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Tag Archives: pop art

An Archaeology of Contemporary Life: The Art of Gianluca Capozzi

03 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by Romantic and Postromantic Art in An Archaeology of Contemporary Life: The Art of Gianluca Capozzi, art blog, art criticism, art history, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary art, fine art, fineartebooks, Gianluca Capozzi, hyper-realism, modernism, modernity, painting, Romanticism and Postromanticism

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An Archaeology of Contemporary Life: The Art of Gianluca Capozzi, art blog, art criticism, art reviews, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary art, contemporary painting, fine art, Gianluca Capozzi, hyper-realism, Italian art, painting, pop art, postmodern art, postromanticism.com, Surrealism

Born in Avellino, Italy, educated at the prestigious Academy of Fine Art in Florence, the contemporary artist Gianluca Capozzi shows an amazing versatility. Her paintings range from hyper-realism to a kind of minimalist Surrealism to Pop art. Gianluca Capozzi’s artwork offers an archaeology of contemporary life.

If anyone were to discover her works decades or even centuries later, they’d see our societies as they are: fragments of our every day lives, be it enjoying a day at the beach or walking on crowded city streets, on the way to work. But for the modern viewer, her artwork holds unexpected visual surprises that give us–quite literally–a fresh perspective on our daily activities: such as images that are off-center, where the focal point is the people dispersing into the city streets from an empty center or a young woman standing in the foreground with a fire blazing right behind her.

One of my favorites, called Pinup, featured below, captures perfectly the nearly inseparable fetishism–a longstanding cliché of the media machine–between women’s sexual allure and cars.

On the other hand, the painting entitled Office, below, is demurely realist and traditional. In a manner reminiscent of Degas’ voyeuristic framing, the viewer is invited to peek inside our mundane reality of “just another day at the office” as if we were mere external observers to our own everyday lives. This painting effectively defamiliarizes the familiar through its perspective rather than its style.

Finally, the painting entitled Sunday Afternoon, featured below, superposes a black and white image of a man working on his car with whimsical, colorful streaks of color. Both the car and the man have a retro look about them, but the splashes of color framed in white render them very fresh, ornamental and modern.

Gianluca Capozzi has the talent to render the familiar unfamiliar for the viewers of today while also making it more memorable for the viewers of tomorrow. You can see more of Gianluca Capozzi’s contemporary and versatile art on her blogspot, at the link below:

http://www.capozzigianluca.blogspot.com

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

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From Eros to Thanatos: Damien Hirst and Postromanticism.com

09 Thursday Jun 2011

Posted by Romantic and Postromantic Art in aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, After the end of art, art blog, art criticism, art education, art for art's sake, art history, art movements, Arthur Danto, artist Damien Hirst, Away from the Flock, Bakhtin, Charles Saatchi, chronotopes, Claudia Moscovici, conceptual art, contemporary art, Damien Hirst, Damien Hirst and Postromanticism, death, death in art, Distinction, Duchamp, Edouard Manet, Emile Zola, From Eros to Thanatos, From Eros to Thanatos: Damien Hirst and Postromanticism.com, installation, Lady Gaga, Lady Gaga and Damien Hirst, neoconceptual art, pickled shark, Pierre Bourdieu, postmodern art, postmodernism, postromantic aesthetics, postromantic art, postromanticism.com, readymade, Realism, Realist art, Romanticism, Romanticism and Postromanticism, scandal, Sigmund Freud, spin paintings, spot paintings, The Field of Cultural Production, The Golden Calf, The Nation, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, Warhol, Young British Artists

