Roger Ballen…..

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Roger Ballen, South Africa

Alter Ego 2009
Bite 2007 Boarding House 2008 Boxed rabbit Cat catcher 1998 Complex Ambiguity 2007 Contemplation 2007 Conversation 2003 Culmination 2007 Displaced 2011 Dresie and Casie, Twins, Western Transval, 1993

Roger Ballen [1950] was born in New York, and has lived and worked in South Africa since the late 1970´s. His mother worked as a photo editor at Magnum Photo Agency, New York, and as a teenager Ballen befriended the likes of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Davidson, and Elliott Erwitt.

For many years Ballen worked as a geologist while documenting the small villages of rural South Africa and their isolated inhabitants. His distinctive style has evolved from a documentary approach to something more abstract, metaphoric and introspective. Over the years he has developed his own private visual universe – combining photography, sculpture, films and installations. He describes his work as fundamentally psychological and existential; making art is an exercise in defining himself.

Escapee 2011 Five hands 2006 Fraught 2003 Head-inside-shirt-2001 Hungry dog, 2003 Pielie 2012 Portrait of sleeping girl 2000 Scavenging 2004 Skin and bones2007 Under the moon 2000

 

More on Roger Ballen:

http://blog.frieze.com/roger_ballen/

 

Frank Eugene

 

 Die Sphinx von Gizeh, Aegypten, Mitternacht

Minuet

Anne Königer Smith

 

Nu au bord de l’eau Nude in Walking Stance

Frank Eugene Smith, who was later known by his artist name Frank Eugene and who adopted German citizenship in 1906, was born in New York in 1865. After a first training at the City College, Eugene began to study painting in New York in 1884 and switched to the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich in 1886. During his years of study Eugene began to be interested in the new media of photography and studied further autodidactically. As soon as 1889 Eugene had his first one-man show at the Camera-Club’ in New York, which was founded by Alfred Stieglitz. After his graduation Eugene returned to New York in 1894 and worked for some years as a stage designer and portrait painter, specialising in portraying well-known theatre-actors. Since 1900 he lived in Germany again and got envolved with artistic photography, was admitted to the Linked ring’ in London and founded – together with Stieglitz and Edward Steichen – the American photographer’s society Photo-Session’. Between 1904 and 1910 Eugene’s works were published as heliographs in the advanced photography journal Camera Work’ and became internationally known. Eugene orientated himself in his photographs at painting, following the romanticising style of art photography: Eugene’s treatment of the negatives with opaque colours and etching needle led to his wanted pictorial and graphic effects and with his favoured techniques like platinum print and the rubber-bichrome.technique, he achieved the modern blur of his positives. Since 1907 Eugene began his educational work at the Lehr-und Versuchsanstalt für Fotographie in Munich, which he continued at his chair for artistic photography at the Königliche Akademie für Grafische Künste in Leipzig in 1913. In 1907 Eugene organised a meeting between Stieglitz, Steichen and Heinrich Kühn and brought forward the assimilation of German art photographers to American guidelines. Frank Eugene died in Munich in 1936.

The Oriental Bride

Adam and Eve

The Song of the Lily

The archer

  Teenage girlNude Man with Harp,

La cigale

Rebecca

František Kobliha

Crowd

The Storm
Sphinx
Salome

Salambo

Nude

Noc na řekou dřevoryt

Máj

Gefällt mir- Gefällt mir Lade.
Fantazie měsíčních nocí
Self Portrait

Frantisek Kobliha (17 November 1877 Prague – 12 December 1962) was a Czech painter, graphic artist, representative of the second generation of Czech symbolism

Fantazie měsíčních nocí,
Dusk
Der Vampyr
Unknoen title
A kiss

Auguste Rodin Nudes Watercolours…..

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Auguste Rodin

Nu ErosNu Female Couple Minerva Female Couple Two women embracing Psyche Deux femmes

Rodin’s nude sketches and provides a brief overview of the artist’s scandalous presence within fin-de-siecle Paris. These simple but suggestive watercolor and pencil drawings, taken from the artist’s later years, convey an immediacy and sensuality that belie his better-known work in monumental sculpture. Dismissed as obscene at the time of their drafting, the influence of Rodin’s confident but delicate eroticism can be seen in the later works of Schiele, Picasso, and Matisse.

Much of Auguste Rodin’s work defied traditional artistic conventions but out of the public eye, he took a further decisive step towards modernism in a different genre.

