Don Jacot ~ Photorealist ~ Art & Bio

American Photorealist artist, Don Jacot (1949 - ), states "I identify myself with Photorealism, an art movement some thirty years into its development, but with historical precedents in the origins of optics and photography. Though I have done purely realist paintings, I prefer the clarity and dependability of photo information, especially for landscapes."

Don Jacot (1949 - )

The artist, Don Jacot expresses "I identify myself with Photorealism, an art movement some thirty years into its development, but with historical precedents in the origins of optics and photography. Though I have done purely realist paintings, I prefer the clarity and dependability of photo information, especially for landscapes. Working from my own photos but not a slave to them, I feel free to alter perspective, color, the shapes and positions of objects, buildings, etc, in a painting, or to combine elements from sets of photos. I often compose images, which no camera could take. The possibilities are endless, and new artistic developments will probably parallel progress in photography, optics, and computers."

Jacot began drawing in Detroit, Michigan, in 1981 for recreation, using charcoal on paper to interpret photographs of works by famous masters, such as Charles Sheeler and Walker Evans. He took basic drawing classes at Wayne State University and is essentially self-taught. In 1983 he began to seriously pursue art as a full-time career while performing part-time work as a physician's assistant.




Jacot works in acrylics, oils, gouache, watercolor, and charcoal, but concentrates on oil painting. He works with regular artists' brushes and rarely uses an airbrush for touches in a few paintings. Influenced by Social Realism, his urban landscape includes commonplace subjects and aging structures and portrays their "pathos and dignity." Recently he has taken a different approach to the urban environment or the culture in general, and has focused in on the shop window as a motif for a series of paintings. "There I found unusual and complex arrays of consumer items, toys, etc, old and new, mundane or exotic, but always interesting and beautiful to me. I have edited things out of store window settings and then inserted the objects I wanted to see. Sometimes I have fabricated whole images of window displays. My next step is narrowing the frame of reference furtherdown to close-up views of groups of objects, appliances, etc, still within a store window context. By complement and by contrast I combine things from different eras, objects with similar functions or with nostalgic, humorous, or symbolic value, and thereby reflect the culture around me. Beyond that I want to share my fascination with the forms of the things themselves, their colors and surfaces, and their appearances under different lighting, angles, or lens lengths" Jacot explains.

1949 Born Chicago, IL
1971 B.A., University of Illinois Champaign, IL
1977 B.S., Mercy College of Detroit Detroit, MI


Selected Exhibitions
2003 Iperrealisti, Chiostro Del Bramante, Rome, Italy
2002 Urban Landscapes, Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, NY
2001 Near and Far, Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, NY
1999 Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, NY
1999 See the USA, National Building Museum, Washington, D.C.
1998 Photorealism, Jaffe Baker Gallery, Boca Raton, FL
1997 The New Photorealists, Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, NY
1996 New Work, Xochipilli Gallery, Birmingham, MI
1996 Attention to Detail (Realism in All Forms), Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, NY
1995-96 The Chair: Deconstructed/Reconstructed, The Sybaris Gallery Royal Oak, MI
1995 The Chair: Deconstructed/Reconstructed, Louis K. Meisel Gallery New York, NY
1995 The Chair: Deconstructed/Reconstructed, Xochipilli Gallery Birmingham, MI
1994 An American Vision: Photorealism Paintings, Margulies Taplin Gallery, Boca Raton, FL
1993 Really, Real, Realism Show, Jack Wright Gallery, Palm Beach, FL
1992 Photorealism for Nashville Collections, Cheekwood Fine Arts Center Nashville, TN
1992 The Mailbox Show, The Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Inst. Detroit, MI
1991 The Mailbox Show, Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, NY
1990 Don Jacot-El Structures, Xochipilli Gallery Birmingham, MI
1988 Detroit Landscapes, Xochipilli Gallery Birmingham, MI
1985 Urban Realism, Xochipilli Gallery Birmingham, MI

Helen Frankenthaler : Tales of GenjiInspired by Murasaki Shikibu's classic narrative work & the Japanese Ukiyo-e tradition

American painter and printmaker, Helen Frankenthaler (1928-) returned to the oldest form of printmaking, woodcut, to create her famous series of prints, Tales of Genji. Appropriately for the series title, Frankenthaler, chose a romance about the passionate meanderings of an emperor's son in Heiam Japan, a unique tribute to what many consider to be the world's first novel. The Tales of Genji, written by a court lady known as Murasaki Shikibu in the 11th century, has inspired innumerable ukiyo-e woodcuts since it was written. However, these prints have distinctly stepped outside the ukiyo-e tradition and beyond what Frankenthaler has already achieve in her past woodblock editions.



