SUPERDIGIT

"...So i could be there and get lost at the same time"

2012-01-25T09:33:00.000-05:00

Nan Goldin

Alison Knowles

2012-01-22T01:19:00.000-05:00

Gentle Surprises for the Ear (1973) ->
Collaboration between Philip Corner, Bill Fontana and Alison Knowles

Eighty objects ticketed for sounds were presented as a performance at "Experimental Intermedia" evenings in New York City in the 1970s. The work was presented again at the Los Angeles County Museum Exhibition "Out of Actions" 2001.

"Alison Knowles is neither a composer nor a performer in any traditional terms, yet much of her work is obviously some sort of music. When pressed to categorize herself, She told me she conceives most of her works simply as events. Yet even this catchall term does not include her sculpture and prints, or her books and poems. But while she works in many media or intermedia, everything she does comes out of the same basic impulses: a concern for communication between human beings, an appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of ordinary objects, a deep respect for John Cage, and a profound understanding of what "communicating" is really about." By Tom Johnson, Musical America 1975.

Alison Knowles (born 1933) in New York City is an American visual artist known for her soundworks, installations, performances, and publications. Knowles was very active in the Fluxus movement, and continues to create work inspired by her Fluxus experience.

to see more about Alison Knowles click here

kate bush

2012-01-20T19:02:00.001-05:00

Special Blend, curated by Chris Martin. The Journal Gallery

2012-01-08T11:49:00.001-05:00

Special Blend, curated by Chris Martin
opens Friday January 13 from 6 to 9 pm at The Journal Gallery 168 North 1st Street, Brooklyn

Special Blend features:

Katherine Bradford

Tamara Gonzales

Joanne Greenbaum

EJ Hauser

Alison Knowles

Justine Kurland

Lauren Luloff

Joyce Pensato

Amanda Ross-Ho

Niki de Saint Phalle

Michelle Tarantelli

Special Blend will run from January 13 - February 12, 2012

click HERE for more info.

Per Kirkeby.

2011-12-29T22:50:00.000-05:00

Untitled, 1984, Oil on Canvas.
The Ludwig Collection, Cologne, Germany.
Per Kirkeby (born Copenhagen, September 1, 1938) is a Danish painter, poet, filmmaker and sculptor.

A.R. PENCK, Ich in Deutschland (West), 1984, Dispersionsfarbe auf Nessel, 600 x 1200 cm

2011-12-21T00:05:00.003-05:00

Penck's vision of life in the West.

A.R. PENCK, Me in Germany (West), 1984, Emulsion paint on canvas, 19.69 x 39.37 feet

"Centre stage is a work that Penck painted non-stop in 35 hours. This was prompted by the legendary overview exhibition "von hier aus" which took place in 1984 in Düsseldorf. After-wards it arrived at Museum Ludwig, where it could only rarely be shown on account of its size, which is [almost 20 by 40 feet]. Ich in Deutschland (West) [me in Germany (West)] is the name of this monument from the period shortly after the artist moved to West Ger-many. "I'd been spat out by the East but not yet gobbled up by the West", as he wrote at the time. But the piece is not simply about a society, it's about a whole culture and existing in it, about sex and power, politics and church, life and death - aspects that he joins up with great daring.

It is accompanied by four paintings (Standart - Prä - Standart) [Standard - Pre - Standard] from the nineties and ten less-known felt sculptures from the eighties. The later are conceived of as science-fiction machines, yet they don't look at all angular or technological, but soft and round instead.

Penck has remained true to himself, his reduction does not constrain anything but follows the gaze of the feeling, suffering, joyous person who is beyond all ideol-ogy."

excerpted from the Museum Ludwig announcement (click here).

A.R. PENCK, Me in Germany (West), 1984, Emulsion paint on canvas, 19.69 x 39.37 feet

A.R. PENCK, (detail) Me in Germany (West), 1984, Emulsion paint on canvas

COSIMA VON BONIN’S CUT! CUT! CUT! FOR MUSEUM LUDWIG’S SLOTH SECTION, LOOP # 04 OF THE LAZY SUSAN SERIES, A ROTATING EXHIBITION 2010–2012

2011-12-06T10:06:00.000-05:00

Cosima von Bonin’s (*1962) exhibition at the Museum Ludwig is the final chapter of an exhibition series connecting four European cities. Conceived as a work in progress – similar yet totally different in each location -, the cycle began in Rotterdam, continued to unfold in Bristol and then in Geneva.

The cycle ends with a big bang where it all began: in Cologne, the artist’s home base. Cologne thus forms the final “loop” in this circular exhibition concept, as indicated in its title. Lazy Susan is a colloquial term referring to a rotating platter centrally placed on a dining table – and particularly common in Chinese Restaurants – enabling easy access to different dishes. The choice of a household accessory that bears a female name is no coincidence. Just as significant is the idea of laziness, a recurring motif in Cosima von Bonin’s work.