These erotic female nude studies, created during the final two decades of his life, represent a completely new approach to art – one that freed itself from previous ideals of beauty and from existing concepts of morality. The work was considered to be indecent at the time. When a small collection of the drawings were shown in Weimar, the director of the museum was dismissed. More than 100 of these little-known drawings, now exist in museums and private collections worldwide.

By the time of creating these drawings in his career he had gained the notoriety and the means to afford live models, often several at a time. They remained in motion during the drawing sessions, while Rodin sketched without interruption, rarely looking down to see what he had drawn. The women’s bodies are spayed out, liberated and unashamed. The delicate nature of Rodin’s line and gentle wash of watercolour in comparison to the honest portrayal of the women’s bodies is totally new to look at even now over a hundred years later. Theres something incredibly powerful about the sexuality created in these drawings with only a couple of pencil lines which is really quite genius.

Le Temple de L’AmourNude Woman Tipped Over La Cigale Femme nue, avec tête sur son épauleFemme nue agenouillée vers la droite Femme nue de face Le présage La danse La LuneNu Couple

Before Creation

The Witches Sabbath….

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Witches' Sabbath

Representation of Sabbat gatherings from the chronicles of Johann Jakob Wick.1250

Albrecht Dürer, A witch riding backwards on a goat, with four putti, two carrying an alchemist’s pot, a thorn apple plant. c.1500

Hans Baldung, Witches Sabbath 1510

Attributed to Andries Jacobsz, Preparations for a Witches Sabbath 1610

David Ryckaert, La ronde des Farfadets 17th c

Cornelis Saftleven, Witches’ Sabbath 1650

David Ryckaert, La ronde des Farfadets 17thc

Dominicus van Wijnen, Witchcraft  Scene 17thcFrans Francken, The Witches’ Sabbath 1606

Jacob van Swanenburgh, Witches Sabbath In Roman Palace Ruins, 1608

Salvator Rosa, The Witches’ Morning-1645-1649

Salvator Rosa, The Witches’ Morning-1645-1649

Salvator Rosa, The Witches’ Sabbath 1635

Attributed to Luis Paret y Alcázar Date 1746-1799

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, El Aquelarre 1797

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Witches Flight 1797

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Witches Sabbath c1800

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Witches’ Sabbath 1821

The Witches’ Sabbath or Sabbat is a meeting of those who practice witchcraft and other rites.

European records indicate cases of persons being accused or tried for taking part in Sabbat gatherings, from the Middle Ages to the 17th century or later. The English word “sabbat” is of obscure etymology and late diffusion, and local variations of the name given to witches’ gatherings were frequent. “Sabbat” came indirectly from Hebrew שַׁבָּת (Shabbath, “day of rest”). In modern Judaism, Shabbat is the rest day celebrated from Friday evening to Saturday nightfall; in modern Christianity, Sabbath refers to Sunday, or to a time period similar to Shabbat in the seventh-day church minority. In connection with the medieval beliefs in the evil power of witches and in the malevolence of Jews and Judaizing heretics (both being Sabbathkeepers), satanic gatherings of witches were by outsiders called “sabbats”, “synagogues”, or “convents”. I n spite of the number of times that authorities retold stories of the sabbat, modern researchers have been unable to find any corroboration that any such event ever occurred. Beleif in the existence of witches was widespread in late medieval and early-modern Europe. Many religious authorities believed there was a vast underground conspiracy of witches who were responsible for the horrific famines, plague, warfare, and problems in the Catholic Church that became endemic in the fourteenth century. By blaming witches, religious authorities provided a handy scapegoat for those who might otherwise question God’s goodness. Stories of the sabbat had prurient and orgiastic elements, which caused these stories to be told and retold. In effect, the sabbat acted as an effective ‘advertising’ gimmick, causing knowledge of what these authorities believed to be the very real threat of witchcraft to be spread more rapidly across the continent. Unfortunately that also meant that stories of the sabbat promoted the hunting, prosecution, and execution of supposed witches. The descriptions of Sabbats were made or published by priests, jurists and judges who never took part in these gatherings, or were transcribed during the process of the witchcraft trials. That these testimonies reflect actual events is for most of the accounts considered doubtful. Norman Cohn argued that they were determined largely by the expectations of the interrogators and free association on the part of the accused, and reflect only popular imagination of the times, influenced by ignorance, fear, and religious intolerance towards minority groups. Some of the existing accounts of the Sabbat were given when the person recounting them was being tortured. and so motivated to agree with suggestions put to them.

