thegallerystarhill

Damien Hirst

2012-01-16T15:44:00.003+08:00

It has been awhile since I last post on art reading. I will start being more consistent this year after all the "unexpected" events of last year, here is the first.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/arts/design/damien-hirsts

I have been working hard- Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2011-12-24T14:14:00.001+08:00

We are open

2011-12-17T12:11:00.003+08:00

We are now officially open at S12, Pamper Floor, Starhill Gallery. Our new tel no is 018 3310 782 Please visit us, we are not in top condition yet but good enough to receive guests.

Now is every

2011-08-07T12:32:00.009+08:00

Cheng Thak Malacca street Foo Cheong Kam Cheng Wong Perng Fey September woods Mat Jamil Faizal Blue Lake Tuck Wai City Project Soon Lai Wai Happy together Kim Ng City Dwellers Eston Tan Human in Nature Compact by Fauzul

"Now is every" is an exhibition of my representing artists recent works. " What is the new works by so and so artist ? " This is the kind of question that I have been asked often. So for this year, I decide to put up an exhibition with no theme but showing the latest works by my representing artists so as to answer the question in one go! I find it extremely challenging to be able to get my artists to be " on time " so this exhibition has fallen behind time so as to say, but no worry, here it is and I think it is still a strong collection of works.

Maroc- ready for an experience of Morocco

2011-07-07T17:52:00.006+08:00

Well, the exhibition is ready. Jeffry the Photographer is happy and I am happy too. I hope you will truly have a real Moroccan experience! See you.

"Maroc" by Jeffry Lim

2011-06-27T13:25:00.007+08:00

Jeffry Lim is a friend and I am most delighted to host this special exhibition for him at my gallery.

Photo Exhibition Info:

Jeffry Lim is showcasing his personal collections of artistic photographs on Morocco’s arts, culture and selected unique destinations at The Gallery, Kuala Lumpur from 11^th -24^th July 2011. Photos are printed on imported large format ‘Lyve Canvas’ for fine art use, which meets the Archival Standards set forth by Fine Art Trade Guild. They come in limited copies, which are up for sales.

All guests are welcome to view this exclusive exhibition entitled “Maroc” at the following venue and date:

Venue

The Gallery@ Starhill

FF 06 Muse Floor

Starhill Gallery

181,Jalan Bukit BIntang

Time: 10:00am – 9:00pm

Preview Sessions

§ Date: 9^th July 2011 (Private Preview, For Invited Guests Only)

§ Date: 10^th July 2011 (Jeffry & Friends Session, For Invited Guests Only)

§ Date: 11t^h - 24^th July 2011 (Public Exhibition)

About Maroc:

‘Maroc’ in French, which refers to Morocco features several series of unique arts, culture and scenic landscapes in Morocco captured through lens by Professional Photographer, Jeffry Lim. The uniqueness of Morocco’s natural beauty inspired him to capture an interesting mix of a vast geographical landscape comprising of mountain terrains, river, valleys, desert, ocean, countryside and ancient historical cities where one can rarely see in a single country. Some of the interesting shots included the Great Sahara on North Africa, one of the world’s largest tanneries located in the mysterious city called Fes and the infamous cascading blue town in Chefchaouen. It was his childhood dream to visit the largest tannery and the Sahara.

As a traveller, he was able to experience the rich heritage and cultures, derived from the mix influences of Berbers, Arabs, and Jews to Spanish and Portuguese.

He visited the entire country on a rented car. The self-drive experience was truly rewarding for him despite having to be extra careful in some areas. The more places he explored, the better he understood how blessed we are.

Artist translates passion for planes, bikes and cars into artworks

2011-04-22T11:09:00.000+08:00

If you are yet to make it to Raduan's Signature, do come and view, this is a good and strong collection of his most recent works. Artist translates passion for planes, bikes and cars into artworks

2011-04-12T11:31:00.001+08:00

Signature- Raduan Man

2011-04-07T12:28:00.004+08:00

I often think one of the best part of my job is to go through the process of putting an exhibition together. I love the urgency of the matter, chasing artist to deliver paintings on time, the printer to finish printing the catalogue, and the installer to be here on time to put all together. The final outcome is exciting and satisfying. I hope you enjoy looking at these photos.

2011-03-31T10:49:00.002+08:00

These are some of the interesting works in the exhibition.

you are invited, Raduan Man Exhibition

2011-03-31T10:43:00.001+08:00

please come and view this exciting exhibition.

First exhibition for 2011-Raduan Man

2011-03-09T12:03:00.003+08:00

Some images of his works for the exhibition for a start.

The Gallery @ Starhill is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Raduan Man -“Signature”. This is his fifth (5) solo exhibition. This exhibition includes 19 works by Raduan Man.

The paintings included in “ Signature ” explore Raduan skilful technique in print making. Using carving on wood and later transfer onto canvas and jute. He is obsessed with pure and basic forms, his works consists of his dreams, strength and self-belief and he uses man-made machines or mechanical objects of cars, airplanes, time-pieces and others are his subject matter.

Born in 1978, he grew up in Pahang, Malaysia. He studied at the Universiti Teknology Mara and obtained his Bachelor of Design - Fine arts in 2000. .He then continued another year at the Universiti Teknologi Mara obtaining his Bachelor of Fine Arts ( print making ) with honours in 2001

His quest for learning brought him to the University of Wolverhampton, UK and he obtained his MA ( painting ) in 2003. He continue to study at the Camberwell School of Art University of the Arts London and obtained his MA ( print making ) in 2006.

2011, a bright new year.

2011-01-24T19:46:00.001+08:00

Happy new year! I have not been very in blogging lately, and here I would like to wish everyone a very Happy New Year! I have started the new year with some changes in mind, this year I am planning to do a little more traveling. So, one of the first thing I did was to fly to Singapore for the inauguration of ArtStage 2011. I flew in and out of Singapore on the same day, and coming back not greatly impressed but appreciated the effort. Typically of Singapore, the exhibition seem to me to be so "controlled" and "lifeless", it lacked the sense of pulse and instead gave me a sense of heaviness. This is my personal experience. I am posting some photos that I took at Artstage to share with you. Hope you enjoy them.

- Posted by The Gallery@Starhill

Location:The Gallery @ Starhill

Young fine art graduates and students' works

2010-11-16T18:38:00.004+08:00

We have decided to give the young artists a chance to sell their works for our first ever Grand Sale in Starhill. The works are by young graduates ( less than 5 years ) and students of fine arts. I am promising you that the works are fantastic but is worth having a look. Furthermore, the prices are really really good all below RM 1000. Please visit us .

All ready for your viewing

2010-10-22T19:28:00.003+08:00

Hard and soft, life and death, light and heavy, bright and dark, renewal and decay- the balance of order permeates through Alex's paintings. His paintings are a window to a re-created order, an utopia shaped from reality and imagination, and his rock parables in his art also parallel a phase of stability and composure in his life as he approaches his 60th year next year. Kok Chuen

Alex Ong Solo on the 24th Ocotber 2010

2010-10-07T18:15:00.002+08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWGA3maBLX4 youtube for your viewing pleasure.

more pics

2010-10-03T13:41:00.003+08:00

Alex Ong Solo on the 24th Ocotber 2010, please come.

2010-10-03T13:31:00.003+08:00

Alex Ong is a very fine watercolor artist, one the best in this field. This exhibition is special, he said it. It is a daring departure from his normal safe composition, there is a huge area of intriguing ideas behind this body of works. I hope you will be pleased and surprised by what you see. Come and view this exhibition in October, beginning from the 24th.

The end of the three month long Art Festival

2010-10-03T13:19:00.005+08:00

Dinner Six winners Star fishes for auction for Reef Check Malaysian. Kind hearts did their parts in painting and donating their work of art. My wonderful co workers who helped me everyday. The entrance to the Gala night. Me getting ready for the night.

A Boat exhibition by Eric Quah ready for your viewing.

2010-09-01T17:44:00.004+08:00

A Boat is Eric Quah's 43 rd solo exhibition. It is a refreshing body of works.

Tempo Exhibition ready for your viewing.

2010-09-01T17:31:00.007+08:00

Eric Quah's 43 th solo exhibition - " A Boat "

2010-08-30T16:34:00.007+08:00

It is with great delight that we present to you Eric's Quah 43th Solo exhibition opening on the 4th September with an art talk by him on his experience in making " A Boat". A Boat 1 A Boat in landscape 1 A Boat in landscape 3 A Boat 2 A Boat 3 A Boat 4 A Boat 5 A Boat 6 A Boat 7 A Boat 9 Voyage 17 Voyage 11 Voyage 22 Voyage 13 I went to Penang to preview these wonderfully executed body of works and I must say that I am truly impressed and happy and definitely recommend to anyone who like Eric's style to make time to drop by and be enthralled by these excellent paintings.

Invitation to a special day- opening for Tempo Exhibition

2010-08-30T15:17:00.008+08:00

My invitation to all please come and join us for a special day on the 4th September 2010 starting at 6 pm. Suhaimi Ting Cho Chien Khoo Sui Hoe A view of the exhibition Muthalib Man Raduan Man Kim Ng Hamdan Fauzul Gan Chin Lee Wong Pergn Fey

August Exhibition

2010-07-26T16:08:00.002+08:00

I am excited and anticipate unexpected result from these two exhibitions. Breakthrough is unplanned but I am very please to be able to help these young young artists to do their bit in their first step to their career. Please do come if you are reading this blog. Tempo is part of our annual exhibition in conjunction with the Art Festival in Starhill Gallery. Some new artists and I have not seem most of their works for this exhibition, anxiously waiting to be surprise. Come all, will see you.

