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Tag Archives: modern art

Cindy Jackson: Master Sculptress

05 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by Illustrators Journal in EDITORIAL

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Art in Los Angeles, artist as brand, innovation, modern art, nudes, sculpture


I’ve known Cindy Jackson for the last ten years. I was her student, she did work for me , then we became friends. She is a marvelous artist who is so good at what she does it defies logic. Her pieces are dynamic and forceful with powerful messages in execution and form. It seems almost illogical that such power could come out of someone who is small in stature, soft spoken and very learned.Screen Shot 2015-10-05 at 5.31.46 PM

Cindy once worked as a sculptor for Hasbro and McDonalds.  You know?  The toys in your happy meals?  She is also skilled as a painter and has worked as a graphic designer.

Screen Shot 2015-10-05 at 5.33.09 PMCindy’s latest endeavor is entitled (Not Quite) Salvation. Here is her explanation of the show

It’s an exploration into ways in which we, as a modern society, seek ‘salvation’. True, I was brought up in a very religious household. And yes, I am sure that it has strongly influenced the way I look at the world. I take a pretty critical view of not only organized religion, but also the way in which we tend to follow others.  Speaking broadly I do think that our culture (all cultures really from the past and forever onward) will be seeking.  We might not always be seeking the same thing, but we are forever looking for something to take us to a higher place. Perhaps it’s because I live in Los Angeles, but it’s apparent to m1425533543530e that we seek our higher self by striving for money (or at least the appearance of money) – and that manifests itself in the lust and constant consumption of brands that project affluence. Our “religion” manifests itself in the surface of things.

I love the
physicality of sculpture and of working large. For me it carries a power that I don’t experience when, for instance, I look at a painting. There was a time not too long ago when I was ha
nging my sculptures of Yo-Yo Man on the streets of Los Angeles and just leaving them there. For me, it was the act of taking a work of art out of the precious nature of an art gallery and instead incorporating it into our everyday world just to see what it would do. I very quickly came to realize that the size of the work and the way that it activated the space around it was as much a part of the work as the sculpture itself…which led me to thinking about installations…

The Salvation Men need to be big. My LV Angel needs to be life-size. My Hanging Jesus Swag Lamps need to be smaller than life-size.  The size I choose in making my sculpture is all about the psychology of how we perceive things in relation to our bodies. That being said, certainly everything doesn’t need to be gigantic. My savings account can’t take that. HA

End Part 1

Art in the Streets

20 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by Illustrators Journal in CATCH-ALL

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artist as brand, innovation, La Marathon, long distance running, modern art, Olympics, technology


Screen Shot 2013-03-20 at 11.22.21 AM Around noon on Sunday I crossed the LA Marathon finish line after running 13.1 miles to complete a half-marathon. I was sore yet ecstatic. The feeling of running the last mile was exhilarating and while it was happening I took in the aroma of the moment and realized this was the height of performance art. I had created myself as a long-distance runner despite being a cardiac patient three years removed from open-heart surgery. I ran to help raise money for Beit T’Shuvah and to prove I could do anything I set my mind to do. SIGNAGE.LR_0301 and I ran to honor my friends Louis, Tony, & Joey who are no longer with me and I ran to honor one of my favorite human beings, Harry Salter who died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 98 last week. As I challenge myself these days I realize more and more how precious moments like finishing a marathon are. So my life is my art. All I do is created by me and that needs not be defined by labels like art director, illustrator or the like. Just doing what I love to do and trying to be the best me doing it I can. Much more to come.

Lucky Kool

16 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by Illustrators Journal in Lucky Kool

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artist as brand, cartoonist, cartoons, illustrator, illustrators journal, levinland, Levinland studio, lon levin, marijuana, modern art, this week in digital media on blogtalk radio


Lucky Kool cartoon

What Hollywood Does To You

30 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by Illustrators Journal in SKETCH OF THE DAY

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abstract art, artist as brand, digital painting, drugs, Hollywood, illustration, illustrators journal, innovation, levinland, lon levin, modern art, rock n'roll


This sketch almost needs no explanation except the title. It came to me after having a talk with a friend of mine who was in the business.

