This image was put together in a conference room over Memorial day weekend. Can you imagine how many Post-It notes had to be used? Come on, guess...
It took 2,646 notes. I wonder how many more notes it would take to do the fat Elvis?
This from Mental Hygiene:
"my boss decided that we needed to do something fun and creative in one of our conference rooms - the one we use for brainstorming and internal meetings - and together we came up with the idea of filling the wall with post-it notes in a multicolored mosaic of (and i’m not sure whose idea this was) Elvis."
Wow! Why can't we all have bosses like that?
Also on the website are concise directions on how you can make an image out of Post-It notes.
(via Cool Huntings)
Again, Wooster doesn't disappoint. This above image was found in Melbourne. The artist is Rone, and I suggest looking at more of the artist's work here.
This is from Arianna Huffington about today's White House Press Briefing:
"When asked about criticism of the president’s linking of 9/11 and Iraq, Scottie responded, “And who made any suggestion of a link to the attacks?” Uh, that would be your boss Scott -- you know, the guy who brought up 9/11 five times in his big speech on Iraq."
It is unbelievable that these guys continue trying to sneak 9/11 back into the dialogue with Iraq. But it is even worse when they do it and then deny that they did it.
During the last election the public was too stupid to notice. Perhaps, people are just now starting to realize what a dishonest, disingenuous bunch of hacks we have running the country.
The Wooster Collective has again led me to a very interesting artist. His name is Danny Cannizzaro and he works with paint, graphic art, photography, and animation. His interests in the arts seems very ecclectic and at only 21 years old he still has room to grow. I really enjoy his work and respect that he is able to allow us to witness works in progress.
This from Danny on his site:
"I'm sick of art being overly elite and incomprehensible to anyone that hasn't dedicated their life to it. My goal for this site was to show people what I've been working on and also show some of the thought process behind my work in an attempt to demystify the notion of "the artist"."
You should really check out his animation. It is impressive stuff.
Thanks Wooster for this bit from Swathmore College:
"Darwin's theory of natural selection provided a simple, non-supernatural explanation for how life on earth had evolved and continues to evolve. Although scientists worldwide view evolution and natural selection as completely uncontroversial, popular support in the United States is waning, especially with respect to the origin of humans. Without more public displays of affection for the theories of natural selection and evolution, it is likely that more and more schools will allow or even promote the teaching of evolution 'alternatives' that invoke dabbling by supernatural entities."
Easily print special Darwin bookmarks and stickers here. Print out some bookmarks and pass them out. Make some stickers and stick them in public places. Don't let the radical Christians in this country dictate what our children are taught in public schools.
Canada can be the first proud nation to say that it put an end to nation-endorsed homophobia, under the law at least.
This from Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin:
"We are a nation of minorities. And in a nation of minorities, it is important that you don't cherry-pick rights.
"A right is a right and that is what this vote tonight is all about."
What about the U.S.? Well, I was watching The Simpsons this past Sunday when a Parental advisory appeared before the show warning parents of themes regarding same-sex marriage. Just one example illustrating that we still have a long way to go.
I stumbled across the work of Joe Sorren from a link on another artist's site and was immediately taken with his strange, but beautiful characters. There is a real sadness in these works, a desperate vulnerability in the characters that doesn't quite match their youthful appearances. It is this contradiction that makes Sorren's work so effective for me.
This from La Luz de Jesus about Sorren:
"Sorren paints mostly in acrylics, sometimes in pencil and crayon, creating his delicate, muted and inarguably beautiful paintings. Influenced by a variety of artists from Vermeer and Leighton to Twomby and Kerouac, Sorren is noticeably interested in the power that lies within stillness."
If you haven't heard of the band OK Go then here is your chance to see them in action. This video is both hilarious and well-choreographed. It was done using one angle, one continuous shot, and all on what looks like someone's patio. The song, A Million Ways, is well worth a listen as well.
(via Josh Rubin)
You knew this was going to happen:
"Within hours of yesterday's Supreme Court decision allowing a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas Capitol, Christian groups announced a nationwide campaign to install similar displays in 100 cities and towns within a year."'We see this as an historic opening, and we're going to pursue it aggressively,' said the Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, director of the Washington-based Christian Defense Coalition, which organized vigils outside the Florida hospice where Terri Schiavo died this year."
And when a Christian says "aggressive", you know they mean real red-faced, righteous anger aggression. They will parse over every word of the Supremes and decide what is permissable for a Commandment monument, and then before you know it monuments are popping up everywhere you look. Get ready for one, or many in your neighborhood.
How much longer before we start burning people at the stake?
This from Art MoCo on the work of Rebecca Campbell:
"West Coast painter Rebecca Campbell left her Mormon roots and a naïve sense of the art world behind in Utah when she headed off to art school in Oregon. But it didn’t take long for Campbell to trade the security blanket of her religion for the trappings of feminism as she started to explore themes that took on more social relevancy."
I am always amazed at how people from an intense religious background can transform themselves into something so reviled by those in the church. That being said, I am glad that Campbell found herself out of her Mormon upbringing and discovered a joy in art. And even better, we get to experience it with her.
Campbell's work is currently available at LA Louver.
This from The Huffington Post:
"Iran's ultraconservative president-elect, at once defiant and at ease, vowed Sunday to restart the nation's controversial nuclear program and warned European negotiators that building trust required a mutual effort."Asked about relations with the United States during his first news conference since Friday's election, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran 'is taking the path of progress based on self-reliance. It doesn't need the United States significantly on this path.'"
This is certainly good news for the neo-cons. They have just been waiting for an excuse to launch a war on Iran(some might say this has already begun). Now, this newly elected jackass, a radical conservative(imagine that), is just giving the Bushies' shivering bloodlust one more rationale for an attack. Bush, Cheney, Rummy, and Condi are probably in the Oval office today basking in their shared orgasmic glee.
And for the rest of us....well, we are just scared as hell. At least I know I am.
Google has just launched its new video search engine. Check it out.
I was over at The Nation's website when I ran across an interesting illustration by Roberto Parada, and decided to check his work out. He basically works in satirical portraiture. His work is mostly commisioned from magazines. But don't get the wrong impression from the works that I have displayed here. He is an equal oppurtunity satirist. He has done magazine covers for The Weekly Standard, and he has done a slightly wicked portrait of Al Gore.
This from Parada:
"If you can identify the flaws, you can go right to the core of a person. There is also a level of emotion that comes from seeing someone being molded and created right in front of you. They are real to me at that point. I begin to have a connection. It's a great feeling. There is nothing that tops it for me, nothing."
Also, check out his creepy portrait of Homer Simpson.
