New Suggestions For CSU-Long Beach's Art 110 Class

Back in April I reported on an art appreciation class at CSU-Long Beach which features the fantastic assignment of painting reenactment. I suggested a few works for the fall semester - Washington Crossing the Delaware, a painting of John Brown, and a Botticelli Annunciation, which is basically the ecumenical inverse of that scene in Nightmare On Elm Street III when Freddy Krueger is leading Johnny Depp around by his tendons. I think I'd be equally frightened by either scenario, wouldn't you? Someone write me an essay on the role of horror films as an existential response to ecstatic experience in a post-religious culture, stat!

Anyway, I was thrilled when instructor Glenn Zucman found the post and basically shot all my ideas down. Well, not exactly. As it happens, works need to be on permanent display in Los Angeles in order to be considered, because the students have to go look at the actual artwork, not just some crappy photos on a website somewhere. The gall! But he invited me to come up with some alternatives. I had a lot of fun browsing the LACMA permanent collection online, and have come up with a bunch of options that may or may not be on display at any given moment.

The following selections have been made based on their intrinsic beauty, compositional complexity, pathos, aeronautics, or other challenges.

Leonard Bramer (Holland, 1596 - 1674)
The Liberation of Saint Peter, circa 1625
Getting the lighting right here could be a challenge. This picture has always looked demonic to me. All those blacks and browns.

Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (French, 1809 - 1864)
The Sacrifice of Isaac, 1860
Man, that color!

Rutilio Manetti (Italy, 1571 - 1639)
Dido and Aeneas, circa 1630
Selected for pathos, and for having so many faces in such different relationships and layers.

Charles-Joseph Natoire (French., 1700 - 1777)
Psyche Obtaining the Elixir of Beauty from Proserpine, circa 1735
How would you represent that dragon? No teddy bears allowed!

Carlo Saraceni (Italy, 1579 - 1620)
The Martyrdom of St. Cecilia, circa 1610
Beautiful and hard to do!

Joseph Marie Vien (French, 1716 - 1809)
Venus Emerging from the Sea, circa 1754-1755

Venus and the mermaid are permitted to wear bikinis, but I'd like to see them pull off that arc of fabric and the diving cherub!

By the way, if you haven't been to Glenn's Art 110 wiki lately, check out their great selection of photos of students striking poses with or near museum security guards!

A Brief and Partial History of Tainted Love

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1961. Not the painting.

From the wires:

A woman has been arrested on suspicion of kissing a painting by American artist Cy Twombly and smudging the bone-white canvas with her lipstick, French judicial officials said Saturday.

Police said they arrested the woman after she kissed the work on Thursday. She is to be tried in a court in the southern city of Avignon on Aug. 16 for "damage to a work of art," judicial officials said.

The painting, which is worth an estimated $2 million, was on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon. It is part of an exhibition slated to run at the museum through Sept. 30. Officials did not provide further details on the painting.

Jake and Dinos Chapman, from "Insult to Injury," 2003.

And, ages ago (2003), from the Guardian....

Two years ago, the Chapmans bought a complete set of what has become the most revered series of prints in existence, Goya's Disasters of War. It is a first-rate, mint condition set of 80 etchings printed from the artist's plates. In terms of print connoisseurship, in terms of art history, in any terms, this is a treasure - and they have vandalised it.

"We had it sitting around for a couple of years, every so often taking it out and having a look at it," says Dinos, until they were quite sure what they wanted to do. "We always had the intention of rectifying it, to take that nice word from The Shining, when the butler's trying to encourage Jack Nicholson to kill his family - to rectify the situation," interrupts Jake.

"So we've gone very systematically through the entire 80 etchings," continues Dinos, "and changed all the visible victims' heads to clowns' heads and puppies' heads."

The "new" work is called Insult to Injury. The exhibition in which it will be shown for the first time, at Modern Art Oxford, is called The Rape of Creativity.

Far muddier are the conflicting reports that Patricia Cornwell, in her obsession to prove that painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper, destroyed some of Sickert's paintings to test her theory. The merits of Cornwell's arguments notwithstanding (even reader-reviewers on Amazon largely hold the book in contempt), a CBC article in 2003 paraphrased a curator asserting that Cornwell had destroyed "up to thirty paintings," "tearing them apart" in her search for evidence. Once Cornwell donated 82 works by Sickert to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, however, the Art Newspaper did slightly better, quietly paring the tally down to one work which "it is said" (unattributed) was destroyed, and also does Cornwell the service of mentioning that she denies having done it.

