Follow Up Friday
A little summary of the week that’s just been!
Including art history news, DIY tips, exhibition & literature reviews, auction announcements, etc.
Email me with your ideas. I’d love to hear from you.
1. Taking Art on the Road
Elise Graham and her son, Aaron, own a 12-foot van that travels around Manhattan. The vehicle contains something truly unique, the Rodi Gallery. Exhibiting emerging artists, the Mother/son team travel the streets of New York exposing passersby. This is an emerging trend in the art world, using the successful model of the food truck:
In interviews, mobile owners say they are trying to avoid the confines — and politics — of the gallery system; to help people think about art in different ways; or to reach more communities, especially those with young and old people who tend not to visit art districts. That was what motivated Berge Zobian of Providence, R.I., to create his truck in 2012, equipped with 44 linear feet of exhibition space, a stereo system, security cameras, projection monitors and even a bar for making coffee. On one occasion he took 40 paintings to a church, one priced at $35,000.
Read more about this new trend here.
2. Husband & Wife Both Up for BP Portrait Award
Henrietta Graham and Tim Hall are accomplished practising artists; Graham a portrait painter and Hall is more known for his maritime scenes. The pair have both entered the BP Portrait Awards competition at the National Portrait Gallery in London and their works will be displayed alongside all the other finalists. A first in the competition! Graham has focussed on depicting celebrity chefs and has racked up a portfolio of about fifty pieces.
Graham’s painting [above] shows James Martin standing in a powerful pose, arms folded in his kitchen. Some of it was painted in the Knightsbridge kitchen of Pierre Koffman, another subject of Graham. Hall’s work, Henrietta And Ollie, depicts his wife as she paints chef René Redzepi, whose Copenhagen restaurant Noma was recently named the world’s best for the fourth time.
She appears in the exhibition twice. Once as the artist of the above portrait, and then again as the sitter for her husband’s entry (he painted her painting). Read more on this incredible feat here, and do check out the BP Portrait Awards, which open on the 26th of June.
3. Today is National Donut Day!
Jordan over at Oh Happy Day! has written about five ways to celebrate this glorious occasion! I did a little research on National Donut Day (as you do) and it is celebrated in both America and Canada — because we got jealous. According to Wikipedia:
National Doughnut Day is on the first Friday of June each year, succeeding the Doughnut Day event created by The Salvation Army in 1938 to honour the men and women who served doughnuts to soldiers during World War I.
To celebrate, many donut shops offer free donuts! I do hope you manage to scope some out, but in the meantime you can check out Jordan’s site and get read to throw your own fancy donut party. Fixing to make your own concoctions? Check out My Name is Yeh‘s donut hacks here!
4. Hidden Beached Whale Revealed
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, acquired View of Scheveningen Sands in 1873 when a donor handed over several Dutch landscape paintings. There is no indication that anyone at that time knew the van Anthonissen painting originally featured a beached whale. While undergoing recent restoration work, a conservationist unveiled something surprising — a depiction of a beach whale! Dutch master van Anthonissen created the work in the 1630s, which was obviously altered in later years. To read more on this fascinating story and see a video clip of the unveiling of the whale, click here.
5. The RA Summer Exhibition Opens to Great Fan Fare
The Art Newspaper reports that works in the Royal Academy of Arts’ Summer Exhibition are selling fast as the annual open submission show, which has been held every year without fail since 1769 opened Wednesday night. Drawing big crowds to the opening, 2014 saw the first time that the initial round of judging was via digital submissions. This has helped make the exhibition more international than ever before. Read a more extensive review here.
