Art & Sculpture Archives - Page 9 of 10

Chicago’s Public Art: The Picasso

Posted on May 6, 2020May 20, 2024 by Nancy

Sculptures are the ultimate exploration of materials and their expression. With Optima Co-Founder David Hovey Sr. having expanded the design reach of Optima to include sculpture, the medium is one that hits close to home for us. To indulge in our love for the craft, we’re exploring Chicago’s public sculpture art, piece-by-piece. First up is an iconic staple in Chicago: The Picasso.

The (Chicago) Picasso

The monumental, larger-than-life sculpture created by Pablo Picasso situated in downtown Chicago goes unnamed by the artist. However, the work is affectionately referred to as The Picasso and even The Chicago Picasso. The sculpture is now a globally-renowned landmark, standing 50 feet tall and weighing in at 162 short tons.

The Chicago Picasso was commissioned by the architects of The Richard J. Daley Center in 1963. Occupying the beloved Daley Plaza alongside the skin-and-bones International Style Modernist skyscraper, the sculpture stands out as a whimsical and abstract piece that invites plaza visitors to jump, climb and slide upon its smooth, COR-TEN steel surface. The interactive sculpture cost the modern day equivalent of $2.8 million, with three charitable foundations shouldering the cost. And although Picasso himself was offered $100,000, he refused the payment, insisting that he wanted to make the work as a gift.

Picasso’s inspiration remains a mystery, though some muse that the armadillo-esque figure is actually an abstracted portrait of the French woman, Sylvette David – now known as Lydia Corbette. The sculpture’s abstract nature was met with tough criticism initially. In a city where most sculptures were famous figures, some didn’t take kindly to the strange public art newcomer. But it was only a matter of time before The Chicago Picasso rightly became a revered piece of Chicago’s vibrant public art collection, brightening the Daley Plaza and the city with its presence.

Taking Art Online: How to Visit Fan-Favorite Museums Digitally

Posted on April 20, 2020September 1, 2020 by Nancy

As art enthusiasts, we know a trip to the museum can provide much needed inspiration and solace. While many physical cultural institutions have closed their doors as we shelter-in-place, their doors remain very much open online. Today, we’re sharing how our favorite museums have been taking art online, and how you can visit iconic global institutions digitally.

J Paul Getty Museum

Take a trip to sunny LA with digital museum tours offered by the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. Their expansive collection of 6,000+ works makes the museum worth the visit on any ordinary day, but through Google Arts and Culture, you can actually physically “mouse” your way through the galleries via an interactive online museum tour, or scroll through three online exhibits and 15,000+ artistic works.

Vatican Museums

While sheltering-in-place, the options for online exploration are limitless. Traverse internationally across the interwebs to place yourself via computer into the Vatican Museums in Rome, Italy. Explore the Sistine Chapel, impressive architectural details, intricate murals and an astounding array of artwork via their online virtual tours featuring expansive, 360-degree views. Afterwards, you can even take an “outdoor stroll” around the Vatican City with You Visit.

Picasso Museum

In keeping up with our love of Picasso, we recommend spending a few hours online at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, Spain. A seemingly-endless digital archive of Pablo Picasso’s most renowned works is accompanied by some of the best-preserved Medieval architecture in Barcelona. Enter the museum through its ancient and rustic patios to discover the digital treasures within via this digital interactive tour.

Art Institute of Chicago

Missing visits to your local favorite? Have no fear, because the Art Institute of Chicago is bringing the comforts of a familiar gallery to your couch. Their array of online resources include ways to surf the entire museum collection, new and highly-detailed interactive features, a digitized version of their current special exhibit and more.

As we continue to spend our days at home, virtual trips to explore the arts and culture provide a much needed vibrant reprieve. Stay tuned for more Optima features on how to stay engaged, connected and inspired at home.

The Work of Pablo Picasso

Posted on April 20, 2020May 20, 2024 by Nancy

One of the world’s most iconic creators, Pablo Picasso is globally known as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. His brightly-colored work adorns the walls of our Optima buildings, and today we dive into his life and work.