Happy Birthday Man Ray

27 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by Illustrators Journal in Happy Birthday, PHOTOGRAPHY

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abstract art, artist as brand, Dada, dali, digital painting, illustration, illustrators journal, innovation, levinland, lon levin, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, marijuana, modern art, nude sketch, nudes, paris, this week in digital media on blogtalk radio




A very interesting video about Man ray’s main muse during the 1920’s. Man ray was a ground breaking artist who created his own conventions and ways of creating and clearly a bridge to the modern era. He would’ve loved photoshop!

<strong>Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky, August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American modernist artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called “rayographs” in reference to himself.

Ray’s work was not appreciated during his lifetime, with the exception of his fashion and portrait photography; especially in his native United States. Nevertheless, his reputation has grown steadily in the decades since.

While living in New York City, Man Ray was visually influenced by the 1913 Armory Show and galleries of European contemporary works. His early paintings display facets of cubism. After befriending Marcel Duchamp, who was interested in showing movement in static paintings, his works began to depict movement of the figures. An example is the repetitive positions of the dancer’s skirts in The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Shadows (1916).

In 1915, Man Ray had his first solo show of paintings and drawings. His first proto-Dada object, an assemblage titled Self-Portrait, was exhibited the following year. He produced his first significant photographs in 1918.

Man Ray abandoned conventional painting to involve himself with Dada, a radical anti-art movement. He started making objects and developed unique mechanical and photographic methods of making images. For the 1918 version of Rope Dancer, he combined a spray-gun technique with a pen drawing. Like Duchamp, he did readymades—ordinary objects that are selected and modified. His Gift readymade (1921) is a flatiron with metal tacks attached to the bottom, and Enigma of Isidore Ducasse is an unseen object (a sewing machine) wrapped in cloth and tied with cord. Aerograph (1919), another work from this period, was done with airbrush on glass.

In 1920, Ray helped Duchamp make the Rotary Glass Plates, his first machine and one of the earliest examples of kinetic art. It was composed of glass plates turned by a motor. That same year, Man Ray, Katherine Dreier, and Duchamp founded the Société Anonyme, an itinerant collection that was the first museum of modern art in the U.S.

Ray teamed up with Duchamp to publish one issue of New York Dada in 1920. For Man Ray, Dada’s experimentation was no match for the wild and chaotic streets of New York. He wrote that “Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival.”

In 1913, Man Ray met his first wife, the Belgian poet Adon Lacroix, in New York. They married in 1914, separated in 1919, and formally divorced in 1937.

In July 1921, Man Ray went to live and work in Paris, France. He soon settled in the Montparnasse quarter favored by many artists. Shortly after arriving in Paris, he met and fell in love with Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin), an artists’ model and celebrated character in Paris bohemian circles. Kiki was Man Ray’s companion for most of the 1920s. She became the subject of some of his most famous photographic images and starred in his experimental films. In 1929, he began a love affair with the Surrealist photographer Lee Miller.

For the next 20 years in Montparnasse, Man Ray was a distinguished photographer. Significant members of the art world, such as James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Bridget Bate Tichenor, and Antonin Artaud, posed for his camera.

Man Ray was represented in the first Surrealist exhibition with Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso at the Galerie Pierre in Paris in 1925. A metronome with an eye, originally titled Object to Be Destroyed, was one of his works from the time. Another important work from the time was the Violon d’Ingres, a stunning photograph of Kiki de Montparnasse, styled after the painter/musician Ingres. Violon d’Ingres is a popular example of how Man Ray could juxtapose disparate elements in his photography to generate meaning.

In 1934, surrealist artist Méret Oppenheim, known for her fur-covered teacup, posed nude for Man Ray in a well-known series of photographs depicting her standing next to a printing press.

With Lee Miller, his photography assistant and lover, Man Ray reinvented the photographic technique of solarization. He also created a type of photogram he called “rayographs”, which he described as “pure dadaism”.

Man Ray directed a number of influential avant-garde short films, known as Cinéma Pur. He directed Le Retour à la Raison (2 mins, 1923); Emak-Bakia (16 mins, 1926);L’Étoile de Mer (15 mins, 1928); and Les Mystères du Château de Dé (27 mins, 1929). Man Ray also assisted Marcel Duchamp with the cinematography of his filmAnemic Cinema (1926), and Ray personally manned the camera on Fernand Léger‘s Ballet Mécanique (1924). In René Clair‘s film Entr’acte (1924), Man Ray appeared in a brief scene playing chess with Duchamp.

