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Ozzy Osbourne's artwork with chimps goes up for auction
Ozzy Osbourne's artwork with chimps goes up for auction

BBC News

time2 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • BBC News

Ozzy Osbourne's artwork with chimps goes up for auction

If you're obsessed with Ozzy Osbourne, you might be tempted to purchase his latest quirky music legend has produced an abstract art collection with chimpanzees from Florida to raise funds for the animal sanctuary Save the canvases are going under the hammer at Omega Auctions in Newton-Le-Willows, Merseyside, with current bids sitting at more than £2,000 a artworks are signed by Ozzy and named after his songs and albums: Technical Ecstasy, Electric Funeral, Blizzard of Ozz, Tattooed Dancer and Paranoid. Ozzy painted acrylic base coats onto the canvases and then the apes at the sanctuary added their own brushstrokes. The auction house is offering art viewings by appointment on Monday before the auction closes on 17 July. "I paint because it gives me peace of mind, but I don't sell my paintings," Ozzy said."I've made an exception with these collaborations as it raises money for Save the Chimps, a sanctuary for hundreds of apes rescued from labs, roadside zoos and wildlife traffickers," he Osbourne said that the paintings would not only raise "much needed" funds for the sanctuary, but would promote its awareness to the public. The chimps enjoy taking part in a range of activities at the sanctuary in Florida, from food puzzles and foraging to pictures books and painting, Save the Chimps said."Painting is just one of many enrichment activities we offer our residents," director Dan Mathews said. Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.

Mary Corse Sets a Thrilling  Pace Exhibition In LA
Mary Corse Sets a Thrilling  Pace Exhibition In LA

Forbes

time5 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • Forbes

Mary Corse Sets a Thrilling Pace Exhibition In LA

Mary Corse, Pace Gallery LA, 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019 June 21 – August 16, 2025. Photography courtesy of Pace Gallery One of the most thrilling shows I've seen recently is Mary Corse at Pace Gallery LA on view through August 16, 2025. Corse, who recently turned 80, has been an LA artist most of her life, having attended Chouinard Art School (which became CalArts) in the early 1960s and living and working in Los Angeles ever since. At a time when so much contemporary art is figurative, and abstract work tends to the fantastical or psychedelic, Corse's new work reminds us of the rigor, discipline, and inquiry about art-making itself that is central to Corse's practice. The Pace LA show features many of Corse's Diamond shaped works which she has been exploring since 1965. The works are shaped canvases tilted to be diamonds rather than squares and whose surface extends beyond the edges concavely in such a way that, although they appear two dimensional, the works are actually three-dimensional. The canvases seem to float in front of the wall. These subtle shifts in how the work is presented and what draws our eye, ask us to consider what is painting? What is sculpture? Mary Corse, Pace Gallery LA, 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019 June 21 – August 16, 2025. Photography courtesy of Pace Gallery Corse's White Diamond paintings are a rigorous investigation of perception, color, and our own interactions with her work. Some of the Diamond series recall early Russian Constructivist work, Malevich in particular. In other of her works, such as her paintings that feature a reflective black stripe down the middle, it is as if the action and drama in the work have been reduced to a single strip, The ways in which our eye and mind behave when looking at her work, adds a further dimension to Corse's work. Corse's work has also investigated light, and her Pace presentation includes Corse's Halo Room, which is a light installation, in a room of its own that interacts with your presence and shadow as you approach it, and that is animated wirelessly by a Tesla coil (Tesla the scientist not the car). Many California artists rejected Minimalism as a New York, primarily male, art movement that espoused a cool impersonal aesthetic. Instead, several California artists turned to making works that investigated light, space, or were land art interventions and that often took advantage of materials and knowledge from California's Aerospace industry and institutions such as CalTech. Mary Corse, Pace Gallery LA, 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019 June 21 – August 16, 2025 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery Instead, Corse's work demonstrates that Minimalism can be personal, have drama, and can be rooted in California's special light. And that is as thrilling to ponder as it to see.

