Hillary Clinton for President? No, artnewsblog hasn't become a political news blog. Daniel Edwards has created a sculpture called "The Presidential Bust of Hillary Rodham Clinton: The First Woman President of the United States of America".
It's the same Daniel Edwards that recently caused a bit of a stir with the Nude Britney Spears sculpture. The Hillary bust will be on display at the Museum of Sex on August 9.

Hillary Clinton's Presidential Bust To Be Unveiled
"Edwards' inspiration for the piece was derived from actress Sharon Stone's controversial quote earlier in the year about challenges that would most likely be encountered should the Junior Senator from New York run on the 08 ticket. "I think Hillary Clinton is fantastic," Stone said. "But I think it is too soon for her to run. This may sound odd but a woman should be past her sexuality when she runs. Hillary still has sexual power and I don't think people will accept that. It's too threatening." Art Daily

The idea that sexuality could be threatening is kind of interesting, but art and politics is just boring. It's hard to not do a whole exhibition on politics when you feel very strongly about issues of a political nature, but I still think they should be kept in storage.
It's kind of like mixing oil and water.. it just doesn't work. I'm sure the artist (Daniel Edwards) is starting to understand how the media works though. Just as the Britney sculpture created a whole lot of media attention, I'm sure the Hillary bust will create a bunch of news stories and debate too.
>> Controversies, Art Exhibitions, Sculpture News, Art Marketing  ¶ 9:14 PM 7 comments

  Alberto Giacometti Movie This news is three years late, but it's better late than never. I saw a link to the Eternal Gaze movie over at Keith's blog. It's an animation of one of my favorite artists, Alberto Giacometti.

It was released in 2003 and has won a lot of awards, but I've never heard of it. There's a trailer available on the Eternal Gaze website with details for getting hold of the DVD too.

The film maker says the film is a "computer-animated film about a real person in a real location, produced in a medium with unlimited possibilities. The screenplay was inspired by a combination of ideas and facts based on Giacometti's real life stories – with a sensitive touch of fantasy added in".

Here's some art quotes by the Italian/Swiss master..

• The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.
  Alberto Giacometti
• Artistically I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create. I want something, but I won't know what it is until I succeed in doing it.
  Alberto Giacometti
• If the glass there in front of me astounds me more than all the glasses I've seen in painting, and if I even think that the greatest architectural wonder of the world couldn't affect me more than this glass, it's really not worth while going to the Indies to see some temple or other when I have as much and more right in front of me.
  Alberto Giacometti
• All I can do will only ever be a faint image of what I see and my success will always be less than my failure or perhaps equal to the failure.
  Alberto Giacometti
• Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working.
  Alberto Giacometti Quotes

>> Art Movies, Famous Artists  ¶ 8:00 PM 4 comments

  American Artists Online

On my (cyber) world tour of artists by country, I've found that the most represented bunch of artists online are definitely Americans. I struggle finding artists from countries like China, India, or even Germany online, but everywhere I look I find websites by American artists. It could be the language barrier, but I'm sure marketing has something to do with it too.
Anyway, here's some cool American painters..

• Karen Jacobs - Painter that moves from abstract to landscape paintings with ease.
• Andrew Lewandowski - American priest creating bold, colorful, naive paintings.
• Matt Sesow - Prolific, expressive, outsider artist.
• Jafabrit - Contemporary American/English artist that taught me what eating crow is.
• Kelly Moore - Raw, expressionist artist.
• Jeffrey Gold - Classical realist artist using the nude as a subject.
• Andrei Rabodzeenko - Original quirky works (the paintings from 2001-2004).
• Bill Gingles - Interesting American abstract artist using symbols and textures.
• Jesse Reno - Prolific, expressionist painter based in the United States.
• Michel Leah Keck - Successful American artist using Ebay to sell art.
• Beverley Ashe - American painter creating interesting looking expressive people.
• Thomas Arvid - Photo-realist painter of all things wine and vineyards.

See the Australian and Canadian artists from previous posts too.
>> Contemporary Artists, American Art News  ¶ 9:44 PM 6 comments

  Anatomy, Art, and Life I have been watching a fascinating, yet disturbing program on television the past couple weeks. The first week I watched it, I was dizzy and almost felt sick, but I couldn't look away.

