Although he built comparatively little, and only one of his buildings - the Ashmolean Museum and Taylorian Institute in Oxford - remains in the public eye, C.R. Cockerell (1788-1863) is described in Howard Colvin’s A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects (3rd ed., 1995) as ‘at once the most fastidious and the least pedantic of English neo-classical architects’, and by a leading architectural historian of the period as quite simply ‘the greatest English neo-classical architect of the 19th century’ (Frank Salmon, Building on Ruins, Aldershot 2000, p.144). (more)

More of Cockerell’s work over at the Royal Academy of Arts Collections.

First caption:

Storming of the Bastille:

The citizens of Paris led by the Gardes Françaises on the 14th of July 1789. Building of this fortification started in 1369 during the reign of Charles V. Hugues Aubriot, a native of Dijon and Provost of Paris, laid the first stone. Construction was completed in 1382. Aubriot was born in Dijon. He became one of the first prisoners of the Bastille, imprisoned under the pretext of heresy. He was liberated by the Parisians during the troubles that stirred the capital, and escaped to his motherland.

Second caption:

This is how we punish traitors.

“Drawing on the influence of anime, comic books, Otaku culture, and animal compendiums, the work of Nicholas Di Genova features an encyclopedic range of constructed creatures ranging from soft and nurturing to calculating and military. A vast and intense fabricated history acts as a backdrop to the hundreds of interconnected species, families and rival clans that find themselves projecting their habits, relations and environments to their viewers. Working with ink and animation paints, Di Genova’s paintings on mylar highlight his skill with line and his ability to manipulate colour. Always intense and intricately executed, Di Genova’s work rivals the quality of any fine art painter while firmly establishing itself on the fringes of contemporary art. The work brings together knowledge of art and design and samples from both fields, resulting in incredible visual and technical impact and an astonishing strong conceptual core which receives respect from both camps, a dichotomy often severely split.” (more at the LE Gallery)

Check his blo: Skeleton Hug.

Artist statement:

“I use photos as references for my drawings but I am not after a perfect reproduction at all. I use a photo very loosely once the proportions are established. I usually work as if I were drawing from a live model actually. I work with movement and expression, working fast on larger, more unimportant areas, and slowing down on parts that need more attention. I am actually improvising a lot. My main concern is to capture the essence and substance of forms in order to get close to a perceptible presence of the subject.” (more)

Check Dirk Dzimirsky’s blog.

“Lick Line is a series of mouths floating in space and rendered in exacting detail. Aiming to seduce, glistening and salacious tongues poke out and beckon the viewer to come close. Seen as a group, the tongues undulate and bounce. Like many voices talking at once, they invade our space with eroticism, strangeness and perverse possibility.” (press release : Julia Randall: Going Solo)

More of her drawings over at the Jeff Bailey Gallery.

Cath Riley: Flesh series

“The emphasis, and main body of my work, has always been of a three-dimensional nature, but over the last few years, I have given time to develop and explore new skills, particularly the use of pencil on paper to produce some of the pencil drawings which are here on this site.” (more)

Visit Rafa Jenn official website for more.

This particualr illustration is reminiscent of some paintings and drawings by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt.

The Nedhamptons: A Few Old Drawings, by Amanda Nedham

“Amanda’s show Tapping The Admiral recently showed at Le Gallery in Toronto.”

“Nedham reinterprets the especially cruel torture machine from In the Penal Colony and uses it as a tool to compliment an assemblage of specimens culled from natural history museums around the world. The utilization of impossible and elaborate devices, absurd in application, raises each animal to a site of reverence, where it is their wounds which beg to be deciphered. In the face of such custom cruelty, the machine comes to represent almost ceremonious sacrifice, positing each animal as martyr at the disposal of humans through the exaggerated gesture of individualized torment. Aligning each body with a different type of human preservation reflects Nedham’s interest in looking at the specimens not as objects, but as historians, each capturing a very specific story which can be read off of the body and in the context of display. The machines provide a place where the viewer can engage intimately with each narrative, suggesting alternative histories and opening them up to possibilities in the realm of the romantic and inevitably tragic.” (LE Gallery about the exposition Tapping The Admiral) Read what Amanda has to say about this specific exposition over at The Nedhamptons, her personal blog. Visit her official website.

“This unique and intimate treasure of a book captures the sensual pleasure of an artist’s sketchbook as well as the genius behind Klimt’s vision of women.

Throughout his career, Gustav Klimt completed hundreds of paintings and drawings of delicate beauty, many of them featuring the female form. Designed to imitate an artist’s sketchbook, this exquisite volume culls the artist’s most beautiful erotic sketches and watercolors. The experience of viewing it awakens the senses, while affording the reader the guilty pleasure of leafing through an artist’s most private visions. The stunning color reproductions, embossed cover and calf binding make this a perfect gift for lovers of art and for lovers everywhere.” (Amazon)

“An exhibition of 120 of Gustav Klimt’s lesser known erotic drawings was recently on view at the Maillol Museum in Paris. Apart from his extraordinary landscapes, atmospheric and almost spiritual, which were primarily vacation work painted during summers spent on the Attersee, the Viennese artist’s theme has always been La Femme. His women are often sumptuously attired and extravagantly decorated, or naked, sitting or standing coyly as are the three Gorgones from La frise Beethoven . However, in the Paris exhibition they were in various states of dress and undress, sprawled in armchairs and lying on the floor in every position both imaginable and unimaginable.” (read more: “Gustav Klimt: Erotic Drawings of Young Women” by Patricia Boccardo, June 27th, 2005)

“It’s hard to believe there was a time when Gustav Klimt could be described as “little known,” as he was by an underwhelmed New Yorker art critic in 1959, who dismissed the fin de siècle Austrian painter’s first, posthumous U.S. solo show as a sentimental medley of “allegory, mild eroticism and good old German romanticism.” Klimt’s meteoric rise in popularity during the 1960s and 1970s owes much to the initial two certified stateside Klimtomaniacs: Neue Galerie cofounders Ronald Lauder and Serge Sabarsky, whose extensive collections are featured in this lovingly researched exhibition of paintings, drawings and ephemera. (It’s billed as the artist’s first American museum retrospective, though that promises more than the show delivers.) […]

As in Reclining Nude Facing Right (1912–13), a red-and-blue pencil sketch of a masturbating woman rendered in an undulating, electric lines, they convey a passion absent in, or excised from, his paintings.” (read more: “Gustav Klimt: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections” by Anne Wehr, Time Out New York, issue 642, Jan. 17-23, 2008).

All Things Amazing (LiVEJOURNAL): drawing by Gustav Klimt