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Celebrating Baldessari
Happy birthday John Baldessari! The renowned artist and teacher celebrates his 82nd birthday today. Since the mid-1950s, Baldessari has been fusing photography, montage, painting, and text to create complex compositions that explore interpretations of cultural iconography. Born in National City, CA, he is an important proponent of West Coast Art.
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Remembering Egon Schiele
A major figure of Austrian Expressionism, Egon Schiele was born on this day in 1890.
Although his career was short, Schiele’s prolific work paved the way for Modernism. He is most known for Figurative works, self-portraits, and portraits that express a deeply personal and radical aesthetic, tinged with psychological and sexual subtext.
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Happy Birthday Hirst
“Immortality is really desirable, I guess. In terms of images, anyway.” -Damien Hirst
Happy birthday Damien Hirst! The British enfant terrible celebrates his 47th birthday today.
Winner of the 1995 Turner Prize, and, as of 2009, the wealthiest artist in history, Hirst rose to fame after the success of two warehouse shows he organized featuring his friends’ and his own work.
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Happy Birthday Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper, born on this day in 1936, wasn’t just an Academy Award-nominated actor, director, screenwriter, and notorious bad boy. He was also a visual artist who created acclaimed photographs, paintings, and prints.
Unsurprisingly, Hopper’s photographs have a casually cinematic quality to them, especially when he focused on his famous friends and fellow artists—such as portraits of James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol.
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Remembering Beuys
“I Think art is the only political power, the only revolutionary power, the only evolutionary power, the only power to free humankind form all repression.” -Joseph Beuys
A performance artist and sculptor who worked in post-World War II Germany, Joseph Beuys was born on this day in 1921. Firm in his belief that “everyone is an artist,” Beuys worked on public and political art for the last 20 years of his life.
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Sally Mann
Happy birthday Sally Mann! The famed photographer celebrates her 62nd birthday today!
Born in Lexington, VA, Mann received great acclaim and critique for her Immediate Family series, in which she photographed her own children, often nude, in ethereal, unsettling works, picturing the everyday activities and games of a child, while alluding to darker and more serious themes of loss, sexuality, loneliness, and death.
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Woolworth Building
The historic Woolworth Building, nicknamed the Cathedral of Commerce, turned 100 on Tuesday. We’re lucky enough to work on the 26th floor of the Neo-gothic tower, which overlooks all of downtown New York City.
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Celebrating Cy Twombly
“I would’ve liked to have been Poussin, if I’d had a choice, in another time.” - Cy Twombly
Happy birthday Cy Twombly! The artist, who belonged to the Post-Abstract Expressionist generation, was born on this day in 1928 in Lexington, VA.
Twombly’s early works draw on a gestural abstraction, similar to the work of Franz Kline (American, 1910–1962), but he quickly developed a personal Graffiti-like style, laden with references to literature. For many years, Twombly was better known in Europe than in the United States, but today he is recognized worldwide as one of the most inventive painters of his generation.
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Willem de Kooning
“I don’t paint to live, I live to paint.” - Willem de Kooning
A leading figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement, famed artist Willem de Kooning was born on this day in 1904 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. -
Imogen Cunningham
Happy birthday Imogen Cunningham! The artist was born on this day in 1883, in Portland, OR.
Cunningham was the quintessential American female photographer of the 20th century, and an artist whose expansive vision created many great icons of photographic history. In addition to her artistic achievements, Cunningham was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and an honorary doctorate degree by the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.
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Jean Prouvé
Today, we’re remembering French artist Jean Prouvé, who was born on this day in 1901. An architect and designer, his work had a widespread influence on furniture design techniques.
During WWII, Prouvé was active with the French Resistance, earning him a position as the Mayor of Nancy after the war. His building and furniture business was also contracted to manufacture frame houses for refugees.
Prouvé’s work was instrumental in the development of nomadic architecture. His belief was that everything, from a house to a chair, should be portable.
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Vincent Van Gogh
“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” -Vincent van Gogh
Born on this day in 1853, Vincent van Gogh was associated with the Post-Impressionist movement, and best known for his portraits and depictions of cypresses and wheat fields. One of Van Gogh’s most famous works, Starry Night (1889), exemplifies his unique Expressionistic style.
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Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe
One of the pioneers of modern architecture, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was born on this day in 1886 in Aachen, Germany.
Famous for his dictum Less is More, Mies attempted to create contemplative, neutral spaces dedicated to the idea of a universal, simplified architecture.
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Happy Birthday Yayoi
“…a polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colorful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots become movement… Polka dots are a way to infinity.” -Yayoi Kusama
Painter, sculptor, and filmmaker Yayoi Kusama celebrates her 84th birthday today! Born in Matsumoto City, the famously provocative avant-garde artist is best known for her works featuring psychedelic imagery that evoke themes of psychology, feminism, obsession, sex, and intense self-reflection.
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Remembering Albers
German/American artist Josef Albers was born on this day in 1888 in Bottrop, Germany. A painter, sculptor, and architect, Albers taught at the Bauhaus, one of the most prestigious and progressive art schools in Europe; he is considered to be one of the most influential art teachers of the 20th century.
Following the forced closure of the Bauhaus in 1933, due to the rise of Nazism, Albers immigrated to the United States, and became an American citizen in 1939.
