I have chosen the title of this blog, "Not Vasari," because Giorgio Vasari, a 16th century Tuscan artist-turned-author, was one of the first people to formally write about artists and their work (check out The Lives of the Painters by the man himself if you're interested). I want to use this blog to promote contemporary art (and dig back a little bit if the spirit so moves) by looking at some of our most celebrated and under-appreciated artists of today. It's not Vasari, because we'll hopefully be looking at people Vasari could have never knows about (because he's dead). Vasari was a proponent of the idea of the progression and development of art, so I think that's a great starting place for looking at art. As I examine artists/pieces/movements, I hope that this can really be brought to the forefront of how we see art-- is it really progressing? how is it developing and why?
Given the extremely opinionated personality of your blogger, I fear that I may be no less biased than Vasari was; but I urge you, readers (if there are any) to call me out on it and challenge it. That's how we grow and change and become more well rounded versions of the people we are right now.
Happily, I will welcome contributions to the blog! I've all ready had a friend who's excited about composing something for the blog, and I'm very excited to see what he digs up. I'll try to carry the blog as much as I can, but I'd love support and contribution to everyone who feels so inclined. Also, if you have someone/thing that you want to know more about, let me know, and I'll research it for you, because Lord knows I'd love an excuse to do that.
Oh, and one more thing: let's leave Thomas Kinkade out of this. And Anne Geddes.
So, without further adieu, let's get on to our first artist! I find it only appropriate to look at/ eulogize the work of Louise Bourgeois, as she left this earth yesterday at the age of 98.
Good heavens, she is precious. This photograph was taken with her standing behind her 1970 sculpture Eye-to-Eye. The website for the Centre-Pompidou's exhibition of Bourgeois has this to say as a summary: Born in France in 1911 and residing in New York since 1938, Louise Bourgeois is one of the major artists of the second half of the 20th and early 21st Centuries. Her work, which has traversed Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, oscillating between abstract geometry and organic reality, escapes all attempts at artistic classification. Based on memory, emotion and the reactivation of childhood souvenirs, Louise Bourgeois follows a subjective approach, using all types of material and all manner of shapes. Her personal and totally autobiographical vocabulary is consistent with the most contemporary of practices, and exerts an influence on many artists. (credit)Bourgeois's work is bizarrely captivating. Evidently, she has had a life-long fascination with arachnids. While she has worked with spider-imagery since the 1940s, arguably her most celebrated works are her colossal spider sculptures (titled Maman) created in the late 1990s-early 2000. Ultimately, Bourgeois' sculptures incorporate a sense of vulnerability and fragility. Her works are often viewed to have a sense of sexuality to them, which she believed is a large part of both vulnerability and fragility-- undoubtedly themes learned through the childhood experience of her father's adulterous affair with her governess, and event that her mother refused to acknowledge.
Maman at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain
Rest in peace, Louise. The fact that you were the first solo-woman retrospective represented at MoMa speaks very highly of you and your work.
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