2014年4月30日 星期三

Charles James and Me

Photo
Charles James standing on steps with models wearing dresses from his collection in the 1950s. Credit Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images
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When the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute opens “Charles James: Beyond Fashion” on May 8, the exhibition will have 70 outfits, making it the largest show devoted to the designer, who died in 1978 at age 72. Among them are the Taxi dress, designed in 1929, which wrapped around the body and fastened with Bakelite clasps, so that a woman could slip into it while in the back of a taxi, and the Clover Leaf dress of 1952, which did not touch the floor but undulated while the woman walked.
There is also a black silk bias-cut dress designed 20 years before that, with short kimono sleeves, a deep V-back and two black silk streamers that fluttered in the back, at the waist, as the breeze blew.
That was the dress that I wore on the night of June 20, 1975, nearly 40 years ago. That night, I was Charles James’s walker.
I went with the designer, as his date, to the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse for the opening of “Charles James,” an exhibit of 215 of Charles’s drawings of his designs (and 50 by Antonio Lopez, the fashion artist, and his collaborator, Juan Ramos), along with one of Charles’s famous curvaceous Butterfly sofas that resembled a woman’s buttocks, first designed in 1950 for Dominique de Menil. Other clients included Lily Pons and Gypsy Rose Lee, Babe Paley and Millicent Rogers, Mrs. William Randolph Hearst, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney and Jeanne Bultman, the wife of the artist Fritz Bultman.
Photo
The black silk dress designed by Charles James, and worn by the writer to accompany Mr. James to the opening of a show of his in 1975. Credit The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Jerry Hall was in the caravan that drove to Syracuse that night with Mr. Lopez; Mr. Ramos; Homer Layne, Charles’s assistant and pattern maker; Sputnik, the designer’s beagle; and me.
By day, I was the editor of Art Direction magazine; by night, I was a fashionista. I haunted vintage shops like Harriet Love, and dressed up at midnight to go to Max’s Kansas City, with feathers woven in my hair. I had wanted to publish Juan and Antonio’s work, and told them I wanted to write about fashion. They introduced me to Charles, who wanted a writer to help him do his autobiography.
I first met him at the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan, in his bedroom/studio, Room 624. He was not an intimidating man. He stood 5 feet 6 inches, just an inch taller than me. His hair was a gleaming black, and his dark eyebrows were bushy, his eyes friendly and highly intelligent. He spoke with an English accent. The room had a mysterious scent, unidentifiable and slightly medicinal. Charles made his own perfumes, often using civet and ambergris. He also burned fragrances from Floris, the English company.
Sometimes we would go to the workroom, down the hall in 618, which was filled with dress forms, a sewing machine and a cutting table placed over a bed. That was where Mr. Layne, then in his 30s, made patterns, from 1970 until Charles James’s death. “I did the cutting and sewing,” said Mr. Layne (now retired after a long career working for the designers Tom and Linda Platt), adding with a laugh, “When he sold something, he’d give me $500, and then he’d borrow back about half of that.”
But Charles was generous in other ways. “One time, we were shopping at Sy Syms, and he saw this coat — a camel-color wool coat, a winter coat with a tie belt — and he bought it for me,” said Mr. Layne, who also walked Sputnik, drove Charles around the city and made their meager lunch of boiled rice sealed in a plastic bag, then adding vegetables to it.
“He didn’t care about food,” Mr. Layne said. Twice a week, they would go to a nearby restaurant he remembered as the Wild Mushroom, where Charles would eat a burger, and Mr. Layne the sautéed chicken livers and onions. But on those days, when they had so little money that boiled rice would be all that they could afford, I would excuse myself, and go home.
