Giovanni Boldini

I love paintigs of Giovanni Boldini very much and would like you open the art of this genius artist for yourself. Giovanni Boldini (December 31, 1842 - July 11, 1931) was an Italian genre and portrait painter, belonging to the Parisian school. According to a 1933 article in Time magazine, he was known as the "Master of Swish" because of his flowing style of painting.



Boldini was born in Ferrara, the son of a painter of religious subjects, and went to Florence in 1862 to study painting, meeting there the realist painters known as the Macchiaioli. Their influence is seen in Boldini's landscapes which show his spontaneous response to nature, although it is for his portraits that he became best known.



He attained great success in London as a portraitist. From 1872 Boldini lived in Paris, where he became a friend of Edgar Degas. He also became the most fashionable portrait painter in Paris in the late 19th century, with a dashing style of painting which shows some Impressionist influence but which most closely resembles the work of his contemporaries John Singer Sargent and Paul Helleu.



He was nominated commissioner of the Italian section of the Paris Exposition in 1889, and received the Legion d'honneur for this appointment. He died in Paris in 1931. (From Wikipedia)

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, one of the most famous Irish born English artist of 20th century was was born October 28, 1909, in Dublin. At the age of 16, he moved to London and subsequently lived for about two years in Berlin and Paris.

It's well known that Francis Bacon was a homosexual artist that sometimes depicted male lovers making love and this Two Figures Painting reflects that as well.



"The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure; it’s a little like making love, the physical act of love."
Francis Bacon



"Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men. "
Francis Bacon




Bacon's dramatic and riveting work gained international recognition and acclaim. He did not belong to any art movement, but developed his own style. "Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid", he said.The artist died April 28, 1992, in Madrid.

Steve Hanks Nude Watercolors

Steve Hanks graduated from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. Early on, an allergic reaction to oil paint forced him to experiment with watercolors, a medium which he has now famously mastered. He has won countless awards over twenty-five years and was entered into the U.S. Art Hall of Fame in 2000He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.




You do love a woman because she is beautiful, she is beautiful because you love her:-)

Netsuke

No doubt all of you have heard about such decoration piece as the netsuke. Perhaps you also know the story of it which is dating back to the 17th century Japan and became extremely popular in Europe towards the end of the 19th Century and were sold in many places as novelty items very cheaply.



Usually netsuke is made of Ivory or wood but a variety of other materials also have been used throughout the history, such as ceramic, horn, bone, amber etc. The quality of Netsuke was variable, very often it expressed sexual depictions and symbols referring to different work of Eastern art and literature.



Start as a pocket usage into a sexual giddiness (it’s well known tradition of buying a it to newly married couples) it used as a sexual guide for the older children of wealthy families in Japan and China. So very soon Netsuke became a most popular collectible item all over the world.



For all those who probably be curious, “tentacle porn” art has roots in Japan, appearing first in netsuke pieces, and then in shunga, or erotic art prints, by ukiyo-e Hokusai. For instance this really very thrilling print is titled “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife” and is dated by 1820.

Love me that is all. Aristide Maillol

If I were asked about the ideal woman and an artist who could create such ideal in art I would call Aristide Maillol as one of those artists who did create the divine one. Woman of Aristide Maillol is a queen, idol, dream or whatever you want, this is the woman you will never confuse with a man, the woman which charms you with all her femininity that make you to lose not only your mind and your feeling of reality but yourself at all. One of the most famouse and my most loved sculpure by Aristide Maillol, I comsider as a hymn of love, is "The River"



Love me like a river does
Cross the sea
Love me like a river does
Endlessly
Love me like a river does
Baby don’t rush you’re no waterfall
Love me that is all
Love me like a roaring sea
Swirls about
Love me like a roaring sea
Wash me out
Love me like a roaring sea
Baby don’t rush you’re no waterfall
Love me that is all
Love me like the earth itself
Spins around
Love me like the earth itself
Sky above below the ground
Love me like the earth itself
Baby don’t rush you’re no waterfall
Love me that is all




Of all the greats in modern sculpture, e.g., Rodin, Giacometti, Picasso, Brancusi, Moore, Manship, there is one figure whose subtle and heroic work left a profound mark on perhaps all sculptors of the early 20th Century. Aristide Maillol is not a household name by any means, yet his work can be viewed in practically every great art museum in the world. In the US, one can view the Frenchman’s art on the sculpture terraces of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and at almost every important art destination in between.



