BEYOND DEMONS AND ANGELS
is Bruce Rimell's first solo show in five years.
​It opens next Friday (10th Feb) at 7.30pm, at Cupola Gallery in Sheffield, UK:
check out this short film he made to talk about his work and the exhibition!

​Promotional film for Bruce Rimell's exhibition 'Beyond Demons and Angels' at Cupola Gallery, 178a Middlewood Road, Sheffield S6 1TD, UK. Opening 7.30pm Friday February 10th. Exhibition continues February 11th til March 11th 2017.

A promo for a small scale C31 TV series featuring Visionary Artists who currently live in, or were originally from Australia. This is the second season of this show.
Featuring artists:  Adam Scott Miller, Bonny Hut, Bryan Itch, Chandrika Steinhardt, Kuba Ambrose, Melissa Shemanna, Orryelle, Paulie Mann, Tobius Miller. 

Produced and edited by Bonny Hut
Brought to you by Metro Television
In association with 
Visionary Art Network Australia

Demnächst erscheint der Kunstband von Angerer der Ältere "Die Rückkehr des Menschen in die Kunst", angelehnt an das weltberühmte Buch von Ortèga y Gasset "Die Vertreibung des Menschen aus den Kunst".
Die Gestaltung der 2 Bände mit Schuber lehnt sich auch an die Tradition des "Schönen Buches" an. Es wird das Gesamtwerk von Angerer der Ältere sein, das sich im Programm des Verlagshauses Kastner wiederfindet. Weitere Informationen werden folgen. Es ist ein großes Oevre geworden. Aber hier als Vorausschau die Titelbilder als erste Information.

Soon the art book  of Angerer der Ältere, "The Return of Humanity to Art" appears, inspired by the famous book by Ortega y Gasset "The Dehumanization of Art". The design of the 2 volumes with slipcase leans also on the tradition of "the beautiful book". It will contain the complete works of Angerer der Ältere, which again can be found in the publishing house Kastner program. Further information will follow. It has become a large oeuvre. But here as a preview, find the titel pages as a initial information.

Numerous assistants helped in the completion of this project.

From an insiders point of view:

Images in  the gallery below are courtesy of Maria Antonia 'Gigi' Schramek, long-time assistant of Ernst Fuchs.

Post by Otto Rapp

Embedded playlist from YouTube by SirMixItAllUp2 ▼

​"American Visions," an eight-part series on American art written and narrated by Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes, is both an account of American life and a tribute to American art that will likely propel thousands of the not-yet-converted into museums and galleries, antiques shows and auction rooms to see (and inevitably shop) for themselves. Filmed in 100 locations around the country, covering everything from Quaker to Shaker, George Washington to Bierstadt, Remington to Warhol, and the skyscrapers of New York City, Hughes has applied his considerable wit and imagination to the problem of revealing how art records and preserves both points of view and ways of life. It is American history told through art, not merely a history of art. It offers a perspective that is refreshingly elevating and inclusive.

--- by William Hosley

from Amazon.com Review of the Book:

Australian-born art critic Robert Hughes, author of the highly acclaimed study of modern art, 'The Shock of the New' has made his home in the United States for the last 20 years. His latest undertaking, which he calls "a love letter to America," is his most massive: a 350-year history of art in America. Published in association with an eight-part PBS series of the same name, this is no scholarly text. With the same voracious wit and opinionated brilliance that have characterized his criticism for Time magazine, this tour-de-force spans three centuries of events, movements, and personalities that have shaped American society and its art.

Post by Otto Rapp

The recent exhibition Phantastische Venus in Viechtach made me think of this great romantic painting by Alexandre Cabanel, painted in 1863. 

My previous blog posed the question: Yes ... But is it Art? It featured a nearly decade old CBS 60 Minutes program. The questions posed then are still ( and sadly) as topical today as they were back then. Nothing much has changed, except perhaps the numbers. Rather than adding this video here to that blog, I present it as a separate post, though they are very much related.  

Go inside the glittering world of the super-rich as art critic and journalist Alastair Sooke explores the remarkable stories behind the Top Ten Most Valuable Paintings in the World to sell at auction. The documentary tells the stories behind the astronomical prices of art and why the world's richest people want to spend their millions on it.

