Friday Inspiration: Printmakers (Women in Art History)

Corita Kent (American, 1918-1986)

Louise Bourgeois (French/American, 1911-2010)

Zarina Hashmi (Indian-born American, b. 1937)

Kiki Smith (West German born American, b. 1954)

Sybil Andrews (British, 1898-1992)

Lygia Pape (Brazilian, 1927-2004)

Friday Inspiration: timbres d'art

Albrecht Dürer, Self Portrait at 22, 1493

Leonardo Da Vinci, Portrait of  Isabella D'Este, 1500

Amedeo Modigliani, Femme Aux Yeux Bleus (Woman with Blue Eyes), 1918

The last time I was in Paris I found these stamps at the Marche aux Timbres et Cartes-Postales, the stamp and vintage postcard market made famous by Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in 1963's Charade. The vendor gave them to me for next to nothing, they are not rare or valuable, but I fell in love with the tiny little renderings of the paintings. Each stamp measures a mere 1.625 x 2.125" (or 4 x 5 cm) and has the most exquisite level of detail and a full palette. 


I've always loved Dürer's Self Portrait at 22, in which he is holding a thistle. It was the first painting I saw at the Louvre that really made me stop and pause. It was tucked away in a quiet gallery which I found by accident the first time and found by memory a couple years later when I went back. 

Amusing

Is elephant dung as valid a medium as gouache?
Elephant dung is so last season, darling.

--Charles Saatchi*

*from My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic, a self indulgent book in which Charles Saatchi answers all sort of questions in a flippant manner. An amusing read if nothing else.

Ten

I unabashedly love Starbucks. Say what you will, but that $3.64 cup makes me happy.

I find Starbucks oddly comforting. It is consistent in the best possible way. Starbucks in Cambridge is the same as Starbucks in Reykjavik.

I didn't really drink coffee until college. In my junior year when I was trying to work my way through a particularly dense art history course in Postmodernism, I would take all my texts and notebooks and fold myself up into a corner table and read for hours. Anyone who has read Jacques Lecan or Michel Foucault knows you need at least one espresso to even get through the first paragraph.

Now it is a habit to go and work or read or draw or escape. I like to melt into the corner and just watch the world.

Tall non-fat no-whip Hazelnut Mocha (Day 10)
pen and ink
2.75 x 4.75"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Four

An eleventh hour doodle. A Greco-Roman doodle actually. One of those perfectly sculpted faces fragmented by history and left staring into the void for all eternity.

And with that thought, I bid you good-night.


Greco-Roman Doodle (Day 4)
grease pencil
2 x 4"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

It all adds up

I have been finding numbers on the ground lately. It's very Dada.

Speaking of Dada, I have been engrossed in Dan Franck's Bohemian Paris. It is an art history book that reads like a novel. It examines the tumultuous birth of modern art in the early 20th century in Paris. One can almost imagine lingering in the cafes of Montmatre and Montparnasse and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Picasso, Apollinaire, and Modigliani.

Currently on the studio playlist...

I Grieve / Peter Gabriel
Rainy Day / Coldplay
Mykonos / Fleet Foxes
Electrical Storm / U2
Monkey Gone to Heaven / The Pixies
Haunted / The Moody Blues
Plainsong / The Cure
Numb (New Mix) / U2