I’ve always been a Led Zeppelin fan, they were something special, unique and never heard before … and never to be heard again.  So thanks to YouTube, I’ve been watching all these old Zeppelin concerts, and I’ve grown to appreciate their unique genius in a new and more mature way.  Of course, my retro love of the early 1970′s keeps me entralled, but especially the most absolutely gorgeous, sexy, blond God that was Young Robert Plant.

I still love Robert Plant, but I never really appreciated him fully until now. Of course, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham match him in genius, yet I think it’s his bare chest and curly locks that do it.  Not to mention they are the greatest Rock and Roll band ever!  Long live the Queen; the Brits surely have brought us much musical joy (influenced by solid American roots!

Watch Led Zeppelin in their prime!

Check out my etsy store here for a couple of 1970s inspired prints.

Today I came across two different items related to the iconic Gustav Klimt.  Having been to Vienna, which I love (where I swear his spirit lives on!) one is often caught by surprise when suddenly, looming around any corner, is an Art Deco architectural wonder. Of course it is a modern, bustling city, but it literally sings with music and art. I can’t help but love Klimt; of course I love his lyrical line and sense of the decorative, and gold leaf is always special to me (anything that is glittery works for me!)  But also, he was a true lover of women and their sensuality, and he always messed and annoyed  the establishment of his day, a character trait I admire. No shrinking violet was Gustav!  And he produced some seriously beautiful art.

There is a review in The Wall Street Journal “Forever Between Two Worlds” for an exhibition at the Neue Gallery in New York, in honor of the 150th aniversary of his birth.  And at the Getty Museum here in Los Angeles, we have “Gustav Klimt: The Magic of Line” which will showcase his drawings. An excerpt:

Discover the beautiful and evocative drawings of Gustav Klimt in this major retrospective, which explores the stylistic evolution of his drawings as well as their centrality to his work. Klimt’s drawings are characterized by an unsurpassed mastery of line, from his earliest days as a student to his maturity as an avant-garde master.

I am lucky enough to be able to see both, as I will soon be in New York (YAY!!) so I will get to absorb some Gustav magic.

Here is a Photo illustration collage I did that includes an image on Klimts very famous “The Kiss”. I no longer sell this image, but maybe I should revisit it! I love being inspired from other artist’s and incorporating them in my work.

Visit my website or etsy store to see what I am up to now!

It’s been long time between posts lately … you know, the holidays and all that. I’ve been enjoying my downtime and reading my iPad, watching movies (loved loved “The Artist”!), filling orders for my stores and generally being lazy! I recently have been perusing the Life Magazine app, which is just beautiful. They have organized their incredible iconic photos into slideshow-based themes and I discovered Françoise Sagan, (under the “romantic-drunken-mad-literary-artist category”) who by all accounts was a hard living, larger than life, precocious artist. Her first, and most famous book, “Bonjour Tristesse” was published when she was 18 years old. She was an eccentric, and I love her for that!

Here she is with some of her more famous quotes:

“To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter.”

When asked if she believed in love: “Are you joking? I believe in passion. Nothing else. Two years, no more. All right, then: three.”

“A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to want to take it off you.”

“I have loved to the point of madness, that which is called madness, that which to me is the only sensible way to love.”

“One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.”

“Art must take reality by surprise.”

I know it appears I am in love with all things French …and I am! Only the French would make the new silent movie “The Artist”, and possess the effortless style of everyday Parisiens, speak the lovely language that I now master fairly well, not to mention the great bread, the butter, and Brigitte Bardot.

If you have ever studied another language, one of the first things you need to grasp completely is that you CANNOT translate phrases word for word from your language. That is not learning the language! Which is why the phrase “I miss Paris” never rolls off my tongue quickly enough. To miss Paris, or anyone, they must be “missed to you.” Last night I saw a House Hunters International on apartment hunting in Paris (a daunting task, of course) and today I saw a wonderful article about a new exhibition of Gertrude and The Brother’s Stein’s art collection. (If you saw “Midnight in Paris” you were probably amused by Kathy Bates’ portrayal of Gertrude and that fabulous copy of Picasso’s painting he did of her!) The exhibition, “The Stein’s Collect” is at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, then travels to New York, and finally Paris, where it all began.  From the Wall Street Journal article:

For several years, almost the only places in Paris where one could go to see collections of works by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were Gertrude and Leo’s (and later Alice’s) weekly Saturday-evening salons on rue de Fleurus, and Sarah and Michael’s the same evening on the rue Madame. Eventually, “everybody” came—writers, musicians, cafe society and the gay demimonde, foreign searchers after the new, and the artists the Steins collected.