Installation of Cosima von Bonin's CUT! CUT! CUT! at Museum Ludwig, Oct. 2011

The central new piece of the LAZY SUSAN SERIES, AMATEUR DRAMATICS (2010), was co-produced by the participating institutions and takes the form of the eponymous Lazy Susan: a large rotating disc that looks like a mix between carousel and presentation platform. The artist placed various previously created works from her repertoire on the disc, including the PURPLE SLOTH RABBIT (2010) – a large reclining rabbit figure with the word SLOTH embroidered underneath its feet. With irony and provocation, Cosima von Bonin thus makes laziness – simultaneously a vice and a dream in today’s times in which every minute counts – the leitmotif of an exhibition cycle that has more to do with manic production and hyperactivity than with idleness and indolence.

For the Museum Ludwig’s vast skylight gallery, Bonin created a spectacular installation that is simultaneously a clever exhibition design. Six oversized tables ranging in height from 2.7 to 5.4 meters fill the space and offer various presentation levels, with the table surfaces as well as the space beneath used for display. Here, the artist actively incorporates the special features of this high-ceilinged hall with its suspended gallery into her work, offering the visitor a completely new and unaccustomed viewing perspective.

Installation of Cosima von Bonin's CUT! CUT! CUT! at Museum Ludwig, Oct. 2011

Across five rooms and various media settings, the exhibition continues to unfold outside the south entrance of the museum, with the monumental TAGEDIEB (2010) a long-nosed – and hence obviously dishonest – Pinocchio sitting on a towering umpire’s chair, acting as both sculpture and streetlight.

Altogether, the exhibition unites over 70 works, among them numerous new productions and a few rarely exhibited pieces from private Cologne-based collections. Cosima von Bonin does not focus exclusively on a specific technique or style.

Installation of Cosima von Bonin's CUT! CUT! CUT! at Museum Ludwig, Oct. 2011

However, she often privileges soft materials and embroidered textiles, which not only summon associations with stereotypical female pastimes, but also express the apparent lassitude of her cast of characters. The artist picks up on a host of references and associations – from Kippenberger to Disney – and mixes them all together, reminiscent of a DJ’s sampling technique.*

Cosima von Bonin is represented by Friedrich Petzel in New York and Galerie Buchholz in Cologne.

(*the Museum Ludwig Press Release)

Let's Active

2011-12-02T23:47:00.001-05:00

from Winston-Salem NC
Let's Active
Mitch Easter (vocals/guitar), Faye Hunter (bass), and Sara Romweber (drums)

Waters Part.
from the LP Cypress (1984).
Released on I.R.S. Records.

Hannah Höch

2011-11-22T09:57:00.001-05:00

Hannah Höch, Siebenmeilenstiefel, ca. 1934

Hannah Höch (November 1, 1889 – May 31, 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage.

Her most exciting work during the 1920s must surely be the ambitious “From the Ethnographic Museum” series (Abduction above), 17 montages that constitute an epic foray into the notion of Lebensraum (colonial expansion), “primitive” cultures and “underdeveloped” (i.e. inferior) peoples, and female alienation. The series is remarkable for its thematic coherence, elegant visual impact, and technical virtuosity.

“From the Ethnographic Museum” was visually influenced by the newly-redone tribal art displays in the Ethnological Museum. A predominant number of snippets Höch used came from a single issue of Querschnittmagazine entirely devoted to the displays. Each delicately reconstituted object in the series is showcased on its own pedestal, thus reflecting the idealization (and trivialization) of “primitive” artifacts by “developed” nations.

Abduction represents the type of complexity at work in the seemingly-simple images of the series. The female face may be a stand in for Höch. In any case, one might read this image any number of ways—the nobility of “primitive” culture, civilization being carried away by tribal culture, the subjugation of the female identity.

The 1920s were a particularly fruitful decade for Höch, as she explored new emotional and thematic territory. Curiously, however, she exhibited virtually not at all publicly during this period. Nontheless, by the end of the 1920s, photomontage had become an accepted medium, and Höch was gaining public recognition for her work.

Hannah Hoch's work is included in the show "The Other Side of the Moon" at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Dusseldorf, click here to learn more about the artists who made major contributions to the aesthetic renewal of Europe during the 1920s and 1930s.

HAVE IT ALL

2011-11-12T01:42:00.000-05:00

PLANNING TO ROCK

Maria Lassnig

2011-11-09T08:31:00.003-05:00

Tatkraftige Assistenz (Energetic Assistant), 1989, oil on canvas, in the collection of the Ludwig Museum, Cologne

Maria Lassnig (born 1919) is an avant-garde pioneer who has produced fresh and vibrant work for 60 years. She has remained independent from many art historical movements and yet her work has consistently engaged with successive generations of artists. For much of her career, Lassnig was celebrated mainly in Austria and Germany, but the significance of her work has now been recognized through exhibitions worldwide.

Lassnig's bold and visceral paintings reject the static tendencies of traditional portraiture. She coined the phrase body-awareness paintings to describe a visual language that she invented to depict the invisible aspects of inner sensation painting the body from the inside out. She frequently uses her own image as a means of exploring and representing human experience. This exhibition, her first solo museum presentation in the United States, focuses primarily on the extraordinary paintings produced over the past five years, including self-portraits, semi-abstract figurations and works from a series of paintings of couples.

