THOMAS STRUTH: Architectural Monuments + Landscapes

Waldstrasse auf dem Lindberg-Landscape No. 3, Winterthur 1992
Sold at 2000 Auction for $48,825.
Photograph (c) Thomas Struth /All Rights Reserved

Paradise 14, Yakushima, Japan 1999
Photograph (c) Thomas Struth /All Rights Reserved

Mailänder Dom (Fassade) 1998. Sold at 2008 Auction for $565,000.
Photograph (c) Thomas Struth /All Rights Reserved

Pergamon Museum II, Berlin 2001
Photograph (c) Thomas Struth /All Rights Reserved

Monreale, Palermo 1998
Photograph (c) Thomas Struth /All Rights Reserved

"Thomas Struth's Mailänder Dom (Fassade) above, executed in 1998, conveys a sense of the building's overwhelming dimensions through its own size. The building visually and physically dominates both the composition and the people in front of the massive cathedral. The sharp focus on the cathedral recalls the photographs of Struth's teacher, Bernd Becher. However, Struth's image, while appearing to share Bernd and Hilla Becher's concerns with objectivity, aims to capture something more subjective, more distinctive and more profound about the world in which we live.

Western religion places the cathedral, a dramatic and sacred building, on a pedestal. However, the tourists in front of this particular cathedral in Milan are not pilgrims but tourists. This forces the viewer to consider its relative obsolescence in our more secular age. Struth depicts the cathedral most as the center of human interaction, not merely the center of the Catholic Church. The visitors, for the most part, are surely not worshipers. The religious buildings and artefacts of yore have become the tourist sites of today. Struth does not merely document how places look. He does not merely reduce the fabric of our urban life to abstraction, as is the case in so many other "objective" photographs, although these factors are important to Mailänder Dom (Fassade) and its aesthetic. Instead, he attempts to grasp and convey some essence of our existence in the cosmopolitan playground of the modern world."–Christie's catalog 2008. Number nine of an edition of ten, 74½ x 92½ in. (189.2 x 235 cm.), sold at auction for $565,000.

Thomas Struth Biography

Thomas Struth / Exhibition / June 11-September 12, 2010
Kunsthaus Zurich

NEW BOOK: The Pictorial Consequence

Self Portrait (c) Caio Fernandes /All Rights Reserved

An Existence (Almost) Missed
Copyright (c) Caio Fernandes /All Rights Reserved

Brazilian artist, Caio Fernandes, is sometimes described as a Realist painter, "though the sheer intensity of his work sets him apart from most contemporary Realist painters. With a highly individualistic style of painting, Caio reveals the raw physical characteristics and inner tensions of his subjects."

Fernandes published his work on Blurb only a month ago, and already collector's from all over the world have purchased his book, The Pictorial Consequence: 1999 to 2010. Follow Caio's exceptional world on his blog, Mein Welt. More About Caio Here.

THE PICTORIAL CONSEQUENCE: 1999 to 2010

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG INTERVIEW: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao "Gluts"

An Interview With Robert Rauschenberg Book Cover
Elizabeth Avedon Editions | Vintage Contemporary Artists Series
Back Cover: Robert Rauschenberg. Metal Assemblage, Swaddle Glut, 1986
Front Cover: Photograph (c) Richard Avedon /All Rights Reserved

Robert Rauschenberg, Greek Toy Glut (Neapolitan), 1987
Metallo Asemblato (c) Estate of Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg, West-Ho Glut, 1986, Metallo Asemblato

(c) Estate of Robert Rauschenberg

I think of the "Gluts" series as souvenirs without nostalgia. What they are really meant to do is give people an experience of looking at everything in terms of what its possibility might be. –Robert Rauschenberg

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The following text is from An Interview With Robert Rauschenberg by American Art Critic, Barbara Rose, published under the imprint "Elizabeth Avedon Editions | Vintage Contemporary Artists" by Random House (Here):

BR: There's a lot of recycling and reuse in your work. You believe that you don't have to throw something away just because it's old. There's always a possibility for a use. This isn't a common idea. People are really into "new" today.

RR: The only thing I like to keep out of a work, no matter what the materials are, is the history of the process of putting it together. I don't bring that into it. I think of the "Gluts" series as souvenirs without nostalgia. What they are really meant to do is give people an experience of looking at everything in terms of what its possibility might be.

BR: Your art has certainly always been available. You don't need to have an enormous background on Rauschenberg's history to relate to his work. There is always something there to which anybody can relate. That's why it's popular. You may not contrive to be popular, but you are.

RR: When I see the sorts of things you are referring to, I try to destroy them. I'm sure that I haven't been able to avoid developing some "classic" qualities, and I don't mind them being hidden. I just object to their being the subject.

BR: You prefer a composition that is not obviously a composition.

RR: I prefer not to brag about it's sophisticated anatomy.

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BR: I have watched you work, and it is an interaction–it is your encounter, and you interact with this material or this image or whatever, but you never plan your work. There is no plan or sketch. It's absolutely pure process. Which comes, I believe, from abstract expressionism. It's the process. You don't know until it's finished what it is, and it's done when you've decided that that's it–I think that's an aspect of your work.

RR: Actually, when I'm painting, I think that my mental attitude is to drive with the brakes on, and when I sense a funny smell, then I turn off the ignition.

