All posts tagged: Painter

How Painter William T. Williams Has Stayed Curious for Six Decades

How Painter William T. Williams Has Stayed Curious for Six Decades

Published by Jenni Sidey

“There’s something to learn every time I go in the studio,” William T. Williams told me this past spring. “Anything that I did yesterday I have to forget, and I have to enter the studio and enter the paintings as if it’s the first time that I’ve had engagement.” He likes to keep the process “as open as possible,” but still, he is always “thinking about two or three steps ahead.” He keeps at it until he has followed “where the paintings are taking me, [then I] just go with that until I’ve exhausted it.” We were standing in his sun-drenched studio behind his home in Connecticut, where sets of windows on three walls illuminate the interior for several hours each day. Williams and his wife, Pat, have split their time between here and New York for the past 15 years, and it’s a sharp contrast to the New York studio he’s had since 1968, which he intentionally kept free of natural light. “I boarded the windows up in the back, because I wanted to …

Photographer sues painter Elizabeth Peyton for copying Oasis image

Photographer sues painter Elizabeth Peyton for copying Oasis image

Published by Jenni Sidey

Last week, rock music photographer Justin Thomas filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against the American painter Elizabeth Peyton, Sotheby’s, and David Zwirner Gallery, as first reported by Copyright Lately. In the suit, Thomas accuses Peyton of willfully copying a photograph he took at an after-party in London’s Earls Court in 1995 of Oasis band members Liam and Noel Gallagher embracing in a rare show of affection, given the brothers’ well-reported animosity. Related Articles Petyon’s painting from the photograph, titled Earl’s Court (Liam + Noel) (1996), went on to fetch $1,920,000 at Sotheby’s in New York in May. The disputed painting “is just a slavish copy of the copyrighted work,” argues the court filing. “She copies the captured iconic moment, the famous feuding Gallagher brothers in a kiss. She copies the theme, the brutish rock stars caught being tender,” it goes on. “The only transformation is the medium itself, and Peyton’s slight cropping of the copyrighted work and adding different coloring and brushwork,” it adds, claiming the painting is …

Towering Painter of Palestine Dies at 79

Towering Painter of Palestine Dies at 79

Published by Jenni Sidey

Sliman Mansour, a pivotal figure in contemporary Arab art history, with an oeuvre synonymous with the struggle for Palestinian statehood, has died at 79. The news was announced yesterday by Mansour’s family, who had previously shared that he was in critical condition.  “The final chapter has been written,” the Mansour family said on Instagram. “With hearts heavy beyond words, we share that our beloved father has passed away. … To the world, he leaves behind a life filled with beauty, memory, and a legacy that will continue to live through all those he touched. But to us, we lost a father, our source of love, strength and home.” Related Articles Like the work of other Palestinian artists of his generation, Mansour’s paintings helped carry the dreams and testimony of his people beyond the walls enclosing Gaza and the West Bank. One of his best-known works, 1973’s Jamal Al Mahamel (Camel of Hardship), depicts an elderly Palestinian porter carrying the city of Jerusalem on his back, one foot forward. The golden dome of the Al-Aqsa Mosque …

Mary Heilmann, Influential Abstract Painter, Dead at 86

Mary Heilmann, Influential Abstract Painter, Dead at 86

Published by Jenni Sidey

Mary Heilmann, an influential abstract painter who received her first solo exhibition in a New York museum in her 60s, died at 86 on Friday in Riverhead, New York. Her studio announced the news in an Instagram posting, adding that she died “due to complications from a fall.” Heilmann was a pioneering abstract painter who blended elements from pop culture, craft, and art history with ease and wit. In the catalog for Heilmann’s 2008 retrospective at the New Museum—also her first solo at a New York institution—art critic Dave Hickey wrote, “The canons of geometric abstraction, Color Field painting, and Minimalism are honored in the spirit but not in the letter. In Heilmann’s synthesis, they are straightforwardly looted as available precedents.” Related Articles That exhibition had already appeared at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California and the Contemporary Art Museum Houston and received much acclaim. Prior to that show, she had received a survey at the ICA Boston in 1990 and the exhibition “All Tomorrows Parties” at the Vienna Secession in …

This painter reimagines Renaissance art in a cocoa plantation : NPR

This painter reimagines Renaissance art in a cocoa plantation : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Marc Padeu, a painter from Cameroon, draws inspiration from Renaissance art brought into an African landscape. The above painting is title “Sous le poids de la coupe” — under the weight of the cup. Copyright The Artist/Courtesy Larkin Durey hide caption toggle caption Copyright The Artist/Courtesy Larkin Durey Cameroonian painter Marc Padeu says that being an African artist means “being the heir to an extraordinarily rich history.” But he also says it can mean “living and working on a continent where artistic infrastructure is virtually nonexistent.” Padeu’s work often takes inspiration from religious paintings from the European Renaissance — but reimagines them, depicting people in Cameroon’s cocoa plantations. London gallery Larkin Durey is currently holding an exhibition of Padeu’s latest work. Marc Padeu, a painter from Cameroon, has a new show at the London gallery London gallery Larkin Durey. Courtesy of Larkin Durey hide caption toggle caption Courtesy of Larkin Durey Oliver Durey, the gallery’s director, said: “Mark’s work is timeless. His visual style is simultaneously very contemporary but also deeply rooted in that old …

