James Welling Searches for Beauty

James Welling "Gelatin Photograph 40"

The dramatic, glossy black shapes in James Welling’s “Gelatin Photographs” look like coal or tar or chunks of primordial ooze. Both solid looking and fleshy in appearance, they are laid out across a plain white surface and look like an abstract painting. In reality, they are made of Jell-O, dyed black with ink. These mysterious images appear in Welling’s current retrospective at the Hammer Museum. On view through Jan. 12, it surveys 35 years of photographic work in which nothing is ever just Jell-O.

Toro Y Moi's 'Rose Quartz' Video

Toro Y Moi's 'Rose Quartz' Video Features Stop Motion Animation Oil Painting

The fourth single of the American indie musician Chazwick Bradley Bundic, also known as Toro Y Moi's new album "Anything in Return." The whole project was created and produced by Lauren Gregory. In 2009, Moi was signed to Carpark Records, from which he released his first album Causers of This. In promotion of Anything in Return, Toro y Moi has embarked on a tour across North America and Europe, which started on May 27, 2013 in George Washington, and will end on November 10 in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Gill Miller Abstract

Interstellar Chain Drive, 2013

Recently completed acrylic abstract painting from Gill Miller. Interstellar Chain Drive is the sixth in the series of the exploration of humanity vs. the machine, and the results of that marriage. What do we get from that union? The machine as an extension and a tool to advance our interests and causes and to promote a more "civilized" life-style. Certainly two sides to this equation. The modern world has embraced the machine as a tool for living. We are interconnected.

Eric Clapton Sells Another Gerhard Richter

 

Gerhard Richters Abstraktes Bild

This November, the music legend Eric Clapton will sell his second Gerhard Richter painting at Christie's Auction House in New York. The first time around in 2012, Clapton sold a Richter painting, also by the name of Abstraktes Bild, for $35 million, which was far and away above the expected sale price of $14-19 million. This set a new record as the highest price ever paid for a painting at auction for a living artist. This current painting that will be up for auction is expected to fetch around $25 million.

Warhol's "Flash-November 22, 1963"

Andy Warhol

A new exhibit at the Telfair Museum in Savannah, Ga is marking the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, with a collection of Warhol's prints that disseminate the horrendous tragedy that was drawn from five years of the American public's emotional response. It is two things; a celebration of the president as a much beloved leader of the United States and the free world, and through obscured film stills of the moment of the assassination and the ensuing horror, an archival, historical documentation of an event that most people who were alive then, still remember in detail. 

Selections from Andy Warhol; Flash-November 22, 1963; Collection of Herbert Brito. © 2013 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Cy Twombly's "The Rose II"

Cy Twombly's "The Rose II"

The Huffington Post  writes about "100 Works of Art That Will Define Our Age", and included is The Rose II, a masterwork of epic proportions. His cryptic depiction of over sized flowers are at once beautiful, as well as somber and morose, as the paint runs down off the flowers. This implies death, and his professional background as a cryptologist would explain the artist's fascination with the subject matter.

Twombly's style combined graffiti and abstraction in a style that set a precedent to some of today's art. The artist was a working contemporary of Robert Rauschenberg while studying at the Art Students League, and Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell when he went to Black Mountain College. Twombly died in 2011 at the age of 83. He left a body of work and a legacy that will be studied and interpreted, and re-interpreted for years and years to come.

New Banksy Mural in Los Angeles

 New Banksy mural in Los Angeles, Better Out Than In. Painted with black spray paint with flowers representing vomit. The mural is accompanied with the text "October 2013", which aficionados claim the artist is up to some mischief in the U.S. next month. Stay tuned Banksy fans!

Phil Hansen-Embrace the Shake

Phil Hansen-Embrace the Shake

Yue Minjun "Execution"

Yue Minjun Execution 1995

Yue Minjun is a Chinese artist living in Beijing, who is considered one of, if not the most important Chinese artist in China today. He is classified as a member of the "Cynical Realist" movement, although the artist denies that he is part of that. He often depicts himself frozen in laughter in his paintings. Execution is said to portray what happened at Tiananmen Square, although Minjun denies that. He also rejects the idea that he is being critical of the Chinese government, most likely to remain out of the line of sight of persecution. Execution last sold in 2007 for $5.9 million U.S. Dollars at London's Sotheby's.

Tod Lychkoff-Los Angeles Artist

Tod Lychkoff is a Los Angeles native and artist who has lived in Downtown Los Angeles for many years, before downtown had started its urban renaissance - before downtown had become the "cool" place that it has, and is, becoming. He lived there when one of the predominant features of the area were the homeless, sitting, eating and sleeping on the sidewalks, lying in front of dilapidated store-fronts. This was a constant reminder that much of the area lacked an economic and urban vitality.

