Gallery Talk

German Artist Jorg Immendorff Dies at 61

Just caught this article from the Art News Blog, about German artist Jorg Immendorff's passing

German expressionist artist Jörg Immendorff passed away on Monday at the age of 61. The artist struggled with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis which forced him to change painting hands (from left to right) and eventually forced him to stop painting in 2006.

Jorg Immendorff was born on the 14th of June, 1945 in Germany. He died on the 28th of May, 2007 in Düsseldorf.

Jorg Immendorff's paintings and information can be found at the Saatchi Gallery website.

Sad news.

Mobile phone photography as art?

Another interesting article:

Patrice Elmi hasn't touched her bulky 35 mm camera since last fall. The emerging visual artist from Los Angeles has discovered that all she needs is the diminutive gizmo she clips to her jeans and flips open to chat with friends. Take a look at her photography -- colorful abstracts of urban settings -- and it's not immediately obvious that her equipment of choice is a cell phone camera. Even LG Electronics Inc., maker of the handset Elmi uses, initially didn't believe her photos originated from its LG8100 phone when she asked the company to sponsor a recent gallery exhibit of her camera-phone art. "When people see my images, they don't believe that I took them with a cell phone," she said. "The depth and clarity of the images are so phenomenal." The quality was good enough to persuade John Matkowsky, owner of Drkrm, a small gallery showing Elmi's work through May 26, to break from his norm of featuring only traditional silver prints to do his first-ever show of digital prints. "I think it's the future," Matkowsky said. "I think in two years, or 10 -- I don't know -- it'll be normal, and everyone will be doing cell-phone photography shows." Elmi, who teaches local art classes and has dabbled in photography since 1979, said her camera phone "addiction" started last fall when she encountered a corner of a building that she wanted to photograph.

Source

The Queen - In Vegemite

16-year-old Steph Chard has been causing a stir down under with a recent piece of work.

Queen Elizabeth II not by oils or water colours, but by vegemite (an Australian Marmite).

There's only one major criticism of the portrait. It stinks!

Steph says she has no idea had to preserve the work which earned the young painter a 'second' at the local show.

Story from ABC News

Coke museum to host Warhol art

In a mingling of pop art, advertising and the real thing, about 30 Andy Warhol renderings of Coca-Cola's curvy trademark bottle will go on display at a new museum near the Atlanta headquarters of the world's largest beverage maker.

Most of the paintings, pencil sketches and screen prints - all about Coke except for a self-portrait - will be on exhibit beginning May 24 at the new World of Coca-Cola museum near the company's headquarters in Atlanta.

The paintings are on loan for a year from The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. A half-hidden Coke logo looms above the trademark bottle in a dark 178cm-by-132cm painting on linen from 1961. A violet splash of colour spills from a Coke can in a large screen print created for a 1985 cover for Time that was never published.

Full Article

Nine figures in the art world give their verdict on Blair's cultural legacy

Tony Blair is only interested in popular culture and not the arts. He is by nature and mission a leveller, and art asks people to be more than they are, better than they are; it asks for intensity, concentration and effort. Blair worries too much about elitism to recognise art's unique power to change lives. As for Gordon Brown, he is unlikely to care whether art exists or it doesn't, so long as he doesn't have to pay for it.

Full article on the Guardian's website

Elderly pair face art scam charges

    I found this article rather amusing:

A couple in their 80s and their sons were charged yesterday with conning a council into buying a fake ancient Egyptian statue that was supposed to put the Louvre's similiar piece of art in the shade.

Embarrassed town hall staff in Bolton were allegedly hoodwinked by George Greenhalgh, 83, and his wife Olive, 82, into paying nearly £440,000 for the 50cm (20in) image of the Amarna princess, said to represent Tutankhamun's sister. The statue was later found by experts to be many centuries short of its supposed age of 3,367 years. The couple appeared before Greater Manchester magistrates yesterday with their sons, George Junior, 52, and Shaun, 46, who are jointly accused of using their home in Bolton as a base for selling bogus antiques.

It's quite amazing what people will do!

Full story over on The Guardian's website.