Jeanne-Claude of the artistic team Jeanne Claude and Christo suddenly passed away yesterday, November 18th. According to the Associated Press, Jeanne-Claude’s death was due to complications from a ruptured brain aneurysm. Our thoughts go out to her family and friends.

If you have not seen 5 Films About Christo and Jeanne-Claude I would highly recommend it. Directed by David and Albert Maysles the documentary follows the pair as they conceive and produce their sculptures. Totally unscripted, and spanning three decades the film gives an intimate look into their relationship and the fiery personality that was Jeanne-Claude.

via Christo and Jeane-Claude’s site:

The family statement said Christo was deeply saddened by his wife’s death but was “committed to honor the promise they made to each other many years ago: that the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude would continue.” That included completing their current installation, “Over The River, Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado” and “The Mastaba” a project in the United Arab Emirates.

The Colorado project — which they had done parts of on and off for decades — involves spanning miles of the river with woven fabric. They chose the location near Canon City because of its river rapids and access to roads and footpaths. Their other projects include wrapping the Reichstag in Germany.

To view the life and work of Jeane-Claude please visit her and Christo’s site.

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On Sunday September 7th Japanese artist/designer Nagi Noda passes away. She was 35. There is no word on the exact cause of her death; but people have speculated that it was related to a car accident she was in last year that had left the artist with Chronic pain and other ailments.

“Beyond being a brilliant artist and wonderful talent, Nagi was one of the most incredibly unique spirits that I have known,” says Sheila Stepanek, CEO/EP Partizan US, which represented Noda. “Our thoughts and prayers are with her family and friends.” Stepanek says that Noda passed “in her Mark Ryden dress, Chanel boots, perfect make-up with Viktor & Rolf lace black eye lashes.”

She is most famous for the commercials she directed for Nike, Coca-Cola, and most recently for LG. She had collaborated with artist Mark Rydan on a fashion line Broken Label. The first time I experienced Noda’s work was her poodle video she had made for the Olympics (above). She will be missed.

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Robert Rauschenberg passed away on May 12, 2008 at age 82. The Art Institute of Chicago’s own Rauscheberg expert Lisa Wainwright joins us to discuss his life and legacy.
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via MICHAEL KIMMELMAN for the New York Times:

Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died on Monday night at his home on Captiva Island, Fla. He was 82.

The cause was heart failure, said Arne Glimcher, chairman of PaceWildenstein, the Manhattan gallery that represents Mr. Rauschenberg.

Mr. Rauschenberg’s work gave new meaning to sculpture. “Canyon,” for instance, consisted of a stuffed bald eagle attached to a canvas. “Monogram” was a stuffed goat girdled by a tire atop a painted panel. “Bed” entailed a quilt, sheet and pillow, slathered with paint, as if soaked in blood, framed on the wall. All became icons of postwar modernism.

A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.

Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he helped obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life.

Mr. Rauschenberg was also instrumental in pushing American art onward from Abstract Expressionism, the dominant movement when he emerged, during the early 1950s. He became a transformative link between artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and those who came next, artists identified with Pop, Conceptualism, Happenings, Process Art and other new kinds of art in which he played a signal rol

No American artist, Jasper Johns once said, invented more than Mr. Rauschenberg. Mr. Johns, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Mr. Rauschenberg, without sharing exactly the same point of view, collectively defined this new era of experimentation in American culture.

Apropos of Mr. Rauschenberg, Cage once said, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look.” Cage meant that people had come to see, through Mr. Rauschenberg’s efforts, not just that anything, including junk on the street, could be the stuff of art (this wasn’t itself new), but that it could be the stuff of an art aspiring to be beautiful — that there was a potential poetics even in consumer glut, which Mr. Rauschenberg celebrated.

“I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly,” he once said, “because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.”

Read the full article мебелиhere

Sir Robert J. Loescher, 70, died on December 8, 2007.

Mr. Loescher was Professor Emeritis at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and founder of SAIC Art History Department. He was knighted in 1990 by King Juan Carlos, of Spain.

He was preceded in death by his parents and his infant brother, George. He is survived by his brothers, Thomas Loescher, of Tucson, Arizona, and Richard Loescher, of Appleton, Wisconsin; friends, Shay DeGrandis, Nathan DeFoor, Brian Sikes and Bibiana Suarez, of Chicago; Joyce Neimanas, of Albuquerque; Wendy Woon, of New York; and many other colleagues and friends.

A memorial service to honor Sir Robert Loescher, in conjunction with the Midwest Art History Society Conference, will be held on April 4, 2008, at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

Robert J. Loescher, a specialist in Spanish and Latin American art, helped revolutionize the art history program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he taught for more than 30 years.

Mr. Loescher, 70, died in his Lake View home Saturday, Dec. 8, having had suffered from heart problems and was weakened by a recent operation.

Richard & Sarah had the pleasure of knowing and working with Mr. Loescher and will miss him greatly.

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