ROB HANN: The Child Is Gone

Photograph (c) Rob Hann /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Rob Hann /All Rights Reserved

Artwork by Seta Morton

Photograph (c) Rob Hann /All Rights Reserved

Over the past 4 years I've made numerous visits to my girlfriend Nora's (artist Nora Chavooshian) home in the affluent and liberal town of Montclair, New Jersey, about 30 minutes from New York City. I thought about shooting a photographic portrait project with Nora's daughter, Seta, as she passed from childhood to adulthood. I wanted it to be a collaboration and suggested Seta contribute her poetry and artwork to the project.

I spent a year photographing 16 year old Seta and her friends. The result is an extended portrait of Seta, part portrait, part self-portrait. The title of the book, "The Child Gone", is taken from one of Seta's poems. –Rob Hann

view: the child gone

Sanctuary in Pattaya, Thailand all wood construction building

Sanctuary of Truth is an all wood construction building, resembling a temple, and filled inside and out with wood sculpture based on traditional Buddhist and Hindu motifs. Sanctuary in PattayaThe building, which resembles a temple, is close to 105 meters (345 feet) high and covers and covers an area of more than two rais. It features contemporary Visionary art based on traditional religious

LAURENT GIRARD: Statues of Central Park

Robert Burns
Photograph (c)Laurent Girard /All Rights Reserved

The Falconer

Photograph (c)Laurent Girard /All Rights Reserved

Sir Walter Scott

Photograph (c)Laurent Girard /All Rights Reserved

Group of Bears
Photograph (c)Laurent Girard /All Rights Reserved

Indian Hunter
Photograph (c)Laurent Girard /All Rights Reserved

Three Dancing Maidens
Photograph (c)Laurent Girard /All Rights Reserved

The Angel of the Waters
Photograph (c)Laurent Girard /All Rights Reserved

Taking photographs since the age of 12, French born Laurent Girard has been one of the world's most sought-after master black and white printers for decades. Laurent is the former owner of New York's legendary Lexington Labs, printing for everyone from Richard Avedon, Peter Beard, Annie Leibovitz, Bruce Weber, Bert Stern, Herb Ritts to Bruce Davidson, Nicholas Vreeland and Patti Smith (his impressive client list here!). In 2002, he merged Lexington Labs with Coloredge, and, in 2008, Laurent joined Griffin Editions, providing Fine Art Photographic Printing for Artists, Museums and Galleries (their blog). Central Park website.

Statues in Central Park
Gelatin Silver Prints / Selenium Toned
Prints For Sale

SCULPTOGRAPHS: Eugene van Lamsweerde, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin

Artists Eugene van Lamsweerde,
Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin

Guests Stefano Tonchi, the newly appointed Editor-in-Chief of W Magazine and Alexander Vreeland, Founder of Kids For Kids, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation fundraiser (President and COO, Slane & Slane).

Vinoodh 2010 Photograph, wax, enamel

Root 2009 Photograph, wax, enamel

Bird of Paradise 2005
Silkscreen on canvas, mercury ball, gold and silver metal

Detail close-up of wings in Bird of Paradise 2005 (above)

Painter and sculptor, EUGENE VAN LAMSWEERDE, one of The Netherlands’ most celebrated artists, collaborated with artist/top fashion photography power couple, INEZ VAN LAMSWEERDE and VINOODH MATADIN, combining sculpture and photography in their latest exhibition of work now showing at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, NY.

SCULPTOGRAPHS
Andrea Rosen Gallery 525 W.24th St. NYC

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: AN INTERVIEW / Update: Sculptor Louise Bourgeois died at home at 98

An Interview With Louise Bourgeois
Front Cover: Photograph (c) Richard Avedon /All Rights Reserved

Back Cover: Polished Bronze Sculpture (c) Louise Bourgeois

Maman by Louise Bourgeois
Spider Sculpture outside the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain

Arch of Hysteria, 1993
Polished Bronze (c) Louise Bourgeois /All Rights Reserved

Art is not about art

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New York Times Obituary

Artist and sculptor, Louise Bourgeois, born in Paris December 25, 1911, died at home May 31, 2010 at 98 years old. She began her career as a draftsman at 12, providing drawings for the missing pieces of tapestries for her families business. At 15 she studied mathematics at the Sorbonne, then began studying painting at the École du Louvre and the École des Beaux-Arts, later working as assistant to Fernand Léger. After moving to the U.S. with her American husband, art historian and Director of the Museum of Primitive Art of New York, Robert Goldwater, she studied at the Art Students League of New York.