A Promising Start

Born in Spain in 1881, Picasso was a gifted artist from a young age, receiving lessons early on from his father, who was also a painter. While trained and mentored in academic realism, by the time Picasso was sixteen, his interpretation of Modernism began to attract attention within the art world. Picasso struggled with the close influence of his father, who he fought with frequently, and eventually bounced back and forth between Spain and France to pursue his own distinguished style.

An Expansive Body of Work

Throughout his life, Picasso became known for his range of distinctive styles and contributions to various art movements. His work covered Cubism, Surrealism, Neoclassicism, as well as his famous Blue Period and Rose Period. Having lived in Europe through both World Wars, Picasso’s work is reflective of a world changing rapidly and drastically. While living in a German-occupied Paris during World War II, Picasso continued to create paintings and sculptures, despite the fact that his work did not fit the Nazi ideal of art. By the time Paris was liberated, he was already an international celebrity within the art world, a reputation that continued to grow.

Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza, 1967. Credit: Dan DeLuca on Flickr Creative Commons, CC BY 2.0 Deed

A Lasting Legacy

Throughout his life, Picasso refined his mastery of painting, sculpting, printmaking, ceramics and stage design, while also dabbling in poetry and film. His art came with a turbulent personal life, including a web of muses, mistresses, wives and grandchildren, which proved complicated when it came to his estate after he passed away in 1973. His legacy was one of rigorous exploration and zealous creativity, solidifying his name as one of the world’s greatest artists.

Sculpture Spotlight: Windsong

Posted on April 8, 2020September 1, 2020 by Nancy

A striking piece that complements the surrounding green space at Optima Camelview Village, Windsong creates a bold statement that both contrasts with and engages its environment. As with Kiwi, Duo and other original Optima sculptures, Windsong was designed by David Hovey Sr., and today we dissect its form and how it integrates into a larger context.

To stand out against its colorful backdrop, Windsong stands more than 15 feet tall, providing a dramatic addition to the Arizona desert foliage. The sculpture is oriented around a rotating turntable, allowing the top pieces to move with the flow of the wind. Through movement and size alone, Windsong celebrates and embraces the elements, subtly alluding to Scottsdale’s connection to and love of nature.

With a mixture of color and shapes, Windsong also evokes a playful and enthusiastic energy. Each piece of the sculpture is composed of both sharp corners and rounded edges, a culmination of form that emits joy.

Optima’s passion for public art, both inside and outside our building, is a reflection of our dedication to engaging, beautiful spaces. Whether it’s through architecture, design or sculpture, we’re in constant pursuit of creating meaningful homes that have a lasting impact.

The Work of Le Corbusier

Posted on March 9, 2020May 20, 2024 by Nancy

Modernism is an approach that has roots going all the way back to the 1920s. Modernist architecture was pioneered by the inventive and contentious Le Corbusier, a Swiss-French architect, urban planner, painter and furniture designer. To better understand Modernism, we’re diving deep into his life, and highly controversial work.

A Controversial Figure

Born Charles-Eduoard Jeanneret-Gris, architect Le Corbusier built chiefly with steel and reinforced concrete, paring design down to its simplest, elemental geometry and form. He developed his famous theory of modern form and minimalist materials when envisioning affordable, prefabricated housing to help rebuild communities after World War I. His vision for prefabrication was only the tip of a strong, nearly utopian, approach to urban planning and architecture.

Villa Savoye Exterior — Villa Savoye in Poissy, Le Corbusier. Photo Timothy Brown, Flickr Creative Commons

His architectural philosophy was groundbreaking and completely contrary to the dominant narrative of the 1920s. Once he established his ideas, he shared them by publishing the seminal L’Espirit Nouveau (1920), where he revealed his famous “five points of architecture.” Three years later, he published Vers une architecture (Towards a New Architecture) (1923), in which he espoused a new, modern architecture informed by applying principles of cars, planes and ships to buildings. Le Corbusier embraced the conflict that arose to his ideas head-on, making bold declarations such as “a house is a machine for living in” and “a curved street is a donkey track; a straight street, a road for men.”

