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Analysis | Eric Bourdon, artist painter | Posts
May
5
Teacher training in America
Pen, marker on paper, digital retouching
Eric Bourdon © 2018
Excerpts below are selected from an article by German Lopez published on Vox.com : www.vox.com/…/armed-teachers-gun-violence-mass-shootings (2018/03/20)
“The case against arming teachers”
More “good guys with guns” wouldn’t be enough – and would likely make a lot of problems worse.
Feb
24
The Kiss
Marble sculpture
Auguste Rodin / Carved par Jean Turcan
H. 181,5 cm ; W. 112,5 cm ; D. 117 cm
The Kiss is a sculpture of an entwined couple, of which Auguste Rodin created as early as 1882 small versions in plaster, terracotta and bronze.
In 1888, the French government commissioned Rodin to realize the first large marble version of The Kiss, for the 1889 Paris Universal Exhibition. But Rodin will take almost ten years to deliver it.
This marble version appears for the first time at the Paris Salon (former name of the Salon of French Artists) in 1898. It is currently on display at the Musée Rodin in Paris.
What many people don’t know is that Rodin’s The Kiss, like a lot of the Rodin Museum’s works, was not sculpted by Rodin…
Feb
22
Café scene
Watercolor and gouache on paper by Raoul Dufy
Executed around 1934 – Artwork size : 50,8 x 66,8 cm
Sold £50,000 at Sotheby’s London on Feb 6, 2014
In 1926, while watching a little girl running on the dock of Honfleur, Raoul Dufy realizes that the mind records color faster than the outline. He will then dissociate the colors and the drawing. Dufy adds his drawing to large bands of horizontal or vertical colors, or to large colored spots.
Watercolor and gouache become more and more important after 1930. The “puddles of color” of the background are spread on a paper previously wet and stretched on a drawing board. When they are dry, he draws with a fine brush the various elements of the subject.
Feb
13
(Zoom on the self-portrait by Courbet)
The Desperate Man
Oil painting on canvas by Gustave Courbet
Artwork size : 45 x 54 cm, 1843-1845
Conseil Investissement Art BNP Paribas
The Desperate Man is a painting by the French painter Gustave Courbet. The artwork is a self-portrait of the artist. It is thought that he made this painting between 1843 and 1845, at the beginning of his installation in Paris. It shows him “desperate” but especially in full youth.
Courbet was very attached to this canvas since he took it with him into exile in Switzerland in 1873. A few years later, Dr. Paul Collin at the bedside of Courbet during his last days, describes the painter’s studio and, more particularly, “a painting representing Courbet with a desperate expression and that he had entitled Despair for this reason”.
The painting belongs to a private investment collection, but was exhibited at the Musée d’Orsay in 2007.
Feb
7
The bridge at Moret (Le pont de Moret)
Oil painting on canvas by Alfred Sisley, 1893
73 x 92 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Born in Paris in 1839, Alfred Sisley is a British artist painter and engraver, attached to the Impressionist movement and living and working mainly in France. He will be admitted to the Salon of French Artists in 1866, 1868 and 1870.
The pictorial language of Alfred Sisley has always been strongly in keeping with Impressionism, but he has also always shown his attachment to his first inspirers, Jean-Baptiste Corot and Charles-François Daubigny. Sisley is exclusively a landscape painter, one who, with Claude Monet, best sought and succeeded in expressing the most subtle nuances of nature in the Impressionist landscapes. His paintings show his keen interest in the colorful impressions of trees and buildings, and the changing play of light and clouds above the landscape.
Jul
16
[ click to zoom ] [ dessin en français ] [ dibujo en español ]
“On the road to holidays… and bullfights”
(Spanish-style bullfights = corridas de toros)
Pen and marker on paper, 2017
© Eric Bourdon
This drawing was inspired by the contrast between the awareness campaigns against the abandonment of pets on the roads to holidays, carried out by the animal welfare associations, and the festive torture of other animals, supported by the law and mostly funded by public money.
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. While empathy is stimulated on one side, it is reduced to nothingness on the other. Even more, one encourages not only to stay passive, but also to take a positive pleasure in the spectacle of another’s suffering.
