Art Blogging: Audrey Kawasaki

Audrey Kawasaki is an American painter. She was born and raised in Los Angeles by Japanese immigrant parents and studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Her primary subject matter is women on wood panels, in fact, one particular theoretical woman:

All my pieces, all my girls, are a portrayal of his one particular being. They are all portraits of her. maybe physically different, but ultimately its she who i am conveying. I am addicted to her, she haunts me. She is my obsession. My love. My drive. My muse. My curse. My unattainable.

When I paint/draw, it’s like a desperate search for her. Painting is like digging. Sometimes I find her. Sometimes not. Though even if I do capture a glimpse of her, she’ll often immediately fade away. Never is she forever captured in my paintings, and that what makes it so interesting to me. It’s the hunt, the chase, that makes it so thrilling.

She is strongly influenced by manga and Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha, as is quite evident in her both haunting and sensual work.

As I Fall, 2008.
If Only You Were Here, 2008.

Karamari, 2008.

Art Blogging: Edouard-Marcel Sandoz

Edouard-Marcel Sandoz (1881-1971) was a Swiss sculptor who worked in bronze, stone, and ceramics. He studied in Geneva and at the Academy in Paris. Sandoz was associated with the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements, and his subject matter was mostly the human figure and animals. During the First World War, he began producing ceramic bottles, boxes, and tableware in the shape of animals for the Haviland Limoges company, and continued to work with that firm for thirty years.


One of his most iconic images is that of this condor, produced in granite.

Nursing Mother, bronze, Garden of the National Museum, Monaco.

An Important and Unique Cat, marble.

Art Blogging: René Lalique

Rene Lalique (1860-1945) was a French Art Nouveau and later Art Deco glassmaker and jeweler. Born in the region of Champagne, France, he grew up in Paris. Lalique studied art at the College Turgot and was later apprenticed to a master jeweler at the age of sixteen. He studied further at Syndeham Art College in London and developed his skills in naturalistic depiction. After his return to Paris, he received commissions from the great jewelry firms of that era: Cartier, Aucoc, Boucheron, Cartier, Destape, Gariod, Hamelin, and Jacta. By 1885, he had his own workshop in Paris.

Lalique's reputation grew gradually as he was increasingly recognized by art critics as an emerging master craftsman, and Art Nouveau rose in prominence. At the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition, his work was debuted to the entire world, and Lalique's name became famous. He applied glass to different settings, creating the marketing concept of selling perfume in ornate bottles instead of ordinary and designing elaborate glass interiors for luxury trains and ocean liners. In 1925 he designed the pavilion for the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes -- the exhibition that coined the term "Art Deco". Lalique continued to produce countless works right up until the closure of his shop after the Fall of France in 1940. He died two days before the end of World War II.

Centerpiece (Silver and glass, 1903-1905, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian). A delicately-crafted nymph emerges from a lily pond in this mytho-pastoral scene.

Pansy Brooch (glass, gold, enamel & sapphire, 1902-1904, at the Walters Art Museum). This gossamer masterpiece is representative of Lalique's frequent floral theme.

Hairpin (horn, gold, diamonds, 1902-1903, at the Rijksmuseum). Many of Lalique's works seem to brazenly defy the laws of tensile strength and gravity.