Deep within the corners of my mind
I keep a memory of your faces
And I only pull it out when I long for your embrace

Deep within the corners of my mind
I'm haunted by your smile
As it promises me joys like a journey to a tropic isle
It's not hard to see what you do to me
It's like a page right out of fist time wave
Though I try to fight it all the word you write
Leave me standing in the starry robe in some tradjec lovers place

But deep within the corners of my mind
I'm praying secretly that eventually in time
There'll be a place for you and me

That eventually in time
There'll be a place for you and me

There'll be a place for you and me

Deep within the corners of my mind


Beginning his art career at the end of the 19th Century, Maillol determined to join the ranks of the avant garde, first as a decorative artist studying under Alexandre Cabanel (whose voluptuous Birth of Venus hangs famously in the Met in New York), then as a sculptor in the circle of artists who were to contribute to a new chapter in Art History. He was a member of the Nabis (the Hebrew word for “prophet”) artists, who were followers of Gauguin and whose names included Bonnard, Denis, and Vuillard. Maillol participated in the Nabis aesthetic, which strove for pure form and moved away from symbolism and verism. Maillol’s greatest contribution during this period was his single-handed revival of the lost art of tapestry. As an exclusively decorative art, tapestry showed him the way to form for form’s sake, which would become the anthem of early 20th Century art.


Maillol’s first public commission was the Monument to Cézanne (1912-25). This supreme, flying couch of a woman left its mark on 20th Century giants like Picasso (in his classical period which featured giant-limbed, small-headed goddesses no less) and Moore (whose signature style features a bench-like, classically reposed, abstract woman). Monument would be a mother to Maillol’s late period masterpieces like The Mountain (1937), Air (1938), and The River (1938-43). Although undocumented, the clear influence of the great American Deco sculptor Paul Manship is evident in these late works, which each bear characteristics of Manship’s most public of masterpieces: Prometheus in Rockefeller Plaza. Of these, The River is an enigma that will forever leave the book open on Maillol. A reclined, yet animated goddess of a woman is frozen in a kind of mysterious half-exstacy half-torment. At once a Medusa and a languid beauty, this work was based on the idea of a fallen stabbing victim to symbolize the abolition of war. In the end, these polar initiatives become a sublime commingling in art the likes of which the world had not seen since the ancient Laocoon Group of Greece.


all lyrics by Melody Gardot

Tamara De Lempicka

Tamara deLempicka is one of the most famous painters of the art deco period. She was born as Maria Górska in Poland, her father was Boris Gurwik-Górski, a lawyer, and her mother, the former Malvina Decler.




After Poland Maria moved to Russia where stayed until the Bolsheviks arrested her husband Tadeusz Łempicki during the Russian Revolution. After she secured his release they left Russia for Paris. There she enrolled at the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere and studying privately. She was quite a prolific artist (in part facilitated by her spare simple style) and was much sought after as a portrait artist.



At the threat of a second World War, she left Paris for America. She went to Hollywood, to become the "Favorite Artist of the Hollywood Stars". She and her second husband, Baron Raoul Kuffner, one of her earliest and wealthiest patrons, moved into American film director King Vidor's former house in Beverly Hills.



In 1978 she moved to Mexico permanently, buying a beautiful house in Cuernavaca called Tres Bambus, built by a Japanese architect in a chic neighborhood. She despaired of growing old and in her last years sought the company of young people. She mourned at the loss of her beauty and was cantankerous to the end.



Tamara De Lempicka died in her sleep on March 18, 1980 with her daughter Kizette at her side. Her wish to be cremated and have her ashes spread on the top of the volcano Popocatepetl was carried out.

Eric Fischl

Eric Fischl, contemporary painter and sculptor was born in New York City, New York, 1948, educated in California Institute of the Arts and Valencia, California, B.F.A., 1972. Artist lives in New York City and Sag Harbor, New York.










KEN JOHNSON notes, in his short review about Eric Fischl published in NY Times:
"Like the ones in his last show at this gallery, Eric Fischl's curiously repellent paintings are based on his own photographs of hired models behaving like jaded wealthy sophisticates during a daytime love-making session or at home after a late-night party. The middle-aged people in the paintings, who appear in various states of undress, may be talking or arguing about something, but there is a frustrating vagueness about what is going on, and despite the portentously noirish mood, the psychological intrigue is limited."

"...the people he pictures look like the sort you could imagine actually owning Mr. Fischl's paintings. All of this would be more interesting if the imagery were more pointedly defined as social satire or psychosexual drama, and if it didn't look as if Mr. Fischl were congratulating himself with each stroke of his brush. "