Chair designed by Le Corbusier at Optima Camelview Village

Form, Function, Furniture

Le Corbusier also designed furniture, his approach following suit to his approach to architecture. His furniture, co-designed with Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, utilized tubular steel that projected a new rationalist aesthetic. Le Corbusier broke down furniture into three types: type-needs, type-furniture and human-limb objects. His rational approach was not without romanticism, as he said, “Certainly, works of art are tools, beautiful tools. And long live the good taste manifested by choice, subtlety, proportion and harmony.”

At Optima, we employ Le Corbusier furniture in our communities, like those in each of the three building lobbies at Optima Old Orchard Woods in Skokie. The furniture functions just as the artist would’ve wanted — as bold, artistic statement pieces, and as functional, rational furniture.

Modern Design at Optima with Knoll

Posted on February 18, 2020September 1, 2020 by Nancy

Design permeates every corner of our communities. Across our multi-family properties, we utilize furniture designed by globally renowned Knoll to craft spaces that are sleek, modern and comfortable. Not just purveyors of elegant and stunning design, Knoll also has a history entangled with our own, beginning back in 1938.

Modernist Roots

Knoll was founded in 1938 by Hans G. Knoll, a German immigrant based in the United States. Familiar with the seminal Bahaus School of Design and Modernist masters like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, he founded Knoll on the belief that modern architects would need functional, modern furnishings.

Later, Hans Knoll engaged with (and then literally got engaged to) Florence Schust, who studied with Mies van der Rohe at the Armour Institute in Chicago, and worked in the architectural offices from Gropius and Breuer in Boston. Her understanding of Modernist architecture, and the Bauhaus and Walter Gropius himself, transformed the Knoll approach to furniture design, placing new focus on offering objects that represented design excellence, technological innovation and mass production.

The Risom arm chair designed by Knoll at Optima Sonoran Village

Their strong vision attracted high-profile collaborators, such as Isamu Noguchi, who contributed to a collection of furnishings now heralded as classics in the pantheon of modern design. With a repertoire of pieces spanning including the Wassily chair, the Barcelona chair, the Tulip chair; over 40 Knoll designs can be found in the permanent design collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

As seminal collaborators with the Modernist architecture discipline, Knoll is a natural fit for our modern residential and commercial spaces. Their executive designs embody elegance, craftsmanship and emblematic details across seating, tables and desks. The thoughtful and artistic creations of Knoll bring expansive history, elevated design and of course, comfort, to our communities.

The Life and Work of Henri Matisse

Posted on January 21, 2020May 20, 2024 by Nancy

Henri Matisse is often regarded as the most important French painter of the 20th century. Leader of the Fauvist movement, his work was expressive, colorful and rigorous, often depicting flattened forms and decorative pattern. He operated with a unique way of seeing, stating, “I don’t paint things, I only paint the difference between things.” To understand the influential work of one of art history’s greatest minds, we first examine his life.

Matisse’s Early Life

Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (1869 to 1954) was a draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor, most renowned for his work as a painter. Born to a wealthy grain merchant in Northern France, he first studied law before finding his calling as an artist. His mother gifted him art supplies during his recovery from appendicitis. Through the gift, Matisse discovered “a kind of paradise” in creation, and made the decision to abandon law for a lifelong pursuit in art.

In the last decade of the 19th century, Matisse studied art in Paris, and was influenced by the work of early masters and modern artists such as Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and Éduoard Manet. However, an 1896 trip to the island of Belle Île introduced Matisse to Australian painter John Russell, who then introduced Mattisse to Impressionism and the work of Vincent van Gogh, Russell’s dear friend. Seeing the vibrancy of Impressionism and van Gogh’s work, Mattisse’s style transformed with brilliant hues. Of his experience with Russell, Matisse said he, “explained colour theory to me.”