This from The Nation on Tim Robbins' new release, Embedded:
"In May 2003 actor-writer-director Tim Robbins gathered up his pile of newspaper clippings and notes and set out tell the story of 'our reckless neo-conservative administration's march to war, of the unmitigated failure of our press, who acted more like courtesans than journalists, and also of the tragedy that results when young men and women are asked to engage violently with strangers in a hostile land.' The play he produced, Embedded, is a ninety-minute satirical look at the real and recognizable events of our war in Iraq."
I remember reading about this play quite a bit when it first came out, and was interested in seeing it then. Well, now that it is available on DVD, I can.
For some reason, I ended up at the Steynberg Gallery's website the other day and discovered the work of Richard Silva. Silva's work is a nice cross between cubism and abstract expression9ism, but he takes it in a direction all his own. I was really excited about the work I saw, and if I had the jack I would have been happy to lay down some bills for his work. Really nice stuff.
I had a lot of trouble finding out more about Richard Silva. All I could find was this:
"A painter, incorporating a mixed media approach within his paintings from old newspapers, torn cardboard, and even boards and scraps of wood."
If anyone has any more information on Silva, let me know. I would be happy to post more about him and his work.
This Sunday MoMa opens, Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro 1865–1885. This show is on the heels of other successful "partner" shows, like Van Gogh/Gauguin and Matisse/Picasso. However, this is not a made-for-exhibition partnership. It is clear that Cezanne and Pissarro were extremely close friends. This is an important friendship to explore since Cezanne is commonly thought of as the father of modern painting. What, if anything, did Cezanne learn from his partnership with Pissarro? What, if any, was Pissarro's contribution to the shape of modern art?
This from MoMa's website:
"This exhibition offers an unprecedented opportunity to examine the parallel creative paths of these two artists, both through their common choices of subject matter and through their intense engagement in exploring new pictorial processes. Very much in the spirit of projects launched at MoMA in the past few years, this exhibition will reveal how modernism developed through acts of exchange and discussion, rather than through isolated enterprises."
One other interesting note about this show is that Joachim Pissarro, Pissarro's great-grandson organised the exhibit.
Read more about the exhibit at the NYT.
The exhibit runs through Sept. 12.
Fernando Botero is now exhibiting his new work, which focuses on the atrocities that took place at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Again, to continue on the theme from yesterday, it is good for the sake of our histroy, as well as Art history that these confused and misguided times are represented in our creativity. Movements are born in such volatile times, but only when people respond to that volatility with thoughtful passion.
Here is my translation of Google's translation, regarding Botero's answer to why he came to paint pictures about Abu Ghraib:
From the anger that I felt, and that the entire world felt about this crime committed by the country that by all appearances acts as the model of civilization, justice, and compassion.***
The injustice makes my blood boil.
Botero's exhibit began June 16 at the Museum of Palazzo Venezia in Rome.
It has been my feeling that contemporary artists in general have not been vocal enough about the state of things right now, politically speaking. The visual artists are not the only guilty party, all arts have been grossly deficient in challenging our new social norms since September 11th. However, that being said I can understand the possible distaste and joylessnes involved in such work, but it would be nice to see more nonetheless.
This is why the work of Mark Bryan is so important right now. He is truly speaking truth to power, and grinning all the while.
This from Mark Bryan on his website:
"Given this beautiful planet and all our talents, one would think that things for us would be a lot better than they are. I suppose I've carried a general disappointment in human nature for quite a while and that makes itself apparent in most of my work. It seems to me that in terms of what we do to each other and to our environment, we really are fiddling while Rome burns. Perhaps we are either too smart or too dumb for our own good."As a result of this perspective, satirical work is the logical direction for me. Humor allows for comment to be made without alienating the viewer. I believe it also shows a larger view and some affection and sympathy for the players in it."
Just to show you that Mark Bryan is not exclusively working in politics. Here is another example of what he is doing:
Bryan will be showing at Steynberg Gallery starting July 1st.
(via Internet Weekly)
This from Will Ferrel's commencement address at Harvard in 2003:
""One of the challenges you will be faced with is finding a job in our depressed economy. In fact, the chances of landing a decent job are about as good as finding weapons of mass destruction in the Iraqi desert. Slim and none. And Slim just left the building. In fact, the closest thing I found to looking like a weapon of mass destruction is the turd that Dick Cheney left in the Oval Office toilet about an hour ago. On that note, God bless and happy graduation."
Wow! Ferrel was calling out the Administration way back. Not to mention that his WMD joke was the best ever.
(via Kos)
Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-1998, is on record now as saying that the U.S. has already begun waging war on Iran. This is very troubling news:
"The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American over flights of Iranian soil are taking place, using pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities."The violation of a sovereign nation's airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence-gathering phase.
"President Bush has taken advantage of the sweeping powers granted to him in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, to wage a global war against terror and to initiate several covert offensive operations inside Iran."
You can argue that the news organization this story come from is questionable, but it is hard to argue that the source is corrupt.
God save us if it is true.
It has been far too long since I have openly ridiculed the journalistic joke that is the Faux News Channel (I would link, but I'd rather not provide their propaganda machine with the possibility of more traffic).
Anyway, I am glad someone is picking up my slack and publicly going after Faux News. Thanks Shox News!
(via Wooster)
Gardens of Sweden just named its, "Ten Young Artists to Know Now". Out of the work I saw, the most impressive was Gregory Crewdson's photographs. All the photographs seem to have a narrative to them. You always get the feeling that something bad has happened, or is about to happen. All of his photographs seem pregnant with desire or sadness.
This from PBS about Crewdson's process:
"Gregory Crewdson's photographs are produced on a feature-film scale, often requiring massive cranes, big lights, and a large crew."
If you want to read an interview with Crewdson or watch some video of his work. Go to this PBS site.
It seems like I have been yanking an image a day from over at Wooster, but they have put up so much great stuff the last few days.
The above image was stencilled onto a wall in Rome by an Artist named Sten. With work like this being done all over the world, it is clear that Street Art is a legitimate movement that desrerves serious consideration. Well done.
Here are the high points from Steve Jobs' excellent commencement speech at Stanford University:
"I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."***
"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."
***
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
I have read a few commencement addresses in my time. They are normally so dry and useless that I decided not to sit through my own. However, Jobs, as he usually does, has raised the bar with an excellent speech (watch video here).
This from the BBC:
"Radiohead's album OK Computer has been named the best of the past 20 years by US music magazine Spin."The British band beat Nirvana's Nevermind and Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back in the publication's 20th birthday issue.
"The band's 1997 release was chosen because it 'uncannily predicted our global culture of communal distress'."
