MY INTRICATE EGO is a tumblelog.

dominusvenustas:

…He conquered the New York Art World

A work of art can be any imaginable thing, and this is the beginning of modern painting. - GB, 1923

George Bellows’ artistic life was one of restless experimentation. From the dark and gritty underground of New York’s working class to the bright and eloquent leisurely days out of its upper class, his work was that of a social observer. Emotional force, exaggerated forms and themes of urban realism.

Manet was his artistic hero.

Try everything that can be done. Be deliberate. Be spontaneous. Be thoughtful and painstaking. Be abandoned and impulsive. Learn your own possibilities. - GB, 1920

Note to Londoners: George Bellows: Modern American Life at the Royal Academy is a wonderful show. A glimpse into the life and work of a great American artist. Look out for the beautifully composed boxer lithographs and the extraordinary light of the snow paintings.

Very American Artist

likeafieldmouse:

Paul Octavious - Birds of Aperture (2006-12)

blua:

Art installations created by Lizzie Dove who used concrete for the purpose of adding creativity to the small town of New South Wales.

arpeggia:

Iveta Vaivode - Opera: The Spectacle of Society

Opera was once seen as the exclusive reserve of aristocracy, a polite social occasion or an event to attend to affirm your cultural capital as a member of a social elite. Iveta Vaivode’s images tell a different story of intense participation by a more heterogeneous audience in a drama unfolding out of the frame. She watches the watchers, much as painters like Edgar Degas or Walter Sickert did at the music hall a hundred years ago. The long exposures she employs render the subject in a high contrast impressionistic way, like Édouard Manet, but instead of Baudelaire’s Flaneurs, Vaivode sees a more stratified contemporary audience. From box to balcony to stalls the make-up of the spectators clearly differs, but the difference from seat to seat is equally enthralling as many people sit virtually stock-still for the entire 45 minutes of the performance & exposure, whilst others move around to the point of visual extinction. Some sit forward in their seats wringing their hands as the narrative grips them, whilst others coolly recline, arms folded.

In one image Vaivode shoots looking down from the balcony on the red velvet curve that separates the orchestra pit from the stalls. The marked contrast either side of the line, one of light activity against dark observation, puts us in mind of Plato’s cave or Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, as those in the dark sit transfixed by the energy of others – passion by proxy. And yet the work is less social critique than affective visual feast as the audience is drawn into the play.