Relic opening

2010-07-09T20:02:00.001+08:00

Please come to join us tomorrow 10th July @ 6 pm .

National Gallery Invites Clive Head and Ben Johnson for Contemporary Display

2010-07-07T19:15:00.000+08:00

I really enjoy reading this article, click on the link and I think you will like it too. National Gallery Invites Clive Head and Ben Johnson for Contemporary Display

2010-07-05T19:28:00.000+08:00

Please drop by and join us for the opening reception of Relic.

VAA Star Hill Gallery 2010

2010-06-14T14:22:00.004+08:00

VAA ( Visual Arts Award ) by Star Hill Gallery 2010 http://www.starhillgallery.com/vaa/

When I was talking to a respected artist about organizing VAA, the challenge was throw at me as to what is the different between VAA and other art competition. This question stuck with me for a few days and challenge me for an answer.
Being one who is passionate about whatever I do, I settled for this answer:

" VAA will be different because we will be looking for works which embodied the quality of good art- original, thoughtful, skillful and reflect the time we live in now."

Now I will look forward to entrants which will inspire us!

Relic

2010-06-14T13:59:00.005+08:00

Eston's Sing Sing Song @ Vienna Eston's Sing Sing Son @ Vienna Mim"s Rock I Mim and Eston at the studio

MIM's thought:

Having an interest in the natural beauty of geological formations, this is the initial painting series depicting images of the rock formations on Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia. The rocks consist of intrusive granites of Late Cambrian Age, C 570 million ago.Their shapes have been formed by the erosion of wind and rain.

The main concerns for these intimate paintings are their compositional structure, color and texture. The textured "grainy" surface of the pictures was achieved by using many layers of paint.

"Relic" is the title of a poem by Englishman, Ted Hughes, the concept being of something that has survived the ravages of time, dealt by either natural or human forces.

Having attended drawing classes, and been a member of the Brandling Street

Artists Group in Sydney, Australia, I was keen to continue practicing art after arriving in Malaysia three years ago.

After having the good fortune to meet Chin Chin Liew, owner of The Gallery

@ Star Hill, I asked her about the possibility of sharing studio space with an

artist, working in KL.

Chin Chin approached Eston Tan, who agreed to meet with me and perhaps consider my request, based on seeing and approving of what work I had to show him.

Mr. Tan then generously consented to allow me to share studio space with him, allowing me a working environment and the benefit of his opinions and encouragement. My part in this exhibition is very much as "Work In Progress", representing only

"The Story So Far".

It is no coincidence that I get to know these two lovely friends, it is even more heart warming to witness how friendship develops over time. Leaving something in the hearts that will build up each other is good.

First VAA in Malaysia

2010-06-11T19:31:00.004+08:00

First VAA in Malaysia.

Calling and challenging all young Malaysian creative visual artists.

Check this out :http://www.starhillgallery.com/vaa/

I know I am going to get very busy, the time has come and I will see how I will enjoy this exciting moment .

Loriann Bellissimo's artworks display at Ligne Roset

2010-05-27T19:57:00.003+08:00

I was happy to have the opportunity to work work with Ligne Roset the wonderful furniture outlet on the same floor to put up Loriann's artworks. It looks fantastic.

Back to normal before the big bang

2010-05-27T19:38:00.004+08:00

Looking into Space 1 Space 1- white space with exciting mixture of paintings and sculpture. Another view of Space 1 This is what you will see as you enter to Space 2 A mix of paintings and sculpture of different medium . Nicely set with interesting paintings. Entrance to Space 2 The Space 3 window. A long wall of paintings Eng Tay's corner

Reading

2010-05-17T20:11:00.003+08:00

Today has been interesting, I have the opportunity to talked at length with one of Kuala Lumpur mid career artist who is full of enthusiasm in his pursue of his art, ever searching and seeking to reach the next level in his art making; spoke happily with two prominent art collectors and ended with reading the following article which greatly inspired me.

HuffPost New York

NEW YORK — Jasper Johns' seminal work "Flag" from the collection of the late best-selling author Michael Crichton sold for $28.6 million at a New York City auction Tuesday, an auction record for the artist.

Christie's said the work was purchased by an American art dealer during high-spirited bidding Tuesday night by phone and in the room. There were four bidders for the work, which took two minutes to sell, Christie's said.

The previous Johns' auction record was $17.4 million for "Figure 4," in 2007.

"This fabulous painting is a tribute to the great collector Michael Crichton who showed us all how to enjoy and collect art for future generations," Brett Gorvy, international co-head of post war and contemporary art at Christie's, said in an e-mail.

"Flag" was the crown jewel of Crichton's collection.

The popular writer of such blockbuster thrillers as "Jurassic Park," "The Andromeda Strain" and the TV series "ER" died in 2008. He was a passionate art collector, leaving a 20th century art trove of some of pop art's best known artists, including Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Jeff Koons and Pablo Picasso, among others.

The sale featured 31 pieces, which sold for $93.3 million. Another 117 works from the collection will be sold Wednesday as part of Christie's post war and contemporary art sale.

Christie's catalog called "Flag" "one of the greatest icons of modern art alongside Picasso's 'Guernica' and Andy Warhol's 'Marilyn.'"

A 1960 encaustic and paper collage rendition of the stars and stripes, Crichton bought it from Johns in 1973 and hung it in his Beverly Hills bedroom. It has been exhibited only once for a pop art survey at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1992-1993

Crichton generously lent works from his collection for exhibitions, but was possessive about the "Flag" because of his close friendship with Johns, said Gorvy in an interview before the sale.

Because of Crichton's deep understanding of Johns' work, Johns asked Crichton to write the catalog for his 1977 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Within the art world, Crichton was renowned as a leading authority on Johns, Gorvy said.

He had predicted that "Flag" would "go substantially higher" than its pre-sale estimate of $10 million to $15 million, given that the work "is so superb and rare ... and coming from a famous fella and also from someone who understood the artist."

Richard Feigen, an art dealer with galleries in New York and Chicago specializing in 19th and 20th century art and old masters, said before the auction that he believed monied collectors would bid high as a hedge against the economy.

"I rather think that the activity in the stock market will probably stimulate people to put more money into art because art ... now seems to be treated as an asset class and as a safe repository for money and also a hedge against currency fluctuations," Feigen said.

"My guess is people will feel this is a very safe place, if not a dynamic place, to park $30 million more or less." he added.

Last week, "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust," a 1932 Picasso painting of his mistress, set a world record for any work of art at auction when it sold for $106.5 million at Christie's New York.

Christie's head of impressionist and modern art, Conor Jordan, said the price "showed the great confidence in the marketplace and the enthusiasm with which it welcomes top quality works."

Among other highlights in the Crichton collection:

_ Oldenburg's 1970 "Three Way Plug Soft Sculpture," estimated at $250,000 to $350,000.

_ Lichtenstein's "Girl in Water," estimated at $800,000 to $1.2 million, and

_ Robert Rauschenberg's "Studio Painting," estimated at $6 million to $9 million.

Crichton was one of the world's most commercially successful writers whose many books have been turned into film.

We would like to welcome you to Pastiche a solo exhibition by Lori Ann Bellissimo

2010-05-05T17:31:00.003+08:00

From Curator of Pastiche: Chuck Yeoh (Architect)I’ve had the pleasure of being Lori-Ann’s friend, colleague and collector since her first show in Malaysia and have always been captivated by her invigorating spirit and refreshing creativity. Her work has the emotive qualities that take one on a journey from textural cartographic details to the depths of molecular like astrological landscapes. This body of work is a cumulative exploration of the deeper reading of the forces that shape her physically and emotionally acting as a patchwork of her various series of works. I am honored to witness Lori-Ann’s intuitively gifted artwork that continues to inspire me.

From Gina Fairley (Freelance writer, Regional Contributing Editor, Asian Art News+World Sculpture News)

Lori-Ann Bellissimo’s world is an abstraction that sits outside definitions of time and place, a reconfigured centrality if you like, that locates the work within a universal dimension. In a definitive sense these paintings are at odds with mainstream American modernism and its lineage of artists who have worked against the conventions of the paintings of Frank Stella, Jasper John and Mark Rothko. She does not seek to reinvent their formal language but rather chooses to twist and translate it as if it were an available tool. Bellissimo pits intuition over convention. Her fiery engagement with the tropical landscape of Malaysia melds journeys, memories and histories with a cathartic honesty. While Bellissimo’s surfaces capture our immediate interest, it is the architecture of her paintings that is most remarkable as collaged fragments and soft pencil lines are caught within crystalline layers of resins. It has been said that Bellissimo pitches colour against depth. Bellissimo’s works are intellectually searching and solid, yet their physical presence is apparently weightless. Brushing one’s eyes across this body of paintings we are awash with stimulation – seduction – permitted to dream amidst the stars. Such vulnerability of letting go is indeed earned.

From Huat Lim (Owner ZLG Design)

Lori's art is exemplary; each piece is unto its own, with a unique personality. To own a piece is a privilege, to meet Lori would be totally wonderful given the beauty and exquisite quality of her work. I have seen so many pieces each one as unique as the other no two pieces tell the same story, yet they all have such depth in their message.

May exhibition by Loriann

2010-04-26T12:52:00.002+08:00

It is with great pleasure for me to invite you to come and view Loriann interesting paintings. She has done some amazing works, and I am very happy to share her works with you.

Loriann Bellissimo

2010-04-26T12:52:00.000+08:00

Update

2010-04-13T11:51:00.000+08:00

The Fresh Decade runs till the end of April, will look forward to more visitors . - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

youtube posting of Fresh Decade exhibition

2010-03-31T18:35:00.001+08:00

Hope you will enjoy this.