It's called Anatomy for Beginners, with Dr Gunther von Hagens doing the dissecting of the bodies and pathologist Professor John Lee (nicknamed the "Walt Disney of Death") explaining how we work in health and in disease. Gunther is pictured to the left holding the skin of the corpse that he just peeled off.

I never did make it to the morgue while studying art (to sketch body parts), so I thought this could be the anatomy lessons that I never took. I first saw us as meat, then as an amazing technical achievement, and finally as something more amazing than I could fathom. It has also made me rethink my meat eating habits.

All I wanted was to see how we work inside, yet it has changed the way I see things outside of myself.
Episode two is a beauty for those that smoke too.

I'll never look at Rembrandt's "The Anatomy Lecture of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp" the same way again..

There's some more about anatomy here, with some more about how artists have used anatomy to create art. Including the artist Anthony Noel Kelly, who decided that sketching body parts in a morgue just wasn't enough. He paid a lab technician to smuggle out torsos, heads, and body parts so he could make casts of them, paint them silver, and pin them to the wall. He was sentenced to nine months in prison.

>> Being an Artist, Controversial Art News, Arts  ¶ 9:53 PM 11 comments

  Canadian Artists Online Continuing on from the Australian artists, here's some great Canadian artists with an online presence.

• Robert Genn - Contemporary impressionist landscape artist and author of the twice weekly Painter's Keys newsletter.
• Maya Kulenovic - Realist Canadian painter creating edgy figurative works.
• Simon Andrew - Nice expressive landscapes and street scenes.
• Wendy Skog - Canadian artist moving easily between abstraction and figuration.
• Sarah Bradbury - Quirky figurative painter from Canada.
• Richelle Ludwick - Quirky paintings and dramatic photographs by a Canadian artist.
• Anthony Diberardo - Canadian artist and illustrator of "pop surrealism".
• Brian Simons - Bold, expressive Canadian based painter and art instructor.
• Brian Donnelly - Realist painter with an interesting selection of subjects.
• Jack Galvin - Figurative Canadian artist.

There's hundreds more out there. A lot of directories have lists like Dmoz, Linkism, and Yahoo.
>> Contemporary Artists

  ¶ 11:44 PM 5 comments

  Australian Artists Online The internet is great for making the world much smaller than it actually is. An artist living in a backward little country town with no art gallery can get his/her work in front of the biggest art dealers in the biggest art capitals of the world.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I plan to post small lists of artists by country that I come across online. I'm starting with Australian artists because I'm biased.. and Australian ;-)
Some are more famous than others, but they're all interesting artists..

• Patricia Piccinini - Contemporary artist making weird little creatures, installations, and prints.
• Anthony White - Stock market investor that became an artist and started painting money.
• Edwin Gardiner - Australian painter influenced by Asian philosophies and Taoism.
• Brett Whiteley - Studio of the late, great Australian painter in Sydney.
• Leith O'Malley - South Australian figurative painter and fellow red wine drinker.
• Ken Done - Sydney artist famous for his bright colorful paintings and prints of Sydney, Australia.
• Caroline Magerl - Contemporary Australian painter and illustrator painting figurative works.
• Hazel Dooney - Fine Australian artist creating mostly figurative paintings.
• John Olsen - One of the most famous Australian artists still painting.
• Lauren Perkins - Victorian artist painting quirky stylized figurative works.
• Cherry Hood - Sydney based artist painting big realist watercolor portraits.
• Dion Archibald - Me tooting my own horn :-P

I'm sure I will think of some other great Australian artists after I post this, but this is a start. (feel free to add your link in the comments if you're an Australian artist or know of a good one).
>> Contemporary Artists, Australian News

  ¶ 10:22 PM 11 comments

  Art Museum Ticket Prices There has been a bit of news around lately about the price of museum entry. The Museum of Modern Art charges $20 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art has also announced that they will be raising their ticket price to $20.
Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times isn't too pleased with the news..
"The Metropolitan Museum of Art just made a colossal blunder. Our flagship museum of world art recently let slip that it will raise the suggested admission fee next month. Visitors to the venerable New York pile will be asked to slide $20 across the counter, instead of $15, starting Aug. 1." LA Times

