In a time of fashion photo-blogs, online magazines, and the overall access to inspiration and information via social media outlets, Blue Logan provides a counterpoint to instant updates. Known for his large-scale paintings of prominent seasonal runway looks and quick sketching techniques during industry events, Logan has gained the attention of some of the highest fashion editors and art collectors alike. Releasing his most current series of work, Tokyo Crossings, this past week, Logan explores Japanese technique and returns to a favorite subject. GrandLifeNYC spoke with the artist following his opening to learn more about his most recent show.

Why Tokyo? What drew you to Japan?
I went to Tokyo because I had been invited by the Le Baron club to play music there for a month. I thought it was a good opportunity to come up with a show story.

What was it that made you explore painting more scenic images?
I’ve always loved drawing buildings and perspective. That’s how drawing started for me in many ways. So, this is in some way a return rather than an exploration. I wanted to mix what I do with fashion with what I used to love to do and sorely missed.

Did you find yourself adopting new techniques for this series? If so, what and why?
I decided it would be fun to use only Japanese ink and papers - and of course Japanese brushes, which are so beautiful. So yes, it took a bit of time to play with the ink, its absorption rate, and the movement of the brush. But, I’m sure you can study that for years.

Why were your fashion images predominately painted in black and gold?
I liked the combination for one. Also, the images that inspired me by Irving Penn/Issey Miyake seemed to say that to me.

Where did the bird imagery come from? What inspired you to do this?
Tokyo is full of ravens. If you know Tokyo, then you know that it’s not full of pigeons like Trafalgar Square, or the starlings of Rome, the flying foxes of Sydney — Tokyo is ravens. These large, black, menacing birds are really quite something. I lived by a cemetery; so there was a real horde of them hanging out there sometimes. The ravens worked themselves into the street scenes so I wanted to work them into the fashion pieces too. In the end they became the whole dress.

If you could do any artist collaboration, who would it be with?
Toulouse Lautrec.

What are your main artistic influences?
For this show it was Irving Penn, Issey Miyake, and Mashisa Fukase.

If God exists, what do you think He’ll say when He greets you at the pearly gates?
What did you do to your hair?

-Liz Doupnik

“A Day Like Any Other” spotlights a decade of Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander’s unique contribution to the narrative of Brazilian Conceptualism, interweaving painting, photography, film, and sculpture with themes such as nature, language, temporality, and poetry of the quotidian.  The exhibition includes two immersive installations, several suites of new paintings, and three installations that require direct visitor participation. I Wish Your Wish prompts visitors to write a wish on a slip of paper and exchange this wish for the wish of a previous visitor, printed on a ribbon to be tied to the wrist, while First Love asks visitors to describe the faces of their first loves, which will then be sketched and displayed on the walls of the gallery for the duration of the exhibition. Curator Richard Flood expresses, “It is Neuenschwander’s extravagant disregard for artistic categories that makes her work so perfectly tempered for this time. It is the ease with which she lives in the university of the world that guarantees her work its freshness and depth.”

The Whitney Museum has commissioned three contemporary works of art to adorn the site of its future downtown building at the south entrance of the High Line in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. The artists, each of whom is displayed in the Whitney’s permanent collection and was chosen by the curatorial team to reflect the museum’s vision of recognizing living American artists, include the collaborative team of Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker; Tauba Auerbach; and Barbara Kruger. Each artist will work with printed vinyl and demountable decals that will be attached to the perimeter fence and structures within it, responding to the site’s dynamic urban context. The series of installations will be on display at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington Streets through mid-October.

The time between Henri Matisse’s return from Morocco in 1913 and his departure for Nice in 1917 saw an unexpected reinvention of the artist’s work, spurred by the onset of World War I and the intensity of Paris at the time. This exhibition is the first to delve into the most rigorous and innovative period of the artist’s career, revealing meaningful connections between works that are typically viewed as unrelated and examining the physical production of these paintings, focusing the exhibition on the act of creation itself. Among the works on display are two paintings Matisse himself identified as among the most pivotal of his career: Bathers by a River and The Moroccans. Matisse expressed the significance of this time period in a 1951 interview, “Despite pressure from certain conventional quarters, the war did not influence the subject matter of painting, for we were no longer merely painting subjects.”