Back to the Future: Why Does Art Survive?

Published March 23, 2008 art history , Art Ideas , contemporary art 7 Comments

Recently during an artists’ on-line discussion about the archival properties of materials and how that contributes to the value of the art, the question kept popping into my mind. Why does art survive?

damienhirst_skull.jpg Damien Hirst, a British artist whose work explores mortality and death, self-financed this sculpture, a life-size platinum cast of a human skull encrusted with 8,601 diamonds. He estimates the project cost between 10 and 15 million. It recently sold to an investment group for $100 million. This investment seems a pretty good value in the archival sense, since everyone knows, diamonds are forever. Continue reading ‘Back to the Future: Why Does Art Survive?’

Ruth Asawa: A Life in Art, by pam rubert

Published January 30, 2008 Artist , contemporary art , Women in art 7 Comments
Tags: , , , ,

ruth_asawa3.jpg

I find it deepens my appreciation for the art, if I have an opportunity to study the life of an artist who also serves as an inspiring role model. Recently I found such an artist through the blog of Sculpturess.

Photo by Laurence Cuneo from www.ruthasawa.com

Ruth Asawa, a Japanese American artist, was born in 1926 in a farming community in southern California. Early she showed talent and motivation in art — but it was at age 16 when she was confined in the Japanese internments camps during World War II that she had the unusual opportunity to study drawing and design for five hours a day with three Walt Disney studio artists who were also internment prisoners and taught the camp children.

Following internment, Asawa was awarded a scholarship to attend the Black Mountain College in North Carolina to study with avant-garde artist Josef Albers from the Bauhaus in Germany and Buckminster Fuller, best known for inventing the geodesic dome.

Continue reading ‘Ruth Asawa: A Life in Art, by pam rubert’

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