Art of the Moment

I am so sorry to expose you all to this, but if anything is contemporary art, this is:




Postmodern? A sum-up of (crazed) visual culture? There are so many narratives here, I don't know where to begin. Imagine this in a big gold frame in a museum 10 years from now-captures the time and place, doesn't it?

Apparently that forest is fake.

I might just have to hang it on my wall.

Talk of the Town.

Just got my D90 yesterday. Tonight my brother took the family out to dinner and I brought along my camera hoping to shoot some video. I threw it together in iMovie. Song is 'Talk of the Town' by Big Phony. Watch it in HD here.

50mm 1.8
10.5mm 2.8

I think it's about time us kids got together for some fat city lovin

so yea! let's make this happen! I think a performance/reading/art making party is in order. Let me know if any of you have any work you would like to show. Just send me a short description of the work, the medium, etc and I can put together a program.

cpark@nyu.edu

or just comment on this post!

The Last Futurist Exhibtion 0,10 (1915-1917)

I'm working on an essay on this exhibit and Quadrilateral (The Black Square). Look out for it in the next couple of days!

Kenneth Anger at P.S.1 MoMA

If you don't know Anger's films (I didn't), you'll be shocked that you didn't see his stuff earlier.

Go to P.S.1
Sit in a red plastic cave
Melt



PUCE MOMENT

this is what the "Huang Xu" post made me think of...

Loie Fuller:

Julianna Bright

Huang Xu

Nida Sinnokrot

internet poem

came upon this by chance, and have no idea if it's supposed to be a poem but i think it works beautifully:


POEM

Golden era Mexican cinema

"El Rey Del Barrio," starring German Valdes, better known by his nickname, "Tin Tan." Tin Tan screen presence brought the "pachuco" style to the silver screen -- a style that is now mostly seen on white boys during during Halloween trying to portray "the pimp." What people forget to tell you about the pachuco style is how kickin' the girls' hair is, and how gender-subversive their clothing was at the time (1930s/1940s).


And watch this Tin Tan flick just for the cartoonish way the director chooses to to portray "el vagabundo"'s hunger.

Rammelzee and Basquiat

"free choice and external necessity"

excerpt that I find hilarious, from Other Critera - "Jasper Johns: The First Seven Years of His Art" by Leo Steinberg

When you ask John's why he did this or that in a painting, he answers so as to clear himself of responsibility.  A given decision was made for him by the way things are, or was suggested by an accident he never invited.

Regarding the four casts of cases he placed in four oblong boxes over one of the targets:

Target with Four Faces, 1955

Q: Why did you cut them off just under the eyes?  

A: They wouldn't have fitted into the boxes if I'd left them whole.

He was asked why his bronze sculpture of an electric bulb was broken up into bulb, socket, and cord:

A: Because, when the parts came back from the foundry, the bulb 

wouldn't screw into the socket.

Q: Could you have had it done over?

A: I could have.

Q: Then you like it in fragments and you chose to leave it that way?

A: Of course.

The distinction I try to make between necessity and subjective preference seems unintelligible to Johns.  I asked him about the type of numbers and letters he uses -- coarse, standardized, unartistic -- the type you associate with packing cases and grocery signs.  

Number Five, 1960

Q: You nearly always use this same type.  Any particular reason?

A: That's how the stencils come.

Q: But if you preferred another typeface, would you think it improper to cut your own stencils?

A: Of course not.

Q: Then you really do like these best?

A: Yes.

This answer is so self-evident that I wonder why I asked the question at all; ah yes -- because Johns would not see the obvious distinction between free choice and external necessity.  Let me try again: 

Q: Do you use these letter types because you like them or because that's how the stencils come?

A: But that's what I like about them, that they come that way.

do things ever expire when they are canned?

Another Manzoni, Merda d' Artista (Artist's Shit), 1961

How much would you pay for this shit??

double stuffed oreo

Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1913

Malevich, White on White (Suprematist Composition), 1918

Piero Manzoni, Achrome, 1962

Robert Rauschenberg, Black Painting, 1952-53

melting

ISFAHAN

BONFA

HOT HOUSE

random inspiration

Felix Gonzalez Torres, Untitled 1991

Gabriel Orozco, Cats and Watermelons 1992

 

SHARKS!

shit/space/silence...etc.

some things that may make you laugh/amused/irritated/mad/wtf????? 

my personal favorites:

Marcel Duchamp, A Mile of String, exhibited in New York (1942)

Andre Breton had organized a retrospective of Surrealist art, and Marcel Duchamp basically created an installation in the gallery with a web of string.  At the opening reception, he had a whole bunch of little children running around, making it nearly impossible for people to see the art work.  fun stuff

Richard Serra, Prop (1968)

This whole series of Prop pieces consist of a heavy piece of lead that is held up precariously with a "prop" or another piece of lead.  They are incredibly dangerous to display -- museums had to display them behind plexi-glass because i think someone was severely injured from one of the pieces..... ooops

John Cage, 4:33"

I don't have a visual or sound clip, because these were meant to be performed...but basically it is a musical composition that lasts 4 minutes and 33 seconds.  It can be played with any instrument, and the musician is not supposed to play.  Instead, the music is considered to be the sounds that are in the room during the performance.  I think John Cage performed it once on piano, and just lifted the top of the piano and then shut it after 4:33".  People must have been pissed! Could you imagine getting all dressed up to go see a musical performance and then end up with only 4:33" of silence??? haha

Yves Klein, The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility, The Void, exhibited at Iris Clert Gallery (April 1958)

Along the same lines of Cage's work...Klein painted the windows blue and hung a blue curtain in the entrance way.  He then proceeded to remove everything from the room and painted everything white.  He set up an elaborate entrance with guards and blue drinks, and all these people waited in long lines to find out that the gallery was empty.  The gallery was basically selling empty space/air, which is completely genius/hilarious! 

Gordon Matta-Clark, FOOD (opened in 1971)

A restaurant where cooking and food were considered art.  Artists were invited to cook, and the whole dinner was considered a performance piece.  For example, Matta-Clark had a "bone dinner" for $4, "which featured oxtail soup, roasted marrow bones and frogs' legs, among other bony entrees.  After the plates were cleared, the bones were scrubbed and strung together so that diners could wear their leftovers home." Food served as a meeting center for a lot of the LES artists in the 1970s, and was a popular alternative art space.  I wonder if they served Photofry (1969)....DELICIOUS!

Robert Ryman, White Paintings

Same idea as the Rauschenberg piece I posted a couple weeks back.... THE DEATH OF PAINTING!!!!! DUN DUN DUNNNNNN

and on a final note, something short and sweet:

Linda Benglis, Untitled (detail from Art Forum), 1974

There are no words... just ridiculousness.