The Cosmic Landscapes of Matthew Lee
Matthew Lee is a phenomenal landscape painter, with the ability to absorb you into the world of his paintings. His work makes you want to spend time with it and ponder the message behind it. He grew up in Middleton, west of Madison, journeyed to Milwaukee when he was 18 years old, and never looked back. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in portrait painting from UW-Milwaukee, he went on a research adventure to Antarctica that would change his style and focus of painting, drawing from him the works that are currently wowing viewers of his Redline Milwaukee exhibition. When he is not showing his work in galleries Lee teaches art classes at MIAD and makes annual trips, with Carthage college, to Montana to excavate 65-million-year-old dinosaur remains. In all of his works you can see his appreciation for our earth and the amount of time and energy he has put into mastering the visual representation of it on canvas. I had the pleasure of sitting with Matt for an enlightening discussion. What is your favorite type of Art? I like early American Modernism, a lot. Peter Bloom, Edward Hopper, and those people. I always joke that my work is like Ed Hopper’s Antarctica, like if he had decided to get out of New England, if he had been to the Arctic and been around telescopes and painted like that. Read full article at source:...
La Clairvoyance, 1936 by Rene Magritte @art_online
In La Clairvoyance Rene Magritte delivers a self-portrait of himself painting a bird. But, as with all of Magritte’s work, there is so much more going on. Not only is he painting a picture of a bird, he is using an unhatched egg as his point of reference. Magritte is painting more than what is right in front of him: he is painting the possibility, potential, the future. Hence the name of this painting: Clairvoyance. Magritte has painted himself painting his perception of the future. Confusing? A bit. Brilliant? Absolutely. By infusing himself into this picture and entitling it “Clairvoyance”, Magritte is delivering a message about himself as the painter: he is clairvoyant, he conveys the future through his art. This painting is therefore as much about him as a painter as it is about the resulting artwork. Though some may perceive this piece as arrogant, Magritte is staking his claim and sharing his philosophy, much like many of his surrealist contemporaries did regularly (i.e.Joan Miro, and Salvador Dali). Magritte is bold enough to use his painting to engage in a dialogue with his viewers. ...
Ceremony to honor artist George Gogas’ ‘Odyssey’
It’s been almost 30 years since Charlie met Pablo. Painter George Gogas had the idea for his Western-meets-modernism series in 1987 for a showing at the Missoula Art Museum. It was an exhibition on Western imagery, and Gogas, a dedicated, MFA-holding modernist, was a little stumped. “I thought, ‘What can I do that wouldn’t be really, really realistic and corny or whatever, about Western art?’ ” Gogas said earlier this week. He imagined a stylistic mashup of Charlie Russell’s action-filled vistas with Pablo Picasso’s flattened cubist planes. The painting was accepted and the largest part of his career was formed – he estimates there are more than 50 now. To celebrate his long career, including decades as an art teacher and even more as an artist, Gogas has been selected as the 2016 honoree for “The Odyssey of the Stars” at the University of Montana. To accompany Saturday’s ceremony, there’s also a 40-year survey of Gogas’ art at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture’s Meloy Gallery. Source: Career survey, ceremony to honor artist George Gogas’ ‘Odyssey’ | Local |...
‘Luncheon In Fur’: The Surrealist Teacup That Stirred The Art World
As the world celebrates one hundred years of dadaism, it is worth looking at how this “anti-art” art movement that started in a café in Zurich during World War I resulted in an iconic artwork involving that most humble object of tableware: the teacup. In 1936, a 23-year-old Swiss artist named Meret Oppenheim bought a teacup, saucer and spoon from a department store in Paris and wrapped them in the cream-and-tan pelt of a Chinese gazelle. Her hirsute little offering became a defining artifact of surrealism — the art movement that sprang from dadaism’s flamboyant entrails. Part of the sculpture’s appeal lay in the conversation that led to its creation. One day in 1936, Oppenheim met her friends Pablo Picasso and his new lover, Dora Maar, at the Café de Flore, the modish Paris coffeehouse that was a regular haunt of artists. Beautiful, witty and fiercely independent, Oppenheim had been living in Paris for the last four years. She had scarcely managed to sell her art, but made a modest income by designing jewelry and accessories for the trailblazing fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, known for her shoe-shaped hats and telephone-shaped purses. As part of the surrealist set, Oppenheim had posed nude for Man Ray’s camera and had recently ended a passionate yearlong love affair with the German painter Max Ernst, suddenly calling it off over lunch at a café. Read the full story at source: ‘Luncheon In Fur’: The Surrealist Teacup That Stirred The Art World : The Salt :...