graffiti in caracas: government sponsored political promotion

See the rest of the slide show here: Political Graffiti

"CARACAS, Venezuela — Of all the murals and graffiti that adorn this anarchic city’s trash-strewn center, one creation by the street artist Carlos Zerpa fills him with special pride: a stenciled reinterpretation of Caravaggio’s “David with the Head of Goliath,” in which a warrior grasps the severed head of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The more overtly political images tend to glamorize President Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution, and his demonization of Washington is a favorite subject.

Mr. Zerpa, 26, a slightly built painter sporting a few days of stubble, shrugged at the possibility that American visitors to Caracas — or Mrs. Clinton for that matter — might find the mural offensive. “It’s a metaphor for an empire that is being defeated,” he said nonchalantly in an interview. “My critics can take it or leave it, but I remain loyal to my ideas.”

So does the government, which supports Mr. Zerpa’s creations and the work of many other street artists, and is increasingly making them a central element of its promotion of a state ideology. Government-financed brigades of graffiti artists and muralists are blanketing this city’s walls with politicized images, ranging from crude, graffiti-tagged slogans to bold, colorful works of graphic art."

By Simon Romero for the NYTimes

See the rest of the article here: Artists Embellish Walls With Political Visions

albers color relativity studies

Is the purple same or different?

Taken from Marilyn Fenn Studio.
For more exercises testing your eye for color, go here: Color Theory Exercises

roy - papermaking with chuck close

See it here on youtube.

young curators speak

New curators with eclectic backgrounds are helping to define how art is viewed by the next generation of museumgoers. All still in their 30s, four from top New York City institutions talk about their jobs.

From the NYTimes

twombly decorates the louvre

"The Louvre's ceilings already abound with decorative paintings: There are plenty of frolicking maidens, epic battles and racing chariots, not to mention cherubs holding cornucopias.

American contemporary artist Cy Twombly had something different in mind — something simple.

Twombly, the first artist given the honor of decorating a Louvre ceiling since Georges Braque in the 1950s, came up with a geometric design — a deep blue background punctuated with floating disks and emblazoned with the names of sculptors from ancient Greece.

The 400-square-meter (4,300-square-foot) ceiling, inaugurated Tuesday, floats over a gallery of antique bronzes like a deep blue sky. It opens up the long gallery but doesn't overpower it, as was Twombly's intent."

Angela Doland for the Associated Press

See the rest of the article: US artist Cy Twombly creates ceiling for Louvre

See more of Twombly's work here

mona hatoum wins

"Sophie Calle and Mona Hatoum have been recognized for their work with awards. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, Calle has won the Swedish Hasselblad Prize for Photography for 2010 from the Hasselblad Foundation in Gothenburg, while Hatoum was awarded the German Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis for 2010 from Berlin’s Akademie der Künste...

In Hatoum’s case, the jurors lauded the centrality of the “human body caught between violence, power, and fragility” in her work. Hatoum, who was born in Lebanon in 1952, moved to London in 1975 and now divides her time between London and Berlin. The Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis is endowed with $16,800."

From Artforum

philagrafika 2010

Oscar Munoz

Gunilla Klingberg

Art Hazelwood

Philagrafika 2010 is the first presentation of what will become a recurring event in Philadelphia, celebrating the role of print in contemporary artistic practice.

The Philagrafika 2010 festival contends that the printed image lies at the heart of contemporary art. Concepts of imprinting, multiplicity, reproduction, and seriality, as well as physically printed forms are frequently used by artists who do not think of themselves as printmakers. As artistic vocabularies have expanded and mixing media has become commonplace, artists have increasingly drawn from inherent characteristics of the print to achieve specific aesthetic and expressive goals.

See more here: Philagrafika 2010