A happening is a performance or event that is considered to be art. This blog covers world art events, art news and publications, and will expose the reader to all areas of the art world. The fine arts will be covered such as painting, sculpture, assemblage, installation, photography, conceptual art, large scale craft related events, handmade/altered books, and printmaking. Blog is maintained by an Art Librarian at the Rochester Public Library (NY).
Kusama sees colorful spots on everything she looks at due to a rare eye condition she has had since she was a child. For most of us it would be a hindrance but Kusama has used it to her advantage by creating bright and vibrant hallucinogenic art.
Now you can read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland illustrated with Kusama's illustrations. It certainly is a different way to read Alice but a wonderful crazy one.
And if you happen to be in London, you can see an exhibit of Kusama's work at the Tate Modern.
If you happen to be in London the nine decades of Kusama's work is showing at the Tate Modern right now.
Read more and see more of her Alice illustrations at Brainpickings.org
Damien Hirst(born 7 June 1965) is an British artist. He is amember of the group known as the Young British Artists (or YBAs), who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. Hirst is probably best known for his works where he used dead animals such as a sheep, cow, and a shark as part of his installations. These animals are sometimes dissected and are standing or floating in formaldehyde. His work that includes a shark in formaldehyde in a clear display case, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, created in 1991, is an iconic piece of his from the 1990s. He is also well known for his spots and spin works. Another work immeditaely recognized as Hirst is his diamond covered skull, For the Love of God, covered in 8,601 diamonds and offered for sale at $100 million.
The exhibit at the Tate Modern is the first comprehensive show of his work. Along with the shark piece will be his medicine cabinets and pill cabinets in addition to some other works made throughout his career using butterflies and flies as well as the spots and spins.
If you aren't aware of Yayoi Kusama You can now see a major exhibition of her work at the Tate Modern. The nine decades of Yayoi Kusama's life have taken her from rural
Japan to the New York art scene to contemporary Tokyo, in a career in
which she has continuously innovated and re-invented her style.
Well-known for her repeating dot patterns, her art encompasses an
astonishing variety of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture,
film, performance and immersive installation. It ranges from works on
paper featuring intense semi-abstract imagery, to soft sculpture known
as "Accumulations", to her "Infinity Net" paintings, made up of
carefully repeated arcs of paint built up into large patterns. Since
1977 Kusama has lived voluntarily in a psychiatric institution, and much
of her work has been marked with obsessiveness and a desire to escape
from psychological trauma. In an attempt to share her experiences, she
creates installations that immerse the viewer in her obsessively charged
vision of endless dots and nets or infinitely mirrored space.
At
the centre of the art world in the 1960s, she came into contact with
artists including Donald Judd, Andy Warhol, Joseph Cornell and Claes Oldenburg, influencing many along the way. She has traded on her
identity as an "outsider" in many contexts - as a female artist in a
male-dominated society, as a Japanese person in the Western art world,
and as a victim of her own neurotic and obsessional symptoms. After
achieving fame and notoriety with groundbreaking art happenings and
events, she returned to her country of birth and is now Japan's most
prominent contemporary artist.
