Art News Articles

Good morning - it’s 1 January 2006. Yesterday I performed all traditional Danish rituals in order to enter 2006 in a happy way. In order to make 2006 a Happy New Year. A splendid seafood dinner, serpentines, table bombs, funny hats, lots of rockets etc. Except one traditional Danish ritual. I was not drunk. No beer. No vine. No drinks. No champagne. Lots of mineral water. My entrance to 2006 was vertical. Not horizontal as it often was. I have no hangovers. I have cleaned up my domestic domaine and I am ready to write.

I have decided that 2006 is a happy new year… A wise man - a philosopher from Copenhagen - said at the end of 2005: Don’t put your life into an account. Live your life now - passionately. Don’t commit yourself to any New Year Resolutions. Don’t exercise. Don’t loose weight. Don’t quit smoking. Don’t… Don’t put your life into an account. Live your life now - passionately. The wise man of course said this with a smile. But I sure see his point.

Here is how I’ll try to live my artist life - now - passionately:
- Weekly domestic art initiatives.
- The World Wide Days project.
- The revival of the poster project.
- The Auctions project. - Monthly interactive lecture in Lille Fejringhus Gallery.
- Monthly article to online and printed Art Magazines.
- Fairy Tales.
- The book Museums of the world.
- Education, education and education.

Weekly domestic art initiatives.
Is about continuously being in touch with the domestic market.
By personally presenting new art works to potential buyers.
It’s about earning a living.

World Wide Days.
Is about continue building a network of online galleries worldwide.
It’s about optimizing existing exhibitions.
It’s about adding new art works to the exhibitions.
It’s about monitoring new exhibition possibilities.

Revival of the poster.
It’s about marketing the print on demand of my art works.
Print on demand ordered online at my print partners in Salt Lake City, UT and Raleigh, NC.
Print on demand - prints on paper or canvas - ordered at Asbjorn Lonvig Digital Art Laboratory.

Auctions.
Is about auctioning art works on ebay.com, kunstverket.se and other auctions.
It’s about maintaining skills about how to do it.
It’s about optimising use of online auctions.

Monthly interactive lecture in Lille Fejringhus Gallery.
Is about deciding myself where and when to do interactive lectures.
Lille Fejringhus Gallery is the perfect place.
An interactive lecture is mentally exhausting, so only once a month would be nice.

Monthly article to online and printed Art Magazines.
Is about being on the move, about telling the stories, that an artist must tell.
It is about a kind of relaxation.
A visual artist relaxes when he expresses himself literally.

Fairy Tales.
Inuit Circumpolar Area culture and especially Greenlandish culture are the inspiration to a series of new fairy tales in children’s books.
The Laura-project it is called.
I’ll visit Greenland in 2006.
The fairy tale series the Lucca-project has been translated from English into Dansih, German, French, Italian, Japanese and Chinese.
In 2006 a bilingual edition in English and Persian (Arabic) will be published.

Museums of the world.
Is about Editorial Croquis, which is a printed art magazine and a publishing company in Buenos Aires that has run some of my articles about art museums in Spanish.
The director and editor of Editorial Croquis Martin Enriques Gil has recently asked me to write a book “The Museums of the World by Asbjorn Lonvig”, published by Editorial Croquis in Danish, Portuguese, Spanish and English.
And I have answered: I’ll do it, I’ll find out how. In 2006 I’ll do something about it. Layout. Edition sizes. Sponsor contracts. The first visits to museums etc.

Education, education and finally education.
Is about using computer and internet in art and art marketing.
I have to continuously improve my skills in this area - even if I originally was a trained IBM software specialist.
In 2006 my skills concerning using Adobe Illustrator CS2 must be raised to a professional level.

Thoughts.
Some years Artprice.com - the leading art information company in the market - pronounced that the art market would increase to 3,5 times the existing art market because of computers and internet.
Since then I have concentrated 100 % on using computer and internet.
During this period of time I have got a lot of condescending response.
I believe the whole art market now is realizing that Artprice.com was right.

In 2006 condescension will be replaced by acceptance???

The article “Matisse and Louisiana…” by Asbjorn Lonvig
published in Spanish in the Art Magazine Croquis,
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
See the Spanish translation by Editorial Croquis.

The art poster is dead.
The director of the Hans Christian Andersen Festival Plays, said to me. Too bad. I am a poster designer. It is a fact that the art poster is dead when it comes to advertising. Only major cultural events still use posters for advertising. Other media have ousted the poster as an advertising media.
Publishing posters traditionally is very complicated.
First you choose a relevant art work.
Then you prepare it for print.
Then you print it. To decide edition sizes concerning posters is the hard part. Then you distribute the poster. Preparing, printing and distribution are costly. Nearly nothing is left for the artist.
Print on demand is the answer. You can work with print on demand in at least 3 ways.

