Monday, November 30, 2015

Eyvind Earle









Eyvind Earle


Eyvind Earle


Eyvind Earle


Eyvind Earle


Eyvind Earle


In 1951 Eyvind Earle joined Walt Disney studios as an assistant background painter. Earle intrigued Disney in 1953 when he created the look of “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom” an animated short that won an Academy Award and a Cannes Film Festival Award

Disney kept the artist busy for the rest of decade, painting the settings for such stories as “Peter Pan”, “For Whom the Bulls Toil”, “Working for Peanuts”, “Pigs is Pigs”, “Paul Bunyan” and “Lady and the Tramp.” Earle was responsible for the styling, background and colors for the highly acclaimed movie “Sleeping Beauty” and gave the movie its magical, medieval look. He also painted the dioramas for Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

After about 15 years creating animated art, Earle returned to painting full time in 1966 and kept working until the end of his life. In addition to his watercolors, oils, sculptures, drawings and scratchboards, in 1974 he began making limited edition serigraphs

Eyvind Earle had a totally original perception of landscape. He successfully synthesizes seemingly incongruent aspects into a singularly distinctive style: a style, which is at once mysterious, primitive, disciplined, moody and nostalgic. He captures the grandeur of simplicity of the American countryside, and represents these glimpses of the American scene with a direct lyric ardor. His landscapes are remarkable for their suggestion of distances, landmasses and weather moods. “For 70 years,Earle wrote in 1996, “I’ve painted paintings, and I’m constantly and everlastingly overwhelmed at the stupendous infinity of Nature. Wherever I turn and look, there I see creation. Art is creating. Art is the search for truth.”









Sunday, November 29, 2015

"Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots" Blockbuster Show at the DMA










Dallas Museum of Art to Present Largest Exhibition Of Jackson Pollock’s Black Paintings Ever Assembled

Exhibition of Jackson Pollock’s Black Paintings to Open Exclusively at Dallas Museum of Art in November

Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots Is Only the Third Major U.S. Museum Exhibition to Focus Solely on the Artist

On November 20, 2015, the Dallas Museum of Art will present what experts have deemed a “once in a lifetime” exhibition, organized by the DMA’s Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art Gavin Delahunty: the largest survey of Jackson Pollock’s black paintings ever assembled.

This exceptional presentation will include many works that have not been exhibited for more than 50 years, several of which were considered lost. 

Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots offers critical new scholarship on this understudied yet pivotal period in the artist’s career and provides radical new insights into Pollock’s practice.

On view at the DMA through March 20, 2016, the exhibition will receive its sole US presentation in Dallas, with more than 70 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints.

Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots is the first large-scale exhibition to be curated by Gavin Delahunty at the DMA since he joined the Museum in May 2014. The exhibition is co-organized with Tate Liverpool, where Delahunty previously served as Head of Exhibitions and Displays. Tate Liverpool opened a smaller version of the exhibition in June.

The exhibition will first introduce audiences to Pollock’s work via a selection of his classic drip paintings made between 1947 and 1950, including Number 2, 1950, a work from the Harvard Art Museums’ collection that has not traveled in over 20 years. 

These works will serve to contextualize the radical departure represented by the black paintings, a series of black enamel paintings that Pollock created between 1951 and 1953. An unprecedented 31 black paintings will be included in the DMA presentation, nearly double the next largest survey of these works (which was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967).

 “While several of Jackson Pollock’s contemporaries combined black and white, his black paintings were exceptional in their absolute merging of color and surface, which went over and above what Pollock himself had previously achieved; this is a crucial difference for many contemporary artists revisiting Pollock’s work today,” said Delahunty.Through a comprehensive display of more than 70 works, the exhibition offers the opportunity to address ‘blind spots’ in the current understanding of the artist’s practice, offering a new perspective on his lasting contributions to post-war and contemporary art.

As one of the first American museums to acquire Pollock’s work, it only is fitting that the DMA should present this definitive exhibition of the black paintings, engaging a new generation of audiences with this important and under-examined aspect of the artist’s practice, Delahunty concluded.

Also featured in the exhibition are 30 works on paper made by Pollock during the same period as the black paintings. Made with enamel and ink and watercolor, the works on paper are considered by scholars to be the artist’s most important as a draftsman. 

The exhibition will also feature five of Pollock’s extant six sculptures, which provide a true three-dimensional experience of his well-known painting approach. Together with the 37 paintings on view, these works immersive audiences in Pollock’s complete oeuvre and shed new light on the experimentation and ingenuity that has become synonymous with his practice. 

