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15Aug 2019 by kike_K No Comments

Book I: “Old Masters”

Painting

I discovered the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) just as usual, by chance (I was having a look in a bookshop, and his book was there on a bookshelf); eager to read but with no preconceived idea. Just from the beginning his style so particular, so repetitive and sort of hypnotic (he almost never uses full-stop) caught me; it is so really difficult to get used to it. Reading Bernhard half-heartedly paying no attention to the text can be quite maddening. He easily creates a bunch of memorable characters such as the Prince Saurau (Gargoyles) or the painter Strauch (Frost), we will be referring to them in some other entries. On the other hand, all references to Art or more particularly to painting are a constant in his books. The…

Luis Melendez

Painting

There is an old building near my home with a plaque to show the location of Miguel Jacinto Melendez’s workshop. He was a painter in the court of the Spanish King Felipe V. I often thought about his young nephew Luis Egidio Melendez (1716-1780) and supposed he used to work there too. Luis Egidio Melendez was one of the best still-life painters in the world. Among his well-known works, there is a much interesting self-portrait (exhibited at the Louvre) and a series of forty-eight still-life paints ordered in 1771 by the Prince of Asturias, the next King Charles IV who intended to decorate his own private quarters. Thirty-nine are nowadays a part of the Prado Museum’s collection. I’d like to specially focus on one of these called, Servicio de chocolate,…

Rory McEwen

Illustration

I have so many reasons to visit a museum, any museum indeed but inevitably all visits end in the bookstore. I am so an unapologetic seeker of rarity, fond of very simple books or catalogues (not really expensive but wonderfully illustrated) that have sometimes showed me the works of unexpected and unknown artists. Among so many great books devoted to Pollock or Warhol it is feasible to find real gems. This happened to me one time in the astonishing bookshop of the Centro Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia. I found a small book about the British artist Rory McEwen (1932-1982); this is a catalogue published by the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh on the occasion of the exhibition of the works by McEwen that took place in 1988. I found…