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aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, After the end of art, art, art blog, art criticism, art history, Arthur Danto, Away from the Flock, Bad Romance, Bakhtin, Beautiful Inside my Head Forever, Charles Saatchi, chronotopes, Claudia Moscovici, conceptual art, contemporary art, Damien Hirst, Damien Hirst and postromanticism, Damien Steven Hirst, death, diamond studded skull, Distinction, Eros, Eros and Thanatos, fine art, fineartebooks, fineartebooks.com, From Eros to Thanatos, From Eros to Thanatos: Damien Hirst and Postromanticism.com, Georges Bataille, Hirst's art, history of art, installation, L'Erotisme, Lady Gaga, Lady Gaga and Damien Hirst, Lady Gaga plays Damien Hirst Piano, modern art, mortality, Museum of Contemporary Art, neoconceptual art, pickled shark, Pierre Bourdieu, pop art, postmodern art, postmodernism, postromantic art, postromantic movement, postromanticism, postromanticism.com, readymade, Romantic art, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Sotherby's auction, spin paintings, spot paintings, Thanatos, the art of Damien Hirst, The Field of Cultural Production, the Nation, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, Young British Artists

Damien Hirst is probably the most controversial and successful artist of our times, particularly if one measures success by how much critical attention art gets and how much it sells for. The founder of the avant-garde Young British Artists and considered to be the richest living artist in Great Britain, Hirst has had more than his share of both positive and negative media attention. The critical and artistic elite, however, hails him as one of the most innovative neoconceptual artists of our times. This is a very high honor, indeed, given that conceptual art has dominated the latter part of the twentieth century and continues to be very popular with critics today.

In most of his work, the philosopher and art critic for The Nation, Arthur Danto, explains the rise of conceptual art. His artistic heroes are Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol, who arguably contributed most visibly to make art what it is today: aesthetic in the critical and reflexive ideas it raises about art rather than in the way it represents objects. Duchamp’s urinal and Warhol’s brillo boxes, Danto argues, are not artistic in their materiality. There’s nothing intrinsic to these objects that makes them different from ordinary household objects. Their aesthetic qualities, Danto suggests, lie in the way their make us question the nature and existence of art in a new and provocative way. The millennia-old Platonic tradition of understanding art as some kind of inferior mimesis or imitation of reality is clearly gone in such readymade objects and pop art assemblages. Gone is also the equally old tradition, famously initiated by Plato and resurrected by the Romantics, of art as a special, almost daemonic, force that inspires artists to create works of beauty. Last but not least, in reading Danto we get the impression that the notion of creativity and originality, defended by the French writer Emile Zola in his ardent defense of Manet, has been pushed to the extreme by Duchamp, Warhol and , more recently, by Hirst himself.

Much of Damien Hirst’s art explicitly evokes the concept (and reality) of death. His most famous readymade, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, features a 14-foot tiger shark preserved in formaldehyde and displayed in an aquarium. This piece was created in 1991, bought by the artist’s original patron, Charles Saatchi, and redone in 2006 (since the original began to rot). Hirst’s other controversial readymades include dead and dissected animals, a cow and a sheep (Away from the Flock), also preserved in formaldehyde. My personal favorite is In and Out of Love, which consists of colorful and delicate butterflies whose beauty in death is preserved by art.

Those familiar with the world of art already know everything I’ve just summarized. Now I’d like to examine Hirst’s art in terms of its cultural role as well as in terms of its complementarity to my own contemporary art movement, postromanticism.com. I will first consider Hirst’s powerful impact in the field of contemporary art, then his striking conceptualization of death, which will lead me to explore the continuity between the themes of Eros and Thanatos: desire and the life force represented by my movement postromanticism.com and death and mortality being represented by Hirst’s conceptual art.

1. The Field of Cultural Production and Shock Value. Although sympathetic to those who value the role of conceptual art to provoke thought, ideas and change assumptions about what is art, I tend to look at art more pragmatically and sociologically, relying upon the works of the French sociologist of art, Pierre Bourdieu (The Field of Cultural Production and Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste). I believe that art is what “the field of cultural production”—namely, art critics, artists, patrons, art schools, art teachers and professors and museum curators—say it is. The art considered most valuable by these cultural forums—meaning not only the art that sells for most money, but also the art that gets most critical attention (even if not always of the positive variety!)—is what defines art for a given context. This may seem somewhat relativistic, but it doesn’t have to be:  if one assumes that critics, artists, etc. propose valid and defensible standards of aesthetic value and judge art accordingly. Hirst’s works have probably made the biggest impact in the recent history of art, where conceptual art dominates the art scene, particularly in critical reviews and museums of contemporary art. (Of course, in other essays, I argue that conceptual art shouldn’t dominate those venues, and that curators and art critics should become more open to different styles of art, including more traditional styles inspired by the Romantic and realist traditions, which are very popular with galleries and the general public).

