jueves, 15 de noviembre de 2007

Colette Calascione








Navegando por myspace me encuentro con esta maravilla... sin palabras... breathtaking*

Addressing the issue of gender identity and particularly that of "female identity," Calascione's imagination takes her into flights of fancy and fantasy in her paintings. She paints women in all guises, mostly unclothed, sitting on divans brocaded in satin, standing provocatively, looking at the viewer, reclining on a bed surrounded by the stuff of dream and fantasy, purring cats, fairy tale fish, toy soldiers.

Her "Self-Portrait with Internal Landscape" reveals the artist in a tiered yellow period dress with a roundel of a landscape brooch at her chest being opened by a man's hand, which enters the painting from the right side, a fragment of a person? To the left is a partial view of a table with vase and roses, above this hangs what appears to be a detail of an old photograph. Only a corner of this photo is revealed to the viewer, with curving legs of a table, and legs of a gentleman garbed in a tailcoat. Could this be a romantic connection? A black eye mask--inviting the viewer to peer into the artist's eyes and keeping the viewer at a distance--conceals the artist's pretty and gamine face.

Painted like old master paintings with a careful drawing, a monochromatic under-painting phase followed by many layers of oil, the artist beguiles us with her images and her imagination.

Colette Calascione was born in 1971. She received a B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, California. Her work has been shown at St. Mary's College, Moraga, California and the San Francisco Art Institute, as well as in many galleries, most notably in the San Francisco area.

jueves, 1 de noviembre de 2007

Guy Bourdin




(...) In the seventies, alongside Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin created some of the world's most scandalous fashion images. Bourdin's work for French Vogue was chic, disturbing, and often surreal. In his glossy netherworld, beauty was extreme, and fantasy was grotesque and sometimes macabre...

Eviana Hartman in Vogue US, april 2003