This is great news for all of us Radiohead fans, but we already know that they are the best band on the planet. The biggest question is: When is the next album?
I just saw this Gum Grafitti over at the Wooster Collective and thought I would visit the photographer, Wolffman, and put a couple up.
I cringe just about every time I run into a Tom Cruise story these days. Our main stream press is becoming as bizarre as the British press with their celebrity obsessions. Still, I have to admit that this story really caught my attention, and it is more due to Cruise's reaction to the incident:
"Four members of a freelance camera crew were arrested at the War of the Worlds premiere in London after its star Tom Cruise was squirted with water."The 42-year-old actor's face and jacket were drenched with water squirted from what appeared to be a microphone.
"The crew was working for Channel 4, which said it hoped Cruise would see the funny side of the stunt which was for a new comedy show.
"The four men were arrested on suspicion of assault and later released on bail."
It is sad and bizarre that these guys were arrested for squirting water at the star. However, I can see why Cruise might be embarassed, but he could have handled himself better. If you watch the video of the incident he has a 'how dare you?' attitude about the whole thing, which makes him seem all the more insulated from reality. The BBC uses the word "drenched" to describe Cruise after being squirted by the water. Well, if you watch the video you can see that he is merely dampened, which makes his reaction all the more over-the-top. Anyway, my favorite part was when someone brings Cruise a towel to dry himself off. That, to me, was the perfect image of the mad hatter celebrity.
All that being said, I will still go see "War of the Worlds".
If you are an avid listener of the NPR program This American Life, as I am, then you are probably familiar with the work of Sarah Vowell. If her name doesn't ring a bell then her voice certainly would. Her unique voice, and her humor has caused many to label Vowell as the female equivalent to David Sedaris, but that is unfair to Vowell's talent as a speaker, and as a writer. It is a voice all its own, as is her writing.
Check out this interview at Powell's, or go to NPR and hear Vowell read an excerpt from her newest book. Then check out that book, "Assassination Vacation," or if you just love that signature voice then buy the audio.
To be honest, I have made a concerted effort not to obsess about politics on this, my new and improved blog. However, after posting this story criticizing the Bush administration's environmental policy (ironically entitled, "When will it end?"), I have just discovered another, sinister lapse in the Bush poilcy towards Global warming. This from The Observer:
"Extraordinary efforts by the White House to scupper Britain's attempts to tackle global warming have been revealed in leaked US government documents obtained by The Observer."These papers - part of the Bush administration's submission to the G8 action plan for Gleneagles next month - show how the United States, over the past two months, has been secretly undermining Tony Blair's proposals to tackle climate change."
I was lovin' this piece by WK (via those indispensible purveyors of street art over at the Wooster Collective), and thought I'd put it up for all to see. Go check out WK's site for more.
This from the LA Times via The Huffington Post:
The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before announcing Thursday that it would relax regulations limiting grazing on those lands, according to scientists involved in the study.A government biologist and a hydrologist, who both retired this year from the Bureau of Land Management, said their conclusions that the proposed new rules might adversely affect water quality and wildlife, including endangered species, were excised and replaced with language justifying less stringent regulations favored by cattle ranchers.
Grazing regulations, which affect 160 million acres of public land in the Western U.S., set the conditions under which ranchers may use that land, and guide government managers in determining how many cattle may graze, where and for how long without harming natural resources.
The original draft of the environmental analysis warned that the new rules would have a "significant adverse impact" on wildlife, but that phrase was removed. The bureau now concludes that the grazing regulations are "beneficial to animals."
Eliminated from the final draft was another conclusion that read: "The Proposed Action will have a slow, long-term adverse impact on wildlife and biological diversity in general."
Also removed was language saying how a number of the rule changes could adversely affect endangered species.
"This is a whitewash. They took all of our science and reversed it 180 degrees," said Erick Campbell, a former BLM state biologist in Nevada and a 30-year bureau employee who retired this year. He was the author of sections of the report pertaining to the effect on wildlife and threatened and endangered species.
"They rewrote everything," Campbell said in an interview this week. "It's a crime."
One of the major problems with politics in this country is that both camps are so firmly entrenched in their positions that there is never any give, even when our very environment is at stake. Over and over again this administration has proven itself to be antagonistic towards the environment, and over and over again they get away with it. It seems that if you want to complain about their policies then you are a tree-hugger, or an environmentalist, which are both code words for liberal (gasp!).
The problem is that we are not talking about taxes or judicial nominations, we are talking about the world we live in. Republicans have to get some perspcctive and recognize what this administration is doing to our country's enviroment. Whether they were scaling back air pollution laws and calling it the Clear Skies Act, or handing a bill to the logging industry called the Healthy Forests Initiative (Orwell would be proud), or this new charge of changing the language of science. Well, it is no longer a matter of opinion. It is a fact that the Bush administration has an unfathomable environmental record.
Jim Lampley writes for The Huffington Post:
" A Bush-watcher website identified as TBRNews.org is reporting under the byline of "domestic intelligence reporter" Brian Harring that the Department of Defense is using a cynical tactic to mislead the public regarding the true death toll for American military personnel in Iraq. Harring claims he has an internal pdf. file from the D.O.D. which establishes that nearly 9000 Americans have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom, but that the official number has been held to 1713 by designating as Iraq deaths only those who perish on Iraqi soil. The remainder, he says, are military personnel who have died en route to Germany or in German hospitals-- casualties of the war, but not listed in the official death toll."
If true, this is extremely troubling.
Update: It looks like this story may not be true. Jim Lampley is now reporting that, "Questions regarding its[the website's] credibility are too severe and too plentiful."
It took me awhile to find out more about Caroline Hwang, but I loved her stuff so much that I was determined to get more info. I was finally able to snag this bit from the New Image Gallery:
"Some people get lost in the woods searching for home; others find the comfort of home within the woods, or even within the journey of seeking solace."Caroline Hwang invites you to get lost among her yarn trees, plush boats, and other strangely soft woodland diversions. Wander among awkward girls, ponder relationships gone awry, and do not bother with the trail of bread crumbs--using a collage of fabric and embroidery, Caroline hopes you find the comfort of home. Or you can stay lost."
Hwang's work is now being featured in Swindle magazine. Thanks to Cool Hunting for the tip.
Also, check out this short Quick Time movie from Hwang's website. It will give you a peek into one of her gallery shows.
It looks like the American press might finally be getting serious about the Downing Street Memo(here's my take on the memo, and here is a wikipedia link on the memo). This from the AP:
"Amid new questions about President Bush's drive to topple Saddam Hussein, several House Democrats urged lawmakers on Thursday to conduct an official inquiry to determine whether the president intentionally misled Congress."At a public forum where the word 'impeachment' loomed large, Exhibit A was the so-called Downing Street memo, a prewar document leaked from inside the British government to The Sunday Times of London a month and a half ago. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, organized the event."