Gan Chin Lee in Sin Chew Jit Poh

2010-03-31T14:57:00.002+08:00

Gan Chin Lee is one of the twelve artists who is part of the Fresh Decade exhibition, for those of you who can read Chinese, this is for you.

Fresg Decade - ReGroup 2nd Exhibition

2010-03-30T18:43:00.000+08:00

I have just posted the power point presentation on my blog, please enjoy watching it.

2010-03-30T18:39:00.001+08:00

Fresh Decade-ReGroup exhibition

See more presentations by thegallerystarhill | Upload your own PowerPoint presentations

Missing Link: New Van Gogh Painting Authenticated | Bob Duggan | Big Think

2010-03-20T18:26:00.001+08:00

-"What I find most interesting about this new discovery is how it represents a “missing link” in the evolution of the artist we know now as “Van Gogh.” " -The evolution of an artist is important , before an artist starts to gain "fame" , he must consistently work on his paintings or art. I was at a talk show last night, it was interesting to hear from this man who is a Chinese scholar who said that for anything to be of any worth, there is no "short- cut", because the "short-cut" will show itself in no time and will not stand the test of time. Artists must evolve, by working on their works. It is a process and no "Short-cut". No instant fame for me. Strong foundation in basic skill is so lacking in our art scene here in Kuala lumpur. I found the reading of the following article so interesting and hope you like it too. Missing Link: New Van Gogh Painting Authenticated Bob Duggan Big Think

Antony Gormley’s rooftop sculptures are making New Yorkers jumpy - Times Online

2010-03-19T18:55:00.000+08:00

I will love to see this happen in Kuala Lumpur one day! Antony Gormley’s rooftop sculptures are making New Yorkers jumpy - Times Online

invitation to Fresh Decade

2010-03-14T17:36:00.002+08:00

You are invited to our first exhibition for a new decade 2010. Please come.

ReGroup 2nd group exhibition

2010-03-13T00:22:00.000+08:00

This is another work. I have 12 artists taking part . So, a few more to come...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

ReGroup 2nd group exhibition in April

2010-03-12T16:32:00.003+08:00

Yes indeed the time to start of 2010 is here. Our first major exhibition for the new decade. Let's me just post some of the works here, without any description, hope you can pick up the artists. More to follow.....

Art Fair

2010-03-12T16:24:00.002+08:00

Yes, art fairs are foul – but we need them

Let's face it: art fairs are exhausting and a terrible way to see work. But they're essential for galleries and artists

* Ben Luke * guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 March 2010 16.17 GMT Armory art show

Last week was Armory week in New York.

If ever there was a surfeit of contemporary art in one place, then now is the time. It was centred on the Armory Show, America's biggest art fair, featuring most of the world's top commercial galleries, as well as younger, emerging spaces from across the globe. Alongside it was a plethora of other fairs, including the ultra blue-chip Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) event, Pulse and Volta for more fringy galleries, and this year's most notable newcomer, Independent, which has gathered together some of the most cutting-edge international galleries. Despite the recession, fairs are expanding in scale and growing in number rather than fading away.

Although I love contemporary art, and writing about it is what I do, I am pretty glad not to have been in New York. This is not because there wasn't anything worth seeing – far from it. It's just that fairs are, on the whole, a deeply unpleasant way to see art. With rare, beacon-like exceptions, you get booth after booth of cluttered group shows where artists with nothing in common are pitched in with each other simply because they are represented by the same gallery. Sure, you get special commissions, sculpture parks and other initiatives, which attempt to add gravitas to the whole shebang, but they can only distract so much. Let's face it: fairs are an exhausting, deeply unsatisfying cultural experience.

But the fact is that they are essential for galleries and, most importantly, for artists. Recently I was speaking to the director of Glasgow's Mary Mary gallery, Hannah Robinson. She told me that fairs are vital for someone like her, and taking part in them, selling work and making contacts, allows her to programme with more freedom, as well as to take on special projects. Rebecca May Marston, the director of Limoncello, a dynamic relative newcomer to the London scene, told me at Frieze last year that she needs art fairs, simply to survive as a gallery.

As fairs have burgeoned over the last decade, life has changed for collectors, too. Kate MacGarry, who is showing at Independent in New York this week, set up her East End space in 2002, and told me that the one-to-one sales made in the gallery – a common feature of the early days – have grown rarer, and that collectors are increasingly waiting for the fairs to make their move. "Gone are the days when everyone was rushing in," she says. "But events still create the momentum for sales to happen."

Thankfully, there is no sense in which art fairs are replacing galleries. And if fairs allow Mary Mary, Kate MacGarry, Limoncello and other spaces to put on their more considered, better installed shows throughout the rest of the year, then I'm prepared to accept fairs as a necessary evil.

Like most people who love art, contemporary or otherwise, I haven't got a hope in hell of buying anything substantial, but I do want to be able to look at it and engage with it, and the abundance of commercial galleries in London's East End and Fitzrovia, in Glasgow, and in Berlin's Mitte or New York's Lower East Side, are still the best place to see work that's fresh out of the studio. And if fairs allow galleries to show the best new art as well as helping them make ends meet, then maybe they're not so bad after all.

As I read this article my mind was being diverted to the time when I visited our recent Art Expo in Kuala Lumpur. What was the experience? Did I enjoy my time there? Was it a good art fair? Did I find any interesting artist? Sad to say, the answer is no. Apart from the known names from the art world, I am not very impressed, personal view though.

Not everyone can be an artist

2010-03-05T11:49:00.002+08:00

Not everyone can be an artist

Posted by Jonathan Jones 16.38 GMT

Interactive art is gaining ground – but whether it's Spencer Tunick's nudes or Antony Gormley's plinth, no masterpiece was ever created by committee

Tunick's Amsterdam artwork" width="460" height="276">

People power ... nude volunteers in Spencer Tunick's 2007 Dream Amsterdam series. Photograph: Robin Utrecht/EPA

The rise of interactive art seems to make sense in our digital age. It seems only right that art, too, should twitter. And so the noughties saw the rise of art that involves real people – as many of them as possible. Spencer Tunick and Antony Gormley led the way in persuading volunteers to strip off or be cast in plaster, or stand on a plinth and be webcammed.

Some forms of interactivity are obviously good for art, as they are good for society. The more democratically ideas and information are shared, the more accessible art will be. Sites that allow artists to promote themselves without going through the rituals of the art world are great because for every dud who gets publicity through alternative channels, there is also the chance of raw genius sidestepping the institutions that force art and artists to conform to fashion and supposed good taste. In theory.

So democracy is great – except when it shapes the actual work of art. I do not believe a great work of art has ever been created by communal consensus, let alone by multiple editors. There will never be a wiki-masterpiece. This is because art, if it has any value at all, is the product of deep and often rationally incommunicable perceptions, and to try and explain or share those perceptions in a communally created artwork will negotiate and re-edit them to banality.

But, I hear you roar, there are obvious objections to that claim. What about devised theatre and the films of Mike Leigh? But the reason Leigh's pieces work so well is that talented actors are doing the interaction: what you are seeing is not a democratic free-for-all but an elite. Good art is the product of talent. All the forces in our culture that weaken our belief in talent deny this fundamental fact, but it always returns to haunt us.

Participatory art is a denial of talent. It panders to a cosy lie, that everyone is equally able to create worthwhile art. What chance have we of nurturing those rare wonders in our midst, the born artists, if we claim this infantile right to put on a badge that says "artist"?

"Good art is the product of talent. All the forces in our culture that weaken our belief in talent deny this fundamental fact, but it always returns to haunt us." In this aspect, especially in our society when following "the flow" seems to be the norm, we have seen time and again how superficial popular arts are being held in high esteem, because of an environment which exhort the "buying" power of the so called art collectors. Many of these collectors are not passionate about art but using art as a platform to gain social standing and to serve their agenda of promoting themselves. Any cause which is worthwhile always calls for integrity in judgement. I hope we will see genuine talent being encouraged in Malaysian art scene and not being left unnoticed.

Qi Baishi is only just behind Picasso in art sales ranking - Times Online

2010-02-28T13:51:00.002+08:00

Qi Baishi is only just behind Picasso in art sales ranking - Times Online

"In 2009 the traditional auction powerhouses of New York and London suffered their worst year in a generation — at the same time as the Chinese art market, and Qi in particular, had a surge in value fuelled by local new money. The number of dollar billionaires in China reached 130 last year and the country is now the third most important art market in the world after London and New York."
How things had changed in the recent years. I am particularly amazed at what Picasso said about Qi, "Picasso called Qi “the greatest oriental painter” and said that he did not dare visit China for fear of meeting him."

Her world 50 years

2010-02-27T17:52:00.004+08:00

View of how the exhibition looks from first floor. Haffendi with his Remnant Garden. Me receiving a token from the Minister . Three of us , Soon Lai Wai, Haffendi and me.

It was a fun outing and at the same time something that I do to have create awareness of art in our life. The exhibition will run for a week and we hope the sale of the painting will be able to help some charitable bodies.

Sculptor with big ideas, Anish Kapoor, joins the high rollers - Times Online

2010-02-22T18:38:00.000+08:00

Sculptor with big ideas, Anish Kapoor, joins the high rollers - Times Online .Was reading this today and thought it interesting and informative. Anish Kapoor is an inspiring sculptor, a fine example for artists to emulate his attitude towards his works. Down to earth and humble as stated in the last paragraph in the article.

Her world 50 years

2010-02-22T15:56:00.005+08:00

Soon Lai Wai's painting- Lotus as a symbol for women who strives to achieve their ambition and emerged untainted and successful. Haffendi feels that every woman is a garden. "Remnant Garden" is an intricate collage that exudes the sensuality and vibrancy of a garden in full-bloom.. Tomorrow We, two artist and me will be attending Her World 50 years celebration. Do drop by to view the exhibition.

what abstract expressionism should do to you.

