Cool Building @ Manhattan

This building caught my eye as a work of art when I was strolling around Manhattan last weekend. Located in the NoHo area east of Washington Square and NYU, it was partially covered in a kind of free-flowing, sculptural "latticework" of sorts that was reminiscent of the organic, swirly stylings of Art Nouveau, but reinterpreted for a 21st-century urban setting.

Organic "latticework" just outside the building (Photos by Karen Carstens)

Front entrance with "latticwork" on either side

"Latticework" adjacent to front entrance

Mirrorred surface with a pattern that mimicks the "latticework"

Peering through the "latticework" on to the street

More of the mirrored surface

More of the grey "latticework"

A different type of mirrored surface

Somehow I also photographed myself taking photographs of this really cool building with my UMD iPod.

Karen Carstens (Photos by Karen Carstens)

I decided to play around with this image with Photoshop, making it "grainier" (ie "adding noise") ...

... as well as converting it into a black-and-white version. The sky really is the limit with Photoshop!

Here are some more of those funky "reflections" ...

As I lingered around the building and snapped these pics with my UMD student-issued iPod, a couple of young urban hipster types walked by. They also stopped and stared at the building for a minute. Then I heard one of them knowingly tell the other something along the lines of "Ah, yes, this is clearly by (so-and-so)."

But I did not, alas, quite catch the name of the artist or architect he was referring to.

It was a blustery day.

From Elation to Deflation @ Daily Mail Story

Crimson Cherry Blossom

So I now I feel all deflated about the sensational Daily Mail story I linked to yesterday. A very dear friend of mine, who also just happens to be a great Berlin-based writer and editor, suggested on Facebook when I linked to said Daily Mail story that he would not believe it (based on some information/hunches he himself has which I cannot elaborate on further here).

Now only time will tell whether this fantastical art news does, indeed, turn out to be true as excavations at the site continue.

Art News Roundup @ Everywhere

Cologne Cathedral (Thomas Wolf/Der Wolf im Wald)

First there was the amazing news that a new Van Gogh painting was recently re-discovered in the Netherlands (Maura Judkis also blogged about this for the Post).

NOW there is even more awesome art news - a veritable treasure trove of Nazi-looted art could be unearthed soon via an "Indiana Jones" style digging expedition in Germany's Erzgebirge mountains, as Alan Hall reported for Britain's Daily Mail on March 25.

"Monets, Manets, Cezannes and masterpieces by other artists, along with sculptures, carpets and tapestries, are believed to be buried in an old silver mine near the Czech-German border, 90 minutes' drive from the city of Dresden," writes Hall.

"The paintings formed the bulk of the Hatvany collection, the property of Baron Ferenc Hatvany, who was a leading Hungarian-Jewish industrialist and art patron."

(I cannot help but note here that Ron Lauder's mother, the late American cosmetics' tycoon Estée Lauder, was partly of Hungarian-Jewish origin - and that I could very well imagine some of these same artworks in Lauder's own amazing private collection.)

Estée Lauder (at left) "in a vivid print from Yves Saint Laurent, puts today's face on a customer by using a darker shade of lipstick" in 1966. (World Journal Tribune Photo by Bill Sauro/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection/Wikimedia Commons)

So much world-class art looted from Jewish collectors by the Nazis, as well as by Russia's Red Army (some of the Hatvany collection also went to the Russians), still needs to be restored to its rightful heirs - or at the very least displayed in museums for all to enjoy. In this instance such a sensational find would rock the entire international art world.

Sometimes, moreover, art justice is actually served.

Top 50 emerging artists

Hot off the press, the latest edition of artbusiness news profiles 25 of the "Top 50" emerging artists of 2012 - the first 25 were profiled in the magazine's November/December 2011 edition.

Last year, by contrast, ARTnews published this list of the world's "Top 200" art collectors. (Ron Lauder and his wife, Evelyn, incidentally, made the cut.)

