It’s a $14 million dollar makeup set that includes personally formulated lipstick and mascara.  The makeup itself, besides being made from the finest ingredients available, is encapsulated  in containers made of 18k gold, diamonds and other precious gems.

The Socialite collection is top of the line, personalized, creme-de-la-creme makeup – created uniquely to match the taste of the individual placing the order.  Does beauty get any better, or more beautiful, than this?

Thomas Feulmer with Christina Rees

For most people, a life surrounded by art would be a fantasy.  Yet, for Dallas conceptual artist proficient in both painting and sculpture, Thomas Feulmer, that every day is reality.  With a full-time day job as the curator for The Rachofsky House, Feulmer has spent his spring gathering and curating Craighead-Green Gallery’s “New Texas Talent” exhibition running from July 31 through September 4.

Feulmer artist statement says, “I am interested in exploring the internal intimacy and alienation (as a survival skill? as a mode of intimacy?) that occurs through the terrain of my daily movements.  I hope my work guides the viewer/participant toward greater degrees of intimacy and alienation (not necessarily a bad thing) through a physical experience grounded in the present.  My drawings and paintings often use built-up layers of various media – polyurethane, nail polish, ink, etc. I think of the surface as a terrain for the eye.”

Feulmer has worked at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and since 2004, he has been at The Rachofsky House.  He has been a member of 500X Gallery since 2008, and his works have been shown at the now closed Road Agent Gallery and Marty Walker Gallery.  He most recently co-curated (with Christina Rees, above) “Modern Ruin,” a popular two-day exhibition in February 2010.  After sorting through hundreds of submissions for the “New Texas Talent” show, he and the gallery have selected 26 artists to feature in the five-week exhibit.

"Floating Retina" by Cat Snapp, one of the New Texas Artists featured

Answering the question “What does is mean to be a ‘new’ artist?” Feulmer replies, “They are artists who have not been in the public eye.  There have been young artists and students just out of school, but there are some older artists who just haven’t had the opportunity to show their work to a large audience.  An artist has to be like an entrepreneur.  They have to make work, and they also have to find opportunities to show their work.  If they are lucky enough to have a connection to a gallery, they can develop that way.”

Bird Man

Travel photos, collected postcards, and well worn maps provide inspiration for Maureen Brouillette’s paintings working with acrylic and mixed media on canvas and paper.  Cityscapes and landscapes are her favor inspirations and her recent work takes us on a ROAD TRIP through middle America yet suggests a contemporary viewpoint ripe for interpretation.

Architectural snapshots such as these define each painting. With the layering of paint and paper, Brouillette merges reality with abstraction.  She integrates elements with gestural, graffiti-like line and quiets bold color with contrasting neutral hues. The result is imagery that has both an energetic rhythm and room to breathe.

She was awarded Best of Show in the 2009 and 2005 Southwestern Watercolor Society juried exhibits.  She has been commissioned for a painting for the new Omni Hotel and Convention Center being built in downtown Dallas.

There’s something classically beautiful about Levi’s.  You know… You all have that perfectly faded, exquisitely soft, comfortable cloud of jeans that you always reach for.  But, how about this “spin-painted” pair by Damien Hirst.  Phenomenal.

Yet the most beautiful thing about Levi’s is this…

And, what they are doing about it…

“Art is the mirror of who we are, and what we would like to become.”  With this declaration as Cynthia Chartier’s artist statement, her objective is to be bold enough to challenge the intellect and to delight the sense using her narrative form of visual communication.

Every time you look at one of her paintings, you should discover something new and as the secrets of language and symbolism reveal themselves, the creation process becomes an engaging experience. Cynthia’s style mirrors her passion for life, spirituality, music and love.  Combining rich jewel tones of vibrant colors with hand-selected sheet music and manuscripts, painting layer upon layer of rich color and glaze.  The multiple layers build up to create a prism-like effect adding subtle dimension of depth for the viewer’s personal discovery.

Cynthia’s work can be seen at Samuel Lynne Galleries in the Design District of Dallas and at Art on 5th Contemporary Fine Art in Austin.

A Commander being armed for Battle, Rubens

Flemish master Sir Peter Paul Rubens’ “A Commander being armed for Battle” painting has been sold at auction for $13.68 million.  The painting was sold by the family of the late Princess Diana on Tuesday, July 6th, to help pay to preserve the Spencer family home.