Of course questions regarding Tony Blair's truth-telling were all over the British press as early as 2003. Our press is so slow and lazy, more than two years behind the rest of the world, and we are just now trying to catch up. The American media machine has been so terrified that they might be seen as having a liberal(gasp!) bias, that they try to sink these stories by ignoring them. It is only through the tenacity of those on the internet that this story has been able to float.
There is an exhibit up right now at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, "Moments in Modernism, Georgia O'Keeffe and Andy Warhol: Flowers of Distinction." This is an interesing idea for an exhibit, albeit a possibly dull one. O'Keeffe's flowers are certainly interesting, not my personal favorites, but I would think they could find a better counterpart then Warhol to display beside her work. Obviously O'Keeffe's flowers are world renowned, but I didn't even know Warhol painted flowers until Art MoCo posted info on this exhibit.
This from the O'Keeffe Museum's website:
O'Keeffe and Andy Warhol: Flowers of Distinction brings together approximately 40 depictions of flowers by two of America’s most celebrated and popular artists. In so doing, it demonstrates how their paintings of the same subject, which represent very different moments in the history of American modernism, allowed them to both position and distinguish themselves within an age-old tradition of flower painting."
Here is a Mapplethorpe flower just to give you an example:
All that being said, I could be completely wrong about Warhol's flowers, and maybe this is just a way to introduce and educate the public that Warhol even painted flowers. Or maybe I am out of the loop. Perhaps, Warhol's flowers are already extremely popular and the Okeeffe/Warhol connection is more than appropriate.
Either way the exhibit is up through Jabnuary 2006.
This from Design Boom, on Carlo Mollino's "Polaroids":
"Less well known are Mollino’s erotic polaroid photographs.
"After Carlo Mollino died, his executors found more than 2,000 polaroid photographs, made beginning in the 1960s, subjects are Turin’s unpenitent Magdalenes - most of them nude. At one level they can be confused as little more than a genre of amateur pornography with a disinterested will to artistic form."
I have been having my own struggles lately with that thin line between erotic art and pornography. As I said yesterday, "certainly there is a thin line between the erotic and the pornographic, and this line is always determined by the viewer."
So, I am posting Mollino's images to try and bring viewers to my side, and hope that they too can see the art in Mollino's photographs.
I think that history shows us that his photographs are art through the handling of the subject, meaning the model's placement and pose. For example, the image at the top of this post is photographed in the classic reclining nude pose. This pose is nearly a prerequisite among painters.
I have compared the Mollino below to Velazquez's famous, "The Rokeby Venus" to illustrate how closely the subjects resemble one another. I use these examples to make my point in historical terms. If these Mollinos' were paintings the question of pornography would never even be introduced. It is the realness of the images, the model's possible vulnerability, our own shame and uncomfortability with the human form that we might find work like Mollino's offensive, or pornographic.
See more of Carlos Mollino's "Polaroids" here and here.
A couple of weeks ago I found a blog that is devoted to posting Bram Stoker's Dracula in its journal-type format, meaning they will post....I'll let them tell you:
"This blog will publish Bram Stoker's Dracula for the next six months. Individual pieces of the novel will appear on the calendar dates indicated in the text, starting with Jonathan Harker's May 3rd Bistriz journal entry, and finishing up with November 6 and the final Note.""I'm planning on two categories of posts. First, and primarily, will be the novel's text. Secondarily I'll post about the novel, or reflections on this project."
The project started on May 2, but it is certainly not too late to catch up.
Also on the Dracula-front is a new piece of historical fiction, "The Historian" by writer, Elizabeth Kostova, which is getting rave reviews.
The story concerns a young American who discovers a mysterious book in Amsterdam from her father.
Here is a blurb from Pubishers Weekly on Amazon:
"The book is ancient, blank except for a sinister woodcut of a dragon and the word "Drakulya," but it's the letters tucked inside, dated 1930 and addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," that really pique her curiosity. Her widowed father, Paul, reluctantly provides pieces of a chilling story; it seems this ominous little book has a way of forcing itself on its owners, with terrifying results."
You can read excerpts from Kostova's novel here.
I have never personally been a big fan of Dracula, but I have to admit if I keep hearing good things about Kostova's novel then I might have to pick it up. Who knows, if I really like her novel then it may lead me to read from the Dracula Blogged site as well, and the great thing is that it will be free.
Tim Lokeic's work is chaotic, beautiful, disturbing, and erotic often all at the same time. Lokeic has a way of making us interersted in his subjects even when their surroundings are absolute mayhem.
For example, some of Lokeic's work is rawly sexual, and yet the subjects' eyes always seem to be responding calmly to the situation. Now, certainly there is a thin line between the erotic and the pornographic, and this line is always determined by the viewer. Still, I think his work offers us a look at the line without crossing it. Perhaps, it is the cartonnish appearance of the actions that make them seem less real.
Regardless of what you think of the subject matter, you should give his work a look.
This from Volta on Lokiec's exhibit as Zach Feuer Gallery:
"Using paint, crayons and pencil on paper and panel, the works combine abstract art-historical references and updated pictures of young people lounging together and interacting. From pregnant women to group orgies, Lokiec paints and draws his figures performing various activities."
Update: It looks like this exhibit was over on June 11. I missed it by that much.
The Guardian has posted the winning short fiction piece from this year's Orange Prize. The winning author is Sam Binnie, a 23 year old that actually works in the publishing industry. The story is called, "The Dress," and it only takes a few minutes to read. So, if you have the time...
Here is the first bit:
1.
"When you are seven, you will wear a dress that you will look for, for the rest of your life. It is perfect, lemon yellow with a frill at the bottom and ribbons on each strap. Don't trip when you arrive at the party. Mind the hem. Be careful with the jelly. This is a dress in which you are a princess, or, if the situation demands, a pirate, robot or shop assistant. This dress you wear will not only show you what a body can be, but will come to signify all the hopes that you don't know you have at seven. It will stand for joy, and simplicity, and forgetfulness. This is not a dress you will wear again."
This is an interesting blog that acts as a open forum for people to write letters to the president. There are both pro and con letters, and it is interesting to read different points of you from people all across America about this president.
Of course, I have made my opinions clear about Bush over and over again. So, why not go get some other points of view?
An exhibit of new Claes Oldenberg and Coosje van Bruggen will end this Sunday at the Pace Wildenstein gallery in New York. The exhibit is entitled, "The Music Room", and features a series of sculptures of musical instruments in different states of disrepair. The exhibit also includes some sketches and paintings that acted as precursors to the sculptures.