Duchamp, Man Ray, and Francis Picabia were friends and collaborators. The three were connected by their experimental, entertaining, and innovative art.

Later life

Man Ray was forced to return from Paris to the United States due to the Second World War. He lived in Los Angeles, California from 1940 to 1951. A few days after arriving in Los Angeles, Man Ray met Juliet Browner, a first-generation American of Romanian-Jewish lineage. She was a trained dancer and an experienced artists’ model. They began living together almost immediately. The two married in 1946 in a double wedding with their friends Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. Nonetheless, he called Montparnasse home and returned there.

In 1963, he published his autobiography, Self-Portrait, which was republished in 1999 (ISBN 0-8212-2474-3).

He died in Paris on November 18, 1976 from a lung infection. He was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. Ray’s epitaph reads “unconcerned, but not indifferent”. When Juliet Browner died in 1991, she was interred in the same tomb. Her epitaph reads “together again”. Juliet organized a trust for his work and donated much of his work to museums.

Happy Birthday Ralf Metzenmacher

26 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by Illustrators Journal in Happy Birthday

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artist as brand, cartoonist, digital media, digital painting, illustration, illustrators journal, innovation, levinland, Levinland studio, lon levin, modern art, Nazis


Ralf Metzenmacher (born July 26, 1964) is a German painter and designer. He is a representative and pioneer of Retro-Art, a synthesis between art and product design. Metzenmacher sees his Retro-Art technique as a revitalization of 17th century still life painting and as a further development of Pop art.

Biography

Metzenmacher was born in Aachen. He attended Aachen University of Applied Sciences (FH Aachen) from 1986 to 1991. There he studied object- and product design under Prof. Christiane Maether and Prof. Ulf Hegewald, specializing in painting technique and drawing. Between 1991 and 2004 he worked as a designer for Puma. As director, towards the end of his time there he was responsible for the Footwear Europe and Accessories International division. He played a significant role in the process of transforming the sports manufacturers into an international Sports-Lifestyle brand.

From the early 80s onwards, Metzenmacher spent more and more of his time concentrating on painting technique. He produced a multitude of paintings (genre scenes and still lifes) during his degree and alongside his job as designer. These are all documented in his book “The other world” (self-published). He has worked as a freelance artist since 2004 and lives and works in Bamberg.

Concepts

The artist Ralf Metzenmacher uses his painting technique to polarize and surprise through the regeneration of numerous concepts. He describes himself as a “paintbrush artist” and refers to his exhibition rooms as “schooruum”, an onomatopoeic reference to the English word “showroom”. He propagates the term “Retro-Art” to describe his own painting technique. As self-proclaimed “pioneer” in this area, his aim is to successfully integrate this synthesis of art and design into the Fine art world and to establish its position in the art market.

The term “retro” or “retro-aesthetic” became popular in the mass culture of the nineties, rather than through any art connection. As a movement that has penetrated film, fashion, music and custom design to a similar extent, retro has become a specific expression of a cultural orientation – the spirit of the times in the last decade of the twentieth century.

“Further development” of Pop art

Retro-art painting technique is reminiscent of Pop art, with intensive strong colours and a reduction and simplification in its presentation. However, whilst Pop art links art with graphics, Retro-Art combines art with product design. “Classic” Pop art generally uses two dimensional images from comics or advertisements to depict (American) symbols as icons of folk culture. In contrast, Retro-Art uses three dimensional representations and adopts a critical standpoint on current issues and trends in youth culture and lifestyle.

“Revitalisation” of still life painting technique

Some of Metzenmacher’s pictures (e.g. “The Crown”) feature surreal elements, reminiscent of Salvador Dalí’s work. However, Metzenmacher does not see himself as a surrealist, more as a modern ambassador for the classical still life painting technique. The works and painting techniques of Spanish artist Francisco Zurbarán have had a lasting influence on him, as have the still life paintings of Italian artist Giorgio Morandi.

Retro-Art painting technique is effectively a “revitalisation” of 17th century still life painting technique. As a result, Metzenmacher predominately paints modern still life paintings. Depending on the particular theme, he selects simple objects in daily use (e.g. cigars, punching bags, cars) and portrays them in an unusual way. He also uses familiar symbols from the history of art (e.g. mussels, snails), often modifying or distorting them.

