“Old Doll”

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by Ekaterina Levina
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This drawing was made after an installation "The Meat Market" by George Herms.  Old and forgotten toys, discarded dolls evoke a sense of a lost childhood. Nowadays, in the digital age, the real toys look old-fashioned and nostalgic.  With so many electronic games popular with children of all ages, there is a possibility that “analog” toys are the things of the past. The world of digital entertainment is changing really fast, and very few things get a second life and shared or passed down to the next generation.

"The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk" at the de Young museum.

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by Ekaterina Levina
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I love fashion. I especially adore decorative and handmade elements – lace, ribbons, feathers, embroidery and beading. I spent a few hours looking at examples of wonderful craftsmanship at the Gaultier’s show. Meticulously hand-made and lavishly decorated clothes had an amazingly light-hearted and optimistic feel about them. The show has a lot of themes with its pop-culture, cinema, sexual and ethnic references.

Talking mannequins with animated faces thanks to video projections make the exhibit very entertaining. I’ve found them amusing but a bit distracting from the design. I loved one of the talking installations – a male mannequin, dressed up in a regular shirt with a tie and a ball gown with feathers, who was talking to his “reflection” about freedom to choose any style and garments you want to wear. I think that his speech summarizes the message of the exhibit, “Don’t think about other people looking. Be yourself.” True to this is also an excerpt from a classified ad placed by Jean Paul Gaultier at the entrance to the show - "Non-conformist designer seeks unusual models - the conventionally pretty need not apply."

Gaultier’s show is definitely the one I will visit a few more times.

“Pink”

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by Ekaterina Levina
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One day I opened my closet and realized that about 50% of my clothes were different shades of pink. I wondered if it was a reflection of my personal taste or a result of retail “conspiracy” and a stereotype that girls are pink and boys are blue. This color division is very obvious if you go to children’s clothing stores – about 70% of outfits for girls are pink. I painted my own “pinks”, warm and cozy colors, my favorite shades of red and coral to see that there is a life beyond a shocking pink, which is very popular in mass production. It’s interesting to have an opportunity to step back from consumer culture and check your own preferences.

“A Hand and Roses”

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by Ekaterina Levina
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I’ve painted roses hundreds of times and never got tired of their beauty. In this watercolor painting I’m interested in the interaction between a viewer and the natural world. A person looking at a landscape becomes a part of the scenery, and a hand touching a rose is now a part of a still life, even for a moment, but caught on paper forever.

“Feather”

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by Ekaterina Levina
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I noticed this feather stuck in the wire over a hatchery in Mt. Shasta. It was very close, almost at arm’s reach, but unreachable because a fish reservoir had an electrical wire fence around it. Feathers fly when even a light wind blows, but this one couldn’t. The scene was an illustration of a contrast between a natural freedom and a human made order and restrictions.

“Death Angel”

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by Ekaterina Levina
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“Death Angel” is a drawing inspired by a wood sculpture of an unknown artist from New Mexico in 1900. You can see the original at the de Young museum.

It seems easy to forget about simple things following different political debates and struggles nowadays. But even simple things can put somebody between life and death. The human society is very advanced when it comes to technology and medicine. The world is different today compare to a hundred years ago. Yet, hunger suffering still exists despite that it’s 100% preventable. I ask myself, is it possible for an artist to make any difference without getting involved in political games?

In the ideal world art, power and money would work together.

"The banality of evil" (Hannah Arendt)

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by Ekaterina Levina


I’ve been reading a book “The Rape of Europa” by Lynn H. Nicholas for a while, on and off, about the fate of Europe’s art treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. It’s not the easiest book to read despite the fast-paced dramatic story. Even without actual descriptions of the horrors of the war, they are always behind the scene.

I came across of an interesting fact about Hermann Goering.

Goering considered himself “the last Renaissance man” and was a greedy art collector. He amassed a great deal of paintings, jewels and objects d’art. Very few of them were of unquestioned attribution.

In his collection of Old Masters Goering had a favorite Vermeer “Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery”. This painting was a part of “a little nest egg in case of emergency” in a personal baggage of Frau Goering, his wife, when Goering decided to send his family and his collection away fearing the Red Army in January 1945. It took two of Goering’s special trains with additional eleven extra boxcars to move only the most valuable things from his collection.

Unknown to Goering, his prized “Vermeer” was a fake. Despite having all the great art treasures around him, Goering loved the most a fake painting with a moralistic subject.

Here he was, Hermann Goering, the Reich Marshal of the Greater German Reich, Hitler's chosen successor, an incredibly powerful man of his time, so rich and so… banal.

Goering’s favorite Vermeer “Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery”, a fake.