Lassnig trained at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, and then spent several years in Paris in the 1950s and 60s, where she was exposed to Surrealism and Art Informel, a European counterpart to Abstract Expressionism. From 1968 to 1980, she lived in New York, where she made a series of inventive animations, several of which are included in this exhibition. Drawing on some of the same themes and subjects as her paintings, the narratives make astute observations of the complexities of male-female relationships and present her experience of being both a woman and an artist. She returned to film-making in 1992, producing Kantate, her most celebrated film, which presents her life story in a 14-verse song, performed by the artist.

Zweifel (Doubts), 2004-2005, Oil on canvas, 207 x 150 cm / 81 1/2 x 59 in

In 1980, Lassnig was invited back to Vienna to become the first female professor of painting in a German-speaking country at the Academy of Applied Arts and her work received wider recognition at an international level when she represented Austria in the 39th Venice Biennale that same year and participated in Documenta 7, Kassel, in 1982. Since then, Lassnig has had numerous solo exhibitions, including: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1994; Muse national dArt moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1995; Museum moderner Kunst, Vienna, 1999; and Kunsthaus, Zurich, 2003, as well as many commercial gallery exhibitions. Her work was recently featured in the major American touring survey Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2007 and was included in the 55th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, 2008, Life on Mars.

excerpted from a CAC press release (click here for more info)

Die Sinne (The senses), 1996, Oil on canvas, 205 x 155 cm / 80 3/4 x 61 in

Rosemarie Trockel

2011-11-02T10:08:00.016-04:00

Rosemarie Trockel (born November 13, 1952 in Schwerte, Germany) is a German Artist, and an important figure in the international contemporary art movement.

From 1970–1978, Two contemporary concerns, particularly women and their place in the art world. Her work challenged concepts of sexuality, culture, and artistic production. In the eighties she had important Solo-Shows in the USA e.g. at the MoMA, New York. Trockel's "knitting pictures", produced in 1985, consist of lengths of machine-knitted, woollen material stretched on to frames. The material is patterned with computer-generated geometrical motifs, or with recognizable logos, such as the hammer and sickle motif of the Soviet Union superimposed on a background of red and white stripes reminiscent of the US flag.

Four Corners, 2008, wool (yellow-orange), wood, painted, 96 x 296 cm

Another of Trockel's pieces consists of a steel cube fitted with six hot plates in two parallel, diagonal lines, meant to establish a bridge between the feminine domain of cooking and the masculine domain of industrial production. Aside from the knitted, patterned logos she made, she also made a series of pictures of webs spiders had made and their effects if taken lsd, hashish, or mescaline. She says it depicts their loneliness and their weak figures, because their webs would not be strong enough to catch prey to survive. They would eventually die. These spider web series can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, NY.

Untitled from What it is like to be what you are not..., 1993,
One photogravure from a portfolio of eight photogravures and one photolithograph and one screenprint, composition: 14 15/16 x 11 7/16" (38 x 29 cm); sheet: 22 5/8 x 17 1/2" (57.5 x 44.5 cm). Publisher: Helga Maria Klosterfelde Edition,
Hamburg. Printer: Niels Borch Jensen, Copenhagen. Edition: 9.

Pot, 2006, ceramics, platinum glazed, 58.5 x 66 x 62 cm

OH MYSTERY GIRL 8, 2006, mixed media, 67.5 x 57 x 3.8 cm

Untitled (AMACA, RED-WHITE), 2000, wool, linen, 40 x 195 x 125 cm

Trockel's Painting Machine and 56 Brush Strokes is a mechanical contraption of wires and steel rollers, in which 56 paint brushes make small marks on a roll of paper. The brushes are made of human hair and are engraved with the names of the hair's donors as like Cindy Sherman and Georg Baselitz.

In 1995, Trockel created the Memorial Frankfurter Engel in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

She is represented by Sprüth MagersBerlin London.

She lives and works in Cologne, and teaches at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Untitled, 1986, ink on lined notebook paper, 8 1/8 x 5 3/4"

STARING INTO THE SUN / CHRIS MARTIN

2011-10-24T14:29:00.105-04:00

CHRIS MARTIN
STARING INTO THE SUN
Kunsthalle Dusseldorf
22.Oktober 2011 - 15. Januar 2010

Starbanner for Kunsthalle Dusseldorf Facade, 2011, spray-paint + gel medium + collage on plastic, 140 x 207 inches (left), and Orange Construction Painting, 2006, oil + spray paint on plastic mesh, 51 x 42 x 4 inches (right).

Starbanner for Kunsthalle Dusseldorf Facade, 2011, spray-paint + gel medium + collage on plastic, 140 x 207 inches

Bedford Boogie-Woogie, 2001, enamel + spray paint on yellow vinyl, 118 x 143 inches. Installed on the outside of the KD.

Joseph Beuys' stovepipe from 1971 with The Last Optical Illusion of 2008, 2008, oil + spray-paint on canvas, 50 x 36 x 5 inches (right) on the facade of the Kunsthalle.