This is what Tod paints about. He is telling a story of the faceless, the homeless people that we often overlook and ignore, to the best of our ability. I asked Tod about the shredded newspapers in many of his paintings on the recent Downtown ArtWalk where he had a solo show in a large, cavernous gallery in the heart of the Gallery District. He said the shredded newspaper represents how we are often just numbers and anonymous names in an impersonal world that often overlooks the sea of humanity around it. Most of us are so busy running around with our own agenda that we don't take notice of the person lying in the alley or on the sidewalk. Maybe we don't even notice the person in the apartment or house next door who is living in distress. (paraphrased in my own words).

Tod's art is beautiful. Most of the canvases are quite large. They tell a very important story on canvases that are drenched in color and texture and have amazing compositions. The viewer is drawn in to these amazing creations that they stand in front of, and somehow one feels in awe of what is before them. I felt compelled to ask questions and to contemplate.

Art Walk, Jeffrey Werve, Los Angeles Sept. 12, 2013

Untitled #6

Upon first glance and then closer examination, Untitled #6 drew me in as an exciting and very enticing abstract painting. With its blue and neutral pallet and ensuing red splash overlay, the "painting" was fresh and appealing in a world full of abstract art. It had a signature which made it its own. The artist, professional photographer Jeffrey Werve explained to me that the three large framed "paintings" were actually photographs of random paint spills, splashes and found objects, randomly  composed. The result is colorful, beautiful and compelling. The camera lens frames the composition to make the final piece. Jeffrey is clearly a professional photographer with an eye that transforms randomness into art.

Gill Miller's NYC

NYC,  2010,  Spray Acrylic on Canvas.

This is the painting that started my art career really, with my first art show in 2010 at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, CA. This painting involved hundreds of overlays of paint using blue painter's tape and spray acrylic. The process seemed endless until I got to a point that it looked finished. The color balance was there as well as the symmetry and composition. My art since then has gone into a different direction, exploring other styles and even recently a bit of surrealism.  NYC is still my biggest seller of giclees. I'm even shipping them off to buyers as far away as Singapore.

James Turrell's ‘It’s Not About Light—It Is Light’

James Turrell's Caper (Salmon-White), 2000, composed of LED and fluorescent

light, is installed in Houston’s Mies van der Rohe–designed glass pavilion.

A three museum, 3 city retrospective by living Los Angeles artist James Turrell is a tour-de-force of this artist's work, at LACMA in Los Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Each institution is presenting the artist according to their cultural history and influences, yet each exhibit has on display works of print, drawings, models, and Turrell’s elusive, hallucinatory installations constructed entirely from white and colored light. His light displays are fantastic and mezmerizing, if not other worldly. Admission to his exhibits cost an additional charge, and are worth every penny of it. Walking into these fields of colored light leave you with a feeling that you have experienced something quite unique and special.
The memory of what I experienced at LACMA stays with me, and has changed my perception of what I see around me.

Street Art from L.A. to Kiev, El Mac to Shepard Fairey

The new book, The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti, by Rafael Schacter, conicides with the recent decision by the Los Angeles City Council to overturn the 11 year ban on public murals on private property. The book includes 113 street artists from 25 countries. With Los Angeles at one time the epicenter of street art in the world, this decision will change the face of the city once again. The explosion of art will move from inside the gallery to the streetscape. In my view, this is a very important function of art - making it accessible to everyone in a setting that is not intimidating, such as a gallery can be. Two of the world's most famous street artists included in the book, El Mac and Shepard Fairey, are from Los Angeles, and lend weight to the art scene here. The book by Schacter, and the overturning of the mural law in Los Angeles, are a celebration of public art. It enriches the urban fabric, and makes for an intensely more vibrant and interesting urban experience.

Kirkpatrick Mural by Nathan Brown

KIRKPATRICK MURAL by: NATHAN BROWN from Nathan Brown on Vimeo.
This incredible elementary school asked me and my good friend Audrock to give the walls of their school some life and here is what i did :)

Downtown Los Angeles Inflatable Structure

 

Downtown Los Angeles Inflatable Walk-in Structure at Grand Park 

Los Angeles' Downtown has seen an explosion of urban renewal and vitality injected into it in the last 15 years. And as part of that renewal and vitality is the influence of the art scene there. The arts often play a key role of an urban renaissance, and Los Angeles is no exception. Grand Park is also a symbol of that renewal. Situated between the Music Center on the west and City Hall on the East, the programming of events is a key to that success.