While Jackson Pollock’s leading role in the Abstract Expressionist movement has been widely discussed, less attention has been devoted to his black paintings period. In describing this pivotal phase in Pollock’s artistic trajectory, the critic and historian Michael Fried remarked that “[Pollock is] on the verge of an entirely new and different kind of painting . . . of virtually limitless potential.” The black paintings assembled for the exhibition will include significant loans from U.S., Asian, and European collections, as well as important works drawn from the collections of the DMA and Tate.

Pollock's extraordinary, still controversial black paintings of 1951 finally get the attention they deserve; they prove to be just as radical as his earlier, more celebrated all-over drip paintings, and speak even more to our own time as well,” said John Elderfield, Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art.

Exhibition Organization and Tour:

Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots is co-organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and Tate Liverpool. The exhibition is curated by Gavin Delahunty, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art (formerly Head of Exhibitions and Displays at Tate Liverpool), with Stephanie Straine, Assistant Curator, Tate Liverpool. 

The exhibition is co-presented by Bank of America and Texas Instruments. Additional support is provided by The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc.  The presentation in Dallas is made possible by TWO X TWO for AIDS and Art, an annual fundraising event that jointly benefits amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research and the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Contemporary Art Initiative.  Marketing support is provided by the Dallas Tourism Public Improvement District and the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau and Texas Monthly.

The exhibition tour includes:

Tate Liverpool: June 30–October 18, 2015
Dallas Museum of Art: November 20, 2015–March 20, 2016




Leo F. Dorne: Woodblock Prints

Leo F. Dorn



Leo F. Dorn



Leo F. Dorn



Leo F. Dorn



Leo F. Dorn



Leo F. Dorn (1879-1964) was born in Kentucky but is today most closely associated with the Silvermine Art Colony of Southwestern Connecticut, where he was a member of the so-called "Knockers" group of artists and craftsmen. Woodblock prints of New England, by artists such as Francis Gearheart, Blanche Lazzell, and others, are currently highly sought-after by the art market.


Paul Klee: Catalogue Raisonne - Nine Volume Set











Why simply do when you can totally overdo? 5,000 pages of every art piece Paul Klee did. Merry Excessmas to me....


Paul Klee Catalogue Raisonne: Nine-Volume Set

Paul Klee (1879-1940) is one of the most significant and best-loved artists of the twentieth century. For the nine volumes of this landmark in Paul Klee scholarship, the Berne-based Paul Klee Foundation has researched intensively the artist's 9,600 drawings, prints, watercolors, and oil paintings, allowing the artist's complete works to be assembled and published for the first time. 

Presenting Klee's oeuvre in chronological order, each volume contains an introduction in German and English, an explanation of the catalogue system, a German-English glossary, a bibliography, and indexes. All the entries are illustrated and include catalogue numbers, technical descriptions, measurements, references to related works, details of provenance and location, relevant literature, and a list of exhibitions and auctions in which works have appeared. Klee's own entries from the catalogue he wrote from 1911 onwards are also included, and the most important works of his career are illustrated in color.

For example, Volume III follows Klee from 1919 through 1922, when he taught at the Bauhaus and became particularly involved with Bauhaus theater. Many of his works from this period -- masks, clowns, acrobats, ballet dancers -- reflect the influence of drama, ballet, the circus, and cabaret performances. 

This monumental set of publications is an essential reference work for libraries, art resources, and lovers of Klee's poetic, imaginative, and wholly original work.



Saturday, November 28, 2015

Jules B. Dahlager Painting: "Beautiful Tongass Narrows with Cape Chaconin Distance"

Jules B. Dahlager


Jules B. Dahlager


Jules B. Dahlager


Jules B. Dahlager


Jules B. Dahlager


Jules B. Dahlager






Modern Navajo Weavings in the Traditional Styles





Navajo weaver Treva Peshlakai of Kirtland, New Mexico wove her Second Phase Chief’s rug in the size 60” wide x 55” high. All single-ply weft yarn is 100% Navajo Churro Sheep wool. The design replicates a Classic/Late Classic Period, 12-spot Second Phase Chief's Blanket. The hand-dyed colors are the authentic indigo blue, and the aniline black, camel tan and red. The two x two-strand warp selvage cords at each end are a black. Treva weaves rugs with two warps inside the outer warp channel for extra strength, instead of weaving weft selvage cords outside the edges of her rugs. The four strands of black cords on the ends are knotted into tassels at the corners. The warp is mill spun, single ply white wool. The woven density is eight warps per inch and 28 wefts per inch.



















Hypno-Holidaze II







Friday, November 27, 2015

Must-Have Art Instruction Books























Paul Klee: "Paul Klee Aux Sources de la Peinture"

























Paul Klee Aux Sources de la Peinture, Roy, Claude, Paris, ale Club Francaisdu Livre, 1963. First Edition. Hardcover; First Printing. 12,000 copies. Quarto of approximately 127 pages; tipped-in color plates plus numerous black and white illustrations.