New Painted Film Stills By Rebecca Whipple

Rebecca Whipple has completed animation for a new piece entitled "Steve Martin On The Loose a.k.a. The Big ShaBang." The piece is 4:55 and the stills she sent me to post as a sneak peek are gorgeous.




Music is being composed by Benito Meza. Here's a clip with him playing (he's the clarinetist):

You can read/view previous coverage of Rebecca Whipple on TiP here and here, or view more work on her website.

Better Than The Original: Sending Up Hirst's "For the Love of God" Skull

The following display was placed outside the White Cube Masons Yard late Sunday night. The gallery is hosting Damien Hirst's "For the Love of God," a diamond-encrusted skull valued at somewhere between sixteen and twenty million dollars. Artist Laura mocked it up using more than six thousand Swarovski crystals; I estimate it easily cost her under $300 to make.

Wooster Collective, thinking small as usual, calls it a prank. I call it art. And although "Love" is the best thing Hirst has done in years, this is still better than the original it comments on. By a long shot.

Cartography Meets Art Meets... Strollers?

Bugaboo Daytrips maps stroller-friendly routes for excursions. Each route features an artist-designed map. Many of them are quite beautiful, and as they are all downloadable in PDF format, might make for nice location-based art prints.

NYC Chinatown, by Souther Salazar, with a bit of website chrome

Vancouver, by Josh Cochran

Prague, by Dustin Arnold

[Via|Link]

The Funniest Very True Thing I Have Read About Art In A Long Time

Lisa Hunter of the blog The Intrepid Art Collector observes:

One's appreciation of contemporary art is inversely proportional to how long it takes to get to it. ... People in big cities are usually the first to appreciate new art, but not because we're intellectually superior. Maybe it's just easier to appreciate something difficult when you haven't traveled a long way with high expectations.

In the art world, such honesty is pure gold. To see the underwhelming art that inspired her epiphany and to read more of her thoughts on the subject, see her post.

Life After Paper: Jonathan Callan's Book Art

Collected Short Stories, 2005

Stubb, 2006

North London, 2004

[Via|Link]

Mona Marzouk

"Queen," by Mona Marzouk, acrylic on canvas, 150x90 cm

Many related works at the link.

[Via|Link]

The Graphic Art of An International Sketchbook

"book" is a four-artist project in which a sketchbook was shipped back and forth between Brooklyn, New York and Belfast, Northern Ireland. The four participating artists were Duke Riley, and Mac Premo, Rory Jeffers, and Oliver Jeffers.

The thirty-six spreads offer a wealth of inspiration and of great design and art. A few of my favorites are below.

Rory Jeffers

Duke Riley

Oliver Jeffers

The sketchbook has been reprinted in a signed, limited edition and sells for about $90. Prints have also been made of each artwork and are being sold in limited editions of 50, with individual 25" x 16.5" prints selling for $175. [Link]

New Animated Shorts By Rebecca Whipple (Interview)

Rebecca Whipple, who I interviewed last year about her amazing "Language of War" watercolors, has begun working in animation. She produces individual drawings or paintings and then scans and stitches them together into animated sequences, and has so far been creating shorts which recreate short scenes from films. The first series she's showing is a pair of related film sequences, one from George Lucas' Star Wars and one from Akira Kurosawa's 1958 The Hidden Fortress, each showing the film's respective hero on the attack. Her process echoes that of Jeff Scher, but the end result is in a visual language and rhythm that is uniquely her own.

TiP: How long did these films take you to produce? What is the frame rate?

Rebecca: The Hidden Fortress animation took me about a month, but only because it was the first animation I did, so I had to learn the program. I could do the same piece now in about two weeks. The Star Wars sequence took longer because the drawings were more exact, about a month and a half or two (once again I was still learning the programs.) The frame rate is 15 fps, the same as the original film.

TiP: How did you select the films and scenes you used? What is the relationship between the two?

Rebecca: George Lucas admittedly took inspiration from the characters and story of Hidden Fortress for Star Wars. I picked the two scenes because the movements were parallel, the hero running in pursuit of the enemy; I wanted to compare the motion.

TiP: Any more in the works?

Rebecca: This project is in collaboration with Mark Bartlett, theorist and critical analyst, who is going to write an essay about the same material, i.e. the film scenes. There will be a few more film scene pairs, based on related kinds on motion, comic, action, dance, etc. This is a side project for me, and therefore, as I am working on it between other projects, it will take a while to complete. I would also like to stress that the version available of this work online is low resolution. I wish I could put a full resolution version online, but questions of ownership prevent me.

A note on another animation work: I have just finished a five-minute animation of a very different sort; it is a dream animation starring Steve Martin. It has taken up all of my energy over the last 5 months and is quite exciting. The music is not finished, so I can't show it yet. Benito Meza, a breathtaking clarinetist who plays with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, is writing and producing the score.