Individual objects are portrayed with a disciplined graphical precision. They are separated from their usual surroundings either to stand alone, or to be presented in an artistically engineered context surrounded by ethereal space. The luminescent contrasting colours distort the materiality of the objects and confound the viewer. Frames in the style of those from times gone by form an essential part of each picture.

Target group and collections

His painting technique appeals primarily to a young and young at heart public whose interests lie in fashion, design and lifestyle products. As a result, Metzenmacher with his history in product design has added “collections” to go with each original. These collections are printed art pieces which differ in colour, size and fittings (frames). This idea of different collections came from the fashion industry and has been transferred to the world of art by Metzenmacher. He calls his collections “edition” and “rallipan”.

Picture cycles

Metzenmacher prefers to paint picture cycles. For example, in the cycle “The Crowning of Creation” he portrays primary and secondary female characteristics in a thought provoking manner using snails, mussels and melons. Titles for his work include such idiosyncratic examples as “The Cherry Rose” and the “The Melon Princess” In the cycle “The Lord of the Crown” he uses sports cars and a smoldering cigar with a penis ring as a symbol of masculinity.

Happy Birthday Marc Chagall

07 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by Illustrators Journal in EDITORIAL, Happy Birthday

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abstract art, artist as brand, artwork, Chagall, digital media, digital painting, drawing, French painter, modern art, modernist, nude sketch, this week in digital media on blogtalk radio, twitter, xanate media


Chagall is one of a handful of 20th century masters who change art as we know it. His stain glass artwork is otherworldly and perhaps on a level with the finest glass work ever done. His lyrical painting style and mastery of color is second to none. His fierce adherence to his heritage as a Jew is something to be admired and celebrated. Certainly it is a lesson to any artist to remain focused and true to what they believe despite any influence that would tell them otherwise.

Marc Chagall  (7 July [O.S. 24 June] 1887 – 28 March 1985), was a Belarusian-Russian-French artist associated with several major artistic styles and one of the most successful artists of the 20th century. He was an early modernist, and created works in virtually every artistic medium, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.

Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as “the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century”. According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be “the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists”. For decades, he “had also been respected as the world’s preeminent Jewish artist”. Using the medium of stained glass, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, windows for the UN, and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also did large-scale paintings, including part of the ceiling of the Paris Opéra.

Before World War I, he traveled between St. Petersburg, Paris, and Berlin. During this period he created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his idea of Eastern European Jewish folk culture. He spent the wartime years in Soviet Belarus, becoming one of the country’s most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avante-garde, founding the Vitebsk Arts College before leaving again for Paris in 1922.

He had two basic reputations, writes Lewis: as a pioneer of modernism and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism’s “golden age” in Paris, where “he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism”. Yet throughout these phases of his style “he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk.” “When Matisse dies,” Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, “Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is”.

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Jackson Pollock’s ‘Mural’ heads to Getty for preservation work: LA Times

27 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by Illustrators Journal in EDITORIAL

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abstract art, artist as brand, Getty Center, illustrators journal, Jackson Pollack, Levinland studio, lon levin, modern art, murals, social media, this week in digital media on blogtalk radio, University of Iowa



This story was in the LA Times yesterday and I found it fascinating on a level not really discussed here. The fact is we humans prize artwork like nothing else, almost or equal to our obsession with precious gems. However artwork is man made and those people who cannot create love to possess creativity so that they can somehow feel a part of it.

We as artists usually undervalue ourselves and don’t receive the accolades or the financial rewards that the work should get. In many cases the artist have passed on and their families scattered and they never benefit from the value of the work.  

When Jackson Pollack created this work he was not yet the Jackson Pollack we know. I’m not sure what he sold this painting for but it wasn’t $140 million! Now maybe he got a good price for it. After all it was a commission by Peggy Guggenheim. But perhaps Peggy got a great deal knowing what Pollack might one day be worth. We’ll never know.

The point?  In your time, value your work and demand it’s true value. No one can predict that a painting which sells for a few hundred dollars today may one day be worth millions in the future but you can ask for a fair price and not sell work because you don’t value it as it should be valued. We don’t all have patrons like Peggy Guggenheim with deep pockets. But sometimes when you’re hurting for money you may sell something for a price you later regret. I’ve done it a number of times as I’m sure a lot of artists have. So, if you have questions about the value you should ask a dealer, a friend, other artists, etc.  

