Interiors:
the white mountains and sea.

"Snow and ice are normally white due to the diffusing structure of transparent water ice crystals. The same is true for many types of clouds where droplets of water diffuse the white light from the Sun.

Many mountains with winter or year-round snow cover are named accordingly: Mauna Kea means white mountain in Hawaiian, Mont Blanc means white mountain in French. Changbai Mountains literally meaning 'Perpetually White' Mountains, marks the border between China and Korea and Mount Kilimanjaro's name could originate from Swahili meaning little white hill. The White Sea, an inlet of the Barents Sea on the northwest coast of Russia is undoubtedly named so due to the icy environment."





final image:
work by graham potter,
oil on carved board.







-------------------------

P o r t r a i t o f a M a n

Portrait of a Man
Pt. 15


"David times 19"
aka
House of David.

Formerly Nat King's Cole's home in Hancock Park, Los Angeles.
3rd St. and Muirfield Rd.

The house is now owned by Norbert Youngwood.

"Apparently the owner, Norbert Youngwood,
after neighbors expressed displeasure over his erecting a single statue of David, retaliated by adding 18 brothers of various sizes."

"It is one of most recognizable sculptures in the world, a monument to the perfect male form, a paramount symbol of Renaissance art.

Michelangelo's "David." Norwood Young's got 17 of them.
They line his mansion's semicircular driveway--two sets of eight 3-foot-high replicas on column pedestals, flanking each side of a diminutive "Venus de Milo."

A lone "David" sits atop Young's roof, along with six plaster models of Greco Roman-style busts. The statues are irregular, each one slightly different from the other.

Young, who set up the statues a year ago, thinks he's improved the neighborhood. The neighborhood--stately, affluent Hancock Park--strongly disagrees..."

taken from 1997 LA times article.











-- -- -- -- white house -- -- -- --

Nicolas de Stael
1914-1955


"Many were attracted by the romance of this tall, lanky Russian aristocrat with the deep voice and quixotic disposition, a former Foreign Legionnaire, a remote relative of the French writer Madame de Stael, the orphaned son of a Czarist cavalry general. When in 1955, at the age of 41, de Stael threw himself from the balcony of his apartment on the Riviera - perhaps a victim of the pressure that accompanied his meteoric success - the critic and art historian Douglas Cooper was not alone in thinking de Stael had been ''the truest, the most considerable, and the most innately gifted painter who has appeared on the scene in Europe or elsewhere during the last 25 years.'' A decade later, in 1965, on the occasion of a big de Stael exhibition, Newsweek described him as ''the last of the great School of Paris painters.''

article here...

(nice, 1954)

Changing the Art on the Walls, read article here about the Obamas!

"The Obamas are sending ripples through the art world as they put the call out to museums, galleries and private collectors that they’d like to borrow modern art by African-American, Asian, Hispanic and female artists for the White House. In a sharp departure from the 19th-century still lifes, pastorals and portraits that dominate the White House’s public rooms, they are choosing bold, abstract art works.

Last week the Obamas decided to borrow “Nice,” a 1954 abstract by Russian-born painter Nicolas de Staël containing red, black and moss-green rectangles; a couple of boxy paintings from German-born Josef Albers’s famed “Homage to the Square” series in shades of gold, red and lavender; and “Dancer Putting on Stocking” and “The Bow,” two table-top bronzes by Edgar Degas. The museum also sent over New York artist Glenn Ligon’s “Black Like Me,” a stenciled work about the segregated South, among others that the Obamas are still considering, according to a White House spokeswoman."
















"He was also, in his love of color, a natural heir to Matisse, and, in his enthusiasm for the sensuousness of paint, a follower of Braque, who in turn became one of his friends and admirers. As a painter, in other words, the Russian-born de Stael was unmistakably French, not least because finesse plays such a central role in his achievement."







(Les Footballeurs, 1952)
oil on canvas







"But by 1953, de Staël's depression led him to seek isolation in the south of France (eventually in Antibes). He suffered from exhaustion, insomnia and depression. In the wake of a disappointing meeting with a disparaging art critic on March 16, 1955 he committed suicide. He leapt to his death from his eleventh story studio terrace, in Antibes. He was 41 years old."





see more images of his work here..