2010-02-14T16:07:00.004+08:00

Abstract expressionism: when art became larger than life

With their giant canvases and towering ambition, Gorky and Rothko transcended everything we thought possible of art today

Aiming high ... Mark Rothko's Red on Maroon mural sections at Tate Modern. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

The abstract expressionists, those Amercian artists who made their country's art famous 60 years ago, cannot be ignored. They are so real and so massive; so absolute.
They've rolled back over me recently. Walking into Tate Liverpool a couple of weeks ago, I found that Mark Rothko had got to the Albert Dock before me. His Seagram Murals currently hang in a warehouse space on the ground floor of the museum, and I found them devastatingly beautiful. Their wine-dark ecstasy pays such Bacchic homage to the House of Mysteries in Pompeii, whose paintings he saw while planning them. Just recently, I saw Roman wall paintings in thearchaeological museum in Naples that bleed with Rothko reds.
Rothko is a great artist, and so is Arshile Gorky, whose retrospective has just opened at Tate Modern. I'll be reviewing that shortly, so I will just comment more generally on how Gorky and Rothko transcended almost everything we now expect art to be. They aspired to greatness – a quality almost no art nowadays believes it can attain. Some people call them pompous for that; I call them courageous.
It's worth looking, in the first few rooms of the Gorky show, at how he tried on different habits of excellence: painting like Picasso, then like Cézanne. The desperation to achieve on their level is both moving and disconcerting. But finally he, like Rothko, found a personal, original road to the highest mountains.
When I encountered the abstract expressionists en masse for the first time in New York's Museum of Modern Art in the 1990s, they taught me that art in our time can be not merely interesting or shocking – let alone "fun" – but can attain the most profound qualities of the noblest masters. And here in the UK, they've taught me that all over again.

" Gorky and Rothko transcended almost everything we now expect art to be. They aspired to greatness – a quality almost no art nowadays believes it can attain. Some people call them pompous for that; I call them courageous". How aptly put, I often wonder whether I am too critical about what I am seeing in Malaysian artists, I can hardly seem to be able to detect any of these traits, aspiring, courageous, greatness. most artists are just too safe and lack the true element of making art to be what art is suppose to be. I hope we will improve, otherwise, I feel a tint of guilt when I am selling some paintings with such a high price tag.

New paintings by Eng Tay

2010-02-08T17:28:00.000+08:00

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

making my day

2010-02-08T11:26:00.006+08:00

Ryan Mosley: a great artist in the making?

With echoes of 18th-century master Watteau, Mosely does something beautifully rare: think, not just paint

Prickly subjects ... A detail from Ryan Mosley's Taking Care of the Crops (2009–10). Photograph courtesy the artist and Alison Jacques Gallery

I like the paintings of Ryan Mosley, currently showing at London's Alison Jacques Gallery, for their marriage of grit and fantasy. Tough, hard-thought, intelligent textures – real painting, in other words – create realms of wilful play. Is it whimsy or is it tragedy? I'm not sure. The ambiguity interests me.

Let me put this praise in context. I am not saying Mosley is a genius, but I am saying this 30-year-old's first serious solo show is unusually promising, indeed that some of the promise is already fulfilled. Mosley's best paintings are his biggest. There's a fine freedom and confidence to his large, even slightly grandiose, pictures that imagine a balletic Wild West, as if painted by Antoine Watteau.

That 18th-century ghost haunts the best painting of all, a spacious white canvas with a minstrel playing a banjo – it's called Southern Banjo – beneath a tree. Isolated in his minstrelsy, at once proud and solitary, this timeless figure makes an immediate appeal to your sense of pathos. Mosley is a young 21st-century painter tackling themes comparable with those that Wallace Stevens described in his poem, inspired by Picasso, The Man With the Blue Guitar.

It's hard to be negative about any of the works here. What matters is the sense that here is a painter doing what painters need to do: work. He is thinking through paint, and finding in its demands a complex, skilled style of his own, in the only place this can be done, the studio.

Mosley has just been exhibited in St Petersburg – at the Hermitage, no less – in Charles Saatchi's exhibition Newspeak: British Art Now. This survey comes to London in June. I wouldn't want to bet on its overall quality, but his encouragement (and collecting) of Mosley shows that Saatchi still has the ability to spot real talent first.

Posted by Jonathan Jones Tuesday 2 February 2010 17.22 GMT guardian.co.uk

"A painter doing what painters need to do : work" . I have try not to be too critical about Malaysian artists and be "nice" about their works. I am disappointed though that most of the even very popular artists here are opting to be "safe" and rather "fast " in their works. Artists paint and work, sad to say very few are doing this in our art circle here. Works are simply too fast and easy , duplicating works without much thought.

Artdaily.org - The First Art Newspaper on the Net

2010-02-07T17:55:00.000+08:00

Artdaily.org - The First Art Newspaper on the Net CY Twombly is one of the living artists that I like very much. At an age of 82 he is still so committed to his work and continues to produce marvelous paintings .

2010-01-27T17:25:00.002+08:00

The boy who paints like an old master

His pictures cost upwards of £900, there are 680 people on a waiting list to buy them, and his second exhibition sold out in 14 minutes. Patrick Barkham meets the gifted artist Kieron Williamson, aged seven

In pictures: Kieron Williamson's best work

- Patrick Barkham
- The Guardian, Tuesday 29 December 2009
- Article history

After Gliman by Kieron Williamson. Click on the magnifying glass for a larger version

Kieron Williamson kneels on the wooden bench in his small kitchen, takes a pastel from the box by his side and rubs it on to a piece of paper.

"Have you got a picture in your head of what you're going to do?" asks his mother, Michelle.

"Yep," Kieron nods. "A snow scene."

Because it is winter at the moment, I ask.

"Yep."

Do you know how you want it to come out?

"Yep."

And does it come out how you want it to?

"Sometimes it does."

Like many great artists, small boys are not often renowned for their loquaciousness. While Kieron Williamson is a very normal seven-year-old who uses his words sparingly, what slowly emerges on the small rectangle of paper in his kitchen is extraordinarily eloquent.

This month, Kieron's second exhibition in a gallery in his home town of Holt, Norfolk, sold out in 14 minutes. The sale of 16 new paintings swelled his bank account by £18,200. There are now 680 people on a waiting list for a Kieron original. Art lovers have driven from London to buy his work. Agents buzz around the town. People offer to buy his schoolbooks. The starting price for a simple pastel picture like the one Kieron is sketching? £900.

Kieron lives with his dad Keith, a former electrician, his mum, who is training to be a nutritionist, and Billie-Jo, his little sister, in a small flat overlooking a petrol station. When I arrive on a Saturday afternoon, Kieron and Keith are out. When Kieron returns in football socks and shorts, I assume he has been playing football. But no, he has been replenishing his stock of pastels in Holt, a chichi little place where even the chip shop has grainy portraits for sale on its walls.

Artist Kieron Williamson, age seven, painting at home in Holt, Norfolk. Photograph: Graham Turner

From Jan Lievens to Millais, there have been plenty of precocious geniuses in the art world. Excitable press coverage has compared Kieron to Picasso, who painted his first canvas, The Picador, aged eight.

"We don't know who Picasso is really," says Keith.

"I know who Picasso is," interrupts Kieron. "I don't want to become Picasso."

Who would he like to become? "Monet or Edward Seago," he says.

These days, however, we are often suspicious of child prodigies. We wonder if it is all their own work, or whether their pushy parents have hot-housed them. People who don't know the Williamsons might think Kieron is being cleverly marketed, particularly when they hear that Keith is now an art dealer.

The truth is far more innocent. Two years ago, a serious accident had forced Keith to stop work and turn his hobby – collecting art – into an occupation. The accident also stopped Keith racing around outside with his son. Confined to a flat with no garden, surrounded by paintings and, like any small boy, probably influenced by his dad, Kieron decided to take up drawing. Now, father and son are learning about art together.

Kieron is rubbing yellows and greys together for his sky. "There's some trees going straight across and then there's a lake through the centre," he explains. Is this picture something you have seen or is it in your imagination? "I saw it on the computer and every time I do the picture it changes." he says, handling his pastels expertly.

Keith ducks into the kitchen and explains that Kieron finds pictures he likes on the internet. Rather than an exact copy, however, he creates his own version. This winter scene is imagined from an image of the Norfolk Broads in summer.

Figures at Holkham by Kieron Williamson

At first, Kieron's art was pretty much like any other five-year-old's. But he quickly progressed and was soon asking questions that his parents couldn't answer. "Kieron wanted to know the technicalities of art and how to put a painting together," says Michelle. Hearing of Kieron's promise, one local artist, Carol Ann Pennington, offered him some tips. Since then, he has had lessons with other Norfolk-based painters, including Brian Ryder and his favourite, Tony Garner.

Garner, a professional artist, has taught more than 1,000 adults over the last few decades and Kieron, he says, is head and shoulders above everyone. "He doesn't say very much, he doesn't ask very much, he just looks. He's a very visual learner. If I did a picture with most students, they will copy it but Kieron is different. He will copy it and then he will Kieronise it," he says. "It might be a bit naive at the moment but there's a lovely freshness about what he does. The confidence that this little chap has got – he just doesn't see any danger."

Garner says his parents have been brilliant at shielding Kieron from the business side and the pressure this invariably brings. Keith and Michelle are extremely proud, and protective, and perhaps slightly in awe of their son. They insist that Kieron only paints when he wants to.

