A quick note to say that I feel sort of vindicated. Back in March 2010, I wrote THIS post predicting the rise of International Klein Blue – that fabulous deep blue invented and patented by the late, great artist Yves Klein.

Yves Klein, Petite Vénus Bleue, 1956 Image: canalblog.com

And so it went…that bright blue was suddenly everywhere from J.Crew catalogues to Uma Thurman at the Oscars. It even showed up in a stunning piece at the AGO retrospective of General Idea.

General Idea, XXX (bleu) (installation view) 1984 3 acrylic on canvases, 3 poodles. Image: theglobeandmail.com

And now, Newsweek/Daily Beast art critic Blake Gopnik has singled it out at the recent Art Basel Miami Beach:

“The booth had a classic all-blue Yves Klein, from 1960, that I could not live without. It had been inscribed as a gift from Klein to Antonio Saura, the Spanish painter, and was signed and dated and had had few owners. Klein is undergoing a massive reevaluation these days: Instead of being seen as a consummate colorist, his role as godfather of conceptualism is at last being noticed. The picture was a steal at $1.4 million.”

Uma Thurman,looking stunning at the Oscars. Image: stylenik.com

Did you know that you can buy the paint – Yves Klein patented the colour – in Switzerland? It’s not cheap. But it’s beyond any other colour you will paint with – in fact the only colours that can possibly accompany it are white, or gold leaf. As he knew very well, IKB and gold is a heavenly combination.

I’d love to meet the guy who ordered the IKB bespoke suit.

Read Gopnik’s full article on ABMB, HERE.

The other week I dropped in to see one of my new favorite galleries, General Hardware Contemporary, in Parkdale. Not only was owner Niki Dracos super friendly, happily accompanying me in my rush around the gallery (I was late for a talk at Art Toronto) but I was really impressed by the work.

Paintings by Anahita Rezvani-Rad. All images: VoCA

R.M. Vaughn is right, in his Globe and Mail review, that we don’t see these kinds of shows often enough in Toronto and when we do, it’s with relief to those of us who deplore the art scene’s typical back-patting. As Vaughn points out, what makes it so vital is that it is work “seen through the eyes of artists experiencing displacement (internal or geographic) from their homelands.”

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I’ve been thinking recently about Canada’s arts granting system. With all this talk of financial reform, from the global to the municipal levels (hello, Rob Ford), maybe it’s time we looked at whether the granting system in Canada could use some reform of its own.

Image: canadianart.ca

Federal, provincial and municipal arts councils are all arms length agencies of the government. The Canada Council for the Arts is a crown corporation chaired by Joseph Rotman, which is funded from parliament along with endowments and donations. The visual arts are one division, the other five are media arts, dance, music, theatre and writing/publishing. The Ontario Arts Council is a publicly funded agency of the ministry of culture, and the Toronto Arts Council is funded by the City of Toronto.

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Cindy Sherman, the American artist known for her Untitled Film Stills, 1977–1980 and subsequent self-portraits in which she transforms herself, through hair, makeup, prosthetics and costume, into various female characters from the seductive to the grotesque, is all about disguise.

Cindy Sherman for MAC Cosmetics. Image: heartymagazine.com

She’s been working this way for decades and is one of America’s best-known artists. In fact, she now holds the record for highest price paid for a photograph at auction when her work Untitled #96 was sold for $3.8 million at Christie’s in May.

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Although I don’t blog about public art in Toronto, since it could create a conflict with my position on the City of Toronto Public Art Commission, that doesn’t stop me from blogging about public art elsewhere.

The entrance to the new Sofitel Hotel in Vienna. Image: VoCA/Scott Barker

I was in Vienna, Austria recently and saw the most fantastic use of art in Jean Nouvel‘s new Sofitel hotel. Surprisingly unremarkable from the outside, there was an artwork by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist that greeted us at the hotel entrance and really wowed us on the rooftop restaurant. I’m not sure if they have a percent for art program there, which we have in many cities across North America (it gives one percent of project costs over to public artworks in newly built properties) but the hotel owners really gave an impressively enormous amount of space and visibility over to the artwork.

The awning over the hotel’s entrance was lit up from underneath with an image that has viewers peering into Pipilotti’s magical ‘heaven’. You literally see up her nostrils. Then, you enter the very black elevator up to the roof top lounge and restaurant.

