The 2011 Project is a work by San Francisco artist Tofu. Each day in 2011 he created a 4”x4” mixed media piece. The finished project was made up of 365 smaller mixed media pieces. In 2013 the individual pieces will be distributed to project supporters. The project also acted as sketchbook for new ideas, which continue to be incorporated into new work For more information please visit 2011project.com
As an artist it’s always a struggle to get recognition for your work. Today the current issue of Urban Magazine arrived in the mail from Italy. It has an article on the 2011 Project. I am feeling rather validated today, and I have to confess, just a bit glamorous…
I have never been to Venice. Even after all the time I spent in Europe, and I’ve never managed to get there (and I’ve always wanted to go). Well, today I visited Venice, well sort of….
The morning started with a walk to Golden Gate Park and then I popped into the de Young to check out the new exhbition titled Masters of Venice. Room after room of 500 year old Venetian art. The work is on loan from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It’s one of those fabulous European Plunder Palaces where much of the collection is essentially, shhhh, stolen. The Titians and the Giorgiones are the real stars and overshadow the rest of the work. It was another example of why I try to see art in person, no book or photo on a website can really capture the glow of a Titian seen close up. One day, hopefully soon, I must get to Venice….
One might think the freeway was a California invention, but no, it was the Italians who first came up with them (and it should be noted it was under the fascists in the 1920’s). To my California ears, autostrada just sounds much more chic. I am tempted to say we should all start calling our freeways autostrada. Then again, there might be someone in Milan who has an image of the freeway being far more glamorous. Hollywood and all…. Foreign words are a good way to make things more interesting. Eating snacks behind the house on a slab of concrete can’t compare to dining al fresco on hors d’œuvres out on the patio behind the bungalow.
Are their examples of this in most cultures? I wonder if it is a universal phenomenon the way a culture uses a name from a foreign language so it will be perceived as better. Or should I say, has more cachet?
"Kidnapped" - mixed media on canvas, 4"x4"
100 years ago today the Mona Lisa was kidnapped from the Louvre. Many would say she was stolen, but I think when it comes to the Mona Lisa, we’ll call it a kidnapping. She didn’t make it back to her French home for two years. Even Pablo Picasso was questioned as a possible suspect. In the end, the culprit was a Louvre employee named Vincenzo Peruggia. Mona lived with him for two years. And that thought alone makes me want to write a play. If only I had the time. Finally, Signore Peruggia tried to sell the painting to the Uffizi in Florence. He was arrested and served a scant six months with the reputation of being a patriotic Italian trying to repatriate the Mona Lisa.
She took a tour of Italy before returning to Paris. Spent World War II in hiding and since has survived acid attacks and a rock. Safely now behind bulletproof glass, she even survived a coffee mug hurled at her in 2009. It makes one wonder why museums sell things like coffee mugs at all. It’s been quite the century.
In the quest to have more public holidays where everyone gets a day off, today seems an appropriate one. Today is Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday. One of the greatest artists and geniuses of our collective history certainly deserves a holiday. Do we celebrate him as an artist? A mathematician? A scientist? An architect? The list goes on.
For my little tribute piece I have chosen to “sample” his painting “Lady with an Ermine.” I’ve never seen the Mona Lisa but this is one I have seen in person when the “Lady” visited us from Poland a few years ago. The painting is now in a museum in Krakow and has been in Poland for over 200 years.