Fletcher Martin

Fletcher Martin's life is as fascinating as his work. Read all about him on Today's Inspiration.

Wall Murals

Art wall murals. More at the link.

A dad's project for his young son, made in Photoshop. How-to at the link.

A decorative painter who painted faux effects at Disneyland Paris.
More samples at the link.

Love, Shredded: The Blankie Photographs of "Dirty Wow Wow"

The new book Dirty Wow Wow and Other Love Stories: A Tribute to the Threadbare Companions of Childhood features images of stuffed animals and other objects ravaged by the love of children. The most striking photographs in the book are of children's blankies. It looks like they've been digested by baby dinosaurs. They're just gorgeous.

Ten Speed Press gave TiP special permission to blog these. Click on them for a larger view.

Rags

Belmont Blankie

Blankie

Photography studio Hornick/Rivlin did a great job with this project. With most of the shots in the book straight-on photos of stuffed animals (only a few are from non-"catalogue" perspectives) I'm guessing that orienting these floppy, tattered blankets was one of the most interesting parts of their shoots for this book. And they did an outstanding job. You can check out more of their work here. (Note to photographers and artists everywhere: If you abandon a site and put up a new one, take the old one down, because it will still draw visitors, most of whom won't think to look for another site after clicking on the top Google search result for your company!)

Ten Speed Press is running a contest for readers through the month of May to submit their own photographs and stories of "lovies" online for a chance to win a copy of the book and other prizes. A new winner is selected every week.

I wrote a bit more about the book here.

Images reprinted with permission from Dirty Wow Wow and Other Love Stories: A Tribute to the Threadbare Companions of Childhood. Copyright (c) 2007 by Cheryl and Jeffrey Katz, Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, CA. Photo Credit: Hornick/Rivlin.

Banksy Profile and Interview

Now online at the New Yorker. This stuff doesn't stay available forever, so go read it.

I have mixed feelings about the lack of originality in a lot of Banksy's art. But his persona and story are pure gold, and I have no problem with the lines he walks - financial success|rebellion, celebrity|anonymity. Favorite quote:

“I originally set out to try and save the world, but now I’m not sure I like it enough.”

The only truly deflating ending to this story (and it will end someday) would be if it turned out that Steve Lazarides, his agent/gallerist/spokesperson, really turned out to be him.

We Need A New Word For This. Let's See, What Should We Call It?

Artists are increasingly being "commissioned" to produce brand-friendly works of "art." From AdAge (registration required):

Agneessens takes an active role in the creative process, collaborating with brands on the vision for art projects as well as artists. "Ironically enough," he says, "I personally prefer to work on branded art projects than for galleries. Of course, there is the constraint of being close to the brand value in the content you generate, but if you select the right artist, this should come naturally." [Via|Link]

All of the times you called an artist a "sellout" sound a little hollow now, don't they? The bands that signed with major labels. The artists who started repeating themselves for sales potential. Good times!

Don't you wish you could take it all back, so you could use the term now and it would really matter? No, we need a new word for this. Any suggestions?

We could do worse than looking to David Lynch, who was asked about a related topic in a recent interview: product placement in movies. Strong language alert!

Self-Portraits by Gisela Giardino

mosaiqued self ( g^n )
Originally uploaded by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³.

One of two images used for the new header. Giardino has a lot of interesting self-portrait projects on Flickr; check them out here.

Collaboration made possible thanks to Creative Commons licensing.

Jim Woodring's Moleskines

Artist Jim Woodring shows off some amazing moleskine pop-up books on his blog. [Via] Amazon has a surprise clearance sale on Moleskines. Dated 2007 materials are obviously going for bargain-basement prices ($6-7), but the rest of the Moleskine line is on sale, too, perhaps to generate buzz - the full range of non-dated Moleskine books is 50-66% off. Check it out here, while they last.

Perspective-Based Street Art: How To Tell The Story?

Probably executed using a projector from a fixed viewing point, then painting in the areas designated by the projection. More pictures at the link. The real question (for me, anyway) is does the project look its best when shown from fragments leading towards the whole, as my source blog chooses to present it, or is it better viewed from the whole into fragments? Which tells a better story? Obviously, fragments -> whole best represents a visitor's actual experience at the site. So why do I like seeing the whole first better?

Watercolors of Moira Hahn

"Blue Moon," a watercolor by Moira Hahn. [Artist's website]

[Via the brilliant new blog startdrawing.org.]

Icons: Chinese Opera Characters

[Via|Link]