Six inflatable works of art from Hong Kong’s future museum of visual arts, called M+, are on display. They are all odd in their own way, with one or two almost NSFW. (I do like the bouncy Stonehenge, however.)
M+, a Future Art Nightmare
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Category Archives: Art
Brendan O’Connell Paints Like a Four Year Old
When I read this comment about Brendan O’Connell, the artist:
What intrigues me is the distinct possibility that 100 years from now, people will find O’Connell’s pictures of the isles of WalMart as intriguing as we find the Degas’ and Toulouse-Lautrec’s portrayals of the bars and dance halls of turn of the century Paris
I don’t expect it to be referring to a painting like this:
Brendan O’Connell also crowdsources the photographs he uses as fodder for his paintings. This piece, which shows men buying candies and Valentine’s Day cards for their sweethearts, was based on a submission.
Let’s not pretend like he has talent. I’ve seen five year olds with more skill. Check out this talented local artist, Letty Nowak.
Indians Pay Tribute to Margaret Thatcher
The Laughing Squid Presents Jeremy Laffon
Jeremy Laffon “sculpted” the below masterpiece which I found on the laughing squid website. (Which sounds vaguely naval, but is not.) The sculpture:
Jeremy Laffon
Can you tell what he made his art out of?
Tilda Swinton, Communist?
In an earlier post, Ex Bootneck confessed to watching Top Gun for twenty minutes and Billy Elliot for ten. In college, I watched a movie called Orlando for all of five minutes before I decided it was simply not for me. The starring actress, Tilda Swinton, came across as both bloodless and anemic, which may be a contradiction. And now she is up to new tricks:
Tilda Swinton has snoozing down to an art.
The “Moonrise Kingdom” actress, 52, took up residence in a glass box at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on Saturday as part of an unannounced performance piece.
Actress sleeps in box: Tilda Swinton. She helped launched the ‘David Bowie Is’ exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Clad in jeans and a blue button-down shirt, the Academy Award winner slept on an unadorned white pallet in a transparent display case.
A label for the work lists its materials as “living artist, glass, steel, mattress, pillow, linen, water, and spectacles.”
Her public napping is part of a performance art piece titled “The Maybe,” which she debuted in 1995 at London’s Serpentine Gallery. She later repeated the work in the Museo Barraco in Rome.
Swinton will return to the glass case several times to appear in the installation, but the exhibition dates remain a mystery even to MoMA employees.
Interesting facts about Tilda:
Her father is Major-General Sir John Swinton, KCVO, OBE, DL, and Lord Lieutenant of Berwickshire from 1989 to 2000.
And:
While at Cambridge, she joined the Communist Party.
Her father must be proud. Of her (yawn) artistic expression.
Desk Jobs, by Louis Quail
Louis Quail, a UK artist, photographed office workers for his series Desk Jobs:
A Dubai worker, from Louis Quail’s Desk Jobs
Louie is not the first to track office workers. Previous office art drudgery includes Anna Fox’s Work Stations back in the late 80s, while Lars Tunbjörk’s snapped pics of weird work moments. As for Jan Banning’s Bureaucratics, he was less upbeat in his photos.
I joined the Navy to get out of cubicles and guess where I am now? Back manning my cubby. If you look carefully at the Dubai guy above, you can see an action picture of some manly warrior, maybe riding on horseback. I got pics of Navy ships. And I put up my flying patches. Um, Dwight K. Shrute from the Office, I got his picture too. It’s a long story.
Somali Pirates Think Like Marc Chagall
Is life imitating art in Puntland? For example, these Somali pirates can play life:
Suspected Somali pirates appear behind bars of a court in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden. Worldwide piracy figures have reached a five-year low, according to the International Maritime Bureau.
And Marc Chagall’s America Windows will play our art:
Marc Chagall French, born Vitebsk, Russia (present-day Belarus), 1887–1985 America Windows.
Not quite, but close. My favorite Chagall story is that he wrote checks to everyone, figuring no one would cash them due to his signature.
Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. –John Steinbeck
Ismaili Muslim Art
Ismailism is the second largest branch of Shia Islam behind the Twelvers. (The difference: The Ismāʿīlī get their name from their acceptance of Ismāʿīl ibn Jaʿfar as the appointed spiritual successor (Imām) to Jaʿfar aṣ-Ṣādiq, wherein they differ from the Twelvers, who accept Mūsà al-Kāżim, younger brother of Ismāʿīl, as the true Imām.*)
I ran across this particular piece of Ismaili Islamic art and found it stylistically interesting:
Famous Ismailis you may know include the liberal Canadian politician, Murad Velshi, and his son, CNN’s Chief Business Correspondent, Ali Velshi, known for his fair reporting.
* Sorry for all the crazy diacritical marks. Wikipedia insists upon them.
The Duke Of Lancaster and a Geisha
Those of us with water in our personalities don’t pick where we’ll flow to. All we can do is flow where the landscape of our lives carries us
–Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
I never seek to defeat the man I am fighting, ” he explained. “I seek to defeat his confidence. A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory. Two men are equals – true equals – only when they both have equal confidence.
–Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
You Ever Feel Like This?
“I’m Not There,” by Barcelona-based photographer Pol Úbeda Hervàs, is a series of self-portraits where the photographer removed himself from the picture.
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow–
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there’s none of him at all.
He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
One morning, very early, before the Sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
My Shadow, by Robert Louis Stevenson
(Courtesy of Ex Bootneck)
Liu Bolin Hides from his Wife
I have heard of men standing in the shadows of their wives and vice versa. But this is a new one. A man who is painted to resemble his (possible) wife. Look closely at the female sailor. You see Liu Bolin?
Liu Bolin, hiding in the female sailor
Hey, Why Am I on the Wall?
Andy Warhol – Cmn Mao
What would you say if you were tromping through the Philadelphia Museum of Art and noticed yourself on the wall of the museum. In a 16th century Italian painting by an unknown artist titled Portrait of a Nobleman with Dueling Gauntlet. It happened to Max Galuppo, 20, a Temple University student. I suppose this is better than some Andy Warhol painting or any modern art nightmare.
Rupert Schmid Wrestles with Viola Frey
Pink Lady, Viola Frey
So, a blogger visits the Oakland Museum and is struck by a sculpture titled Pink Lady. The piece, by artist Viola Frey, is then compared to one by sculptor Rupert Schmid, titled California Venus. A neoclassical work of marbled beauty, 1965 versus 1895. I am afraid the modern era does not fare well.
A commenter sums up the subtraction of talent with this apt quote from the playwright Tom Stoppard: Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
Farzana Wahidy, Photographer
It would be easy to caption the below picture with something wry and snarky, such as Are you my mommy? But the truth is, women in Afghanistan face a rough road. I won’t bow to their culture, forgive their quaint cultural mores. I like the fact that some of them are being empowered through photography:
Farzana Wahidy, The Women of Kabul
In 2001, I created a humanitarian organization in Afghanistan called Aina, meaning “mirror.” The main goal of Aina was to empower local women, especially in media. We created Aina Photo to train local females (and males too) to become the first Afghan photojournalists. Farzana was one of the first, in 2002; she was one of 15 we picked from more than 500 people who applied. She was young, 17 or 18. At first her father was hesitant, but we convinced him that it would be a good thing for her to do. She had spent her life living under the Taliban; she knew what that meant for Afghan women, and she understood that she could tell their stories in photographs.
Photo by Farzana Wahidy
Her main teacher was Manoocher Deghati, who is now Mideast photo editor for the Associated Press. She worked very hard and eventually became the first female photographer in Afghanistan to work with international media like the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. Farzana is telling the story of Afghanistan from the inside.
Rather than supporting our spoiled, petulant artists, we should be backing these cultural warriors. I would much rather see Afghani photos on the walls of a New York gallery than a bag of garbage on the floor, with the $10K price tag on it. . .
Those Cossacks, Always Getting in the Way of. . .
That Cossack on the right looks like David Lynch. Likewise, this looks like a scene out of Twin Peaks. . .