Curator Attributes Lost Still Life to Flemish Painter Clara Peeters

Curator Attributes Lost Still Life to Flemish Painter Clara Peeters

Published by Jenni Sidey

“Why have there been no great women artists?” Maybe because too many of their masterpieces were dismissively shoved into storage for not having been painted by a more famous man. That, at least, seems to be what befell a still life by the 17th-century Flemish painter Clara Peeters. Still Life with Small Game and Grapes on a Gilded Tazza, ca. 1620, was at one point thought to be by Ambrosius Brueghel (son of Jan, grandson of Pieter). But, according to the Guardian, that attribution was rescinded in the early 20th century, leaving the still life in “anonymous” limbo ever since. Related Articles Cynthia Osiecki, a curator at the National Museum of Norway in Oslo, came across Still Life with Small Game and Grapes on a Gilded Tazza in the museum’s storage area several years ago. A number of details indicated to Osiecki, who specializes in early modern art, that this painting may in fact be by Peeters, one of the most important women Old Masters working in Europe. The wood panel it was painted on …

Prolific Armenian Painter Haroutiun Galentz is Making a Comeback

Prolific Armenian Painter Haroutiun Galentz is Making a Comeback

Published by Jenni Sidey

A 20th-century modernist has been the subject of a recent book that reassessed his legacy, as well as a dedicated conference at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice this month. The work of Armenian painter Haroutiun Galentz (1910–1967) is seeing a resurgence with interest in both Italy and Lebanon. As a survivor of the Armenian Genocide during World War I, Galentz’s oeuvre serves not only as a reminder of the resilience of the human spirit but also the power of creativity amid some of the worst imaginable atrocities. Galentz in his studio in Yerevan, 1966 Last fall, the first English-language monograph dedicated to the artist was released by the publisher Skira, with events in Paris and at the Nuhad Es-Said Pavilion for Culture linked to the National Museum of Beirut marking the occasion. Haroutiun Galentz: The Form of Colour, edited by Vartan Karapetian and Marie Tomb, brought together a collection of pieces by Galentz from the National Gallery of Armenia and the Janibekyan Collection, along with holdings from museums and private collections across Europe, Asia, and …

Painter, Collector & Carl Jung Collaborator

Painter, Collector & Carl Jung Collaborator

Published by Jenni Sidey

“The deepest things in human life … can only be expressed in images,” wrote Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn. And yet, though obsessed with images, she never called herself an “artist,” even as she painted and drew. Fundamentally, she was a collector: of people, of images, of ideas, always animated by her interest in symbols and archetypes. Carl Jung, her close friend and collaborator, fueled this long, epic inquiry. Still, she remains profoundly mysterious and contradictory, a person fiercely drawn to and driven by spirituality who left few windows into her own spirit.  Related Articles Born in London to Dutch parents in 1881, Fröbe-Kapteyn was the highly educated daughter of highly educated parents. At once spiritual and analytical, she had no specific belief system. Like many Europeans who became interested in alternative or occult traditions in the early 20th century, she was drawn to and influenced by innumerable schools of spirituality, philosophy, and mythology. This paradox sits at the heart of Fröbe-Kapteyn’s philosophy: the importance, and challenge, of connecting the personal with the eternal. She was driven by …

British Painter Talks Design of Proposed 0 Bill Featuring Trump

British Painter Talks Design of Proposed $250 Bill Featuring Trump

Published by Jenni Sidey

Iain Alexander, a British painter who has exhibited in Palm Beach, Florida, designed a proposed $250 bill recently sent by the Trump Administration to the Treasury Department. In an interview with the Washington Post, Alexander said that Trump had reviewed his design and gave the okay for adding the colors of the US flag and a logo commemorating the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, which is being celebrated this year. “He likes to call me his favorite British artist,” Alexander said of Trump. Related Articles The Trump administration has been pursuing a 250 dollar bill featuring the real estate mogul-turned-president since last year, despite the fact that US law prohibits living figures from appearing on US bills. According to the Post, US treasurer Brandon Beach and senior advisor Mike Brown pushed staff at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to create prototypes of the 250 dollar bill, including one featuring Trump’s face designed by Alexander. Alexander’s signature appears below the mock-up, per the Post. Alexander said that he had proposed featuring Betsy Ross, who famously …

Influential Abstract Painter Dies at 88

Influential Abstract Painter Dies at 88

Published by Jenni Sidey

Tess Jaray, a British painter whose understated abstractions explored patterns that recur throughout the world, died on Sunday, according to an obituary posted to the artist’s official Instagram account. She was 88. Jaray specialized in paintings of grids, cubes, and undulating zigzags, all of them set atop palely colored backgrounds. She began making them during the 1960s, at a time when Minimalism reigned supreme across the pond, in the US. But her works exerted a quieter presence, without much of the drama that accompanied that movement. Related Articles She described a desire to reach something embedded deep within the human condition using these abstractions. In 2019, she told Studio International that she wanted “to make sense of the obsessive searching for patterns and repetition in nature and in art that have been so important … They may be seen as a meeting point, a coming together of the head and the heart and the external and the internal.” While Jaray may lack the name recognition had by some of the most famous artists of her …