an irishwoman in Paris

Sorry this is late, but this was a week of news! I registered for my Fall 2009 classes (already?? you might be asking, and yes, that was my reaction as well), I was accepted into a summer program I applied for, AND was offered a full scholarship for it! So, it's been good, oh yes.

We're in the midst of looking at the Art Deco movement in one of my classes, and I could not be happier. This piece comes from that.This unique sofa was designed and constructed by Eileen Gray in 1919-20. It is in the collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, although it is not currently on display due to the VMFA's current expansion. In fact, none of the 19th and 20th Century decorative arts are on display during all of this, a state of affairs which causes me great sadness, as the VMFA's collection of Art Nouveau and Art Deco pieces is fantastic. Anyway.

Eileen Gray was a fascinating figure. Irish by birth, she lived in Paris for most of her life. Beginning in 1907, she was taught the art of Japanese lacquer by Seizo Sugawara, a master of the craft. Lacquer is a difficult, labor-intensive process at which Gray excelled, as evidenced by this sofa as well as her screens. Although many Art Deco artists looked to exotic cultures for inspiration, few suceeded so well as Gray with this sofa, inspired by the Polynesian dugout canoes (canoes made from a single tree).

Below is an image of Gray's apartment in the Rue de Lota in Paris. Can't you just see a beautiful woman in a silky, slinky dress draped across it? She wouldn't be doing anything--woman like her never do, you know--but she would look gorgeous.

Some news

I have a couple of posts in the can, waiting to emerge onto the silver screen of the internet, but first I wanted to share some news. As the title of the blog says, I have a degree. Well, it seems that I'm headed towards another.

I've been accepted in the Corcoran's History of Decorative Arts MA program for fall 2008. The program operates through the Smithsonian Associates, so I'll have pretty much the best that Washington, DC has to offer at my fingertips. Needless to say, I'm excited!

Bare bones blogging

I have a vision of what I'd like this blog to look like, but am apparently unable of achieving it. Give me time. I'll start as a mean to go on, however, with a post about the art world.

While traveling in China in 2005, I had the pleasure of seeing Xu Bing's Book from the Sky in an exhibit at the Hong Kong Museum of Art. Even knowing nothing about it, it's a magnificent piece. I found myself surrounded on all sides by text and characters--it was only years later that I learned that the characters were not actual hanzi at all, but nonsense designed to resemble the nearly 50,000 characters in the language.

So I was understandably excited to read that Bing has been appointed as vice president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China's oldest and arguably most prestigious art school. The fact that Bing has lived in the States since 1990 has many hopeful that the school will be looking to the rest of the globe in addition to its country's own history, pursuing international partnerships in addition to the one it currently has with the Glasglow School of Art. The Chinese government has certainly been devoting more and more money to the school and its museum, from $2.8 million in 2000 to $21 million in 2007.

To quote Jason Kaufman of the Art Newspaper, from whom much of my information was gleaned,

"At a time when Chinese contemporary art is associated mainly with soaring prices, the choice of an intellectual such as Xu Bing, a 1999 MacArthur Foundation 'Genius' award winner who has resisted the temptations of the market, appears conservative, especially as his work is steeped in traditional Chinese painting, calligraphy and language. It is however, evidence of the value the ministry places in artistic aspirations beyond financial returns."

I'm mostly excited to see the name of an artist I both like and respect. Read the article for a full interview with Xu Bing.