Paper Art

I already posted on toilet roll art a while back, and now the same website, Bored Panda, has two more posts about paper artists.
The first, a German artist called Simon Schubert, creates art just from folding paper:



The second, Peter Callesen, creates art just from cutting paper:



Pretty neat, no?
d.

Drinks Inspired by Artists

In keeping with my apparent recent theme of "Just Reposting from Flavorpill" (ha!), had to post this gem. Check out Drink Inspired by Famous Artists. I wasn't expecting them to be as tongue-in-cheek or clever as they are. Here are some of my favorites:
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Fuzzy Vulva
- Vodka
- Peach schnapps
- Honey syrup
Mix with bone of dead desert animal.

Vincent van Gogh’s Green Fairytale
- Absinthe
- Sugar cubes
- Water
Garnish with your own severed ear — because it’s coming off anyway. Better to chop it off while you’re still sober enough to make a clean cut.

Marcel Duchamp’s Urinal Scorpion Bowl
- Dark rum
- Brandy
- Orange juice
- Orgeat syrup
Serve in actual urinal, and share with friends. Anyone who doesn’t want to drink out of the urinal is an ignorant traditionalist afraid to break the shackles of bourgeois conformity.

One of the commenters also mentioned a drink inspired by Hemingway: "this delightful little punch in the face called Death In The Afternoon. Which is, quite simply, Absinthe mixed with ice-cold champagne." Given that I am currently reading the drunkfest that is The Sun Also Rises, that sounds like a worthwhile pursuit...
In the meantime, we're drinking Jameson & Ginger for tonight's Always Sunny episode.
Cheers!
d.

Art Cakes

One of the pages in flavorpill's list of pop culture cakes is on cakes inspired by visual art, and I just had to re-post their awesomeness.
Who wouldn't want a cake based on the work of Warhol, Picasso, Hirst, Banksy, or Mondrian?!?

(Pollock)

(Warhol)

(van Gogh)

(Picasso)

(Mondrian)

(Banksy)

(Hirst)

I'm particularly fond of the Mondrian and Banksy cakes, although the Warhol and Hirst ones are pretty darn cool as well.

Detroit

About two years ago, I went to Detroit, Michigan to do some research at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Though my topic really had nothing to do with Detroit, other than that a very rich man had once lived there and bought a painting I am very interested in, I was instantly struck by the empty decay all around me in that city. It was the middle of winter, cold and barren, and the walk between my little bed-and-breakfast and the museum was strewn with huge old mansions, boarded up and abandoned, on still and empty streets. It was kind of magical, in a way, and certainly fascinating. I found myself dreaming of buying or squatting at one of these mansions and starting an artist collective.
I wasn't able to do so at the time, but it seems I wasn't the only one with the idea. An article in today's NYT, "Wringing Art out of Rubble in Detroit," discussed the growing creative community that has colonized Detroit's wide, empty avenues and broken-down buildings. Transplants from the hipster havens Portland, San Francisco, and Brooklyn as well as random places like Montana are banding together to come up with creative ideas, from installations to urban agriculture to selling a plot of land one inch at a time, which seem somehow easier to bring to fruition in a city this barren. One quote in particular describes this phenomenon to a tee: "There’s an excitement here...There’s a sense that it’s a frontier again, that it’s open, that you can do things without a lot of people telling you, ‘No, you can’t do that.’” This sensibility really reminds me of why creativity and creative lifestyles seem to flourish so well in Berlin--and also why that may soon not be the case, if the uptight German police continue to crack down as they were beginning to do during my time there. In a city that is "left behind," artistic types are free to create in the empty spaces. As one artist put it, "I'm really interested in the idea of our relics."
I couldn't have said it better myself.

PS. I found the image on this short post about Detroit from a couple months before my visit there.

Matchstick Art

Check out these awesome sculptures by David Mach, made entirely out of matchsticks!



Apparently he sometimes sets them on fire.