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RR: For me, Tibet was a living relationship with people. It was a reaffirmation of the fact no matter what the language is or the customs are, there is a general love between human beings. I know it sounds simplistic, but you could see it in Tibet. Some places it's harder to break through that. These people–perhaps because the air is so thin, or their life is so hard, or because they are so religiously rich–have love all over the place. I mean, every step, no matter how cold it is or how hot or how muddy, is still part of the palette of friendship.

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February 12 - September 2, 2010
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG GLUTS
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

FRANCESCO CLEMENTE: Vintage Interview

Book Cover: An Interview With Francesco Clemente. "She and She" Back Cover Painting (c) Francesco Clemente /All Rights Reserved. Front Cover Photograph (c) Richard Avedon /All Rights Reserved. Click to Enlarge

Sky and Water, Watercolour on paper
Painting by Francesco Clemente /All Rights Reserved

The following quotes by artist Francesco Clemente were excerpted from An Interview With Francesco Clemente by Rainer Crone and Georgia Marsh, published under the imprint "Elizabeth Avedon Editions | Vintage Contemporary Artists" by Random House (Here)

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...about the publication of your book of poems, Castelli di Sabbia. (Naples: L’Arte Tipografica, 1964) "I had been reciting it to my mother since I was five or six, and it was published against my better judgment. It was enormously embarrassing, and it made me into a painter, actually, because I decided that to be a poet was too embarrassing; it was too revealing, and I wanted something more obscure to deal with. I thought of painting that way. That was when I was eleven or twelve years old."

"Paintings are simple things. They are important not so much for what is in them as for what is not there. When we talk of the Renaissance we talk of something fragile; the surprise is that at a certain point, after a thousand years of Christianity, Renaissance artists looked at their bodies again, and looked at their faces, and looked at the world as a sensual place. This feeling of surprise happens again in Tiepolo's skies, and even down to de Chirico's earliest painting. If we talk of Piero della Francesca, what comes to mind is the light. There are two lineages of light in painting. One is a secular light: from Caravaggio to de Kooning. The light is outside; it comes down on things, and makes them what they are. But if we talk of Piero, or talk of Roman paintings, or of the Pompeian paintings, we talk of a light that comes from within and that has nothing to do with the history of man. It is a light that is before the history of man. Giotto is unique because you don't know exactly which way the light goes: his is already a completely secular point of view, but still the light is treated as an inner flow. There is really no one else like him; that degree of mystery is nowhere else. We have to talk in terms of light, because if we talk in terms of formalities, what can we get out of it?"

"It could be a step forward to realize that the rational picture of the world is also an imagination; it has the same reality as a myth. It is the product of the mind; it is not more substantial than the mind. When we talk about mythology we are talking about questions of history, of rational thought and rationalized memory of our past. History is the most tragic product of the rational mind–a picture from which there is no way to escape. The picture of the world that history gives us is the picture of a dead person who looks over his own life. It is as if we are all dead, and we are looking at the world in a glass case. How can we get away from this? I have no answer for it."

Exhibition through Feb 27, 2010

FRANCESCO CLEMENTE: A History of the Heart in Three Rainbows
The Goldman Warehouse, Miami

PAINTINGS & BIO | VIDEO I & VIDEO II

CAIO FERNANDES: My World

Untitled, acrylic on canvas
Painting (c) Caio Fernandes /All Rights Reserved

Bianca Conducting Souls, 2009 series
Copyright (c) Caio Fernandes /All Rights Reserved

Untitled, acrylic on canvas
Painting (c) Caio Fernandes /All Rights Reserved

Untitled, acrylic on canvas
Painting (c) Caio Fernandes /All Rights Reserved

Bianca Conducting Souls, 2009 series
Copyright (c) (c) Caio Fernandes /All Rights Reserved

Bianca Conducting Souls, 2009 series
Copyright (c) Caio Fernandes /All Rights Reserved

When I was 13, the year I fell in love with photography, I also discovered North American realism in painting, literature and photography. Here in São Paulo, we are sons and grandsons of Europeans that came here after the wars. The European sensibility and aesthetics are still very strong among us. I was taught all the "isms" of the 20th Century that came from the old continent, along with the most popular work from the USA, such as Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art...but after "In The American West", I saw that art could be very mature, even sober, without losing the power of expression. Today it sounds obvious, but at the time it really blew my mind.

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CAIO FERNANDES, born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1975, studied Psychology, Art and Photography at both the University of São Paulo and at Brazil's most prestigious school for Art and Architecture, the Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP). Studying under artists Evandro Carlos Jardim, Claudo Mubarack and Elisa Bracher, he worked as studio assistant to Ms. Bracher for a short period preparing exhibits for Germany and Rio de Janiero.

Fernandes' work is sometimes described as Realist, "though the sheer intensity of his work sets him apart from most contemporary Realist painters. With a highly individualistic style of painting, Caio reveals the raw physical characteristics and inner tensions of his subjects. A strong interest in Kardecist Spiritism, which proposes an intricate set of perspectives of the "self", is apparent in his self-portraits. Though Caio affirms that a self-portrait can only be considered as a visual reflection of himself, "There is no conceptual speech behind it," he believes strongly that the only important thing is the painting itself."

Order Caio's Book: THE PICTORIAL CONSEQUENCE

CAIO FERNANDO: MEIN WELT

WOOM Art Outsiders / No Brow Art