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Sunday, June 21, 2009

21st June 2009 - Who's made a mark this week? #101

Yesterday was a big day.
  • In the morning the scales told me that I'd lost two stone (28lbs) since the beginning of the year (partly due to Sketchercise) despite being more or less housebound for three weeks in March/April
  • Last night this blog had its 500,000th unique visitor.
I hope you all enjoyed Monday's Highlights from "who's made a mark this week"? (June - December 2007).

I'm planning to continue next week with some more highlights from the first three and half years of Making A Mark!

Plus some tips for how to grow your readership and visitors. Above you can see what the graph of growth in visitors looks like.....

Art Blogs

Drawing and sketching

Coloured pencils and pastels

PEACH Prunus persica 'Springtime'
Janie Pirie SBA GM
coloured pencils
copyright the artist
Painters

copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Art Group Blogs

Art Business and Marketing

  • How to progress your career:

Art and the economy

  • Bloomberg's reported
    • Warhol, Prince Works Fail to Save Art Sales From 70% Decline and that sellers are now trying to negotiate private sales
    • Sotheby’s Rating Faces Downgrade by Moody’s in Market Decline - what this means is that the people who rate different companies as to their relative value for investment purposes are uncertain about the state of the auction market. This reflects caution amongst investors in relation to art which in turn signals disquiet about the level of sales and the values likely to be generated by auctions of art. In theory there should be a ripple effect ie just as contemporary art values soared to reflect prices paid at auction so they should now reflect the level of disquiet that the values have been over-inflated in the recent past.
Moody’s Investors Service, which already rates Sotheby’s bonds below investment grade, or junk, said it placed its debt on review for a possible downgrade.
  • Art Tactic characterises itself as an insider's view of the art market. Estimates for contemporary-art auctions have contracted more. The average auction price of contemporary art has fallen 76.2 percent since May 2008, according to London-based ArtTactic.
  • Online sites selling art are facing a similar situation to auction houses: Sales are down - according to this article Online art auctions take hit from economy in the San Francisco Chronicle

Art Collectors

Art Competitions

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

  • the new Channel 4 project Life Class: Today's Nude is a Jerwood/Artangel Open Commission
  • Live life (drop in) drawing classes next week: 22 - 26 June /29 June - 4 July in five locations across London – in the City, Soho, Covent Garden, Canary Wharf and Bloomsbury – and in four cities across the UK: Manchester, Bristol, Southampton and Glasgow prior to the screening of...........
  • Channel 4 Broadcast: 6 - 10 July 2009, 12.30pm with John Berger, Judy Purbeck, Maggi Hambling, Gary Hume and Humphrey Ocean
  • the panel discussion on Today's Nude is on 7th July at Conway Hall at 7pm.
Alan Kane, Maggi Hambling and Humphrey Ocean discuss their individual perspectives on life drawing, its renewed popularity and the aim of Life Class: Today's Nude in disseminating the activity via television.

Art Exhibitions

Peter Monkman - winner of the BP Portrait Award 2009
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

The BP Portrait Award was announced on Tuesday evening and I was there! The exhibitions for the BP Portrait Award and the BP Travel Award opened to the public on Thursday. Here are my four posts!
Futurism opened at Tate Modern on 12th June. I'm no fan - and it's maybe the case I've got company - at least in relation to this exhibition. Here's a few reviews
You expect an exhibition on futurism to clamour with the noise and energy of modern life, but this utters barely a whisper........But Tate Modern's new futurism show, which has travelled from Paris and Rome, feels staid and dull, flat and sluggish. Many of the best works have not made the journey
The show, which opened in Paris and has been seen in Rome, is an ambitious attempt to present Futurism as European-wide art movement. What surprised me, however, is how little truly important art was made under its influence. ...........What should have been an eye-opening, groundbreaking show was spoiled for me by a more or less incomprehensible open-plan installation........(and) the verbiage of a poorly designed catalogue.
Paradise in Plasticene - which is a plasticene sculpture created by James May and others and first seen at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show can now be seen at Royal Festival Hall, Level 2 Green Side (I don't think that's a pun!) until 5th July.
Paradise in Plasticine is a sculpted art installation, inspired by nature’s variety and fecundity, and framed in the guise of a mystical secret garden from the dreamscape of childhood.

Art History

Art Museums and Galleries

  • The Hermitage Amsterdam (Amstel 51, Amsterdam) opened yesterday. Thanks for the tweet from the VanGoghMuseum which alerted me to this (and thanks for following me too!) The first exhibition At the Russian Court should be one of the most largest and most lavish exhibitions ever presented in Europe - it will have over 1,800 objects on loan from the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg on display. I'm going to be looking up options for visiting!
Hermitage Amsterdam is the only dedicated, independently managed venue in the West of St Petersburg’s magnificent State Hermitage Museum. At the Russian Court — a scholarly researched exploration of the opulent material culture, elaborate social hierarchy and richly layered traditions of the Tsarist court at its height in the 19th century — will remain on show from June 20th in the new institution until January 31st 2010.

Art Supplies

Book reviews

Creativity

This video about creativity came to me via Enrique Flores - thank you Enrique. It's very profound and it's very funny

and finally........



a bit of fun!

Maybe next year the platform for the guest speaker at the BP Portrait Award won't be placed right in front of a picture of a pink toy cat which appears to want to play 'rabbit ears' with Sebastien Faulks?

Sebastien Faulks with Yvonne Peachey (winner of BP Travel Award 2009)
.....and a pink cat!

photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

7 comments:

  1. Thank you Katherine for the mention about my blog and the nice note you left as well as the Moley Project. I participated in the last Moleskine Project at Art House Coop and enjoyed it very much. It has been fun knowing my book has been traveling to several galleries.

    I am so thankful I found my way to art and the satisfaction I get from it. It used to be nice because I could do it, and now I'm so passionate about it, I have to do it.

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  2. Great job Katherine and congratulations - first for the new numbers on the scales (woo-hoo!) and also for your 500,000th unique visitor! You go girl!

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  3. Thank you for the mention Katherine. Very nice of you.
    Love,
    Linda

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  4. Hello Katherine,
    Congratulations on losing the weight, sadly I found it on this side of the pond.

    Phenomenal post and I adored the picture of the cat toy peeking out.

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  5. If we had better art education, people wouldn't BUY crap from Kinkade!

    Man, that stuff is awful.

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  6. Katherine, my congratulations to you on all your achievements: weight loss (that's not easy!), visitors, and also for all the effort it must be to keep this blog so complete and with all this amount of information. You're amazing.
    Best regards,
    Carolina

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  7. Woohoo - congrats on the 500,000th unique visitor (and the weight lose).

    thanks for the mention!

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