Water (7x7), 1999-2000, acrylic on canvas, 118 x 143 inches (left), Staring into the Sun, 2011, oil on canvas, 429 x 118 inches (right)

Staring into the Sun, 2011, oil on canvas, 429 x 118 inches (left), Big Glitter Painting, 2009-10, mixed media on canvas, 135 x 108.25 inches (middle), Ain't It Funky, 2003-10, mixed media on canvas, 135 x 114 inches (right)

Monkeys, 2008, oil + collage on canvas, 54 x 49 inches

The Secret Melancholy of Karlheinz Stockhausen 2008-2009 in foreground, oil and spray-paint, 20 x 14 inches

Monkeys (left) and Untitled , 1989, oil + acrylic gel + aluminum foil on canvas, 129 x 95 inches (right)

reverse side of Untitled, 1989

Psilocybe, 1980-1981, oil on canvas, 17 x 13 inches

0-1234567, 1986-1996, oil and collage on canvas, 18 x 16 inches

Motown Music and the Astral Plane, 2007-2008, mixed media + oil + collage on canvas, 48 x 38 inches

1234567...., 1987-1995, oil and roof cement on canvas, 18 x 15 inches

The Valley, 2005, acrylic gel + oil + collage on cardboard, 25 x 18 inches

The Valley (left), Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, 1988-97, oil + collage + latex on canvas, 14 x 12 inches (upper right), and Untitled, 2003-05, oil + collage + acrylic gel on canvas, 11 x 14 inches (lower right)

I Am Not..., 1988, oil + collage + glitter on canvas, 25 x 22 inches

What is Here..., 1990-1992, oil + smoke on plasterboard, 16 x 17 inches (left), I Am Not...1988 (upper right), and 1-21..., 1986-1995, oil on canvas, 16 x 14 inches (lower right)

Long Lake, 2000, oil on canvas, three panels, each: 118 x 143 inches

Long Lake, 2000, oil on canvas, three panels, each: 118 x 143 inches (right)

King and Queen Couple, 1997, acrylic on canvas, 129 x 160 inches

Here (s/w), 1995-96, acrylic on canvas, 129 x 143 inches

Chris Martin is represented by

Mitchell-Innes & Nash

and

KOW BERLIN

sterling ruby and lucio fontana

2011-10-14T15:18:00.000-04:00

Go see the Sterling Ruby + Lucio Fontana show at Andrea Rosen up until October 22, 2011.

sterling ruby and lucio fontana show at andrea rosen

EXCAVATOR DIG SITE, 2010, BRONZE

"I am smashing all of my previous attempts, and futile, contemporary gestures, and placing them into a mortar, and grinding them down with a blunt pestle. I am doing this as a way of releasing certain guilt. If I put all of these remnants into a basin, and it gets taken away from me, then I am no longer responsible for all my misdirected efforts. I will no longer have to be burdened with the heaviness of this realization." Ruby Sterling

Basin Theology / Dig Deep Faith, 2011, Ceramic

window by Gerhard Richter in the Cologne Cathedral

2011-10-14T00:12:00.000-04:00

utopia / dystopia

2011-08-24T09:36:00.002-04:00

YACHT Utopia / Dystopia (The Earth Is On Fire) (Explicit) from DFA Records on Vimeo.

more summer sounds from YACHT

the fitting room

2011-06-24T16:00:00.002-04:00

I'm keeping my eye on VOGT gallery, where I just saw an interesting show called The Fitting Room, featuring paintings by DAVID BRODY, MERNET LARSEN, NICOLE WITTENBERG. VOGT is located at 508 - 526 WEST 26TH ST in space #911.

Nicole Wittenberg, Untitled, 2010
Oil on canvas, 25 x 42 inches

Mernet Larsen, Lecture, 2011
Acrylic and tracing paper on canvas, 58 x 36 inches

David Brody, I am the Eggman (#14), 2009-2011
Oil on linen, 60 x 50 inches

TOTES venice biennale 2011

2011-06-08T09:56:00.003-04:00

The 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale Preview took place on June 1-3, 2011

While there I collected some various totes.

Many of these totes contained books, magazines, cd's, t-shirts, and other press info!

Steven Shearer / Canadian Pavilion (verso)

Steven Shearer / Canadian Pavilion (recto)

The Frog King / Hong Kong Pavilion (verso)

The Frog King / Hong Kong Pavilion (recto)

Mousse Magazine (verso)

Mousse Magazine (recto)

Mike Nelson / British Pavilion (verso)

Mike Nelson / British Pavilion (recto)

Speech Matters / Danish Pavilion (verso)

Soundscape Taiwan (verso)

Plan B / Turkish Pavilion

(this tote has an inside pocket and yellow rubber bottom, which made it my go-to tote)

Real Live Flesh

2011-04-06T23:42:00.008-04:00

by Tune-Yards.
get ready.

o mighty isis (LIZ)

2011-04-04T23:21:00.001-04:00

the working title | Bronx River Art Center (BRAC)

2011-03-21T00:04:00.001-04:00

The Working Title is a 32-artist group survey of recent abstraction organized by the amazing Progress Report