Tales of Genji I, 1998
Thirty-three color woodcut from 11 woodblocks on light sienna TGL handmade paper
42" x 47"
Edition of 30, 12 Artist Proofs





Tales of Genji II, 1998
Forty-one-color woodcut from 14 woodblocks on pale orange TGL handmade paper
47" x 42"
Edition of 35, 12 Artist Proofs





Tales of Genji III, 1998
Fifty-three color woodcut from 18 woodblocks and 2 stencils on gray TGL handmade paper
47" x 42"
Edition of 36, 14 Artist's proofs





Helen Frankenthaler
Tales of Genji IV, 1998
Collage
47" x 42"
Edition of 30, 12 Artist Proofs





Tales of Genji V, 1998
Forty-eight color woodcut from 21 woodblocks and one stencil on rust TGL handmade paper
42" x 47"
Edition of 36, 14 Artist Proofs





Tales of Genji VI, 1998
Thirty-five color woodcut from 14 woodblocks and one stencil on tan TGL handmade paper
47" x 42"
Edition of 35, 14 Artist Proofs




* Frankenthaler: The Woodcuts (Helen Frankenthaler) (Hardcover)
by Judith Goldman (Author), Myra Janco Daniels (Author), Suzanne Boorsch (Author)

* Some images taken from Against the Grain : Helen Frankenthaler Woodcuts

* Some text taken from "Notes on Tales of Geji" by Kenneth E. Tyler of Tyler Graphics, LTD, New York

Wayne Thiebaud: Candy: Suckers

"Suckers" (from the Delights portfolio) Etching 1964




"Large Sucker" Color Lithograph 1971









"Big Suckers" Aquatint 1971



"Black Suckers" Aquatint 1971

Woman Attacks Mona Lisa

A Russian tourist sparked a security alert when she threw a mug at the Mona Lisa, the world's best-known painting, officials at Louvre Museum in Paris have revealed.


Screams erupted from the 40-odd tourists jostling for position around Leonardo da Vinci's enigmatic painted lady when the empty terracotta mug flew over their heads and smashed into the portrait.
The Russian woman is thought to have bought it minutes earlier at the museum gift shop.

However, the Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile was unaffected by the commotion, as the mug bounced harmlessly off the bullet-proof glass shielding her and shattered on the floor, according to the team of staff paid to guard her.

"There was no damage done to the painting whatsoever," a museum official told Le Parisien.

"Naturally the Mona Lisa is a carefully watched and protected painting. It is kept in a special sealed box to protect it from vibrations, heat and humidity. It is protected by thick glass resistant to bullets and any other object hurled at it," he said.

The woman was seized by two museum security guards and handed over to central Paris police after the incident on August 2.

The remaining tourists were then left in peace to gaze at the work, viewed by 8.5 million people each year.


The Russian is being held in custody and has reportedly undergone a psychological examination.

Doctors were trying to assess whether she was suffering from Stendhal Syndrome, a rare condition in which often perfectly sane individuals momentarily lose all reason and attack a work of art.

In July last year, a 32-year-old woman wearing lipstick kissed a painting by the American artist Cy Twombly on display in Avignon, leaving left a large red smudge. She was sentenced to community work.

At the Orsay Museum in Paris the previous year, a man ripped a hole in a painting by impressionist Claude Monet.

The last attack on a work of art at the Louvre was in 1998, when a mathematics professor and calm family man suddenly attacked a statue of the Roman philosopher Seneca with a hammer.

The Mona Lisa is the only painting ever to have been stolen from the Louvre, in 1911, and then recovered.

In 1956, it was damaged when a vandal threw acid over it while it was on display at a museum in Montauban, in France.

The same year, a Bolivian man threw a rock at the painting, damaging paintwork below the Mona Lisa's left elbow.

The painting belongs to the French state.

By Henry Samuel in Paris
Published: 12:11PM BST 11 Aug 2009
Source: Telegraph.co.uk
images via Wikipedia

John Baeder Paintings & Biography

John Baeder (1938 - )

Baeder, born in South Bend, Ind., 1938, studied at Auburn University in Alabama. His subjects have been almost exclusively isolated roadside diners and eateries. That an artist can concentrate so masterfully on one theme enticed Abrahms to publish “Diners by John Baeder” in 1978.

