Images by Matthew Stone. Courtesy of Gentle Monste
Lee Krasner
Lee Krasner (1908–1984) was born in Brooklyn as Lena Krassner and grew up in an Orthodox Jewish, Russian émigré family. She decided to become an artist at the age of 14, and was one of the first artists in New York to adopt an entirely abstract approach. She went on to be one of the pioneers of Abstract Expressionism. In 1942, her work was included in a group exhibition entitled French and American Painting, and the only fellow exhibitor that she had not met was Jackson Pollock, so she decided to visit his studio. From then on, they were together and in 1945 they married and moved to Springs, Long Island.
Unlike many of her contemporaries, Krasner refused to develop a “signature image,” which she considered to be “rigid rather than being alive.” Working in cycles, she continually sought out new means for authentic expression, even during the most tumultuous of times, which included Pollock's emotional volatility and his sudden death in a car crash in 1956. Krasner's formidable spirit is felt throughout the body of work that she created over more than fifty years in the studio—celebrated in this exhibition.
Combat, 1965
Is that face on the right Pollock’s? … a detail from Icarus, in Lee Krasner: Living Colour. Photograph: The Jewish Museum
Dynamic paintings that fizz and fascinate rescue the endlessly surprising artist from her husband Jackson Pollock’s shadow in this thrilling major retrospective.
Krasner began conventionally enough, with self-portraits whose masses of hair and clotted paint already had in them the kind of organised turmoil and tonalities that would reappear in her mature work. Her naked life drawings (much better, it must be said, than Pollock’s Michelangelo-inspired early drawings), had a kind of smoothed beefiness. One female nude floats rather than sits on her diminutive chair. Later, Krasner began classes at Hofmann’s 9th Street school, where she encountered his very physical teaching style – correcting students’ work by drawing over it, or tearing up drawings and reassembling them in new configurations.
Murakami Takashi
He is one of the most influential Japanese artists born after the 1960s. He is not only a widely loved artist in Japan, but also an idol of the new generation of young people in Japan. He strongly realized that contemporary Western art is completely different from Japanese art creation. The important thing is how our generation does not rely on any inherent cultural system to create the most essential things. Therefore, his works not only integrate the elements of opposition between Eastern tradition and Western civilization, elegant art and popular culture, but also retain the entertainment and appreciation of his works. It is a product that combines the characteristics of Japanese contemporary popular cartoon art and traditional Japanese painting style. The interestingness of his works is worth mentioning. Takashi Murakami implanted a variant image of Mickey Mouse in his own work and regarded it as his own incarnation and a unique visual symbol.
Pablo Picasso
Picasso's artistic career almost throughout his life, his work styles are rich and varied, and later generations used the phrase "Picasso is always young" to describe Picasso's changing art forms. Historiography had to divide his vast works into different periods-the "blue period", "pink period" in the early years, the "black period" in the heyday, "analysis and synthesis of cubism", and later " Surrealism period" and so on. His "Girl of Yavignon" created in 1907 was the first work considered to be cubist and a famous masterpiece with landmark significance. It not only marked a major turning point in Picasso’s personal artistic journey, but also a revolutionary breakthrough in the history of modern Western art, which triggered the birth of the Cubism movement.
Sculpture
Exhibition
Lino Print
THE CAT BOOK
I Plan to do cat-themed Because I like cats very much and I have two cats in my home in China
Then I found a book for children , The layout of this book is very special
I plan to make a book of cat
So you can see that i used origami Spread the surface of the book
In order to achieve the effect of cat hair, I also painted the cat’s face and tail to make the whole book like a real cat
I first made some experimental works with photos of my cat
Because my two cats have completely different Behavior and personality are very different
So I use their character to paint their style
For example, Garfield is very gentle and likes to be close to humans So i used warm color and show more lovely stuff complete the charater
the other one is much colder, so I used cooler tones to paint it
Here you can see that I have made a lot of works of this style using these elements
In addition, I referenced the cat image of Alice in Wonderland and made two similar styles of paint
In the end I used the Chinese style, using ink and brush
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This is the work I put on the exhibition
I was in the preview group in this exhibition
The frequency of cats and artists appearing together is very high.
Researchers speculate that cats can reflect the personality traits of this group of creative people, such as melancholy, mysterious, ambiguous, lazy, maverick, elusive...
From a lifestyle perspective, they need both companionship and need. Only cats can meet the special requirements of loneliness. Cats’ indifference to human activities was sinful in the past, but now people noticed that in addition to being willing to establish a strong and affectionate relationship with animals, humans are also willing to accept a kind of indifferent relationship that is independent of each other and has a companionship.
The grotesque breeds revealed by cats have been appreciated by many literati and artists at this moment: because when you want to start digging out stereotypes and bad habits, there is nothing more gentle in appearance and cold in heart than a cat, and it is considered to be related to mysterious knowledge. Related animals can better represent the nobility and superiority of the owner.
