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worldofartbysue.bsky.social
World Of Art By Sue
@worldofartbysue.bsky.social
1K followers 2.4K following 930 posts
History of Art for everyone (themes change monthly)! Other interests include: world history, genealogy, books, photography, gardening, (US) football and dinosaurs. Life goal: to learn something new every day. Degree in Art History from McGill University
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December's theme: Pop Art
MARISOL (MARISOL ESCOBAR) (1930 – 2016), “The Family”, 1962. Museum of Modern Art, New York City US.
Marisol was born in France to Venezuelan parents, moved around quite a bit throughout her childhood and landed in New York City in 1950.
#arthistory #art #PopArt #sculpture
Marisol's favorite medium to work in was wood sculpture, usually with life-sized figures with a slightly primitive look (she was impressed by an exhibit of Pre-Columbian art early on). Her sculptures are blocky and brightly colored and include figures representing the gamut of American life, from individual portraits to an anonymous dustbowl family. She often included a self-portrait tucked into the piece, both overtly (as in every figure’s face was her own) and covertly (as in a doll’s face being cuddled by a child). She used everyday items and everyday people in her pieces. In MoMA’s “The Family”, she has a central female figure – not a glamour pin-up like Richard Hamilton, but rather a solid, dependable matriarch. This sculpture is made up of three sections, using found items such as a pair of French doors, a metal doorknob and actual sneakers on the children’s feet. Not all of the children are smiling, or even paying attention (is this my family???). Marisol was inspired to create this piece by a photograph that she found in her studio; the photo had been left behind by a previous inhabitant. Andy Warhol said of Marisol that she “was the first girl artist with glamour”; he was so taken with her that he cast her in two of his movies.
December 8, 2025 at 4:00 PM
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#Spain
Atocha train station, Madrid, Spain
December 7, 2025 at 2:37 PM
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December's theme: Pop Art
RICHARD HAMILTON (1922 – 2011), “Pin-Up”, 1961. Museum of Modern Art, New York City US.
What is more “old school” art history than the female nude?
#arthistory #art #PopArt #collage
What is more “old school” art history than the female nude? From the prehistoric Venus of Willendorf to Ancient Greek statues of Aphrodite to Renaissance paintings of Adam and Eve to Manet’s scandalous “Déjeuner sur l’Herbe”, the female form has intrigued and inspired great artists. The British Pop Artist Richard Hamilton was likewise inspired, although his sourcing influence was more Playboy magazine than Giorgione. Hamilton’s “Pin-Up” employs the very Pop-ian medium of collage, but he took it even further by making it a 3-dimensional collage. He mixed a cartoon style hair-do with a cut-out photograph of a lacy brassiere and sculpted plastic breasts and set it all against a simplified background of flesh-tone colors. Hamilton was known for his experimentation with various materials, including plastics (a very modern material), acrylic glass, and different printing techniques in creating his pieces (this has led to some difficulties in properly conserving his work).
December 7, 2025 at 2:34 PM
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December's theme: Pop Art
YAYOI KUSAMA (born 1929), “No. F. C. H.”, 1960. Private collection.
Kusama’s obsession with dots, colors and repetitive patterns began in her childhood.
#arthistory #art #PopArt #YayoiKusama
Kusama’s obsession with dots, colors and repetitive patterns began in her childhood with a vivid hallucination: she saw a patterned tablecloth expanding and covering everything around her, including the ceiling. She has taken this vision (and others since then) and created a signature style all her own, with roots in Pop Art (with some Op Art influences added in as a bonus). The Japanese artist was living and working in New York City at the time she made this painting, and the influence of that artistically creative time made a lasting impression upon her. Today, she is still creating artwork and installations that immerse the viewer in her special world. She frequently employs repetitive patterns as a way to counter intrusive thoughts and manage her mental illness by creating her own visual language. “No F. C. H.” is an early iteration of Kusama’s Infinity Net series, in which the intricate pattern meanders around the canvas without a set beginning or end. For this piece, the artist painted the canvas a burnt orange and then layered a teal blue hue on top creating different sized “holes” in the net design. The result is an intriguing artwork full of visual stimulation. By the way, the title “No F. C. H.” has no discernable meaning, except to the artist herself.
December 6, 2025 at 2:14 PM
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Exterior windows of Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Blue-green windows and the metallic exterior panels of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain
December 5, 2025 at 5:42 PM
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December's theme: Pop Art
JAMES ROSENQUIST (1933 – 2017), “President Elect”, 1960. Centre Pompidou, Paris, France.
Rosenquist began his art career as a billboard painter and he never left behind his fascination with popular imagery.
#arthistory #art #Rosenquist #PopArt #JFK
Rosenquist's paintings are large in size and contain images of consumer culture and advertisements with a liberal sprinkling of celebrity appearances, such as President John F. Kennedy in “President Elect”. This work also includes an image of a yellow Chevrolet and a piece of cake, both taken from mass media sources. Rosenquist said that he used a campaign poster photo of Kennedy to highlight how politicians had started to market themselves as a consumer product. He mixed actual photographs with clipped images from magazines to construct a mock-up collage as a source for his final painting, which was then meticulously painted in a photo-realistic style.
