Archive for May 16, 2013

Artist of the moment….Radcliffe Bailey…

{ May 16, 2013 @ 3:22 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Radcliffe Bailey is a wonderful collage artist born in New Jersey in 1968. For his collegiate education the artist attended Atlanta College of Art.

Bailey is based out of Atlanta, Georgia. Some critics say his a mixture of Basquiat and Bearden. For me Basquiat was raw talent and expression, his designs are not something that would sell if mass produced on the market. Bailey has a wonderful sense of design and also incorporates photography into his collages. His sense of design also reminds me of Roy DeCarava, the first African American to win a Guggenheim fellowship. Both of these artists were excellent draughtsman in addition to being fine painters and photographers. Bailey is great at capturing the modern African American cultural experience.

In this clip we meet the artist and listen to a brief lecture.

From the Polk Museum of Art we hear Bailey discuss his work with a lead curator.

Birdhouses are a major theme in his works. This dates back to being with his grandfather who enjoyed making them. His grandfather was a blacksmith.

Appeared in some videos back in the early 1990s with the group Arrested Development.

The artist has even done sculptures.

Has had his work exhibited at the main airport in Atlanta, Georgia. This also brought him national attention.

Radcliffe Bailey is an artist on the rise. It will be interesting to see what mediums he chooses to combine next! His work is very modern in that he chooses great photographic imagery to compliment his design skills.

price range information: Most originals priced between $6,000 and $25,000.

Dynamic artist families..Roberto Matta and family

{ May 16, 2013 @ 12:09 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Roberto Matta was a wonderful abstract and surrealist painter born in Santiago, Chile in the year 1911. At first his collegiate studies focused on architecture at the Pontificia Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Chile. He dropped out of school and headed to Paris in 1933.  He met artist Andre Breton who convinced him he should be an artist and to follow the Surrealist movement. Finally in 1937 Roberto Matta joined the Surrealist movement.

price range information: Depending on chosen medium, most works priced between $5,000 and $300,000.

This was a magical time for the visual arts of Europe and Paris. Whilst in Paris Matta was able to meet many renown  artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, and Le Corbusier.

Matta moved to the United States in the late 1930s. At this time he began to paint in oils in addition to his surrealist drawings.

Gained a large amount of recognition for his “inscape” series. This series dealt with the psyche of man. This series was great for its intellectual ideas. Before, no one had tried to paint the inside of a mind. It was ground breaking just for its subject matter.

Roberto Matta passed away in 2002.

An awesome clip that shows his “inscape” series below.

A montage of all of his works below.

And we see the artist at the major auction houses.

The artist was also among the first to include clay in his surfaces, adding another dimension to his works. Also ground breaking in his painting ideas, he blended lifeforms that could exist in outer space, with those that exist on earth.

Matta was disassociated with the Surrealist movement do to romantic issues. He had an affair with well known painter Arshile Gorky. This caused the artist to kill himself and the group blamed Matta for the result.

Politics played a large role in his canvases.

Matta was always experimenting and worked with ceramic, photography, and even video.

Matta had two twin sons that went on to become professional artists. Gordon Matta-Clark who lived from 1943 to 1978 dying at the age of 35 years old due to cancer. He was renown for taking a building slice, and turning into a piece of art. The artist would take an abandoned building, cut out a piece of floor, ceiling, or wall, and turn it into art. The mother of these twins was American artist named Anne Clark. I was unable to find an example of her art. Gordon Matta-Clark studied architecture in college.

Most of the available works of Gordon Matta- Clark are photographs selling between $10,000 and $90,000.

Some works by Gordon Matta- Clark.

Like his father, Gordon Matta-Clark used video and photography to document his works.

In this clip we learn more about Gordon Matta- Clark  from his widow. The show took place at the Whitney Museum of Art.

Gordon Matta-Clark’s twin brother was Sebastian Matta. No samples of art to show, sorry!

A daughter Federico was an artist. No birth date given. Some examples of her work below.

Another son went on to become a very successful composer. Another son went to become a writer.            .

What a wonderfully creative artist family for us to enjoy! Thank you Matta family!

D