The writer Chateaubriand said: "I love the freedom of cats and their almost ungrateful character, which makes it refuse to attach to anyone, whether it is in the upper-class salons or in the slums."
Edward Gory once said: "Books and cats make life beautiful."
Henri Matisse, a famous French painter and founder of Fauvism, his love of cats
Avant-garde classical music composer John Cage caressed the cat during a break
American neo-expressionist artist Jean Mitchell Basquiat and his cat
The White Cat, 1912, Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle, Halle (Salle), Germany
Franz Marcis known for his images of brilliantly colored animals – horses, dogs, and of course, cats. In 1911-12 Marc displayed his works in Munich. His paintings of cats illustrate the animals in their natural state of sleeping or grooming. Some of his famous cat paintings show cats on a yellow pillow, two cats blue and yellow, cats in a basket, and cats on a red cloth. For him, animals were the ideal symbol of purity, truth, and beauty. Also he believed in the symbolism of colors – blue meant spirituality and masculinity, yellow feminine happiness, and red represented violence
Louis Wain, The Bachelor’s Party, ca. 1939, private collection. Bonhams.
Louis Wainand his cats deserve an article all their own – one day it will be published here, I promise! Wain was one of the most popular English illustrators. Born in 1860, he became famous for his anthropomorphic portrayals of cats. As the English writer H.G. Wells remarked, “he invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world.” The thing is that Wain was mentally ill and probably had schizophrenia which might have caused his obsession with cats He became known as a leading authority on all things cats and was elected president of the National Cat Club. Also he judged cat competitions and was involved in several animal charities. He worked for nearly thirty years, sometimes producing as many as several hundred drawings a year – which amuse cat and art lovers to this day.
Suzanne Valadon, Raminou, 1920, private collection. Pinterest.
Suzanne Valadon was a French painter and artists’ model. In 1894 she became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Valadon painted still lifes, portraits, flowers, and landscapes that are noted for their strong composition and vibrant colors. She was, however, best known for her candid female nudes that depict women’s bodies from a woman’s perspective. She was also a cat lover and often painted her cats, especially her favorite, the fat Raminou.
Pablo Picasso – Cat Catching A Bird
Picasso’s Cat Catching a Bird was created in a couple of versions in 1939 – the year of the outbreak of the war. As Picasso himself recalled, “The subject obsessed me, I don’t know why”. The bird struggles desperately to free itself from its tormentor’s hold. The neutrality of the background does nothing to relieve the horror of the scene. It is an image of everyday life blown up to apocalyptic proportions. The cat is postponing the killing of the bird for as long as possible – the longer he does it, the longer he is in absolute power.
Min-Zhen – The Black Cat
picasso’s cat was a cruel one – time for a smiling one! Min Zhen was a Chinese painter and seal carver born in Nanchang, Jiangxi, who spent most of his life in the Chinese city of Hubei. He was noted for painting human figures and occasionally doing finger painting. He was orphaned at an early age and is sometimes associated with the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, which is the name for a group of eight Chinese painters active in the 18th century who were known in the Qing Dynasty for rejecting orthodox ideas about painting in favor of a style they deemed expressive and individualist.
It was hard to find any information about this gorgeous fat cat, but maybe no more comments are needed here. He has just eaten all the cat food in the world and is happy now.
Bart van der Leck, The Cat, 1914, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands.
Bart van der Leck is primarily known as the cofounder of the magazine De Stijl. In 1916, like piet mondrian, he opted for radical abstraction in his work and to use the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue. That choice was preceded by a quest for a new visual idiom. The classical Egyptian art in the Louvre impressed him during a visit to Paris. Inspired by this, he developed a style with highly simplified forms and sober colors. Consequently in The Cat, Van der Leck depicted the animal both from the side and in profile, and used only black, white, red, and orange.
Utagawa Kuniyoshi – Cats Suggested as the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō
Fifty-five cats appear in this triptych print by the Japanese illustrator Utagawa Kuniyoshi. One of them crawls out of a basket, a few catch rats, others eat fish. Kuniyoshi loved cats. When he became a teacher, his students noted that his studio was overrun by them. His fondness for felines crept into his work and they appear in many of his finest prints. Sometimes they appear as characters from well-known stories, other times they are beautifully expressive studies. Often Kuniyoshi would depict cats in a fully anthropomorphic form, like the later Louis Wain.
Cats Suggested as the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō is a fun spoof on Hiroshige’s The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō which was the bestselling collection in the history of ukiyo-e. The Tōkaidō – or ‘Eastern Sea Road’ – had fifty-three different post stations along its route and these provided stables, food, and lodgings for travelers. Kuniyoshi decided to show these stations through cat puns. For example, the forty-first station of the Tōkaidō is called Miya. This name sounds somewhat like the Japanese word oya which means ‘parent’. For this reason, the station is depicted as two kittens with their mother.