You might like to check out the previous blog 
Yes ... But is it Art?

Original broadcast date: SEPTEMBER 12, 1993, 7:00 PM
A vacuum cleaner. A urinal. Three basketballs floating in water? Morley Safer takes a critical look at the contemporary art world, where household items like these are sold as high-priced art. In this much talked about piece, Safer takes on the artists, dealers and critics of the 90s with gusto.

The producer of 60 Minutes is Andy Rooney. 
Some years ago, in his weekly opinion piece, Andy Rooney shared his views on public art. 
When Did This Become Art?

About the 'artspeak' that describes some of these works he said: 
"I may not understand art, but I do understand the English language, and that is pretentious nonsense. "

UPDATE: 
I now posted a related topic  -  The Value of Art  -  in a separate blog. 
It features a more recent BBC Documentary asking the question 
What makes art valuable?

Here is a related subject: 
Art critic and film-maker Ben Lewis spent 2008 following the booming contemporary art market, from its peak in May until its collapse in October.

To watch the entire 95 minute movie, a streaming rental can be ordered from this preview below: 

On my Blogger The Mystic Otto Rapp I had written several pieces dealing with this and similar subjects. 
Here are a few samples:

LAOKOON, ANTI-LAOKOON and ANTI-KOONS

I'M SICK OF PRETENDING: I DON'T "GET" ART

and finally, since Jeff Koons was mentioned in the 60 Minutes video:
A Millions Poodle - ostentatious display of enormous wealth

The late art critic Hilton Kramer, interviewed in the  CBS video "But is it Art?" had published several very interesting books on this subject, such as this one (1985)  - check it out on Google books, available at Amazon:

Another Update - this is too good to leave out:
Jeff Koons's Louvre Show Cancelled
article on Artnet by Lorena Muñoz-Alonso, Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Quote: 
"It is about time somebody called Koons out for what he is – a circus showman peddling over-blown, over-priced tourist souvenirs."

To commemorate St. Stephan's Day, here is a early 16th C painting by Austrian artist 
Marx Reichlich (1460 to 1520). 

Jacobus and Stephan altar, right inside wing, lower scene: Stoning of Saint Stephan.

Reichlich was a painter of primarily religious works. He painted a number of traditional scenes as commissions for churches, including "Adoration of the Magi", and "The Last Judgement". Some of his works reside at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. This particular work however is in the collection of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. 

Post by Otto Rapp

I had recently posted a tongue in cheek spoof about a 'artspeak generator': 
INSTANT ARTIST STATEMENT

OK, now I am trying to get a bit more serious here - 
below is a picture and quote from the blog Translating Artspeak (who in turn took it from an article in the Arts & Culture section of the ChicagoMag (January 2014): 

The quote:
“With his keen knowledge of paint’s spatial effects, the artist exploits the transformative qualities of color applied directly to the architectural frame.”

The Translation:
 The artist painted a mural. 

Of this English upper-middle class speech we may note (a) that it is not localised in any one place, (b) that though the people who use this speech are not all acquainted with one another, they can easily recognise each other’s status by this index alone, (c) that this elite speech form tends to be imitated by those who are not of the elite, so that other dialect forms are gradually eliminated, (d) that the elite, recognising this imitation, is constantly creating new linguistic elaborations to mark itself off from the common herd.
—E. R. Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure, 1954
........................read MORE

but to be fair, here is the critique, if you will, of the above essay, by Ben Davis:

INTERNATIONAL ART ENGLISH
 - THE JOKE THAT FORGOT IT WAS FUNNY

“International Art English” is back. 

The essay of the same name, penned by David Levine and Alix Rule and published in the online journal Triple Canopy one year ago, touched off a minor furor with its attempt to prove scientifically that the art world was a hive of pompous windbags — that is, that the official language of art was a linguistically meaningless jumble of buzzwords written in a tortured style imported from French theory, a claim the authors said they could verify through running 13 years of press releases through a computer. 
..................read MORE

But if you prefer humorous, then by all means, check my earlier blog 
INSTANT ARTIST STATEMENT