Chillin' and paparazzin' in the backstage

My friend Concetta asked me to come and help her on a photoshoot she was styling for. She and Kristina (the photographer) have been collaborating for a while now. Have a peek;)

The shoot was held at the Romeur Academy Studios. This where we actually met in the first place - a few years ago when the academy started a fashion & media oriented website I started writing articles for it and they both made part of the editing (Kristina is the editor in chief).

Concetta is showing the editorial which inspired her to the model.








Concetta posing for the light check.








The wardrobe. THE WARDROBE! Concetta was so lucky to get to borrow some pieces from our friend Emanuele's private collection. I'm telling you, I think I haven't seen someone more obsessed with fashion than he is. So we have here some pieces of Hussein Chalayan, Stella McCartney, Margiela and last but not least Prada (the fur jacket you see below). Plus the bags- LV,Fendi, YSL, ..








This is the model- Danilo. Though he's not a professional model, he's natural charm and charisma filled the whole room the minute he walked in. He didn't notice I was taking a photo of him - I love his profile! And that hair...




Kristina is a great photographer, she knew exactly which buttons to push to get the right attitude out of the model. Would like to be photographed by her one fine day myself too, maybe:)




As soon as Danilo noticed me, he took one of his zoolanderish poses and Kristina stopped him right away, telling him not to do THAT on the shoot..
























Everybody, this is Concetta presenting Fendi.












Everybody, this is Danilo presenting The Muse (YSL).




















I ADORED THESE PANTS.







With Kristina not seeing him, Danilo does not lose the chance to pull off some other of his zoolanderish poses...







;)

Thanks to Kristina and Concetta, it was a blast.

"What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting."

Today I accidentally spent a really nice touristic day in Rome. Accidentally, because I was supposed to go to school and catch up with history & etc. and instead I caught myself waiting in the line for two hours to see the Caravaggio's exhibition in the Scruderie del Quirinale Gallery. This is what happened: we have our dear friend Maris from Estonia over our place and there's so much to catch up with and last night, guess what, we totally lost our time track. The good company, all the chit chat of the world plus a bottle of great wine did their job well (too well I'd say). Anyway I decided I'd wake up an hour later and eventually everything went well. My timing was perfect, I was at the bus stop 5 min earlier, trust me this is RARE, but I think someone up there didn't like my easy luck at all so huge traffic appeared on my way just out of nowhere. But, as my to-do list is like what.. a meter long ? I easily found some annoying things needed to be done, after what I thought I should definitelly try and go to see the Caravaggio's exhibition. The exhibition has been on already from the end of February but the excitement doesn't seem to want to calm down and the gallery is "over-peopled" all the time.. the que was really long and I spent two hours under the sun standing melting... and it was SO WORTH IT! I think I have only once seen another so greatly arranged exhibition in my life (it was Basquiat's, in 2008 autumn, in Palazzo Ruspoli).





Let me tell a little about Caravaggio: one of the greatest baroque painters in Italy, he was born in Milan in 1571 and he died in 1610. In the 90's when he arrived in Rome he was discovered by the "art patrons" (cardinals) and soon enough he got the most important commissions of his time: the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and Calling of Saint Matthew, delivered in 1600. But there is no wonder, his work was revolutionary. He ignored all conventional "rules" of classical painting and introduced a much more radical and naturalistic attitude. Dramatical scenography characterized of a great use of chiaroscuro (light and shadow) combined with a careful attention of real life helped him to take the artistical taste of his time to a whole new level. His personal life influenced his late work quite a lot: Caravaggio, as busy busy leading a very tumultuous life, was constantly involved in scandalous intrigues and troubles. The culmination of his "bad boy" fame was in 1606 when he accidentaly killed a young man and was forced to escape from the authorities until his death. If you care, read more about him on wiki (click!). Here's just few his works:

This was my absolute favourite...
Don't you just loooveee that flirty smile of his?!

Because of the cloudy cloudy wheather in Europe our friend is "forced" to extend her vacation in Rome (sounds terrible, right?:D) and we've been seeing around a bit with her. I love it so much, when people come to visit, it's a perfect chance to enjoy your city as a tourist and see it from a whole different point of view, to LIVE IT as if you were on a vacation yourself. Especially in a city like Rome, where there are places to discover until exhaustion!

PS!
Did you like this post and are you intersted in reading more stuff about Rome and it's people & art & food & history ?
Let me know, I'll try my best to come up with topics which interest You the most;)

Information about the exhibition:

20 February - 13 June
ticket: 10eur/7,50eur
audioguide (english/italian) : 4eur (I SUGGEST!)
opening hours: Monday to Thursday 9:30am to 8:00pm ... continue reading

Curated by Rossella Vodret e Francesco Buranelli
Scuderie del Quirinale homepage (click!)
Tel. 06 39967500

WORD OF THE DAY

Oh boy, you can bet that!
Riiiight girls?

How did your week start?
I, for example, missed my wake-up alarm this morning ..

"Painting is but other word for feeling"

Caspar David Friedrich

I've been studing history of arts for the past four years now. The program is divided in 5
parts: 1st year) Ancient Art, 2nd) The Medieval Art (Early Christian, Insular, Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic art), 3rd) The Renaissance and this year, we started with Mannerism (which evolved in Baroque which was replaced by Neoclassicism) and arrived to Romanticism.

I have always loved this subject a lot, it's the basis of everything. But even so I hadn't realized how "annoying" the subject had got with the continuous re-emergence of Classical Art or the Catholic Church's irritating interruptions.. The initial enthusiasm had kinda faded away and I even wasn't aware of it.. until .. we started with Romanticism. I felt so liberatory when we firsts started analyzing these revolutionarily brilliant artists with a totally new approach to looking and feeling art.

Fresh.
Original.
Involving.
Deep.
Mysterious.
Nostalgic.
Intimate.
Just.. Genial!

In visual arts this complex cultural movement deepens many different aspects and relevant themes of the age: nationalism and patriotism (question majorly developed in France), regain of moral and religious values, individualism and the concept of artist as "the genius" who's destiny is to follow his inner demon, nostalgy for the Medieval Age, love for exotic places and fantastical dreams (often nightmares), recovery of an intimate relationship with nature and the image of sublime: a delifghtful horror provoked by the wonders of nature (Edmund Burke, read this article about beauty and the image of sublime), the last is my favourite aspect of the movement. In the order of my preference (the most favourite artist who represents majorly the image of sublime is in the end):

Théodore Géricault (click!)

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (click!)







Caspar David Friedrich (click!)
















John Constable (click!)













Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (click!)




Joseph Mallord William Turner (click!)


















J.M.W. Turner is my favourite amongst romantical painters.
His work is so inspiring. I think no words needed.

What's your favourite cultural and artistical movement in the art history?
And if you're a lover of romanticism, who's your favourite painter?

PS! If you care click! to read on wiki about Romanticism.