Cats in Art: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Julie Manet also known as Child with Cat, 1887, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France
Berthe Morisot and her husband Eugène Manet, brother of the painter, had known Renoir for many years. The Manets’ admiration for the painter’s talent convinced them, in 1887, to commission a portrait of their daughter Julie. The cat is here only the addition, but such a sweet one! Not to mention that it looks much happier than Julie. Maybe she didn’t like Renoir’s paintings, just like some American art aficionados over one hundred years later.
Cats in Art: Henriëtte Ronner-Knip, The cat at play, c. 1860 – 1878, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Henriëtte Ronner – Knip was born in Amsterdam into a family of painters. She is well known for her paintings of domestic pets, primarily cats. Paintings of pets were popular with the wealthy bourgeois in the Victorian era and her many paintings of cats getting into mischief in domestic scenes proved to be favorites. Mostly sentimental portrayals, her paintings rarely offer any metaphorical meanings and are focused only on the cats themselves. She studied her cat subjects avidly and with sincerity. She even went so far as to construct a specially built glass-fronted studio in which her cats could freely scamper about, sleep, and get into the types of trouble that only cats can get themselves into.
Cats in Art: Jeff Koons, Cat on a Clothesline , 1994-2001
Whether or not you like Jeff Koons you can’t pass in front of his art indifferently. You wouldn’t see it in this photo but his Cat on a Clothesline is gigantic, it measures 312.4 x 279.4 x 127 cm. For Koons, this piece of art is “like a contemporary crucifixion. But it’s also this cute little cat, that’s just in a sock. You can also think of it as a womb-like situation, feeling that sense of protection”. You need to decide for yourself what it is to you.
ONLINE EXHIBITION
tate
THE SHOOTING
andy wahol
Richard Avedon
Andy Warhol, artist, New York, 20 August 1969
Nicola Erni Collection
© The Richard Avedon Foundation
On 3 June, the writer Valerie Solanas came to the Factory and shot Warhol, damaging his internal organs. Warhol was rushed to hospital and was declared clinically dead, but doctors managed to revive him. Solanas had been part of the Factory scene for a short time. She appeared in Warhol’s 1967 film I, A Man and had given Warhol the script for her play Up Your Ass, which was mislaid. She told the police Warhol was stealing her ideas. Her SCUM manifesto called for an end to the male sex and to capitalist society.
The shooting brought increased scrutiny of Warhol’s lifestyle and affected his physical and mental health for the rest of his life. He stopped the open-door policy of the Factory. He had trouble eating, had to wear a surgical corset, and became nervous around people he didn’t know. Despite the trauma of the event, he agreed to pose for photographer Richard Avedon and once compared the stitches of his chest to a Yves Saint Laurent dress.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
Warhol took over 500 photographs of 14 models. A selection of these were enlarged onto silkscreens. The result was a large group of paintings that deviated from the original proposal in favour of an exploration of performance, glamour and personality. In a similar manner to other works he created at the time, Warhol used expressive brushmarks and finger painting to explore the relationship between the silkscreen layer and the painted background.
POP
Warhol was eager to speed up the process of replicating his images, so in 1962 he adopted the commercial production technique of screenprinting. He began to use photographs from newspapers and magazines, often depicting traumatic scenes. Screenprinting meant he could reproduce photographs onto canvas multiple times. While the printing process removed the artist’s hand, Warhol often allowed his screen to be over or under-inked. This created effects that disrupted the images. The face of film star Marilyn Monroe became almost mask-like, while the emotional impact of the news images in his Death and Disaster series was both emphasised and undermined. Some images, such as Pink Race Riot (Red Race Riot), which depicts peaceful civil rights campaigners being attacked by police, connected his work to broader social struggles and forced viewers to look at the world around them.
I always think that Andy Warhol's work is always unique
And provided me with a lot of inspiration on how to show my ideas
I think his pictures are very impactful and powerful
And I was shocked by the works in the TATE exhibition
I think I can also use more strong colors and visual impact to increase diversity in my future works.
Infinity Mirrored Room - Filled with the Brilliance of Life
Yayoi Kusama
Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life 2011 is a room through which visitors pass on a walkway made of mirrored tiles. The walls and ceiling of the room are also mirrored, and the floor surrounding the walkway is covered with a shallow pool of water. Hanging from the ceiling are hundreds of small, round LED lights that flash on and off in different colour configurations on a timed programme. The pinpricks of light in the otherwise darkened room appear to reflect endlessly in the mirrors and the water, giving the viewer the experience of being in a seemingly endless space.
The Passing Winter
Yayoi Kusama
This work was made by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama in 2005, while the artist was living and working in Tokyo, Japan. The box is made from six panels that are secured together, yet the box itself is not fixed to the plinth, but simply rests on it. As a result, this extremely fragile sculpture must be handled and approached very carefully, and it requires regular polishing to maintain a clean, highly reflective surface.
Yayoi Kusama's color application has always been very top-notch
I like her pictures very much. The colorful colors make her works very memorable
I hope that in the future I can better apply all kinds of colors
To express my emotions better