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kottke.org posts about art

Bieber is the reason

My friend Chris Piascik has done a daily drawing every day for over 2 years. Some really good stuff. It’s almost always a crazy squiggly monster of some sort or intricately hand-drawn typography.

He also loves The Misfits. A couple months ago, he mixed The Misfits’ Crimson Ghost logo with a cat to get Cattitude. I thought the Crimson Ghost would go well with Justin Bieber, too, and have been asking Chris to do it for weeks. He finally did, and oh man, he might be making it a T Shirt, as well. 10 points if you get the reference in the title of this post.

Bieberzig


San Francisco artists’ soapbox derby, 1975

In 1975, a bunch of artists competed in a soapbox derby in San Francisco. It is “far out, man”.

The banana is the fastest fruit I could think of.


Marina Abramovic’s frequent companion

MoMA intern Julia Kaganskiy did an interview with Paco Blancas, who you might recognize as the man who has sat with Marina Abramović at MoMA more than a dozen times.

Abramovic sitter

Maybe it’s just an image that pops while I’m connected with Marina. Let’s say it’s an image of someone I love deeply, and then this creates the emotion, the tears just come out. Most of the time it’s tears of joy. You’re just being and thinking about somebody or something that’s important in your life. And then just acknowledging this person or situation and moving on into being present because yeah, the tears come, but I don’t want to cry for the entire sitting. I want to move on and continue to be with Marina, to be present.


The art of sitting

Abramovic sitter

At the behest of MoMA, photographer Marco Anelli has been taking photographs of all the people participating in Marina Abramović’s performance in the main atrium of the museum and posting them to Flickr. To review:

Abramović is seated in [the atrium] for the duration of the exhibition, performing her new work The Artist Is Present for seven hours, five days a week, and ten hours on Fridays. Visitors are invited to sit silently with the artist for a duration of their choosing.

The photographs are mesmerizing…face after face of intense concentration. A few of the participants even appear to be crying (this person and this one too) and several show up multiple times (the fellow pictured above sat across from Abramović at least half-a-dozen times). The photos are annotated with the duration of each seating. Most stay only a few minutes but this woman sat there for six and a half hours. This woman sat almost as long as was also dressed as the artist. (It would be neat to see graphs of the durations, both per day and as a distribution.)

Has anyone out there sat across from Abramović? Care to share your experience? (via year in pictures)

Update: On the night of the opening exhibition, the third person to sit across from Abramović was her ex-boyfriend and collaborator of many years, Ulay (pictured here on Flickr). James Wescott reports on the scene:

When she looked up again, sitting opposite her was none other than Ulay. A rapturous silence descended on the atrium. Abramović immediately dissolved into tears, and for the first few seconds had trouble meeting Ulay’s calm gaze. She turned from superhero to little girl — smiling meekly; painfully vulnerable. When they did finally lock eyes, tears streaked down Abramović’s cheeks; after a few minutes, she violated the conditions of her own performance and reached across the table to take his hands. It was a moving reconciliation scene — as Abramović, of course, was well aware.

Here’s a description of one of the projects they did together in the 70s:

To create this “Death self,” the two performers devised a piece in which they connected their mouths and took in each other’s exhaled breaths until they had used up all of the available oxygen. Seventeen minutes after the beginning of the performance they both fell to the floor unconscious, their lungs having filled with carbon dioxide. This personal piece explored the idea of an individual’s ability to absorb the life of another person, exchanging and destroying it.

Wescott also sat across from the artist:

I was immediately stunned. Not by the strength of her gaze, but the weakness of it. She offered a Mona Lisa half-smile and started to cry, but somehow this served to strengthen my gaze; I had to be the mountain.

Carolina Miranda sat down across from Abramović:

When I finally sat down before Abramovic, the bright lights blocked out the crowd, the hall’s boisterous chatter seemed to recede into the background, and time became elastic. (I have no idea how long I was there.)

Amir Baradaran turned the exhibition into a venue for a performance of his own…he even made Abramović laugh. Joe Holmes got a photo of the photographer in action. (thx, yasna & patrick)

Update: The look-alike who sat with Abramović all day did an interview with BOMBLog.

At certain times I thought that we were really in sync. Other times I didn’t. Other times I was totally hallucinating. She looked like a childhood friend I once had. Then she looked like a baby. […] I thought time was flying by. Then time stopped. I lost track of everything. No hunger. No itching. No pain. I couldn’t feel my hands.

Update: Author Colm Tóibín sat opposite Abramović recently (here he is on Flickr) and wrote about it for The New York Review of Books. (thx, andy)

Update: Singer Lou Reed sat. (thx, bob)

Update: Rufus Wainwright sat. And perhaps Sharon Stone? (via mefi)

Update: More first-hand accounts from the NY Times.

