Read biographies and/or monographs about my favorite artists

Frida was an amazing artist. I had never understood her work. Though I love the color and the rawness, I think I had been looking for the visual appeal, the “pretty” . I’m not sure what happened to me, I am oooing and ahhing over every image. She was so singular and in touch with herself.

Her art says it all. Her training, wanderlust, loves, friendships and humor are all there. This one is called “Au Bonheur des Dames”

Maira Kalman has a blog every month in the New York Times on-line edition. She is my hero. Truth, beauty, humor, intellect whimsy and free wheeling associations. Try this link to see what I am talking about.

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/?th&emc=th

This illustrator collages fabric and draws with emboidery.

An artist is someone who produces things that people don’t need to have but that he – for some reason – thinks it would be a good idea to give them.

Well, she’s not exactly an artist. She is an evolutionary biologist and she writes about the Evolutionary Biology of Sex. Her book: “Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation” is so funny and fascinating. This is a beach book with some real science!

EXCERPT:

Dear Dr. Tatiana,
I’m a European praying mantis, and I’ve noticed I enjoy sex more if I bite my lovers’ heads off first. Somehow they then seem less inhibited, more urgent—it’s fabulous. Do you find this too?—I Like ’Em Headless in Lisbon

Dear I Like Em Headless:
Some of my best friends are man-eaters, but between you and me, cannibalism isn’t my bag. I can see why you like it, though. Males of your species are boring lovers. Beheading them works wonders: whereas a headless chicken rushes wildly about, a headless mantis thrashes in a sexual frenzy. Why can’t he be that way when he’s whole?

Bought this book by Gottfried Fliedl “The World in Female Form” and published by Taschen. It was so inexpensive for an art book chock-full of full color plates. So many images I hadn’t seen before. This is real high calorie, eye candy. I love the dichotomy between the hyper-realism of the faces and then bodies that are impossible and then surface decoration.