Interview with photographer Alec Soth. “I feel like a large part of photography is like a performance. And the photograph is like a document of this performance, of this encounter with the world.” Many interviews with photographers often end up sounding very similar, but I enjoy reading them anyway. (via eyeteeth)
Advertise here with Carbon Ads
This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Beloved by 86.47% of the web.
kottke.org posts about art
In March of 2004, an artist named Tofu began constructing a map comprised only of the hometowns of American men and women killed in Iraq (map detail). “One of the disturbing by products of this work are the maps of various states with many rectangular pieces missing where I cut out towns.” (via moon river)
Do rich artists make bad art? “When you become as rich as [Warhol or Dali], being as rich as this becomes your story. If you don’t make art about being a multimillionaire, you are being dishonest. If you do, you can hardly claim the universality of great art.” (via rw)
Dazzle ships
Some photos and sketches of WWI ships painted with “Razzle Dazzle” camouflage. “The primary goal of dazzle painting [which took visual cues from cubism] was to confuse the U-boat commander who was trying to observe the course and speed of his target.” (via cf)
Sand animation art. Watch the videos…it’s cooler than it sounds. (thx, brock)
Wired Magazine profiles Josh Davis. Davis typically gets too much credit for being controversial and too little for his work. His speeches/appearances are well worth seeking out; they’re entertaining, informative, and inspiring.
Whitney Biennial 2006, through May 28 in NYC. NY Times review. Momus describes his first day as a performance artist at the Biennial.
James Nieuhues’ ski report paintings
The Captain of Design himself points us to the ski trail maps of James Nieuhues. Nieuhues is a prolific fellow…he’s done paintings for most of the large ski resorts in the western US.
Fractal bacteria
Pruned has collected some lovely petri dish scenes full of fractal patterns.
Billions and billions of bacterial landscape architects pruning — no less in environments poisoned with antibiotics — other bacterial landscape architects, dead or alive, to form dazzling arabesque parterres. The self-organizing embroidery of organisms in constant Darwinian mode.
More here. See also ferrofluid.
A statement on art statements. “I have no way of actually proving this, but I am convinced that many photographers do not have all that stuff from their statements in their heads and then go out to shoot the photography. I have the suspicion that some of them, after having shot their photos, have a hard time writing something that can pass as a statement, because ‘I just wanted to take beautiful photos of rubble piles’ somehow doesn’t appear to be acceptable.”
Who knew David Sedaris’ family was so full of art experts? “I don’t know if you realize it, but it seems that Picasso is actually Spanish.”
A 1904 photograph by Edward Steichen was recently sold at auction for more than $2.9 million, the most anyone’s ever paid for a photo at auction. (via consc)
Dorian Lynskey “[charted] the branches and connections of 100 years of music using the London Underground map”, much like Simon Patterson’s The Great Bear. (gs)
Socials & More