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Lhasa de Sela

Unknown women ... artists

Artemisia Gentileschi...








was a wonderful painter who lived in Florence in the 17th Century, same good as any other male artist of this period. Her work is tortured, stemming from the fact that at the age of 19 she was raped by a friend of her fathers and the humiliated in the ensuing trial. In spite of her difficulties she became one of the leading painters of her day, and yet since that time she has been consigned to obscurity whilst her male contemporaries can be found in any art book dealing with that period.

Camille Claudel...

she was the misstress and assistance of sculptor Rodin. Historically whilst Rodin was given the credit, she physically worked behind the scenes sculpting on or completing many of his master works and certainly exerted a profound influence on his work during the period that she was with him. Yet, she spent her last days in a mental institution and died in relative obscurity.

Mother instinct...

As my mother instinct is killing me these days J I thought of sharing this artist I discovered accidentally one year ago… I was sitting at my gym waiting for my class to start and I was looking at a magazine where I saw a photo of scared little boy sitting and many small people around it…

In the beginning I thought it was a photo but then what were all these little people around him… they all looked so real…so the little boy… I was so impressed! I wrote down the name of the artist and when my class was finished I did a search on the Internet and I was really amazed by this artist work…

Ron Mueck was born in Melbourne born in 1958 and moved to England in the early 1980s. Mueck moved on to establish his own company in London, making photo-realistic props and animatronics for the advertising industry. Although highly detailed, these props were usually designed to be photographed from one specific angle hiding the mess of construction seen from the other side. Mueck increasingly wanted to produce realistic sculptures which looked perfect from all angles.

In 1996 Mueck transitioned to fine art collaborating with his mother-in-law, Paula Rego, to produce small figure as part of a tableau she was showing at the Hayward Gallery. Rego introduced him to Charles Saatchi who was immediately impressed and started to collect and commission work. This led to the piece which made Mueck's name, Dead Dad, being included in the Sensation show at the Royal Academy the following year. Dead Dad is a rather haunting silicone and mixed media sculpture of the corpse of Mueck's father reduced to about two thirds of its natural scale. It is the only work of Mueck's that uses his own hair for the finished product!

Mueck’s huge 4.5m crouching Boy was the centrepiece of the Millennium Dome in London and of the Venice Biennale in 2001. The artist’s work is becoming ever more intriguing, ranging from smaller-than-life size naked figures to much larger, but never actual, life size. Consequently his hyper-realistic sculptures in fibreglass and silicone, while extraordinarily lifelike, challenge us by their odd scale. The psychological confrontation for the viewer is to recognise and assimilate two contradictory realities.

Pregnant woman and Mother and Baby (such an affectionate, sensitive sculpture) are the best sculptures I ‘ve ever seen in my life and I hope one day to be able to see them closer… Pregnant woman is Mueck’s most ambitious work to date. The sculpture is monumental (2.5m high), utterly imposing and even intimidating when first experienced by the viewer. After a while, however, this majestic Earth Mother becomes familiar, unthreatening and endearing. She is exhausted, hands held back over her head; the face is tender and vulnerable. Her presence is a powerful one indeed, and she evokes a multitude of thoughts, ranging from the wonder of maternity and procreation to population control and the burden of female responsibility.Mueck is meticulous and scrupulous about verisimilitude. The feet of pregnant woman are planted firmly on the ground supporting her weary pose. Nails, kneecaps, nipples, all are portrayed with scintillating realism, the consequence of flawless process.Pregnant woman began with a series of small plaster maquettes. They allowed investigation of the outstretched arms in a variety of poses. The decision to make the figure a giant was a brave one, and the confidence that has carried it off so effectively is a mark of Mueck’s artistic maturity. After making three maquettes about 15cm high, Mueck tested his decision to sculpt a work much larger than life size by making three large drawings of the pregnant woman, seen in profile, each a different height. He was at that time artist-in-residence at the National Gallery, London, and, in order to test the scale, he took the drawings to the room where the sculpture would ultimately be exhibited.Over three months Mueck worked with a single female model, beginning when she was already six months pregnant. He also used photographs — and, without doubt, there are also art historical precedents behind the sculpture as the artist absorbed the wonderful European Old Master collection in London. He made the figure in fibreglass but, because fibreglass is so hard, made a separate face in silicone, so that eyebrows and hair could be punched in with greater ease but no less perseverance. Tiny needles were used to punch in human hairs one by one in tedious repetition.Pregnant woman is not a portrait. The invisible presence of the soon-to-be-born infant makes this sculpture one of the most fascinating images of maternity. Still considered a taboo in some cultures, many people are confronted by the sight of pregnant woman. Nothing is sacred, nothing is private any more, some have said. But Pregnant woman is surely a secular Madonna, a hymn to the beauty of the life giving, which only mothers share so personally.Pregnant woman was included in exhibitions of Mueck’s work held at the National Gallery, London, from March to June 2003, at the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, from November 2003 to January 2004, and the National Gallery, Berlin, in early 2004 before arriving at the National Gallery of Australia.

In 2002 his sculpture Pregnant Woman was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for AU$800,000.

Articles were taken from:
http://www.artmolds.com/ali/halloffame/ron_muek.htm
http://www.nga.gov.au/Mueck/director.cfm

Madelein Peyroux

Indroducing... me

Well thats a ... hello testing post... hello then!

I have tried several times to post this little angel as it was initially but i dont seem to do it right. Normally is moving its hand painting and its little feet... its so cute... :)

Meli Melo...

as if i am chosing a name for my life... Meli from Greek that means Honey and Melo for something melo, makes you cry out, something dramatic... a life sometimes sweet sometimes dramatic, like most of us i guess!