Oldenberg and Van Bruggen are long time collaborators(They are also married.), and our probaly best known for the giant sculptures of everyday objects including clothespins, trowels, and the monster of all shuttlecocks.
This from the Pace Wildenstein website:
"The artistic team of Oldenburg and van Bruggen has, to date, executed more than 40 permanently sited sculptures in architectural scale throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan."
You can check out some of their large-scale sluptures here.
I always think of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec as the late-nineteenth century's best artist without a movement attached to his name. He is an island unto himself in Art History. Certainly other artists used the Paris underworld for their work, but none as thoroughly as Toulouse-Lautrec.
This from The National Gallery's website:
"Artists' fascination with the decadent spirit and glamour of bohemian life in the Parisian district of Montmartre at the turn of the 20th century is the focus of this major exhibition of more than 250 works primarily by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)."
It seems that Toulouse-Lautrec's legacy has largely been limited to his print work, but his paintings are very impressive. It is sad that Toulouse-Lautrec's style has been defined by the work he did for street posters. It is true that his street posters are very good, but certainly Art History owes his paintings a second look.
Well, The National Gallery just completed its exhibition on this subject, "Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre." But don't fret if you didn't get a chance to see it in Washington. It is on its way to the Art Institure of Chicago starting July 16.
This is a great exhibit because it essentially acts as a semi-retrospective of Toulouse-Lautrec's work from his most substanital period 1888-1896,--a barrage of his paintings, drawings, and prints.
Another great thing about the exhibit is that it includes works by other painters on the subject of Montmarte, including works by Van Gogh, Picasso, and Degas.
Richard Serra is now showcasing his huge installation/sculpture, "A Matter of Time" at the Guggenheim Bilbao. The installation opened on June 8, and will be a giant addition to the museum's permanent collection.
Here is what the Guggenheim's website says about Serra's work:
"One of the preeminent sculptors of the 20th century, Richard Serra has long been acclaimed for his challenging and innovative work, which emphasizes the process of its fabrication, the characteristics of its materials, and an engagement with the viewer and site. As an emerging artist in the early 1960s, Serra helped change the nature of artistic production. He and the Minimalist artists of his generation turned to unconventional, industrial materials and began to accentuate the physical properties of their work. Relieved of its symbolic role, freed from the traditional pedestal or base, and introduced into the real space of the viewer, sculpture took on a new relationship to the spectator, whose phenomenological experience of an object became crucial to its meaning. Viewers were encouraged to move around —and sometimes on, in, and through— the work and encounter it from multiple perspectives."
It is certainly the ability of the viewer to participate with the sculpture, become a part of it, that makes the piece so interesting to me.
ArtMoCo elaborates on the participatory potential of the installation/sculpture:
"Imposing as they may be, the sculptures invite the viewer to become participant: to explore around them, to find the spaces within, to play with sound, to stop and start at any point, to move at any speed. Because of its mazelike structure, this installation will leave different imprints on every person that passes though the experience."
The New Yorker's current Critic's Notebook opens like this:
"Has anyone ever loved a picture by Neo Rauch at first sight?"
However, I wan't looking at them in person, and since there seems to be so much going on in each painting, I wonder if I might feel differently after exploring them further.
I certainly have no problems with his level of craftsmanship. He is obviously a good painter. Still, there is something that isolates the viewer form his work, a divide between the subjects and the viewer. I have gotten a similar dispassionate feeling when I have seen certain Dali's, as if there is a busy strangeness simply for its own sake. This can be done successfully, but often it just comes off feeling dry and emotionless.
That all being said, I don't dislike Rauch's work, I just find it wanting. But I will keep looking. I don't love it now, but who knows, maybe I will eventually find that missing piece. I certainly learned to appreciate what I once couldn't understand about Dali.
About a month ago I wrote a piece about Czech photographer, Miroslav Tichy. I ended the piece by asking if anyone knew how I could find more of his work to contact me. Well, thanks to a reader (much thanks, Anne), I have found some more of his work, and it was, as I expected, well worth a further look.
My dilemma with his work is how he goes about taking these photographs. Are these women aware that they are being photographed? Admittedly, there is something exciting about an unexpected snapshot, but his photographs are so revealing, often catching subjects naked. Still, to his credit, the photographs are so cloudy and dreamy that they often don't even seem real, seeming instead to be some picture taken out of some memory or old fantasy. So, often the faces seem featureless or unrecognizable, protecting the subject from any possible embarassment.
This from Arndt & Partner Berlin:
"In self-imposed obscurity Miroslav Tichy has used his limited photographic equipment with immense virtuosity, producing an astounding body of work - unique in its originality and stupendous in its formal excellence - dedicated to a single theme: the appeal of the female figure."Tichy was born in 1925 in a small town in Moravia (Czech Republic) where he still lives today. Having studied at art school, in the 1950s he set out on a career in painting and drawing. However, totalitarianism and personal experience soon caused him to turn away from state-approved culture. Instead Tichy increasingly concentrated on photography. With great skill and imagination he even constructed much-needed items of photographic equipment from empty cans, spectacle lenses and wooden boxes."
I have had, in the past, a three picture rule when creating any new post, but I had to break the rule for Tichy.
I feel like some of the most interesting stuff I have been finding lately has been from the Wooster Collective. WC is almost exclusively devoted to street art. However, the artist Adam Neate is not so easily labelled. He doesn't leave his paint on the streets. He actually leaves his paintings on the street. Neate shares his art work with those that might appreciate it, but may not be the kinds of people that go to galleries. This, for me, is the perfect marriage of traditional art and street art.
This from Wooster:
"Adam Neate, who for years has been going around town leaving paintings on the street for people to pick up and enjoy in their homes, has finally launched a store of his own for those of you who like us, like his work but have never come across any of them in your 'hood.
"We're quite happy Adam has done this, as for years people keep asking us where they can get a hold of one of Adam's pieces and our answer is always --'walk the streets of London and maybe you'll get lucky.'"
However, it seems as though Adam has decided to sell his work over at Beautiful Crime(another great site). I do not begrudge anyone for trying to make money from their art. I just hope Neate continues to share his art with unexpecting passers-by.
I was just recently introduced to Phoebe Beasley's work after learning that she is to deliver the commencement address at my alma mater, Ohio University tomorrow.
I really enjoy her work. It is whimsical yet serious, and her color choices are flawless. She has a way of presenting the character of a subject without ever showing us that subject's facial expressions, and she does it in a style that is wholly her own.
