March 25: All Art and Architecture Edition

Christopher Knight at the Los Angeles Times provides a useful overview of the career of California painter and architect Millard Sheets:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/03/millard-sheets-pasadena-museum-of-california-art.html

http://www.pmcaonline.org/press/millard_sheets_press_release_FINAL.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millard_Sheets

The Royal Academy in London is currently featuring the neglected 18th century watercolorist Paul Sandby, and a very appealing artist he is:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36811

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/paul-sandby-ra-1731-1809-picturing-britain-a-bicentenary-exhibition/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Sandby

I've been entrance by Scandinavian painting of the 1825-1925 period ever since discovering Kirk Varnedoe's excellent book Northern Light. It is good to see that Christen Kobke (1810-1848) is getting his first London exhibition:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36894 

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/kobke

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christen_K%C3%B8bke

Since I have turned PMD into a true daily diary and been scouring the Web for noteworthy material, I have become acquainted with so many terrific visual artists that I did not know about, such as painter Mark Grotjahn:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/03/mark-grotjahn-at-blum-poe.html

http://www.blumandpoe.com/exhibitionpages/grotjahn10/index.html

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/mark_grotjahn.htm

These encounters are very encouraging to me! If I had any doubts that there is tremendous work being done these days, I don't any longer.

Here is another painter and print-maker new to me, Barbara Rae, like Paul Sandby currently on exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. I love her vibrant use of color:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36947

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/hugh-casson-room-for-friends/barbara-rae-ra-prints,315,RAL.html

Coloration is also a strength of the Hungarian modernist Simon Hantai, who died just a couple of years ago:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36945

http://www.paulkasmingallery.com/exhibitions/2010-03-19_simon-hantai/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Hantai

Nicholas Roerich's mountain paintings are studies in ice-blue:

http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36962

http://ngmaindia.gov.in/ce_nicholas-roerich.asp 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Roerich

The Estonian photographer Alexander Gronsky has won the Foam Paul Huf Award for "a young international talent in photography under 35 years of age." Check out his website, there are a lot of fine pictures there:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36781

http://www.alexandergronsky.com/

The Palacio de Cristal in Madrid is currently home to a site-work by French artist Pierre Huyghe, "La saison des fetes," that incorporates plants and flowers "associated with festivals and celebrations familiar across the world":

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36908

As watchtowers go, this is pretty snazzy:

The municipality Inden wanted to erect a watchtower and landmark at this location [a coal mine!]. MUA decided on using the shape of an immense, 36 m tall robot: the Indemann. The Indemann’s design is characterised by its striking external appearance, but the real surprise lies in the staged experiences that the visitors can expect in its interior. The public experience the building as a composition of architectonic experiments, with tremendous overhanging elements, surprising transparencies and, for example, accessible grid floors in the outstretched robot arm 18 metres above the ground.

http://www.archdaily.com/53348/indemann-maurer-united-architects/

Also modernist in an inviting way that makes you want to explore it is the Porta Volta Fondazione Feltrinelli in Milan:

http://www.designscene.net/2010/03/porta-volta-fondazione-feltrinelli-by.html

Among notables born on this date are feminist Gloria Steinem, pop singers Aretha Franklin and Elton John, country singer Hoyt Axton, soprano Magda Olivero, artist Matthew Barney, astronaut Jim Lovell, composers Johann Adolph Hasse and Bela Bartok, conductor Arturo Toscanini, sportscaster Howard Cosell, baseball pitcher Tom Glavine, race-car driver Danica Patrick, film directors David Lean and Helmut Kautner, novelists Penelope Gilliatt, Toni Cade Bambara, and Flannery O'Connor, historian A.J.P. Taylor, and actors Simone Signoret, Kari Matchett, Bonnie Bedelia, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Ed Begley Sr. Someday I really must sit down with Matthew Barney's seven-hour film cycle Cremaster 1-5, but in the meantime here is an extended video interview with Barney describing the entire series: