Rita Kernn-Larsen (1904-98) was a Danish Surrealist painter, whom Peggy Guggenheim met in Paris in 1937 and invited to exhibit at her Guggenheim Jeune gallery in London the following year. This show initiated Guggenheim’s patronage of Surrealism.
The current exhibition inaugurates two new exhibition rooms at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
Kernn-Larsen played a noteworthy part in the Surrealist movement, both in Denmark and internationally. She trained with Fernand Léger in Paris the early 1930s, distinguishing herself as his star pupil.
Searching For the Moon, 1936-37, Oil on canvas
In the Surrealist vein, Krenn-Larsen merged memories rooted in real-life experiences with dream and imagination, derived from an automatic painting method generating a stream of images from within the unconscious. Her works reflect the Surrealist desire to bridge any possible boundaries or alternative states, be they the human and the natural, dream and reality, the conscious and unconscious. A central motif in her paintings were the femme-arbres, women as arboreal creatures, which allude to the Surrealist’s identification of the female artist with the fertile natural world.
Behind the Mirror, 1937, Oil and sand on vancas
In her later years, Kernn-Larsen moved away from Surrealism towards an art based on both abstraction and nature. Her paintings were selected by the art historian Arturo Schwarz for the 1986 Venice Biennale. This exhibition marks her return to the city after more that thirty years.
The Apple From Normandy / The Apple
1934
Oil on canvas
This is one Kernn-Larsen’s earliest Surrealist paintings. It develops its biomorphic shape through an automatic technique, championed by the Surrealists, in which the subconscious freely directs the hand in tracing the line on the surface.
She explained: “I start with something realistic and its continuation is taken care of by the unconscious. The result often surprises me… there is as such a certain connection to the ‘psychoanalytic’.”
Phantoms
1934
Oil on canvas
Phantoms originated with a drowning accident that Krenn-Larsen and her husband witnessed on vacation in Normandy at a bathing resort in late summer 1934. ” It was uncanny… two [people] went missing… I don’t think they were ever found. It made a deep impression on me,” she recalled.
Dance and Counter-dance
1936
Oil on canvas
Kernn-Larsen’s works combined memories, dreams and imagination, as the employed an automatic Surrealist painting method to generate a flow of images arising from the unconscious. This is a signature example. The artist explained, “two rhythms play against each other. I consider it to be one of my most successful pictures.”
Self-Portrait (Know Thyself)
1937
Oil on canvas
The automatic line in this self-portrait evolves from Kernn-Larsen’s personal features. She explained: “I have taken off the shoes because I had to step into the glass.”
The Women’s Uprising
1940
Oil on canvas
The self-identification with fertile nature was frequent in Kernn-Larsen’s work. Seeing nature as female, Surrealist woman artist found in its abundant growth a metaphor for their artistic creation. Here, Kernn-Larsen developed the motif of the femme-arbres, women as arboreal figures, with their growing, sprouting branches.
The Severed Head of Medusa – Malachite, 38 x 49.6 x 52 cm
As you already know we are visiting Venice and we came to attend Damien Hirst’s exhibition, “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable”. He has been absent for more than a decade and apparently he was busy working on this project, since the assemblage of the exhibition took 10 years.
In 2008 by scanning the coast of East Africa a vast wrecking was found, retrieved from the ancient sunken vessel, the Apistosalmost 2000 years ago, according to the curators.
Researches and scuba divers were astonished by the amount of art work that was submerged in the Indian Ocean for some two thousand years before. (or they want us to believe)
The Fate of a Banished Man – Carrara marble, 387 x 399 x 176 cm
The collection lent credence to the legend of Cif Amotan II, a collector who was a freed slave from Turkey, lived between the mid-first and early-second centuries. He stoled, commissioned and borrowed a massive collection, brought them together on the biggest ship of its day called the Apistos (translates from Koine Greek as the ‘Unbelievable’). The collection was meant to be used for a temple built by the collector.
“For me the show is totally about belief and it’s like you can believe whatever you want to believe. I mean I believed the story of the collector from 2000 years ago, I spent so much time on it, that it’s not a lie. I just believe it. I think you have to believe it.” Damien Hirst
There is a thin line between reality and unreality in this collection and we got quite confused ourselves going through the artworks, not sure which one belonged to the past and which one was made few years ago.
We assumed some of the gold ones could belong to the ship but still was not completely sure about our thoughts.
In one hand when you see the underwater footages, at first you think, well this is real, they actually found it under the sea, but then you realise it can be made up in order to create this uncertainty for the viewer, and on the other hand, you think it could be real and Hirst built this statues based on what he saw and was inspired.
We think that some were actually found from the Indian Ocean and are either in the exhibition or kept in a safe, and the rest was created by Damien Hirst based on the findings, but there is no actual promise for this as we are free to think whatever we want (at least for now).
