Miroslav Tichy…

Born in Moravia in 1926, Tichý studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts (SVU) in Prague in the years immediately following the SecondWorldWar. After Czechoslovakia’s adoption of communism in 1948, he left the Academy and turned his back on the official art world, withdrawing from mainstream society, in part as a political response to the social and cultural repressions of the regime. Regarded as a talented painter and draftsman influenced by Picasso and the German Expressionists, Tichý did not agree with the prevailing socialistrealismoftheday, instead formingan artist collective knownastheBrněnskáPětka (Brno Five) with other likeminded SVU alumni. Constantly threatened and watched by the regime, the group took great risk in producing their work, even holding a clandestine exhibition in the Kyjov hospital in 1956. Tichý benefitted from the small, yet vibrant, cultural scene of Kyjov, taking in dance performances, plays, and beginning his first photographic experimentations with the artist Ladislav Víšek. Prone to mental breakdowns since his youth,Tichý worked alongside his peers until an apparen tpsychotic episode justbefor ea planned exhibitionin1957 from which he withdrew his images. His work was not exhibited again until nearly four decades later. Over the years, his deliberately nonconformist lifestyle—as well as his mental illness—landed him in trouble with the authorities and led to periods of confinement in psychiatric institutions and the loss of his studio in 1972.

Living in near isolation in his hometown of Kyjov, Tichý conceived a world populated by images of the local women, taking thousands of photographs from the 1960s through the late 1980s. Though he never stopped producing paintings and drawings, Tichý focused the majority of his attention on the photographic medium, practically reinventing it to suit his artistic vision of capturing the feminine essence with light. Save for the film, chemicals, and photographic paper he bought from a nearby drugstore, all his photographic equipment was self-made. Using cameras inventively constructed from found materials—shoeboxes, tin cans, clothing elastic, toilet paper rolls, even cigarette boxes—Tichý obsessively returns to the subject of the female form, whether viewed from afar with his makeshift telephoto lenses, or captured from the television screen. His intuitive method of photographing during daily walks about town might appear amateur in ambition, but the intensity, frequency, and regularity with which he creates reveal a unique and distinctly personal style of photography. Despite his camera’s crude optics—the lenses were cut from Plexiglas polished with sandpaper, toothpaste, and ashes—and skewed framing, the resulting images are formally complex, reflective of Tichý’s early art training, and vaguely reminiscent of the early works of the classical pictorial tradition. His images of women—often in bathing suits, bare-legged, or simply walking about town—are subtly erotic, taken from afar, often without the knowledge of the subjects. Tichý often embellished the surfaces and borders of these scratched, blurred, torn, and spotted images by drawing directly on them in pen or pencil, heightening the expressive quality created by his imperfect equipment. Sometimes framed or mounted on newspaper or cardboard, these highly personal objects were created for his own viewing pleasure, each negative printed only once with a homemade enlarger.

Miroslav Tichy

Miroslav Tichy’s camera

Magdalena Abakanowicz

Agora IIYellow AbakanThe Group of SevenRed AlbakanPlecyMammal HeadThe Group of SevenKlatka i plecy

 

Magdalena Abakanowicz (Polish, b.1930) is best known for her textile sculptures of biomorphic forms. At the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts she studied drawing and painting in the Socialist Realist style, as well as textile design, screen printing, and fiber design. Her early work includes a series of gouaches and watercolors on linen sheets, which depict imaginary plants and animals. After she graduated, the Polish government was less strict about the form and content of art, and artists were allowed to travel to Western cities. Abakanowicz was particularly influenced by the geometric structures of Constructivist art. Her series Abakans, begun in 1967, are giant sculptures, woven from a variety of fibers, that hang a few inches off the ground.

 

During the 1970s and 1980s, Abakanowicz made several series of anthropomorphic textile sculptures. Backs (1976–1980) was a series of 80 versions of the human trunk made from burlap and resin, and Embryology (1978–1980) consisted of approximately 800 round forms of various sizes, made from burlap, gauze, and hemp. These organic sculptures examine the role of individual creativity within the crowd. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Abakanowicz produced sculptures in bronze, wood, stone, and clay, including her Bronze Crowd (1990) and Puellae (1992) series. For the War Games series, begun in 1987, Abakanowicz stripped off the bark of trees that were abandoned by foresters near Warsaw, and remodeled each trunk with metal parts. This series represents her life-long interest in nature, dismemberment, and regeneration.

Grey Albakan

Four seated figuresFour on a BenchCrowdCrowd IV,CoexistenceAgoraAgora III

George Platt Lynes

Errante 1936Mythology Series. The cyclops 1939Mythology Series. 1939Untitled c1936TransvestiteThe Sleepwalker, 1935Jean Cocteau 1936Gloria Swanson 1939Mythology Series. Endymion and Selene 1939Mythology Series. Cyclopes 1939Untitled c1939

George Platt Lynes (April 15, 1907 – December 6, 1955) was an American fashion and commercial photographer.