John Baeder’s calculated and nostalgic renderings of “classic Americana” theme diners have brought him great appeal and success. As Gerrit Henry commented in “Super Realism: A Critical Anthology” (Dutton 1975); in “In Photo-Realism, reality is made to look so overpoweringly real as to make it pure illusion: through the basically magical means of point-for-point precisionist rendering the actual is portrayed as being so real that it doesn’t exist. What does exist off the canvas is the mind, which conceived of the idea of the painting of a photograph of reality, in all its intrinsic implausibility. Whereas classical painters through the ages have idealized reality itself, the “classical” New Realists have totally devalued reality in order vastly to overvalue (in other words, completely abstract) the human brain. Photo-Realismm is basically not realism at all. More correctly, it is the plastic offshoot of today’s conceptual arts.”


John Baeder

1938 Born, South Bend, IN
1960 Auburn University, Auburn, AL
Resides: Nashville, TN



Selected Exhibitions
2005 Diners, Galerie Patrice Trigano, Paris, France
2004 Los Angeles Taco Trucks, Mission San Juan Capistrano Gallery, CA
2004 The Early Eighties,(watercolors), Cumberland Gallery, Nashville, TN
2003 Los Angeles Taco Trucks,(watercolors), Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2003 O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY
2000 O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY
1999 Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, TN
1997-98 Cumberland Gallery, Nashville, TN
1997 Sign Language: Photographs, Nation’s Bank Plaza Galleria, Atlanta, GA
1997 O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY
1996 Sign Language: Photographs, O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY
1994-95 What’s For Dinner?, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC
1994 Southern Images Plus Two That Aren’t, Morgan Gallery, Kansas City, MO
1993 O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY
1993 Southern Images, Cumberland Gallery, Nashville, TN
1991 O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY
1989 O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY
1988 John Baeder: Americana Photographs, Zimmerman-Saturn Gallery, Nashville, TN
1988 Modernism, San Francisco, CA




On the road

With a new book, exhibition and acclaim, Atlanta native John Baeder takes viewers on a uniquely American odyssey
by : Stacey Hudson


AUGUSTA, GA. - Get up close to a John Baeder painting — really close. But don’t touch it. See the play of light and shadow in the folds of the cheap aluminum siding on the Lan Tin Chinese Kitchen? Now try and find a brushstroke. You can’t. Not really.

That’s it. That level of detail and precision in his sometimes massive paintings is one of the reasons that Baeder is among the best-known of the photorealist masters of the 20th century.

The other reason — apart from his approachable and agreeable personality — is the enduring and endearing subjects he chooses.

He highlights his lifelong obsession in a new retrospective at the Morris Museum: “Pleasant Journeys and Good Eats Along the Way.” The exhibit showcases 40 paintings on loan from both public and private collections.






Baeder paints what he loves: diners, those icons of the American highway system, urban neighborhoods and rural back roads. Longtime friend Kevin Grogan has tried to stump him, calling him from two-lanes all over the American landscape with a diner dragged from obscurity.

He’s never once succeeded. Baeder seems to know every indie restaurant in America, like Willie’s on Rural Route 22 near Paulding, N.Y. Willie’s is a diner in the most authentic way possible, which is to say that it is not comprised of a converted railroad dining car. That’s a myth of the industry’s origins that doesn’t hold true.

Willie’s is a converted school bus, painted blue and remodeled to include tables, chairs and air conditioning. That’s closer to the real origins of diners, which actually began in 1872 in Providence, R.I., as a simple horse-drawn food wagon. Not to say that some of the railroad industry’s rolling stock wasn’t converted into free-standing restaurants.

Obviously, evidence of that exists at many a rail station crossroad around the country. But the concept was similar to the current taco wagon phenomenon seen in L.A., Miami and parts of Texas: independent entrepreneurs quickly providing hot, fresh, homemade meals at a reasonable price to loyal patrons.

Diners proliferated from the late 1930s through the 1950s, with the rise of car culture and the construction of the U.S. interstate highway system. Many of them stayed open 24 hours for the newly road-weary. Like Baeder’s “home” diner, Atlanta’s famous Majestic on Ponce de Leon Avenue, open consistently and owned by the same family since 1929.

“It was an eatery with a counter, but not a diner in the traditional, pure, bonafide sense. It had short stools and I was enthralled sitting on those stools with all the grown-ups and was more thrilled by observing with complete and clear amazement the choreography of the counter-man preparing food so swiftly on the grill in front of me,” Baeder said. It was like a dance of physical multitasking as the short-order cook — or Shorty, as the cook in such places is often called — flipped burgers, burned toast, poured pancake batter and scrambled eggs after breaking them with just one hand.