This could be the theme for this show, to trust your own instincts and believe your own story, and what seems real to you.
If this is a fictional world created by the artist, we think it’s amusing and refreshing to combine ancient world with today’s art and modern life, if not, well then it’s a bit boring to see copies.
Bust of the Collector, Bronze, 81 x 65 x 36.5
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN LIES AND TRUTH LIES THE TRUTH.
The exhibition is held in two venues in Venice, Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana until 3 December 2017.
Demon with Bowl
Standing at just over eighteen meters, this monumental figure is a copy of a smaller bronze recovered from the wreckage.
The discovery of the statue Appeared to solve the mystery of a disembodied bronze head with saurian features excavated in the Tigris Valley in 1932.
Ancient Mesopotamian demons were complex primeval creatures that exhibited elements of the human, animal and divine.
Demon with bowl, Painted resin, 1822 x 789 x 1144 cm
Aspect of Katie Ishtar Yo-landi
The Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar is one of the most complex and elusive figures of the ancient Near East.
This large bust has been gilded from the neck down, the sheets of gold leaf applied by devotees in the manner of temple offerings in southeast Asia.
Aspect of Katie Ishtar Yo-landi, Bronze and gold leaf 164.5 x 90.0 x 66.6 cm
Mickey, Bronze, 91 x 71 x 61 cm
Best Frieds, Bronze, 72.5 x 136.7 x 82 cmHead of Sphinx, Silver, paintSinner, Silver, paint
Two Garudas, Silver, paint
Sun Disc
Solar disc presents a human face emerging from a harmonic low relief pattern of intersecting rays. Sun worship is reflective of the universal human need to comprehend the mysteries of life, death and the beyond.
Sun Disc, Gold, Silver 122 x 122 x 21 cm
Andromeda and the Sea Monster, Bronze, 391 x 59305 x 369.5 cm
Hermaphrodite
According to myth, Hermaphroditus was the son of hermes and Aphrodite and the personification of youthful beauty. One day, he was accosted by the enamoured nymph Salmacis whilst he bathed. As she gripped his body, the nymph prayed that the two might be eternally united in their ‘clinging embrace’, at which, the fused into into one being: half man, half woman, seemingly ‘neither and both’ (Ovid).
Hermaphrodite, Bronze, 194 x 96.4 x 36.5 cm
The Severed Head of Medusa
From the Roman era onwards, Medusa’s great beauty became one of her most prominent characteristics. The late-medieval poet Christine de Pizan described her as a figure ‘of such striking beauty that not only did she surpass all other women, but she also attracted to herself, every mortal creature upon whom she looked’.
The Severed Head of Medusa , Malachite , 38 x 49.6 x 52 cm
The Severed Head of Medusa, Gold, silver, 32 x 39.7 x 39.7
Hydra and Kali
Depicting the all-encompassing cosmic nature of a deity through a multiplicity of limbs is an Indian practice that dates from the Kushan period (second century BCE to third century CE). Whilst a many-headed snake (nāga) also features prominently in Hindu mythology, this seven-headed beast more closely recalls the Greek Hydra.
Hydra and Kali, Bronze, 539 x 612 x 244 cm
Tadukheba, Carrara marble, emeralds and rock crystal, 43.7 x 30.2 x 26.5 cm
Sphinx
This sphinx’s idealised female attributes recall Roman examples dating from the first and second centuries CE.
Sphinx, Bronze, 123.1 x 177.5 x 68.4 cm
Unknown Pharaoh
While the identity of this figure is unknown, his pharaonic statues is confirmed by the nemes ( headcloth) he sports.A prominent uraeus (royal cobra) and vulture’s head coil upwards from his brow: a symbol of the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt that occurred around 3100 BCE.
Unknown Pharaoh
Aten
The practice of tattooing in Egypt is in evidence from around 2000 BCE and was traditionally associated with Nubian musicians and dancers. With her bejeweled nudity exultant expression, this figure expresses the power of the supreme solar god, Aten, in terms analogous to the ecstasy of sexual love.
Aten, Red marble, grey agate and gold leaf, 127.3 64.5 65.5 cm
Calendar, Stone, Bronze, 422.5 x 475.8 x 172.3 cm
The Diver
Poised on tiptoe, this double-sized bronze figure would have been displayed in a j : a shrine built on the site of a natural grotto. Grottoes were extremely popular in Greece and Rome, and large-scale artificial versions were sculpted in replication of natural rock formations.