(In 2013, Mr. Layne sold a collection of more than 100 items of the designer’s clothing, accessories and ephemera to the Met, for a sum neither would disclose.)
It was not always easy to be a friend of Charles, and Mr. Layne survived — with a submissive grace — the designer’s mercurial personality.
One such feud involved Halston: In 1975, Charles wrote an article for Metropolis magazine, accusing the younger designer, whom he had known since 1958 and who had hired him to help re-engineer some clothing, of plagiarism after Halston didn’t include Charles’s name on the label. When Charles wasn’t attacking Halston in print, he would attack him verbally, to me. He would call Halston “that thief, that copycat.”
He also accused Diana Vreeland, the longtime editor of Vogue and then a special consultant to the Costume Institute, of purposefully ignoring him. “If he thought you had crossed him, you were off his list,” Mr. Layne said. “He felt that Diana Vreeland was in a conspiracy to keep his work out of the magazine.” ( His clothes had not appeared in Vogue since 1957.) He wanted me to write an article that would be critical of Ms. Vreeland, but I wanted to concentrate on his talent, not these furies.
I was sometimes at the studio at night, when Antonio was drawing a model, maybe Eija Vehka Aho or Nancy North. I would ask Charles how he made the skirt flare, or shaped a bodice, and he would explain calmly and meticulously. “He was vain,” said Paul Caranicas, an artist who was Mr. Ramos’s partner from 1972 to 1995, when Mr. Ramos died. “And if you paid him attention, he wouldn’t be cranky.”
To keep Charles amiable at the Everson show, Mr. Ramos and Mr. Lopez invited me to be his companion for the evening. I was to keep him constant company, flatter him on the drawings and smile benevolently as people came up to congratulate him. I was to prevent him from mentioning either Halston or Ms. Vreeland.
Photo
Charles James with Jeanne Bultman, a client, top row, and the sculptor Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas, a patron, second and third rows, in the mid-1970s. Ms. Strong-Cuevas’s dress was one the writer told the designer she loved but could not wear. Credit Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos
I went to his workroom so he could choose a dress for me one June day, a week or two before the opening.
“Try this,” he said.
He held up a brilliant orange silk satin dress, with slender straps, a snug bodice with a décolleté neckline and a tight form-fitting skirt to just above the knees, where a white stiffened satin band, reaching to the floor, flared out. I squeezed myself in and couldn’t breathe or walk.
“The dress is fantastic,” I said. “But I can’t wear it. It’s structured. It’s formal. It’s too small. It isn’t me.”
He designed the dress in 1974 as a gift for Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas, a sculptor in Manhattan and occasional patron, finishing it a few years later. (Ms. Strong-Cuevas said that the dress was so tight on her, she broke the zipper once.)
He asked me what I liked.
“The 1920s and ’30s,” I said. “Black, preferably, bias-cut, no structure and easy to move in.”
Days later, I went to the workroom, and there was the 1932 number. It was the most beautiful and erotic dress. The fabric slithered over the body, just barely touching the skin. Air circulated between the body and the dress, so when the silk did brush against the skin, it felt like a caress. I was ecstatic. “That’s me,” I said. Charles looked pleased.
On the night of the opening, Charles went in early to inspect the show. He was not happy.
Mr. Caranicas said, “Antonio’s drawings were framed, and Charles had a vision of how he wanted them hung, on black lacquered panels, triptychs.” One of the triptychs was in the wrong place. “Charles took it off the wall,” Mr. Caranicas said, “and started going to our hotel with it. We saw him leaving with it, and we got into the car, and Juan jumped out of the car, and persuaded him to return it, so it was hung where he wanted it.”
Charles wore a navy wool blazer and tan pants that night, Mr. Layne recalled, store-bought. “He never made anything for himself,” Mr. Layne said, except once, a swimsuit when he went to Capri, in the 1920s.