Jan
30
It’s a most common question, especially since we discovered that Martin Heidegger, the ‘philosopher of authenticity’ was not only personally involved in Nazism, but his so-called ‘philosophy’ was essentially an intellectual (and highly sophisticated) phrasing of the Nazi ideology. The publication of his courses and lectures, writings in their original form, private letters and public statements, and a huge number of texts he wanted to be published only after his death, make this issue increasingly important.
See The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy
in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935 by Emmanuel Faye, Yale University Press, 2009.
INDIES Book of the Year Award
in the Philosophy category, by Foreword Magazine.
Jul
21
Celtic art & monsters coming to UK. Don’t panic, they’re not really ‘Celtic’…
2015/07/21 | by Eric Bourdon | Comment
Silver Gundestrup cauldron from northern Denmark© John Lee / The National Museum of Denmark
Source : From monsters to manga : golden age of art by the Celtic race that never was, by Maev Kennedy, 10 July 2015
Julia Farley, the London curator, said the museums hoped to explode the view that the Celts were a distinct race who kept moving west from eastern Europe until they ended up stranded to this day in Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
[…]
…the term “Celt” was used by the ancient Greeks to refer to anyone in Europe north of the Mediterranean. “The word Celt was used to describe what people were not – not Roman, not Viking, not Mediterranean, not metropolitan or imperial”, MacGregor [the British Museum’s director] said. “The name Celt is a badge of otherness.”
[…]
If they had no common language or shared bloodlines, what united the people for 2,500 years was art, spectacular pieces showing humans and animals tangled together like spaghetti – and an element of what Farley called “weirdness”, including helmets for both men and horses which transformed them into horned monsters.
Celts : British Museum, London, 24 September 2015 – 31 January 2016, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, 10 March – 25 September 2016
Jul
17
Western collections of Assyrian art more valuable than ever… thanks to ISIS
2015/07/17 | by Eric Bourdon | Comment
Source : British Museum could send loans worth £1bn to the Gulf
by Martin Bailey, 15 July 2015
‘The Banquet Scene’ ; gypsum wall panel relief fragment, 645BC-635BC
© The Trustees of the British Museum
Islamic State destroyed 50 complete panels at Nimrud in northern Iraq in April, which has made the remaining reliefs in museums, including the Louvre [Paris] and Metropolitan Museum of Art [New York], even more important. Although the £100m valuation may seem high for the British Museum’s Banquet Scene, Sotheby’s sold the Guennol Lioness (3000–2800BC) for $57m in 2007. The limestone figure of a lioness, believed to have been discovered near Baghdad, measures just 8cm in height.
[…]
The British Museum will receive a fee for the loans [to Abu Dhabi museum], and although the fee has not yet been finalised, it will certainly be millions of pounds a year. This will help the British Museum financially, which has been facing substantial cuts to its UK government funding. In real terms (after inflation) this represents a 30% reduction in grant-in-aid from 2010 to 2016.
Jul
13
In Athens, the ruins of the State and the market could reveal true art
2015/07/13 | by Eric Bourdon | Comment
George Vamvakidis and Stathis Panagoulis of The Breeder, Athens.
Photo: via artnet.com
“The art market is basically dead right now in Athens,” said George Vamvakidis in a telephone interview. Vamvakidis is a co-founder of The Breeder, a successful gallery that specialized in Greek contemporary artists and is known on the international art fair circuit. “The state is unable to fund the arts and the private collectors, the biggest ones, choose not to support the local market. So as a result almost every single commercial gallery of our generation has closed its doors.”
[…]
The upshot of the crisis, according to some of the dealers, is that it has caused something of a renaissance in the country. [Artist Dimitra] Vamiali said the crisis became “an inspirational turning point for many artists.” Vamvakidis said that artists are “liberated from the forces of the market” and for this reason Athens has become something of a creative hub because of the resultant creative energy and the low cost of living. “Artists that are working under those circumstances – who have the balls to produce work that is totally unconventional,” said Vamvakidis, “are producing really brave work.”
Full article here : Greek Art Dealers Tell Us How to Run a Gallery in Athens On 60 Euros A Day by Rozalia Jovanovic and Eileen Kinsella, July 10, 2015