Opening Reception: Friday, March 25, 6-9pm

Here are links for the artists featured: Amy Feldman, Benjamin King, Britton Tolliver, Cordy Ryman, Dennis Hollingsworth, Douglas Melini, EJ Hauser, Eric Freeman, Gary Petersen, Halsey Hathaway, Ian Pedigo, Inna Babaeva, Ivin Ballen, Jasmine Justice, JD Walsh, Jered Sprecher, Joshua Abelow, Joy Curtis, Keltie Ferris, Kris Chatterson, Lauren Luloff, Letha Wilson, Matthew Deleget, Omar Chacon, Osamu Kobayashi, Pamela Jorden, Patrick Brennan, Stacy Fisher, Tamara Zahaykevich, Tisch Abelow, Vince Contarino, Yadir Quintana

The name of the exhibition refers to the changing classification, description, or title that is given to abstraction. By nature, abstraction resists tradition and categorization transforming itself into a highly visual moving target. These artists employ abstraction as a means to investigate different approaches to materials, systems, media and content. Rather than following a pre-established doctrine of romantic sentimentality, most of the works elicit an air of experimentation, familiarity, and an overall sense of purpose.

The Working Title brings together different perspectives on abstraction in conversation with each other. Minimalism, post-modern, geometric, gestural, formal, color filed, video and process-driven works occupying the same room, creating unpredictable relationships through contrasting approaches.

Having direct access to technology has become an important tool for artists to share and discuss their practice, making connections on a regional and global level. The collective stance and attitudes on making art are less defensive than they used to be, opening up conversations with the past by seeking out and elaborating on previous approaches that may have been marginalized or forgotten.

The Working Title is on view from March 25 – April 2, 2011.
BRAC's Temporary Gallery Location: 305 E 140th St #1A Bronx, NY 10454

Jonas Wood

2011-03-07T09:41:00.000-05:00

huge admiration for Jonas Wood's new show at Anton Kern until March 26, 2011

Shio Shrine, 2010
Oil and acrylic on canvas
86 x 90 inches

Bird Cages, 2010
Oil and acrylic on Linen
80 x 65 inches

Sun Porch, 2010
Oil and acrylic on canvas
120 x 104 1/4 inches

Helen Frankenthaler

2011-03-07T09:31:00.000-05:00

Small's Paradise, 1964, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 94 inches

Blue Atmosphere, 1964

Summerscene, Provincetown, 1961
Acrylic on canvas mounted on paperboard
20 x 24 inches

diamond vehicle

2011-01-21T19:19:00.001-05:00

Carpet of Flayed Man, China for Tibet, 19th Century, wool, cotton, and dye, 54.5 x 36.75 inches

I love the Metropolitan Museum. Today, me and an art pal spent an epic five hours nerding-out on their fantastic collection.

Rugs and Ritual in Tibetan Buddhism is amazing and on display until June 26, 2011.
Located in the Florence and Herbert Irving Galleries for the Arts of South and Southeast Asia, 3rd floor.

carpet of a flayed elephant, Mongolia, 19th cent., wood, cotton, and dye, 77.5 x 51.5 inches

"Vajrayana and Tantrayana are the names most commonly applied to the advanced schools of Mahayana Buddhism practiced in Tibet. Vajrayana ("Diamond Vehicle") has at its core the pursuit of higher spiritual awareness and, ultimately, enlightenment through the study and mastery of ritual activities that remove obstacles along this path. The "three poisons" that hinder spiritual advancement are identified as ignorance, greed, and hate, and much of the ritual enactment is devoted to quelling these negative passions. This exhibition explores the role of these empowering rites and of the utensils and other paraphernalia they employ. Some of these activities can be performed by novices; others involving advanced skills in visualization—creating a mind-picture of the deity under worship—are dangerous for anyone other than advanced practitioners in the tantric arts. Trance and exorcism are key elements within the repertoire of advanced performance meditations.

Carpet of flayed man, China for Tibet, 19th cent., wool, cotton, and dye, 54.5 x 36.75 inches

Many of the objects included in this exhibition are shocking to those unfamiliar with the meaning and purpose of Tibetan religious art; depictions of exposed brains in skull cups and flayed human skins, for example, are but an extreme expression of the Buddhist pursuit of bodily detachment. Although intended to elevate the initiated to a higher level of consciousness, to the uninitiated or the novice these images may seem simply gruesome. Two large cloth paintings on view were meant to be used expressly within a chapel dedicated to the wrathful protective deities. In this chapel, or gonkhang, invocation rituals were performed using many of the utensils displayed here. Much Vajrayana ritual is based on sacrifice, which has its origins in early Indian Vedic and Hindu practices. They share many of the same utensils and performance gestures, differing only in the symbolic meanings attached to them.

Carpet of flayed man, China for Tibet, 19th cent., wool, cotton, and dye, 73 5/8 x 49 3/4 inches

The wrathful deity Mahakala, an emanation of Akshobhya Buddha, features prominently. He serves as the principal destroyer of the corporeal bonds that tie us to our material and physical existence, thus impeding spiritual advancement. Likewise, Padmasambhava, one of the pioneer propagators of Buddhism in eighth-century Tibet, is an important figure in this ritual history. His instruction in and promotion of the Vajrakila Tantra, an early Indian tantric text, was a seminal moment in the development of Tibetan ritual, further stimulated in the fourteenth century with the promotion of these rites in the Sakya monastic tradition.