Combating "gallery rage"

ARTnews also recently reported on what museums are doing these days to counter the new phenomenon of "gallery rage," which involves increasingly irked museumgoers venting (often virtually) about the overcrowding of major blockbuster art exhibits that marrs the individual's attempts to experience art.

People lined up around the block of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan on August 3, 2011 to see the "Savage Beauty" exhibition showcasing examples of the late British fashion designer Alexander McQueen's work. I tried to enter the Met just to stand in line to see this exhibition on a Sunday in late July 2011, only to hear the people in line ahead of me - this was just to GET IN to the Met itself (!) - say that they had heard that there would be yet another two-hour line just to GET IN to the Alexander McQueen show itself. As I was babysitting two German 15-year-olds at the time who were on their first ever starry-eyed trip to New York City, there was NO WAY I could ever justify spending the better part of a day in line to see a few dresses designed by McQueen. So I never had a chance to experience "gallery rage" that time around because I couldn't even get into that blockbuster show!
(Photo by flickr user Benny Wong)

I recall a clever system involving timed ticket entry to one such blockbuster show I visited in 2005 at the Tate in London. This stunningly atmospheric Turner-Monet-Whistler show was still pretty crowded, but at least the timed entry system helped keep some of the overcrowding at bay and allowed a relatively decent view of the paintings on show at the time.

Throngs of museumgoers take in the Alexander McQueen "Savage Beauty" show at the Metroplitan Museum of Art in New York on May 15, 2011. This is about as close as I ever got to that exhibition. (Photo by flickr user Wesley Chau)

ARTnews earlier this month also published an interesting item on how art fairs are joining forces with the "virtual" world.

"Degenerate" art on view along Polish-German border

The works of several gone - but not forgotten - 20th century artists are meanwhile chronicled in an exhibition I would love to see were I living in Europe right now.

As reported on by Deutsche Welle, a new joint German-Polish exhibition in Mülheim an der Ruhr entitled "Hunting Down Modernism - Forbidden Art in the Third Reich" presents works which were once dismissed and shunned by the Nazis as "degenerate."

Joseph Goebbels (center, in trench coat and hat), Hitler's infamous Nazi propaganda minister (Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda) strolls through the "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art) exhibit at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich, Germany on a Sunday afternoon in 1937. Hartmut Pistauer (in glasses, at right) was chief curator of this "exhibit," the first of several to denigrate and attack the avant-garde in Germany. Many artworks were lost, stolen or destroyed in the process, and many artists were compelled to flee the country. Some artists and intellectuals even committed suicide. Nazi Germany was not a great place for artists. Many German and Austrian actors, writers and directors, moreover, fled to Hollywood, where they greatly influenced the rise of the Film Noir genre, which unsurprisingly cast a gloomy and mysterious pall on crime and punishment in the 20th century.
(Photo Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)/Wikimedia Commons)

This reminds me of the excellent LACMA exhibition on degenerate art I saw some two decades ago when it came to the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Last laugh: "naked" art in Cologne

At the same time, Spiegel Online International took note of a "happening" whereby two women with famous works of art by Klimt and Schiele painted across their naked bodies walked around the western German city of Cologne - or at least tried to, until police stopped their bare-it-all "walk of art."

This is reminiscent of the 1960's, when the "shock value" of such a stunt may have been somewhat higher - at least in a place like Germany, where people routinely hang out together in the buff at saunas, pools, parks or FKK, ie nude, beaches. All I have to say about this is that, if I had to be one of those two women, I would have rather "worn" the Klimt than the Schiele painting, given that the former provided more, um, "coverage," as this photo gallery attests.