The Steins were such influential and astute art collectors that they managed to have owned some of the most beautiful and important paintings ever created, such as these two glorious Matisse portraits. They are breathtaking!

So I’m sure you can understand why I have learned to say correctly “Paris me manque” whilst my head is thinking: “Paris is missed to me!”

And as always, please visit my store(s) to see the things of Paris that are missed to me

When I was much younger and practicing my oil painting skills, I painted a picture from a photograph of David Hockney. I’m innately attracted to bright and audacious color, so I loved him not only for his personal style-  his bleached yellow orange hair, heavy round black rimmed spectacles, loud striped rugby shirts, his trademark miss-matched socks.  I am enamored with his blazing color palette and his subject matter, ranging from southern california architecture (and their swimming pools), portraits of his friends, and his later giant landscapes painted “en plein air” in his native England.

He has always been innovative and embraced new tecnology; mediums both high and low were just another means to document his abundant creativity. One of my favorite Hockney eras was his 4 x 6 inch photographs taken  with a drugstore camera, then developed at the one-hour photo stop. He them pieced them together creating giant collages, the most famous being “Pear Blossom Highway.”

So I have been happy to discover that since 2008 he has been painting on his iphone, and most recently on his ipad. His recent show in Paris of his ipad creations are changing the rules (again) for what a work of art can be.  At the show titled “Fleurs Fraiches,” his drawings are displayed on ipads mounted to the gallery walls, and he emails new creations to the show daily. He has even evolved his eclectic personal style by having suits made for him with pockets large enough to hold ipads, thus, technology influences fashion! He loves the immediacy of the medium. He states, “You can make a drawing of the sunrise at 6am and send it out to people by 7am.”

Hockney’s ipad drawing raise larger questions about the aesthetic and monetary value of art.  For earlier shows, he had his paintings printed out, mounted and priced. At the Paris show, the work is not for sale, merely displayed. He loves the democracy of the medium; anyone can download an app and get to work creating masterpieces and perfecting their finger dexterity. Not to mention there are no paint stained hands or fingernails, and nothing to clean up! Yet all the pieces are quite distinctly Hockney-esque. I wonder about the value of Hockney’s pieces if he decides to sell the ipads that he created them on. I suppose one could purchase the ipad and just delete it, and thus create the 21st century version of Robert Raushcheberg’s famous “Erased DeKooning.” Every art student is familiar with the story of how the upstart young artist Rauschenberg nagged the mega-famous elder statesman deKooing to give him a drawing. After finally succeeding, he promply almost completedly erased it, and then signed his name. Ahh, I love art!

I recently read a wonderful article in the Wall Street Journal about the artist Christo, and his life after the death of his true love and life-long artistic partner, Jeanne Claude.

I only became aware of him after he was long established for “wrapping” monumental, site-specific works. Christo, if you are not familiar with him, is the artist famous for wrapping iconic structures, both natural and man made, including the Reichstag in Berlin, which took 24 years to be approved, and one million square feet of rugged Australian coastline in Little Bay, Australia.

I love his use of “reveal and conceal” as a medium to create new meaning and new ways of perceiving. When Christo wrapped something, suddenly it was what it was- and something else, too.

But more than any of his works, I was moved by the story of his enduring love for Jeanne Claude. They met in Paris when they were both 23 years old; she a chic bohemian Parisienne and he a penniless Bulgarian immigrant. Their unlikely partnership was to be broken only by her death. One of his earliest “wrapped” works is a 1963 portrait of her; raven-haired and sultry, exotic and untouchable, with her ruby red lips peeking thru plastic and twine.



This wonderful photo of them late in life says it all. Her hair is now the color of her lips and they look youthfully and eternally in love. He is quoted saying “she cannot be substituted…cannot be reinvented.”

It is a deeply moving story of what is at the soul of the art and artist.



Read more on Jeanne Claude and Christo here.

I’m so loving the glorious, saturated color I’m seeing on the fall 2011 runways. From London, Mary Katrantzou’s marvelous cacophony of prints are inspired by Faberge eggs.  She is quoted as saying she “almost cried because my prints were controlling me”, but I’d say she mastered them expertly, wouldn’t you? And Gucci’s luxe jewel-toned color block furs are SOOOO chic!  The current explosion of detail and color remind me of quite a few wonderful contemporary artists, two which I share here; Fred Tomaselli and Ryan McGinness.  I love their obsessive use of detail and grandness of scale. Always so much to be inspired by!