Many of the diabolical elements of the Witches’ Sabbath stereotype, such as the eating of babies, poisoning of wells, desecration of hosts or kissing of the devil’s anus, were also made about heretical Christian sects, lepers, Muslims, and Jews. The term is the same as the normal English word “Sabbath” (itself a transliteration of Hebrew “Shabbat”, the seventh day, on which the Creator rested after creation of the world), referring to the witches’ equivalent to the Christian day of rest; a more common term was “synagogue” or “synagogue of Satan”, possibly reflecting anti-Jewish sentiment, although the acts attributed to witches bear little resemblance to the Sabbath in Christianity or Jewish Shabbat customs

Johann Heinrich Füssli, The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches 1796

Parmigianino , The witches’ sabbath c.1732

Antoine Wiertz,The Young Sorceress 1857

Claude Gillot Witches’ Sabbath 1871

Luis Ricardo Falero, Faust’s Dream 1878

Luis Ricardo Falero, The Witches Sabbath 1875

Luis Ricardo Falero, Witches going to their Sabbath 1878

Martin van Maele, La Sorcière 1911

Martin van Maële. Illustration de La sorcière, de Jules Michelet. 1911.

French postcard, Witches’ Sabbat in Paris c1910

Paul F. Berdanier , The Witches’ Sabbath a la Mode c1935

 

 

 

Odilon Redon

À Edgar Poe (À l’horizon l’Ange des Certitudes, et dans le ciel sombre, un regard intérrogateur)

Boiled perfume

Cactus Man

Caliban

Cellule Auriculaire

Chimera

Extasy

Flower of the swamp, a head human and sad, lithograph from the portfolio Homage à Goya

Guardian Spirit of the Waters

Head of a martyr

Head on a Stem

La vision

Limbes

 

Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

“Standing outside trends and movements, Odilon Redon, a native of Bordeaux, produced a rich and enigmatic corpus: ‘Like music’, he declared, ‘my drawings transport us to the ambiguous world of the indeterminate.’ In contrast with Goya’s monsters and Kubin’s nightmare visions, his work is imbued with a melancholy passivity. While origins of this disposition must be sought in the artist’s experience, the overall effect is entirely consistent with the moods of Symbolism : nocturnal, autumnal, and lunar rather than solar. During the early part of Redon’s career, the nocturnal did indeed predominate. Only later did he admit the light of day. His mature production began around 1875 when Redon entered the shadowy world of charcoal and the lithographer’s stone. This period yielded sequences such as [Guardian Spirit of the Waters (1878)] and [Cactus Man (1881)]. Redon made it clear that they had been inspired by his dreams, and they inspire in the spectator a conviction like that of dreams.

“It was only in the 1890s that he began to use the luminous, musical tones of pastel and oils. These became the dominant media of the last fifteen years of his life. Redon’s art was always commanded by his dreams, but the thematic content of his work over his last twenty years is more densely mythical, brimming with newfound hope and light which rose quite unexpectedly out of the depths of the artist’s personality.
– From “Symbolism”, Michael Gibson.

Lumière

Primitive Man (Seated in Shadow)

Spirit of Forest (Spectre from Giant Tree)

Tears

The devil

The Masque of the Red Death

The Teeth

The Tell-Tale Heart

To Edgar Poe (A Mask Sounds the Death Knell)]

To Edgar Poe (The Breath which Leads All Creatures is also in the Spheres)

To Edgar Poe (The Eye, Like a Strange Balloon, Mounts toward Infinity)

Visage derrière les barreaux

The tower of Babel

Abel Grimmer – Construction of the Tower of Babel c1610

Abel Grimmer – The Tower of Babel c1605

Abel Grimmer – The Tower of Babel c1605

Anonymous Dutch painter-  Tower of Babel 15th C

Unknown engraver

Anton Mozart – Construction of the Tower of Babel c1600

Athanasius Kircher – Turris Babel 1679

Bedford Book of Hours, c. 1423

Charles Gussin, La Construction de la Tour de Babel, 1690,

Cornelis Anthonisz – The Fall of the Tower of Babel c1595

Dutch school – Tower of Babel (17th century)

Frans Francken – Construction of the Tower of Babel c1620

Frans Francken – Construction of the Tower of Babel c1630

Gillis van Valckenborch – Tower of Babel 1568

Hendrick Van Cleve – Tower of Babel 16thC

Hendrick Van Cleve – Tower of Babel 16thC

The Tower of Babel forms the focus of a story told in the Book of Genesis of the Bible. According to the story, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar. The Tower of Babel has often been associated with known structures, notably the Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk by Nabopolassar, king of Babylonia (c. 610 BC)-The Great Ziggurat of Babylon base was square (not round), 91 metres (300 ft) in height, and demolished by Alexander the Great. A Sumerian story with some similar elements is told in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. The narrative of the city of Babel is recorded in Genesis 11:1-9. Everyone on earth spoke the same language. As people migrated from the east, they settled in the land of Shinar. People there sought to make bricks and build a city and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for themselves, so that they not be scattered over the world. God came down to look at the city and tower, and remarked that as one people with one language, nothing that they sought would be out of their reach. God went down and confounded their speech, so that they could not understand each other, and scattered them over the face of the earth, and they stopped building the city. Thus the city was called Babel.

