Artist Textiles: Picasso to Warhol

Last weekend, Josh and I went to Tilburg to see the TextielMuseum, a Dutch museum dedicated to the the art of textiles, and set in an old textile factory.

The best part was their featured exhibit called Artist Textiles: Picasso to Warhol, which featured 20th century artists contributing to textile designs. I think my grandma would have especially loved it.

It was a wonderful collection, with artists such as Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, and Raoul Dufy.

I loved how a lot of the prints looked like they came straight from Anthropologie – except so much better. I found it all really inspiring as an illustrator.

My favorite of the collection had to be the Zandra Rhodes pieces, which were featured right alongside the more notable pop artist Andy Warhol. So 60s and psychedelic but I would still wear this stuff, even today. I love those lipstick prints, don't you?

*Photos by me, and from TextielMuseum.nl 

Proto Knot

By Lynda Benglis, 1971

Flying Freedom, Looking Forward

Laura McKellar's mixed-media embroideries are really beautiful, especially the two above, as I am looking forward and finding new freedom in life. 

Also, I really need to try my hand at embroidery.

I want

By Louise Bourgeois, who has kind of become my hero of late.

Mary Fedden

Mary Fedden was a British artist who died earlier this year at age 96... 

I love her work. And she was adorable.

Kitchen

Love the impressionistic simplicity of this piece by Bella Foster.

To Glue

collage (From the French: à coller, to glue)

These are mostly found from my mom's Pinterest, by the way.

top to bottom: artist unknown; Margaret Suchland; Luci Everett; Felicia P. Dadak; Paula Mills

A Child's Garden of Verses

Illustration by Jessie Wilcox Smith for Robert Louis Stevenson's collection of poetry.

Agnes Martin

Ron Robertson

When I was 17, I got the opportunity to do a summer internship with Santa Barbara assemblage artist Ron Robertson in his home studio. I learned a lot about art and the process of creating it, while smelling Ron's rank rolled cigarettes and listening to his weird government conspiracy theories. For some reason Ron popped into my head this morning, and so I thought I'd share some of his awesome pieces or art. I still really love mixed media art, and will definitely be doing more in the future.

Bleu

I really, really like this. It's by Fumi Koike (via Miss Moss). 

 Food illustration is definitely on my to-do list!

Central Park

By Bella Foster

Gentlewoman

Very inspired by this piece by Australian artist Caitlin Shearer.

Mrs. Dalloway?

Doesn't this painting remind you of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway? "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." It's called "A New Day," by British painter William Henry Margetson (he was alive around the same time Woolf was!). And speaking of "new day," today is brilliantly clear and sunny... I feel a bit revived.

Style + Portrait of a Lady

Miss Elsie Palmer, John Singer Sargent, (1856-1925), / Eleonora, by Stockholm Streetstyle




Model Laura Bailey, September 2011 / 1570s A Lady in a Fur Wrap, by El Greco (1541-1614)




Alfred Agache, French (1843-1915) / Monica, Stark St., Downtown Portland

Women's History Month: Mary Cassatt

Here's to strong-willed visionaries and talents like Mary Cassatt, American painter.

Cassatt grew up in an environment that viewed travel as integral to education; she spent five years in Europe and visited many of the capitals, including London, Paris, and Berlin. While abroad she learned German and French and had her first lessons in drawing and music.

Though her family objected to her becoming a professional artist, Cassatt began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia at the early age of 15. Part of her parents' concern may have been Cassatt’s exposure to feminist ideas and the bohemian behavior of some of the male students. Although about 20 percent of the students were female, most viewed art as a socially valuable skill; few of them were determined, as Cassatt was, to make art their career.

Impatient with the slow pace of instruction and the patronizing attitude of the male students and teachers, she decided to study the old masters on her own. She later said, “There was no teaching” at the Academy. Female students could not use live models and the principal training was primarily drawing from casts.

Cassatt decided to end her studies (at that time, no degree was granted). After overcoming her father’s objections, she moved to Paris in 1866, with her mother and family friends acting as chaperones. Since women could not yet attend the École des Beaux-Arts, she applied to study privately with masters from the school and was accepted to study with Jean-Léon Gérôme, a highly regarded teacher known for his hyper-realistic technique and his depiction of exotic subjects. Cassatt augmented her artistic training with daily copying in the Louvre (she obtained the required permit, which was necessary to control the “copyists,” usually low-paid women who daily filled the museum to paint copies for sale). The museum also served as a social meeting place for Frenchmen and American female students who, like Cassatt, were not allowed to attend cafes where the avant-garde socialized.

In 1868, one of her paintings, A Mandoline Player, was accepted for the first time by the selection jury for the Paris Salon. Cassatt saw that works by female artists were often dismissed with contempt unless the artist had a friend or protector on the jury, and she would not flirt with jurors to curry favor.

Cassatt traveled to Chicago to try her luck at establishing herself as an artist, but lost some of her early paintings in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

She was invited by Edgar Degas to show her works with the Impressionists, a group that had begun their own series of independent exhibitions in 1874 with much attendant notoriety. She had strong feelings for Degas but learned not to expect too much from his fickle and temperamental nature. Also, Mary had decided early in life that marriage would be incompatible with her career.

In recognition of Cassatt's contributions to the arts, France awarded her the Légion d'honneur in 1904.

Diagnosed with diabetes, rheumatism, neuralgia, and cataracts in 1911, Cassatt did not slow down, but after 1914 she was forced to stop painting as she became almost blind. Nonetheless, she took up the cause of women's suffrage, and in 1915, she showed 18 works in an exhibition supporting the movement.

Her paintings have sold for as much as $2.9 million.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cassatt

Illustrated List

I love this illustrated packing list by artist Adolf Konrad. It's featured in a great book I received for Christmas called Lists (To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art). I love the arrows, plus signs, and art supplies.

Modigliani + Today's Street Style

Lunia Czechowska, 1918

Blue Eyes (Portrait of Madame Jeanne Hébuterne), 1917

Madame Zborowska With Clasped Hands, c. 1917


All photos by Vanessa Jackman

Style + Art Nouveau

"Portrait of Eugenia Primavesi," Gustav Klimt, 1913

"Spring," Alfons Mucha, 1896

"Nestle's Swiss Milk," Theophile Alexandre Steinlen, 1895