Hirst’s works are not original in the traditional Kantian sense of inimitability. In fact, the artist imitated his own work of art by placing a second shark in formaldehyde when the first one started to decompose. His work is original, however, in the sense of making a huge cultural splash and in being the first—or one of the first–of its kind to make that kind of impact or statement. This sense of originality is not far removed from shock value, a term which many (including me) have used to criticize postmodern art. The more I’ve opened my mind to all types of art since starting my art blog, however, the less critical and the more positive I’ve become about shock value. In fact, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that shock value may be necessary to keeping art alive in culture.

Art runs the risk of becoming increasingly culturally irrelevant. If you look at what attracts most public attention nowadays it’s the latest shenanigans of the Kardashians; the latest fashions and shoe trends; the cutest purses; the latest Hollywood hookups and scandals, the juiciest political sex scandals and–let’s not forget–the Royal Wedding. Not just art, but also politics risk falling by the wayside. As you may recall, in the not-so-distant past, it used to be that every major newspaper had foreign correspondents. Now we see the proliferation of entertainment editors and blogs, which have replaced, for the most part, foreign correspondents. In the U.S., rather sadly, international news has become almost exclusively a matter of headlines pertaining strictly to our foreign policy. We have to dig hard, as Americans, to find out what’s going on in the rest of the world outside of the area of high-profile celebrities, the wars we start, political scandals, or natural disasters. If international politics has become less relevant—in selling newspapers–than Kim Kardashian’s new engagement ring, you can imagine that the world of art risks being left even further behind.

The number of entertainment editors and blogs keep growing, while the number of high-profile art critics keeps falling, as the art and book critics are being swallowed up into the general rubric of Arts or Entertainment, which for the most part focuses on best-selling books and film reviews. In this context, if artists do not create something very entertaining, shocking and provocative to get the arts and entertainment critics and, more importantly, the general public interested in them, the world of art is likely to fade in the background of culture like a shy wallflower. Artists like Damien Hirst offer aesthetic objects that are so provocative  that whether or not you like that kind of art or even find it “artistic,” it places art, once again, at the center of public discussion, which is where it should be. As George Bernard Shaw famously stated, “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”

2. From Eros to Thanatos: Postromanticism and Damien Hirst’s art. Judging by its own aesthetic standards, I also appreciate the way Damien Hirst’s neoconceptual art makes us think about the continuity between love and death, or between Eros and Thanatos. In many respects, his artworks are opposite of and complementary to the art movement I co-founded with Leonardo Pereznieto in 2002, postromanticism.com. Postromanticism emphasizes the importance of beauty, sensuality and passion in contemporary representational art. While being original and edgy, postromantic art maintains the verisimilitude of the artistic objects—be they paintings, photographs or sculptures—which resemble the objects they depict.

By way of contrast, the notion of verisimilitude isn’t really applicable as a standard by which to judge Damien Hirst’s art. Hirst often exhibits the real object: the real sheep, the real shark, the real butterflies, in the same way that Warhol exhibited the real brillo boxes and Duchamp an actual latrine. Postromantic art is all about the importance of desire, love and passion in human life. Hirst’s artworks show us the ephemeral nature of such emotions. They often represent the literal embodiment of mortality, underscoring the fleeting nature of biological life itself. Postromanticism and Hirst’s conceptual art may therefore seem polar opposites, and in some respects they are. But every major anthropological and psychological study of love and death has depicted these oppositions as inextricably connected. Freud is known for discussing the link between love and death in his book, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, or between the life force (Eros, desire, sexuality) and the death force (or Thanatos, a term made popular by Paul Federn). Looking at the life and death forces in terms of energy flow, psychoanalysis looks at desire as a dissipation of energy, where every orgasm represents a “small death.”