Diners are somehow rooted in both traditional American family values, and yet evoke a Bohemian feel drawn directly from Jack Kerouac on the road with his notebook and his dog. Icons of this era and lifestyle are the things Baeder paints: diners and icons of the age, like Shoney’s Big Boy statues. Few artistic endeavors provoke as ready a smile as a painting of a “graveyard” for retired Big Boys (one of which now sits in Baeder’s
backyard, a gift from a friend). And, of course, he has a series that features the individuality of the taco trucks that roam L.A.’s streets, bringing burritos to the masses and gainful employment to a family of recent immigrants.

Baeder’s paintings are popular enough to find success in the reproduction market with prints, postcards and bits of nostalgia-themed household goods. But he’s no Thomas Kinkaide, turning art into something mass-produced with the zeal of a million Happy Meals. Baeder’s work sits in such prestigious holdings as the Whitney Museum in New York, and, of course, the High Museum in his hometown of Atlanta.

But in addition to his righteous place at the forefront of the masters of the photorealism movement, Baeder’s work also attracts such attention because, in many cases, his photographs and paintings of roadside stands are the only remaining records of emblems of American history. They are sought after and protected in much the same way as original paintings of Rosie the Riveter or the first sketches of Mickey Mouse. Their artistic value is driven up by their cultural value. As a result, the Morris Museum chose him as their featured artist for their gala this year.

Baeder says he takes culture from one dimension and contributes back in another. He captures a rapidly disintegrating aspect of the country’s landscape and both glorifies and preserves it. But getting there is half the battle.

“The painting is the mere act of transcendence, an end product that enters space and time,” Baeder said. “The final leg of the quest.”

Pleasant Journeys and Good Eats Along the Way
The Morris Museum of Art
Through March 9, 2008
706-724-7501
themorris.org





Links
John Baeder's American Roadside
Pleasant Journeys and Good Eats along the Way: The Paintings of John Baeder
Official John Baeder website

An Artist at WorkRobert Bechtle Paintings

Robert Bechtle Paintings & Biography

Robert Bechtle (1932 - )


Robert Bechtle was born in 1932 in San Francisco. He graduated from the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland with a BA in 1954 and an MFA in 1958, and has taught at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and San Francisco State.

Bechtle has exhibited his work since 1957, and has been included in group exhibitions in some of America's most prestigious institutions (including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). In addition, his work have been seen in exhibitions throughout the world, including Japan and Germany.

Robert Bechtle has worked in pencil, oil, acrylic, and watercolor, and has successfully experimented with printmaking. His work is represented in numerous museums and private collections throughout the country.



Robert Bechtle

1932 Born in San Francisco, CA
1954 California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA: B.F.A.
1958 California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA: M.F.A.
1960 - 1961 University of California, Berkeley, CA
Lives in San Francisco, CA


Selected Exhibitions
2006 “Full House,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
2006 "Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective,” Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.
2006 “Infinite Painting, “ Villa Manin Centro d’ Art Contemporanea, Codroipo, Italy
2005 "Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective,” San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
2005 Gallery Paul Anglim, San Francisco, CA
2005 "Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective,” Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth
2002 “New York Renaissance: Masterworks from the Collection of the Whitney Museum,” Palazzo Reale, Milan, Italy
2002 “American Standard: (Para)Normality and Everyday Life,” Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY
2001 “Looking At You,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
2001 “Les Annees Pop” Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
2001 O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY
2000 Gallery Paul Anglim, San Francisco, CA
2000 “Urban Realism,” Blain Fine Art, London, UK
2000 “Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
2000 “Drawings 2000,” Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY
2000 “A Century of the American Dream,” Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya: Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Kobe, Japan



1999 “The American Century: Art and Culture, 1950-2000,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
1997 “Thirty-five Years at Crown Point Press,” National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
1997 “Watercolors” O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY
1996 Gallery Paul Anglim, San Francisco, CA/ O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY
1996 “CCAC: Past, Present, and Future (1906-1996),” Oliver Art Center, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA
1992 O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY
1991 “Robert Bechtle: New Work,” San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
1987 O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY
1984 O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY



I am interested in how things look; I am also interested in painting that is based upon how things look. I like to see things the way they are rather than thinking how they can be changed. The richness and range of the visual world constantly thrills and amazes me. I am most particularly interested in using the part of our world which we seem to notice least...that is, our everyday surroundings as we live day to day. Thus, I have painted friends and family, familiar houses, streets and neighborhoods. The paintings are on one level, about middle class American life as experienced in California. On another, they are about reconciling that subject matter with concerns about formal painting issues (the use of color and light, design, and the kinds of marks one must make to replicate appearances). They are, in that sense, a part of a long tradition of European and American painting which has sought to find significance in the details of the commonplace.
- - Robert Bechtle, 1990, OK Harris