Vollis Simpson

The NY Times recently ran an article called "Vollis Simpson: Junkyard Poet of Whirligigs." It's about a 91-year-old outsider artist and former farm equipment repairman in North Carolina who creates huge, fanciful and dynamic pieces from junkyard scrap. I was particularly drawn by a quote in the article from Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, "a Maryland philanthropist and consultant to nonprofits" who opened the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. She says of Simpson, “He’s delighted with attention, but he doesn’t need it…my favorite artists don’t watch themselves being artists.”
My favorite artists don't watch themselves being artists.
What an interesting little phrase. Some of my favorite artists decidedly do "watch themselves being artists" (Whistler comes to mind). If you're not watching yourself being an artist--i.e. if you're unaware of your artistic identity, or don't particularly identify your work as 'art'--then are you really an artist?
Food for thought.

Alexa Meade

Alexa Meade creates "living still lifes" by painting live bodies and incorporating them into installations with found objects. These are photos, not paintings!
Also check out her flickr.

IKEA and art

Haha...check out this article on flavorpill about various artists' interpretations of IKEA.

RIP Jeanne-Claude

I've been remiss in not posting this sooner. Jeanne-Claude passed away last November after a life making beautiful "environmental art" with her husband, Christo. I will never forget seeing The Gates (pictured above) in Central Park my senior year of high school. It was breathtaking, and one of my first introductions to site-specific art. I wish I could have seen when they wrapped the Reichstag in billowing fabric here in Berlin. Jeanne-Claude, you will be missed.

Gabriel Orozco

Gabriel Orozco currently has a retrospective on at MoMA that was recently reviewed in the NY Times.
I was particularly taken with the description of one of the pieces in his first MoMA show in 1993, pictured above. Instead of using the sterile gallery space offered him by MoMA, he "chose instead the museum's nooks and crannies," creating this piece by placing bright pieces of fruit in the windows of the building across the street from MoMA. Holland Cotter writes in the Times, "You looked up and there they were: bright dots connecting art and life."
The main point of the article is a contrast between that show and the current one, which is bigger and more flamboyant. Cotter makes the point that the tones of these two shows point to a dichotomy in Orozco's artistic practice, concluding, "at some point he may decide which he really wants to be: the artist of poetic epiphanies or of institutional product. In this show he is both."
Yet he also says, "Mr. Orozco likes to disappoint; it is almost a credo of his. "I want to disappoint the expectations of the one who waits to be amazed," he has said." To me that quote would indicate that Orozco cultivates not just a dichotomy but a continuous change in his practice so as to confound expectations.
Either way, I cannot help being captivated by this description of "what Mr. Orozco has always done best: find the cosmic in the commonplace, sweeten abjection with wisdom and wit." Yet supposedly now, "At 47, Mr. Orozco is no longer the footloose wanderer, toothbrush, notebook and camera in hand, who found poetry in puddles and dignity in debris, dung and dryer lint."
Sounds like such an interesting show, not just for the art itself, but for what the chosen pieces and tone of the show overall say about a career and a man.
Wish I could see it!

Toilet Roll Art

Wow--made from toilet paper rolls!
Done by an artist called Junior Fritz Jacquet.

Also, this is my hundredth post! whoo?

Bosch tchotchkes

Pretty great. Based on the imagery of Hieronmyus Bosch, a Renaissance painter often seen as a forerunner of Surrealism. On Amazon.