This from Ohio University's Outlook:
"Beasley specializes in oils-on-canvas as well as prints and collages and her works are featured in the homes of celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby and Maya Angelou. She is the only artist to twice receive the Presidential Seal on her artworks. Her commissions include the official artist of the 2000 National Democratic Convention, the 1987 and 2000 Los Angeles marathons and the 100 Black Men National Convention in Detroit in 1999."
I really hadn't expected posting two pieces of street art today, but Wooster put up a beautiful painting from Curtiba, Parana, Brasil that I just had to post. I think this may be, no, it is the best piece of street art that I have ever seen. I love it.
The Face Analyzer is a site where you upload a picture of your face and the site analyzes your ethnicity and an array of other personality traits. If nothing else it is a fun site to check out.
In case you were wondering here are my results.
By the way, I tested the system by trying several different pictures of my face. Besides my ethinicity, nothing else really changed. Strangely the picture I have posted on this site registered me as 100% Middle Eastern. As far as I know I am 0% Middle Eastern. My final profile had me at 59% Angle-Saxon and 41% Middle Eastern. Go figure.
I go to the Wooster Collective everyday to see what is being done on the street art front. It is the offical site for all things street and I highly recommend it. For me, personally, street art is a fascination, but I still have a love/hate relationship with it, which I have expounded on before. I certainly hate more street art than I love. But every now and then I find an image that I think is powerful and important work for the public to see. Oftentimes these pieces seem juvenile, or sophomoric in thier obviousness. Nevertheless, sometimes it takes being obvious to get your point across to a larger number of people.
This image was found on the streets of Murcia, Spain:
A new work by J.S. Bach has been found. It is not a major work, but it is said to be of "superior quality." It was apparently written for the birthday of a Duke, for whom Bach worked as an organist.
This from the AP about the discovery:
"Experts have discovered a previously unknown work by Johann Sebastian Bach in documents taken from a German library shortly before it was heavily damaged by fire, researchers said Wednesday."It was believed to be the first new Bach work to surface in 30 years."
In case, you hadn't already heard, there is a Max Ernst Retrospective at The Met through July 10.
A founding member of the Surrealist group in Paris, German-born Max Ernst (1891–1976) was one of the most inventive artists of the 20th century. His paintings, steeped in Freudian metaphors, private mythology, and childhood memories, are regarded today as icons of Surrealist art.
Ernst has always been a real hit-and-miss arttist for me. The works of his that I like, I tend to really like, and the ones that I don't like, well, they just creep me out. He has always been an artist that I respected for his nihilism and conceptual inventions than for his aesthetic eye. There is no doubt that he is a major figure in modern art, and an essential character when discussing the importance of both DaDaism and Surrealiusm.
I feel like I have been ignoring Eastern art so far on this site. So, when Cool Hunting directed me to this exhibit, I knew this was the one to post.
This is an exhibit that offers a comprehensive look at Japanese art over the last half century. You can imagine the post-war struggles that Japanese artists had to contend with in the fifties and beyond. It has been a turbulent time for most industrialized countries with the technological advances we have experienced over this time period, but the Japenese also had to struggle with new identity, merging the line between East and West, while desperately, delicately maintaining their rich heritage.
Here is a blurb from the site:
A comprehensive exhibition by Kunsthaus Graz and Camera Austria entitled “Chikaku. Time and Memory in Japan”, reflecting the dynamic development of Japanese art during recent decades.The exhibition focuses on the topics of 'perception' (Japanese 'Chikaku'), 'time' and 'memory'.
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"Modern Japanese art was created under the complex influence of brisk modernisation and rapid technological progress. In the course of this development it exhibited an essential relation to the problems of society in dealing with technology and the environment, the latter being of global importance today.
You are invited to anonymously contribute your secrets to PostSecret. Each secret can be a regret, hope, funny experience, unseen kindness, fantasy, belief, fear, betrayal, erotic desire, feeling, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything - as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before.
There are funny cards, artistic cards, and cards that are downright heartbreaking--but they are all worth a look. This a truly amazing site.
Thanks to Claudius for the link.
This is good news for Dave Chappelle fans from Time:
"The international man of mystery is back in the house. Dave Chappelle, the congenial comedian who took off in the middle of making the third season of his acclaimed Comedy Central show, popped unannounced into two Los Angeles comedy clubs last week. They were Chappelle's first performances since his abrupt escape to South Africa. (Onstage, he ridiculed the rumors of rehab.) Meanwhile, sales of his second-season DVD package are breaking records, with 1.2 million copies sold in the first week alone.
Here's to hoping Chappelle really blasts the media when the third season of Chappelle's Show comes out, assuming there is a third season.
The Billboard Liberation Front is at it again. I really wouldn't want these guys for enemies. These are strong images that stick with the viewer. In fact, I had a taste of McDonald's last week, and I couldn't get the image of their earlier billboard out of my head. Regardless, I ate the hell out of that greasy, fatty grub.
But you got to hand it to these guys for determination, and I am all for taking your protest to the streets, especially when you can use a traditionally corporate method to get your point across. I mean, one of these billboards is a Clear Channel billboard for crying out load.
(Photos from EricinSF via Wooster Collective)
I actually have a few friends that aren't convinced that Hillary is going to run for President in '08. Well, the following picture should leave no doubt about her future plans.
Hillary is running for a second term as Senator of New York, but she is really starting an early Presidential campaign. These photographs are rarely accidental. Can someone say image consultant?
This from The Huffington Post:
"Senator Hillary Clinton castigated President Bush and Washington Republicans today as mad with power and bent on marginalizing Democrats during a speech to 1,000 supporters at her first major re-election fund-raiser, which netted about $250,000."Mrs. Clinton, who is running for a second term in 2006 and is widely described as a possible Democratic nominee for the presidency in 2008, said that her party is hamstrung because Republicans dissemble and smear without shame and the news media has lost its investigatory zeal for exposing misdeeds."
Artists Christoph Steinbrener & Rainer Dempf are displaying their new work, "Delete" in Vienna from June 6-June 20th. They have covered the city's advertisements, logos, symbols, and signage with yellow foil (shades of Christo and Jean-Claude). This must be wonderful for residents, providing them an oppurtunity to experience their community in a new way. However, it must be awful for tourists, not knowing where anything is located. Still, maybe they can appreciate that they are being treated to a wonderful piece of city sculpture.
This from Art MoCo:
"The sculptural aspect will come into play when the monochrome of the coverings provide a more cohesive visual pattern, allowing the buildings to have more connection while bringing the actual shapes and forms more into evidence. The discursive aspect will be even more powerful as discussion revolving around the use of public space will be opened. The urban landscape has been imprinted with messages of all kinds and thus a familiarity with constant symbolism can lead to disorientation when such an artificial context is removed."