Floating in the black dress and Manolo Blahnik black silk shoes, I circulated next to Charles, and at dinner, nudged him (gently) to eat a bite or two of food. Ms. Hall, tall, lithe and bubbling with that outsize Texan charm, swanned about the museum, wearing another Charles James dress, under a glamorous white eiderdown jacket from 1938. I gaped at the jacket, and said to Charles how wildly beautiful it was. Halfway through dinner, as plates were being cleared from the table, Charles said, “I think you should wear that jacket now.” He went over to Ms. Hall, asked her for the jacket, and then held it out for me to slip on.
Photo
The white eiderdown jacket worn to the show by Jerry Hall (and shown here on Pat Cleveland). Credit Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos
It was my first and last time wearing haute couture. It was a singular moment, to be clothed in pure silk, inside and out, head to toe, a white puff of a jacket over a slink of a black dress. I was in a state of bliss.
The next day, I was back to my own clothes: jeans, Indian cotton gauze top, sandals.
That summer, I met with Charles maybe once or twice at the Chelsea. In October, my phone rang.
“This is Charles James,” the English-accented voice said.
He had called to invite me to a black-tie dinner, somewhere in New York, with Juan and Antonio, the next night.
“Oh, Charles, thank you so much,” I said. “I would love to go with you, but in the last month, I have fallen in love with a wonderful man, and tomorrow night, we’re going to a Knicks game.”
There was silence at the other end.
Finally, Charles, who was once married and was the father of two children, said, in a warm voice, “I wish you happiness.”
But this was not the end of my relationship with him.
My boyfriend, Gerry Sussman, an editor at The National Lampoon, wanted to meet Charles James. Gerry loved the Knicks, but he also loved clothes. He sometimes had his sports jackets custom-made, and certainly his tuxedo.
Gerry understood Charles’s genius. But he also wondered about his hair, still jet black despite the advancing years. What kind of dye did the designer use? Was it shoe polish? No, it was a black commercial hair gel, Mr. Layne said.
Gerry was such a fan of Charles’s that I had the bright idea of commissioning my wedding dress from Charles. It was January 1977, and we were going to get married that June.
Photo
Antonio Lopez’s drawing of the dress designed for Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas. Credit Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos, via Homer Layne
By then, the book project with Charles James was dormant. But Antonio and Juan often invited Gerry and me to go to a cocktail party for Charles. One day, I was visiting Charles in his studio at the hotel, where he was sewing pieces of Chinese jade, beautifully carved small pieces in clear, deep green, onto the waistband of a pale pink silk satin full-length skirt. The jade pieces were going to be buttons, to close the waistband.
Who’s that for? I asked.
“A young Chinese lady who has a lot of jade,” he said.
“Wait,” I said to myself. “I’m a young Chinese lady who has a lot of jade” (in the form of pendants, bracelets and rings given to me by my mother).
I raced home to Gerry.
“What if Charles were to design me a wedding dress,” I said, “using some of the family jade?”
“Sure,” Gerry said. “What do you think it would cost?”
“Twenty-five hundred?” I said. “He’s kind of penniless these days.”
“O.K.,” Gerry said. “But first ask Juan and Antonio what they think of the idea.”
I called Juan, left a message, and later that night he called back. I told him the idea, to commission a wedding dress from Charles, to be ready in six months, by June.
“Forget about it,” Juan said in his high-pitched but street-raspy voice. “We like Gerry.”
“What does that have to do with commissioning the dress?” I asked.
“Charles will never finish the dress,” Juan said.
That Charles James was such a perfectionist that he often did not finish dresses was not a myth. “He wanted to get it right,” Mr. Layne said. “Most clothing, you feel it pulling on your shoulder, and it’s not balanced properly. He put the weight on the trapezius muscle that runs across the ridge of your shoulders. That’s what carries the weight, and that’s why they felt so light.”
“If you want to marry Gerry, marry Gerry,” Juan said. “Wear anything. Just forget about the dress.”
And so I did.

