A large David Hockney retrospective recently opened at Tate Britain. This is not a review of an exhibition I won’t be able to see in person, instead let’s focus on Hockney’s “perspectives”. These should make YOU want to go check out his work, in London before May 29, 2017 or elsewhere. A quick word on depth and perspective. Artists had not figured it out before the Renaissance so they resorted to stacking figures of pretty much equal size in what’s called medieval overlap. Everything looks quite flat and rigid. With the Renaissance came Brunelleschi and Da Vinci. They worked out linear perspective and vanishing point. Have a look at the picture above: even though you know the pier is made of two sets of poles which remain at the same distance from one another, as it recedes in the distance it looks like they shrink and converge into one point, the vanishing point on the horizon line. It’s called monocular perspective. But David Hockney calls it “cyclopic perspective”. Why is that? In his art, David Hockney wants you and him to be “looking with both eyes”. So let’s dive from multiple vantage points. In the 1980’s, Hockney used Polaroid pictures […]
Superficiality, distortion and lack of authenticity are plaguing our world, our news and sometimes our relationships with people. Maybe technology makes everything available but it also buries us under an avalanche of impersonal content with little substance. So, with this in mind, I give you the very personal art of Do Ho Suh and his many variations on the theme of displacement. Have you ever moved to a different country? Have you ever had to leave your comfort zone to start from scratch at school, at work, at the grocery store? I am French, married to a Brit and after living in quite a few countries, we are currently in California. It is not the most extreme expatriation by any means, but displacement knows no geographic measure. For me, Do Ho Suh sums up the many shapes of displacement in this little house landed askance on the roof of a building. His artworks always resonate up close and personal and they’ve helped me long after the exhibitions have closed. I saw his Apartment A (2011–2012), Corridor and Staircase (2011–2012), and Unit 2, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA (2014) during an exhibition at the MCASD last year so I will use my pictures to describe what I feel may […]
Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa (1830) has been on my mind a lot recently. As a print, it’s widely owned by museums around the world as about 5000 copies would have been made from the original color woodblock. Yet, it’s rarely displayed because prolonged exposure to light can too easily fade its contrasting Prussian blue and indigo. It’s so iconic and recognizable but most of us would know it from cheap reproductions, so how closely have you looked at its many subtle variations? The Great Wave is an unmistakably Japanese image, charged with the uncertainty that Japan would have faced as it was forced out of its self-imposed 200 years of isolationism by the battleships of US Commodore Perry. Fast forward to our daily dose of news from the world and The Great Wave keeps on resonating, bringing to mind the force experienced in the surf as one wave retreats and the next one crests. Processing my feelings through the filter of Art helps me put things in perspective. Think about it. When you’re looking at the Great Wave, as viewer you are also in a boat! And here, Hokusai provides a canvas of universal appeal for everybody to lay down their big (or small) fears […]
Freshly back to my Art History studies, my friend Lorenza was hoping for a few jewel-related stories into the discussions of our course on Impressionism. Jewelry and gemstones are high on my grid but mixed with Impressionism, isn’t it a stretch? Not in my world: Opal is the Impressionist gemstone par excellence! Look at the range of pastel colors this opal displays: the soft brownish orange turning to a blushed apricot and a hint of coral, the green alternating between moss and forest until it fluoresces neon-like while bright aqua blue is dispersed widely with rare specks of royal blue emerging from the depth. This spectacle is what us gemologists call play-of-color, and it is visually very similar to the open and broken brushstrokes associated with the Impressionists and Monet in particular. Let me take you beyond the surface of opal for a bit of gemology… Erosion can have beautiful consequences. Water runs down, picks up mostly silica and other minor elements and becomes a silica-rich solution which permeates cracks. Once there, such solution deposits as small silica spheres which can vary in size depending on temperature and pressure. As the process repeats itself, a whole structure of tiny […]
The days are a bit colder, it’s winter almost everywhere…Can you feel it too? I thought I’d share my vaccine against life becoming a grisaille, one of those melancholic artworks exclusively in shades of grey. So today, I give you…COLORS. Yes. Tried and tested, add colors to your outfit, pop some colorful jewelry and it will fight the gloom and lift your spirits…People are bound to notice and comment on it so you get to share the joy! Ta da! One area I really cannot live without colors is when I cook. My epiphany was when I wondered how I could make my son ingest something other than white food and stumbled on an Ottolenghi cook book. My husband and I used to live around the corner from his first deli in London. Such fond memories of delicious and colorful food well before Ottolenghi became the acclaimed chef he so deserves to be. His original deli was all white walls to let the colors and unusual combinations of his scrumptious Mediterranean food work their magic. First on your eyes, then your taste buds. Pomegranates shining like rubies in his grain salads, the classic green and red contrast revisited with green beans, brocoli, red chili and poppy seeds… In a nutshell, cooking […]
With a pervasive laid-back attitude, it would be easy to stamp San Diego –wrongly, in my opinion – as provincial compared to Los Angeles, its buzzing but gridlocked neighbour. Yes, Los Angeles hosts some high profile museums but if you care to look, not just see, then San Diego has much to offer. San Diego just tends to be understated – a word I have come to think about a lot more since I moved to La Jolla 6 years ago. “Understated” popped in my head again while visiting The Power of Architecture exhibition this week. What is it about Modernist architect Louis Kahn that makes his work so understated – even underrated compared to Le Corbusier or Frank Lloyd Wright – despite the fact that experiencing it is quite monumental? Take his architectural masterpiece, the Salk Institute, tucked away in La Jolla since 1965. You hear about it – a bit – if you live in San Diego but it’s really a gem hidden from the street. Granted, it is in keeping with Kahn’s concept of an “intellectual retreat” but seek it out, it’s worth it! There is some serious neuroscience research going on at the Salk Institute. I pray […]
While in Havana recently, I stumbled on a sculpture garden tucked away in the backyard of an old pretty house off Calle Oficios. The first surprise was to find a sculpture by Rafael Barrios, an op-art artist I discovered in Los Angeles then admired again in Paris. What a surprise to see his work in Havana of all places! Then my eyes took in this beauty, this jewel-toned 3D mural by Cuban artist Alfredo Sosabravo who was born in the 1930’s. He works with many different materials, from oil paint to colourful glass but let me share what I have actually experienced first-hand: his 1992 Palenzuela mural realized with ceramic tiles. Is it a puzzle? Not really. All tiles are squares, uniform in size and most patterns don’t seem to join up correctly apart from one, almost in the center and made of 4 tiles. It represents a stylized sun. Can you see it? Overwhelmed by the size of the mural, my family and I immediately started to look for recognizable shapes as we got closer (a bird! a fish! a frog!). Known quantities acting as a reassuring starting point quickly became reference points. Wait! You see a crab? Yes, 3 up from the sun and 7 tiles to the […]
Having always been interested in Fine and Decorative Arts, I wanted to learn more about Art History in 2016.