Carpet of Tiger-skin Design, China for Tibet, 19th cent., wool, cotton, and dye, 70 1/8 x 35 inches

Tibetan tantric rugs serve as seats of power employed by practitioners of Esoteric Buddhism. The imagery—the flayed skin of an animal or human—is potent. Together with the utensils on view in the exhibition, these rugs are employed in a variety of esoteric rites. A tiger-pelt rug on view has a long ancestry in India, where holy men of various persuasions meditated and preached while seated on a flayed tiger skin. In Tibet these skin rugs were deployed principally in rites invoking the protective deities, and were a noted feature of the annual New Year's Eve exorcism dance performance (Tse Gutor, rtse dgu gtor) to cleanse away the past year's sins." - excerpted from the wall text in the gallery.

The Great Rose Transplant. *

2011-01-07T23:32:00.001-05:00

Jay DeFeo and her legendary painting The Deathrose/The White Rose/The Rose. 1958-1966. Oil on canvas with wood + mica. 128 7/8 x 92 ¼ x 11 inches.

“On November 9, 1965, workers and a supervisor from Bekins Van and Storage Company work for seven hours to remove the painting from DeFeo’s Fillmore Street studio - a process that DeFeo dubs ‘The Great Rose Transplant.’ The ‘transplant’ entails removing the painting from the wall to which it has been attached for almost six years and cutting away about 2 feet of windowsill and wall before the painting can be removed and lowered by forklift to the waiting Bekins truck below. Bruce Conner shoots 700 feet of 35mm film documenting the painting’s removal from the studio. Within a day, DeFeo and Wally Hedrick vacate the 2322 Fillmore Street (SF, CA) building and separate.”

Photos (scanned) & text excerpted from Jay DeFeo and The Rose Edited by Jane Green and Leah Levy.

Click here to go to the Jay DeFeo online archive at SF MOMA.

Click here to go to the Jay DeFeo Trust.

* The images previously associated with this post have been removed as requested by the copyright holder.

nobody loves a genius child

2010-12-09T12:51:00.001-05:00

Check it out - a super film by Tamra Davis about Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child.

ROSE WYLIE what with what

2010-11-02T22:04:00.001-04:00

DON"T MISS...What with What

Rose Wylie at Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, NY

October 14 – November 13, 2010

The images in Wylie's large-scale paintings, such as a cat, a skull, or seemingly inconsequential details of everyday life, are drawn from a variety of sources. Memory and emotional resonance guide her selections as in the movie scenes, which she paints, unchecked against the original references, in her Film Notes. Often a doll-like, female figure appears with objects or stands alone, assuming various rolls.

To give form to the everyday, personal and emotional, Wylie draws from a comprehensive knowledge of art historical references; including Dürer woodcuts, folk painting, Egyptian figures, medieval art, El Greco and early, hand-painted Pop. She first works out her ideas in drawings on paper, which she alters, crops, collages, layers and combines. Similar processes are then employed when she reworks these drawings in oil onto raw, unstretched canvas.

One senses Wylie's visceral delight in the physical process of putting down paint, reworking it over and over, sometimes hiding unsatisfactory results with a patch of fresh canvas, white paint or simply scratching it out. Everything is in a serendipitous flux until completion, when the lines feel as if generated by themselves and every blob is in its place. Text, as Wylie indicates, is included as much for pattern as for content. This amalgamation of image and text creates a maze of narrative possibilities where the process of combining produces a distinct interplay between meaning and representation. What to express with What, What to paint with What, What to combine with What lies at the core of Wylie's process.

Rose Wylie - installation view (2010)

Rose Wylie's work is currently garnering quite some attention: Who is Britain's hottest new artist? A 76-year-old called Rose Wylie, Germaine Greer commented in The Guardian in a full-page article, July 2010. And the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, selected her to represent Great Britain in its 2010 exhibition Women to Watch. Over the years, she has had several solo shows in London with UNION (2010 and 2006), Transition Gallery (2008) and Stephen Lacey (1995 and 1999), and has appeared several times in the Norwich Gallery's East International under such selectors as Matthew Higgs, Camille Chaimowicz, Neo Rauch, Rudi Fuchs and Jan Dibbets. Wylie was selected twice for the Jerwood Drawing Prize (2000 & 2002) and short-listed for the Jerwood Painting Prize (1997). Her work is in several public as well as high profile private collections.

Hedda Sterne !

2010-10-06T19:31:00.000-04:00

New York VIII, 1954, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 72 1/8 x 42 inches

There is MUCH to like at the MOMA AbEx show, the above painting was my favorite from today's visit.

The following text I took from the Krannert Art Museum at University of Illinois press release for Uninterrupted Flux: Hedda Sterne, A Retrospective (2006-2007).

Perhaps most recognizable as the only woman in the famous 1951 photo of the so-called Irascibles, Hedda Sterne was an important member of the New York School (although she prefers not be aligned with any artistic group) and exhibited with Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. Her impressive art career spans from the late 1930s when she exhibited with the Surrealists in Paris until the present. Yet, despite her presence amongst the Abstract Expressionists in the 1940s and 50s and the dynamic body of work she has created over the greater part of the 20th century, her work has gone almost completely undocumented in art historical narratives of the post-war American art scene. Krannert Art Museum’s exhibition, Uninterrupted Flux: Hedda Sterne, A Retrospective, presents an overview of Sterne’s career, including works never previously shown to the public. Based on a series of conversations with the artist and extensive research, the exhibition explores some of the over-arching themes that unite Sterne’s incredibly versatile body of work.

