Sympathy for the art gallery

May 18

“Then in the late 18th century, the idea was openly formulated that true art comes from dangerous voyages of the soul. From Turner adventuring in sea storms to Schiele opening his senses, artists going into the modern age were filled with the Romantic urge to discover intense realities. In the later 20th century, this cult of the unknown switched from mountaintops to hard drugs, and from high culture to rock music – but the Romanticism was the same.” — be sure to read the damning conclusion: Damien Hirst is the perfect artist for the cosy world of Desert Island Discs | Art and design | guardian.co.uk

May 17

[video]

markmcevoy: There goes the neighborhood classy

markmcevoy:

There goes the neighborhood

classy

May 16

standardgrey: Ad Reinhardt, 1966.

standardgrey:

Ad Reinhardt, 1966.

May 14

foreverdiary: Rachel Whiteread Love.

foreverdiary:

Rachel Whiteread

Love.

(via artspotting)

Love.

Love.

(Source: chriswool, via installator)

May 10

[video]

May 09

[video]

May 06

grupaok: splattergut: Oskar Kokoschka’s Alma Mahler Doll as Venus. Munich, 1919 But the news of Alma´s marriage to Walter Gropius hurt him still more. In deepest desperation, he ordered a life-size doll from a doll-maker in Munich which should resemble Alma in every detail, and he thought it would help him console himself for the loss of his loved one. Not surprisingly, the result was disappointing: a clumsy construction of fabric and wood-wool, which Kokoschka had beheaded at a wild, orgiastic party in his atelier in Dresden, in 1919. wut

grupaok:

splattergut:

Oskar Kokoschka’s Alma Mahler Doll as Venus. Munich, 1919

But the news of Alma´s marriage to Walter Gropius hurt him still more. In deepest desperation, he ordered a life-size doll from a doll-maker in Munich which should resemble Alma in every detail, and he thought it would help him console himself for the loss of his loved one. Not surprisingly, the result was disappointing: a clumsy construction of fabric and wood-wool, which Kokoschka had beheaded at a wild, orgiastic party in his atelier in Dresden, in 1919.

wut

May 05

finegarten: Self-Portrait of a Suicide A love of photography and a dislike of mice caused a London photographer to rig this trap that caused a mouse to take his own picture and his life at the same time. The trap was wired to the camera so that tripping of the trap mechanism also tripped the camera shutter. The killing spring is about to come down on the neck of the rodent here as its first nibble at the cheese sprung the trap. via

finegarten:

Self-Portrait of a Suicide

A love of photography and a dislike of mice caused a London photographer to rig this trap that caused a mouse to take his own picture and his life at the same time. The trap was wired to the camera so that tripping of the trap mechanism also tripped the camera shutter. The killing spring is about to come down on the neck of the rodent here as its first nibble at the cheese sprung the trap.

via

(via alter43)