Anthropologists make the link between love and death even more explicitly by looking at desire in the context of human sacrifice. The best book I’ve read on this subject is Georges Bataille’s L’Erotisme. For Bataille, love represents the hopeless search for our lost continuity. It’s hopeless because the unions we attain through sex and love are very fleeting. After copulation we return once again to our individuated, solitary selves. As they say, we’re all alone in pain and death. “In essence,” Bataille states, “the domain of eroticism is the domain of violence, of violation… The most violent thing of all for us is death which jerks us out of a tenacious obsession with the lastingness of our discontinuous being.”

Postromantic passion, as expressed by the artists associated with postromanticism.com, is a celebration of desire, respect, love and obsession for as long as these deep and powerful emotions can last. This art also celebrates passing on and transforming artistic traditions—the Romantic movement, neoclassicism and art nouveau—for our contemporary times. Hirst’s art provokes us to think about the obverse sides of love and desire: how quickly they can dissipate; how contingent human emotions can be; how wrong we often are about the objects of our desire; how idealization often turns into the devaluation of the object of love (or just lust); how even when love lasts, unfortunately, our lives do not. The danger represented by his tiger sharks or the mortality displayed by his dissected animals is, after all, also our own mortality and the danger we can pose to each other.

To emphasize the importance of this complementarity between postromanticism and Hirst’s neoconceptual art, I’d like to allude to one last cultural figure: Mikhail Bakhtin, the famous Russian formalist critic. Bakhtin argued that art and literary are chronotopic rather than just  diachronic. By this he meant that artistic and literary movements don’t happen just in linear/temporal sequence, one following the other, as they’re often taught in art and literary history. New art movements often go back in time to find inspiration in much older movements, the way Neo-Classicism found inspiration in Greek and Roman art and Romanticism went back to Medieval art.

The relation between postromanticism and Hirst’s neoconceptual is similar: each finds inspiration in older movements. Moreover, they end up depicting the themes of love and death in a way analogous to how the Romantic and Symbolist movements did this centuries earlier. Postromanticism draws more from the Romantic tradition while Hirst’s art echoes Symbolist obsessions (with death, decay, the unconscious, fears, and pushing the boundaries of art). I believe that the tension and complementarity between these two contemporary art movements is exciting and necessary. After all, a worthwhile human life must entail both the appreciation and celebration of love and beauty and the resignation and sense of irony towards our cosmic insignificance and transience. It all depends, like in the illusionist picture of the young or old woman featured below, upon your perspective.


Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

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Barna Nemethi’s AllHollow: A New Dada Springs from the World of Marketing

27 Wednesday Apr 2011

Posted by Romantic and Postromantic Art in aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, Alina Huza, AllHollow, Andy Warhol, art blog, art criticism, art education, art for art's sake, art history, art movements, artistic photography, avant-garde, Barna Nemethi, contemporary art, Curtea Veche Publishing, curteaveche.ro, Dada, Dadaism, fashion, fine art, fineartebooks, Griffon and Swans, griffon.ro, Grigore Arsene, Hugo Ball, Iren Arsene, Iulia Cirstea, l'art pour l'art, modern art, modernism, modernity, Neo-Surrealism, new Dada, new Surrealism, Oana Paunescu, originality in art, Patru Paunescu, photography, pop art, postmodern art, postmodernism, postromanticism, postromanticism.com, Romanian art, Romanian Association of Editors, Romanticism and Postromanticism, surreal art, Surrealism, Surrealist art, The Hunt, Tristan Tzara, Vlad Fenesan, Will Vendramini, Wonderland, Zuzanna Buchwald