Further I, 1984, Acrylic and oil crayon on canvas., 72 x 52 inches.

Sterne’s long career has traversed both Europe and America and has intersected with several important movements. Likewise, the list of artists with whom she personally was connected reads like a veritable who’s who in 20th century art. Sterne was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1910 and although a generation younger than Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara and Victor Brauner, she was aware from a young age of the Romanian artistic avant-garde surrounding her. Brauner, a Surrealist painter and a close friend of Sterne’s family, introduced her to the Surrealists in Paris in the late 1930s. Hans Arp, impressed by a work he saw in the 1939 11th Exposition du Salon des Surindépendants, brought Sterne’s work to the attention of Peggy Guggenheim, then in London. When Sterne, who is of Jewish origin, returned to German occupied Romania, she narrowly escaped a round up in Bucharest and emigrated to the US in 1941. In New York Peggy Guggenheim introduced Sterne to a vital community of émigré artists including Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and Piet Mondrian. Sterne’s first solo exhibition was held in 1943 at the Wakefield Gallery in New York then under the direction of Betty Parsons. When Parsons opened her own gallery in 1946, Sterne joined the roster of Parsons’ most prized artists along with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt. Since 1943 Sterne has had nearly 40 solo exhibitions and participated in countless group shows. She is currently represented by CDS Gallery in New York.

Sterne’s continual exploration of new directions in her art has yielded a diverse body of work—from her early Surrealist chance pieces, to the anthropomorphic machines of the late 1940s, to the abstract highways and horizon paintings of the 50s and 60s, face series of the 70s and geometric prisms of the 80s and 90s (to name only a few directions her work has taken). Furthermore, Sterne has moved fluidly between abstraction and figuration, as she has returned often to portraiture throughout her career. Her very spirit of exploration, encouraged by her vigorous reading of philosophy, theology, history and literature, provides a framework through which the diversity of her work can be understood. When discussing her work she often returns to the ideas of flux and interconnectedness — two themes that account for her remarkable openness to exploring new styles. However, Sterne’s disinterest in developing a marketable style—or as she describes it, her refusal to paint logos—has made it difficult for any one artistic movement to claim her and perhaps may have contributed to her omission from the art historical canon. Uninterrupted Flux aims to make her prolific body of work visible again and invites further exploration of her life and art.

A corner of Hedda Sterne's studio, photographed in 1970 by Duane Michals.

rainy day

2010-10-02T15:15:00.000-04:00

my picks from a very rainy + windy day in chelsea

David Shrigley
September 15 - October 23

Anton Kern Gallery

David Shrigley, Installation view, 2010, Anton Kern Gallery, NY

Untitled, 2010, Bronze, 5 1/4 x 4 x 5 1/4 inches

David Shrigley, Untitled, 2009, Ink on Paper

Mark Barrow

September 23 – October 30

Elizabeth Dee

Mark Barrow, III, 2010, Acrylic on Hand-Loomed Linen
24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm), Textile by Sarah Parke

Mark Barrow, NIH, 2009, Acrylic on Hand-Loomed Linen
Left: 29 x 27 inches (73.7 x 68.6 cm), Right: 22 x 20 inches (55.9 x 50.8 cm)
Textile by Sarah Parke

Elmer Bischoff

Figurative Paintings, 1953-1966
Sep 10 - Oct 30, 2010
George Adams Gallery

Elmer Bischoff, Self-Portrait, 1955
oil on canvas, 28 x 22 inches

Elmer Bischoff, The River, c. 1953
oil on canvas, 56 x 56 inches

indian summer

2010-09-13T18:15:00.001-04:00

the summer isn't over at David Nolan Gallery.
Summer Group Show
July 9 - September 25, 2010

Barry Le Va, Untitled, 1981, ink and acrylic on paper, 22 1/8 x 30 1/4 inches

John Duff, Inside the Kepler Conjecture III, 2010, urethane resin, steel, 47 x 22 x 22 inches

Mel Kendrick, Double Core, 2005, plywood, plaster, 52 x 31 x 36 inches

true believer

2010-09-11T19:27:00.000-04:00

do not miss SARAH PETERS' splendid show.
APPEAL TO HEAVEN at winkleman gallery
september 9 - october 9, 2010

Dorothy May Bradford, 2010, Pencil and ink on paper, 22" x 30"

Sarah Peters, "Appeal to Heaven," installation view. Photograph by Etienne Frossard.

Descendants & Believers, #4, 2010, bronze, 11.5" x 7.5" x 9", edtion of 5

On the Road - Anna Akhmatova

2010-08-20T12:33:00.000-04:00

On the Road

Though this land is not my own
I will never forget it,
or the waters of its ocean,
fresh and delicately icy.

Sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk,
and the air drunk, like wine.
Late sun lays bare
the rosy limbs of the pine trees.

And the sun goes down in waves of ether
in such a way that I can't tell
if the day is ending, or the world,
or if the secret of secrets is within me again.

