Annigoni’s great 1950s painting of the Queen goes on show for the first time in 26 years in the Diamond Jubilee Exhibition

 art  No Responses »
May 162012
 


One of the greatest royal por­traits of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, ’s 1954–5 paint­ing of The Queen is to go on pub­lic dis­play for the first time in 26 years at the National Portrait’s Gallery’s The Queen: Art and Image exhib­i­tion, it was announced today.

It will be shown on the same wall as the artist’s second cel­eb­rated full-length por­trait of The Queen com­mis­sioned by the Gal­lery in 1969, the first time these por­traits will ever have been seen together for over a quarter of a cen­tury and only the second time ever.

Since it was first shown at the Royal Academy in 1955, the paint­ing has only been loaned twice, in 1958 and 1986, by its own­ers The Fish­mon­gers’ Com­pany, one of the City of Liv­ery Com­pan­ies, from Fish­mon­gers Hall, where the paint­ing occu­pies a prom­in­ent pos­i­tion. This refined paint­ing in tem­pera, oil and ink on paper on can­vas, reflects the artist’s fas­cin­a­tion with Italian renais­sance tech­niques. When shown at the Royal Academy, it drew crowds said to be ten-deep with view­ers fas­cin­ated by the portrait’s ideal­ised yet pen­et­rat­ing character.

This spec­tac­u­lar new addi­tion to the Gallery’s tour­ing exhib­i­tion – open­ing in Lon­don tomor­row, 17 May 2012, ahead of The Queen’s Dia­mond Jubilee week­end cel­eb­ra­tions – will be dis­played along­side some of the most remark­able and res­on­ant images of across 60 years of her reign, includ­ing those by Lucian Freud, Gil­bert and George, Cecil Beaton, , Annie Leibovitz and Lord Snowdon.

Annigoni’s grand, full-length paint­ing Queen Eliza­beth II, Queen Regent, shows the recently crowned, 28-year-old Eliza­beth wear­ing her mag­ni­fi­cent Garter robes, and depic­ted against a pas­toral land­scape. The paint­ing was promp­ted by an obser­va­tion made by The Queen while the artist was mak­ing a pre­par­at­ory sketch in Buck­ing­ham Palace:

When I was a little child, it always delighted me to look out of the win­dow and see the people and traffic going by.

The res­ult­ing work shows a mon­arch in a sylvan idyll yet out­ward look­ing and con­nec­ted to her surroundings.

It is seen next to Annigoni’s life-size 1969 com­mis­sion for the depict­ing the mon­arch again in cere­mo­nial robes but now stand­ing against an ambigu­ous, spare and gloomy, plain back­ground. While both por­traits were greeted by enorm­ous pub­lic and press interest, the later work adop­ted a rad­ic­ally dif­fer­ent approach from the romantic view of the earlier por­trait. Anni­goni said:

I did not want to paint her as a film star, I saw her as a mon­arch, alone in the prob­lems of her responsibility.

 

Left: Queen Eliza­beth II, Queen Regent by Pietro Anni­goni, 1954–5 © The Fish­mon­gers’ Com­pany
Right: Queen Eliza­beth II by Pietro Anni­goni, 1969 © National Por­trait Gal­lery, London

THE QUEEN: ART & IMAGE - National Por­trait Gal­lery, Lon­don
From 17 May until 21 Octo­ber 2012
Tick­ets: www.npg.org.uk/thequeen

Behind every great woman is a great man: the man being conductor Fabio Luisi and the woman his photographer wife Barbara

 music, photography  No Responses »
Mar 292012
 


Bar­bara Luisi was, no is, a viol­in­ist, but her pas­sion for phở­to­graphy has taken over and her hobby has become her major activity. Though she begun study­ing the violin at 9 in her home town, , she also star­ted phở­to­graphy at a rel­at­ively young age, experimenting with her first Leica at 17.

Luisi worked with orches­tras such as the Munich Phil­har­monic, Orchestre du Cap­itol de Toulouse, Bay­erische Staat­soper and was also first viol­in­ist in the Pocci String Quar­tet. It was music that brought her together with her hus­band, orches­tra dir­ector Fabio Luisi, while she was play­ing with the Munich Opera Orches­tra, an encounter which was, as she says, “very romantic, without words, only music…”

This in turn brought her to . She now makes her home in Cam­ogli, a small fish­ing port on the Lig­urian coast just south of Genoa, a place of nat­ural beauty that inspired her latest col­lec­tion of phở­tos. How­ever the appoint­ment of hus­band Fabio as Prin­cipal Con­ductor of the Met­ro­pol­itan Opera in Septem­ber 2011, and hotly tipped to take over from James Lev­ine as Musical Dir­ector, has given her a new home in New York.… con­tinue reading

London’s National Portrait Gallery celebrates a record 2 million visitors

 art  2 Responses »
Mar 282012
 

The yes­ter­day wel­comed its two mil­lionth vis­it­ors – a mile­stone which sets up the highest annual fig­ures in the Gallery’s his­tory when they are pub­lished at the end of the month.

The group of vis­it­ors through the door when the fig­ure of two mil­lion was reached was given a sur­prise wel­come by the Gallery’s dir­ector Mr . The Cara fam­ily from Northamp­ton – Melanie, 45, Dave , 44, both doc­tors, and Josh, 14 – were presen­ted with a year’s Mem­ber­ship to the Gal­lery, a £100 voucher for the Por­trait Res­taur­ant and cop­ies of the Gal­lery Guide and High­lights book.