Evie Hone and Mainie Jellett: Two Irish artist friends who rewrote the rules of 20th century art
Evie Hone and Mainie Jellett: Two Irish artist friends who rewrote the rules of 20th century art

Irish Times

time28-06-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Irish Times

Evie Hone and Mainie Jellett: Two Irish artist friends who rewrote the rules of 20th century art

Confronted with a room of glorious cubist colour, you can almost get a sense of what it must have been like when Evie Hone and Mainie Jellett first held an exhibition together, 101 years ago. The pair had already been exhibiting in Paris and Jellett had stunned Irish audiences the year before, when her composition Decoration went on display in a group show at the Society of Dublin Painters. Now considered to be the first abstract cubist work shown in Ireland, Decoration exercised the pens, if not the critical faculties, of reviewers at the time. George (AE) Russell wrote of Jellett's 'subhuman art' and described her as succumbing to the 'artistic malaria' of cubism. The Irish Times published a photograph of Decoration alongside an odd-looking onion, under the headline ' Two freak pictures '. What was so upsetting? The inherent capacity of art to surprise and challenge is part of its power, and not everybody is comfortable with that. New ways of seeing have always tended to take a while to catch on. Just like impressionism before it, cubism was originally coined as a term of disparagement. READ MORE The Art of Friendship: a three-fold screen by Mainie Jellett. Photograph: National Gallery of Ireland On show now, as part of Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone: The Art of Friendship, at the National Gallery of Ireland , Decoration, while definitively abstract, doesn't seem quite so freakish after all. It clearly shows the influence of Jellett and Hone's tutor Albert Gleizes, who had set out his method of abstraction in a text, La Peinture et Ses Lois (Painting and Its Laws), published the year Decoration was made. In a series of diagrams, Gleizes demonstrated his theories of translation and rotation, by which he pursued his abstractions. The method was to distil an image into a set of geometric elements, then move and layer these to create the artwork. His goal was to get away from art as imitation, to create an expression of unspoken emotion – or, as he put it, art that makes 'intersections between known images of the natural world and unknown images that reside within intuition'. Gleizes wanted abstract art to lead to a new way of thinking. No wonder people were so dismayed. This is undoubtedly part of the reason for the aggressive response to Decoration's first exhibition. For many, the experience of being presented with something for which there are no easy words can be deeply unsettling, especially when emotion gets involved. But Jellett's painting does more. Decoration's debt to the shapes and structures of religious art is clear, with blue and gold echoes of altarpieces and a haunting of the shapes of a Madonna and child, as she takes Gleizes's strict system and lets a little connection to the more easily perceived world back in, strengthening both in the process. The Art of Friendship: Achill Horses, by Mainie Jelllett. Photograph: National Gallery of Ireland The Art of Friendship: Daniel in the Lions' Den, by Evie Hone. Photograph © Geraldine Hone, Kate Hone and the FNCI/National Gallery of Ireland The works in The Art of Friendship continue in this vein: there are seascapes, landscapes, horses and a strikingly rich vein of religious-inspired work, all bringing Hone and Jellett back together in a shared exhibition for the first time in a century. Through it we discover the capacity their art retains to astonish. Both born in Dublin, to well-to-do families, the pair had met in 1917 in London, as students of Walter Sickert at Westminster School of Art. By 1921 Jellett had followed her friend to Paris, to study with André Lhote . A cubist painter, Lhote was a teacher with an eclectic mix of students, including Tamara de Lempicka, Elizabeth Rivers and Henri Cartier-Bresson . Hone and Jellett didn't stay long, instead persuading Gleizes to take them on later that year. Gleizes didn't typically accept students, so some persistence was involved, but it was a fruitful relationship of mutual respect, and Gleizes's own work and ideas would come to be influenced by theirs in return. The critical response to Hone and Jellett's two-person show in 1924 was much more nuanced than the explosions of derision that had greeted Decoration a year earlier. The Freeman's Journal reviewer was probably the most accurate, writing: 'A little introspection before condemning these pictures or dismissing them as inconsequential things will go a long way to a finer understanding of them, and incidentally, of one's self.' The Art of Friendship: A Landscape with a Tree, by Evie Hone. Photograph © Geraldine Hone, Kate Hone and the FNCI/National Gallery of Ireland The Art of Friendship: The Virgin of Éire, by Mainie Jellett. Photograph: National Gallery of Ireland That remains true 100 years later, in art as well as life. It reaches back to Gleizes's theory that abstract art can expand the limits of our thinking while giving us a window into the workings of our own thoughts and emotions. This doesn't make it better than representational art, just different, and Hone and Jellett would continue to paint representational work throughout their lives. Still, exploring the carefully restrained storms of colour and line in the first space of the National Gallery's magnificent exhibition, it is tempting to look for an origin. Where had these artists come from? What were their early works like? Were clues to their cubism embedded, say, in art from their time in London? Or earlier, when Jellett had received art lessons from Elizabeth Yeats , and then at Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, and Hone had been a day student at the National Gallery of Ireland? Brendan Rooney, who has curated the exhibition with his colleague Niamh MacNally, says that an imbalance in the pair's surviving early work influenced their decision to start with the full impact of that glorious burst of cubist colour. So much less of Hone's early work is today available. It is a small niggle but one that lingers through the exhibition, as a knowledge of Jellett's precubist work, from the 1991 show Mainie Jellett, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, lent