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An neat painting of Audrey Hepburn by Craig Alan who often uses small figures to create portraits of pop icons.
The Waterfall, 2011 - Marjolijn van der Meij via Bezembinder
Ulla Jokisalo Under supervision, 2008
Giclee print, needles and embroidery on canvas
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Overrun, 1985 sold for £1,127,650 at the Contemporary Art Evening Sale, 17 February 2011, London.
In a manner similar to the French painter Jean Dubuffet, Overrun’s heavily vertical format and its five black window frames at the top are suggestive of a vibrant urban landscape. Basquiat was greatly influenced by the high-rise skyscrapers of his native New York City and continuously referenced it. His teenage years spent as a wandering homeless artist, during which time he tagged mysterious and witty statements under the pseudonym SAMO, left a lasting impression. Art historians have long drawn comparisons with Jean Dubuffet’s childlike and naïve style and his lack of interest in rationally coherent compositions with a central perspective – a comparison most striking when comparing Dubuffet’s series Views of Paris with Overrun. Like Basquiat, Dubuffet made graffiti the central motif of his art.
Another important feature to be seen here, and which can be seen elsewhere in Basquiat’s output, is the use of language, in the form of consciously child-like scribbles and cryptic writings. While painting in the basement of Annina Nosei’s gallery, Basquiat had a book open to pages illustrating Twombly’s large, lyrical compositions which incorporate text and image. While recalling similar inscriptions in the works of Jean Dubuffet and Cy Twombly, Basquiat’s words, whether crossed out, repeated, or naively spelled, signify both the urgency and power with which he could communicate through his art. Paradoxically, this was an ability he so cruelly lacked in the real world so it is all the more affecting when seen in his paintings.
James Roper - Paroxysm
“By constructing abstract bodies formed from multiple elements these works mimic the complex bodily structures found within nature. Biological machines such as the human body process and retain energy and any processes placed under restraint will result in an intensification of it’s eventual release. The work attempts to portray this intermediate state as control gives way to chaotic abandon and a transition occurs from one state to the next. I am heavily influenced by the excessive and sensuously rich imagery of Baroque art and it’s depiction of the unfettering of religious restraint. Instead of the gentle ushering of the spirit towards the heavens my paintings spit, ejaculate, regurgitate and projectile vomit the spirit out, rejecting it’s bodily form in a fit of maniacal hysterics, a nonsensical reflexive outburst like the spasmodic speaking in tongues of those ‘slain in the spirit”
