REPRINTED FROM:
Your Art Escort Frankly Francesca
28 May 2011 by Francesca Owens
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| Our day at Tamara's show in Roma, Paolo & I! |
90 paintings, 30 drawings, 50 photographs, 2 short films and a hand full of her personal letters & news article reprints
She is an artist I have admired for years even researching her life well before getting near an original. This past week in Rome strolling along with friends I saw a fabric sign rippling in the wind with what I thought was her name. A hard and fast halt with a twist of my body, I ran to the fabric banner. Yes, it was Tamara! A show dedicated to just Tamara!
This is the location where I visited the Amadeus Modigliani exhibit in 2006. Although always interesting, the show had a very limited amount of works. So what if this is true of hers I thought?… As long as I get to
see originals it’s worth it!
I texted my Italian ex-boyfriend Paolo and arranged an early breakfast for the following morning. After our cappuccini I said “I had a surprise”. We had not only seen the 2006 Modigliani exhibition together but the 2009 Rome Jeanne Michael Basquiat Exhibition too. With tickets in hand we climbed up the stairs to her gallery space, immediately I over whelmed and felt exuberant.
DeCo DivArtista, Tamara Lempicka unrolls the layers and increases the folds, enmeshes full body with sleek and chic, then glazing monochromatic tones with isolated vibrant punches, chiaroscuro contrasts no doubt about it, her message is clear… LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME, WHILE I LOOK AWAY.
Never was I so taken aback by such strong works and sooooo many pieces. Just when I thought it would be finished, there was more. Here storyboards were filled with her life’s details exposing to me mistakes on Wikipedia about like her father’s death when she was just 5.
Her eccentric-ness for life, direct and flamboyant posture confirmed to me that some of us are just born this way. We are not pretending, we do not do this for others but we do have an endless need to communicate, to express and to over flow.
After passing all works two times, I felt a bit depressed. I needed to leave this woman who I got to spend an afternoon with. I thought well about this way she laid out her compositions.
This “common compositional theme” and then it came to me. When I listened well and watch her audience of “glamorousa persona” is what I overheard, over and over and over… More silent than a whisper… I heard…
“Look at me while I look away. I am soft, I am round, I am quiet, I am irresistible and I am a seductress.
I am powerful, I am important; I command my space and the structures surrounding my presence.
I flow easy, I layer in folds and I fill my curves.
I am rectangular, I am straight, I am gay, I am square and I am full of angles.
I am diagonal and direct.
I am blunt, I am harsh and I am geometric like an Einstein equation.
I am to be studied, and in the meanwhile I will be erotic or powerful or strong in business or full of strength and importance.
I know you want to stare at me, so let me hold a pose for you to study and remember of me by. Again, I have a need to make a statement, look at me while I look away.”
In the end Tamara wins… She highlights what she wants your eye to see and where she wants it too finish. Her art reads commercialism with an Andy Warhol’s Campbell soup cans advertisement but with no end product being sold. Cropping her subjects, balancing unevenly weighted linear backgrounds, she creates profundity and debt in a 3 dimensional “persona” of her subjects.
A trendy, suggestive, provocative artist and her style, she was enlightened before her own time in the roaring 1920’s. Her memorizing black and white photos give an insight to the psyche of this amazing and under rated artist. …
TAMARA LEPICKA’S SHOW IN ROME IS A MUST SEE! A MUST DO AND A MUST BRAG ABOUT!
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