the brilliant sense of an artist searching for the limits of picture making. The Art of Friendship: The Cock and Pot, commonly known as The Betrayal, by Evie Hone. Photograph © Geraldine Hone, Kate Hone and the FNCI/National Gallery of Ireland The Art of Friendship: Resurrection, by Evie Hone. Photograph © Geraldine Hone, Kate Hone and the FNCI/National Gallery of Ireland Hone was the same, and while initially the pair's work was intriguingly similar, as the exhibition demonstrates, it soon diverged. Both were influenced by their religious convictions, as their cubism became a way to express some of their sense of the ineffable mysteries of the divine. Born Protestants, they had a fascination with medieval and renaissance religious art that was more Catholic in affect, and Hone would go on to convert to that latter religion later in life. By 1927 The Irish Times was describing Jellett as 'the only serious exponent in this country of the ultra-modernist school of painting.' The writer might have said 'in these islands', as Jellett was also years ahead of her celebrated UK counterpart Ben Nicholson. This demonstrates that Dublin in the 1920s and 1930s was not entirely the backward-looking place that later histories might like to imply. Ireland at the time was by no means a feminist paradise, but the young Irish Republic wasn't entirely a swamp of misogyny. That set in harder, later. Instead, the early ideals of the new State included space for the arts and culture, and for women in articulating the place of Ireland in the world. Jellett's The Bathers was selected to represent Ireland in the 1928 Olympics, back when there was a category for artworks depicting sports. In 1937 the government of Éamon de Valera commissioned Jellett to create murals for the Ireland pavilion at the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow in 1938, while Hone's stained glass My Four Green Fields, which was commissioned for the 1939 New York World's Fair, now hangs in the Department of the Taoiseach in Government Buildings in Dublin. Still, shocking headlines are always, unfortunately, preferable. Take the Guardian's coverage of the current exhibition, with its headline ''Freak pictures': Ireland's art revolutionaries who were treated so badly one fled to a nunnery.' The Art of Friendship: Resurrection, by Evie Hone. Photograph © Geraldine Hone, Kate Hone and the FNCI/National Gallery of Ireland In truth, Hone did enter a convent in Cornwall as a postulant in the year after the pair's joint exhibition, but was she run out of town by opprobrium, as the Guardian suggests? Or was it, as is more likely, that the quieter and more retiring of the pair, who had experienced a life of ill health after contracting polio at the age of 12, had had enough of public life for a while? Either way, it didn't last, and in 1927 Jellett went over to collect her. The pair went on to travel together, visiting Gleizes, painting and exhibiting. Jellett explored beyond the canvas, with screens, designs for carpets, advertising posters and theatre sets. Hone turned to stained glass. Originally rejected by Sarah Purser , when she applied to join An Túr Gloine – the Glass Tower, Purser's studio – in 1932, Hone went on to triumph in the field. [ Distinctively Irish, creatively modern: Roy Foster on Sarah Purser, the most successful portrait painter of her day Opens in new window ] Her major masterpiece is, sadly, not on general view unless you happen to be a student at Eton College , the English public school, where her East Window was made between 1949 and 1952. Sketches and studies for this, and other of her works, are shown in a dedicated space in this exhibition, and it is a joy to see the intricacies of her art at eye level. The Art of Friendship: the East Window at Eton College chapel, by Evie Hone. Photograph © Geraldine Hone, Kate Hone and the FNCI/National Gallery of Ireland The Art of Friendship: Heads of Two Apostles, by Evie Hone. Photograph © Geraldine Hone, Kate Hone and the FNCI/National Gallery of Ireland Some, such as Heads of Two Apostles, and Head of Christ (a study for the Eton window) show the influence of Georges Rouault, but their power belongs entirely to Hone. In the final room, representation comes back into the picture. The pair were always curious, always exploring, and I'm reminded of the arc of Picasso's career, where it is obvious that his restless genius was less concerned with dedication to form than to the enigmas of painting itself. Picasso's own work will be on show at the National Gallery later this year, when From the Studio opens, in October. Resisting the clumsy idea that abstract art must be superior because it can be difficult, this exhibition likewise demonstrates the power of a pair of artists who were intrigued by what imagemaking can do. Paintings of woodlands at Marlay, where Hone spent the final years of her life, are wonderfully mysterious, and there is also a lovely watercolour by her of a country house in St-Rémy-de-Provence that would have made Matisse very happy had he made it. The Art of Friendship: Snow at Marlay, by Evie Hone. Photograph: Geraldine Hone, Kate Hone and the FNCI/National Gallery of Ireland Dedicated to their work, Hone and Jellett continued to promote modernism in Ireland, through exhibition and also through their support of a younger generation of artists, including Louis le Brocquy, who would speak with fondness of them. They were founder members of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, and while Jellett was by nature more forceful, they both worked to spread the word on new ways of seeing. They were also entirely collegiate in their outlook, bringing people together no matter their own artistic styles or leanings. [ Caravaggio: The 'boozing, whoring, brawling and bisexual bad boy of baroque' Opens in new window ] Hone and Jellett remained friends throughout their lives. Hone was the last person to sit with Jellett on the evening before she died, from cancer, aged just 46, in 1944. And when Hone died, 11 years later, she left many of her own collection of Jellett's works to the State. Her bequest included Decoration, now described by the gallery's curators as arguably the most significant modernist painting in the history of Irish art. It is a powerful legacy. Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone: The Art of Friendship is at the National Gallery of Ireland , in Dublin, until August 10th

