01 Work, The Art Of The Nude, with footnotes # 50

Slawomir Rumiak, (b. 1972)

The Violin of Kaimurakis, 2003

Gelatin-silver print/baryta paper

44.4 x 39 cm

Private collection

Sławomir Rumiak is a photographer, video and installation artist, and draughtsman. He is a graduate of the Katowice branch of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (1999). Rumiak was born in 1972 in Bielsko-Biała.

He gained international recognition very early on, when he was still a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice (which at the time still formed part of the Kraków Academy). In 1998, Koichi Sato, a Japanese poster designer visited the school upon Jan Sawka’s invitation, and was drawn to Rumiak’s expressive black and white photographs. As a result, the young artist was invited to Tokyo by the prominent photography theoretician Kōtarō Iizawa and the legendary photographer Eikoh Hosoe. In 1999, the Polish artist gave a series of lectures for the latter’s students, while the Il Tempo gallery (owned by the renowned collector Etsuro Ishihara) organised a solo exhibition by Rumiak.

With time, the artist was becoming increasingly interested in film – especially the relationship between film and still photography, as well as between film and space (both the screening and recording site).

Sławomir Rumiak is currently working on medium- and full-length film projects. One of them was presented at the collaborative exhibition with Cristiano Mascaro titled Traces of People, which took place in 2015 at the International Cultural Centre in Kraków. The show featured Rumiak’s film essay Macunaima Returns to São Paulo.

Sławomir Rumiak has remained close to Japan to this day. He has also curated two exhibitions of Japanese art in Poland: Bellmer found in Japan – Simon Yotsuya and Friends (2010, Kronika Gallery in Bytom) and Atokata (2012) – a showcase of Kishin Shinoyama’s photographs illustrating the landscape of the Tohoku region after the 2011 tsunami. Krzysztof Miękus, June 2016, transl. AM

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01 Works, The Art Of The Nude, with footnotes # 45

Marcel Mariën, (1920 - 1993)

La pudeur/ Modesty, c. 1969

Collage

28 x 18.5 cm

Private collection

Marcel Mariën (April 29, 1920 in Antwerp – September 19, 1993 in Brussels) was a Belgian surrealist (later Situationist), poet, essayist, photographer, collagist, filmmaker, and maker of objects.

Mariën was one of the most intriguing and elusive figures in the Belgian wing of the Surrealist movement. He was not only an artist, but also a publisher, a bookseller, a sailor, a journalist in China and an elaborate Surrealist prankster.

Aged 15, Marien became apprentice to a photographer – initially undertaking menial roles, but later setting up a home studio to develop his own projects. In 1937, he first encountered the surrealist paintings of René Magritte in exhibition and – inspired by André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto - traveled to Brussels to seek out the artist.

Magritte was warmly welcomed into the close-knit Belgian Surrealist group. Within a year, he had his own work included in the Surrealist group exhibition, Surrealist Objects and Poems, in London.

In 1939, he enlisted in the Belgian Army to fight in World War II, but was captured and held as a prisoner of war in Germany. Following his release, he returned to Brussels and, in 1943, wrote and published the very first monograph on Magritte.

It was not until 1943 that he produced his first photograph with a distinctive personal vision, “De Sade à Lénine”, an image of a woman cutting a slice of bread, the loaf gripped tightly against her naked torso, the blade pointing at her left breast. Mariën commented, “the knife passes from de Sade to Lenin”.

It was pure Surrealism, marked with the two themes that would characterize his photography: the everyday object stripped of its traditional function and the female body as an instrument of creation.

Mariën was never a practical man and was helped by his partner Hedwige Benedix in the production of his art work. In 1983, a year after her death, he again took up photography as a quick and immediate way of expressing his ideas. He carried on where he had left off in 1942 and began producing one extraordinary image after another, simple yet elegant surreal images with free associations of imagery and text. More on Marcel Mariën

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, And visit my Boards on Pinterest

Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others. Some Images may be subject to copyright

I don't own any of these images - credit is always given when due unless it is unknown to me. if I post your images without your permission, please tell me.

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01 Work, The Art Of The Nude, Warren B. Davis' A Young Nymph, with footnotes # 49

Warren B. Davis (1865-1928 Brooklyn, NY) 

A Young Nymph

Oil on canvas laid to board

8" H x 10" W

Private collection

A nymph in Greek and Latin mythology is a minor female nature deity typically associated with a particular location or landform. Different from other goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as divine spirits who animate nature, and are usually depicted as beautiful, young nubile maidens who love to dance and sing; their amorous freedom sets them apart from the restricted and chaste wives and daughters of the Greek polis. They are beloved by many and dwell in mountainous regions and forests by lakes and streams. Although they would never die of old age nor illness, and could give birth to fully immortal children if mated to a god, they themselves were not necessarily immortal, and could be beholden to death in various forms. More on nymphs

Warren B. Davis (1865–1928) was an American painter and illustrator known for his dry-point etchings and tempera paintings of idealized young women. Davis studied at the Art Students League in New York and is often compared to similar artists of his time, N.C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish.

