Girl of my Dreams XII

In this world

love has no colour

yet how deeply my body

is stained by yours.

- Izumi Shikibu

Helen Frankenthaler, an American abstract expressionist painter. See her full series of portraits in New York 1969 here.

Clare Grill

She is interviewed in Lula Issue 16.

Freudian

'What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.'

- Lucian Freud

As Londoners we are spoilt for choices of great art exhibitions, especially this quarter of the year, with David Hockney at the RA and Picasso at the Tate Britain and so on. But for certain, the Lucian Freud Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery is the one that I will be frequenting for the next few months to come.

With more than 100 early and late works of the great British artist, the exhibition is unmissable. I spent a good few hours wandering, listening to the audio guide, and studying the paintings. The way that Freud so uniquely and eloquently captured human life and flesh, the contour of naked bodies and emotions - it overwhelms you with its disquieting silence, leaving you in awe yet unsettled.

The exhibition closes on 27 May 2012.

Serendipity

six.

Ad-hoc visits to:

The Table (Southwark) for brunch - excellent eggs benedict and buttermilk pancake // Sunflower Seeds by Ai Weiwei revisited - the video documenting the process of how they produced 100 million procelain seeds in a small town in China is illuminating // Oh Rothko // Surrealism is always a good idea // Miró in April at Tate (squealing in excitement!)

London: a feast to the mouth and to the eye (when you know where to go!)

Rêverie

when i am swept away by a deluge of fear and uncertainty i close my eyes and find myself serene and submerged in your lucid dreams.

Drawing similarities;

*miu miu ss 2010 collection & henry matisse's cut outs (gouaches découpés)

Vast in scale (though not always in size), lush and rigorous in color, his cutouts are among the most admired and influential works of Matisse's entire career. They belong with the grandest affirmations of the élan vital in Western art... for a great introduction to Matisse's cut outs see here.

He is one of the greatest artists of our times.

Van Gogh

Romans Parisiens (Les Livres Jaunes) 1887, Vincent Van Gogh

My friend and I queued for 2 hours trying to get into The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts; but the queue was stagnant for a good while, plus the gallery would probably be so crowded that we could only have a glimpse of each painting from afar - after tossing the coin, we left and got the exhibition catalogue instead (for £10.50 - Even cheaper than a single ticket!) Then we went to the National Gallery to see some other Van Gogh paintings instead.

Above is one of my favourite drawings of his.

'Photographing a cake can be art.'

*Truman Capote (Author of Breakfast at Tiffany's), New York, 1948

*Duchess of Windsor, New York, 1948

*Alfred Hitchcock, New York, 1947

The 'Irving Penn Portraits' exhibition at National Portrait Gallery (London) now is absolutely lustrous, stunning and breathtakingly beautiful. It shed a light on how photography can transcend to such an art form that no one has imagined before.

Irving Penn (1917–2009) was one of the great photographers of our time. Focusing specifically on his portraits of major cultural figures of the last seven decades, Irving Penn Portraits is a glorious celebration of his work in this genre.

The exhibition is brought together from major international collections and includes over 120 silver and platinum prints, many vintage, ranging from his portraits for Vogue magazine in the 1940s to some of his last work. Penn photographed an extraordinary range of sitters from the worlds of literature, music and the visual and performing arts. Among those featured in the exhibition are Truman Capote, Salvador Dali, Christian Dior, T.S. Eliot, Duke Ellington, Grace Kelly, Rudolf Nureyev, Al Pacino, Edith Piaf, Pablo Picasso and Harold Pinter.

This fascinating survey brings to light the significance of Penn's visual language and provides a rare opportunity to explore his innovative use of composition, light and printing techniques.

I especially enjoyed a rare portrait of Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and Yves Saint Laurent when he was twenty-one - still hunting down these wonderful images from the internet.

The exhibition will run until 6 June 2010.