2014年4月28日 星期一

新生代玩出陶器新花樣


陶土,新生代玩出新花樣

藝術2014年04月28日
一群年輕藝術家用更加時髦而成熟的形式重新定義了民間藝術。
黛娜·貝切特(Dana Bechert)
黛娜·貝切特,陶器,135-640美元。帕特里西亞·若因(Patrick Jouin),LeBeau桌子, 11,380美元,Cassina, (212) 228-8186。
黛娜·貝切特,陶器,135-640美元。帕特里西亞·若因(Patrick Jouin),LeBeau桌子, 11,380美元,Cassina, (212) 228-8186。
Photograph by Yelena Yemchuk. Hair: Brian Buenaventura at Management + Artists for Cutler/Redken. Grooming: Raul Otero. Set design: Kadu Lennox at Frank Reps.
黛娜·貝切特今年23歲,自從2012年畢業並獲得雕塑學位以來, 她便一直致力於發展自己的陶藝品牌。她那極度生動的黑白花瓶和花盆衍生自美洲原住民阿克瑪·珀布羅(Acoma Pueblo)風格的陶藝技巧,但是其上的一抹亮色和動物圖案使它們顯得更加抽象和複雜。「所有雕刻都是徒手完成,比外表看上去的更加自然,」貝切特說。 每件作品最多要耗費她七個小時去完成。她喜歡控制製作過程的方方面面,就算尋找花瓶和花盆上貼的彩色陶片也要自己親自動手。貝切特還和朋友們一起嘗試一個 食具設計計劃,比如最近設計了一系列倒咖啡的漏斗。「我覺得我的作品是一種工具,可以把日常生活中最基本的東西和美聯繫起來,品嘗和分享食品與飲品,」她 說。
娜塔莉·赫萊拉(Natalie Herrera)
High Gloss陶器,85-260美元;tableofcontents.us
High Gloss陶器,85-260美元;tableofcontents.us
Photograph by Yelena Yemchuk. Hair: Brian Buenaventura at Management + Artists for Cutler/Redken. Grooming: Raul Otero. Set design: Kadu Lennox at Frank Reps.
大多數陶藝家都喜歡轉陶、燒窯和上釉過程中的那種不確定性,但28歲的娜塔莉·赫萊拉卻並非如此。「我也希望自己的形式能更自由一點,因為陶土是最狡猾多變的媒介,但我更喜歡解決問題,喜歡研究角度和比例,」這位現居布魯克林的平面設計師說,她最近推出了自己的陶藝品牌High Gloss。 她把獨特的準確性帶入了工作,使用羅盤、X-acto美工刀和三角板等非傳統工具。她對幾何乃至積極空間和消極空間非常感興趣,並說現代主義雕塑家羅斯· 達克沃斯(Ruth Duckworth)和馬丁·馬吉拉時裝屋(Maison Martin Margiela)品牌對她影響最大。她說,他們「顛覆傳統物品,為它們賦予新形式」。
林賽·漢普頓(Lindsey Hampton)
林賽·漢普頓陶器,90-275美元;手工與設計美術館, (415) 773-0303;Risom桌子(蓋有桌布),1206美元起,dwr.com。
林賽·漢普頓陶器,90-275美元;手工與設計美術館, (415) 773-0303;Risom桌子(蓋有桌布),1206美元起,dwr.com。
Photograph by Yelena Yemchuk. Hair: Brian Buenaventura at Management + Artists for Cutler/Redken. Grooming: Raul Otero. Set design: Kadu Lennox at Frank Reps.
30歲的林賽·漢普頓現居溫哥華,正式工作是平面設計師,她說自己 的靈感來自瑞士極簡主義設計,還有達達主義。她喜歡將兩種方式並置在一起,「將簡潔和喧囂嫁接起來。」她的陶藝也有同樣風格,她用有趣的鋸齒線裝飾簡單 的、建築式的形狀陶器與不加裝飾的陶土,畫上她那些搖滾樂海報和品牌設計品中常見的彩點和淡彩漸變色。她的技巧也橫貫兩個種類。她在做陶器時將 Photoshop效果簡化,把色彩混入坡度變化和鏤花中去,製造出鮮明的角度。「我用陶器滿足我多維度的創作慾望。」
本·麥丹斯基(Ben Medansky)
本·麥丹斯基陶器,60-200美元,poketo.com;克雷特·巴里爾(Crate Barrel),Parsons桌,489美元,crateandbarrel.com。
本·麥丹斯基陶器,60-200美元,poketo.com;克雷特·巴里爾(Crate Barrel),Parsons桌,489美元,crateandbarrel.com。
Photograph by Yelena Yemchuk. Hair: Brian Buenaventura at Management + Artists for Cutler/Redken. Grooming: Raul Otero. Set design: Kadu Lennox at Frank Reps.
25歲的本·麥丹斯基在芝加哥藝術學院學過陶藝,曾幫助風格多變的洛杉磯設計二人組漢斯兄弟(Haas brothers )開設陶藝工作室,亦曾在孟菲斯重要設計人物彼得·夏爾(Peter Shire) 那裡當過學徒,夏爾的波普藝術風格作品帶有文藝復興氣質。一年前他開始自立門戶,採取了一種更低調的形式,主要是在使用他標誌性的帶白斑的陶土製作器具, 並在其上增添或移去簡單的幾何形狀。他的新系列受機車零件、發電廠和徑向汽封片啟發,使用工業擠壓器製作指骨形狀的東西。「我喜歡控制混亂的感覺,完美的 圓柱體之上有精心設計的混亂,讓人想起機械世界,但也是一個自然主義的世界,」他說道。
本文最初發表於2014年4月8日的T Magzine。
翻譯:董楠