Rubens is one of the premier Baroque-style painters of the 16th century.  He is well known for his altarpieces, portraits, landscapes and history paintings of mythological and regal subjects.  Baroque is an artistic style prevalent from the late 16th century to the early 18th century in Europe.  It is most often defined as “the dominant style of art in Europe between the Mannerist and Rococo eras, a style characterized by dynamic movement, overt emotion and self-confident rhetoric.”

The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent, in response to the Protestant Reformation, that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement.  Religion figured prominently in much of Rubens’ work and he later became one of the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting.

In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector and diplomat… knighted by both Philip IV, King of Spain, and Charles I, King of England.

The painting is part of a Spencer collection sell-off of approximately $30 million designed to help preserve the family home, Althorp.  Althorp is undergoing a major restoration and the trustees of the estate decided to sell artwork deemed not integral to the Spencer Collection.  Diana’s brother Earl Spencer also sold off “King David” by Baroque artist Il Guercino for 5.2 million pounds. Overall the auction raised 42.3 million pounds solidly mid-range against an estimate of 36.9-55.8 million pounds.

Kyle McDonald and Golan Levin at Flong blog produced these “flower panoramas.”  This is what you would see if you were doing panoramic imaging from inside a flower…

A complete set of about two dozen such panoramas can be seen in this Flickr set.

A modified version of the software — the FlowerUnwarper — was optimized for unwarping flower images, and is available here (including source code).  The software is built in Processing and uses the ControlP5 library.  All of the source photos used in this project were distributed with Creative Commons Attribution licenses.

As of July 10, the team at NotCot have since used their software to create some beautiful and fascinating views of unwarped chandeliers! Truly beautiful things.

The most recent art market boom was in autumn of 2007.  With hitherto unseen levels of wealth and production, the snap back has delivered brutal reverberations to curatorial and artistic practices.  Many discussions concerning value and content and relevance have been tossed about, so exactly what adjustments are being made and what impacts are being felt?

Historically, moments of economic recession have been extremely interesting times for meaningful art-making.  Especially for emerging artists… it’s not as though the booming days were especially different for them.  When you’re starting out, resources are always scarce, and you have to be inventive.

In boom times, more and more, the artist’s position shifts to become one of responding to content demands and fulfilling them to schedule (art fairs!), instead of pursuing aesthetic aims within a practice that sets its own terms.  However, there is a strong contingent of artists of all persuasions and levels of market success who are embracing the recession.

While some artists produce art that suits the voracious appetite of the market for consistently high turnover of “signature” works, many don’t.  For the latter group, one gets the feeling that these last years of increased global demand from fairs and biennials have distracted them from the reasons why they set out to make art in the first place.

So, how do successful (a term to be debated another time) artists negotiate their positions as “workers” vis-a-vis the market?  Discuss amongst yourselves…

THE MADNESS OF ART – Trailer from Jim Kempner on Vimeo.

So, for my FIRST post under the category of “Characters,” there’s nothing more appropriate than this hilarious video blog revealing the cyclical circus of bigwigs, collectors, curators, artists, advisers, and critics through the eyes of gallerist, Jim Kempner.

The Madness of Art is a humorous look at Chelsea’s dynamic art scene in New York City.  The Madness of Art is created by Gallery Owner and Art Dealer, Jim Kempner, of Jim Kempner Fine Art, drawing from years of real life experiences in the art business.  Episodes are humorous and surprisingly realistic.

Jim Kempner writes, directs and stars in The Madness of Art along with his often co-opted Gallery Director, Dru Arstark, numerous Assistants, Interns, Art Handlers, Dealers and Artists.

The Madness of Art has been constructed through years of videotaping situations featuring artists such as Robert Indiana, Tony Fitzpatrick, Charlie Hewitt, Bernard Venet, Yoko Ono, and Steve Giovinco, as well as clients and family.  This video romp is a fun and refreshing view of art from the gallery perspective.

The Gallery itself, Jim Kempner Fine Art, is located at the epicenter of the New York Art scene at 10th Avenue and 23rd Street.  Each episode features a range of contemporary art and artists work of photography, prints, drawings, sculpture and paintings.

Stay tuned!  New episodes are revealed weekly!

I’ve always admired people who have the guts to go with an all white interior… Almost by default, they probably don’t have children or a black cat. 

Just look at how the colorful artwork & accessories in this space pop.  I found this lovely residence via Bolig Magazine online and while I personally thrive on color, I respect and ogle in awe the blissful mental silence and creative energy created by these white spaces.