Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Jean Thiancourt

Jean Thiancourt is a French sculptor, as talented as he is discreet. He initiated a gigantic project, to sculpt the 20 Ignudi from Michel Angelo's Sixtine Chapel. This may remind you as well Patrick Poivre de la Freta similar project. The size of Jean Thiancourt Ignudi sculptures is larger though.





 



Among the other sculptures from Jean Thiancourt subjectively selected for this blog, there is this one, part of a serie of 3 characters, seated in various areas of the Port-sur-Saone town in France. Each character has a different ethnic origin (African, European, and Asian). They symbolize the fraternity and tolerance that should exist between all people on earth.


And this one that I like also.


If you want to see his other sculptures, I invite you to browse his blog and website, mentioned below.

Sources
Jean Thiancourt blog

Jean Thiancourt Ignudi's blog

Artisho gallery

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Wilfred Fitzenreiter

To start this December month, here is the 'Three girls and a boy' sculpture made by Wilfred Fitzenreiter.  It is located in Germany, opposite the Berlin Cathedral, on the bank of the river Spree next to the DDR Museum.



Wilfred Fitzenreiter  (1932 - 2008) was a modern German sculptor, who lived in Berlin. He studied sculpture, worked as a freelance in Berlin, was a teacher at the Art Academy of Berlin. 



This video link allows you to see the variety of bas-reliefs and interesting medals he did, with amazing characters, couples, and sometimes mythology.




Thursday, November 17, 2016

Icarus by Jean-Christophe

To end the serie about Icarus sculptures and engravings, here is the contemporary version of this Icarus or fallen angel myth, that I sculpted from a large block of blue alabaster, in 2014. With contrasted texture for the broken wing, and hair, the color of the stone is a great match with the sky, and the pale white clouds of the natural stone is also a nice link with the feathers and sky clouds.

You can see the various steps of the sculpture, starting from the rough stone, on my gay-sculpture  website 'workshop' part.






 


Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Mercury by Artus Quellinus I





In the Roman mythology, we have already mentioned Mercury in this blog. Today's sculpture is also a Mercury, young God's messenger holding the caduceus. This beautifully crafted bas-relief was executed around 1650, by Artus Quellinus, and is visible in Amsterdam, Holland, at the Royal Palace.

Admire the details : a beautiful tunic on the shoulders, the winged sandals (to travel fast as the messenger of the gods), the caduceus (history of caduceus was also mentioned here in this blog), the purse (symbol of trade), the cockerel (symbol of vigilance) and the goat. Also the foliage and flowers hanging on each side. In Greek mythology, the parallel is Hermes.


Artus Quellinus the Elder was born into an artistic family, in 1609. He was the son of the respected Antwerp sculptor Erasmus Quellinus I, who teached him the basis of sculpture, and his brothers were artists too (Erasmus became a painter, and Hubertus an engraver).
Artus Quellinus spent 4 years in Rome to get trained, where he met François Duquesnoy, who would influence him with his Baroque style.

Artus Quellinus - Painting by Erasmus Quellinus 1662  Gulden Cabinet
He also spent some time in Lyon, then returned to Antwerp. He has worked in Amsterdam, where he got commissions, including the new City Hall (today the Royal Palace) for which he spent 15 years on the decoration, including large bronze sculptures, bas-reliefs etc. That palace became an example for other buildings.
Mercurus sculpture - Painting by Rogier

Artus Quellinus I also produced small-scale sculptures such as ivory-carvings. He died in 1668.

Sources
Wikipedia
Baroque in Vlaanderen

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Humanity against Evil - by Gaetano Cellini

A few weeks before critical elections in USA, I submit to your thoughts and appreciation this remarkable sculpture in marble made by Gaetano Cellini in 1908, entitled 'Humanity against Evil'. It is currently visible at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, Italy.


 


Gaetano Cellini (1873-1937) was born in Ravenna. Influenced by Rodin, who he met, and by Michelangelo, he presented this sculpture first in plaster, in Milan in 1906. With that model, he won a famous prize "Premio Fumagalli dell'Accademia di Brera".
The marble version was finished in 1908.

Photo Ken Munsie

 
At the base of the sculpture, you can read two lines in Italian (or more precisely a dialect from northern Italy) translated as : “Thus I’ll extirpate using my teeth and nails / the eternal pain that stings my heart”.
Sources
Askart
Homodesiribus blog
Italianways

Friday, October 7, 2016

Gay secrets of the MET Museum - New York

If you are in New York next November 4, 2016 you may want to explore some less-known aspects of the Metropolitan Museum treasures, during a tour called 'Gay Secrets of the Met'.
This artistic & fun & knowledge-sharing promenade is organized by Oscar Wilde Tours and is led by the famous professor, Andrew Lear (see some bio extracts at the end of the post).


Of course, you will see Greek and Roman ancient nude statues, like Hadrian (the first out gay leader as Lear says) and Antinous (well mentioned in this blog here), but also homoerotic art pieces from other periods, Renaissance, phallic totems of Oceania, beautiful Italian paintings, curious erotic vases, sculptures, etc. all depicting, visibly of more hidden at times, gay characters, male love, seducing scenes, etc.


Some artists can be well known at times, like Caravaggio or Rodin, but you will discover others too. They all depict the appreciation for the male love. Professor Lear did some research on one interesting painting by Andrea Sacchi for example, ''depicting a nude Apollo crowning the soprano singer Pasqualini. With a bit of digging, Lear concluded the painting was secretly an homage to the intimate relationship between the singer and a well-known cardinal of the time, a nephew of Pope Urban VIII. ''.