Update: And CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. (thx, ian)


Computer vs. Mondrian

In the mid-1960s, Bell Labs’ A. Michael Noll programmed a computer to paint like Piet Mondrian. Can you tell who did this one before clicking through?

Computer Mondrian

(via @christianbok)


Unknown Michelangelo found at the Met?

Everett Fahy, the former head of the European painting department at the Met, believes that one of the museum’s paintings by Francesco Granacci is actually by Michelangelo.

I believe Michelangelo painted it in 1506, two years before he started on the Sistine ceiling. It was already in my brain in 1971, the year after it was bought. When the Metropolitan showed it in 1971, I wrote for an exhibition called ‘Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries’ that the second panel recalled the figures in the Sistine Chapel. As years went by, it firmed up. I had long believed it to be by Michelangelo, but exactly when I don’t know. There wasn’t a moment when I suddenly said, ‘This is absolutely by Michelangelo.’ It was a gradual recognition.

One the clues Fahy used to make his determination involves the rocks in the painting; they resemble the quarry at which Michelangelo spent several months in 1497. The painting can be viewed larger on the Met’s website.


Early computer art

This collection of early computer generated art (1952-1978) includes this quite Whovian swirl:

Whovian

(via do)


Henri Cartier-Bresson at MoMA

I got a look at the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit at MoMA the other day and loved it. Seeing his work, especially his earlier on-the-street stuff, makes me want to drop everything and go be a photographer. If you’re into photography at all, this show is pretty much a must-see.

(BTW, I chuckled when I saw this photo on the wall…it was the subject of an epic Flickr prank a few years back.)


The craziest apartment in Manhattan

The Selby has some shots of Cindy Gallop’s apartment, which has to be one of most personality-drenched living spaces I’ve seen since Martha Stewart’s house. (Not that I’ve seen Martha Stewart’s house. But I can imagine.) Here is, for example, Gallop’s Gucci chainsaw:

Gucci chainsaw

There is also a video tour on Vimeo and a 2006 New York magazine article about how Gallop turned a former YMCA locker room into her “ultimate bachelorette pad”.

She had a specific vision for her new home. “I was looking for something dramatic,” she says. So she told her designer, Stefan Boublil of the Apartment, a creative agency in Soho, “When night falls, I want to feel like I’m in a bar in Shanghai.”


Sistine Chapel virtual panorama

This is probably the best way to see the Sistine Chapel aside from getting on a plane to Rome.


Shoes that make everyone the same height

Same height shoes

A selection of shoes that makes everyone 2 meters tall. (via dj)


Supersizing The Last Supper

In paintings of the Last Supper done over the past 1000 years, the portion sizes of the food depicted have increased by 69%.

From the 52 paintings, which date between 1000 and 2000 A.D., the sizes of loaves of bread, main dishes and plates were calculated with the aid of a computer program that could scan the items and rotate them in a way that allowed them to be measured. To account for different proportions in paintings, the sizes of the food were compared to the sizes of the human heads in the paintings.


Spin spin mesmerizing

From Cory Arcangel, two dancing display stands that spin at slightly different speeds. I actually watched the whole thing.

These sculptures are made from 2 over the counter ‘Dancing Stands’ (the tacky kinetic product display stands you can often see in down market stores) which have been modified to spin at slightly different speeds. When my modified stands are placed next to each other they go in and out of phase slowly.


Mountain ranges as stock market infographics

Photographer Michael Najjar took some of his photos from the Andes and turned them into stock market infographics. Here’s Lehman Brothers stock price from 1980 to 2008.

Lehman Mountain

Boy, their stock price really fell off a cliff there, didn’t it? The rest of the series is worth a look as well, although Najjar’s site features the worst use of Flash I’ve seen in many months…it automatically fullscreens and generally wastes a bunch of time with transitions. To find the rest of the photos, wait until the map starts loading and put your mouse at the bottom of the screen. A menu will s.l.o.w.l.y. slide up…High Altitude is what you’re looking for. (via info aesthetics)


America’s Greatest Living Abstract Painter Tournament

Americans take their art and NCAA brackets too seriously, so this is perfect: America’s Greatest Living American Abstract Painter Tournament. The top seeds are Ellsworth Kelly, Cy Twombly, Robert Ryman and Mark Bradford…go and vote for your favorites. (via sippey)


The artist is present

Watch a live-stream of performance artist Marina Abramović as she sits in the atrium of the MoMA all day every day until the exhibition ends on May 31. (via @gregorg)


Maps as metaphor

What a great way to start off this morning: a new series of map-based illustrations by Christoph Niemann. Reserve Battery Park is a favorite. So is this omelet recipe:

Niemann Omelet


Living still lifes

Remember the painting or reality post from a couple of weeks ago? Alexa Meade’s living still lifes are like that except better.