This from the artists' website:
"'Delete' will entail a very likely unique cooperation of all resident shopkeepers with a spectacular art project, a cooperation that has been made possible by the shopping street management unit of the Vienna Economic Chamber. For a period of two weeks, the entrepreneurs will renounce their identities to become part of a large-scale installation."
The photo above is from Angry Alien Productions. They animate extremely abridged versions of popular movies and make all the main characters rabbits. Brilliant!
It turns out that they have done this with all kinds of different movies(The Exorcist, Jaws, The Shining). The photo above is from their version of Pulp Fiction.
Thanks again to Internet Weekly for the link.
You have got to see Fast Film. It is only a short film(difficult to wade through if you have dial-up), but it is unlike anything I've ever seen before. It is like a digital collage love story to the history of cinema. There are iconic images from the history of film strewn about all over this movie.
This from Channel 4 Films about Fast Film
"Virgil Widrich's extraordinary, award-winning animation is a technical masterpiece. Hundreds of great movie moments are distilled into 14 minutes of animated magic by the director's clever use of technology (and a photocopier).On the surface, Fast Film tells a simple story. A woman is kidnapped and a man sets off to save her, embarking on a dramatic rescue mission full of wild chase scenes.
What makes Fast Film unique is that all its scenes were taken from 300 different feature films. Director Virgil Widrich captured stills from the 300 movies, and made over 65,000 photocopies of these, then folded them into a variety of shapes and animated them. The result is a completely fresh look at Hollywood - a tour of movie history at breakneck speed."
Thanks to Internet Weekly for the link.
I was browsing some online galleries and discovered the paintings of Aaron Westerberg. I was really struck by his choices on what to paint. It is obvious that he has, at least in the ones that I have chosen to display, chosen to paint pretty pictures. It is easy for the art establishment, or art academics, to dismiss pretty pictures as pointless and derivative, but it is difficult to understand what makes a picture pretty, beautiful even. Aaron Westerberg obviously understands, and he is good at it.
This from Whistlepik on Westerberg:
"Aaron Westerberg is a fine young draftsman who excels in the depiction of the human figure. In his portrait work he is able to capture the subtleties of form and the unique character of the sitter."
It is nice to look at a piece of art now and again that is not full of chaos, confusion, or cynicism.
This from Terry Rodgers about his work:
"What I know for sure is that I love to look at people…watch them…photograph them… eventually paint them. I am fascinated by the implications of their gestures. I take energy and inspiration from the strangeness and connectedness I find--the contradictions within which we all live. Surface, substance, substrata, interior, exterior and the realms of meaning are my obsession."
There is no doubt that there is plenty to see in a Terry Rodgers painting. There seem to be layers of storylines floating around his canvases. My problem is, I'm not sure if the stories are supposed to be troubling or heavy with desire. Perhaps, Rodgers is trying not to show us his hand. Or, maybe, he just doesn't care.
Often, though, the stories seem less interesting because the people appear superficial and airbrushed. Their gestures and expressions are as unimportant and dull as they appear to be.
However, sometimes Rodgers does catch a moment of real regret, guilt, or jealousy and that is where his work is the strongest.
I saw this piece early this morning on the Wooster Collective website. I took special notice of it, but then moved on to other things. But, for some reason, that picture stuck with me throughout the day.
I have been thinking a lot lately about street art and what it means to art culture in general. Is it a good or bad thing?
Street art means many things, and it comes in many forms. Oftentimes there is no other way to look at it than as simple vandalism. It is one thing to admire a piece of art work on the side of a building. It is a whole other situation when it is on the side of your building.
I really dislike tradional graffitti, those fat, or jagged letters spelling out someone's tagline or signature. That is ridiculous. But something that is as uplifting as the above picture can transform someone's normal day into inspiration. That is the power of street art--to make someone look up from the mundane.
Street art can also obviously be effective as a tool for social comment or protest, and that is as important as the uplifitng. Both, I hope, have a goal of changing a normal person's ordinary day into an extraordinary day.
Let us remember that street art might be the only art many people ever see in person. So, perhaps, it should be worth it. If we must be vandals then let us be quality vandals.
Go over to blogebrity and read the interview with Josh Rubin of Cool Huntings. I have been reading Rubin's blog for months now and, other than the tennis shoes stuff, I would say it is top notch. I always find something good there.
This from Arianna Huffington on her website:
Take the biggest under-reported story of the moment (at least in America): what the Downing Street Memo reveals about the Bush administration and how it led us into the Iraq war.For those of you not up on the details -- and considering the woeful lack of coverage in the American mainstream media, who can blame you? -- the Downing Street Memo, disclosed by The Sunday Times of London, details a secret meeting on July 23rd, 2002 -- eight months before the invasion of Iraq -- at 10 Downing Street between Tony Blair and Richard Dearlove, the head of MI-6, who, just back from Washington, reported that Bush was determined to go to war. Here is the money quote from the memo:
Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. [Bush's National Security Council] had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
I have consciously tried to stay above the muck of politics lately. So, I have pretty much laid low on this downing street memo story. However, the absolute lack of attention that this story is being given in the American press is beyond negligence, it is outright defiance towards the truth. The media clearly does not have time to report on real stories. They are too busy deciding whether Michael Jackson is guilty, or whether or not Tom Cruise has lost his mind. They are so busy playing in the circus that they are just letting the world outside the tent fall apart.
After I posted my entry last night on the The Capezzera Drawings exhibiting at The Findlay Gallery, I ran across another drawing I wanted to post.
There are more where this came from here.
Ifr you haven't checked out The Huffington Post yet, then you are missing out on loads of great material.
Like this must-read piece from former presidential candidate, Gary Hart:
American political parties, as we have known them for two centuries, are disintegrating. They are being replaced by shifting coalitions that are forming and reforming constantly. This transition is leaving an awful lot of Americans adrift.
Because most of our founders did not trust the idea of political parties, they came into existence only reluctantly. Parties seemed too much like the dreaded “factions” that had arisen in Europe, what today we would call interest groups, concerned more with their own good than the common good. America’s founders, steeped in the ancient Greek and Roman republican ideal, wanted their new fellow citizens to be concerned with the commonwealth. The more people fell into or formed narrow or special interest groups, the less they would be committed to the ideal of the new republic, that which was held in common by all and over which all were sovereign.
One of the highest compliments for a citizen of the founding era was to be called “disinterested.” That did not mean uninterested. It meant not interested in one’s own concerns at the expense of the commonwealth. The founders held the quaint notion that if we were all concerned, or interested, in what we held in common we would all benefit individually. Likewise, the more a citizen was interested in getting only what was best for him and those like him, the more corrupt the American republic would become.
