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Happy 82nd birthday to Jasper Johns! From our website: In the 1950s Jasper Johns developed a distinctive painting style that would help lead American art away from the then-dominant movement of Abstract Expressionism. The exact correspondence of figure and ground in his work challenged the traditional distinction between an object and its depiction. At the same time, variations on each theme dissolved the “natural” link between the symbol and its meaning. Johns thus questioned the basic underpinnings of our representational system, and specifically the mechanisms of fine art. Pictured: Jasper Johns, Flag (1960-1969) 

Happy 82nd birthday to Jasper Johns!

From our website: In the 1950s Jasper Johns developed a distinctive painting style that would help lead American art away from the then-dominant movement of Abstract Expressionism. The exact correspondence of figure and ground in his work challenged the traditional distinction between an object and its depiction. At the same time, variations on each theme dissolved the “natural” link between the symbol and its meaning. Johns thus questioned the basic underpinnings of our representational system, and specifically the mechanisms of fine art.

Pictured: Jasper Johns, Flag (1960-1969) 

Happy 80th birthday Robert Bechtle!  Pictured: Bechtle’s Alameda Gran Torino (1974) From our website: For more than 40 years Robert Bechtle has pursued a quiet realism, working from photographs of familiar subjects to depict precise moments in time. Despite their photographic origins, however, his canvases are resolutely and finally about painting. Underneath the smooth sheen of their surfaces lies a textured web of strokes and dabs, where abstract shapes meet edges to form an intricate, layered view of our environment. Learn more here.

Happy 80th birthday Robert Bechtle! 

Pictured: Bechtle’s Alameda Gran Torino (1974)

From our website: For more than 40 years Robert Bechtle has pursued a quiet realism, working from photographs of familiar subjects to depict precise moments in time. Despite their photographic origins, however, his canvases are resolutely and finally about painting. Underneath the smooth sheen of their surfaces lies a textured web of strokes and dabs, where abstract shapes meet edges to form an intricate, layered view of our environment.

Learn more here.

Happy Birthday Keith Haring! I don’t think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.  – Keith Haring Image: Detail from Keith Haring’s Pop Shop, © Keith Haring artwork © Estate of Keith Haring . Photo: Charles Dolfi-Michels. Image courtesy Tate Modern.

Happy Birthday Keith Haring!

I don’t think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it. 

– Keith Haring

Image: Detail from Keith Haring’s Pop Shop, © Keith Haring artwork © Estate of Keith Haring . Photo: Charles Dolfi-Michels. Image courtesy Tate Modern.

The art market entered a new phase on Wednesday evening when “The Scream,” a pastel drawn in 1895 by Edvard Munch, was sold for $119.92 million at Sotheby’s auction of Impressionist and modern art. (via NYTimes) :-o sums this up pretty well!

The art market entered a new phase on Wednesday evening when “The Scream,” a pastel drawn in 1895 by Edvard Munch, was sold for $119.92 million at Sotheby’s auction of Impressionist and modern art.

(via NYTimes)

:-o sums this up pretty well!

Today is International Workers’ Day. We’ve posted a selection of worker-related works from our permanent collection to our blog, so you can see just a few of the many angles from which artists have portrayed working men and women. Pictured here: Dorothea Lange’s Hoe Culture, Alabama (Tenant Farmer near Anniston), From the Resettlement Administration, 1936. Click here to see more artwork.

Today is International Workers’ Day. We’ve posted a selection of worker-related works from our permanent collection to our blog, so you can see just a few of the many angles from which artists have portrayed working men and women.

Pictured here: Dorothea Lange’s Hoe Culture, Alabama (Tenant Farmer near Anniston), From the Resettlement Administration, 1936.

Click here to see more artwork.

