Author: xerkss

It’s undeniable that Contemporary African artists are rising more and more interest in the contemporary art market. Just last year, London based auctions registered a notable increase in African Art sales. Moreover, the exhibits around the world and the growth of new artistic institutions are helping to introduce a canon that marks an advantageous nod to the future.

The rising of Contemporary African Art

What are the reasons behind African Art consecration in the last year? Collectors’ demands increased consistently for works by African artists. The tendency roots to many theme-focused art fairs that helped to get to know an art heritage rich in media and variety. The seed must be found in a rich cultural actuality, and not less, in strong art schools over the continent.

In France, the African art scene has a key role and boasts good media coverage. Expositions as “Beauté Congo” by Fondation Cartier, 2015, turned the spotlight on the most interesting African creations, bringing them closer to a wide audience of diversified interest.

Still in France, Art Paris 2017 focused particularly on African artists’ work while AKAA (Also Known As Africa) was the first salon in Paris entirely dedicated to African art.

Moreover, the development of local collecting is contributing to support the artistic scene of the continent. It is no coincidence that Johannesburg’s collectors are the first players in this market. From an overall perspective, prices aren’t the highest on the market but they are steadily increasing. That is why they represent an opportunity for collectors that are seeking pieces of great historical and aesthetic consistency.

As for defining an art capital, differently from Asia where Hong Kong has a key role for the trades, Africa boasts by now different countries that are growing in importance for the art market. Still, for now, it lacks a preeminent art-market center.

Discovering African Artists

What’s impressive is the creativity those artists are bringing to the Contemporary Art panorama. Painting remains the most popular art form in East Africa but often African artists express through different media braided together. That’s the case of Maroccanean artist Ghizlane Sahli. In particular, this artist works with repurposed materials in an interdisciplinary way, that ranges from architecture to embroidery. Her works, inspired by natural and organic shapes, were recently displayed in London, Paris, Marrakesh, Milan, and Germany.

Remarkable representatives of African art come from Nigeria. A path opened by Ben Enwonwu that widened notably these last years. In particular, Nigerian artists seem to share the intent of creating social and environmental-conscious art.

Renowned sculptor Sokari Douglas Camp represents contemporary concerns through the rituals of the African world. In works like “Green Leaf Barrel” she focuses on the dramatic pollution conditions in the Nigeria Delta.
Nnenna Okore, another impressive artist from Nigeria, uses a combination of biodegradable materials for her artworks. Her paintings and sculptures remind of natural primordial shapes that she creates through tools such as paper, ceramic, fabric, and hessian.

Another incredibly interesting figure in the contemporary art panorama is Gerald Chukwuma. His vibrant canvases quest about anthropological, social and human conditions in Africa. Cameroon artists Salifou Lindou and Boris Nzebo on the other side, approach struggling themes with unique figurative identities. If Salifou Lindou’s overlapping lines reflect the ambiguity of life itself, Boris Nzebo’s multilayered paintings portray the social and political life in Douala, the biggest city of Cameroon.

Find out more about these Contemporary African Artists in RDN gallery and in our articles section!

When asking what is Abstract Art, the most immediate answer would relate to Kandinskij’s non figurative art of 1913. Even if that might be considered the starting phase of a more defined canonization of the style, the answer to the question is far more complex. The debate around abstract art raised many discussions. In addition, the idea behind the style is ductile and artists themselves express it in different ways.

Defining the style

Literally, “abstraction” refers to something that distances an idea from objective referents. Abstract art creates images that do not belong to our visual experience. The style tries to express its contents in the free composition of lines, shapes, colors, without imitating the concrete reality in which we live.

In visual arts, that means pulling a depiction away from reference points. That’s why it can’t be defined as representational. 

The abstract was already present in many previous aesthetic productions, even very ancient. In these cases, however, the abstract figuration had only one precise aesthetic aim: that of decoration. The abstract art of this century has, however, a completely different purpose: that of communication. It wants to express content and meanings, without borrowing anything from the images that already exist around us.

In defining the style we must consider the concept of abstraction. This is the process through which the human mind describes reality using only some of its features. In the field of abstraction also stylizations enter, which, for example, proposed Art Nouveau.

What is Abstract Art today

The first signs of the style as we see it today dates to Impressionism. For instance, impressionist artists focused on capturing the essence of a subject rather than conveying it in a realistic, precise way. Surely Post-Impressionism and Fauvism in putting the colors at the center of their visual identity introduced new pillars in abstract art.

Today there are many different types of abstract art. Even the forms in which it expresses are verified, for example, it can be two or three dimensional. It can be geometric or figurative just to cite a few. For example, a great master of our time, Mikhail Turovsky often uses in his painting figurabstraction, a mix of figurative and abstract that creates incredibly powerful canvases. 

Fluid abstraction, defined as the pictorial’s answer to dance, is another sub-genre that is totally abstract.

However, there is something that all these sub-genres share. This main trait goes beyond any attempt to understand what is abstract art. This art is founded on emotions, sensations, and memories that undefined objects arouse in our minds.