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aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, Alina Huza, AllHollow, allhollow.com, Andy Warhol, art, art blog, art criticism, art history, avant-garde, Barna Nemethi, Barna Nemethi's AllHollow: A New Dada Springs from the World of Marketing, Claudia Moscovici, Curtea Veche Publishing, curteaveche.ro, Dada, Dadaism, fine art, fineartebooks, fineartebooks.com, Grigore Arsene, history of art, Hugo Ball, Iren Arsene, Iulia Cirstea, Laura Cosoi, modern art, modernism, Neo-Dada, Neo-Dadaism, new Dada, Oana Paunescu, Patru Paunescu, photography, pop art, postmodern art, postmodernism, postromanticism.com, Romanian Association of Editors, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Surrealist art, Surrealist film, Surrealist photography, The Hunt, Tristan Tzara, Tzara, Vlad Fenesan, Will Vendramini, women in art, Wonderland, Zuzanna Buchwald

Newton’s third law of physics postulates that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. However, things don’t work out as neatly in the world of art. There are some rules that govern the world of art, but as they say, those are meant to be broken by new and innovative artists. One of the most creative and irreverent art movements was Dada, founded by a Romanian poet, Tristan Tzara. Like Surrealism, which later sprung from it, Dada was a broad cultural movement, involving the visual arts, poetry, literature, theater, graphic design and–inevitably–even politics.

Born in the wake of the devastation caused by WWI, Dada rejected “reason” and “logic,” which many of its artists associated with capitalist ideology and the war machine. Despite becoming internationally known for so many visible artists and poets, the Dada movement could not be pinned down.  Its aesthetic philosophy was anti-aesthetic; its artistic contribution was anti-art. As Hugo Ball stated, “For us, art is not an end in itself… but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in.”

For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction? Even in the anti-rationalist world of art? Maybe so. But what actions might we be speaking of, today? It’s hard to pick and choose among the many dangers facing the contemporary world: the ever-present threat of terrorism; the backlash of democratic superpowers sometimes even against the innocent and the helpless; the plutocratic mentality threatening to engulf the free world; the homogenizing reign of pop culture; the standardization and what Marx would call the “object fetishism” that has reached unimaginable proportions in the globalized capitalist market.

Looking at the world through critical eyes can reveal a very discouraging picture. But maybe we need such so-called “nihilist” reactions from artists to avoid the bland conformity that threatens to normalize even phenomena which should, by all rights, shock us. Few would know about these modern phenomena better than Barna Nemethi: a young Romanian artist who grew up in a new capitalist market, which developed rapidly under his eyes, largely due to the efforts of his generation. By chance (or good fortune), as the son of Iren and Grigore Arsene, Barna also grew up at the center of Romanian culture. His adoptive father is the President of the Romanian Association of Editors and, along with his wife, Iren, the head of Curtea Veche Publishing, one of Romania’s most prestigious and largest publishing houses. Barna followed in his parents’ footsteps by becoming the Managing Parter at Curtea Veche Publishing (http://www.curteaveche.ro/) and the Executive Manager of the Advertising Company Griffon and Swans  (http://www.griffon.ro/). He’s also a very talented film director and photographer.

But perhaps Barna Nemethi’s most ambitious, subversive and dynamic project is AllHollow (http://www.allhollow.com/), a new online magazine that combines photography, journalism, (anti)aesthetic philosophy, fashion, film and art. In the April issue, Laura Cosoi pays tribute to the legendary pop artist Andy Warhol by dressing like him and shooting video clips in which she imagines and recreates how he’d react to contemporary gadgets, such as the ipod.

The clips are quite stylish, but there’s a good measure of irony and humor in the tribute, as Laura emulates Warhol’s slow, meticulous style, in the vimeo clip below:

http://vimeo.com/21645424

The April issue of AllHollow also includes Wonderland (Concept by Oana Paunescu, produced by Alina Huza and filmed by Patru Paunescu, directed by Vlad Fenesan and photographed by Barna Nemethi).  The film and the photo shoot both mediate the boundaries between high fashion (modeled by Iulia Cirstea) and new Surrealism/Dada images and scenes.

