At Your Fingertips: David Hockney's iPad Art

Apparently you can teach some old dogs new tricks. In a piece by Digital Planet producer Colin Grant, artist David Hockney discusses his love affair with his iPhone and iPad and how he uses those new technologies to create art (such as the example above). In a new exhibition titled Fleurs fraiches (“fresh flowers”) at La Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, France, Hockney displays these new works together for the first time. It’s fascinating to watch such an established artist venture forth in a yet-to-be-established medium, lending it the “street cred” that it so sorely needs to combat critics who still cling to the old media as the only “true” art. Working directly with his fingers on the interfaces of his devices, Hockney brings art not only from his fingertips, but also puts it just a fingertip away for the viewer. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "At Your Fingertips."

Rising Up: Leonard Baskin’s Portrait Gallery

When Daedalus crafted wings of feathers and wax for his son Icarus, he included the warning to not fly too close to the sun. As anyone who knows Greek mythology remembers, Icarus ignored the warning and plunged into the sea to his death. Artist Leonard Baskin never forgot the story of Icarus, which merged two of his greatest interests—men and birds—and created a woodcut of the fallen son in an egg-like oval, as if the tragic boy were truly born a bird. When Alfred Appel, Jr., a literary scholar as well as author on modern art and jazz, came across Baskin’s literary-tinged art in the 1960s, he fell, too—in love. Leonard Baskin: Art from the Gift of Alfred Appel, Jr., which runs at the Delaware Art Museum through January 9, 2011, tells the story of that collector’s love affair with Baskin’s art and Baskin’s love affair with the great artists in words and images that inspired his paintings and sculptures. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Rising Up."

[Image: Leonard Baskin (1922-2000). Icarus, 1967. Color woodcut on paper, 32 x 21 ¾ inches. Gift of Alfred Appel, Jr., 2009. © Estate of Leonard Baskin, Courtesy Galerie St. Etienne, New York.]

[Many thanks to the Delaware Art Museum for providing me with the image above and press materials for Leonard Baskin: Art from the Gift of Alfred Appel, Jr., which runs through January 9, 2011.]

Hello, Norma Jean: The Lost LOOK Photos of Marilyn Monroe

Any list of the most photographed people in history certainly has to include Marilyn Monroe. Just when you think we’ve seen every possible image of the iconic starlet, a new trove appears out of nowhere. Marilyn, August 1953: The Lost LOOK Photos by John Vachon, featuring photography by John Vachon and text by Brian Wallis, doesn’t just add to the mountain of Marilyn pictures, but provides a new perspective on both the actress and the mythos of Marilyn behind which the heart and mind of Norma Jean Mortensen hid. Both a book of photography and a book about photography and fame, Marilyn, August 1953 allows us to the star as collaborator in the star-making rather than the passive victim of “Candle in the Wind” fame. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Hello, Norma Jean."

[Image: © The Estate of John Vachon. Dover Publications, Inc.]

[Many thanks to Dover Publications for providing me with a review copy of Marilyn, August 1953: The Lost LOOK Photos by John Vachon, featuring photography by John Vachon and text by Brian Wallis.]

Recreating Paradise: Gauguin’s Noa Noa Prints

In late August 1893, painter Paul Gauguin returned to Paris after spending the previous few years in Tahiti, the Polynesian paradise that propelled his art to a whole new level. Hoping to sell his “uncivilized” works to a “civilized” audience, Gauguin realized that he had to first explain the allure and power of that paradise to prospective purchasers. Thus, the idea for Noa Noa (“fragrant scent” in Tahitian), Gauguin’s book of those experiences, was born, along with a series of woodblock prints he designed to illustrate it. Alas, Gauguin never got to see his work published, but the prints themselves took on a whole new life, which continues today in the Princeton University Art Museum’s exhibition, Gauguin's Paradise Remembered: The Noa Noa Prints. In this startling exhibition, we see that Gauguin’s prints portray a paradise more of the mind than of his actual experience. The island eden Gauguin hoped to enter, in fact, may never have existed—an idea that his prints, reproductions of a reality that was never truly real, emphasize through their very nature. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Recreating Paradise."

[Many thanks to the Princeton University Art Museum for providing me with a review copy of Gauguin's Paradise Remembered: The Noa Noa Prints (published by Yale University Press), the catalogue to the exhibition running through January 2, 2011.]