May 04

museumuesum: Felix Gonzalez-Torres Untitled (Welcome), 1991 Rubber mats, photographs, metal, soap, paper. 11 x 29 1/2 in. (27.9 x 74.9 cm).  ”Untitled” (Welcome) is an astonishing work. It is made of the most common materials, arranged in the most simple forms, but unlike the industrial ready-mades of Duchamp, or the radically geometric sculptures of Judd and LeWitt, it conveys a deeply poignant and profoundly personal charge. It is elegiac, not ironic; intensely felt, not cool and abstract. Made when Felix Gonzalez-Torres faced his own mortality and that of his lover Ross, the artist had no time to waste; he had to make every act and every detail count. And he does. The work is essential in its subject matter and concentrated in its emotion, not just in its form. He compressed into this extraordinary sculpture everything he had learned how to express from the armory of Modern and Contemporary art. It is no accident that as one comes to look at this masterpiece one thinks by turns of the formal simplicity of Judd, the private languages and personal symbolisms of Beuys and Cornell, the desperate yearning of Rothko, and the angry yet bittersweet lyricism of late Picasso raging against death. The work consists of eighty-some identical black rubber doormats, each emblazoned with the word “WELCOME,” which are arranged in four ascending stacks, set with the highest stack against a wall. Unlike his paper stacks, which the viewer is free to take, the doormats are a permanent part of piece. Hidden and interlaced among the mats are everyday items, such as a key, a playing-card, two bars of soap, a papertowel, some scraps of writing, a group of photographs (fig 1). The doormats are public, commonplace, industrial; the items hidden among them are instead relics and traces of personal and shared existence. The soap still gives off its perfume, an aroma that is fading but still lingers like a memory; and all the items similarly evoke treasured experiences that can be recalled, but not recovered, from the past. The photographs range in character and subject-matter from the sort of pictures of himself (fig 2), family, friends, pets, and loved-ones that nearly everyone has, to images of natural beauty (for example, the sky, a waterfall), as well as pictures of more overtly metaphysical or poetic content, including works by the artist. Susan Sontag has famously remarked: “Photographs state the innocence, the vulnerability of lives heading toward their own destruction, this link between photography and death haunts all photographs of people” (Susan Sontag, On Photography, New York 2001, p. 70). Photographs in this sense are expressions of the desire to hold on to and preserve what one cannot bear to lose, but one day will lose anyway. The haunting combination of innocence and mortality, love and death, is unmistakable in all these pictures. It is especially evident in a photograph of an arm and hand holding a Teddy-bear: an AIDS-induced lesion marks the arm (fig 3). That the Teddy-bear is one of the many toys Felix salvaged from the flea market only increases its poignancy as a totem of childhood vulnerability and love. The ephemerality of beauty and the flickering evanescence of life are also on view in the largest photograph of the group. This depicts the shadow of a man that is cast onto a diaphanous curtain which is caught and illuminated by the light coming from an unseen window (fig 4). In cultures throughout time and around the world, shadows have been used to express the transience of mortal existence. Hence, in the Book of Psalms, for example, one reads, “Man is like a thing of naught; his time passeth away like a shadow” (Psalm 144.4), and Pindar, the classical Greek poet, wrote, “What is a man? Man is but a shadow, the shadow of a shadow. Yet, when beautiful golden light streams from the sky, then bright and brilliant seems his lot” (Pythian Ode 8). It is striking that Gonzalez-Torres’s photographs of the sky, two of which are included here, surely are meant to convey this very sense that beauty is a kind of blessing, although an all too brief and ultimately ungraspable one. Gonzalez-Torres, of course, is not quoting or referring to the Bible or ancient literature in his art. He does not need to for his meaning to be immediately felt and understood. He found in his impending death a means for understanding, and the urgency to express in direct comprehensible language, the beauty and fragility of mortal existence. He wanted to create something of permanent value, which by being shared with and experienced by the viewers, would continue on after he was gone. The stacks of doormats that ascend like a series of steps going into a house surely imply the presence of a door. Of course, the threshold, gate or door is a universally understood marker or symbol of the division between two realms of action and being, such as the public and private, the family and the social, the sacred and profane (the word profane literally means outside the gate), the living and the dead. It is easy to imagine these steps, containing the relics of memory and love, as a bridge between the public and private. Indeed, Gonzalez-Torres in his art often straddled these two spheres, with works such as the stacks of candy that were meant simultaneously to be preserved and given away; they are something with an intensely personal significance, and yet also something with a shared, common association of an entirely different order. Yet the implicit door is surely also the portal between the living and the dead, as in an ancient Roman sarcophagus (marble coffin), where such symbolism was quite common. Beyond this gate lies “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns” (as Shakespeare described it). One typewritten note hidden among the mats speaks of “The trip good-bye.” Before leaving the land of the living, on the edge of oblivion, Felix Gonzalez-Torres made a marker, a monument, and blessed it with the traces of love, beauty, and remembrance.

museumuesum:

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Untitled (Welcome), 1991

Rubber mats, photographs, metal, soap, paper.

11 x 29 1/2 in. (27.9 x 74.9 cm).


 ”Untitled” (Welcome) is an astonishing work. It is made of the most common materials, arranged in the most simple forms, but unlike the industrial ready-mades of Duchamp, or the radically geometric sculptures of Judd and LeWitt, it conveys a deeply poignant and profoundly personal charge. It is elegiac, not ironic; intensely felt, not cool and abstract. Made when Felix Gonzalez-Torres faced his own mortality and that of his lover Ross, the artist had no time to waste; he had to make every act and every detail count. And he does. The work is essential in its subject matter and concentrated in its emotion, not just in its form. He compressed into this extraordinary sculpture everything he had learned how to express from the armory of Modern and Contemporary art. It is no accident that as one comes to look at this masterpiece one thinks by turns of the formal simplicity of Judd, the private languages and personal symbolisms of Beuys and Cornell, the desperate yearning of Rothko, and the angry yet bittersweet lyricism of late Picasso raging against death.
 
