It began a long time ago, but for Rietta, it really began when she met Carla, another very special and extraordinary person, and realised that they shared the same dreams. Or did it all start when Rietta and Carla found the severely injured dog in the woods, becoming firm friends as they tried to nurse it back to health and happiness?
Then there was the ‘thing’ that they glimpsed watching them from the shadows, and the mystery of the missing standing-stone… but when they find the key to another realm, well, then things really start happening!
This is the first in a new epic fairy-tale trilogy, This, That and the Other, imaginative fantasy, on an epic scale. The story follows the special friendship between two girls who embark on a magical adventure together, across the three realms. A modern fable inspired by fairy tales and folklore, in the tradition of The Neverending Story, The Box of Delights, The Chronicles of Narnia... …
Yves Klein had been working with canvases of a single colour since the early 1950s and in 1957, as part of a solo exhibition he titled, Proposte Monocrome, Epoca Blu / Monochrome Proposition, Blue Epoch, he presented eleven canvases painted a uniform vivid blue. They were hung unframed and suspended on wires away from the gallery wall so they appeared to hover in the air. He stated an intention to produce “invisible paintings”, where the canvas disappears behind the colour.
Jackson Pollock took the connections between musical and visual compositions, that Wassily Kandinsky had famously explored, and ran — or more like danced — with them. Pollock’s early works had been distorted figurative paintings that were in keeping with the fashion of American Expressionism at the time which, in turn, had developed from a wider interest in the works of The Blue Rider, including Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, and the Spanish-born styles of Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso.
Like many of their antecedents, the Abstract Expressionists of the USA progressed from figurative, through distortion, towards the abstract. Kandinsky, the Russian artist who had taught at the influential Bauhaus, had approached canvas and paint purely as a means of composition. In much the same way, a great composer approaches an orchestra and its instruments where the music itself remains intangible and abstract, though often emotive. …
Happy New Year and welcome to this sixth edition of our newsletter, with editor’s picks, a small selection of beautiful books, useful online resources, and a round-up of a couple of popular articles, recently published in Signifier plus exciting news of our new online contemporary art gallery…
Each exhibition showcases just six images by each artist. These six images are linked in an understandable way — perhaps from the same project, series or dealing with related subjects. They may be linked by aesthetics, techniques, processes, philosophies, formal or conceptual elements. …
Georges Braque is a very important artist whose career touches upon, and consolidates, many Modernist styles. His earlier works are considered Fauvist due to the vibrant use of structural colour, strong line and lack of traditional perspective. Like much of the work being produced in the first decade of the Twentieth century, by his fellow French painters like Henri Matisse and André Derain, Braque’s earlier paintings are clearly influenced by the Post- and Neo-Impressionist styles present in the works of Vincent van Gogh… and, just like many of those pioneers, his work was initially misunderstood.
Welcome to this fifth edition of our newsletter, with editor’s picks, a small selection of beautiful books, useful online resources, and a round-up of three popular articles, recently published in Signifier (plus a seasonal bonus one)…
Thank you for your continued interest!
Secluded in an area of private woodland is ‘Cae’n y Coed’, where a circle of 22 Ash trees stand. They have been growing under the gentle guidance of artist David Nash for more than 40 years. Over the decades he has gradually manipulated their growth so they have bent in towards each other in a vortex that has now met to form a living dome. The dome creates a space that is only a little bit different from its surroundings, yet the sculptural intervention draws our attention to the natural processes and the passage of time. This is a sculpture that exists in the time scale of nature. …
Myron of Eleutherae was respected as being one of the earliest Greek sculptors to achieve complete realism, fused with perfect aesthetic balance. He worked toward an end result cast in bronze and produced figures that, to the observers of the time, looked as if they would actually complete the movement in which they had been cast. They were anatomically accurate. Their flesh and skin texture appeared supple and mobile, despite being made of hard metal.
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