In other news, the Neue Galerie has announced that they will scrap the $50 fee for their special Wednesday openings to see the world's most expensive painting. It sounds like an exorbitant fee to charge for an exhibition, but it has been done before according to this New York Times article..
"The Neue Galerie's $50 offer is not without precedent. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has occasionally charged a higher admission price for viewings of special exhibitions on its normal closing day. Last fall it charged $50 for Monday tickets to a popular exhibition of van Gogh drawings." NY Times

If I had the choice of a nice new $50 exhibition catalogue or squeezing through a room filled with people all trying to see the same paintings, I would choose the catalogue. Blockbuster exhibitions are the worst places for looking at art.
Thankfully I don't have to choose though, as it's great to have the catalogue and see the real paintings.
It's interesting to see how high the museums will go with ticket prices though. I would expect to be sipping on a lot of fine red wine and chewing on a selection of international cheeses for a $50 entry fee (regardless of what paintings were hanging on the wall).
>> Art Museums, Art Controversies  ¶ 2:45 AM 10 comments

  George Craige Art Scam? I just received an email from George Craige gcraige108@yahoo.com and just assumed it was a scam (and am still 99.9% sure that it is), but how would he benefit by using a bank transfer for payment?
I understand that bank checks can be abused (see the previous art scammers post), but I thought a money transfer would of been a bit safer. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the "Telegraphic Bank Transfer" method that George is suggesting.

Have other artists been contacted by Mr Craige? Here's the email I received from him.. (and sorry George if you really did want to buy the paintings, which I really doubt!).


Good day to you,

I visited your site and I saw these fascinating artworks and I found some interest in :-

1. (man walking oil canvas board s: 25x40cm)
2. (fog over newcastle oil artists board s: 20x40cm)
3. (portrait of a girl (triptych) oil canvas board s: 25x20cm x 3 (25x60cm)
4. (newcastle view oil artists board s: 20x40cm)
5. (istanbul clouds (Kizkulesi) acrylic on canvas board s: 20x25cm)

So , I will like to buy them for our new house in United Kingdom.

I must say you really doing a great job, I have already contacted a shipping company that will be shipping them along with our other house decorations. Our shipping company will Pick-Up these items once i pay you .

I will be paying you via Telegraphic Bank Transfer (CommonWealth Bank), Please let me know your mind about this sales and tell the the price for each? I will be looking forward to your response on how to proceed.

Regards,

George Craige gcraige108@yahoo.com
There's also a list of art scammers online over at artquest (I couldn't see George on the list).
>> Art Scams, Being an Artist  ¶ 8:23 PM 10 comments

  ArtNewsBlog in the Artist's Magazine I finally got a copy of the June edition of the Artist's Magazine! I had been meaning to get a copy since the start of June and it's now getting closer to the end of July, so it just proves that I have a problem with procrastination.
Art News Blog was lucky enough to get a mention on the "TechnoByte" page in the Artist's Magazine, where three art blogs were profiled.

I scanned a copy of the review, but here's what it says..
"I hope they come across art news that they haven't seen before," says Australian artist Dion Archibald about his site's visitors. He posts a different piece of art news almost every day, ranging from serious to the downright odd. Recent posts link to an interview with David Hockney and reference a news story about a 12 year old who stuck chewing gum on a prominent painting.

The other two art blogs to be mentioned were Your Daily Art and Working Artist's Journal.
>> Art Blogs  ¶ 12:04 AM 4 comments

  Neue Galerie's Most Expensive Painting The most expensive painting in the world is now on display at the Neue Galerie in New York. "Gustav Klimt: Five Paintings from the Collection of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer" will be on show through to the 18th of September.

