This is a little off topic but I couldn’t resist…Found this on Cigarettes and Purity and wanted to share.

According to Hoogrrl economist David Galenson has found a new way to rank Art.
In other words, just in case that wasn’t clear he has taken a statistical approach to determine which are the greatest works of art in history by counting the number of times a work of art appeared in a book between 1900 - to 2005.

Although I know that art is a commodity for some and investment for others there must be another way to quantify art.
As Hoorgrrl says

The frequency of an illustration doesn’t seem to me to really explain what makes an idea good. Somewhere along the line you’ve got to find answers to why it’s so interesting.

I agree. For some reason I can’t quite pinpoint I find this statistical approach to be insulting, at best…

I don’t think that art is comparable, or rankable in any way, although obviously there is good and bad art - but what is good and what is bad is arguable to a degree.

Maybe because I view art as a work of soul and mind, and not of a business, This approach is so annoying to me.

At least he recognises how annoying the art world would find his statistics. From the New York Times

His statistical approach has led to what he says is a radically new interpretation of 20th-century art, one he is certain art historians will hate. It is based in part on how frequently an illustration of a work appears in textbooks.

“Quantification has been almost totally absent from art history,” he said. “Art historians hate markets.”

 

What do you think?

The Agnew Clinic Thomas Eakins

The Swimming hole

I read a great post in Art Blog about Thomas Eakins

Born July 25, 1844 under an unlucky star, Eakins may be the greatest artist America has ever produced, certainly the greatest Philadelphia ever birthed, and yet also the most unjustly neglected

Bob, the author of the Art Blog is a passionate Eakins lover and I suggest you read His post.

I love the way Eakins dealt with light in his paintings in an incredibly accurate way. I can smell the grass and the water in the swimming hole, and the somewhat stale air in the Agnew Clinic.

I think this level of skill in the translation of what is in front of us to eternity through the medium of painting is a long lost one, that photography, as accurate as it is can never replace.

I read about the Ashok Bhowmik exhibition at Tamarind Art in New York City till August 15th, in Art News Blog.

The Insect and The Angel Ashok Bhowmik

the gallery says:

“Ashok Bhowmik is the featured artist in our current exhibition, ‘Alchemy of Enigma.’ Ashok’s paintings manipulate and invoke a spiritual yet haunting imagery within the synapses of the mind. His juxtapositions have a distinct style, streamed with color and accents against stark, bleak backgrounds to add to the simplistic yet powerful nature of his images. Ashok graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft in Kolkata and has exhibited in many solo and group shows worldwide. He currently lives and works in Kolkata.”

I don’t know much about Contemporary Indian Art, I can see a connection between his work and naive art in that his work has a definite narrative to it.

looking at each of the pictures, keeping the name in mind, you have all the elements of a story

The Egyptian and The Clock Ashok Bhowmik

The colors, of course, are way to sophisticated to really be be naive art.

I recommend musing in front of his pictures if you are have plans of being in New York soon

Michael Stravato for the New York Times

Cy Twombly at Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston in front of the gallery’s largest painting, “Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor.”

I would love to see this retrospective, unfortunately I have no plans for being in London at this point.

The Retrospective spans 14 rooms in the Tate Museum, in chronological order.

I read about The retrospective in Two Coats of Paint.  Sharon Butler quotes David Cohen of the New York Sun:

“In room after room, this survey offers spare yet dynamic canvases, or cruddy yet evocative sculpture. However nonchalant his painterly marks may seem, they are taut and expressive nonetheless. Scatological as they can be in their oozing and dribbling, his paintings are unfailingly elegant. There is a dichotomy in Mr. Twombly’s work between the verbal and the nonverbal: Writing is key to his work - often there is text scribbled into his canvases, and titles manifest connections with poetry - but equally vital is a sense that splodges and gestures form an arcane system of pre-verbal expression. This juggling act, sustained over half a century, is essential to Mr. Twombly’s achievement. But it also accounts for his rocky ride in terms of esteem. Because he taps reserves of brutalism and classicism in equal measure, he is apt to appear too effete to one camp, too grubby to the other. The combination of rough textures and smooth literary references may well account for his greater success in Europe than in America.”

A  couple more pieces

Wilder Shores of Love,1985

Leda and the Swan