Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind, The British Museum

We had a weekend in London, and on the flight over by KLM I was reading through the inflight magazine onboard the plane, and came over this exhibition at The British Museum. The weather was shitty, so it was a perfect opportunity to explore a museum exhibition.

I am also at the moment reading the final book by Jean M. Auel, "The Land of Painted Caves", so it was a perfect timing to go and see these ancient artworks on display.

http://www.jeanauel.com/

It was really astonishing to see the details in the artwork, and to get an understanding of how time consuming some of these creations were.
Informative video on youtube about the exhibition:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slnvRPV4Bas

One of the sculptures on display was the Lion Man (unfortunately a replica), a human shaped body with a lion head.

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Ice-Age-Lion-Man-is-worlds-earliest-figurative-sculpture/28595

Barcelona; Streetlife, Gaudi and Art Noveau

Last Christmas and New Year 2007 I went to Barcelona, one of the worlds coolest and prettiest cities by my opinion. And also great people that lives there! No hay problema, nunca!
The playfulness of the city is also reflected in the experimental architecture made by Gaudi. His work is found all around in Barcelona, from parks to the great cathedral "Sagrada Familia".
I didn't have a camera when I went to Barcelona, so most of the pictures in this post is from a tourist-leaflet about Gaudi's work, and some pictures from a disposable camera I ran around with, that's why they're a bit blurry...


The use of colorful tiles and with curves and lines inspired by nature, Gaudi's work is one of a kind. Cities are usually boring and depressing, but by making them more alive and "nature-like" I belive people would enjoy living there even more!

Chimneys!


Sagrada Familia, not yet finished

Casa Battló, like made out of candy

But Gaudi is of course not the ONLY big thing about Barcelona. It is a centre for street art and fashion like only the catalan can do it. People are relaxed and the vibes are definitively different from posh Madrid, or the Celtic North-West.
Under is a music video made of Manu Chao, La Rumba de Barcelona, many of the shots taken from La Rambla, the main walking street in the City, loaded with tourists, salsemen and entertainers all year around.

While in Barcelona i bought a book called "Art Noveau, a Study of Europe and America's boldest and most fashionable style" by Stephen Escritt.
I have always been a fan of Art Noveau, even though with my Scandinavian genes I should find it a bit fussy but rather opposite, it's not really maximalism, but definetively not minimalism either. It's the natural curves and playfullness of motives and colors and the so direct inspiration from nature that fascinates me.


The book is given out by the publisher Phaidon, which specializes in books about art, photography, design architecture etc.

Painting by Murcha, famous art noveau artist.

The dragonfly is a favourite motive in Art Noveau

Rolf Groven, political painter

"Children of Abraham, 2003"

I'm a big fan of Rolf Groven.
He makes his fine art a political demonstration against unfairness in the world, it be war, pollution or just "day-to day" politics.
Many of his works has been rejected at exhibitions because of their strong, raw motives.

He has been an active painter for over 30 decades now and is still provoking the Norwegian political elite and its followers.

He does something we should see more in fine arts, using his artistic abilities to wake up the people from ignorance and dullness!




This painting is from 1971 and is inspired by the painting of Rafael with the same name; "The Sistine Madonna".
The motif is a mother and her son hit by the American napalm bombing under the Vietnam war. Groven's question was how a nation with such a strong, Christian belief could execute so much pain agains civilians in a country that had never done the USA anything! (Luckily there were a lot of people inside the USA that demonstrated against the war, but these are never the people in power, unfortunately...)

More info about Rolf Groven

Fascinations from the childhood

I remember my parents having a huge book (I think it's still there in their bookshelf), bounded in light-brown leather with paintings and drawings from Theodor Kittelsen inside, a Norwegain illustrator/painter with a lot of motives from Norwegian nature and folk-tales.

"Echo"



My first years I would just look in the book, without having learned how to read, and some of the pictures could be really scary, especially those with motives from the Great Plague that wiped out close to 2/3rds of the Norwegian population in the mid 1400.
He had personified the plague as an old lady with a skull-face or as a black owl.
I remember having nightmares sometimes after looking in the book before going to bed...




He is also the man who has set certain standards on how we picture the trolls from the Norwegian forests and mountains.


More information on Theodor Kittelsen

Chalk cliffs of Rugen by Caspar David Friedrich

This is a picture I first encountered in my bedroom of my family's summer estate.
Originally the bedroom was my youngest aunt's, but as she grew old, married and had kids, I inherited the small room on the loft of the oldest house, and by the bed, a small poster of this painting was the first thing I laid my eyes on everytime I went to bed or woke up.
My concerns were always around the man who had fallen over and lost both his hat and his walking stick, and the young lady dressed in red that sort of reaches out towards him. Why did he fall? Or was he just looking over the edge of a steep drop? I imagened the three persons in the picture were in some sort of argument, the two men not seeming interested in eachother. Were they fighting over the red dress lady?
The pictures gave me a lot to think about before falling asleep. The colours of the sea, like in a sunset. The white chalk cliffs that I first thought was snow or ice. As a child I had never seen chalk cliffs before, but could relate to the glaciers I had seen in a distance on top of the Norwegian mountains.
I wonder if the poster is still there.

More about Caspar David Friedrich