The Diver, Bronze, 473 x 90 x 83 cm
The Collector with Friend, Bronze, 185.5 x 123.5 x 73 cm
Cronos Devouring his Children, Bronze, 312.5 x 334.3 x 253.5 cm
Two Figures with a Drum, Bronze, 556.6 x 238 x 274 cm
The Monk , Bronze, 377.6 x 294 x 216 cm
The Warrior and the Bear
This monumental sculpture relates to the ancient Greek maturation ritual of arkteia, which involved groups of Athenian girls imitating she-bears, whilst dancing and performing sacrifices. This act of sanctioned wildness served to appease Artemis – goddess of the hunt – following the Athenians’ slaying of a bear. While the practice of arkteia wasintendedtoexpel the animalistic qualities of a woman’s nature in preparation for a life of domesticity, this figure subverts the tradition by celebrating the ferocity that inhered within the goddess.
The Warrior and the Bear, Bronze, 713 x 260 x 203 cm
The Shield of Achilles, Gold, silver, 144 x 112.5 x 7 cmSkull of a Unicorn, Gold, silver 126.5 x 22.3 x 74.6 cm
Children of a Dead King
This composition depicts a romanticised scene from the story of the defeat of Rome’s deadliest enemy, Mithradates VI (120-63 BCE), King of Pontus.
The sculpture is presented alongside a contemporaneous, war-damaged version, which is riddled with bullet holes.
Children of a Dead King, Bronze, 197.7 x 138.3 x 89.1 cmPair of Slaves Bound for Execution, Painted bronze, 179.4 x 139.2 x 85.6 cm
Winged Horse, Bronze, 43.2 x 35.8 x 13.5cm
Lion women of Asit Mayor, Bronze, 170 x 154 x 315 cm 169.5 x 134 x 300.5 cm
Mermaid, Bronze, 459.5 x 208 x 233 cm
Photo credit: Art Road
Introduction: Art Road
Photo description: Punta della Dogana, Palazzo Grassi
An Iranian born artist now living in Columbus, Ohio, she attended the Faculty of Arts at the University of Tehran, and afterward studied under the mentorship of prominent Iranian painter Daruish Hosseini. She later began sculpting under the tutelage of eminent sculptor Behrooz Daresh.
Pastel & acrylic on cardboard, 20″x20″Acrylic & pastel on cardboard,25″x22″
“I am an expressive person. I enjoy watching people, in public spaces, at coffee shops, pools, beaches, painting their bodies, their emotions, capturing the other side of them. Not the realistic things everyone can see, but the hidden expressivity.”
Acrylic & pastel on cardboard, 22″x24″Acrylic & pastel on cardboard, 20″x24″Acrylic & pastel on cardboard, 20″x22″
“I like to make my viewers think. When they pass a piece at an exhibition they have to stop and wonder. I like to show non-artists the things they can’t see. Show them a different world. It’s sometimes hidden, and sometimes not real at all, but in my imagination, a fiction that the person inspires.”
Acrylic & pastel on cardboard, 18″x20″Acrylic and pastel on cardboard, 22″x26″
Raheleh’s work concentrates on abstractions of the human form and the emotional expressivity emanating from it, something not found elsewhere in nature. Each piece shows an alternate view of the subject, displaying a distinct beauty otherwise unseen. One cannot pass Raheleh’s pieces without stopping, and getting washed over by its startlingly unique perspective.
Pastel & acrylic on cardboard, 20″x16″Acrylic & pastel on card board, 20″x24″Pastel & acrylic on cardboard, 20″x22″
“For sculpting, I started because the canvas is not enough to show my emotion and excitement. I needed to make it in three-dimensional to get enough expression. To make the creatures I invented, and introduce them to the people.
I enjoy carving. When there’s a piece of wood or metal, and you can bring out art out of nothing — you give a little of your soul to these things. They have a part of you in them.”
Diving Bird – Aluminium 12″ x 10″
Since moving to the U.S., Raheleh has begun collaborating with an Iranian-American photographer, Arezoo Bijani, on a collection of works emanating from their experiences as artists in Iran, revealing the struggles they passed through in their home country, but also the distinct non-Western vantage point it gives them on male-female asymmetries even in the West.
Prints:
Lino print & collage on paper, 20″x8″Lino print with ink & collage on paper, 10″x8″Lino print & pen on paper, 10″x8″Lino print on paper,12″x10″
The super talented FKA twigs as the creative director of Nike Women’s Spring Zonal Strength Tights campaign.
This creative collaboration shows us the hard work and power that dancers put into their artistic and athletic work, and we all should express our ideas and feelings.
“Put Your Trust In Me”
‘I ACHED TO SUCCEED, TO HEAL, TO MAKE
A DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD. TO MAKE DEEP AND
LASTING CONNECTIONS WITH THOSE WHO VIBRATE
AT A FREQUENCY I RECOGNISE WITHIN MYSELF’
FKA twigs always prefers to direct her own videos, in order to create the exact image she had in mind. This video was directed by herself.