The restaurant ceiling. Image: VoCA/Scott Barker

The entire restaurant – from the chairs to the carpet, walls and bar is covered in matte, dark grey. The only colour exists in a spectacular ceiling mural by the artist that covers the ENTIRE ceiling, which is also punctured with small circular video screens. Through the screens you can see Pipilotti cavorting around, sticking her fingers down to pull you up into the ceiling.

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It’s better late than never for some highlights from this year’s Venice Biennale.

Flying into Venice. All photos: VoCA

Having been to several Venice Biennales in my life, I almost always prefer the pavilions where the artist addresses the architecture of the pavilions in which the art is housed. The first Biennale was held in 1895 and there are only 30 permanent national pavilions in the Giardini. This year, there were 89 participating countries, many of whom exhibited in off-site pavilions throughout Venice.

The whole concept of the pavilions in the Giardini is, to my mind, rather outdated, and art has clearly moved on from such constraints. Many of the pavilions are architecturally designed to best showcase painting or drawing shows like this year’s contribution from Canada. Luckily, Vancouver artist Steven Shearer managed to give Canada’s little pavilion, wedged in between Germany and Great Britain, some oomph with an enormous billboard and d-i-y shed-like entrance.

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In honour of all the weddings taking place this June (including my own) I thought I would show the most famous wedding painting of them all: The Arnolfini Portrait, painted by the incredibly brilliant Flemish painter Jan van Eyck in 1434 and known to all first year students of art history as an excellent example of symbolism in painting.

The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, 1434. Image: Britannica.com

Historians still theorize about the purpose of the painting and whom, exactly it was depicting. Most agree that is was a portrait intended to commemorate a marriage and to display the wealth of the Italian merchant Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife. The many symbolic elements seem to add up to the depiction of a couple who are looking forward to life together, with numerous elements suggesting wealth, passion, loyalty, gender roles etc.

With its minute and extremely precise reflection of the scene in a convex mirror at the back of the room, it is a rather modern and admirably complex picture.

The painting is in London’s National Gallery.

Have you seen Beyonce’s new video Who Run the World (Girls)? I havent’ been able to get it out of my mind. Check it out HERE.

A promo image for Beyonce’s new video Run the World (Girls). Image: cdn.idolator.com

While pro-women statements have been popular in pop music for a while, (the Spice Girls and Girl Power wasn’t so long ago) with Beyonce’s video I sense an attitude of female fierceness that I haven’t noticed in mainstream pop before. It made me wonder what ‘Girl Power’ has turned into, and what its eventual impact might be. Feminist writers – like Susan Hopkins in Girl Heroes: The New Force in Popular Culture – have in recent years been identifying and deconstructing the links between ‘Girl Power’ and the notion of the female warrior.

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Rumour has it that the newly released Creative Capital Plan, which makes a strong case for Toronto’s art and culture sector as a significant industry and revenue generator, may be short-lived.

Image: ocad.ca

The report, headed up by Councillor Michael Thompson (Ward 37 Scarborough Centre), Chair of the City’s Economic Development Committee, is billed as a partnership between the City and the arts and culture community, and provides recommendations to update the City’s last culture plan from 2003.

In 1998, the newly amalgamated City had a Culture Plan drafted “to help guide the city’s cultural development for the next decade.” The first plan focused on larger cultural initiatives – and we now have the Ballet School, the Canadian Opera Company, OCAD University, the ROM and the Art Gallery of Ontario to show for it.  The new report recognizes the value of small arts operations as well as the need to connect them with like-minded organizations and their initiatives.

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I thought I’d share with you a photograph that was recently given to me. It’s quickly become one of my favorite things.

It’s a photograph of Andy Warhol examining a Polaroid. It must have been taken in the early sixties, and it was taken by a friend of mine, a German art collector, whose daughter Warhol was doing a silkscreen of.

Image: VoCA

In the photo, one of several taken surreptitiously by my friend, Warhol is examining a test, soon to become one of his famous silkscreen portraits. Click HERE to read more about the process he used to create the portraits.

The critic Arthur Danto wrote, in The Nation in 1989: “I think eventually people competed to be portrayed by Warhol because that appeared to give them instant immortality of the sort usually enjoyed only by the greatest of stars or the most celebrated products, as if they were also part of the common consciousness of the time.”

Which, of course, they were.