German children enrolled in a state-run daycare program enjoy some healthy down time together in a sauna in 1984. (Photo Benno Bartocha/Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)/Wikimedia Commons)

(When I lived in Germany I managed to avoid the FKK beaches, but did get talked into going to the sauna - luckily there is a lot of steam in these places. Suffice it to say I preferred the "women's day" at the sauna, when we were not forced to be naked with a bunch of dudes - bar the male staff members on duty who somehow STILL seemed to be hanging around at the sauna working on various faucets or showerheads etc. - the price one must pay for German "Ordnung" (orderliness) - they are constantly repairing roads, sauna showers, etc. in that country - no potholes or leaky faucets for them!)

Funky Stuff @ artexpo New York (Part Trois!)

Among the many interesting exhibition spaces filled by the works of a single artist at the artexpo was that of Sophie Dervieux, who creates eye-popping 3-D wall art using a technique she developed together with her father that references nature and celebrities via photos and collages she whips up into unique "wall sculptures."

Brigitte Bardot takes center stage in this piece by Sophie Dervieux (Photos by Karen Carstens)

I had to stop and admire how she makes everything from sea turtles to tigers to Brigitte Bardot "come to life" via this fun technique. (Bardot, ever the animal activist, would surely approve of the nature element. Obviously cute housepets and greeting card motifs were, however, conspicuously absent from Dervieux's exhibition space at the artexpo. I found her work cute, but still witty and original.)

I LOVE this panda piece by Dervieux - I had to photograph this for my Mom, who is a panda FANATIC!

So here are a few samples of Dervieux's work, which I photographed with her permission - as long as I link back to her website, which I've done in the first graf of this blogpost and will do again right here, just for good measure!

Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot, as re-imagined by Sophie Dervieux

So here are a few samples of Dervieux's work, which I photographed with her permission - as long as I link back to her website, which I've done in the first graf of this blogpost and will do again right here, just for good measure!

Sophie Dervieux and her 3-D creations at the artexpo in New York (as MM and BB look on in the background...)

Sophie's cute panda looks quite content ... (detail)
 

In Sophie's World, a tiger might morph halfway into a fish ... (detail).  A full image of this work - minus camera glare - is visible on her website.

Funky Stuff @ artexpo New York (Part Deux!)

Here's some more funky stuff that was on display at the artexpo which I was weirdly drawn to ...

Absolutely adorable - reminiscent of Hello Kitty & Co., or what the friendly offspring of some of those giant furry "monsters" in the film adaptation of "Where the Wild Things Are" might look like (by Korean-born, NY-based artist Su-Jin Lim) (Photos by Karen Cartens)

This is something that would keep me awake - and dreaming - in my office! (detail)

The sad dream landscape of Hello Kitty's depressed friends (?) ... (by Su-Jin Lim)

A saftig floral graphic image (detail)

Totally weird, but somehow mesmerizing ... (by Su-Jin Lim)

This reminded me of the work of Paul Klee (detail - by Italian artist Vincenzo Balsamo)

This oil painting vaguely reminded me of a Modigliani portrait ("Cosima" by Diana Pinck)

Hello Kitty he ain't! (He looks like he might eat Hello Kitty actually ... !)

Like candy for the soul - glorious glassware ...

Funky Stuff @ artexpo New York

Although I just realized I probably sounded lukewarm in my personal take on the artexpo New York, there were definitely some pretty nifty - and downright brilliant - works on display, some of which I managed to photograph.

(This was not allowed by some, but tolerated and even encouraged by others exhibiting at the expo, in the interest of gaining still more exposure for their fabulous artworks!)

So here, in no particular order, are a few fun highlights of only a fraction of the artworks that were on display:

Funky sculptures at artexpo New York (Photos by Karen Carstens)

American dream (?) ... a fun piece by Susi Q

Bright lights, big art in the Big Apple ...

A Martin Kaupp portrait of Amy Winehouse

One fish, two fish ... (detail of a painting) 

Another view of those funky sculptures ...

Emmy Magliani by Emmy Rossan

A single-panel piece by Cincinnati-based artist Nicholas Yust

 

A face in the crowd ...

A metal piece hand-crafted by Nicholas Yust (detail)

Clearly there was a lot of cool stuff to see at the artexpo - a fun way to spend an afternoon in New York!