1. Print on Demand at ArtWanted.com.
ArtWanted is a .com that can handle ordering, online payment, quality print and shipment. And as an interesting feature at ArtWanted the artist himself can decide the prices on the prints of his art works!!!!! I have tested ArtWanted.com in Bountiful, Salt Lake City, Utah. ArtWanted can handle sizes up to 30 x 40 inches, that is 76 x 101.6 cm. I have submitted a number of art works in huge print files to ArtWanted. See the print on demand introduction page.
This means that anybody in the world, who likes my style, can have a poster. The prices are from US$ 1.95 to US$ 79.95 depending on size and surface. Then you add some US$ for shipment depending on where you live. ArtWanted.com informs you about the shipment costs before you pay.
This means that at the exact same moment I have finished an art work it is available for poster printing world wide.
Nice feeling.

2. Print on Demand at the customer’s own computer.
This Monday I finished a job for a large financial institution in Denmark. I have placed the Word (.doc) files with the art works for print on the customer’s computer. And the customer prints on demand.

This means that any company, any organization, any person in numerous of situations can skip traditional printing. They can relieve. And skip the impossible task of deciding edition sizes.


3. Print on Demand at our Digital Art Laboratory.
All other Digital Art matters are taken care of by the Asbjorn Lonvig Digital Art Laboratory. The staff is: Ole Aaen, AD from 2A, Vejle, Denmark Erik Adriansen, AD from 2A, Vejle, Denmark Asbjorn Lonvig, Artist, Hedensted, Denmark To the right you can see Ole Aaen and Erik Adriansen work with “1080 Haight Street” - a Victorian House from my San Francisco selection. This laboratory uses the newest technology when it comes to Mac computers, PCs, Graphics Editing Equipment, Small format printers, Large format high quality printers, Print surfaces, Film, TV, Video Editing Equipment, Projection Equipment and Photo Equipment. See more details on the Asbjorn Lonvig Digital Art Laboratory.

We can present art works in any size print in serigraph quality offering state of the art color fastness. We can print on paper, canvas etc. We can offer posters and prints with printed signature. As a point of departure editions are open. However, we can do limited edition prints, numbered and signed, as well. Or one of a kind signed prints. Sizes are: Height is unlimited. Width is up to about 5 feet, depending on the surface. To print a 1:1 print of one of my canvases size 79.2 x 54.8 inches, that is 201 x 139 cm on paper is a piece of cake. In this department we work with prices up to about US$ 2500. One day we printed on canvas. Amazing. This means that anybody can create exactly the art work reproduction, that they like. OK. I have to like it, too.

Technical remark:
The posters are drawn in Adobe Illustrator. That means that they are vectorized and scalable. That’s the reason that we can present pure, pure colors on all prints. There are no photographing and scanning involved. This week we will do some tests photographing my “sad days” paintings and Morten Lonvig’s portrait paintings. We are not satisfied until you can see every stroke of every hair in the brush. Or every stroke from my wooden block and filling knife, which I have used in some of them. Or that you clearly can see, that the paint has been thrown temperamentally in some of them. A KODAK dcs pro 14ns digital camera will probably do the job, we’ll see. If we succeed you’ll be presented to a series of brand new posters soon.

Thoughts:
If you use the Danish definition of poster, which is any kind of reproduction of art works, you sure can announce that computers and the internet have caused a “Revival of the Art Poster…” in the sense that they have made print on demand posters a major tool in future distribution of reproductions of art works world wide.

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Try out ArtWanted.com in Salt Lake City
click on a poster

Smaller prints - coming soon as large prints:

After a long, long swim we have found Bubbling Hat Fish. He has been found at 1166 M. H. del Pilar, St. Ermita in Manila on the Philippines. He is in good shape and has been reunioned with his fellow Fairy Tale Characters.

Click on him - or here.

Last time I wrote to you it was about a playhouse inspired by Gaudi. I asked why not build a Picasso playhouse? A Miro playhouse? A Matisse playhouse? Do you know the Austrian painter Hunderdwasser? A Hundredwasser playhouse would be great fun. And a Salvador Dali playhouse?

Ed Baron from Baron Conservancy in Wonder Valley near desert oasis city of Twenty Nine Palms, a few miles east of Los Angeles wrote: “Can’t you just see a whole playground of Playhouses? What a wonderful art project. It would certainly tie in with our purpose of preserving Art and Human Nature. Perhaps volunteers will agree to come erect them at the Baron Conservancy?”

First I asked Ed Baron if he was serious?

He answered: OF COURSE I AM SERIOUS.

In order to describe this project to sponsors I have designed a number of new playhouses inspired by the great masters.

Pablo Picasso I do love very many of Picasso’s works. Once I visited New York I was at MOMA. In my photo album there is this amazing photo of one of my sons and the Picasso She Goat. The She Goat is a fairy tale character in the fairy tale “The Baby Carriage and the Sleep Sheep”, too. A staircase up to the door and two windows. The playhouse you can see to the left.