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The following excerpts are from An Interview With Louise Bourgeois, by American Art Critic, Donald Kuspit, published under the imprint "Elizabeth Avedon Editions | Vintage Contemporary Artists" by Random House (Here):

DK: You have spoken of (your art) as encompassing the whole history of art, but I wonder if you have any special consciousness of modern art. What do you think about modern art in general? How do you see yourself in the history of modern art?

LB: I am not interested in art history, in the academies of styles, a succession of fads. Art is not about art. Art is about life, and that sums it up. This remark is made to the whole academy of artists who have attempted to derive the art of the late eighties, to try to relate it to the study of the history of art, which has nothing to do with art. It has to do with appropriation. It has to do with the attempt to prove that you can do better than the next one, and that a famous art history teacher is better than the common artist. If you are a historian, you have to have the dignity of a historian. You don't have to prove that you are better than the artist.

But I can say this. I studied in Paris in the thirties at a time when artists had the ateliers that were open to students. My favorite teachers among many were Fernand Léger, Othon Friesz, and Paul Colin. Michèle Leiris and André Breton were also part of my education. Also, I taught for a long time and was given many honorary doctorates. Flattering as it is, it has little to do with my ongoing self-expression. Also, I valued my friendships with Corbusier, Duchamp, and Miró, Arp, Brancusi and Franz Kline and Warhol. Today I value my friendships with Robert Mapplethorp and Gary Indiana.

DK: Which artists do you like?

LB: I like Francis Bacon best, because Francis Bacon has terrific problems, and he knows that he is not going to solve them, but he knows also that he can escape from day to day and stay alive, and he does that because his work gives him a kick. And also, Bacon is not self-indulgent. Some people will say, "What do you mean by that? He always paints the same picture." That's true–he always paints the same picture, because he is driven. But he is not self-indulgent. Never.

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LB: I think I know why the Museum of Modern Art did not buy my work. The truth is very difficult to speak of. There was a certain style of collecting at the Modern which had to do with...I think I should watch my words.

DK: Why? Don't watch your words. You have lived long enough to tell the truth.

LB: Well, it had to do with the trustees, with pleasing the trustees. Alfred Barr was not a trustee; he was an employee, like all the rest. The trustees had real buying power. Alfred Barr had special skills, but he was not part of the Board of Trustees. He was on the other side. The artists who succeeded in selling at the time–Calder, Mark Rothko, Ben Shahn, they were the three–pleased the trustees. You had to entertain the Board, and these Three Stooges knew how to do that, knew how to socially entertain these important people, these trustees. I did not mind that, as a woman, but I could not do it.

Women had to work like slaves in the art world, but a lot of men got to the top through their charm. And it hurt them. To be young and pretty didn't help a woman in the art world, because the social scene, and the buying scene, was in the hands of women–women who had money. They wanted to be entertained–they were lazy and sometimes stupid, and they wanted to be entertained by men of a certain age. So these charmers were what was called in the eighteenth century a pique-assiette in French, somebody who picks at your plate, who will come entertain for dinner, like a buffoon–it is a kind of profession that interests me very much. And they are picked from among artists because there is a certain prestige to being an artist, but from a professional point of view they are more entertainers than artists. They relate to the storyteller, which was a profession. The storytellers of the Middle Ages were men who went from place to place, telling their tales, and sometimes reached the top because of their acting and verbal abilities.

Because of the profession of my husband, I lived among these people. It was interesting. And because I was French and kind of discreet, they tolerated me–with my accent I was a little strange, I was not competition–and I was cute, I guess. They took me seriously on a certain level, but they refused to help me professionally. The trustees of the Museum of Modern Art were not interested in a young woman coming from Paris. They were not flattered by her attention. They were not interested in her three children. I was definitely not socially needed then. They wanted male artists, and they wanted male artists who did not say they were married. They wanted male artists who would come alone and be their charming guests. Rothko could be charming. It was a court. And the artist buffoons came to court to entertain, to charm. Now it has changed, now the younger men are in–older women and younger men.

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DK: Why do you think the Museum of Modern Art finally gave you a retrospective exhibition?

LB: It had to do with one person, that wonderful, wonderful woman, Deborah Wye. She worked very, very hard. She convinced them, she got all the information...she convinced them that I was important.

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In 1982, The Museum of Modern Art, NY, exhibited a retrospective exhibition organized by Deborah Wye. Bourgeois was 70 years old. In 2008, The Tate Modern Museum, London, organized and exhibited a major retrospective of Bourgeois’s work which traveled to the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In 2009, the retrospective traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC.

Louise Bourgeois, Les Fleurs, 2009 Gouache and Silkscreen on Paper,
Wooster Group Benefit Auction March 15th. Estimated value $15,000.

March 15th Wooster Group Benefit Live Auction

Artwork for auction includes Louise Bourgeois, Francesco Clemente, Chuck Close, Jasper johns, Jeff Koons and view Artists here

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