17-year-old artist embraces heritage through her abstract paintings
17-year-old artist embraces heritage through her abstract paintings

Free Malaysia Today

time23-06-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Free Malaysia Today

17-year-old artist embraces heritage through her abstract paintings

17-year-old artist Danya Adriana credits her mum for being her biggest supporter. (Danya Adriana pic) KAJANG : While many of her peers are immersed in the digital world, one secondary-school student has chosen a different path – using canvas and colour to express herself and explore her cultural roots. At only 17, Danya Adriana Feri Pito Manda is making a name for herself in the local art scene as a young painter who infuses abstract art with the richness of Malay culture, offering a refreshing blend of tradition and contemporary styles. Her love for art began early: encouraged by her family, especially her mother, Danya's passion took shape at age 12, when she took part in art competitions and workshops. 'My family, particularly my mother, has always supported me. That unwavering encouragement is what drives me to keep creating to this day,' she told Bernama at her home in Kajang. Danya experiments with textures, layers and colours inspired by nature. Shades of blue and green – symbols of calm and a connection to the natural world – frequently dominate her work. For her, the abstract style offers freedom, a way to express emotions and ideas without being confined to realistic forms. At the same time, her paintings celebrate Malay cultural heritage through subtle motifs and imagery. 'I'm especially drawn to traditional Malay designs, like the patterns on wau, batik, and the elegance of old Malay architecture. Malaysia's rich flora and fauna also inspire me,' she said. Danya often experiments with textures, layers and colours inspired by nature, with shades of green and blue dominating her work. (Danya Adriana pic) 'These elements are woven into my work through a modern abstract approach, with blue and green as my signature colours. They evoke a sense of calm and harmony with nature.' While she has yet to pursue formal art training, the Sekolah Menengah Khir Johari student is undeterred. She takes her craft seriously and has proven that age – or a lack of credentials – need not be a barrier to creative success. She also brushes aside negative perceptions about young artists, choosing instead to focus on her growth. In fact, Danya's talent has gained recognition since she joined Galeri Art Market Malaysia – a platform that showcases emerging artists to a wider audience – five years ago. Last year, she was commissioned to produce three large-scale pieces for the interiors of the newly opened Moxy Hotel Kuala Lumpur Chinatown, which a project she completed earlier this year. Her works can also be found in branches of Hospital Aurelius in Nilai, Pahang and Kedah, and are owned by former tourism deputy minister Bakhtiar Wan Chik. An admirer of surrealist icon Salvador Dalí and Malaysian children's book illustrator Yusof Gajah, Danya is balancing her artistic journey with preparations for this year's SPM examinations. Danya's artwork graces the walls of Moxy Hotel KL Chinatown and branches of Hospital Aurelius. (Danya Adriana pic) Looking ahead, this teen artist dreams of opening her own studio, a space wherein she can not only create but also foster a sense of community. 'I want it to be a platform for education, so more people can explore art in depth. I also hope to merge art with economics and business, to help young artists become more independent and professional,' she said. Indeed, Danya is helping to reshape how the next generation sees art: as a meaningful, professional field that plays a vital role in shaping a creative, culturally aware society.

