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.