Mixed Bag @ artexpo New York

artexpo New York (Photos by Karen Carstens)

I visited the artexpo in New York on Sunday, March 25, which featured what one might expect - an eclectic mix of art spread out over a vast space (Pier 92 along the Hudson River, to be precise).

"International Artexpo New York has stood at the pinnacle of the commercial fine art market for the past 33 years," states on official press release.

"The list of past exhibitors is a veritable Who's Who of visual artists, including Andy Warhol, Peter Max, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Indiana, Keith Haring and Leroy Neiman."

artexpo New York 2012

What was on display this year by a variety of gallery owners, art dealers and individual artists were mostly paintings, as well as some photography, mixed media works, sculptures, and works in glass and metal, plus a smidgeon of multimedia elements such as video - although surprisingly few such digital-era works were actually on display.

(One exception to this rule was an über-cute "claymation" video by a young artist called Susi Q which many passersby - including myself - found highly amusing and absolutely adorable. I also must have missed this.)

One particular booth I steered clear of was that of the famous Thomas Kinkade Gallery.

I was just not that into him.

(If you're unfamiliar with this reference, you're probably not a fan of the now defunct HBO series Sex in the City.)

There were many more artists and artworks I was more drawn to, and some that I found truly breathtaking, or at the very least something I thought would look cool in my office or apartment.

Life-sized sculptures at artexpo New York

But as I had visited the breathtaking Ron Lauder exhibition at the Neue Galerie earlier that same day, I was by contrast somewhat underwhelmed by most of the contemporary artworks on display at artexpo.

Let's face it. For any artist alive today it is really hard to come close to the likes of Klimt, Schiele, Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, Degas, Brancusi, Richter, Polke, the German Expressionists or the chief designers and artists of the Wiener Werkstätte, whose works - among others - have been collected by Lauder and are now on display at the Neue Galerie through April 2.

Those preternaturally talented artists of yesteryear are all pretty tough acts to follow!

There was nevertheless quite a lot of good - and possibly also some great - art on disply at the artexpo.

Paintings at artexpo New York

Among several of the artists whose works caught my eye at the artexpo were Ahni Kruger, Anne Marchand, Nick Paciorek, Diana Pinck, Julie Satinover and Boris Giulian, whose somewhat surreal "Alphabets - Beauty of Diversity" paintings are clever and amusing pieces. (By contrast I was less into this, which somehow left me cold.)

The creative stylings of Sophie's Dervieux and Martin Kaupp also amused me.

I also LOVE this Web site - The World of Ed Heck - very cool!

And I know a friend of mine who is professional Porsche mechanic would absolutely ADORE this, as well as possibly the photograps of vintage pick-up trucks by Nancy Louise Formn (Weezy).

Spotting the art of Dr. Seuss on the premises was fun too.

(There were, of course, many more artists represented at this international art event. You can peruse their works via this complete exhibitor list featuring hundreds of artists and gallery owners. One of the galleries that caught my eye for its nice selection of imported oil paintings was Paul Robinson Fine Art.)

One of several art-filled corridors at the artexpo

The upshot: there was a lot of pretty nifty and fun stuff to see at artexpo (where I admittedly only had a limited amount of time to spend - less than two hours).

The problem for me was that I was (subconsciously) comparing a lot of it to Ron Lauder's collection, which I had just viewed at the Neue Galerie, and which literally blew my mind (even his medieval armor collection got to me - he had me at the 15th century!).

If I were a professional gallery owner or art dealer I would, however, have likely approached everything I saw at artexpo quite differently, ie with a view to the value and marketability of the artworks on display. Taste in art naturally also remains purely subjective, which is part of what makes it so much fun to behold.

(Ron Lauder's private collection is, incidentally, one of the finest in the world. I blogged about this before here.)

Wrapping things up at the end of artexpo New York on March 25, 2012