The museum has also had to announce that they will be opening an extra day each week (Wednesdays from 12 till 4pm) to keep up with the high demand of visitors. The star of the exhibition (Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer I) is surely attracting a crowd that doesn't usually spend much time in art galleries. The gold beauty must be hearing comments like "Oh, that's not worth $135 million" and "What a waste of money", but at least she is getting people looking at art.
>> Art Museums, Famous Artists  ¶ 10:47 PM 1 comments

  Starting an Art Gallery Over at ArtInfo.com they have attempted to outline what it takes to start an art gallery and why you should start an art gallery.
I used to have a romantic notion of what it would be like to own an art gallery. To be surrounded with great art everyday, to work with artists I love, and to sell art to people that love art as much as me. But it's not as easy as it sounds.
I haven't owned an art gallery or worked at one, but I have had an exhibition at an artist run gallery. Which took all of the romanticism out of the idea.
There's marketing, hanging, organizing the opening, smooching, and when it's all up and running, it's just like looking after a shop. I know an artist run gallery is a bit different to a commercial gallery, but setting up and looking after my own exhibition gave me a lot more respect for what gallery owners do. It almost justified the large percentage of the sale price they take from artists.

Anyway, in part one of "Opening your own gallery" there's this comment..
"The best dealers are not salesmen in the classic sense of the word. Their passion and their connoisseurship and their knowledge have to combine to convince someone to acquire something that has no ostensible function in life, and that's not always an easy thing to do. It is distinct from the normal business world because of that."

And in part two there's these great tips for starting a gallery (go to the ArtInfo page to see more on each tip).

• If your motivation is purely financial, forget it.
• Those without prior experience need not apply.
• You have to be passionate about it. The "merely interested' won't cut it.
• You have to have a precise focus.
• In New York City, you have to be equally certain of where you should set up shop.
• You need a lot of experience in business.
• Just as important, you need a lot of experience with, and knowledge of, art.
• You have to have the ability to make both artists and collectors comfortable with you.
• Then, if there is a secret ingredient, here it is: You have to have "a good eye."
• In conclusion, you need a wide range of skills, you need to work hard, and you can't imagine for a moment that this going to be easy.

>> Art Galleries, General Arts

  ¶ 5:00 AM 22 comments

  Genpets Bioengineered Buddy I saw a story over at artful visions about these weird little cute creatures called Gen Pets. They're supposedly living toys that you have to care for.
Everything looks very believable as there's a website with plenty of information about Genpets and what they do. I was almost tempted to purchase one (the website says they are coming soon), but I looked into it a bit more and found that they're the work of an artist.
They remind me very much of the weird works by the Australian artist Patricia Piccinini, but they're actually by the Canadian artist Adam Brandejs. He has also made a strange flesh shoe!
Anyway, he is actually trying to say something about bioengineering and how the technology could be used in the future..
The artist says on his website "I don’t ever want to be confused for as a crazy activist, nor do I want to appear as endorsing this technology. Bioengineering could lead to medical breakthroughs that save lives, but will it? This is more a critique of corporate ethics than of technological ethics."


While the Genpets hang on the store shelves they are in a form of hibernation. Each Genpet™ package has a special nutrient feeding tube attached to it, supplying our specially formulated mix and keeping them healthy and asleep.

>> Contemporary Artists, Weird Art News  ¶ 7:20 PM 8 comments

  Guggenheim in UAE with no Nudes? The United Arab Emirates will soon have the largest Guggenheim museum to be built. The New York based Guggenheim Foundation currently has museums in New York, Bilbao, Venice, Berlin, and Las Vegas.
The American architect Frank Gehry will build Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (GAD) which will be located on a Gulf island (Saadiyat) near the United Arab Emirates capital. It is expected to be 30,000 square meters or 322,800 square feet and will be completed within five years.

The interesting thing about such a grand museum for contemporary art is that there will be no nudes or works that are confrontational in any way, which includes works of a religious nature. I don't think it's a major issue, just different to museums in other countries.
I remember stopping at the airport in the UAE and flicking through the art magazines to discover that all the nudes had been blacked out with a marker. I'm not sure if it still happens, but I remember thinking I would hate to have the job of going through every magazine to check for nudes to cover over!
The heated toilets at the airport made up for it though. They were really quite impressive!

