Tuesday, December 26, 2006

"Femme nue sur le dos, maintenant les cuisses écartées" (1900) by Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin, Femme nue sur le dos, maintenant les cuisses écartées, ca. 1900, Crayon graphite, estompe et gouache sur papier crème. H. 25 x L. 32, 6. D. 6189 ” Musée Rodin, Paris.

"Playboy" (2005) by Jacob Dyrenforth

Jacob Dyrenforth (1975, Cincinnati, Ohio) makes photo-based, meticulously executed, graphite drawings of pixilated images drawn from subcultures of the recent past. He received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1998) and an MFA from the Columbia University School of the Arts (2003). His solo exhibitions include Some get strong, some get strange, Sandroni Rey, Los Angeles; The Yearn, Wallspace, New York (2006) and Vice. And Versa, 31 Grand Gallery, New York (2005).

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Monday, December 11, 2006

Three drawings by Matt Brown

"Sticks and Stones: Part Three" by Matt Brown, coloured ink on illustration board
"Endocrine Series" by Matt Brown, 10x8", coloured ink on illustration board

Matt Brown is represented by Christopher Cutts Gallery in Toronto, Canada. Make sure you click on the images above to see the detail in the large versions.

If you have more info on Mr. Brown please let us know because his dealer's site does not have a bio, and "Matt Brown" is a bitch to google.

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"Odalisque I. Looking at Manet. Olympia" (2005) by Louis le Brocquy

The "Odalisques Series" by Louis le Brocquy (Ireland, 1916) is inspired by Manet's painting Olympia (1863), a masterpiece which le Brocquy has ruminated upon since he first encountered it in Paris in 1938 at the Jeu de Paume. Olympia worked her complicated magic on le Brocquy at intervals throughout his career, while also leaving her enduring mark on art history and on the work of many other great artists including Picasso, Modigliani and Moore. In 1951 le Brocquy perceived Olympia very differently in his large painting A Family (National Gallery of Ireland), envisaging a group of refugees in post-war Europe. Here Manet's cool sensuality has been completely ignored; as the artist puts it, 'reduced to Palaeolithic circumstance under electric light bulbs.' In the recent Odalisques, however, le Brocquy has wholly returned to his original delight in Olympia, a naked figure at once aloof and alluring.

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Born in Dublin, Ireland, Louis le Brocquy is one of the foremost Irish painters of the twentieth century. His work has received much international attention and many accolades in a career that spans seventy years of creative practice. In 1956, he represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale, winning the Premio Acquisito Internationale with A Family (coll. National Gallery of Ireland), subsequently included in the historic exhibition Fifty Years of Modern Art at Brussels World Fair 1958. Widely acclaimed for his evocative portrait ‘Heads’ of literary figures and fellow artists, which include William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, and his friends Samuel Beckett, Francis Bacon and Seamus Heaney, in recent years le Brocquy’s early Tinker subjects and Family paintings, have attracted headline attention on the international marketplace marking him as the fourth painter in Ireland and Britain to be evaluated within a very select group of artists, alonside Lucian Freud, David Hockney and Francis Bacon. Recognised by many as the greatest Irish artist of the twentieth century, and one of the greatest of any era, the recent realisation of over £1 million for one of his works at auction is not merely a record but an acknowledgment of his genius and international appeal. Acknowledged by museum retrospectives worldwide, the artist’s work is represented in numerous public collections, from the Guggenheim in New York City to the Tate Gallery in London. In Ireland, he is honoured as the first and only living painter to be included in the Permanent Irish Collection of the National Gallery.

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"Room with a View" by Lucy Fur (2006)

Excerpts from "Room with a View" by Lucy Fur (2006). All photos courtesy and © Lucy Fur 2006.

This book looks at the Burlesque's Queen in hotel rooms across America. Lucy Fur's two major pursuits - photography and professional exhibitionism - meet up advantageously in the setting of odd American hotel rooms. Equal parts Bettina Rheims, Helmut Newton and Cindy Sherman, Lucy Fur has begun a photographic career by capturing herself in a vanishing breed of unique motel room environments across the US.

Writes Lucy in her introduction, "Room With a View is not merely a pin-up book: it is as much about the room as it is about me. I think of myself as a fixture in that room, like a lamp or a chair. The kind of motel rooms that particularly attracted me had wood panelling, forgotten '60s- and '70s-era oil paintings, strange lighting, fantasy themes, tiled bathrooms, wacky wallpaper, and no outside view. All the photo-graphs are in some way a reaction to the established lexicon of 'pin-up sexy.'"

Room With a View contains nearly one hundred of Lucy Fur's photographs, bound handsomely with an inlaid photograph surrounded by an elegant embossed cloth binding.