Jacob Grimmer – Construction of the Tower of Babel 16th C

Jan Christiaensz Micker c1620

Johann Baptist Baaderon the ceiling of the Pfarrkirche St. Johann Baptist, Wessobrunn, Germany. c1780

Joos de Momper – Turmbau zu Babel c 1595

L. A. Corvinus in J.J. Scheuchzer’s Sacred Physics 1735

Lodewyk Toeput – Turmbau zu Babel c 1585

Lucas van Valckenborch – Tower of Babel 1594

Lucas van Valckenborch (Attributed to) c1595

Lucas van Valkenborch – Construction of the Tower of Babel c1590

Maarten van Heemskerck c1530

Marten van Valckenborch – Construction of the Tower of Babel c1595

Marten van Valckenborch – Construction of the Tower of Babel c1600

Marten van Valckenborch – Tower of Babel.1600

Marten van Valckenborch the Elder –  – Tower of Babel 1595

La Torre de era una significativa edificación rescatada por el imaginario judeocristiano, que fue construida por los hombres en tiempos inmemoriales y que f se puede identificar con el histórico zigurat Etemenanki de la antigua ciudad de Babilonia. Este edificio, en cuya cúspide estaba la Esagila -templo dedicado a Marduk-, originalmente tenía siete pisos de altura y más de 91 metros, pero pocos de sus restos permanecen en la actualidad.La Torre de Babel no solo es una edificación clave en la tradición judeocristiana y mencionada en el antiguo Testamento, sino también pertenece al ideario universal y su historia ha trascendido generaciones. Pero la leyenda de la torre reposa sobre una realidad, pues existía en efecto en Babilonia una construcción de varios pisos y de origen desconocido, que era ya restaurada en tiempos de Nabopolasar (625-605 AC), fundador de la dinastía caldea. Inclusive, esta construcción se llamaba Etemenanki, que puede ser interpretado como “la mansión de lo alto entre el cielo y la tierra”, concordando con las principales interpretaciones del capítulo 11 del Génesis que afirman sobre la construcción de la torre, que los hombres pretendían alcanzar el Cielo. Una inscripción que data del tiempo de Nabopolasar señala: “Marduk (el gran dios de Babilonia) me ha ordenado colocar sólidamente las bases de la Etemenanki hasta alcanzar el mundo subterráneo y hacer de este modo que su cúspide llegue hasta el cielo”. En otra inscripción, de los tiempos de Nabucodonosor, se precisa que la decoración de la cúspide estaba hecha de “ladrillos de esmalte azul brillante, es decir, adornada del color del cielo, perfectamente adaptado para dar la impresión de que el edificio se perdía en el azul infinito.

Meister der Weltenchronik German Late Medieval – Construction of the Tower of Babel c. 1370

Monsu Desiderio – The Tower of Babel c1620

Peter Brueghel The Elder- The Small Tower of Babel, 1563

Peter Brueghel The Elder- The Tower of Babel, 1563

Peter Brueghel the younger – Tower of babel c1595

Pieter Brueghel the Younger – Construction of the Tower of Babel c1620

Pieter Schoubroeck – Construction of the Tower of Babel c1600

The Confusion of Tongues by Gustave Doré (1865)

Tobias Verhaecht – The Tower of Babel c1610

Tobias Verhaecht – The Tower of Babel c1620

Unknown Artist

Unknown artist – The Tower of Babel

Unknown Master, German (active at the end of 16th century in Nuremberg)
Michel Koven The Tower of Babel 2014

 

 

 

Michel Koven Babel 2012

John Martin The Fall of Babylon, 1831
Du Zhenjun, Europa, C-Print, 2010

http://arttattler.com/archivebabylon.html

 