Alexa Meade

Here’s one of her works in progress. (thx, chris)


Painting or reality?

Makeup girl

Answer here. (via rocketboom)


Shaq: the big art curator

Shaquille O’Neal curated an art exhibition that opened this weekend at Flag Art Foundation in Chelsea.

Do you ever get time to visit museums?
I used to go a lot with my kids. Donald Trump is a great friend, and he has four or five Picassos on his plane. And that’s where I would look at them. One time, I was at a museum and tried touching a Picasso. You break it, you buy it, they said. I was told it would cost $2 million.


Overcoming creative block

A number of designers, artists, and photographers share how they combat creative block. One solution begins:

Slice and chop 2 medium onions into small pieces.
Put a medium sized pan on a medium heat with a few glugs of olive oil.
Add the onions to the pan, and a pinch of salt and pepper.


Ikea art

Art made from Ikea products. Greg, your project didn’t make the cut.


Timeline paintings

Ward Shelley paints these wonderfully intricate timelines of different things…his life, Frank Zappa’s career, and the history of the avant garde.

Ward Shelley


Super Bowl art bet

The Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art have a Super Bowl bet…the loser loans a significant piece of art to the winner for three months. The directors of the two museums trash talked back and forth via email and Twitter before agreeing on the paintings to be loaned.

“Max Anderson must not really believe the Colts can beat the Saints in the Super Bowl. Otherwise why would he bet such an insignificant work as the Ingrid Calame painting? Let’s up the ante. The New Orleans Museum of Art will bet the three-month loan of its Renoir painting, Seamstress at Window, circa 1908, which is currently in the big Renoir exhibition in Paris. What will Max wager of equal importance? Go Saints!”

(thx, stuart)


Henri Cartier-Bresson retrospective at MoMA

Upcoming at MoMA: a retrospective of the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

For more than twenty-five years, he was the keenest observer of the global theater of human affairs — and one of the great portraitists of the twentieth century. MoMA’s retrospective, the first in the United States in three decades, surveys Cartier-Bresson’s entire career, with a presentation of about three hundred photographs, mostly arranged thematically and supplemented with periodicals and books.

After MoMA, the exhibition will visit Chicago, SF, and Atlanta. Quite excited for this one.


Motoi Yamamoto’s salt labyrinths

Artist Motoi Yamamoto creates intricate large scale mazes using salt. I love this one, an installation at the Sumter County Gallery of Art in South Carolina:

Motoi Yamamoto

His Utsusemi installations are worth checking out as well.


American Pixels

American Pixels

American Pixels is a project by Joerg Colberg that uses jpeg compression algorithms to create compelling images. From the technical notes:

ajpeg is a new image compression algorithm where the focus is not on making its compression efficient but, rather, on making its result interesting. As computer technology has evolved to make artificial images look ever more real - so that the latest generation of shooter and war games will look as realistic as possible - ajpeg is intended to go the opposite way: Instead of creating an image artificially with the intent of making it look as photo-realistic as possible, it takes an image captured from life and transforms it into something that looks real and not real at the same time.


Modern fossils

Artist Christopher Locke makes fossil sculptures of extinct technology, including cassette tapes, rotary telephones, and boom boxes.

Atari fossil


3-D effect in CSS

Roman Cortes took Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas and applied a pseudo 3-D parallax effect to it using only CSS. Awesome. Now redo The Kid Stays in the Picture entirely in CSS.


Selling Wants to buy Haves

I love this project: a couple of NYC artists do paintings of items that they want and sell the art to buy the items.

Each painting shows one thing we want, and sells for the price of the real item. So you can buy A Slice of Pepperoni for $3.00 or Dinner at Nobu for $152.00. When the painting sells we use the money to go out and buy that thing.

Wants For Sale

The other half of the project is the documentation of the purchase/enjoyment of the item; here’s the outcome of “Custom Adidas”. (via clusterflock)

Update: C.J. Cubitt reminded me of J.S.G. Boggs, an artist who draws realistic-looking money and trades it for goods and services…the goods, receipt, and any change become the artwork. Here’s one of his hand-drawn bills:

Boggs dollar

Update: Dorothy Gambrell of Cat and Girl solicits donations and then draws the stuff she buys. (thx, sean & seth)

Update: The same artists also do Needs for Sale…the sales benefit charities.