Unseen Art Scene (mirror)

Modernism in mid-20th-century drawings from Nigeria: Above, Uche Okeke’s “Design for Iron Work I,” from 1959; and “Okpaladike and his Obu,” from 1961. Courtesy of the artist and Skoto Gallery  Article written by Holland Cotter JAN. 29, 2015 Source: NY Times  Histories of Modernism are constantly changing as scholars come to realize its global breadth and local particularities. The marketplace is slower on the uptake. Although New York has a few galleries specializing in early-to-mid-20th-century Asian work, Skoto Gallery in Chelsea remains, more than two decades after it opened, the sole full-time outlet for comparable work from Africa. And it gives us some Modernism-merging-into-contemporary basics in a thumbnail survey of works on paper by the influential West African artist Uche Okeke . Born in Nigeria in 1933, Mr. Okeke was, in the 1950s, a founding member of the Zaria Art Society, a group of academically trained experimental artists who joined Western medium...

 A Brief History Of Art Censorship From 1508 To 2014 Source: The Huffington Post | By Priscilla Frank - 01/16/2015   Miriam Webster defines censorship as "the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and removing things that are considered to be offensive, immoral, harmful to society, etc." The art world -- a realm populated by masterpieces often hailed for their transgressive, controversial and taboo characteristics -- regularly butts against standards of decency and good taste in the fight for freedom of expression. Throughout history works of art have been altered, silenced and even erased due to unacceptable content, whether the motivations for censorship were religious, social or political. Yet artists have long pushed boundaries of "offensive" through their imagery and content, presenting everything from portraits of a vulva to a performance replicating 19th century "human zoos." After last week's brutal attack on Paris...

Project management is not so much a science as an art, says expert Dennis Comninos, as business turns towards talent over technicians as the differentiator of great project managers. Until recently a search for a good project manager would focus on what they could do - what they knew about processes and software – the tools that made them competent. Today that is not enough. What is now increasingly sought is not so much a project manager as a project leader, a person with the instinctive ability to look beyond ticking project boxes, and to apply strategy and business focus. “In the last 10 to 15 years there has been a focus on skills, software tools and techniques but those are not what make a great project leader,” says Dennis Comninos, course convenor of the UCT Graduate School of Business’ popular executive course on Project Management and co-author with Enzo Frigenti of the definitive international bestseller The Practice of Project Manageme...

Top Tips for Painting with Ink Modern inks are a far more versatile medium than you might imagine. The intense colours, transparency and fluidity make them well worth a try, especially if you already enjoy watercolours In order to understand more about the characteristics of ink, we need to pay homage to the humble ink stick, which originated in the Far East more than 2,000 years ago. This is solid ink, diluted with water for varying effect. Thick ink is very deep and glossy, while thin ink appears lively and translucent. The marvel of the media is how an artist can skillfully use ink to create an image of great immediacy and life, balancing brightness and darkness, density and light, line and tone. Manufacturers advocate the use of ink for both clearly defined line work or broad washes of subtle colour, but I prefer the latter. Inks undoubtedly stand as a medium on their own, but are also great in mixed media pieces, used as washes to unify areas in drawing, collage and pa...

Paint Mediums Explained Few things divide oil painters as much as the use of mediums. Are they the key to the ‘secrets’ of the Old Masters or merely unnecessary complications to painting? Tutor Martin Kinnear experiments Oil paint is simple stuff – just coloured powder (pigment) and binder (oil). Before 1851 and the introduction of the first collapsible paint tube, artists would mix each colour from scratch,adding whatever adulterants were necessary for the task in hand. Less opacity could be created by adding resins, faster drying by adding lead, extra gloss by varnish, dullness by waxes, and so forth. Modifying the paint was part of the craft of painting. Combinations that worked were handed down from master to apprentice, new combinations jealously guarded, new materials eagerly sought and tested. By the start of the 19th century it had become not simply impractical but unthinkable to paint without a medium of some kind, typically a general purpose medium to be added at ...

The Bamum Kwifo society acts as a police force, carrying out punishments and executions at night ( kwifo means night). As an agent of the king's administration, Kwifo also mediates significant conflicts and pronounces sentence in both civil and criminal cases.     Each Kwifo society has a mask that serves as the spokesman and representative.  Known as mabu , thi smask presents the decrees of the society to the community.  It ushers members of Kwifo through the village, alerting the people of the approach of the group, and compelling them to behave appropriately. Masks like this usually perform in groups of eight to thirty, accompanied by an orchestra of drums, xylophone and rattles. When they make special appearances at the burial and commemorative death celebrations of a member of the group, they are viewed with awe and reverance. Source: A History of Art in Africa  ISBN0-13-183356-1   Source: Metropolitan Musuem | NYC http://www.metmu...

Mbangu Sickness Masks | Pollitt Collection Pollitt Collection Pollitt Collection Let us study two different entities at the same time. Both coming from very different cultures yet have a universal visual language of pain. Francis Bacon's Portraits in connection with Mbangu Sickness Masks from the Pende people from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their skilled craftsmanship of twisted faces on wooden masks depict the mental anguish felt by many of those oppressed and worn whilst jumping over an open fire. The colours that make up the masks are mainly white with hints of red. The suffering seen in the Congo for centuries is for many almost unbearable. It is no wonder when wanting to dig into the soul of man one need look no further than the Pende people of Central Africa. The loss of faith in humanity in the late 1940s was such that the human image in art became increasingly difficult to portray. The existential despair expressed by Jean-Paul Sartre in Nausea at the beg...

                A Layman’s Guide to Using Colloidal Silver August 5, 2014 at 12:23am A Layman’s Guide to Using Colloidal Silver For those of you who are looking for an article packed with scientific jargon and molecular theory, "this ain’t it." This small body of information is intended to be nothing more or less than my own experience and my observations of the experience of others in the effective and ineffective use of colloidal silver. Silver producers claim their products are “silver bullets” and the opposing view claims that it is nothing but quackery and in essence nothing more than “silver busts”. By far the most frequent questions we receive here at Utopia Silver concerning silver are, “Does silver really work?” and “How much silver must I use for it to be effective?” The first question is a moot point in any real world science; silver kills one-celled organisms (germs), period. Any opinion to the contrary is where the real qu...