Dave Cara said:

This is won­der­ful. I’m a reg­u­lar vis­itor to the National Por­trait Gal­lery and most of my know­ledge of the his­tory of Brit­ish mon­archs was learnt from my vis­its here over the years.’

The Caras were the two mil­lionth vis­it­ors recor­ded since the 2011-12 fin­an­cial year star­ted last April. Last year’s fig­ure was 1,819,442 while the Gallery’s pre­vi­ous highest ever fig­ure in 2009-10 was 1,961,843 vis­its.… con­tinue reading

Dubai will build its opera house and museum despite economic problems

 architecture, opera  1 Response »
Mar 232012
 


will build its and mod­ern art museum as planned, the gov­ern­ment has announced.

The com­plex is to be built near Burj Khal­ifa, the world’s tallest tower. Archi­tec­tural ele­ments are now being final­ised and work will begin soon, said AFP.

Dubai is heav­ily in debt hav­ing bor­rowed to fin­ance its rapid eco­nomic growth. This stopped abruptly when inter­na­tional fin­ance dried up. Dubai’s total debt is estim­ated at more than 100 bil­lion dollars.

In 2008, Dubai announced plans to build a series of cul­tural pro­jects, such as lib­rar­ies, theatres and museums and an opera house, but the pro­jects never saw the light. Neighbouring Abu Dhabi, mean­while, is build­ing a huge cul­tural com­plex on Saadiyat Island, which will host branches of the Gug­gen­heim, the Louvre and Zayed National Museum.

The Gulf region has been the site of a cul­tural boom over the past few years with the Ara­bian Peninsula’s only opera house, The Royal Opera House of Oman, open­ing last Octo­ber.… con­tinue reading

Priscilla the Musical gives the Milan catwalks an added dash of kitsch

 design, fashion, musical theatre  No Responses »
Feb 252012
 

Today is car­ni­val day in : Sabato Grasso. It comes later than all the other car­ni­val cel­eb­ra­tions, and this year was blessed with a 20°C sunny day which gave the tour­ists a good excuse to get out their shorts and sandals.

As car­ni­val week also coin­cides this year with a fash­ion week, Mil­ano Moda Donna, the streets were crowded, especially out­side one of the strangest cat­walk shows Milan has seen this week. The pro­du­cers of the musical cap­it­al­ised on the big crowds to give Oscar-winning designer ’s cos­tumes an air­ing out­side the walls of the theatre. The crowds loved it…

Priscilla, La :  -Teatro Ciak, Milan… con­tinue reading

Carla Fracci and Bocelli’s agent Caterina Caselli in a bizarre collection of photographs!

 ballet, photography  No Responses »
Feb 212012
 

In 1978, with at the height of her fame, a book was pro­duced with a col­lec­tion of phở­to­graphs by . Fracci in the piazza, Fracci on stage, Fracci in the stu­dio, Fracci on the beach… that sort of thing. In these phở­tos she is in fact over forty though, like now, she looks much younger.

In these phở­tos — Fracci at home with friend — there is a singer, ten years younger than Fracci, who had become a house­hold name in dur­ing the six­ties: . At this point of her life she was mov­ing behind the micro­phone and becom­ing a tal­ent scout. She helped to build the career of among oth­ers, and her agency blos­somed when she dis­covered the young Andrea Bocelli. Since being signed by Case­lli, Bocelli has gone on to sell more than 65 mil­lion albums.

In these phở­tos how­ever, that was still to come, and it is amus­ing to watch her expres­sion as she looks ador­ingly at Fracci’s feet!… con­tinue reading

Forget Damien Hirst… graffiti artist to receive $200 million from Facebook’s stock market launch

 art  No Responses »
Feb 072012
 

, who has cre­ated a num­ber of mur­als for headquar­ters, might des­troy the image of the as “impov­er­ished souls eking out an exist­ence for the love of their craft”, says the Los Angeles Times. The street and graf­fiti artist could stand to earn upward of $200 mil­lion from Facebook’s ini­tial pub­lic offering.

Choe was asked to cre­ate mur­als for Facebook’s former headquar­ters in Palo Alto in 2005 by the company’s found­ing pres­id­ent, Sean Parker. Two years later, the artist was asked by CEO to cre­ate more artwork. The company’s cur­rent headquar­ters in Menlo Park also bears the graf­fiti stamp of Choe, who cre­ated a large-scale blue mural in the lobby of one build­ing, as well as other works.

Choe was com­pensated for his work with shares of Face­book. The artist’s com­pens­a­tion is val­ued at about $200 million.

Since bid­ding good­bye to his rough street life, includ­ing a “stint in the slam­mer”, Choe has launched a highly suc­cess­ful graf­fiti career.

… con­tinue reading

Vatican museums hit new record in 2011: more than 5 million visitors

 art, Italy  No Responses »
Jan 102012
 

The Museums broke their own record for vis­itor num­bers to any site in in 2011, attract­ing more than five mil­lion people for the first time, Dir­ector said Tues­day. “By Decem­ber 31, at mid­night, 5,078,004 people had entered the pope’s museums,” Paolucci told Vat­ican daily l’Osservatore Romano.

Paolucci said the fig­ure was “par­tic­u­larly impress­ive” given that the second-biggest tour­ist lure in Italy, Florence’s Uff­izi Gal­lery, only man­aged to attract one and a half mil­lion people last year”.

via ANSA… con­tinue reading

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