The Inflatable Walk-in Structure is called Exxopolis. It was created by Architects of Air, a Nottingham, England-based company that is the brainchild of sculptor Alan Parkinson, who started designing the structures he calls luminaria in 1992. The World City event is the first time a luminarium will be presented in Los Angeles.

Gerald Buck in Newport Beach

Gerald Buck inside his private art museum in Newport Beach, CA. He dies this week at 73. He maintained a vast, by some estimates the largest private art collection in the United States, art collection. Getting into the museum was by invitation only. Some of the notable artists who 

were invited in to see the collection were Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Irwin, 

Helen Lundeberg, Carlos Almaraz and Edward Kienholz

Berkeley-no-13 Richard Diebenkorn

 

Berkeley-no-13. Richard Diebenkorn. 

One of my favorite artist's because of his incredible use of color and light, and compositions that invite you in and make you want to stay. Richard was a Bay Area artist. His subjects ran the gamut of landscapes to interiors to portraits.

The Huffington Post 
Richard Diebenkorn

"Chain Drive" Acrylic on Canvas

Chain Drive is the first painting in this series that

I started in 2012. It makes reference to the machine vs. the organic and how they interplay, or don't. Spray acrylic on canvas 48x36

Obama

 

Obama

Metropolis II by Chris Burden (the movie)

"Kane" Matthew Stone

Kane, Matthew Stone 2011

Francois Boucher, A Stooping Nude

François Boucher 

1703-1770

A stooping nude turned to the right, his right hand grasping a pedestal

Picasso

For some reason, I think of Picasso on Sundays. I don't really know why. As one of the Grandmasters of modern art, his influence is undeniable. Whether you love him, or not so much, he was an expert at marketing himself and his art. I know one thing for sure, and that is, to be an artist, and to be known by your last name, is a dream!

Gill Miller Painted Round Table

 

 Top View of side table. Painted by Gill Miller using spray acrylic. 2012

Side View. Graceful legs.

"Amorosity", The Art of Love

Amorosity in B&W. The Art of Love. The Art of the Embrace. The Joy of Romance.

"Venice", Summer in Southern California-Digitized Photograph

Summer has finally arrived here in Southern California. "Venice" was photographed in the summer of 2012, digitized and transformed. Reminiscent of George Seurat and Pointillism. By Gill Miller

Jackson Pollock Action Painting, involving his trademark pouring and splashing paint. Courtesy SFMOMA

San Francisco artist Barry McGee

 

San Francisco Artist Barry McGee

Site specific loft installation in San Francisco. Fantastic and mesmerizing.

Famous Pop Artists

Famous Pop Artists.  Can you name them?

Gill Miller

In my studio in Los Angeles 2013. To my right is Chain Drive, the series of paintings that I have been working on throughout the year. This series celebrates the round form and a "chain drive" design that promotes movement on the canvas. This celebrates the urban, the machine, and the organic. We are finally learning the importance of nature, the organic element, and its importance to our quality of life.

"Adam" by Gabriel Krekk

"Adam" by Canadian Watercolorist Gabriel Krekk, was painted in 2006. It is a study in the use of light and shadow. The deep shadows ask us what is inside this man, his soul and his spirit. And even though Adam is at least partially undressed and exposed, as in every person, these things are often cloaked and shrouded to the casual relationship and may not be made known until time allows.

"All That is Unseen", by Matthew Stone

"All that is unseen" exhibit by artist Matthew Stone at the Allan Nederpelt Gallery, New York. 2011

What is the artist saying? Is this a metaphor for the idea that we see only what we want to see? Or  perhaps as humans we can only take in so much visually at a time.

Georgia O'Keeffe, "Bejeweled Creamer"

 
Georgia O'Keeffe's "Bejeweled Creamer" is one of the most beautiful paintings that I've ever seen. This is saying a lot for an artist with the painting chops of O'Keeffe.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Born in 1887 in Wisconsin, she made her permanent home in New Mexico in 1949, which is how most of us think of her and where she lived. She worked in oil, pencil, clay and most famously in watercolor. Her organic and sensuous watercolors, such as "Bejeweled Creamer", are her trademark masterpieces.

Green & Black, Acrylic on Canvas

Titled "Green & Black", like all of my art, it is painted with spray acrylic on canvas. I'm fascinated with the round form, and the "chain drive" pattern, which is the series that this piece comes from. The round form and the chain pattern create a movement on the canvas that I find very interesting. I have been painting this series throughout 2013.

Chelsea Face Mural

My photograph from 2012 of the "Face Mural" in NYC along the fabulous High Line Park in Chelsea. The pink was applied digitally by me.

Head in Ass

Visitors stick their heads inside "to see a video of two Czech politicians feeding each other slop to a soundtrack of ‘We are the Champions'".