The set itself has dream-like inconsistencies and juxtapositions. A spectacularly beautiful woman, dressed in a combination of nightgown/ballerina outfit and black fishnet stockings, lies on a metal bed above which hangs…a giant fish. She’s surrounded by three manechins, which seem evocative of feminine and masculine roles.

http://www.allhollow.com/#1168104/Wonderland-Motion

The “heroine”  moves with the mechanical, slow and sometimes sensual abandon of someone trapped in a dream, or perhaps unwittingly trespassing the boundaries between dream and reality. The images and the model are so hauntingly beautiful that they belong in a high-fashion shoot. Yet, at the same time, the incongruous setting and absurd array of props surrounding the model makes the entire scene evocative, open-ended in meaning and surreal. There is no dominant theme, no obvious plot: nothing to trap the model in any structure other than the aura of the fantastic itself.

I can’t write about AllHollow without also alluding to The Hunt, a series of photographs taken by Barna Nemethi in Manhattan, which features the models Zuzanna Buchwald and Will Vendramini. Like Wonderland, there’s a Surrealist mood and more than a touch of Dadaism in these images. The handsome man sometimes wears a funny animal mask, sometimes not. He’s simultaneously presented as a stalker/predator in search for his languid prey and as an attractive potential date for the beautiful woman.

The Hunt makes  light of–while also making viewers attuned to–the strange (yet normalized) mating/dating rituals  that men and women commonly engage in. But, simultaneously, like practically all of Barna Nemethi’s  series, this set of images could easily function as a high fashion photo spread that seamlessly combines impeccable stylishness and subversive creativity.

For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. This happens in the laws of physics and sometimes also in the more erratic world of art. In the case of Barna Nemethi’s innovative AllHollow project, however, the action and the reaction come from the same source. Barna Nemethi’s film and photography represent a new Dadaism full of artistic innovation and subversion at the heart of the marketing world that it simultaneously perpetuates and transforms.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

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The Art of Vesa Peltonen and Global ArtXchanges

28 Monday Mar 2011

Posted by Romantic and Postromantic Art in aesthetics, Amnesty International, art and human rights, art blog, art criticism, art education, art history, art movements, beauty, Claudia Moscovici, Cubism, fine art, fineartebooks, Global ArtXchanges, history of art, Impressionism, Impressionist art, modernism, post-Impressionism, postimpressionism, postromantic aesthetics, postromantic art, postromanticism, postromanticism.com, Realism, Realist art, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Vesa Peltonen

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aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, Amnesty International, art, art and human rights, art and spirituality, art criticism, art history, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary art, Cubism, fine art, fineartebooks.com, Global ArtXchanges, international art, international art programs, modern art, multicultural art, pop art, post-Impressionism, postromanticism, postromanticism.com, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Vesa Peltonen

Vesa Peltonen has dedicated not only his art, but also his life to protecting and celebrating human rights. His paintings have a softened Cubist feel about them: as if the viewer were examining not just the shapes themselves, but also their shadows and the shades of color, from all angles.  The effect is dazzling. Like in post-Impressionism, his paintings allow the eye to mix the colors from afar. Because the emphasis is placed on shades of striking colors, however, the images seem to float despite their underlying realism.

Vesa’s paintings are multicultural in theme, as the artist finds the beauty and flavor of each location where he travels to bring art to students all over the world. Vesa Peltonen’s art and his human rights activism are, in many respects, inseparable. He founded the Global ArtExchanges Program, which, in his own words, views art as “an integral part of helping enliven the learning of youth, and thus enriches their neighbourhood and community, large or small.”