Or this from one of my personal favorites, Adam McKay:
If you happen to be a W. Bush supporter who's skimming through the Huffington Post to see who the liberal traitors and agitators are, I have some questions for you. And these are honest, "I really am looking for an answer" questions, not rhetorical snarky questions.I'm really looking to figure out this divide in our country between the so-called true patriots and the shiftless liberals. So help me out and then when you see me on the road with my "Wal-Mart: Low Wages, Low Morals...Always" bumper sticker, feel free to flip me off.
Now I already fully admit that I'm a liberal idiot and cynical godless appeasement junkie, so there's no need to call me that. Oh, and also, I'm a Hollywood smart-ass and a Prius driving hippy. I won't get into the fact that I was raised in a lower class background and I hadn't been to Hollywood until five years ago. Plus, even though I believe in a strong military and supported our attack of Afghanistan and Serbia, you can call me a weak-kneed pussy. It's really okay. I get it.
Also, if you use a news aggregate, then The Huffington Post is your feed. I get about all the news I need, and then some from their site. I ditched my AP wire feed because I was getting all that news from Huffington.
There is an interesting exhibit of Edward Hopper drawings at the Peter Findlay Gallery. It is always interesting to see a painter's drawings, especially wehen we can see the growth of a work from a sketch to a painting. We are lucky enough to see some of that on display with some of Hopper's work.
This from from Peter Findlay site:
"Edward Hopper died in 1967. When Jo Hopper died eight months later she left the entire contents of the New York Studio to the Whitney Museum and their Cape Cod home in Truro to her friend Mary Schiffenhaus."In drawers and cupboards Mrs. Schiffenhaus found studies for many of Hoppers great late works. The twenty-two drawings in this exhibition were given to her close friend Frank Capezerra in 1969."
Hence the collection being called The Capezerra Drawings.
These are quite a find for any lover of Hopper's work. I would certainly call myself a fan of Hopper's art, and I think one has to appreciate his place in American art history. He is certainly an important figure and it is nice to see that there is a seemingly thorough record of his work.
Posted by Paul Hina at 12:22 AM
From 9 a.m on Sunday 5th June to midnight on Friday 10th June 2005The Beethoven Experience
Every single note of Ludwig van Beethoven in one week, 5th to 10th June. Every symphony, every quartet, every sonata, and plenty of Beethoven surprises too...
You have the option of listening live online, or you can wait and download everything the day after the broadcast for free.
Also, The Beethoven Experience website is packed full of Beethoven stuff. Check out actor John Hurt reading from Beethoven's letters.
This from the Matthew Marks Gallery, where Johns' new works are on exhibit:
"The first painting in this new series included a string hanging from upper right to lower left, generating a curve called a 'catenary,' and this curve became the compositional backbone of the entire series."Johns produced a total of 61 paintings, drawings, and prints based on the catenary theme, 38 of which are included in this exhibition. The work is saturated with autobiographical references, both transparent and opaque, while it simultaneously encourages multiple layers of meaning. Sensual surfaces, fragile constructions, and formal rigor meet allusions to key moments in the history of modern art and motifs from Johns’s earlier work."
Then there is this from Charlie Finch, over at ArtNet:
"What does it profit a man to gain the whole art world and to lose his soul? Those who see beauty in the work of Jasper Johns are confusing that quality with the deep pathos of a bitter, secretive man leaking sadness in every stroke."The 'Catenary' series, currently on view at Matthew Marks, is a gray graveyard marking a life of unrelished successes and missed opportunities to connect with the wide, wonderful world out there. If you want to know what a catenary is, look down at your balls (or labia). That uneven double arc is a catenary, like the doublet of a watch chain or uniform braid. Sad sexuality is the uniform of Jasper Johns."
Wow! Someone needs to hand Charlie Finch a valium(what a dick!). Talk about the pathos of a bitter man.
Anyway, critics aside, I have always thought of Johns as the least interesting of his contemporaries: Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, John Cage. However, that does not mean he has not done some interesting, even great stuff. I find his new work to be as good as anything that I have seen him do.
That being said, I don't think there is anything particularly groundbreaking in his new work. In fact, some select pieces of the Catenary series seem downright boring. I agree with some critics who have hypothesized that Johns appears to over-intellectualize his work, unintentionally causing the aesthetic to suffer. That being said, I find the piece I posted above to be one of the more engaging and aesthetically pleasing of the pieces I have seen from the Catenary series.
This from the Free New Mexican about the photographs of Mona Kuhn:
"Those works feature the nude human figure, directly and sympathetically observed, singly and in groups. The settings are everyday, even prosaic-- someone's backyard deck, a quiet room-- but in their power and intent, the images suggest Eden before the fall: a conscious fairyland."
In the photographs of Mona Kuhn we enter a narrative where the characters seem both warm and vague. There is a story standing before us, sometimes looking at us, and we are either hiding away from the action or a part of the action, but we are never so removed that we are not asked to understand something about the characters.
There is an unsex in these photographs, an innocense that causes thge nudes to be unthreatened by their own sexualities, a general relaxing of social norms that is comforting, welcoming, a photograph you want to come back to, a world you don't want to leave.
This from Mona Kuhn:
"The nude is basically-- how do I say?-- it's just a neutral form of human being. It's away from fashion. It's away from time. It's a way for me to be timeless, to go to an essence of emotion."
You can hear an audio interview with Mona Kuhn about her work here.
You can see her work at the Charles Cowles Gallery in NYC.
Buy her book, Mona Kuhn: Photograhs.
Last night, while my wife and I were preparing for bed, we were talking about art and the sexes. Earlier in the night I had used the 'woman' qualifier when discussing a painter. Example: She is the most exciting woman painter I have seen recently. My wife thought the painter would object to the qualifier, and as I thought about it I began to feel guilty.
So, that night we decided that I am actually quite progressive when it comes to the visual arts. My tastes seem to be pretty wide spread. However, when it came to literature we could not remember the last female author I had read. Even when I came up with a book, I had either not finished it, or had been assigned the book at some point in college. The only book that I could come up with, after quite a long deliberation, was Anais Nin's Henry and June, which I read a couple of years ago.
Then I found this story via Bookslut:
"Men have finally realised what they are missing, but they still aren't all that keen to do anything about it.This is the conclusion of a study into sex differences in reading habits, which found that, while women read the works of both sexes, men stick to books written by men. And the boys can no longer use ignorance as an excuse.
'Men clearly now know that there are some great books by women - such as Andrea Levy's Small Island - they really ought to have read and ought to consider "great" (or at least good) writing,'