GSD Platform 6

 

 http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/#/projects/platform-6.html

 可看20頁

 

 

A Daily Dose of Architecture archidose@yahoo.com via google.com 


to me

Book Review: Platform 6 - A Daily Dose of Architecture


Posted: 27 Apr 2014 06:14 PM PDT
GSD Platform 6 edited by Rosetta Elkin
Actar, 2014
Paperback, 368 pages



While every student from every architecture school probably thinks that each year they is deserving of a book that sums up the projects, lectures, exhibitions, events, seminars, publications, and other happenings, not that many schools are able to make it happen. In particular a few Ivy League schools come to mind: Columbia GSAPP's Abstract, Yale SOA's Retrospecta, and Harvard GSD's Platform (the successor to Studio Works). The latter is especially significant given its size (nearly 400 pages), its international distribution through publisher Actar, and the amount of material inside. A prospective student would no doubt be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff happening at the Graduate School of Design as evidenced by the projects, transcripts, and personalities throughout.



Harvard GSD is not unique in needing to find an adequate book structure and graphic design to make sense of the multitudes of output. GSAPP's publications in recent years have been handled by star designer Stefan Sagmeister, who tends for bold statements like holes or an empty box. But Harvard opts for a simple approach that delineates the different work performed through subtle changes in color and graphic treatment. Gray pages signal lectures and publications, for example, and the color blue signals historical content. Unique moments happen with the essays that are printed on slightly smaller and lighter-weight green pages (spread above). The various types of output are interspersed to make the book most suitable for browsing; that is about the only way to go about it, since the book lacks a table of contents (it does have an index, though).



As a visually rich feast for browsing, Platform 6 does a great job of giving people a taste of what Harvard GSD is all about, at least within a particular school year. Yet for those looking to dig deeper they have to venture elsewhere. Tod Williams and Billie Tsien's Senior Loeb Scholar Lecture must have yielded plenty of valuable insight, but all we are treated to is a photo of Billie opposite four short quotes from the talk. This is one example of how the book covers just about everything that happened throughout the year without giving the reader more than just a taste. Only the green inserts really give the reader something substantial, and there are only four of them. Well, five actually, but the last one is by editor Rosetta Elkin on the complications of compiling one year of pedagogy into one volume!

Elkin's essay does elucidate some of the intent of how the book was structured and designed, but the page-to-page juxtapositions are quite subtle: Toyo Ito referencing metabolism on one page followed by "an architecture thesis that questions the autonomy of the urban dwelling" on the next followed by an urban planning project in Burkina Faso that proposes modular housing after that. Perhaps these relationships are a "tool for revealing emergent patterns that operate across public event, individual thesis, and global narrative," but I would not use the word "powerful" as Elkin does to describe it. Nevertheless, Elkin's words do point to the rewards that come with close reading of the school's consistently high-quality output documented in these pages.