Biggest Guggenheim museum to be built on UAE island
All works to go on display at the museum will "respect Abu Dhabi's culture and national and Islamic heritage," the foundation said in a statement. "Our objective is not to be confrontational, but to be engaged in a cultural exchange," said Thomas Krens when asked how the boldness of contemporary art can be reconciled with conservative Muslim values" Yahoo News
There's more about the issue over at the Articulate blog too.
>> Art Museums  ¶ 11:27 PM 11 comments

  To Eat Crow I haven't heard of the saying "to eat crow", but Jafabrit has used it to get back at her daughter over a minor squabble. It basically means that you have to admit that you were wrong about something.
After telling her daughter that her drawing was "decorative", her daughter replied that one of her sculptures looked like a "Martha Stewart Project". Here's Jafabrit's reply..

"Insulted I demanded she apologize. She would not. HA, I would get my artistic revenge, so I made a soft sculpture of her tongue. I stole one of her tongue rings and stuck it through the canvas tongue, and attached a handstitched canvas crow to it. It proudly hangs in our living room and continues to amuse us."
Read more about it here..

It's one of the great things about being an artist; you can vent your anger or get your point across without resorting to monkey behavior. World leaders probably should be artists. When one leader gets mad at the other, he/she can send them a painting, poem or song expressing his rage, rather than sending him a bunch of bombs.

I also discovered what a Jafa Girl is too..
"Create whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want WHENEVER WE ARE IN THE MOOD."

>> Contemporary Artists, Being an Artist  ¶ 8:14 PM 4 comments

  Genius Artists Mushtaq Bhat of Germany was moved enough by the comments on the Self Absorbed Geniuses post to start his own blog at the age of 54. The post was about the Rebels and Matyrs exhibition at the National Gallery in London, and how artists are often self absorbed and create their own myths.

Nathalie said "Of course we are, most artists put their heart and soul into what they do, so it's not odd that it'll be highly personal work with one self as the starting point. IF you also tend to work emotionally, trying to convey something, a feeling or whatever, you'll usually have something from your own personal life to "tell" about. About self portraits... I do them because I think it's really really interesting to see a lot of fine features and details in a face, that you usually don't see because you never look hard or long enough to notice."

Earl said "The self obsessed artist at least believes in themselves and maybe thats why we remember their work."

Irv said "Thanks to social and cultural functions of the designation, artists were among the first, if not the first, occupational category to be characterized as one in which only the ability to penetrate into and express the hidden depths of self and others would allow them to function at their best."

And Coxsoft Art said "The self absorbed "genius" is merely masturbating. He doesn't really want to communicate with anyone else. Why lower himself to communicate with plebs?"

And Mushtaq's advice on his new blog is to Make it to the top or go bust!
>> Art Blogs, Being an Artist  ¶ 6:50 AM 1 comments

  Modigliani Exhibition Amedeo Modigliani is showing at the Royal Academy of Arts in London until the 15th of October this year. The exhibition is a summary of paintings from his short career, with famous portraits of Jeanne Hebuterne, Beatrice Hastings and Paul Guillaume among the works on display.
Be sure to check out the Modigliani movie too. It wasn't the greatest artist movie I've ever seen (Basquiat still holds that title), but it's still very watchable.
Curves and angles
"Modigliani's technique of stylization - its candid asymmetry, its shared cubist elements, its uneven eyes, the jigsaw fit of the nostrils to the outline of the upper lip - is to spike the mannerist touches with plausible and vivid realistic detail. Diego Rivera's eyes are two navels sunk in flesh, the plump fish lips areminimizedd by the fat moon face. His beard is a seethe of ants. There is an element of brilliant pudgy caricature. Rivera resembles his photograph, but he resembles Modigliani's painting more." Guardian
>> Museum Exhibitions, Famous Artists  ¶ 6:02 AM 0 comments

  Post Secret and Supporting Artists
I could relate to this postcard over at the Post Secret blog. Not because I've ever been in a band or lost a lover because of being an artist, but it is an issue that comes up from time to time.
Artists often have to sacrifice a lot for their art, including those that don't believe in the work we do. I don't think it's important for our loved ones to love our art, but I do think it's important that they're supportive.
The person in the "stupid band" above has probably improved since breaking up with the creator of the postcard. Or he/she may just be a masochist and simply attracted another pessimistic partner.
Here's some more Post Secret fun here, here, and the Post Secret book here.
>> Blog News, Being an Artist  ¶ 7:39 AM 6 comments