The work consists of eighty-some identical black rubber doormats, each emblazoned with the word “WELCOME,” which are arranged in four ascending stacks, set with the highest stack against a wall. Unlike his paper stacks, which the viewer is free to take, the doormats are a permanent part of piece. Hidden and interlaced among the mats are everyday items, such as a key, a playing-card, two bars of soap, a papertowel, some scraps of writing, a group of photographs (fig 1). The doormats are public, commonplace, industrial; the items hidden among them are instead relics and traces of personal and shared existence. The soap still gives off its perfume, an aroma that is fading but still lingers like a memory; and all the items similarly evoke treasured experiences that can be recalled, but not recovered, from the past.
 
The photographs range in character and subject-matter from the sort of pictures of himself (fig 2), family, friends, pets, and loved-ones that nearly everyone has, to images of natural beauty (for example, the sky, a waterfall), as well as pictures of more overtly metaphysical or poetic content, including works by the artist. Susan Sontag has famously remarked: “Photographs state the innocence, the vulnerability of lives heading toward their own destruction, this link between photography and death haunts all photographs of people” (Susan Sontag, On Photography, New York 2001, p. 70). Photographs in this sense are expressions of the desire to hold on to and preserve what one cannot bear to lose, but one day will lose anyway.
 
The haunting combination of innocence and mortality, love and death, is unmistakable in all these pictures. It is especially evident in a photograph of an arm and hand holding a Teddy-bear: an AIDS-induced lesion marks the arm (fig 3). That the Teddy-bear is one of the many toys Felix salvaged from the flea market only increases its poignancy as a totem of childhood vulnerability and love.

The ephemerality of beauty and the flickering evanescence of life are also on view in the largest photograph of the group. This depicts the shadow of a man that is cast onto a diaphanous curtain which is caught and illuminated by the light coming from an unseen window (fig 4). In cultures throughout time and around the world, shadows have been used to express the transience of mortal existence. Hence, in the Book of Psalms, for example, one reads, “Man is like a thing of naught; his time passeth away like a shadow” (Psalm 144.4), and Pindar, the classical Greek poet, wrote, “What is a man? Man is but a shadow, the shadow of a shadow. Yet, when beautiful golden light streams from the sky, then bright and brilliant seems his lot” (Pythian Ode 8). It is striking that Gonzalez-Torres’s photographs of the sky, two of which are included here, surely are meant to convey this very sense that beauty is a kind of blessing, although an all too brief and ultimately ungraspable one.
 
Gonzalez-Torres, of course, is not quoting or referring to the Bible or ancient literature in his art. He does not need to for his meaning to be immediately felt and understood. He found in his impending death a means for understanding, and the urgency to express in direct comprehensible language, the beauty and fragility of mortal existence. He wanted to create something of permanent value, which by being shared with and experienced by the viewers, would continue on after he was gone.
 
The stacks of doormats that ascend like a series of steps going into a house surely imply the presence of a door. Of course, the threshold, gate or door is a universally understood marker or symbol of the division between two realms of action and being, such as the public and private, the family and the social, the sacred and profane (the word profane literally means outside the gate), the living and the dead. It is easy to imagine these steps, containing the relics of memory and love, as a bridge between the public and private. Indeed, Gonzalez-Torres in his art often straddled these two spheres, with works such as the stacks of candy that were meant simultaneously to be preserved and given away; they are something with an intensely personal significance, and yet also something with a shared, common association of an entirely different order.
 
Yet the implicit door is surely also the portal between the living and the dead, as in an ancient Roman sarcophagus (marble coffin), where such symbolism was quite common. Beyond this gate lies “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns” (as Shakespeare described it). One typewritten note hidden among the mats speaks of “The trip good-bye.” Before leaving the land of the living, on the edge of oblivion, Felix Gonzalez-Torres made a marker, a monument, and blessed it with the traces of love, beauty, and remembrance.