This program collaborates with local art group directors to motivate youth across the globe to express themselves artistically. Global ArtXchanges works hand in hand with human rights organizations, like Amnesty International, to bring the beauty of art to impoverished areas of the world, where artistic expression might be viewed as a luxury, not a necessity. Art may not be essential to basic material survival, but, Global ArtXchanges maintains, it’s nonetheless essential to our spiritual and creative flourishing. You can find out more about Vesa Peltonen’s visionary art and the Global ArtXchanges Program on his website, GLOBALArtXchanges.org.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com


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Modern and Whimsical: The Art of Helene Lopes Codrescu

01 Tuesday Feb 2011

Posted by Romantic and Postromantic Art in art blog, art criticism, art history, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary art, fineartebooks, Helene Lopes Codrescu, modern art, Op Art, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, pop art, postromantic art, postromanticism, postromanticism.com

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art blog, art criticism, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary art, Cubism, Cubist painting, Dora Maar, finartebooks, fine art, Helene Lopes Codrescu, La Danseuse Voilée, modern art, modernism, New York from the Sky, Op art, Pablo Picasso, painting, Paul Klee, pop art, postromanticism.com, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Veiled Dancer, Woman in a Box

The artist Helene Lopes Codrescu describes herself as “a free electron.” She finds inspiration in numerous traditions in modern art, spanning the globe and reshaping them according to her own talent and perspectives. The painting La Danseuse Voilée (Veiled Dancer), below, has something of the whimsical playfulness of a Paul Klee doodle.

But New York From the Sky, on the other hand, with its geometric shapes and mosaic angles and refractions, bears some similarity to the New York Op Art movement of the 1970’s.

Finally, what art lover can fail to recognize echoes of Pablo Picasso, during his Dora Maar phase, in the tortuous Cubism of Woman in a Box, featured below?

Helene Lopes Codrescu paints outside the box, however. She freely finds inspiration in numerous rich traditions of modern art, but makes them her own, with the independence and internationalism of the free electron that she is. You can see more of her art on the website artquid, on the link below:

http://www.artquid.com/artist/lopesco/about

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

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In all Seriousness: Playing with Toyism

23 Sunday Jan 2011

Posted by Romantic and Postromantic Art in aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, After the end of art, art and activism, art blog, art criticism, art education, art history, art movements, Arthur Danto, Claudia Moscovici, Dada, Dadaism, Dejo, fine art, fineartebooks, Miro, pop art, postmodern art, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Surrealism, Toyism

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aesthetics, art criticism, art movements, Claudia Moscovici, Dada, Dadaism, Dejo, In all Seriousness: Playing with Toyism, Miro, modern art, modernism, pop art, postmodern art, postromanticism.com, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Surrealism, Toyism, toyism.com

In modern art, there are a number of movements that placed playfulness and fantasy at their center: Surrealism, of course, but also Dada and pop art. Toyism is the latest movement in this tradition: it subverts the canon to put the fun back in art. What’s interesting about this game-like movement is the fact that it’s rule-bound. In this respect, it goes against the postmodern assumption that anything goes in art. Since the 1960’s, we’ve come to believe that art is what the artists and public make it to be: it’s a realm with consecration (since some artists become better known than others), but no formal rules or boundaries.

Toyism has some affinities with postmodern pop art, but it’s more quirky, introspective and rule-bound. In the early 1990’s, Dejo, a Dutch artist and musician, introduced Toyism to the public. The membership of this group oscillates, usually between 13 and 20 members, but it cannot exceed 26 members: one for each letter of the Roman alphabet. The artists, including the founder, all work under pseudonyms, to allow for greater creativity and freedom.

Their works are figurative and narrative: they represent recognizable objects and every picture or sculpture tells a story. They tend to use bright and distinct colors, rather than mixtures, for greater contrast and visibility. For this reason, Toyist art is very eye-catching. Although a lot of it looks playful and fun–similarly to Miro’s Surrealist doodles–it often deals with serious themes. The Toyists work in many media and genres–including paintings, silkscreens, giclees, prints, jewelry and sculptures–so if you think this kind of art fits with your style or vision, give them a try on http://toyism.com/.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

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