The AP reports that Cy Twombly, an American painter and sculptor famed for his large-scale scribbles and doodles, has died in a hospital in Rome at the age of 83. The polarizing artist, who emerged alongside his friends Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns as an important figure in New York’s 1950s art scene, created abstract work that defied classification or theorizing by critics and elicited a primal response from the viewer. As Lee Siegel at Slate once wrote of Twombly’s images, which were often inspired by mythology, poetry, and history, “They are not just products of the imagination; they do not exist as correlatives to ideas, let alone to things. Done in pencil and crayon, Twombly’s trademark images capture the transient, universal sign of distraction: the doodle. Twombly inverts both Pollock’s and LeWitt’s seriousness. He does not make art. He makes pre-art.” In 2008, Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones referred to Twombly as “the thinking person’s Banksy,” and called his career retrospective at the Tate Modern “a victory march by the greatest artist alive.” Find a small sample of the beloved artist’s work after the jump.
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Russian avant-garde painter Kazimir Malevich made the world safe for black squares. Though he began his training following in the styles of the cubists and futurists in the early 20th century, he soon shed all attachment to representational reality and caused controversy by presenting the world with Black Square, a painting of a black square on a white canvas, which he suspended over the corner of a room at the 0.10 (zero ten) exhibit in 1915. White on White — a painting of a white square within another white square — further elevating Suprematism from polychrome to monochrome compositions — was another breakthrough for non-narrative art. For once art was freed from political, humanist and social issues, and offered as pure painting.
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South California rockers Cold War Kids are set to tour this winter in support of their recently released Behave Yourself EP, an up-tempo, psychedelic, raw, and sexy follow-up to their second album, Loyalty to Loyalty. Everyone knows their hooks are masterpieces, but not everyone knows that CWK bassist Matt Maust is an accomplished visual artist as well. Flavorpill’s Shana Nys Dambrot caught up with him on the eve of the Behave Yourself tour to talk, art, music, touring — and how these diverse areas of his life inform one another.
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We just stumbled across this year’s Vanity Fair Best-Dressed List thanks to an item in the LA Times about the number of art world personalities who made the cut. And it’s true: Cy Twombly, Bruce Weber, Ike Ude, and Count Manfredi Della Gherardesca are all there, mixed in with Hollywood royalty, New York socialites, political types, and the kind of random fabulous people you usually find on a list like this. Business as usual. And then we spotted the rather surprising user-generated ratings for these bold-faced names. What we discovered about style and popularity, after the jump. Read More »
Bridezilla: circus performer : out-of-control wedding : freak sideshow. Kristine Moran is an artist, not an analogist, but her paintings effectively relay the artifice and fancy of elaborate societal rituals. Moran’s latest solo show, Laugh Until My Teeth Fall Out, is on view through the end of the week at Nicelle Beauchene on New York’s Lower East Side. Read on for images and inside scoop from the artist. Read More »
Employing watercolor, heavy oils, and spray paint, LA-based artist Cole Sternberg blends mediums to produce visually striking works. Paint often obscures text in his compositions, which at first glance may appear messy, but are in fact laid out to convey detailed narratives, be it a representation of Bob Dylan’s Masters of War, an infamous Hunter S. Thompson episode or a particularly unforgettable break-up.
On a recent Saturday, Sternberg arrived at Culver City’s Kinsey/DesForges gallery riled-up from an earlier meeting with Los Angeles Art Association’s board where the debate got heated over how to best help the city’s emerging artists. After walking Flavorpill’s Jane McCarthy through his current exhibition, Sternberg chatted about celebrity culture, spray paint, and how he’d like to get his hands on a Monet (for the second time). Read More »
What works did international art dealers, curators and collectors consider the most impressive at the 53rd Venice Biennale? It was surprising how consistently the same names came up. The US Pavilion (images here) ranked high, even before it was voted best pavilion of this year. And Elmgreen & Dragset’s “The Collectors” (images here) was another favorite. And everyone was impressed with Francois Pinault’s Punta della Dogana (images here). Read More »