Leonardo da Vinci

Everybody knows Leonardo da Vinci. Everybody knows da Vinci’s masterpiece at le Louvre in Paris. I have been in Paris a couple of times, last time to see Biblioteque Forney, where they have a collection of my posters. But I have to visit Mona each time. This time you were allowed to photo her. As I returned home I made the Colorful Mona Collection. You can have Mona in a canvas, in a paper cut-out and now in a playhouse version. The height is supposed to be 15 feet.

Andy Warhol

I have seen Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans here and there. At AROS Museum of modern art in Aarhus, Denmark I saw an original. The height is supposed to be 18 feet.

Michelangelo

I saw his renaissance fresco “Creation of Adam” (1508-1512), which is a part of the Sistine Chapel ceiling decoration in the Vatican Museums in Rome. In my opinion God’s right hand and Adam’s left hand are the essentials of the fresco motif. I have worked with these two hands in various contexts. Now these two hands have become a playhouse design. The height is supposed to be 15 feet.

Salvador Dali

Since I saw Dali’s soft watches for the first time I have been fascinated by them. He was crazy. Really crazy. I met his son in Rome, we exhibited at the same place, he was a nice, humorous fellow painting nice aqua color motifs from his home city Venice, Italy. “Like father like son” proved wrong. The soft watch became the roof of a playhouse. Height 9 feet.

Christo

Christo Javacheff and Jeanne-Claude de Guillebon are famous for wrapping buildings. Here a playhouse is wrapped in green and with a blue string. Height: 10 feet.

Vincent van Gogh

Playhouse inspired by Vincent’s chair. Height: 21 feet.

Joan Miró

I sent all the above designs and a design of a Miró playhouse to Copy-Dan to clear intellectual rights (Copyrights). All the above have been cleared, but my Miró playhouse was made with a gable painting that was too close to Miró.

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A question to the blog readers about something else:

Editorial Croquis, which is a printed art magazine and a publishing company in Buenos Aires has run some of my articles about art museums in Spanish. The director and editor of Editorial Croquis Martin Enriques Gil has asked me to write a book “The Museums of the World by Asbjorn Lonvig”, published by Editorial Croquis in Danish, Portuguese, Spanish and English. And I have answered: I’ll do it, I’ll find out how. We need a sponsor for this project.

Do you have any suggestions??

On “Playhouse inspired by Gaudi…“

Asbjorn, you are the ultimate artist! Making the world more beautiful and fun by creating our inner most expressions into reality! The child’s wonderfully basic yet sophisticated view of life translates into the most amazing house!

Art magazine Editorial Croquis in Buenos Aires has run my article about New Carlsberg Glyptotek in Spanish. See the article “Nuevo Carlsberg Glyptotek“.

To the right one of several Gaugin paintings and a photo from the wintergarden.

La Gerbe, 1953
The Spray UCLA Collection, Hammer Museum.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Sydney F. Brody
© Succession H. Matisse / CopyDan, 2005
Press photo from http://press.louisiana.dk/

See the article in WWAR Art News, Columbus Ohio. About this famous artist in the wonderful Art Museum called Louisiana. It is in Denmark, Scandinavia. You know of course Louisiana in the United States, but you probably don’t know this Louisiana, a Museum of Modern Art.

“But the photos might give you a hint of what my friend in Chicago meant”.

See about the Louisiana Architecture and the Louisiana Collection at the Louisiana web site.

The Exhitition “Matisse - a second life”

Louisiana and Museé de Luxembourg in Paris have made a joined venture. One day the Danish curator and Matisse expert Hanne Finsen asked the director of Louisiana for a cup of coffee. Later the director offered Hanne Finsen numerous cups of coffee. The director liked to know more about her idea. The director is Poul Erik Tojner.

See the article

This Friday I visited the New Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark known for the statue of the Little Mermaid. I came to Copenhagen very early in the morning.

I had dropped my son off at Copenhagen Airport for a transatlantic flight. Copenhagen was still asleep.

Baresso, my favorite coffee shop, opened at 7.30 a.m. So. I spent some time sightseeing before breakfast.

The Royal Castle, Amalienborg was wrapped.

The Parliament, Christiansborg was wrapped.

The City Hall was wrapped.

They were both passionate art collectors.

The New Carlsberg Glyptotek was founded 1897 by Carl Jacobsen who created one of the largest private art collections of his time. It was named after his brewery, New Carlsberg, with the addition of “Glyptotek”, meaning collection of sculpture. He was interested in contemporary French and Danish art, as well as ancient art from the cultures surrounding the Mediterranean. To secure the future of the collection, Carl Jacobsen and his wife Ottilia donated it to the public in two deeds of gift from 1888 and 1899. The Museum’s buildings were created to house these works of art.

Collection of ancient art

Support the art with caution…

Asbjorn Lonvig, artist from Denmark has debuted as correspondent for the art magazine Croquis, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The article “Who is Aros - who is bill” is on the front page of Croquis. In Spanish.

 See the front cover to the left.

Below you see Croquis covers for the recent 18 issues. See the Croquis web page.