"We judge ourselves every day, wondering whether we are making the right choices," says Michelle. "Kieron is such a strong character you wouldn't get him to do anything he didn't want to do anyway. It's a hobby. Some could argue he's got such a talent, why aren't we doing more for him in terms of touring galleries every weekend. We are a family and we've got Billie-Jo to consider; you've got to strike a balance."

Boat at half way house by Kieron Williamson

With all the people wanting paintings, I ask Kieron if he feels he has to do them. He says no.

So you only paint when you want to? "Yep."

Do you have days when you feel you don't want to paint?

"Yep."

So you only do it when you're in the mood?

"Yep."

How many paintings or drawings do you do each week? One or two? "About six."

Is he a perfectionist? "You've got a bit of an artist's temperament, haven't you?" says Michelle, softly, as Kieron continues wielding his pastels. "You get really frustrated if it doesn't work out. You punched a hole in the canvas once, didn't you?"

That was rare. Sometimes, however, Kieron will produce "what we classify as a bag of trosh," says Michelle. "He's just got to go through the motions. It's almost as if it's a release. It's difficult to explain – it's the process that he enjoys, because there are days when he is not really focused on his work but he just enjoys doing it."

Sometimes, when they have taken Kieron out on painting trips in the countryside, the little boy has had other ideas: he has gone off and played in the mud or a stream. He is still allowed to be seven years old.

What do his school friends think? Are they impressed? "Yep." A few moments later, Kieron pauses. "I am also top of the class in maths, English, geography and science," he says carefully, rubbing the sky in his picture.

Kieron explains he is sticking to landscapes for now but plans to paint a portrait of his 98-year-old nan when she turns 100. What does he think about people spending so much money on his paintings? "Really good." Would he like to be a professional painter? "Yep." So he doesn't want to be a footballer when he is older? "I want to be a footballer and a painter."

Kieron enjoys playing football and, like his dad, supports Leeds United ("I haven't ever pushed him into it," says Keith quickly). What other things does Kieron like doing? "You played on the Xbox but then you got bored of it didn't you?" says Keith.

"You said I could have it out when Christmas comes," says Kieron.

"You can have it out in the holidays," promises Michelle. "He's a bit all-or-nothing with whatever he does, like the artwork. You have to pull the reins in a bit because otherwise he'd be up all night."

What would his parents say if Kieron turned around and told them he was not going to paint any more? "Leave him to it. As long as he's happy. At the end of the day, he's at his happiest painting," says Keith. "It's entirely his choice," says Michelle. "We don't know what's around the corner. Kieron might decide to put his boxes away and football might take over and that would be entirely his choice. We're feeling slightly under pressure at the moment because there is such a waiting list of people wanting Kieron's work, but I'm inclined to tell them to wait, really."

I doubt many artists could paint or draw while answering questions and being photographed but Kieron carries on. When he finishes, we lean over to look. "Not bad. That's nice," says Keith, who can't watch Kieron at work; I wonder if it is because he is worried about his son making a mistake but Keith says he just prefers to see the finished article.

"Is it as good as the one I did this morning or better?" asks Kieron.

"What do you think?" replies Keith. "It's got a nice glow on it, hasn't it?"

Kieron nods.

I would love one of his pictures but, I tell Kieron, he is already too expensive for me. "I can price one down for you," he says, as quick as a flash.

No, no, I couldn't, I say, worried I would be exploiting a little boy who is eager to please. I thank him for his time and hand him my business card. And Kieron trots into his bedroom, comes out with his business card and says thank you back.

Kieron's tips for landscape painting

1 "Go on holiday to where you really want to go, and be inspired."

2 "Start with acrylics, then watercolours, then pastels and then oils"

3 When you set out to do a landscape, "start with the sky first, top to bottom."

4 "When you do distance, it's lighter, and when you do foreground it comes darker."

5 "If you're doing a figure in the winter, do a brown head, leave a small gap, do a blue jacket and brown legs. Then with the gap get a red pastel and do a flick of red so it looks like a scarf."

6 "Keep on painting."

How inspiring! And here in Malaysia I have personally came across many so called art collectors who denounced the talent in artists who prefer to use the more tradition style in doing their paintings, they have been termed " outdated, irrelevant, ethnic". The only type of so called contemporary art they collect are those quickly done which are hollow and just popular which is also copying from the west which is "irrelevant" to us, like war planes and robots.

Female artists

2010-01-20T11:57:00.002+08:00

Why the world doesn't need an Annie Warhol or a Francine Bacon

- - Germaine Greer
  - guardian.co.uk, Sunday 17 January 2010 22.00 GMT

Yours for five francs ... a detail from Orlan's The Kiss of the Artist, part of the Pompidou's women-only show. Photograph: ADAGP, Paris 2009

In May last year, the Centre Pompidou consigned to storage nearly all its works by male artists and rehung its permanent collection to show only works by women. Camille Morineau, the curator of elles@centrepompidou, said the show was "going to be dramatic in a big way". It wasn't. The art press simply ignored it. The Guardian was one of few newspapers to ask itself the question: "Is the art world finally taking work created by women seriously?"

British galleries are less, not more, interested in women's work than French ones. The National Gallery owns paintings by only 10 women, of whom only four have been deemed worthy of representation in the main galleries, where you will find one Rachel Ruysch, one Berthe Morisot, and two paintings each by Vigée-Le Brun and Catherina van Hemessen. The rest, with the exception of Rosa Bonheur, can be found in Room A, the study collection, which is open for three and a half hours on Wednesday afternoons.

The Centre Pompidou, popularly known as Beaubourg and officially as the Musée National d'Art Moderne, houses works dating from 1905. Morineau was quoted as saying that until now there were not enough works by women in the collection to have been able to mount anything on the scale of elles@centrepompidou. After five years of a deliberate policy of spending 40% of the acquisitions budget on them, works by women now account for 17% of the permanent collection. This compares with the 13% of female artists in the Tate collections.

The exhibition takes up the fourth floor of the vast building, plus odd rooms on the fifth. The entrance is signalled by a purple panel, on which have been mounted large buttons of different colours; 11 bear the feminised name of a well-known male artist, Annie Warhol, Francine Bacon etc. The 12th bears the name Louis Bourgeois. Though this jeu d'esprit, by Agnès Thurnauer, has its admirers, it is after all feeble. Does anyone really think that Martin Kippenberger could have been Martine Kippenberger?

The storm of words that accompanies the exhibition stresses that its intention is to restore women to their rightful place in art history, as if there was a vast mass of wonderful work by women artists just waiting to be brought to light. The exhibition has been treated as a journey of discovery of works that have been forgotten or lost, but many, including the best of them, are stupefyingly familiar. Some major artists have been sampled in a fashion that seems positively flippant. Jenny Holzer's 26 Inflammatory Essays have been reduced to eight, replicated and mounted on a partition in uniform stripes from ceiling to floor, like cheap wallpaper.

Eva Hesse is represented by Untitled (1970), a seven-part sculpture made of fibreglass and polyester resin over polyethylene sheeting and aluminium wire. When it was made, the 34-year-old artist was dying. She never saw the finished work, which differs significantly from her model. The book published to accompany the exhibition claims that the piece was bought by the Centre Pompidou in 1986, other sources that it was presented to the museum by Mr and Mrs W Ganz. Time and poor conservation have reduced it to a sticky mess.

Some of the younger women artists in the show may turn out to be discoveries, but too many of them are making the kinds of female body art that have been doing the rounds for years. Innocents may be excited by Sigalit Landau's Barbed Hula of 2001, a video showing her full-frontal naked doing the hula with a hoop made of barbed wire, but only if they were too young to see Marina Abramowic´ slicing into her naked belly in the 1970s, or Orlan on the operating table in the 1990s. Later this year, Abramowic´ will be performing throughout her planned retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The life's work of Nancy Spero, poorly represented in this exhibition, will be celebrated at the Centre Pompidou. Both shows will be more rewarding experiences than elles@centrepompidou.

The effect of offering a sampler of the work of 200 women is to diminish the achievement of all of them. By lumping the major with the minor, and by showing only minor works of major figures, elles@centrepompidou managed to convince too many visitors to the exhibition that there was such a thing as women's art and that women artists were going nowhere. Wrong, on both counts.

In May last year, the Centre Pompidou consigned to storage nearly all its works by male artists and rehung its permanent collection to show only works by women. Camille Morineau, the curator of elles@centrepompidou, said the show was "going to be dramatic in a big way". It wasn't. The art press simply ignored it. The Guardian was one of few newspapers to ask itself the question: "Is the art world finally taking work created by women seriously?"

British galleries are less, not more, interested in women's work than French ones. The National Gallery owns paintings by only 10 women, of whom only four have been deemed worthy of representation in the main galleries, where you will find one Rachel Ruysch, one Berthe Morisot, and two paintings each by Vigée-Le Brun and Catherina van Hemessen. The rest, with the exception of Rosa Bonheur, can be found in Room A, the study collection, which is open for three and a half hours on Wednesday afternoons.

The Centre Pompidou, popularly known as Beaubourg and officially as the Musée National d'Art Moderne, houses works dating from 1905. Morineau was quoted as saying that until now there were not enough works by women in the collection to have been able to mount anything on the scale of elles@centrepompidou. After five years of a deliberate policy of spending 40% of the acquisitions budget on them, works by women now account for 17% of the permanent collection. This compares with the 13% of female artists in the Tate collections.

The exhibition takes up the fourth floor of the vast building, plus odd rooms on the fifth. The entrance is signalled by a purple panel, on which have been mounted large buttons of different colours; 11 bear the feminised name of a well-known male artist, Annie Warhol, Francine Bacon etc. The 12th bears the name Louis Bourgeois. Though this jeu d'esprit, by Agnès Thurnauer, has its admirers, it is after all feeble. Does anyone really think that Martin Kippenberger could have been Martine Kippenberger?