As Eventbrite quotes : ''The Met doesn’t have as many male nudes as other major museums because there was little trustee backing for the curators to acquire risqué pieces in its early days. The Met’s funders, more so than other museums, Lear claims, were a dominating and “very prudish” group. As visible by today’s exhibits, that didn’t last. “There’s so much homo-eroticism in the history of art that you can’t keep it out that easily,” Lear says. “Even if you try, it’s going to pop back up.” “In the Renaissance, anytime there was an excuse for making something homoerotic, they do,” Lear says. 
At the end of tour, Professor Lear shows a trio of portraits done by gay New Yorkers in the 1940s art scene.

Professor Andrew Lear (Oscar Wilde Tours)
Some bio extracts:

Professor Andrew Lear combines a love of travel with a passion for gay history, and he brings both of those attributes to Oscar Wilde Tours.
Professor Lear holds a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from UCLA. He has published a widely praised book on male-male love in ancient Greek art, as well as a number of important scholarly articles in this area. Indeed he is generally considered one of the foremost experts on same-sex love in the ancient world, but his interest in gay history extends to other key periods, such as fin-de-siècle England, Renaissance Italy, and medieval Japan...
A beloved teacher at Harvard, Columbia and NYU, Professor Lear won the Harvard Certificate for Excellence in Teaching four times. He has taught a wide variety of courses in Classics, history, art history, and gender studies—as well as Italian and French language classes.

His courses on sexuality in the ancient world have been particularly popular.
Professor Lear brings all those qualities to Oscar Wilde Tours, along with twenty years of experience organizing and leading group tours. With his vast cultural background, his detailed knowledge of gay history and his long experience of travel, Professor Lear strives to provide our guests with a vacation that is intellectually stimulating, culturally rewarding and, above all, fun!

Sources:
Eventbrite
Oscar Wilde Tours

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

David's ankles in the NY Times!

A few weeks ago, the NY Times published a very amusing, amazing and interesting article about Michel Angelo's David, that I submit to you if you click on the NY Times link here.

Photo (detail) by Maurizio Cattelan for NY Times.
No doubt you will appreciate some great reminders about the Renaissance period in Italy, the technical details of some restoration process, but also the comments made by some (American) tourists in Florence, and the David mania as stated by Sam Anderson in his article.




Source
NY Times 

Friday, September 23, 2016

Génius of Arts, by Antonin Mercié

In many countries, September is the period when children go back to school...  Today's beautiful sculpture aims to encourage them to study the arts, with Antonin Mercié 'Génie des Arts' large haut-relief, visible at the Guichet du Louvre in Paris, facing the river Seine.


Génie, in terms of sculpture, or painting, describes a kid with wings, in this case he is sitting on the Pegasus winged horse. Sometimes the feet are covered with foliage ('rinceaux', in French).
 

This sculpture, made in 1877, replaced a Napoleon III sculpture from the sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye. (There is a similar sculpture on the Jules Michelet tomb, visible at the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris). It is made in hammered copper.




Antonin Mercié (1845-1916) was a famous French sculptor, who received the Prix de Rome in 1868 (when he was 23 years old!). He made a famous 'David' bronze sculpture (edited at 100 copies, the large one is visible at the Orsay Museum in Paris. He sculpted the Arago monument in Perpignan, a marble sculpture for the tomb of the wife of Charles Ferry, called 'Souvenir'. And several other monuments, for Jules Ferry, Meissonier, Louis Faidherbe, Adolphe Thiers,  and a 'Regret' sculpture for Alexandre Cabanel tomb. And also a large stone sculpture called 'Justice'...

Below, photograph of Antonin Mercié in his studio (115, boulevard Saint Michel Paris).
 
Mercié was also a painter, one of his famous painting being the Michel Angelo studying anatomy (1885). He was one of the teacher at the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris, for both drawing and sculpture. He became President of the French Artists society in 1913.He is resting in Toulouse, at the Terre-Cabale cemetery.

Mercié portrait (1900) done by Ramon Casas - Musée Nat. des Arts - Catalogne - Spain
Sources :
Wikipedia
Louvre Museum
Paris1900 L'Art Nouveau.com 

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Stone carvers world tour

The male beauties sculpted in stone and visible in today's museums, galleries, cathedrals, castles, churches, public monuments, parks and places, have a similar origin : a (large) block of marble or other stone, block that was extracted from the ground, in various quarries such as the famous Carrara, Volterra, and Pietrasanta in Italy, by famous or less known carvers and sculptors. And these cathedrals, palaces or public monuments as well were built using carved blocks of stone or marble.

Italy (detail - Architecture Allegorie -hard stone marqueterie - painting from Giuseppe Zocchi)

So here is a visual world tour of some of these carvers and sculptors, their tools, their workshops or studios and a selection of some marble and other stone quarries. Let start with some stone carvers, through photographs, old postcards, paintings, drawings, and even marqueterie with hard stone!

Italy (Architecture allegorie - this is an impressive hard stone marqueterie based on a painting from Giuseppe Zocchi - we will write more about him later on).

France - Bastia, in Corsica

Middle-age drawings:

Netherlands
 Netherlands
 Russia - Moscow
 France - Amiens
Dated 1425

Hungary
Turkey
USA - Queens - NYC
 USA - Indiana - Limestone blocks, 1929.
 USA - Manhattan NYC, 1905
 USa - Washington, 1854
 USA - Prisoners in the State Prison of Massachusetts


India - Assam, 1920
 China - Guangzou, 1790
 Japan
 Japan - artist Wada Sanzo, 1883-1967
 China
Mexico - Diego Rivera drawing

Mexico  - Carl Pappe 1936

Egypt


Sources :
Site de Pierres-Info  
Histoire des Arts et des Métiers