Bottom line, let’s all value ourselves a little more. Don’t be timid about asking for what you think is a fair price. All they can say is no. Just remember, there are a lot of art lovers who value good work and will give you a fair shake.


By Jori Finkel, Los Angeles Times
June 26, 2012, 12:05 a.m.

The painting above is an important work in the artist’s (Jackson Pollack) development that some state legislators have urged the University of Iowa to sell off, will be at the Getty for 18 months starting in July.

An important Jackson Pollock painting owned by the University of Iowa that Republican state legislators have lobbied to sell is now leaving the state — temporarily.

Next month the massive 1943 oil painting called “Mural” is traveling to the Getty Center, where it will be the subject of an extensive conservation effort expected to last 18 months.

Pollock painted the canvas, which measures roughly 8 feet tall by 20 feet long, as a commission for collector Peggy Guggenheim a few years before he began his so-called drip paintings, his most famous work. But “Mural” sets the stage for this breakthrough, both because of its loose, loopy brushwork and its shift from symbolic to abstract forms.

Although nobody knows the exact market value of the work, given to the university in 1959, it is now insured for $140 million. Legislators looking at the painting have seen dollar signs. Last year, Republican state Rep. Scott Raecker introduced a bill to force the sale of the artwork, but it sparked considerable controversy and was quickly withdrawn.

Getty head James Cuno said that politics played no role in the decision to take on the painting.

“For us it’s an opportunity to preserve an incredibly important work of art,” he said. “It’s an idiosyncratic painting but very important in the development of Pollock’s work. It’s a hinge painting in his career, from his early calligraphic paintings to his drip paintings.”

Two Getty branches, the museum and conservation group, have teamed up to work on the painting together. The head of paintings conservation for the museum, Yvonne Szafran, named three goals for their work. One is to address the sagging of the canvas at the center caused by its weight and size. Another is to replace or reinforce the stretcher. A third goal, if possible, is to remove the varnish that was added after Pollock’s lifetime.

“It wouldn’t be a dramatic change — it’s not that the varnish has yellowed dramatically, but it’s like a veil sitting on the surface of the painting that he did not intend,” Szafran said.

In addition, she said the Getty would be doing “a lot of looking and analyzing and imaging — with X-rays and infrared work” to learn more about the artist’s techniques and materials. For instance, did he use house paint in addition to oil?

During this process, Cuno added, scientists will not be the only people able to see the work. Outside scholars and artists alike will be invited to examine it and share their insights.

Once conservation is complete, most likely in spring 2014, the Getty plans to display the painting for three months, an arrangement it has made before when conserving artwork from other institutions. A publication on the conservation process will accompany the work’s exhibition.

The painting is currently on view at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, while the University of Iowa prepares to raise money for a new museum building to replace one damaged by the 2008 flood. Sean O’Harrow, the university museum director (and previously director of the Figge), said the lack of a permanent home for the Pollock did play a role in deciding to do the conservation now.

“We didn’t have to remove the painting from a permanent exhibition,” he said. “The timing couldn’t be better.”

The persistent calls for the school to sell the Pollock include an op-ed by longtime Iowa journalist and former NBC News President Michael Gartner that appeared this month in the Iowa weekly Cityview. He argued that the sale was a way to “supply free undergraduate tuition, annually and forever, to … 1,000 needy Iowans.”

O’Harrow and university President Sally Mason have both taken strong stands against such arguments, saying the thinking is short-sighted and that the painting is irreplaceable. They also maintain that a sale would be a violation of the donor’s intent.

So was the Getty conservation partnership a convenient way of keeping the painting out of the hands of the parties who seek to liquidate it? O’Harrow said that that was not a consideration, but calling attention to the work’s significance was.