Born in East Orange, New he spent his childhood in New Jersey but attended the Berkshire School in Massachusetts. He was sent to Paris in 1925 with the idea of better preparing him for college. His life was forever changed by the circle of friends that he would meet there. Gertrude Stein, Glenway Wescott, Monroe Wheeler and those that he met through them opened an entirely new world to the young artist. He returned to the United States with the idea of a literary career and he even opened a bookstore in Englewood, New Jersey in 1927. He first became interested in photography not with the idea of a career, but to take photographs of his friends and display them in his bookstore.

Returning to France the next year in the company of Wescott and Wheeler, he traveled around Europe for the next several years, always with his camera at hand. He developed close friendships within a larger circle of artists including Jean Cocteau and Julien Levy, the art dealer and critic.

While he continued to shoot fashion photographs, getting accounts with such major clients as Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue during the 1930s and 1940s he was losing interest and had started a series of photographs which interpreted characters and stories from Greek mythology.

By 1946, he grew disillusioned with New York and left for Hollywood, where he became chief photographer for the Vogue studios. He photographed Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Gloria Swanson and Orson Welles, from the film industry, as well as others in the arts among them Aldous Huxley, Igor Stravinsky, and Thomas Mann. While a success artistically, it was a financial failure.

During his lifetime, Lynes amassed a substantial body of work involving nude and homoerotic photography. In the 1930s, he began taking nudes of friends, performers and models, including a young Yul Brynner, although these remained private, unknown and unpublished for years. Over the following two decades, Lynes continued his work in this area passionately, albeit privately. “The depth and commitment he had in photographing the male nude, from the start of his career to the end, was astonishing. There was absolutely no commercial impulse involved — he couldn’t exhibit it, he couldn’t publish it.”

By May 1955, Lynes had been diagnosed terminally ill with lung cancer. He closed his studio and destroyed much of his print and negative archives, particularly his male nudes. However, it is now known that he had transferred many of these works to the Kinsey Institute.

 

Untitled c. 1943Untitled. 1935Mythology Series. Boreas 1939Mythology Series. Birth of Dionysus 1939Untiled 1951Mythology Series. Danæ and the Shower of Gold 1939

Achille Jacques-Jean-Marie Devéria

Achille Jacques-Jean-Marie Devéria (6 February 1800 – 23 December 1857) was a French painter and lithographer. In 1822, he began exhibiting at the Paris Salon. At some point, he opened an art school together with his brother Eugène, who was also a painter. By 1830 Devéria had become a successful illustrator and had published many lithographs in the form of notebooks and albums (e.g. his illustrations to Goethe’s Faust, 1828) and romantic novels. He also produced many engravings of libertine contents.

. His experience in the art of the vignette and Mezzotint influenced his numerous lithographs, most of which were issued by his father-in-law, Charles-Etienne Motte (1785–1836). Most of his work consisted of “pseudo-historical, pious, sentimental or erotic scenes.” Since he rarely depicted tragic or grave themes, he appears less Romantic than many other artists of the time.

Francesco Viscuso

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Francesco Viscuso, born in Catania (Sicily) in November 1980, lives and works in Rome. He graduated from Art Institute in Catania – Architectural His art ranges from the fields of painting to installation and video, however  photography is his main medium. The main themes of his work are Time, Memory and Trauma

 

http://francescoviscuso.blogspot.com.es

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Arbor day

Book of Life, 2000

Burn Season 2003

Cloud Cleaner 1999

Earth Elegies

Flying Lesson, 2000

Kingdom

Night Garden

Pollination, 1998

Reclamation

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison are a husband and wife duo who have been making photographs together for almost 20 years. Their work focuses on the relationship between humans and the environment—an idea that has only recently come to popularity with movements like the Go Green initiative and concepts like the carbon footprint. Using photogravure, collage, and painting techniques, the ParkeHarrisons create cinematic environments that explore how we interact with our natural surroundings.

 http://www.geh.org/parkeharrison/index.htm

http://www.parkeharrison.com/

 

Summoning the Storm

Suspended fields

Tethered Sky, 2005

The Book of Life

The Clearing, 2001

The Navigator 2002

The Waiting, 2000

Thecollector

Turning to Spring

Visitation

New Photomyths…….

THE ORPHIC EGG-EL HUEVO ÓRFICO

THE ORACLE OF PROTEUS-EL ORACULO DE PROTEO

IN THE ARMS OF MORPHEUS-EN LOS BRAZOS DE MORFEO

AMPHITRITE III-ANFITRITE III

SLEEPING BACCHANTE

PROMETHEUS AND THE EAGLE OF ZEUS-PROMETEO Y LA AGUILA DE ZEUS

HERACLES-HERAKLES

Francesca Woodman

But Lately I Find a Sliver of a Mirror is Simply to Slice an Eyelid 1975

Providence Rhode Island III 1977

Self Deceit, Rome 1978Untitled (Providence) 1975-78

Untitled 1975

Untitled II, Rome, 1977–1978Untitled III Rome, 1977–1978

Untitled IV Rome, 1977-1978

Untitled 1975–80

Born in 1958 into a family of artists, Woodman began photographing at the age of 13. By the time she enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1975, she was already an accomplished artist with a remarkably mature and focused approach to her work. During her time at RISD, she spent a year in Rome, which proved an enormously fertile source of inspiration. After completing her degree, she moved to New York, where she made several large-scale personal projects and experimented with fashion photography. In 1981, at the age of 22, she committed suicide. Woodman’s untimely death is underscored by the startlingly compelling, complex, and artistically resolved body of work she produced during her short lifetime.