December 5, 2025 at 5:39 PM
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Pit stop somewhere in Utah on a trip cross country, a few years ago (look at that gas price!)
Kate cleaning the schmutz off of our car windshield with a squeegee.
December 5, 2025 at 1:49 AM
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#HearstCastle
Window reflections on the swimming pool at Hearst Castle, San Simeon, California
The blue tiled indoor swimming pool, designed by architect Julia Morgan, with light from the arched windows reflecting off of the water surface. Lights, statues and carved ceiling design complete the stunning decor.
December 4, 2025 at 5:32 PM
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December's theme: Pop Art
SIR PETER BLAKE (born 1932), “Girlie Door”, 1959. Private collection.
“Girlie Door” is an invitation into an adolescent boy’s room, with pin-up photos and celebrity images pasted onto a bright red door (it's not a real door).
#arthistory #art #PopArt #PinUps
Peter Blake used a hardwood base painted red to simulate an actual door and added collaged images to create this piece. Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe pose and gaze out at the viewer. Other beautiful young women smile and seem very accessible. Blake spent his years as a young adolescent as a refugee in the countryside from war-torn London during World War II. His art often presents a melancholic touch along with love of bold American graphic images taken from advertisements. In “Girlie Door” and in later collages, he seems to be yearning for a better present or at least a happier future. He is perhaps best known for his iconic collaged album cover for The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
December 4, 2025 at 3:05 PM
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#Spain
Windows at Principe Pio train station in Madrid, Spain
Spain has made a big investment in updating her train stations while retaining the beauty of the original architecture. The windows at one of Madrid's three main train stations, Principe Pio, create a geometric design when photographed looking out from the station interior.
December 3, 2025 at 5:07 PM
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JASPER JOHNS (born 1930), “Three Flags”, 1958. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City US.
Johns painted his first American flag painting in 1954; it was to become one of his most enduring motifs.
#arthistory #art #PopArt #JasperJohns
So far this month, we have looked at Pop Art that broke boundaries by using mass media images of consumer products and celebrities as a means of raising the mundane to high art. Johns took the common flag image and endowed it with new meaning as an art object. He painted “Three Flags” on three separate canvases, then stacked them with the smallest canvas on top so that it is closest to the viewer. He used one of his favorite techniques, encaustic, which is a mixture of pigment in warm wax (he kept the mixture on a hot plate while creating the painting). The encaustic gives the canvas a textural quality, and a softness of hue, in which every brushstroke becomes visible. Johns was fond of repeated motifs – flags, targets, numbers, to name just a few – which can read as obsession when all of the paintings are together in one location. Johns’ flag becomes more than a symbol (although it does not lose its patriotic symbology); we now also see its geometry and design elements as part of a work of art. These flags have 48 stars because the states of Alaska and Hawaii were not yet part of the United States in 1958.
December 3, 2025 at 5:01 PM
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#Bilbao
More interior window magic from Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
A kaleidoscope of windows and walls inside Gehry's amazing architecture at the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum. The feathery item on the left is Claes Oldenburg's "Soft Shuttle Cock" sculpture, hanging over an upstairs floor landing.
December 2, 2025 at 6:13 PM
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December's theme: Pop Art
RAY JOHNSON (1927 – 2002), “Elvis Presley #1 (Oedipus)”, 1956-58. Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois US.
To make this work, Ray Johnson began with a photograph of Elvis Presley in profile.
#arthistory #art #PopArt #RayJohnson
To make this work, Ray Johnson began with a photograph of Elvis Presley in profile. Johnson then covered the work in red tempera, letting the paint drip down around the singer’s eyes, evoking both blood and tears. In doing so, Johnson connected Elvis, a cult figure of the present, to a cult figure from the mythological past: Oedipus, who gouged out his eyes to atone for committing patricide and incest. Johnson worked in New York City alongside such Abstract Expressionists as Jackson Pollock, and he slyly commented “I’m the only painter in New York whose drips mean anything!” Johnson’s favorite medium was collage, and he frequently incorporated text or bits of texts into his compositions. He called his small-scale creations “moticos”, using pasted images from popular culture. Johnson actively dodged fame and publicity and at one time was called “the most famous unknown artist”.
December 2, 2025 at 4:02 PM
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#Bilbao
Frank Gehry's incredible architecture at Bilbao Guggenheim is a veritable feast for the eyes, both inside and out.
The interior of Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain - every detail, from the balconies to the sweeping walls to the industrial pipes to the windows filtering the light, contributes to an atmosphere like no other.
December 2, 2025 at 12:49 AM
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New month, new theme! The theme for December is: Pop Art. It's gonna be a groovy month :)
EDUARDO PAOLOZZI (1924 – 2005), “Meet the People”, 1948. Tate Museum, London UK.
