Vija Celmins
Encyclopedia
Vija Celmins is an American
artist
.
with her family from Latvia
when she was ten years old. She and her family settled in Indiana
. Celmins received international attention early in her career for her renditions of natural scenes, often painted from photograph
s lacking a point of reference, horizon, or discernible depth of field.
Celmins' early work includes paintings of such commonplace objects as TVs, lamps, and black and white photographs. These works also share with Gerhard Richter's an apparent randomness
and thus apparently dispassionate attitude. It is as if any photograph would do as a source for a painting, and the choice is apparently unimportant. This is of course not the case, but the work contains within it the impression that the image is chosen at random from an endless selection of possible alternative images of similar nature.
Celmins is now internationally known for her later works which are often intensely realistic paintings and drawings. Celmins has also worked with print media since the early 1960s, again meticulously rendering details of the natural environment. Celmins's work demonstrates a remarkably close engagement with the natural world mediated by photography. Celmins has said her images dispel romantic notions of the sublime in nature.
In the late 1960s, Celmins started drawing more, mainly working with graphite
pencil. Her subjects became increasingly selective until her work became almost entirely images of the surface of the ocean, night skies (with stars), and the surface of the desert, with small stones and pebbles rendered in great detail.
In 1997 Celmins won a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship.
In 2009 Celmins won a Fellow Award in the Visual Arts from United States Artists.
In 2009 Celmins won the Roswitha Haftmann Prize.
Pa. museum guard accused of destroying painting
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gpIZDQN2Hvjn3KPYJx75xfoJU83wD9146JEO0
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
.
Early life
Vija Celmins immigrated to the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
with her family from Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
when she was ten years old. She and her family settled in Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
. Celmins received international attention early in her career for her renditions of natural scenes, often painted from photograph
Photograph
A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...
s lacking a point of reference, horizon, or discernible depth of field.
Work
She employs different media in her works, including oil paint, charcoal, pencil drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. In 1967, Celmins taught drawing and painting at the University of California at Irvine. Her works often incorporate shades of black, white and gray in place of colors, drawing inspiration from photos that do not seem to have any discernible depth, central point or point of reference. Her early work includes oil paintings of lamps, soups, and heaters on different media.Celmins' early work includes paintings of such commonplace objects as TVs, lamps, and black and white photographs. These works also share with Gerhard Richter's an apparent randomness
Randomness
Randomness has somewhat differing meanings as used in various fields. It also has common meanings which are connected to the notion of predictability of events....
and thus apparently dispassionate attitude. It is as if any photograph would do as a source for a painting, and the choice is apparently unimportant. This is of course not the case, but the work contains within it the impression that the image is chosen at random from an endless selection of possible alternative images of similar nature.
Celmins is now internationally known for her later works which are often intensely realistic paintings and drawings. Celmins has also worked with print media since the early 1960s, again meticulously rendering details of the natural environment. Celmins's work demonstrates a remarkably close engagement with the natural world mediated by photography. Celmins has said her images dispel romantic notions of the sublime in nature.
In the late 1960s, Celmins started drawing more, mainly working with graphite
Graphite
The mineral graphite is one of the allotropes of carbon. It was named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 from the Ancient Greek γράφω , "to draw/write", for its use in pencils, where it is commonly called lead . Unlike diamond , graphite is an electrical conductor, a semimetal...
pencil. Her subjects became increasingly selective until her work became almost entirely images of the surface of the ocean, night skies (with stars), and the surface of the desert, with small stones and pebbles rendered in great detail.
Awards
In 1996 Celmins received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award.In 1997 Celmins won a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship.
In 2009 Celmins won a Fellow Award in the Visual Arts from United States Artists.
In 2009 Celmins won the Roswitha Haftmann Prize.
Contributions
2008 Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International http://blog.cmoa.org/CI08/2008/02/vija-celmins.phpPa. museum guard accused of destroying painting
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gpIZDQN2Hvjn3KPYJx75xfoJU83wD9146JEO0
External links
- Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips from PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
series Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century - Season 2 (2003). - Artcyclopedia page
- Vija Celmins at McKee Gallery Vija Celmins at McKee Gallery, New York
- http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/tsearch?artist=celmins&title= Vija Celmins at the National Gallery of Art