May 02

fek: Barbara Kruger’s never really talked about Supreme, the skate company who’s been ripping off her ideas and prints letter for letter, color for color, for their red-and-white logo, which you have seen, because it is everywhere.  I emailed her casually to ask her about this. And today, she got back to me, and gave a candid statement on the matter of Supreme for the first time, ever, really. By emailing me a blank email, with an attachment. Which you can see above.

fek:

Barbara Kruger’s never really talked about Supreme, the skate company who’s been ripping off her ideas and prints letter for letter, color for color, for their red-and-white logo, which you have seen, because it is everywhere. 

I emailed her casually to ask her about this. And today, she got back to me, and gave a candid statement on the matter of Supreme for the first time, ever, really. By emailing me a blank email, with an attachment. Which you can see above.

(via cavetocanvas)

May 01

philamuseum:  Feeling good at 90: Spry soon-to-be-nonagenarian Ellsworth Kelly enjoys a moment with Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator of Contemporary Art, in the Museum’s newest installation, Homage to Ellsworth Kelly, in galleries 172 and 175. Background image: “Red Yellow Blue White,” 1952, by Ellsworth Kelly © Ellsworth Kelly  He is 90!

philamuseum:

 Feeling good at 90: Spry soon-to-be-nonagenarian Ellsworth Kelly enjoys a moment with Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator of Contemporary Art, in the Museum’s newest installation, Homage to Ellsworth Kelly, in galleries 172 and 175.

Background image: “Red Yellow Blue White,” 1952, by Ellsworth Kelly © Ellsworth Kelly 

He is 90!

Apr 27

taylorholland: All proceeds from the sale of this digital download from The File Arts will go toward the production of a third piece in my Fra[mes] series. Buy now for $20 thefilearts: The File Arts presents:Fra[mes]: Adoration of the Magiby Taylor Holland It looks like a photoshop-content-aware-fill filter gone awry. But it is in fact a funny and skilled reflection on craftsmanship and ornament and the aura of the physical work. Read more at The File Arts » The download contains: the highest resolution TIF image of ‘Adoration of the Magi’ (2901 x 3711 px) and a catalogue showing process pictures of the creation of the physical versions of the filled frames. Buy at The File Arts for $20,- get a digital signed certificate of authenticity and support the creation of the physical versions of the work. In essence Taylor is using The File Arts as a sort of kickstarter to fund his own art; you get a digital artwork, Taylor gets to make one of these frames in real life with the help of Saithill Frames in Haarlem, the Netherlands.

taylorholland:

All proceeds from the sale of this digital download from The File Arts will go toward the production of a third piece in my Fra[mes] series.

Buy now for $20

thefilearts:

The File Arts presents:
Fra[mes]: Adoration of the Magi
by Taylor Holland

It looks like a photoshop-content-aware-fill filter gone awry. But it is in fact a funny and skilled reflection on craftsmanship and ornament and the aura of the physical work.

Read more at The File Arts »

The download contains: the highest resolution TIF image of ‘Adoration of the Magi’ (2901 x 3711 px) and a catalogue showing process pictures of the creation of the physical versions of the filled frames.

Buy at The File Arts for $20,- get a digital signed certificate of authenticity and support the creation of the physical versions of the work.

In essence Taylor is using The File Arts as a sort of kickstarter to fund his own art; you get a digital artwork, Taylor gets to make one of these frames in real life with the help of Saithill Frames in Haarlem, the Netherlands.

motherboardtv: Scientists Placed Electric Cages over Dead Zebras to Study the Spread of Anthrax I can not be the only one to think ‘Damien Hirst’ And it got me thinking how Damien’s art is a ‘safe’ way to experience these dangerous and extreme situations and their emotions; death, sickness, science reacting on calamity. And of course I knew this before. But this picture really …illustrates it.

motherboardtv:

Scientists Placed Electric Cages over Dead Zebras to Study the Spread of Anthrax

I can not be the only one to think ‘Damien Hirst’

And it got me thinking how Damien’s art is a ‘safe’ way to experience these dangerous and extreme situations and their emotions; death, sickness, science reacting on calamity. And of course I knew this before. But this picture really …illustrates it.

(via kenyatta)