‘If there's a rule, he tries to break it': the explosively colourful textiles of Sam Gilliam
‘If there's a rule, he tries to break it': the explosively colourful textiles of Sam Gilliam

The Guardian

time20-06-2025

  • Entertainment
  • The Guardian

‘If there's a rule, he tries to break it': the explosively colourful textiles of Sam Gilliam

Sam Gilliam's artistic life was bookended by success against the odds. In 1972, he became the first Black artist to represent the US at the world's most prestigious art festival, the Venice Biennale. He had overcome poverty and prejudice in the south to study art at one of the first desegregated universities, and, after settling in Washington, was hailed as a radical innovator within the group of abstract painters dubbed the Color School. Pushing his medium in new sculptural directions, he broke convention by taking his canvases off their wooden stretchers. His best-known colour-drenched works have an improvisatory quality, never installed the same way twice, whether they're draped on the wall or hung tent-like from the ceiling. When the art world turned away from abstraction in the following decades, however, he was all but forgotten. He was approaching 80 in 2012 when the young art star Rashid Johnson championed his work, curating an exhibition that led to a fresh slate of big international shows and museum recognition. Yet as Gilliam said in an interview two years before his death in 2022, in art, 'Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But I've never lost entirely. We just keep on keeping on.' Sewing Fields, a new exhibition featuring unseen work from Gilliam's residency at the Ballinglen Art Foundation on the west coast of Ireland in 1993, reveals how he never stopped making and innovating. 'He was so prolific,' says the show's co-curator, Mary Cremin. 'There's still a huge amount of his work that's never been shown.' One of the biggest surprises is that he worked in Ireland at all. The isolated rural location with its sea cliffs and rolling hills must have been a major change for an artist who spent his life in cosmopolitan Washington's creative community. He wasn't afraid of mixing things up, though. Prohibited from flying across the Atlantic with petrol-based paints, he was compelled to paint, print and dye materials in his Washington studio in advance, and pursue new processes in Ireland. It resulted in a fresh approach with cut-up collaged fragments of paintings including screen-printed cloth and paper and material thick with paint. 'Needs must is the mother of invention,' says the curator. It was the experience of being captivated by laundry billowing on a line that first led Gilliam to set the canvas free from wooden stretchers to create his characteristic draped works. His approach to painting was expansive, underlining art's connection to lowly cloth while nodding to histories of Black female labour. In Ireland, he worked with a seamstress to stitch his layered compositions of collaged painted fabrics with distinct zigzagging lines of thread. 'He supposedly had six sewing machines in his Ballinglen studio,' says Cremin. She points out that Ireland's light and unpredictable weather fed into Gilliam's explosive use of colour, too. 'The sky changes, the seasons change in a single day,' says Cremin. 'In these works, the tone changes all the time.' One reason given for Gilliam's art-world wilderness years is that, during the rise of identity politics in the 1980s, his work didn't foreground Black experience. Today, it's his commitment to constant experimentation within his medium that the curator sees as crucial to his legacy for younger artists. Says Cremin: 'If there's a rule, he tries to break it.' Folded Cottage II, 1993This kickstarted the experimental body of work Gilliam produced on Ireland's west coast and, as the title suggests, it took formal inspiration from its coastal dwellings. There're all kinds of painterly techniques on the fragments he collaged, including stained and splashed paint, as well as his signature method of raking lines in pigment. Doonfeeny Lower, 1994Gilliam pushed painting into sculptural territory with works that spoke to the human body and the world beyond the gallery. With its loops of fabric across its top edge, this collaged painting looks almost wearable – or like curtains. The stitched lines of thread that hold the composition together crisscross like pencil marks. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Count on Us, 2008This dyed nylon trio is typical of Gilliam's key move as an artist: draped paintings that freed the fabric support from its traditional wooden stretcher. The buoyant palette channels the jubilation felt when Obama was elected in 2008. As the co-curator Mary Cremin points out, it's hard not to wonder what the Washington-based artist would have made of the current president. Silhouette/Template, 1994This is one of many later works that would be inspired by Gilliam's time in Ireland. Rippling across the wall like a kite or rolling hills, it's testament to the improvisatory nature of his work, in terms of the painting itself, and how it might change each time it's hung. 'It's unpredictable,' says Cremin. Pages and Echoes #8, 1998From primary hued paint spatters to deep moody mauves, this work pops with contrasting textures and tones. The handmade printed paper among the painted fabric, shows the influence of his sometime collaborator, the revered printmaker William Weege. Sewing Fields is at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, to 25 January.

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