Propeller Island City Lodge

Just heard about this awesome hotel in Berlin. The Lodge is described as "a habitable work of art in the heart of Berlin, whose wealth of ideas never fails to attract everyone into its gravitational field and to continue inspiring guests long afterwards." All the rooms are crazy!
"Definitely one of City Lodge's highlights. The diamand-shaped room is completely(!) laid out with mirrors and gives you the impression of living in a kaleidoscope. Caution: Very sexy!":

"The furnishings hang from the ceiling and you sleep and sit in comfortable boxes beneath the floorboards. Uncannily surreal! The only four-bed room. One of the most unique accomodations.":

"A large room with a gable roof. The bathroom in this room is like a small house, entirely made of blue glass. From the high seat you can observe the antics and 'goings-on' in the circular bed, and its rotations present you with constantly changing perspectives through strategically empty picture frames. ...but we cannot recommand the bed for tall people (2m in diameter).":

"In both coffins you can even slumber beneath closed lids! Exclusively connoisseur room for all those "Nosferatus" who cannot wait for that which awaits us all. Whosoever has second thoughts can creep to the bedplace below, safe within the labyrinth. Not only a unique experience for Gothic die-hards...an exquisite location on top of that!":

and more...

Subodh Gupta

Very interesting artist...makes sculpture out of pots and pans:


As well as more traditional materials:

Of this bronze take on Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q., Gupta says he is an "idol thief." "Art language is the same all over the world," he claims, "which allows me to be anywhere." An interesting sentiment.

Slooow Motion

I've always been a fan of this viral video by Action Figure:

And was reminded of it again today when watching videos by Bill Viola, who says of his work, "I am interested in what the old masters didn't paint, those steps in between."

Interesting, then, that the choreographer who put together this dance version of Gericault's 'Raft of the Medusa' uses such similar methods:



PS. I love the song in the Action Figure video. It's a Shazam remix of 'Sweaty' by Muscles with vocals by Reija Thomas.

Rubens & Hélène Fourment

Rubens painted numerous portraits of his second wife Hélène Fourment, as well as inserting her into many of his allegorical and Classical images. She was not yet 17, he 53, when they married. She bore him 5 children before his death.
Arte's 'Palettes' video series says of his visual obsession with his young wife that it represented "the glory of the flesh," with Hélène's very real, womanly, dimpled and sensuous body, soft breasts, and creamy pearlescent skin standing in stark contrast to the young Rubens' smooth, bland and utterly unrealistic painting of Eve. Further, the video claims that in these portraits Rubens was taking part in "the tradition of Dianas, Junos, and Venuses...goddesses who fill men with desires and with dreams, sometimes only to have them dashed the more completely."

Sand Animation

from Ukraine's Got Talent. Really amazing performance. Reminds me of a quick-fire spray paint artist I saw once on the street in Mexico.

Thomas Demand

Would you believe those are photographs of sets...made out of paper?
Yeah pretty neat. Just went to his opening at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

Google shows 14 paintings from the Prado

I just heard about this. On Google Earth now you can go to the Prado Museum in Madrid and view 14 of their masterpieces paintings in ultra high resolution. See the video below to see just how up close and personal you are able to get. It's amazing!

San Jose Art Museum

Went for the first time today...
They have an exhibit up on Andy Warhol that I wanted to check out. The actual selection of pieces was blah--a couple rooms of screen prints that I've seen a million times before. But there was an interesting blurb about his "fascination with fame" on one wall and an informative documentary playing in one corner. The best part, though, was the little craft table in the middle of one gallery where you could combine Warhol's images (soup cans, a self portrait, and flowers) printed in black on clear plastic with your own compositions of colord paper cutouts and crayon drawings. It was neat.
Upstairs they had an exhibition called "Process as Paradigm" with works from the permanent collection and it was a great smattering of things, including Tony Oursler's Slip (2003), seen above. It's an S-shaped fiberglass sculpture with a video of a woman's mouth and lips projected onto it. Her skin looks green and there's a soundtrack of various phrases, some more intelligible than others, all emphasizing the 'sss' sound. It was both creepy and alluring; I really liked it.
There was also an exhibition of works by female printmakers, where these two aquatints:

by Pat Steir (whose work I just realized I also saw at Crown Point Press last year) really reminded me of my own work:


Other standouts:

Edward Corbett Untitled (Black Painting), 1950
(part of an exhibition on San Francisco Abstract Expressionism)


A detailed Franklin Williams 1972 thread and fabric canvas kind of like the one above.