Happy birthday Willem de Kooning! A central figure in the mid-century New York school of painting, Willem de Kooning was trained in Rotterdam in commercial arts. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1926 and worked initially as a house painter, and as an artist for the Works Progress Administration. By the 1940s, de Kooning had developed an abstract style distinguished by thick, heavily worked surfaces and vigorous brushwork. He then shocked the art world in 1953 by returning to figuration at the moment of abstraction’s greatest success. His flattened depictions of women provide both a critique of Western standards of beauty and an exploration of male sexual fantasies and anxieties. De Kooning’s later period focused mainly on abstracted landscapes. In the 1980s, in failing health, he developed an entirely different abstract style, using primary colors and open, ribbonlike forms. Source: SFMOMA Pictured here: de Kooning’s Woman, 1950

Happy birthday Willem de Kooning!

A central figure in the mid-century New York school of painting, Willem de Kooning was trained in Rotterdam in commercial arts. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1926 and worked initially as a house painter, and as an artist for the Works Progress Administration.

By the 1940s, de Kooning had developed an abstract style distinguished by thick, heavily worked surfaces and vigorous brushwork. He then shocked the art world in 1953 by returning to figuration at the moment of abstraction’s greatest success. His flattened depictions of women provide both a critique of Western standards of beauty and an exploration of male sexual fantasies and anxieties.

De Kooning’s later period focused mainly on abstracted landscapes. In the 1980s, in failing health, he developed an entirely different abstract style, using primary colors and open, ribbonlike forms.

Source: SFMOMA

Pictured here: de Kooning’s Woman, 1950

Did Carleton Watkins’s photography save Yosemite, despite the fact that his life’s work burned in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake? Read about it on OPEN SPACE. Pictured here: Carleton E. Watkins. Mt. Broderick, Nevada Fall, 700 ft., Yo Semite, 1861.

Did Carleton Watkins’s photography save Yosemite, despite the fact that his life’s work burned in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake?

Read about it on OPEN SPACE.

Pictured here: Carleton E. Watkins. Mt. Broderick, Nevada Fall, 700 ft., Yo Semite, 1861.

Today marks 106 years since the San Francisco Earthquake rocked our city. The death toll from the disaster is estimated to be above 3,000, representing the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California’s history. Pictured here: Arnold Genthe’s Looking up Market Street towards Twin Peaks, 1906 (via SFMOMA) More photos from SFMOMA’s collection: Arnold Genthe, Untitled, 1906 Willard E. Worden, Earthquake Damage to Union Street, 1906 Grove Karl Gilbert, Richard Lewis Humphrey, John Stephen Sewell, Frank Soulé, The San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of April 18, 1906…, 1907

Today marks 106 years since the San Francisco Earthquake rocked our city. The death toll from the disaster is estimated to be above 3,000, representing the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California’s history.

Pictured here: Arnold Genthe’s Looking up Market Street towards Twin Peaks, 1906

(via SFMOMA)

More photos from SFMOMA’s collection:

Arnold Genthe, Untitled, 1906

Willard E. Worden, Earthquake Damage to Union Street, 1906

Grove Karl Gilbert, Richard Lewis Humphrey, John Stephen Sewell, Frank Soulé, The San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of April 18, 1906…, 1907

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE! Born 182 years ago today, Muybridge was an accomplished bookseller, inventor, and businessman. He began pursuing his interest in photography in San Francisco in 1867, and went on to pioneer new ways of documenting the nature of movement. Today, Muybridge is known as one of the most influential and innovative photographers of his time. Featured here: Muybridge’s Daisy with Rider, 1887 (via SFMOMA)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE!

Born 182 years ago today, Muybridge was an accomplished bookseller, inventor, and businessman. He began pursuing his interest in photography in San Francisco in 1867, and went on to pioneer new ways of documenting the nature of movement. Today, Muybridge is known as one of the most influential and innovative photographers of his time.

Featured here: Muybridge’s Daisy with Rider, 1887

(via SFMOMA)

“Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.” - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, born 126 years ago today. (via Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)

“Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.” - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, born 126 years ago today.

(via Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)

Today marks the 126th birthday of German-born architect and educator Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose designs greatly influenced the shape and course of Modernism in the US! (via SFMOMA | Explore Modern Art

Today marks the 126th birthday of German-born architect and educator Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose designs greatly influenced the shape and course of Modernism in the US!

(via SFMOMA | Explore Modern Art

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