“Raising awareness of the work’s importance is definitely part of our plans,” O’Harrow said. “The more people know about the work and value it as a national treasure, the less likely it is to be hocked for short-term gain somewhere.”

jori.finkel@latimes.com

Art Of The Day: Artist Paints Herself Into Fantasy Worlds

12 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by Illustrators Journal in EDITORIAL, Profile, REVIEWS

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artist as brand, artwork, David Cohen art critic, digital media, Hunter Colege, illustration, illustrators journal, Jonathan Kalb, Julie Heffernan, levinland, modern art, this week in digital media on blogtalk radio, UC Santa Cruz, xanate media


In my ever growing quest to find different and interesting artists and art I came across Julie Heffernan. And I am glad I did. Her work is simply terrific. It spans illustration and fine art well and can be utilized for both as far as I’m concerned.

Julie Heffernan (born 1956 in Peoria, Illinois) is an American Painter. David Cohen, art critic of The New York Sun, aptly describes Heffernan’s art: “These paintings are a hybrid of genres and styles, mixing allegory, portraiture, history painting, and still life, while in title they are all presented as self portraits.”

Heffernan was raised in Northern California and lives in Brooklyn, New York. She received a B.F.A., at the University of California, Santa Cruz and an M.F.A. in painting at the Yale School of Art. Heffernan is an Associate Professor of fine arts at Montclair State University in  Upper Montclair, New Jersey.

She is married to Jonathan Kalb, chair of the Theater Department at Hunter College and theater critic for The New York Times. Heffernan is the mother of two sons: Oliver, the eldest, and Sam.

In her 2007 self-portrait series, Booty, Julie Heffernan painted herself dressed in creepy dresses made from dead animal carcasses. In this colorful collection of portraits, the artist presents herself draped in pompous dresses made of dead animal carcasses, flowers and fruits. Like Heffernan’s other art series, these bizarre-yet-beautiful paintings are a constant dilemma between the gorgeous and the grotesque, attraction and repulsion.

Happy Birthday Michel Kikoine

31 Thursday May 2012

Posted by Illustrators Journal in Happy Birthday

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artist as brand, artwork, digital painting, illustration, illustrators journal, innovation, israeli painter, levinland, lon levin, modern art, Nazis, nude sketch, nudes, painter, technology, this week in digital media on blogtalk radio


nude by Micehl KikoineA brilliant brilliant painter whose work is fresh,lively and natural. Sublime brush stroking and line work are the hallmark of Michel’s work. 

Kikoine was born in Rechytsa, present-day Belarus. The son of a Jewish banker in the small southeastern town of Gomel, he was barely into his teens when he began studying at “Kruger’s School of Drawing” in Minsk. There he met Chaim Soutine, with whom he would have a lifelong friendship. At age 16 he and Soutine were studying at the Vilnius Academy of Art and in 1911 he moved to join the growing artistic community gathering in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France. This artistic community included his friend Soutine as well as fellow Belarus painter, Pinchus Kremegne who also had studied at the Fine Arts School in Vilnia.

For a time, the young artist lived at La Ruche while studying at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts. In 1914, he married a young lady from Vilnia with whom he would have a daughter and a son. Their son, Jankel Jacques, born in France in 1920, also became a painter. The same year as his marriage, Kikoine volunteered to fight in the French army, serving until the end of World War I.

With the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent occupation of France by the Germans, Michel Kikoine and his Jewish family faced deportation to the Nazi death camps. Until the end of the War they stayed near Toulouse. After the Allied liberation of France, he moved back to Paris where his paintings were primarily nudes, autoportraits, and portraits. In 1958 he moved to Cannes on the Mediterranean coast where he returned to landscape painting until his death November 4, 1968.

[edit]Career

Michel Kikoine had his first exhibition in Paris in 1919 after which he exhibited regularly at the Salon d’Automne. His work was successful enough to provide a reasonable lifestyle for him and his family allowing them to spend summers painting landscapes in the south of France, the most notable of which is his “Paysage Cezannien,” inspired by the great Paul Cézanne. He died in Cannes, France.

[edit]Influence

In 2004, at the university in Tel Aviv, Israel, a new wing in the Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery, was dedicated to the memory of Michel Kikoine.

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Editor’s Note

Visit www.levinlandstudio.com and see the portfolio of the editor Lon Levin

The Spring Issue '17 of the Illustrators Journal will be out in April with all new interviews with cartoonist Mark Stamaty, Fantasy artist and Society of Illustrator's Hall of Fame artists Kinuko Y Craft and some artwork from Millenial sensation MollyCrabtree.

The issue will focus on protest and the arts from Daumier to Ingram Pinn.

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