The Art of Matisse

After time spent learning from Russell, Matisse was plunged into the world of Fauvism at the turn of the century. The style began around 1900, continuing beyond the first decade. Part of an innovative group later dubbed “Fauves,” Matisse explored his new understanding of color through paintings with tones bright, clashing and dissonant from those natural to their subject. Even though he helped to pioneer Fauvism, Matisse never really fit in with the crowd due to his conservative appearance and strict bourgeois work habits. And although the radical movement eventually declined, Matisse nevertheless forged on.

The work that Matisse created during this period set the stage for the work he would create for the rest of his career. His focus on color continued, explored through what he called “construction by colored surfaces.” Even as his style and subject matter changed from abstract, to decorative interiors, to cut-out paper collages at the end of his life, this approach remained the same.

We are lucky to hang the work of Henri Matisse in our own communities. His consideration of form and color is reflective of our own thought process, and serves as a reminder that while style may change over time, a well-formed approach will always shine through.

The Work of Jules Olitski

Posted on December 30, 2019May 25, 2024 by Nancy

Jules Olitski was an American painter, printmaker and sculptor whose work explored color as a subject. Olitski’s innovative experimentation in paint and its properties yielded results that were at once atmospheric and beautiful. In many of our properties, displaying the work of Jules Olitski plays complement to our own exploration of color, form and function.

The Life of Jules Olitski

Jules Olitski was born Jevel Demokovsky in 1922 in Snovsk, Russia (now Ukraine). His birth came just a few months after his father, a commissar, was executed by the Soviet government. At only a year old, along with his mother and grandmother, Olitski emigrated to the United States, where the family resided in Brooklyn. Even at a young age, Olitski demonstrated an aptitude for art. In high school, he won a juried prize that allowed him the opportunity to attend art classes in Manhattan.

In 1939, at 17, Olitski attended an exhibit at the New York World’s Fair, and it was there that he first saw work by Rembrandt. Olitski described the experience as “transformative.” The budding artist delved into the academic art world to study portraiture, but his schooling was interrupted when Olitski was drafted into the army during World War II.

Luckily, the G.I. Bill allowed Olitski to spend time studying in Paris following the war. The Paris schools were Olitski’s first introduction to the European modern masters. Their modernist approach led Olitski to engage in a deep process of self-analysis and reinvention — a process which involved painting while blindfolded, enabling the artist to unlearn his academic training as a portrait painter and freeing his inhibitions.

The Art of Jules Olitski

After school, his originally classical work became more abstract and focused on the surface, color and physical properties of paint and painting. This process-oriented approach led him to express a desire to create “color that would hang in the air.” To do so, he rented an industrial spray gun that allowed him to experiment and discover a radical new technique of layering atmospheric blankets of thick color onto canvas.

Olitski’s unique approach to the canvas helped establish the movement of Color Field painting in the mid-1960s. It also led him to represent the U.S. in the 33rd Venice Biennale in 1966, and to become the first living American artist to showcase a one-person exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969. His work has been described as “visual drama” and “visual muzak” by international art critics.

Olitski was able to learn a classical approach to art, and then subvert that through his own unique innovation. Having his works on the walls of our own properties reminds us to always challenge the status quo, and to never stop inventing.

A Day at the Art Institute

Posted on December 16, 2019May 25, 2024 by Nancy

Architecture is intrinsically linked to art; and designing within the Modernist discipline, we find inspiration from all forms of art. That’s why there’s no better place we can think to spend the day than at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Art Institute is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. Founded in 1879, the museum is an iconic fixture in downtown Chicago’s Grant Park on Michigan Avenue. As a host to 1.5 million people annually, the curatorial efforts there always brings forth something new to see and learn.