The storm of words that accompanies the exhibition stresses that its intention is to restore women to their rightful place in art history, as if there was a vast mass of wonderful work by women artists just waiting to be brought to light. The exhibition has been treated as a journey of discovery of works that have been forgotten or lost, but many, including the best of them, are stupefyingly familiar. Some major artists have been sampled in a fashion that seems positively flippant. Jenny Holzer's 26 Inflammatory Essays have been reduced to eight, replicated and mounted on a partition in uniform stripes from ceiling to floor, like cheap wallpaper.

Eva Hesse is represented by Untitled (1970), a seven-part sculpture made of fibreglass and polyester resin over polyethylene sheeting and aluminium wire. When it was made, the 34-year-old artist was dying. She never saw the finished work, which differs significantly from her model. The book published to accompany the exhibition claims that the piece was bought by the Centre Pompidou in 1986, other sources that it was presented to the museum by Mr and Mrs W Ganz. Time and poor conservation have reduced it to a sticky mess.

Some of the younger women artists in the show may turn out to be discoveries, but too many of them are making the kinds of female body art that have been doing the rounds for years. Innocents may be excited by Sigalit Landau's Barbed Hula of 2001, a video showing her full-frontal naked doing the hula with a hoop made of barbed wire, but only if they were too young to see Marina Abramowic´ slicing into her naked belly in the 1970s, or Orlan on the operating table in the 1990s. Later this year, Abramowic´ will be performing throughout her planned retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The life's work of Nancy Spero, poorly represented in this exhibition, will be celebrated at the Centre Pompidou. Both shows will be more rewarding experiences than elles@centrepompidou.

The effect of offering a sampler of the work of 200 women is to diminish the achievement of all of them. By lumping the major with the minor, and by showing only minor works of major figures, elles@centrepompidou managed to convince too many visitors to the exhibition that there was such a thing as women's art and that women artists were going nowhere. Wrong, on both counts.

Beautiful art, ugly art

2010-01-16T18:10:00.001+08:00

I am for beautiful art.

I'm done with Damien Hirst's art

I confess it – I was taken in by Damien's diamond skull. But his dreadful paintings are the last straw. Never again

No more bouquets ... Damien Hirst's White Roses and Butterflies (2008) at the Wallace Collection. Photograph: Sarah Lee

I did something yesterday I thought I'd never do. I avoided looking at works by Damien Hirst. Having followed my instinct on that one, I will now make a more formal pledge: never to write another word about this artist. Even if critics start hailing him in a couple of years as the next Lucian Freud or confess amazement at Diamond Skull II: With Emeralds This Time, I will remain silent. I am done with him.

Hirst's exhibition at the Wallace Collection in London has sputtered on pointlessly into the bitter first month of this year, which is how I accidentally came into proximity with his paintings again. If I'd known the exhibition was still on, I probably would have avoided the museum entirely. As it was, I studied the Titian I had come to see, then left. I studiously avoided Hirst's free-entry show. Why? I didn't want to ugly the hour.

Bad art is ugly art, in the end. Whatever language we might prefer to use, it all comes down to beauty and ugliness. Hirst's ideas seemed to me once to possess an intellectual and emotional beauty – and their own physical beauty, too. Now everything he does is ugly, ugly, ugly, and it adds to the world's already copious stores of junk. His paintings betray a stupidity and arrogance that makes me lose all interest in him. I love painting and I hate to see it abused.

But ... I could probably kid myself otherwise, given time and a change of direction. That's why I have decided to shun Hirst. He's wasted so much of my time over the years. I freely admit that my determination to believe in him distorted my judgement. I won't get fooled again.

Monet's art

2010-01-12T10:54:00.002+08:00

My normal day reading habit often leads me to Jonathan Jones writing, I like him because he is easy to understand and he is my type of writer. I have enjoyed this article much and laugh with him. Hope you like it too.

Why Monet's art haunts my dreams

Misconceived as an 'easy' artist, Claude Monet's unnerving talent for mood in fact speaks directly to our subconscious

Master of life and longing ... Claude Monet in his garden, near Paris. Photograph: EPA

Last night I dreamed about a painting. It was Claude Monet's Bathers at La Grenouillère (1869), on display at London's National Gallery. (Except that in my dream, it became a black-and-white photograph.) In this painting, people at leisure are glimpsed in a spatter of dancing light: a group of three figures stand on a jetty, fragmented silhouettes against the brightness, while boats, bodies and water flicker hauntingly in the haze.

Anyway, it haunts me enough to enter my dreams, it seems. A dream can tell the truth, and this one reminds me of a fact I've been ignoring, that Monet has the power to obsess. No artist is as misconceived in the popular imagination as this painter of haystacks and cathedral facades in misty, melting twilight. Monet is loved. But he is also sometimes slighted as an easy artist, fit to decorate a table mat but not to namedrop as a hero of modern art.

It's a strange misunderstanding. Monet slips easily into our perceptions not because he is "easy", but because of his profound receptiveness to atmosphere and ability to recreate it on canvas. His paintings are impregnated with mood, saturated in suggestion. Their nostalgia, elusiveness and delicacy speak to irrational parts of the mind. The reason his paintings give immediate pleasure is not that they are cheap entertainments but because they bypass the prosaic parts of our consciousness and reach us deep down.

I looked for a long time at Bathers in an exhibition last summer, and meant to write about it. But here it is again, welling up in my dreams – a masterpiece of life and longing.

Fresh decade, on we go 2010

2010-01-09T14:56:00.006+08:00

We look forward to a fresh decade with lots of hope, anticipation and gladness. We are glad because we can continue to be involved with what we are so passionate in, doing art and being part of the bigger art scene here in Kuala Lumpur and hopefully reaching out further to other parts of the world.

We started the year by rearranging our spaces. We have three spaces now. Yes three, thrill and feeling the weight? No, glad to be able to do more in term of exhibition and better hanging of paintings and art works. It is organic and evolving. How privilege!

Please enjoy as you view these spaces.

We have some very interesting events lined up will update soon.

Have a meaningful and wonderful 2010.

Lau Wai Leng, Chang Shih Wen and Eston Tan on one of the wall. Alex Ong and Ting Cho Chien, my watercolor wall. Lim Ah Cheng's horse and more Eng Tay. Lotus by Soon Lai Wai .Moving to Space 3. Yap Chin Hoe's porcelain painting greets you. .Eng Tay 10' paintings and his sculptures with Lee Long Looi oil on the other wall. Big paintings by Eng Tay and Soon Lai Wai. Tang Hon Yin and Lim Kim Hai . On the adjacent wall, Eng Tay welcome you with his brilliant colors of oil. Space 2 front view with Lim Kim Hai's signature apples. Wall of Yusof Ghani's small study on Wajah As walked in Sapce 1 , cheerful Jack Ting welcome you Jamil. Yusri and Fauzul hanging playfully on one of the wall. Wonf Perng Fey and Eddie. Space 1- Works by Eric Quah, Eddie, and Tajuddin Ismail.

The decade in the visual arts - Times Online

2009-12-23T18:05:00.002+08:00

The decade in the visual arts - Times Online

Shall we close the year with this? I hope we shall have a more interesting decade ahead.

more about opening

2009-12-18T18:23:00.007+08:00

We appreciate good gathering, exchanging of ideas, discussion on art and encouraging creative pursuit.

Long Looi speaking to his fans. Expressing an important point, Eddie giving the art talk, lively and informative.

Lee Long Looi solo exhibition opening

2009-12-18T17:32:00.003+08:00

We are always excited and welcomed our friends in for a wonderful time at the opening of Long Looi's exhibition.

Long Looi sharing his thought Guests engrossed with our Art Talk. Guests mingling outside the gallery Getting ready to start.

Hidden messages in paintings

2009-12-16T12:25:00.000+08:00

Hidden messages in paintings

Lee Long Looi solo exhibition reported in The Star

2009-12-16T12:18:00.001+08:00

For further reading please click below:

http://thestar.com.my/metro/story.asp?file=/2009/12/16/central/5289319&sec=central

New York school and the inclination of the modern art makers

2009-12-14T11:47:00.005+08:00

The mean reds

Mark Rothko was a mediocre figurative painter, who found a magic formula in abstraction. But it didn't make him happy

Stygian shades ... Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko in John Logan's Red. Photograph: Johan Perrson

On 29 February 1972 the English artist Keith Vaughan went to see an exhibition of Mark Rothko paintings. Vaughan recorded the occasion in his diary: "To Hayward Gallery in the afternoon to see Rothkos. Feeble stuff. Large décor. Boring to paint and look at. Not surprising he killed himself if that was all there was to do." This is both ironic and shrewd. Ironic in that Vaughan was also to kill himself five years later (though for reasons unconnected with his art) but shrewd in that, even in this throwaway remark, he gets to the crux of our responses to Rothko and his huge, darkly luminous paintings.

Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903, in Dvinsk, Latvia. His family emigrated to America when he was 10 years old. Like many celebrated artists of his generation – the postwar American abstract expressionists, the so-called New York School – Rothko was at best a mediocre painter, and would have been judged as one, until he found his magic formula. Among his number one can cite similar examples of famous artists who couldn't really draw: Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Franz Kline and, the most graphically inept of all, Jackson Pollock. It seems to me no accident that all these artists sought refuge in abstraction where their signal inadequacies in the world of figuration would be no impediment. The move was canny and acclaimed – these abstract artists achieved great renown and concomitant wealth. But did it bring aesthetic satisfaction – or, to put it more prosaically: did it make them happy?

