'Kerze (Candle)' by Gerhard Richter

1982, oil on canvas

Cherry Blossoms by Vincent van Gogh, 1890s

Renaissance Beauties

via www.mayafialagrau.tumblr.com

A Studio visit

Visiting Alex Katz in his Studio in NYC.
This picture was published in Italian Marie Clarie a while ago.
Great colors. 

Photography by Luigi Cazzaniga

Piero della Francesca

'Kopf' by Willi Baumeister, 1923

I had no idea!

I had no idea that Sophia Loren was a savy art collector! She is just amazing.

Sophia Loren at home with Francis Bacons at the Villa Ponti

Photo by Snowdon - U.S. Vogue, December 1970

Sophia Loren/December Vogue 1970 issue with images of her Villa Ponti near Rome showcasing a VERY SMALL part of her art collection - particularly her Francis Bacon works.

In the late 1980's, it was said that you could not have a proper retrospective of his work without borrowing from the Pontis. They had his paintings stacked on the floor leaning on the walls because they had a few hundred. In today's dollars, the Bacons alone would represent a couple of a billion dollars. 

Plants by Ellsworth Kelly

Woodland Plant
Sunflower
Daffodil

via www.neptunefineart.com

Color Inspiration

Anjelica Houston


Laetita Casta for Harper's Bazaar Russia September 2010


Giovanni Boldini

Past and Present

expensive vintage kitsch

HORRENDOUS. I never liked fat baby angels.

after a dream

I woke up this morning and this painting was the first thing that came to my mind.
How pleasant!

Henry Raeburn of The Reverend Robert Walker Skating (1784)

I am on New York City Taxis, courtesy Alex Katz

Here is an Article from the New York Times about the Project my image was used in.


Soon You Can Hail an Artist as You Hail a Cab

By CAROL VOGEL
Published: December 25, 2009

Renderings show how hundreds of New York taxis will become mobile public art next month when their rooftop ad boards display works by, from left, Shirin Neshat, Alex Katz and Yoko Ono.

Those moving advertisements atop taxis generally deliver not-so-subtle messages, like which airlines to fly or movies to see, who makes the sexiest blue jeans or the coolest sunglasses.

A photograph by Shirin Neshat in a rendering of the type of art-filled taxi ads that will hit the streets of New York in January.

High art they most certainly are not.

But for the month of January, Show Media, a Las Vegas company that owns about half the cones adorning New York City’s taxis, has decided to give commerce a rest. Instead, roughly 500 cabs will display a different kind of message: artworks by Shirin Neshat, Alex Katz and Yoko Ono.

The project is costing Show Media about $100,000 in lost revenue, but John Amato, one of Show’s owners and a contemporary-art fan, said: “I thought it was time to take a step back. January’s a slow month. I could have cut my rates but instead I decided to hit the mute button and give something back to the city.”

He contacted the Art Production Fund, a nonprofit New York organization that presents art around the city, and asked its co-founders, Yvonne Force Villareal and Doreen Remen, to select artists. They in turn sought out Ms. Neshat, Mr. Katz and Ms. Ono, three New Yorkers known for work that can read both conceptually and physically in a confined space. (The ads measure just 14 by 48 inches.)

The project is called “Art Adds,” not just as a play on its advertising origins but also, Ms. Villareal said, because “art adds to the public’s vision.”

Each artist’s work will appear on approximately 160 cabs, and each responded to the challenge in very different ways.

Mr. Katz has taken two of his recent portraits, both of models who frequently pose for him, and put them together. One is a frontal portrait, the other the back of a woman’s head. They are set against a black background. “You can’t go wrong with black and yellow,” the artist said of the posterlike quality of the design.

Ms. Neshat, an Iranian-born artist known for her social, political and psychological commentary on women in contemporary Islamic societies, said that when she was approached about the project, her first thought was of the Pakistani- and Senegalese-born taxi drivers.

“I felt I could make work that was truly non-Western, because it’s an extension of what New York is about,” Ms. Neshat said.

She used the two sides of the so-called cones in different ways. On one there is an illustration of a handshake, the artist’s symbol of unity and solidarity. The other shows an eye decorated with a poem titled “I Feel Sorry for the Garden,” by Forough Farokhzad, a celebrated female Iranian poet. The poem itself is in Persian and written out in calligraphy in the white of the eye. “It suggests that someone is speaking to you in a language that no one can understand,” Ms. Neshat explained. “And although the poem is from the 1960s, it still resonates today.”

Ms. Ono has also drawn on a vintage idea. She used the theme “The War Is Over,” a slogan she and John Lennon used when they took their message of peace around the world in 1969-70, in this case displaying it in English and in sign language.

“It’s almost like a dance,” she said, “the way the message is always in motion.”

Photo illustrations courtesy of Show Media and Art Production Fund

Alex Katz and Ulla

Alex Katz has been painting me on and off for a few years now... this is one of his latest series which includes me. I am the lady in the middle.
Another picture of me will be plastered on 500 New York City Cabs! I cannot wait and what an honor! I think you can spot me from January 2010 onwards.
Have a safe trip!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/arts/design/26taxicab.html

Walton Ford

Walton Ford's paintings have the layers of classical landscape , Audubon images and the tension in process destruction that makes us wait- want to watch wondering what will happen next. Beautifully crafted and a direct reference to the early modern work of Audubon and other documentary landscape and animal paintings -visually rich, active images hold the eye there to watch, to anticipate. History is never innocent in the world of Walton Ford’s wildlife watercolors and prints. Ford’s animals are frozen in devilish acts that range from violent to simply mean-spirited, and sometimes, in parodies of famous paintings. The fantastical combination of a historical style with comic or disturbing content makes these works pointed political commentaries about international policies, the environment, and human. Within Ford’s lexicon of what he gladly terms “fake natural history” animal species become allegories for nations, and his style is a shorthand critique of political and social issues rooted in the past, most explicitly the colonization of Africa and India by western Europe. By using animals for sociopolitical critique and commentary, Ford consciously follows in the footsteps of fifteenth-century artists like Hieronymus Bosch and Albrecht Dürer.













read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/arts/design/22gran.html

You should go! Pablo Picasso: Mosqueteros at Gagosian Gallery

Mindblowing Exhibition. We all have seen many Picasso Paintings and a little boredom might have set in, but this one is a great refresher. Amazingly curated.

'I enjoy myself to no end inventing these stories. I spend hour after hour while I draw, observing my creatures and thinking about the mad things they're up to.'
--Pablo Picasso, 1968


PABLO PICASSO
Femme Nue avec Tête d'Homme, 1967
Oil on canvas


PABLO PICASSO
Tête d'homme du 17ème siècle de face, 1967
Oil on canvas



PABLO PICASSO: Mosqueteros
Installation view


At Gagosian Gallery
Pablo Picasso
'Mosqueteros'
March 26 - June 6, 2009
522 West 21st Street
New York, NY 10011
Tel 212.741.1717 Fax 212.741.0006
Mon-Sat 10-6

Pictures courtesy of Gagosian Gallery

Alejandra Figueroa