2014年4月15日 星期二

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs is at Tate Modern


我從CNN知道此展的消息。1992年的紐約Henri Matisse大展,我去參觀。
它的書,我還在二手書店看過。


Tate Modern opens 'once-in-a-lifetime' Matisse show

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs brings together 130 colourful works including four blue nudes never before displayed together in UK

• Adrian Searle's verdict: 'how rich, how marvellous, how alive'
Sophie Matisse
Sophie Matisse in front of her great-grandfather's The Parakeet and the Mermaid. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features
There are several striking firsts at Tate Modern's new Matisse show: it is the first big exhibition in a generation to examine his vibrantly coloured paper cutouts, the first in the UK to display four important blue nudes together, and the first Tate show to be shown at the cinema.
  1. Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs
  2. Tate Modern,
  3.  
  4. London
  1. Starts 17 April
  2. Until 7 September
  3. tate.org.uk
It is also the first time the Tate will allow one its star attractions, its prized Matisse cutout The Snail, to leave the country. It will travel to New York in October – a measure of the importance of the exhibition, said the Tate director, Sir Nicholas Serota, one of the co-curators. "This kind of show just doesn't happen more than once in a lifetime," he said. "This is the largest show of this body of works and contains most of the major works."
The show explores the paper cutouts that Matisse, one of the greatest of all 20th-century artists, began making in his later life, between 1937-54. It brings together 130 gloriously coloured works, more than any before, and explores how and why Matisse began to make work in a new way so late in life.
The show, which opens to the public on Thursday, argues that the artist's techniques might look simple – paper, scissors, glue – but they were both "radical and groundbreaking".
The Matisse family have been closely involved in an exhibition that Serota said he had wanted to do for more than 30 years. Sophie Matisse, the artist's great-granddaughter and an artist herself, said: "It is such an amazing moment for me to see all these pieces together. It's just very moving … maybe I'll be able to talk about it better in a week when I've absorbed more."
She said she was particularly moved to see film footage of Matisse – old, wheelchair-bound, grumpy – at work. "To see him cutting … his scissors look like they just swam through the paper. To see his intent, his focus, it was like he'd done it a million times before. It's very beautiful and surprising."
Matisse was often ill or confined to bed during these years and was expected to die much sooner than he did, hanging on and defying medical predictions.
What emerges from the show is how vital Matisse was in his late years. He was "completely electric and alive and young," said Sophie. "He knew he only had another five minutes and he was going to make the best of it. You look at the works and he is not old at all."
Sophie, who has remarkable artistic forebears – her grandmother's second husband was Marcel Duchamp – recalled her family not talking about Matisse a great deal when she was young. "The presence was so intense, like a giant pink or red or purple elephant in the room, nobody really needs to talk about it, it's just there."
Serota said it had taken all the Tate's powers of persuasion to get galleries to lend what are often some of their star works.
The gallery is particularly pleased to be showing together works that are considered among the artist's most important: four blue nudes made in 1952. The works – two from the Pompidou, one from the Matisse Museum in Nice and one from the Beyeler Foundation in Basel – have been displayed together only a handful of times, and never in the UK.
There are some massive works in the show, not least Large Composition with Masks, from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which is nearly 10 metres by 3.5 metres and is meant as a ceramic tile decoration for a Los Angeles couple's patio. The co-curator Nicholas Cullinan said: "Matisse got very excited and this was his first attempt to meet the commission, he just filled one wall of his studio and it is an incredible composition that harks back to Islamic tile decorations in the Alhambra."
The couple loved it but admitted it was three times too big. So he had another go, and another – "bear in mind it was the last year of his life," said Cullinan – and the fourth was accepted. "His appetite for work was really astonishing."
Tate is expecting big crowds. Serota said: "For many people [it] will be the most evocative and compelling show that London has ever seen."
For those who do not make it, Tate is collaborating with Seventh Art Productions – responsible for Leonardo Live from the National Gallery in 2011 – to bring the exhibition to cinema audiences.
Matisse Live on 3 June will include a live tour as well as interviews with experts, friends of the artist and archive footage of Matisse at work.
• Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs is at Tate Modern from 17 April to 7 September, and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 14 October to 15 February.