This question is at the centre of a fascinating new play, Red, just opened at the Donmar Warehouse. It's a bravura two-hander – all the action revolves around increasingly adversarial conversations between Rothko (Alfred Molina) and his assistant (Eddie Redmayne) during a two-year period at the end of the 1950s, when Rothko was working on a highly paid commission to provide a series of murals for the new Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan's Seagram Building. This last decade of Rothko's life saw his palette reduce dramatically – the refulgent primaries, the glowing oranges and yellows, of his first colour-field paintings giving way to a predominance of increasingly sombre shades of red and black: bruised plum, tarnished magenta, deep scarlet. At the end of his life he effectively reduced his paintings to a few stygian shades – bluey-purple on sooty greys or simply black and dirty white. As with all of Rothko's work post-1949 (when he hit upon his abstract blueprint) the canvases were large – well over six feet high – and, typically, consisted of blurred, frayed rectangles of two or more contrasting multilayered colours stacked one on top of the other.

Rothko's paintings display, in the jargon of the art world, "frontality". There is no attempt to violate the two-dimensional plane – no depth, no perspective; any semi-figurative explanation is robustly prohibited (no empty beach and sky, no cloudscape, here). All evaluation of this type of pure abstract art is reduced to one's reaction and appreciation – or not – of the colour tones and relationships and the compositional balance or imbalance of the respective blocks of colour. There is nothing wrong with this: pure abstraction, if it is to be appreciated correctly, has to be judged on the strict terms it offers the viewer. To say "that was the colour of the wall in my bedroom when I was a sick child", or "to me blue equals misery", or "that reminds me of a sunset in Crete" is redundant. But in Rothko's case that was never enough. A bombastic, opinionated intellectual, Rothko wanted his simple, extremely beautiful paintings to be freighted with mythic, portentous significance – to be about the despair at the heart of the human condition, doom, entropy, the void and oblivion. Undertaking the Four Seasons commission, he famously declared that he wanted to put all the rich bastards dining there off their food. The discord between his pretentious high-mindedness and the banal destination of his haunting canvases is at the centre of the play. Increasingly troubled by this conflict, Rothko decided to give back the $35,000 he was paid and refused to have his paintings hung in the restaurant.

As time has gone by, the example of Rothko's generation of American artists is both fascinating and salutary. Pollock, with his hectic, belligerent, drink-fuelled self-loathing, his sudden rise and fall (a suicidal car-crash), is exemplary, but to a significant degree many of the artists associated with the abstract expressionist movement were tormented in one way or another and met early deaths either by their own hands or out-of-control self-indulgence. This is where Vaughan's observation seems to me particularly germane: "Not surprising he killed himself if that was all there was to do." Pollock's enduring fame, for instance, rests on his few years of action painting in the late 40s and early 50s – the huge dribbled and drip paintings that are now the legendary touchstones of gestural, impetuous art-making, the triumphant symbol of New York's usurpation of Paris as the world capital of modern art. But the inescapable fact is that the work Pollock did before and after the drip-paintings is embarrassingly bad. Pollock had found his "formula" and it made him the most celebrated painter in the world – and a celebrity. But he couldn't sustain it. When he stopped the drip paintings and tried to work in a different way it drove him crazier and to eventual and inevitable self-destruction.

Around the late 1940s Rothko abandoned his uninspired, biomorphic, quasi-surrealist style and started to produce his soon-to-be signature canvases. The format was established early and only the colour varied (the same could be said of Kline, Newman and Still). Nothing really changed in the way the canvases were painted – the modus operandi in the studio was soon fixed and unalterable (something the play makes visually and vivaciously real). There is a problem for any artist if a particular style becomes instantly recognisable and overwhelmingly in-demand – you branch out, redefine yourself at your peril – but for the purely abstract painter this dilemma seems to me particularly acute. Rothko is the perfect case in point: he effectively painted "Rothkos" for the rest of his life.

One might argue that Lucian Freud has been painting "Lucian Freuds" for decades also. But Freud is a figurative painter, his subject is the infinitely mutable human form and therein lies his salvation and his timeless motivation as an artist. It doesn't take a huge thought-experiment to try to imagine the growing hell of being a colour-field abstract painter condemned to lay on those huge swaths of colour on canvas – however beautiful, however lambent – month after month, year after year, decade after decade. I suspect this was why Rothko surrounded his work with a penumbra of intellectual pontification, as if the sheer density of arid academic commentary made the simple act of painting these colour-fields a more worthy endeavour. The art critic Clement Greenberg – the great elucidator of abstract expressionism and the New York School, the man who "made" Jackson Pollock – described Rothko as "a clinical paranoid . . . pompous and dumb". Greenberg's ego was as big as the artists' he championed and he did seem to exhibit a parasitical relish in the fame he made for his chosen few. There was something of a Faustian pact in being given the Greenberg seal of approval: you became famous, patrons sought you out, you hung in the best galleries, you made lots of money but you weren't allowed to change unless Clement OK-ed it.

And yet, for all the one-trick-pony aspect of Rothko's style, to be confronted by a Rothko painting, or several, in a museum or a gallery, is a palpable delight on a visceral, unconscious level. We respond to these shimmering, blurry, layered hues in a very direct manner, I would suggest, and at a simple but deep emotional level that is hard to classify or elucidate in any truly meaningful way. I can remember, in the early 70s, going into the Rothko "room" at the Tate and being profoundly affected by abstract art for the first time – both rapt and obscurely moved. However, we recognise the inarticulate delight, acknowledge the frisson and move on. The artist has to keep painting.

And there's the rub, especially if you're a not-very-talented artist. Once again the ancient adage that Archilochus evolved (later popularised by Isaiah Berlin) seems particularly apposite in Rothko's case: "The fox knows many things – the hedgehog knows one big thing." It's an interesting binary exercise to divide artists into hedgehogs or foxes, and the New York School of abstract expressionists (with the exception of Willem de Kooning) can only be described as a pack, a flock of hedgehogs. It's a matter of temperament, sheer gift and inclination if you find yourself a hedgehog or a fox. Da Vinci is a fox genius, Vermeer a hedgehog. Freud is a hedgehog, David Hockney is a fox. Graham Sutherland is a fox, Francis Bacon is a hedgehog – and so on. Certain artists know "one big thing" – they can do "one big thing" – and it shapes the art they make. The trouble with the artists of the New York School, it seems to me, is that they had "hedgehog" status thrust upon them – by the critics, by the dealers, by Life magazine. It didn't evolve naturally. There is a story that Greenberg came across some pages from a Manhattan phonebook that Kline had used to wipe his brushes on. Greenberg held them up and told him that was how he should paint and so "Franz Kline" as we know him today was born. But once a style made the artists of the New York School famous they were stuck with it.

One can observe a similar procedure happening today with the Young British Artists group. The sudden huge public renown of the YBAs in the 90s and their subsequent financial rewards echo something of the experience that the abstract expressionists of the 1950s went through. By this token, Damien Hirst's new "blue" paintings, for example – constituting a dramatic swerve in artistic direction from the school of manufacturism that he is associated with – could arguably be described as a very courageous effort to escape the monstrously successful hedgehog status that his patrons and his public fame and wealth have imposed on him. Sliced animals in formaldehyde, vitrines, coffee-bar existentialism – it works, why change? But Hirst, to his credit, clearly doesn't want to remain a hedgehog artist, he wants to be a fox.

So too, I think, did Rothko, but he knew it was beyond him – his modest artistic talent would not allow him to move away from the one big thing he was manifestly good at. I suspect that this played a significant role in his mounting depression and bitterness. Time and again one witnesses artists trapped into making art that the art market wants and the more modest the inherent talent the more terrifying that prospect can be. Part of the thesis behind the play Red is that by accepting the Four Seasons restaurant commission Rothko found himself tacitly admitting to and confronting the limits of his abilities. To provide paintings for the walls of the most expensive restaurant in New York was a form of unignorable self-abnegation, of selling out – big time – but his intellectual vanity couldn't remain at ease with that fact, even when he banked the cheque. He realised that his great, mythic art was actually going to make terrific interior decoration.

Rothko had the integrity, at the last moment, to prevent this fate arriving but the paintings became, over the next few years, progressively darker and darker. His last series of canvases, painted for a non-denominational church in Houston, Texas, are virtually monochrome: deep purples, smirched maroons and lots of black. They hang there today: impressive, brooding, minatory achievements – and an awful premonition. Mark Rothko had found, after the shame of the Four Seasons restaurant fiasco, the ideal space in which his art could be appreciated and in which its mordant, eschatological message could sing, but he never lived to see his Rothko Chapel. He committed suicide on 25 February 1970, a year before his paintings were installed.

An updated youtube for Lee Long Looi - Point in time

2009-12-05T19:37:00.002+08:00

I am able to add music, hope this will be more enjoyable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4qtHbVzgzM

Let's celebrate works, not artists

2009-12-04T15:41:00.001+08:00

Let's celebrate works, not artists

It's the art that catches our eye, not its creator. So why are we still in thrall to the cult of the celebrity artist?

A bit fishy ... Damien Hirst with Death Explained, one of his shark-in-a-vitrine artworks. Photograph: Linda Nylind

It's funny how you learn something, and for one reason or another, promptly forget it. I remember reading a book called Shark Infested Waters by Sarah Kent. This was back in the 1990s, but already the British modern art movement had a history, a back catalogue: its winners and its losers. What I remember is, looking through this book and noticing how many of the artists in the Saatchi collection had already been put aside by fashion. The phenomenon that is contemporary art is so often defined by pure instantaneity: at any given moment it apparently has a shape, in time and space – a history – but that history seems disposable, and will change shape tomorrow.