Jaume Plensa

Spiegel 2010


Spiegel 2010

Dialogue 2009

In the Midst of Dreams 2009

In the Midst of Dreams 2009

Dröm 2007

Marianna & Awilda, 2013

Mineral Man 2007

Unknown Title

Jaume Plensa (Spanish, b.1955) is one of the world’s foremost sculptors working in the public space, with over 30 projects spanning the globe in such cities as Chicago, Dubai, London, Liverpool, Nice, Tokyo, Toronto, and Vancouver. Over the past 25 years, the artist has produced a rich body of work in the studio and the public realm. By combining conventional sculptural materials (glass, steel, bronze, aluminum) with more unconventional media (water, light, sound, video), and frequently incorporating text, Plensa creates hybrid works of intricate energy and psychology. From his delicately textured, intimate works on paper—like his 2005-06 series of ethnographic portraits that resemble worn, 19th century photographs—to monumental outdoor sculptures like Nomade (2007) and a range of cityscape-altering public projects like the Crown Fountain in Chicago (2000-05), Plensa’s work takes many forms. Plensa’s work is invested in evoking emotion and stimulating intellectual engagement. By posing conceptual dualities in his work (inside/outside, front/back, light/dark), Plensa seeks to connect with his viewers on an intuitive level. Often, the viewer participation, or the object/viewer relationship, is what completes Plensa’s work.

Alabaster sculptures, 2009-2011

The Heart of Trees

The Heart of Trees

Unknown Title Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Jaume Plensa (Barcelona 1955) vive y trabaja en Barcelona y París, y es uno de los artistas españoles con más proyección internacional. Dibujo, escultura, obra gráfica, escenarios para ópera, videoproyecciones, instalaciones acústicas… prácticamente no hay manifestación artística o técnica que no haya sido experimentada por el artista.

Entre 1999 y 2003 se convirtió en uno de los referentes de la escenografía mundial, al reinterpretar, junto a la La Fura dels Baus, cuatro óperas clásicas: La Atlántida, El martirio de San Sebastián, La condenación de Fausto y La flauta mágica. Plensa ha obtenido, además, diversos premios, entre los que se encuentran: el Primer Premio de Escultura del XXXIX Salón de Montrouge (1994), el Premio de la Fundación Alexander Calder (1996) y el Premio de la Asociación Española de Críticos de Arte a la mejor obra presentada en Arco´98. Recientemente fue distinguido con el título de Doctor Honoris Causa por la School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Pese a su alto reconocimiento en el mercado del arte, Jaume Plensa ha conseguido mantenerse al margen de las corrientes comerciales que invaden el arte contemporáneo. Su obra ha sido expuesta en los mejores centros e instituciones internacionales de arte contemporáneo.

Awilda 2012

Yorkshire Moss , 2013

Yorkshire Moss I, 2013

Tobias Verhaecht

Alpine Landscape

Landscape with St John the Evangelist at Patmos

Mountainous landscape

Orpheus Returning from the Underworld

Tobias Verhaecht (1561–1631) was a painter and draughtsman active in Antwerp, Florence and Rome. Primarily a landscape painter, his style is indebted to mannerist world landscapes of artists like Joachim Patinir with high viewpoints, fantastic distant perspectives and three-colour scheme. Verhaecht was born in Antwerp. Before he entered the city’s guild of St. Luke in 1590–91, he had already spent time in Italy, first in Florence, and then as a fresco painter in Rome. Peter Paul Rubens, who was a relative by marriage, studied with him around 1592, and another student was his own son, Willem van Haecht. Verhaecht is also known for his designs for prints.

River

The flight from Egypt

The Punishment of Niobe

The Tower of Babel.

The Tower of Babel.

Verhaecht, Tobias (Amberes, 1561-1631). Pintor y dibujante flamenco, miembro de una familia de pintores y comerciantes de arte. Su entrada en el Gremio de Pintores de San Lucas de Amberes en 1590 abre una fulgurante carrera pictórica en la que llegaría a ser pintor de las cortes del archiduque Ernesto en Bruselas, y posteriormente del emperador Rodolfo II en Praga. De hecho participó en las decoraciones para la entrada triunfal del archiduque Ernesto en Amberes. A la vuelta a esa ciudad formó un gran taller por el que pasaron ­Willen van Haecht y Pedro Pablo Rubens. La producción de Verhaecht son los paisajes, donde las visiones panorámicas y las formaciones rocosas de perfiles agudos y cónicos son característicos de su estilo, en conexión con la tradición paisajista flamenca heredera de Joachim Patinir.

Mountainous landscape with river and waterfall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mountainous Landscape with Venus and Adonis.1600

An invitation