Matisse exhibition at Tate Modern hailed by critics

The BBC's Helen Drew takes a look inside the exhibition

Related Stories

Critics have praised one of the largest collections of Henri Matisse's "cut-out" artworks ever assembled, for an exhibition opening at Tate Modern.
The French artist cut out paper shapes for collages when ill-health prevented him from painting, producing famous pieces such as The Snail and Blue Nude.
The Daily Telegraph said the London gallery must know it has a "winner" with its "outstanding" exhibition.
"I eat it with my eyes and never feel sated," said The Guardian's critic.
Many of the items will be seen together for the first time in the exhibition, which opens on Thursday and features about 130 artworks from the latter stage of Matisse's career.
Blue Nude [1]Blue Nude [1] is a key example of the artist's skill with collage
The Telegraph said that "the joy of the cut-outs is their simplicity".
The paper's critic said the artworks were made from "modest materials" using "basic techniques" but that the artist "reduces art to the essentials of colour, shape and pattern".
"Yet precisely because they offer us instant visual gratification, it is easy to forget how innovative they actually are," he wrote.
The Guardian added that the show was "ravishing, filled with light and decoration, exuberance and a kind of violence" adding that it was "about more than just pleasure".
'Very sophisticated'
"Matisse created a universe that filled the room around him, spilling from the walls to the floor."
Matisse worked from a wheelchair after treatment for cancer and the exhibition compiles work dating from 1937 to 1954, when he died aged 84 of a heart attack.
Sir Nicholas Serota, the Tate director and co-curator of the show, told the BBC the works displayed great skill.
"Cut-out sounds a bit simplistic, they are very sophisticated objects.
'Intense, brilliant'
"The brilliance is that he took the method of a child and deployed it with all the sophistication of an artist who had been painting for 60 years."
He said that the artworks were "incredibly influential" on a generation of American painters in the 60s and 70s.
"The colour is really intense, the colour is brilliant, it's really not quite what we associate with the immediate post-war years in Europe. He's really on his own."
The Economic Voice added that the exhibition "re-examines the cut-outs in terms of the methods and materials that Matisse used, and their double lives, first as contingent and mutable in the studio and ultimately as permanent works through mounting and framing".
The exhibition will be at the London gallery until 7 September before it travels to New York's Museum of Modern Art in mid-October. It can also be seen by cinema-goers from 3 June with the launch of Matisse Live.

2014年4月14日 星期一

The Decisive Moment /Tete A Tete (Cartier-Bresson,introduced by E.H. Gombrich) / John Berger pays tribute




CARTIER-BRESSON, Henri - Palais Royal, Paris, 1960.jpg


John Berger pays tribute to his good friend
The Observer, Sunday 8 August 2004


At every railway crossing in France there is a solid notice, a panel with writing on it which reads: 'Attention! Un train peut en cacher un autre.' Cartier-Bresson, whatever the event he was photographing, saw the second train and was usually able to include it within his frame. I don't think he did this consciously, it was a gift which came to him, and he felt in the depths of his being that gifts should continually be passed on. He photographed the apparently unseen. And when it was there in his photos it was more than visible.

Yesterday he joined the second train. At the age of 95 - with all his agility - he jumped it. He has joined his inspiration. Six years ago he wrote something about inspiration: 'In a world collapsing under the weight of the search for profit, invaded by the insatiable sirens of Techno-science and the greed of Power, by globalisation and the new forms of slavery - beyond all of this, friendship and love exist.' He wrote this in his own handwriting, which was open like a lens which has no shutter.