Self portrait talking to VinceProvidence Rhode Island II 1977Providence Rhode Island 1977From Eel series, Rome, 1977–1978Untitled Rome, 1977–1978UntitledUntitled V Rome, 1977-1978

Frans Francken the Younger

The man who has to decide between virtues and vices

Allegoria dell’abdicazione di Carlo V

Chamber of Art and Curiosities.

Death and the Merchant

Frans Francken the Elder The Battle of Time against Death

Monkey’s Feast

Monkeys playing backgammon

Preziosenwand   

The Damned Being Cast into Hell

The interior of a picture gallery with connoisseurs admiring paintings

The story of the prodigal son

Frans Francken the Younger (Antwerp, 1581 – Antwerp, 6 May 1642) was a Flemish painter and the best-known member of the large Francken family of artists. He played an important role in the development of Flemish art in the first half of the 17th century through his innovations in genre painting and introduction of new subject matter. Francken was born in Antwerp where he trained with his father Frans Francken the Elder] He may also have trained with his uncle Hieronymus Francken I in Paris, together with his brother Hieronymus Francken II. He became a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1605 and was deacon of the Guild in 1616.Francken was a very successful artist and operated a large workshop which made many copies of his original compositions. His pupils included Daniel Hagens (1616/17), the Monogrammist N.F., his brother Hieronymus II and his son Frans III.Frans Francken the Younger was a versatile artist who practised in many genres and introduced new subjects into Flemish art. Many of his works are small historical, allegorical and biblical cabinet paintings with the focus on figures. He also invented or popularized several new themes that became popular in Flemish painting, such as genre scenes populated by monkeys (also referred to as singeries) and Kunstkammer or gallery paintings displaying a wealth of natural and artistic treasures against a neutral wall. Frans Francken the Younger introduced many other unusual themes that later became popular, such as the ‘Triumphal Procession of Amphitrite’ and ‘Croesus and Solon’. Francken also made a series of paintings depicting witches and witchcraft, including portrayals of witches’ sabbats

The Triumph of Bacchus

The Triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite

The Triumph Of Neptune

Frans Francken el Joven (Amberes, 1581–6 de mayo 1642) es un pintor barroco flamenco, el más conocido y fructífero de los Francken, familia de artistas.Aprendió con su padre, Frans Francken el Viejo, cuyo estilo cultivó en un primer momento. Se hizo maestro en 1605. En 1614 aparece como decano de la guilda de San Lucas, (gremio de pintores de Amberes). Su padre murió en 1616. Cultivó varios géneros. Muchas de sus obras son pequeñas pinturas de gabinete históricas, alegóricas y bíblicas, cuyo centro de atención son las figuras. En un momento posterior de su vida pintó también grandes cuadros para iglesias. Francken colaboró con frecuencia con otros artistas, añadiendo figuras a obras de Pieter Neefs el Viejo (Viático en el interior de una iglesia del Museo del Prado) Tobias Verhaecht y Abraham Govaerts.También inventó o popularizó varios temas nuevos que se hicieron populares en la pintura flamenca, como las obras de género pobladas por monos (más tarde imitadas por David Teniers el Joven. Pero, sobre todo, se le conoce por sus Kunstkamer o «galerías de arte», esto es, cuadros que representan con gran minuciosidad una riqueza de tesoros naturales y artísticos, de valor histórico y cultural, con un fondo neutro. Los formatos son medianos o pequeños. Gracias a estas obras se pueden conocer las colecciones de arte de la nobleza y los ricos burgueses de la época.Su estilo se caracteriza por una composición suelta, rico colorido y formas elegantes. Los ojos de las personas los pinta de una manera muy característica, con puntos negros en caras finas.

Anita Larkin……

Apparatus for the Repatriation of Tears

 Oracle

Luminary

Rest

Watching and waiting

 Preamble

Wunderkammer object 268

Things that howl in the night (hammer, scissors, mirror)

In Transit

Eat

Device for listening to ants

Roger I hear you loud and clear

Wollongong air

Bivouac and Pilgrimage

Anita Larkin is a sculptor and feltmaker. She graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Sydney College of The Arts in 1993, and is represented by Defiance Gallery in Sydney. The sculptural possibilities of felt and making assemblages of collected objects are the main focus of her practice. She also now spends time making work for public commissions. Her work has been exhibited in Australia, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Mexico and the UK, and is represented in public collections such as The Wollongong City Gallery, and The Australian War Memorial Art Collection