This year, to celebrate 100 Years of Bauhaus, new special exhibitions at the museum shed light on the lasting influence of the iconic design school. That impact has extended into our practice at Optima, with the history of icons like Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and other Modernist masters informing how we create today. Visiting the Art Institute gives us the opportunity to see how that impact has spread elsewhere, too, in three phenomenally curated exhibits. If you only have one day to spend at the museum, this is what we recommend seeing:

In a Cloud, in a Wall, in a Chair: Six Modernists in Mexico at Midcentury

For the first time ever, the Art Institute is showing the work of Clara Porset, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Anni Albers, Ruth Asawa, Cynthia Sargent and Sheila Hicks as a group. The exhibition explores the unifying factor that has impacted the work of each of these artists and designers: Mexico. From different generations and mediums, all created work that was boundary-breaking.

In a Cloud, in a Wall, in a Chair: Six Modernists in Mexico at Midcentury is open until January 12, 2020.

Weaving beyond the Bauhaus

Tucked away on the lower level of the museum, this modest exhibit serves an impactful punch. The exhibit traces the diffusion of Bauhaus weaving workshop artists Anni Albers and Marli Ehrman, and their reciprocal relationships with fellow artists and students. The result is a soaring collection of weavings, acting as a conversation between iconic female textile artists.

Weaving beyond the Bauhaus is open until February 17, 2020.

Bauhaus Chicago: Design in the City

When the Bauhaus shut down, its teachers, students and thought disseminated across the world. This exhibition explores the way that instructors and students at ID and IIT adapted the German design philosophy to the United States through an array of medium, spanning from jewelry, photography, and textiles to furniture, monumental sculpture and urban planning.

Bauhaus Chicago: Design in the City is open until April 26, 2020.We love the way that art helps us understand the world, and in turn, informs the work we do every day. This collection of exhibits plays off one another beautifully to help deepen that understanding, relating it back to our practice in a context that is at once close and timelessly global. To experience these exhibits and everything the Art Institute has to offer, visit their website.

Forms in Bronze: The Work of Henry Moore

Posted on November 25, 2019May 25, 2024 by Nancy

As one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century, Henry Moore often used his sculptural work to explore landscape and the human form. With our design deeply rooted in a respect for nature, Moore’s art is an innate fit to our beliefs and passions at Optima.

To honor this connection, we look back on his life and its work.

The Life of Henry Moore

Henry Moore was born July 30, 1898 in Castleford, Yorkshire, lucky number seven to a household of eight children. Moore’s father was a miner, looking to help his children escape poverty by seeking advanced education — he believed that pursuing art and sculpture was just another form of manual labor with few career prospects. And while Moore displayed an affinity for and interest in the arts at school, he was nonetheless pushed in the direction of a teaching career.

On his eighteenth birthday, Moore enlisted in the British Army during World War I. A gas attack injury forced his honorable discharge, and led to an ex-serviceman’s grant that allowed him to pursue an education in the arts. In 1919 he became a student at Leeds College of Art and in 1921 continued his education at the Royal College of Art in London.

Ironically, Moore did end up teaching at the college, and it was there that he met his wife. Eventually, the two moved to a farmhouse in Perry Green, Hertfordshire, where Moore was able to further explore landscape, nature and the female form in his sculpture.

Two Forms by Henry Moore. Credit: M. Readey on Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The Art of Henry Moore

Moore was a driving force in the English Surrealist movement, although he was also inspired by the primitive forms that he saw as a schoolboy at the British Museum, citing Mexican, Egyptian and African sculptural influences.

His work was also undeniably influenced by nature, landscape and the female form — the softly undulating curves found within his sculptures are reminiscent of the lulling hillside of his birthplace, Castlefor, and his sculptures are always abstractions of the human figure that typically depict mother-and-child relationships or reclining bodies.

One of Moore’s most famous works, Recumbent Figure 1938, was commissioned for the terrace of a modernist house in the Sussex countryside. Moore said of the sculpture, “My figure… became a mediator between modern house and ageless land.” His wood and bronze sculptures set apart by their curves, hollows and piercings, evoking the feeling of objects that were both ancient and modern all at once in their influence and form.

Because of his connection to nature and to Modern abstraction, Moore is indeed a beautiful mediator between natural and built environments, something we too strive to achieve through our projects.

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Blog type: Art & Sculpture