The glorious works of Fernando Botero

Fernando Botero Angulo is Latin America's most recognized living artist, but is still new to me. His distinctive style is referred as "Boterismo", depicting people and figures in large, exaggerated volume.

"When we look at the work of Fernando Botero, be it a painting, drawing or sculpture, we are amazed at the enormous size of the figures, as much animals as people and things...The figures painted and sculpted by Botero are not really ‘fat’. They are his formal bid for expressing the sensuality of form, to explore the possibilities of volume and give monumentality to the protagonists of his pictorial world"... [continue reading on Raising Miro]

"I don’t paint fat women. Nobody believes me but it is true.
What I paint are volumes. When I paint a still life I also
paint with volume, if I paint an animal it is
volumetric, a landscape as well."
Fernando Botero

10 Facts You Need to Know About Fernando Botero - Daily Art Magazine
Big, big, bigger Botero - Raising Miro
Inside Botero's NYC Apartment and Studio (great sneak peak from $6M 2017 listing) - Street Easy Blog
Botero’s Voluminous Sculptures Around the World - Art Weekenders
Fernando Botero - Colombian Artists (GREAT photos!) - The Art Reference Blog
The Art of Fernando Botero: Colombia’s ‘Most Colombian’ Artist - Culture Trip
Fernando Botero in the casting room, a thought experiment - The Art Blog
Fat is Beautiful - The Art of Fernando Botero - Travel Ark 2.0
Fernando Botero & his amusing versions of the Mona Lisa - Public Delivery
Inflated Animal and Human Shapes in the Art of Fernando Botero - 300 Magazine, A Medium Corporation
Visual collection of Botero's work (2500+ works) - ArtNet

How a podcast about design works (99% Invisible)

I am a huge fan of 99% Invisible, so I really enjoyed this video interview with Roman Mars.

Meet Roman Mars, the creator and host of one of our favorite shows, 99% Invisible. It's a wonderful podcast that celebrates and obsesses over the overlooked design in our everyday lives. We visited Roman at his recording studio (ie. home office) to geek out over the hidden world of design, radio production, and storytelling through podcasting...

Meet Roman Mars, Creator of 99% Invisible - Adam Savage's Tested episode page about the 2014 interview

Meet Roman Mars, Creator of 99% Invisible - watch Norman Chan's interview on YouTube

99% Invisible  - Roman Mars's podcast website

World Refugee Day (June 20)

World Refugee Day this year is Saturday, June 20, 2020. I am pre-writing this post, inspired by a 2019 story on artnews.

The Met Is Covering Up a Painting by Marc Chagall to Show What the World Would Lose Without the Contributions of Refugees

"Visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this week will be unable to see one of the major works in the museum’s collection: Marc Chagall’s The Lovers (1913–14). The painting, although still on view, has been obscured with a drab gray curtain in honor of World Refugee Day (Thursday, June 20). The museum is hiding the painting to emphasize what the world stands to lose if countries turn away refugees such as Chagall, a Russian Jew forced to flee France with his fiancee, Bella Rosenfeld, after the Nazi invasion. The Lovers depicts the artist and his wife, who resettled in New York..." [continue reading on artnet].

Marc Chagall's The Lovers (uncovered)

Columbus, Indiana: an architectural epicentre

The public library in Columbus, Indiana - architecture I. M. Pei
Yes, that's a Henry Moore sculpture ("Large Arch")

It all began with a swimming pool.

Not just any swimming pool, but a kidney shaped one.

It was while listening to episode 370 of 99% Invisible, The Pool and the Stream Redux, that I learned about 2 things:
• The history of skateboarding (some of which I was familiar with), and
• How Columbus, Indiana, USA, became an epicentre of modern architecture... who knew?!?

I am not going to spoil things and try to put the story in a nutshell for you. Take a listen yourself, or read the transcript if you prefer.

In the meantime, Google is my friend and I am off to learn more about this architecture.

Resources
The Pool and the Stream Redux (episode 370) - 99% Invisible podcast
Columbus, Ind.: A Midwestern Mecca Of Architecture - NPR podcast
The Precocious Genius of “Columbus” (movie review) - New Yorker
Small and Mighty Mecca of Modern Architecture in Columbus, Indiana - The Roads Travelled

Here are a few photos of the city's architecture.... which I have intentionally left untitled. If you're into architecture, have fun identifying them:)