#arthistory #art #PopArt #EduardoPaolozzi
EDUARDO PAOLOZZI (1924 – 2005), “Meet the People”, 1948. Tate Museum, London UK. Despite what people usually think, Pop Art originated in the UK and the Scottish artist Eduardo Paolozzi is considered to be one of the movement’s pioneers. He described himself as a Surrealist artist, and the Surrealist influence on much of his work is obvious. Paolozzi’s philosophy was to not waste anything and he found many ways to incorporate seemingly unconnected and useless objects – from magazine clippings to wine boxes - into his collages. The term “Pop Art” was not coined until 1958, but in “Meet the People”, one of ten collages from Paolozzi’s “Bunk” series, we can already see the themes that would drive Pop: consumerism, celebrity culture and mass media. The components that went into “Meet the People” were taken primarily from magazines given to the artist by American GIs. Paolozzi created his collages in scrapbooks.
December 1, 2025 at 5:28 PM
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#Ireland
Ancient Irish Entry (to Glendalough)
Located in county Wicklow in Ireland, Glendalough was the site of a 6th century monastic community. Pictured is the arched stone entryway to the complex. It is a beautiful and serene place to visit!
November 30, 2025 at 9:45 PM
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#Amagansett
Amagansett, NY sunset
A fiery red sky as the sun sets over the beach in Amagansett on Long Island, New York. A sliver of blue ocean is to the left, with a strip of beach sand and a grassy dune moving to the right, with beach houses on the horizon just where the yellow sun is going down.
November 30, 2025 at 6:13 PM
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November's theme: Stolen Art
LUCIAN FREUD (1922 - 2011), “Woman with Eyes Closed”, 2002. The theft of this painting, along with six others, from the Kunstal Museum in Rotterdam, The Netherlands in 2012 inspired an opera in 2025.
#arthitory #art #LucianFreud
A majority of stolen art in modern times, aside from looting during wartime, is thought to be masterminded by organized crime to be used as collateral in illicit business deals or held to extract ransoms. These thefts are well planned out and professionally executed. The 2012 Kunstal Museum theft itself was well planned but the thieves had not thought ahead as to how they would cash out the heist. The three men involved were busy with petty burglaries around Rotterdam when they got the brilliant idea to aim higher. They scouted the Kunstal Museum, realized there were no night security guards and broke in undetected. They cut seven canvases from their frames – grabbing small paintings that could fit easily into their bags – and escaped to their home country of Romania. Back in Romania, things got tricky as they belatedly realized that the paintings were too famous, and the theft received too much international publicity, making the loot impossible to sell. One of the thieves gave the paintings to his mother to hold, and as the authorities got closer and closer to the perpetrators, she apparently panicked and burned the evidence in her stove. All involved were caught and sentenced to prison but the paintings, alas, appear to be lost forever.
November 30, 2025 at 6:08 PM
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#Tokyo
Akihabara Electric Town, Tokyo, Japan
The colorful advertisements and lights of Tokyo's Electric Town shopping hub.
November 30, 2025 at 2:27 AM
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#AlexanderHamilton
Statue of Alexander Hamilton, Paterson, New Jersey
Statue of Alexander Hamilton at the Paterson Great Falls National Park in Paterson, NJ
November 29, 2025 at 10:26 PM
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#NewOrleans
Mardi Gras Indian, NOLA
A Mardi Gras Indian displays his beautifully intricate beadwork costume during a parade in New Orleans. He is covered from head to toe (with just his eyes and forehead showing) by his handmade outfit of beaded images and feathers.
November 29, 2025 at 3:56 PM
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November's theme: Stolen Art
RUFINO TAMAYO (1899 - 1991), “Tres Personajes (Three Characters)”, 1970. “Tres Personajes” was a later painting by the Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo.
#arthistory #art #RufinoTamayo
In 1977, this painting was bought by an art collector in Houston for $55,000 as a gift to his wife. The owners placed it in a storage unit when they were moving into a new home, and somehow or other the painting was no longer there when the move was completed and the storage unit was emptied. It remained officially listed as a missing artwork until 2007, when it was returned to the original owner who then sold it at auction for more than $1 Million to a private collector. It is still not known exactly how the painting was removed from storage (and Texas), but in 2003 it was found in New York City by a woman out for a walk in her Upper West Side neighborhood. She spotted the bright, energetic colors poking out of a pile of rubbish on the side of the street; she liked it and took it home. Her curiosity led her to research the painting, which she eventually got authenticated, and once she figured out that it was a missing piece, she was able to return it to the original owner. If paintings could talk, this one could probably tell a good tale!
November 29, 2025 at 3:51 PM
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Orchid
A brilliant magenta orchid sits on a weathered shelf at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, Florida
November 28, 2025 at 10:07 PM
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Underwater!
A young boy swimming underwater, as seen from above.
November 28, 2025 at 8:07 PM
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An anhinga bird, at the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples, Florida
A black and white anhinga bird sitting on a tree branch at the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, scouting around for his next meal!
November 28, 2025 at 6:28 PM