Posts

Contemporary art: Surrealism, Updated.

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Greetings, art lovers, salutations, surrealism admirers. Remember Salvador Dali? He remembers you too.  A true master of his craft, he once admitted that Surrealism was a destructive force, of which he was in complete and total control, unleashing its power to rid of the shackles, limiting the vision of his art viewers. It could be so.  There were others that saw the movement as a reawakening of the poetic idea in art, the reintroduction of the subject, in a very particular sense, that of the strange and illogical.  To me, as an eccentric, Surrealism has always been a view of the world. In others. And only recently that I began thinking of it as a resolution of two states: dream and reality. More than contradictory. “…into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.”- Andre Breton once said. For J.L.King, a young, talented, San Francisco-born artist, Surrealism is one of the means of intelligent provocation in people around: the questions, the never end...

Who Designed the Costume of “Gladiator”, the Movie?

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  Hello, lovelies. Yes, you’re absolutely right.  Docendo discimus  (by teaching others, I learn). So… The artist by the name of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, apart from being a master painter, an expert at fashion, customs and general history of the ancient world, is someone the majority of art lovers or even scholars only mildly curious about fine art, adore or, at the very least, are familiar with. For art historians, Sir Alma-Tadema has always been an ancient world advocate, giving his contemporaries and future viewers a reminder that the world of Ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt was once vibrant and beautiful and filled with indulgences, art and tradition. The artist honored historical accuracy: he kept up to date with archaeological discoveries, read books on the subject, collected photographs of classical sites, made frequent visits to British Museum, and traveled to Italy.  The combination of his unique talent and profound knowledge of the subject had brought Alma-...

We Like Art, Art Needs Us?

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Hello, lovelies. Now. How do I direct your attention to the domain of fine arts? If I declare that Art and Culture, in a specific sense, are of utmost importance in our society, the number of individuals in agreement with me will, most likely, be so small, I’ll feel I am entirely detached from the Outside World. But, as it’s been acknowledged by many of us, it’s all relative.   There is an opinion, shared by one group of curious minds, that the voice of our needs and tastes does not favor Art. They believe they see the impact of the circumstances of our living clearly enough, and that the spirit of Art, in its classical form, is so remote from the spirit of our Age, that, every time, it has to elevate itself above our basic need. In a way, it has to fight the constant fight against our Utilitarian side: as a child of freedom, Art is believed to never responding to “the demands of matter”, but always acknowledging “the necessity of our minds”. “ The great idol of our age”, Utility i...