Friday, December 08, 2006

"Monica nude with yellow curtain" (1991) by Tom Wesselmann

This silk-screen print on paper (sérigraphie sur papier) by Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004) will be auctioned tomorrow at Sotheby's in Paris, France. It's estimated at 1,000—1,500 EUR.

His early work was heavily influenced by the abstract expressionist painters, especially Willem de Kooning. His art became more popular in the 1960s and had his first one-man exhibition in 1962 at the Tanager Gallery, New York. After that, his art made it to several other exhibitions such as the Young America exhibition in 1965, Whitney Museum, New York.

Beginning in the 1950s, he made collages from magazine clippings and found objects, often incorporating female nudes. Wesselmann was best known for his "Great American Nudes" series.

He died of complications following heart surgery, aged 73.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Actress Scarlett Johansson (1984) [update]

Scarlett Johansson at the IMDB and at amazon.com.

Here some great news:

4th December 2006 12:30:03

Scarlett Johansson has vowed to strip for a movie - one day.

The 'Black Dahlia' actress, famed for her curvaceous body, insists she is ready to bare all on the big screen for the right part.

She said: "I'm still making up my mind about when I'll do a nude scene. I'm not opposed to doing nudity, it would just have to be the right project, maybe some sensational European art film."

Scarlett, 22, insists she wouldn't be embarrassed about showing her naked curves on celluloid because she is very happy with her body, especially her breasts.

She added: "I'm proud of my breasts. I call them my girls. They're my charms, my feminine wiles. I'm very comfortable with my sexuality, my body and my face. Well, not always my face, but it's stuck there and there's nothing I can do about it."

Earlier this year, Scarlett topped a poll to find the best breasts in Hollywood.

She beat a host of ample chested stars, including Jessica Simpson and Salma Hayek, to win the accolade.

source | via

Monday, December 04, 2006

"Nudes ama12" (2000) by Thomas Ruff

In his Nudes series, Thomas Ruff gathers from the internet erotic and often pornographic images which he subsequently manipulates by digitally enlarging, blurring, and coloring them. The results are beautiful photographs with an abstract and ethereal quality which seems to belie their erotic content. With Nudes ama12 (2000), which evokes art historical referents such as Courbet's The Origin of the World (1866), the viewer may be satisfied to linger upon the photograph's sumptuous surface quality, or they may accept Ruff's invitation to recreate the fantasy for themselves.

Homework assignment: Google for "ama12".

sources: image | text

"Femme aux Chrysanthemes" (1942) by Francis Picabia

During World War II, Francis Picabia (1879 - 1953) painted images of starlets, nudes and fashionable women that he found in popular magazines and, in particular, erotic magazines of the 1930s. Picabia faithfully copied these images of women altering little from the original photographs. Signs of the photographic origins of his paintings - the harsh artificial lighting and snap-shot effects - were left deliberately obvious. Moreover, Picabia frequently chose images in which the female anatomy was distorted by sharp camera angles which he left uncorrected in his painted versions. He also seductively translated black and white images into color of his own choosing underscoring his fascination with the colors and textures of the female body. However, in spite of the fact that the women he chose often existed in a realm of stereotypical poses and cheap eroticism, Picabia’s paintings of women in the 1940s demonstrate his interest in the fundamental differences between the genres of painting and photography. Each image selected and copied is implicated into this dialogue.

Please note the quite modern-looking Full-Brazilian.

sources: image | text

The Killers' "Sam's Town" (2006) by Anton Corbijn [update]

There was one tag missing on on Artboobs: music! Here's the first (updated) instalment of "album covers featuring boobs": "Sam's Town" (2006) by The Killers with a photo by Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn. More suggestions are highly appreciated.

From a review of the album in a UK music magazine (I've forgotten which one):

As well as a desert bighorn sheep - the Nevada state animal - the album cover has a disconsolate beauty queen leaning against a battered trailer. Corbijn considered hiring a model but then chose Felice, the Puerto Rican-American receptionist at the recording studio.

Amazon review by Aidin Vaziri:

The Killers five-million-selling debut, 2004's Hot Fuss, saw the stylish Las Vegas quartet mining inspiration from its favorite '80s British acts Duran Duran, the Cure, and the Smiths. On its follow-up, the group turns its focus homeward. First there's the album title, Sam's Town, which pays tribute to the old-school local casino where the band got its start. Then there's the music inside, a collection of windswept rockers in the vein of Bruce Springsteen that leave the indie-disco vibe of "Mr. Brightside" in the desert dust. Working with producers Alan Moulder and Flood (best known for their work with U2, Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails), everything here sounds bigger and shinier, with full-blown strings and choirs coloring epics like "When You Were Young" and "The River Is Wild." Coming soon to a stadium near you. --Aidin Vaziri

(updated 2006-12-04)