Not that I need any excuse to add color…

On President’s Day I visited the Los Angeles County of Art for “Target Free Monday.” Target sponsors free admission to the museum here in Los Angeles when Monday falls on a holiday. I am really grateful for that, because you can visit for a brief time and not feel like you have to see everything in one outing. Lately there have been so many great exhibitons around town, so it is nice to frequent the museum on Miracle Mile. I stopped in to see Larry Fink’s photography exhibition in celebration of the upcoming Academy Awards. The use of black and white was brilliant; the limited tonality took away all the smoke and mirrors the glitz and glamour can create. Mr Fink has a distinct point of view, very entertaining, tongue in cheek and spot-on. One of my favorites was a shot of legs all akimbo underneath the table (well-heeled legs, of course!) We are so used to focusing on the make-up and gowns; Larry forces you to REALLY look.
Read more about Larry Fink here:
http://www.lacma.org/art/ExhibFink.aspx

This past weekend I visited MOCA, Los Angeles to see “The Artist’s Museum” and “Supersensorial”. It’s a bold, colorful, exuberant experience which I highly recommend (apparently, the gala opening night was quite the event…even Chloe Sevigny was there, who I just featured in a post.) The “Artist’s Museum” is particularly relevant to the artistic dialogue here in Los Angeles. We have an abundant wealth of talent here, both in faculty and graduates of our great art schools. (Which I have been lucky to attend!)

The blurb on MOCA’s website explains:
The Artist’s Museum showcases works by 146 artists who have helped shape the artistic dialogue in Los Angeles since the founding of MOCA over 30 years ago. Based on MOCA’s world-renowned permanent collection, supplemented by key loans from local collectors and artists, this special presentation features over 250 works, including a number of new projects made especially for this occasion. Representing the diversity and uniqueness of the Los Angeles community, the exhibition highlights important works from legendary L.A. artists who remain vital and influential alongside those emerging from renowned local art schools, visionary artists associated with various street cultures and subcultures, and crossover artists connected to performance, music, and film.

It is an eclectic collection of paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, video and installation art made by L.A. artists (including a section dedicated to looping classic DEVO videos!)

“Supersensorial: Experiments in light, color and space” was also installed at the Geffen, a survey of Latin artists using light and space as image and sensory art. It was a fantastic immersion into enviornments, and a great juxtaposition for the “Artist’s Museum” curation. Believe it or not, there is actually a small swimming pool installed at the Geffen, with disposible bathing suits available, if you feel inclined to go swimming (the kids loved it!)

One of the pieces I particularly liked was the video art/paintings of Jeremy Blake. The documentation with the video quoted Blake as saying he wanted to find a way to make painting “louder…more electric.” It was a beautiful, mesmerizing piece, and when I returned home later I googled him to learn more.  It was then that I realized he was JEREMY BLAKE, the artist who committed suicide in 2007 after losing his soul mate, Theresa Duncan, just a week before to suicide.  I’m sure many of you remember this tragic and haunting story of these two lovely and talented artists.  I spent a lot of time rereading their story; I have been deeply affected by seeing his art, and realizing just how hard it can be to make sense of the world.  There is a great article written in New York Magazine about them you can read here if you are intersted.

Rest in peace, Theresa and Jeremy.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has been rapidly expanding into quite a complex, with the recent opening of the Broad Contemorary Art Museum, and now the Resnick Wing. And fortunately for L.A. County residents, they have been having free admission everyday after 5pm. I saw two great exhibitions there; “Fashion Fashion” and “William Eggleston: The Democratic Camera”.

“Fashioning Fashion” was mesmerizing. Their collection of museum quality European men’s and women’s clothing begins in the 1700′s, and the pieces are exquisite. The textiles, craftmanship, labor and ingenuity of making such complicated clothing with such little mechanization is almost incomprehensible to the modern mind. Quite beautifully presented. There is even a chance to see the first incarnation of the thigh-high leather boot (created of course, during the “Moulin Rouge” era in France. Really worth seeing.

Then, cross over to “BCAM” to see the Eggleston. He was the first photographer to use color film and snapshot style photography and present it as fine art. There is a lot of retro ambience in his work (which I love) and you get a double whammy of it— they were retro when he took them in the 60′s through the 80′s, and only more so now. There is a fascinating documentary on him I saw in art school that is made by his son documenting not only his method of working, but his alcoholism (I’m sure you can find it on you tube by searching his name.)

Here are just a few images from both the shows. I love to present on my blog just a few of the things I draw inspiration from; I hope you enjoy them.

OH… and I forgot my FAVORITE thing about LACMA…it’s on the same piece of land as the La Brea Tar Pits! Those of us who grew up here remember with great fondness our field trips to the Tar Pits. You can’t get more L.A. than that!