As Kirk Varnedoe claimed in his work “Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art Since Pollock”:

“Abstract art has been with us in one form or another for almost a century now and has proved to be not only a long-standing crux of cultural debate but a self-renewing, vital tradition of creativity. We know that it works, even if we’re still not sure why that’s so, or exactly what to make of that fact.”

Kirk Varnedoe

The traveling exhibition dedicated to Norman Rockwell arrives at the Museum of Fine Arts in Huston. Launched by the New York historical society in June 2018, the show will be on display in Huston until March 22nd.

The images created by the American painter and illustrator constitute the very iconography of the American myth. In particular, his style embraces a strong photographic sense, which exacerbates reality by distorting it with irreverent – and sometimes grotesque – details.

Rockwell and the Saturday Evening Post

Norman Rockwell is a peculiar painter. He became famous for the representation of the American dream in the mid-twentieth century. His style, in particular, gained wide appreciation in the United States and greatly influenced generations of illustrators to come.

Rockwell was an extremely prolific artist. Between 1916 and 1963 he created 300 covers for the magazine “The Saturday Evening Post“. His illustrations, in particular, return a precious reconstruction of American popular culture of the last century.

“Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed. My fundamental purpose is to interpret the typical American. I am a storyteller.”

Norman Rockwell

Rockwell is acknowledged to have softened, in America’s perception of the time, the brutality of war through art. In fact, the artist devised a series of covers starring the recruit Willie Gillis. These are images describe the life of a young soldier from the first day in uniform until his return home.

The Four Freedoms of Norman Rockwell

The review collects the most incisive and famous works of the American painter. Among these, there are in fact the paintings inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech on the state of the Union. Eleven months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the entry of the USA into the war.

In that famous speech, Roosevelt announced the civil reference objectives: Freedom of expression, Freedom of religion, Right to a dignified standard of living and Freedom from rest. Rockwell then brought to canvas what Roosevelt had expressed with his voice. The artist created a series of four paintings called “The Four Freedoms“. After the publication of the series on The Saturday Evening Post, the works quickly became iconic.

The American government made those already popular paintings posters that went into countless American homes.

Rockwell’s collaboration with “The Saturday Evening Post” lasted 47 years. Subsequently, the artist began to publish his works on “Look”. In this phase, Rockwell created works related to themes such as that of racial segregation, the war in Vietnam and the manifestations for civil rights in works such as “The problem we all live with“.

Rockwell’s illustrations, from the first phase to the more politically engaged works of the last period, offer a mirror of the beliefs of the time. According to the words of the art curator Eccher, “Rockwell constantly oscillates between a popular narrative, functional to an immediate emotional involvement, and a learned linguistic articulation that captures the scents of classical art, literature, a refined symbolism“.

The Fondation Beyeler in Basel will host Hopper’s iconic artworks from January the 26th. At the base of the artist’s creative imagination is the urban view of American landscapes. Like painted scripts, Hopper’s works contain infinite possible interpretations.

The imaginative painting 

Edward Hopper, class 1882, was called “the silent witness of America”. However, this designation does not perfectly correspond to the pictorial personality of the New York artist. Hopper paints in an era of unstoppable modernization. With TV, advertising, and massive consumerism that began to develop in those years, Hopper embraced an opposite type of message and artistic intent.

Hopper’s works seem suspended in an unreal and melancholic atmosphere. For this reason perhaps, within his works, Hopper seems to freeze his figures. It is no coincidence that the men and women protagonists of his paintings always look elsewhere.

“No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.”

Edward Hopper

Despite the great pictorial capacity that brings him closer to realistic painting, Hopper’s is an art of the dream that arouses a state of tension in the viewer. In leaving room for the viewer’s imagination, Hopper’s American landscapes present an apparently harmonious scene. However, something intangible immediately elicits conflicting perceptions.

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.”

Edward Hopper

During his career, Hopper painted 366 works, many of which are now in the most important American museums. When a work by the New York artist is on the market, in most cases it establishes auction records. In 2018, for example, “Chop Suey” was purchased for 81 million euros. Since 2005, eight other paintings by the artist have reached sales amounts between 7 and 29 million euros.

Edward Hopper on view 

The one at the Fondation Beyler in Basel is an unmissable event. The museum will host 67 works from the finest galleries and international collections.

Edward Hopper’s art has influenced the imagination of generations of artists, even those from other artistic fields. Direct references to his paintings are for example in Hitchcock films, such as Rear Window and Vertigo. Indeed, the perspective, the light and the placement of the figures make his works almost cinematographic. It is no coincidence that numerous directors have admitted that they were inspired by Edward Hopper’s artworks to recreate particular atmospheres and suggestions.

Ridley Scott revealed that he took inspiration from Hopper to obtain particular atmospheres for some scenes of Blade Runner. Finally, Woody Allen reproduced the view of the “Queensborough bridge” in the initial sequence of Manhattan.

The exhibition stems from the collaboration between the Fondation Beyeler in cooperation with the Whitney Museum of American Art. This is the major repository of Hopper’s work. 

In addition, a 3D short film by Wim Wenders will give further insight into the very peculiar art of the American artist.