Journal

Let the Beauty of Art inspire Children

Lianhe Zaobao 联合早报

19 May 2021

Written by Zhang Heyang

Translation by Isabella Meo

28-year-old harpist Laura Peh founded a business last year - a publishing house specialising in art picture books for children - with the belief that art can help cultivate the emotional intelligence and creativity in future generations.

University students Isabella Meo (left) and Erika Solomon (right) are currently interns with Laura Peh (centre), founder of Cinnamon Art Publishing.

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The Muses of Gustav Klimt

Women fascinated Gustav Klimt and he enjoyed painting them. He began with commissions from Viennese society belles, and over time, sought to express the beauty of human emotion through his depictions his muses, their personalities, and desires. His later portraits overflow with expression and decorative features, thus turning the anatomy of a muse into ornamentation. Klimt developed his Art Nouveau style with motifs, mosaics, flowers, and oriental influences. He often thought of his muses as trapped fairies in their own dreams.

How Immersive Art Experiences are Taking Over

As a millennial, I grew up with educational computer games and television programmes, learning problem solving from Putt Putt, egyptian history from Carmen Sandiego and visual art from this one peculiar computer game that I can no longer remember the title of. It featured a talking lizard that would visit famous Impressionist artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet, and up till now, I still credit part of my life trajectory to that lizard. I ended up studying art history in university, and even though I was naturally inclined towards the arts from a tender age, that game gave me the confidence as a primary school kid to proclaim that my favorite painter was Van Gogh, even though most of my peers had no idea who that was. It was one of the many seeds planted in my early life that actually bloomed!

Nam Jun Paik’s Relevance Today

In the sunny island of Singapore, where cinnamon art stories was founded, we have grown to love giant outdoor projection art - those that wrap our museum facades during events such as the Singapore Night Festival and National Gallery Singapore’s Light to Night Festival. Thousands of people fill the streets watching slick animations dance across monumental slabs of concrete. Given that our lives are full of screens and digital content, it is natural that we seek art in that form. It's eye-catching, dynamic and familiar to us. It is easy to take for granted the fact that video is considered an art form. In fact, these large scale video projections, alongside other immersive, technologically-mediated art, come from a long lineage of video and new media art, from which Nam Jun Paik stands out as one of the most important.

Louise Bourgeois: Solitude

Many artists spend large amounts of time by themselves and work alone in their studios. Louise Bourgeois was an artist that emphasized the importance of solitude to the creative process. It was during periodic breaks of solitude that Bourgeois was truly able to connect with her most authentic feelings which later transpired into her iconic body of work. Solitude was medicine to her anxiety. These silent retreats provided her with a sense of safety and calmness. In fact, Bourgeois consider her art as her salvation – the only way of escaping what she had experienced in her childhood.

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