What I realised was that celebrity culture builds a fiction on top of a set of facts that actually point to a totally different conclusion. What catches the eye in today's art is rarely the artist. British art in our time hasn't produced many enigmatic personalities (where is our Warhol?). It's actually striking works of art, not artists, that made British art stand out 20 years ago and gave it the fame it still enjoys. The history of art in the late 1980s and early 90s was not the story of amazing people, but of a tank of oil, a shark in a vitrine, a concrete house.

The images hold you; the ongoing lives of the artists rarely do. And yet, the entire system of art today is geared towards the idea of the individual creative genius. Never has the myth of the artist been more powerful.

I immediately forgot this fact, because it's inconvenient. It's so easy, for critics and everyone else, to name names. But it's the works we should talk about. That shark at the Saatchi Gallery was amazing. I wonder what happened to old what's-his-name.

A wonderful reflection to remind us who loves art what is important.

2009-12-03T16:49:00.004+08:00

More paintings ABC 123 24" x 18" Walk and dance 22" x 54" Me and you 18" x 48" Me and you I 18" x 48"

2009-12-03T16:41:00.003+08:00

More paintings one all 33" x 40" Wishing joy 54" x 20" Sky is my horizon II 48" x 48'

Lee Long Looi solo exhibition in December 12th December to 3rd January 2010

2009-12-03T16:21:00.004+08:00

Lee Long Looi- paintings in the exhibition. Let's go 52" x 66" Voice of youth 18" x 24" Moon talk 11" x 11" Mood on 12" x 9" Lee Long Looi- paintings in the exhibition. Moment 12" x 12" Sky is my horizon II 48" x 48" The red circle 20" x 20"

youtube upload on Lee Long Looi's exhibition

2009-12-03T14:55:00.001+08:00

Lee Long Looi solo exhibition in December

2009-11-30T19:49:00.004+08:00

Maidens and mark-making.

Exotically beautiful maidens comfortably nestle their bodies and heads on rocky landscapes. Stoic yet elegant, they possess sharp Asian facial features, piercing eyes, luscious full-lips, moon faces and golden-tanned skin. Geometrically constructed and caressed by hard brush strokes, their limbs are hyperbolized, displaying elongated necks, arms and solid bosoms. Cloaked in plain garments that are usually white or red in color, they linger in serene mountainous landscapes or brightly-patterned interiors occasionally accessorized with a small white daisy in their delicate hands The creator of these emotionally self-contained and occasionally whistling females is Lee Long Looi.

Rhythm of light 34" x 54" Sky is the horizon II 48" x 48" Wishing joy 54" x 20"

Lee Long Looi solo exhibition in December

2009-11-30T19:41:00.002+08:00

David Hockney

2009-11-25T08:27:00.003+08:00

Hockney at Nottingham Contemporary, review

A fascinating new exhibition of David Hockney's work at the newly-opened Nottingham Contemporary shows the artist's transition from British talent to international star. Rating: * * * * *

By Richard Dorment Published: 5:38PM GMT 23 Nov 2009

1 of 2 Images

Hockney's A Bigger Splash at the Nottingham Contemporary Photo: RII SCHROER

What a bright idea it was to mount a show about David Hockney’s work in the Sixties for the inaugural exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary, the new arts centre for yet another British city that crass urban development robbed of its soul. Though I was underwhelmed by the serviceable shed Caruso St John has designed for the awkward site in that blighted city centre, it was a stroke of genius to bring these glorious pictures and prints from Hockney’s finest period together for the first time.
Only 22 when he arrived at the Royal College of Art, it wasn’t so much that the boy from Bradford set out to break the rules — it was that he didn’t know there were any rules to break. In the faux-naïf, graffiti-inspired work of the early Sixties, he revelled in his freedom to paint the figure unfettered by the disciplines of drawing, proportion, composition or perspective. The camp humour and high spirits of the earliest works go hand in hand with the erasures, pentimenti, secret codes and in-house jokes that are delivered with offhand defiance, as if to say to his elders, “So what are you going to do about it?”
To paint (as opposed to draw) two young men in an amorous clinch wasn’t done in 1962, but Hockney got away with it in We Two Boys Clinging because the “boys” look like crudely painted strawberry and chocolate ice-lollies and it is “love” in the form of Valentine hearts that the picture celebrates, not illegal sex. But sex is what interested Hockney, and the rest of the show tells the story of how he came to discard these early evasions and circumlocutions to put it at the heart of his work.
He followed up his initial success with the series of etchings updating Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress. Setting his story in a specific time and place (New York, early Sixties) with extraordinary graphic fluency, Hockney tells the familiar tale of drink, drugs, sex and death in a jokey visual language that anyone could understand.
But here, and in many other pictures painted right after he left the Royal College, it feels to me that Hockney introduces passages of surrealistic whimsy as a tactic to avoid having to deal with naturalistic description. I find paintings like Great Pyramid of Giza with Broken Head of Thebes (1963) repellently slick and superficial. With their echoes of the cartoons of Saul Steinberg, they are the reason the painter William Scott dismissed Hockney at this period as a “colour supplement artist”.
And then it happened. The day he stepped off the plane at Los Angeles, everything changed. In a moment that I would seriously compare to Vincent Van Gogh’s arrival at Arles, it is as though the heat, light and colour of southern California entered Hockney’s bloodstream. Overnight, a talented British artist became a major international star. Seeing it happen in this show is like watching a plane taxiing down a runway — on and on it trundles, gathering speed and power and then, suddenly, when you come to first LA pictures, whoosh —the wheels lift and one of the great artistic careers of the 20th century takes off.
From the first picture, the mannerisms and the obscurities of the London years begin to fall away. In the flourishing gay subculture in California, the young artist could assert his sexual identity in a way that was not possible under the watchful eyes of the British police and the Lord Chamberlain’s office. Now he could paint the subjects that interested him, sun-struck male bodies lying under blue skies beside rippling water. What’s more, he could paint them in focus, using academic draughtsmanship and Renaissance perspective without having to blur, erase, or otherwise disguise his imagery.
And so the nude in Man Taking Shower in Beverly Hills (1964) is painted from a black-and-white photo Hockney found in a beefcake magazine. But now Hockney’s brush describes the slow moving jets of water hitting the man’s arched back and the light tan line on his buttocks so caressingly that the three big black palm fronds in the foreground look carnivorous, like a Venus flytrap about to eat him alive.
The Californian equivalent to A Rake’s Progress are his wonderful illustrations to 14 poems by C.P. Cavafy. What before had only been implied, he now spells out in elegant line drawings showing young men nude, or in their underwear, or lying in bed together. The catalogue essay rightly discusses all this within the historical context of the sexual revolution that was taking place in these years. But though that is certainly true, what struck me so forcibly in this show is not so much the explicit subject matter of these pictures and prints as their formal perfection.
One small canvas shows the black and white street sign for Wilshire Boulevard against a sky of light blue, with a few green palm fronds. Its not what Hockney paints that’s interesting but how he paints it. Remembering the insouciant way Hockney used to paint in his earlier work, what is so striking here is that each brushstroke is laid on the canvas with a slow deliberation that’s as ravishing as any patch of colour painted by Vermeer or Mondrian. This quality is very hard to put into words, but it is covered by the term “facture” which refers to the artist’s touch, or feel for the paint —which in Hockney’s case is almost palpable. Forget spontaneity — that’s a distant memory, the indulgence of his youth. As Hockney matures, the pictures become quiet, measured, almost solemn - as if he realises that what he is doing in them is too important to make light of.
Take the most famous of all, A Bigger Splash. For years, I looked at that picture and all I saw was the meticulous way Hockney paints the two sprays of water arrested in mid-air forever, dutifully noting the picture’s gentle send-ups of abstract expressionism, geometric abstraction and post-painterly abstraction. But now that I am more familiar with Ed Ruscha’s paintings and photographs of LA, it’s clear that Hockney’s picture also captures the emptiness, sterility and an element of the sinister in Los Angeles. Notice, for example, the dark grey buildings and palm trees reflected in the sliding doors in the middle distance. We often think of Hockney’s Californian pictures as hymns to flesh and sexuality but this picture has none of that. Instead, what it gives us is an element of film noir, a side of LA that all this prosperity serves to keep at bay.
The culmination of the swimming-pool pictures came in 1966 with Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool, that hypnotic masterpiece in which Hockney paints water as a series of intertwined lines of white and mauve paint, rippling over bands of light blue, dark blue, and aquamarine. At first, its hard to take your eyes off the figure at the centre, the linchpin that holds the composition together, But after a while, your eye starts to move over the picture surface to discover the patch of radiant green Hockney uses for the back of the deck chair, or the horizontal bands of yellow, white, and moss green interrupted by evenly spaced black verticals at the top of the picture, surely his homage to Mondrian.
With time, you notice that, as in a work by Josef Albers, the composition here consists of a series of progressively smaller squares, beginning with the “frame” of the bare canvas, and ending with the glass picture window streaked with white diagonal lines that for some mysterious reason we read as reflections. Hockney has found a visual language that combines geometric abstraction with minimalism and naturalism. He plays off the straight lines of the architecture with the curving ripples and round flesh, all in a colours as pure and as vibrant as a Matisse.
With my head full of Hockney, it was hard to move on to a show of perfectly banal collages by a completely unremarkable American artist named Frances Stark, chosen, I can only suppose, because she happens to work in Los Angeles. Seeing it after Hockney like drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola after vintage wine.
Until Jan 24. Tel: 0115 924 2421

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The mean reds

An updated youtube for Lee Long Looi - Point in time

Let's celebrate works, not artists

Let's celebrate works, not artists

Lee Long Looi solo exhibition in December 12th December to 3rd January 2010

youtube upload on Lee Long Looi's exhibition

Lee Long Looi solo exhibition in December

Lee Long Looi solo exhibition in December