His commercial work include illustrations for Vanity Fair, Life Magazine, and The Ladies World.

Now his work can be seen at The Richter Gallery in Bellows Falls, Vermont and at the Cleveland Museum of Art. More on Warren B. Davis

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, Middle East Artists, 365 Saints, 365 Days, and Biblical Icons, also visit my Boards on Pinterest

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I don't own any of these images - credit is always given when due unless it is unknown to me. if I post your images without your permission, please tell me.

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01 Painting, The Art Of The Nude, with footnotes # 151

SANYU (CHANG YU, 1895-1966)

Five Nudes, c. 1950

Oil on masonite

120 x 172 cm. (47 1/4 x 67 3/4 in.)

Private collection

The first time Sanyu encountered the exotic and strange world of nude sketching was in the 1920s at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. For the average Chinese person at that time, it must have been hard to accept that depictions of naked woman should be anything but a form of glorified pornography, even though in the West there was a long tradition of nude art. Back in China, in the years before Sanyu left for Europe, prominent painter and art educator Liu Haisu had introduced the practice of sketching from nude models to Shanghai, a move that sent major ripples through Chinese society and triggered a heated ten-year dispute over naked models and nudity in art. Sanyu, who was personally acquainted with Liu, must have been aware of those goings-on, and he would remain fascinated with the glamorous subject of nude painting right up to the 1950s. More on this painting

Sanyu was a Chinese-French artist that created prints, drawings, and paintings. His work fused the histories of European still-life and figurative painting with the traditions of Chinese calligraphy. Considered a master of form and color, he was sometimes referred to as “the Chinese Matisse.” Born Chang Yu on October 14, 1901 in Nanchong, China, he was tutored in calligraphy and painting from a young age. In 1921, he travelled to Paris to study at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. While in Paris, he discovered the work of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. In 1948, Sanyu travelled to New York where he became a close friend of the photographer Robert Frank. It was Frank who later established the Sanyu Scholarship Fund at Yale University in his honor. Today, a large quantity of his work can be found in the collection of the National Museum of History in Taiwan. The artist died in his studio on August 12, 1966 in Paris, France. More on Sanyu

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, And visit my Boards on Pinterest

Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others. Some Images may be subject to copyright

I don't own any of these images - credit is always given when due unless it is unknown to me. if I post your images without your permission, please tell me.

I do not sell art, art prints, framed posters or reproductions. Ads are shown only to compensate the hosting expenses.

If you enjoyed this post, please share with friends and family.

Thank you for visiting my blog and also for liking its posts and pages.

Please note that the content of this post primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.

01 Works, The Art Of The Nude, with footnotes # 44

Marcel Marien, (1920 - 1993)

The answer of Maria

Color photograph

24 x 19.2

Private collection

Marcel Mariën (April 29, 1920 in Antwerp – September 19, 1993 in Brussels) was a Belgian surrealist (later Situationist), poet, essayist, photographer, collagist, filmmaker, and maker of objects.

Mariën was one of the most intriguing and elusive figures in the Belgian wing of the Surrealist movement. He was not only an artist, but also a publisher, a bookseller, a sailor, a journalist in China and an elaborate Surrealist prankster.

Aged 15, Marien became apprentice to a photographer – initially undertaking menial roles, but later setting up a home studio to develop his own projects. In 1937, he first encountered the surrealist paintings of René Magritte in exhibition and – inspired by André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto - traveled to Brussels to seek out the artist.

Magritte was warmly welcomed into the close-knit Belgian Surrealist group. Within a year, he had his own work included in the Surrealist group exhibition, Surrealist Objects and Poems, in London.

In 1939, he enlisted in the Belgian Army to fight in World War II, but was captured and held as a prisoner of war in Germany. Following his release, he returned to Brussels and, in 1943, wrote and published the very first monograph on Magritte.

De Sade à Lénine

It was not until 1943 that he produced his first photograph with a distinctive personal vision, “De Sade à Lénine”, an image of a woman cutting a slice of bread, the loaf gripped tightly against her naked torso, the blade pointing at her left breast. Mariën commented, “the knife passes from de Sade to Lenin”. (above)

It was pure Surrealism, marked with the two themes that would characterize his photography: the everyday object stripped of its traditional function and the female body as an instrument of creation.

Mariën was never a practical man and was helped by his partner Hedwige Benedix in the production of his art work. In 1983, a year after her death, he again took up photography as a quick and immediate way of expressing his ideas. He carried on where he had left off in 1942 and began producing one extraordinary image after another, simple yet elegant surreal images with free associations of imagery and text. More on Marcel Mariën

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, And visit my Boards on Pinterest

Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others. Some Images may be subject to copyright

I don't own any of these images - credit is always given when due unless it is unknown to me. if I post your images without your permission, please tell me.

I do not sell art, art prints, framed posters or reproductions. Ads are shown only to compensate the hosting expenses.

If you enjoyed this post, please share with friends and family.

Thank you for visiting my blog and also for liking its posts and pages.