Bullshit! I now hear him saying, look at my drawings, there is no second train in them! So I look at some reproductions of some of his drawings. How drawings change - even 24 hours after a death; their tentativeness disappears, they become final. He said repeatedly in his later years that photography no longer interested him as much as drawing. Drawing - or anyway drawing as he drew - has less to do with the sense of sight than with the sense of touch, with touching the substance and energy of things, with touching the enigma of life without thinking about eternity or the second train. Drawing is a private act. Yet Cartier-Bresson returned to it, knowing very well that it was an act of solidarity with both those who see the second train and those who don't.

That's better, he says.

An epitaph for him? Yes, a photo he took in Mexico in 1963. It shows a small girl in a deserted street carrying a framed daguerreotype portrait of a beautiful and serene woman which is almost as large as the child. Both are about to disappear behind a tall fence.

The last second of visibility, but not of the woman's serenity or the girl's eagerness.

???

?

Mexico (girl with a magazine), photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1934

Henri Cartier-Bresson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1998: Tête à tête. Texts by Ernst H. Gombrich. Thames & Hudson, London. French, German, Italian and Portuguese editions











From Amazon
Henri Cartier-Bresson's Tête à Tête contains the photographer's portraits of some of the most potent icons of the latter half of the 20th century. The book is understated, yet powerful and challenging--a masterpiece of the photographer's art of composition and expression. Presented in nonchronological order, yet arranged to provide links and parallels in posture and facial likenesses, familiar icons easily mix with anonymous subjects: a very young Truman Capote in crumpled T-shirt, on the brink of literary fame; a very old Colette, who retains her inquisitorial gaze; Matisse with his birds; Sartre with his pipe; Igor Stravinsky, astonishingly similar in 1946 and 1967; a beaming Che Guevara. There are also group portraits of unknowns, but none the less resonant for that: be suited men in 1950s Iran, tribes people from Kashmir, prostitutes in Mexico, the women of southern Spain, dressed eternally in black. As the art historian E.H. Gombrich comments in his introduction to Tête à Tête, in these portraits Cartier-Bresson moved significantly away from the received techniques of the "society" photographer. Instead, he "always preferred to lie in wait for the telling moment." --Catherine Taylor, Amazon.co.uk

From Library Journal Cartier-Bresson is well known as a master of portrait photography, a visual detective unraveling the mystery of people by revealing so much in his images. Whether his gift is the conscious convergence of people, environments, and light or an amazing coincidence of these elements when he is present, his work is familiar, even comforting. These portraits are how we think of Sartre, Picasso, Sontag, and others. Cartier-Bresson also captures anonymous people who present themselves to his camera with a relaxed honesty of self and spirit. The late art historian E.H. Gombrich's introductory text is respectful, analytical, and a valuable asset to those who will wander through this bound gallery of the photographer's best work. Perhaps the nicest surprise is the inclusion of Cartier-Bresson's pencil drawings, which show the artist's skills in another medium. Recommended.?David Bryant, New Canaan P.L., CT
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Tete A Tete [Hardcover] E.H Gombrich (Author) , Henri Cartier-Bresson (Photographer)
  • Hardcover: 144 pages
  • Publisher: Bulfinch Press UK (Sep 1 1998)

 Cartier-Bresson , 1978年不"認識" E.H. Gombrich 可請他為
1978年愛丁堡藝術節展寫序文. 讀起來更有興味:

Photographer  as Artist: Henri Cartier-Bersson

tete-a-tete


 音節
tête-à-tête
発音
téitətéit
[形]2人だけの;差し向かいの;内密の.
━━[名]
1 2人だけの話;密談
have a tête-a-tête with ...
…と差しで話す.
2 (2人が互い違いですわる)S字形ソファー.
━━[副]2人だけで;差向いで.
[フランス語=head-to-head]


 經典http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=2TYRYD1D518O



Book - The Decisive Moment


Henri Cartier-Bresson

Publisher: Editions Verve (Paris, 1952)
French title: Images à la sauvette










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