Anna Akhmatova
1964
translated from Russian by Jane Kenyon

joan brown

2010-08-17T11:37:00.000-04:00

Joan Brown, The Vanity, 1973; painting; enamel on canvas, 84 in. x 72 1/8 in

"...[Joan Brown] is an artist who is equally in love with her intuitions and the history of painting. Brown is a fancy painter, but in the good sense: you can imagine her being surprised by her own inventions....Brown paints as if she were a born mimic of different styles, and that might explain why she isn't after the unity of any one style. She wants to mix together as many ways of painting as possible, and see if some new clarity comes out of impurity." - excerpted from a 1976 review by Sanford Schwartz.


Joan Brown, Bather #3, 1982


Joan Brown, After the Alcatraz Swim #3, 1975

Joan Brown (February 13, 1938 – October 26, 1990) was an American figurative painter who lived and worked in Northern California. She was a notable member of the "second generation" of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.

She was born in San Francisco and studied at the California School of Fine Art (now San Francisco Art Institute), where her teachers included Elmer Bischoff. She achieved prominence with a style of figurative painting that combined bright color, sometimes cartoonish drawing, and personal symbolism.

Brown was married to Bay Area Figurative sculptor Manuel Neri from 1962 to 1966, though their relationship and artistic collaboration dated back several years prior to this.

In the late 1970s, Brown became increasingly interested in spirituality and New Age ideas, eventually becoming an adherent of Sathya Sai Baba. She made a number of trips to his ashram in Puttaparthi, India. In 1990, she died in a construction accident while installing an obelisk at the Sai Baba's Eternal Heritage Museum in Proddatur, India.

Brown was also a competitive swimmer.

Joan Brown, Fur Rat, 1962


Joan Brown, Untitled (Bird), 1957-1960; sculpture; cardboard, fabric, string, wood, and electric wire, 12 in. x 6 in. x 8 in.

click here to watch Joan Brown interviews

Turner and the Masters | Prado Museum | Madrid

2010-08-15T02:23:00.000-04:00

The following are my picks from the Turner and the Masters show at the Prado Museum, Madrid.  August 4, 2010 - The Turner show was the start to my excellent day at the Prado. 


jw turner, limekiln at coalbrookdale. 1797


jw turner, the fall of an avalanche in the grinsons. 1810

jw turner, snow storm: hannibal and his army crossing the alps, 1812.

"The aim of Turner and the  Masters is to reveal the extent of Turner’s links with other  historically important artists and the profoundly original way in which  he assimilated their influence. This comparison will assist in an  understanding of how Turner’s approach to and assimilation of other  artists was intended not just as an homage to them but also involved a  subtle and highly original type of transformation of their teachings."  Click here to learn more about JW Turner.

jw turner, peace, burial at sea. 1842

francis danby, subject from revelations, 1829.

jw turner, light and colour (goethe's theory)/the morning after the deluge, 1843.

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte - Reina Sofia | August 5, 2010 | Madrid, Spain

2010-08-09T21:33:00.000-04:00

Jean Nouvel added an impressive expansion to the museum in 1999

click here for more about the Nouvel project

below you will find work that caught my attention.

Birds in Sweden

2010-08-09T21:27:00.001-04:00

"Monster languages" is the expression Swedish artist Öyvind Fahlström (1928-1976) used to refer to his experiments in creating new languages: "birdo," based on American bird sounds; "fåglo," based on Swedish bird sounds; and "whammo," based on onomatopoeic expressions in comic books. Of the few works that Fahlström produced employing "monster languages," the 1963 radio play Fåglar i Sverige [Birds in Sweden] is the most ambitious.

Listen to samples of Fåglar i Sverige by clicking here.

Fahlström stayed with Jasper Johns in Charleston SC while working on the beginning stages of this project. While there he created notational poetic word outlines that diagrammed his understanding of bird sounds, songs, and calls. Game structures with organized arbitrariness were one of his approaches for the creation of what he called, "life material."

new realism (1957-1962) Object Strategies Between Readymade and Spectacle

2010-08-09T21:26:00.002-04:00

mimmo rotella - the two faces - 1962

yves klein - 1961 - this film documents the creation of one of Klein's Peintures de Feu [fire paintings].

jean tinguley - c. 1960s - drawing machines and videos about his larger machines

Ade-Ledic Nander II - more from Öyvind Fahlström

2010-08-09T21:19:00.001-04:00


Ade-Ledic Nander II (detail) - 1955-57 - (74 13/16 x 83 1/16 inches)


Ade-Ledic Nander II - 1955-57 - (74 13/16 x 83 1/16 inches)

Öyvind Fahlström is included in the Museo Renia Sofia's: New Realism (1957-1962) Object Strategies Between Readymade and Spectacle. Fahlström was Swedish and became a productive and well known artist that worked in many genres - often with political and social questions. He exhibited in Europe and at Sidney Janis Gallery in New York City in 1967, 1969, 1973 and 1976.

The Computing Centre and the Seminar "Automatic Generation of Artistic Forms"

2010-08-09T20:51:00.000-04:00

Manuel Barbadillo - Roseta 1967

In 1966, at the height of Franco era development, the Computing Centre of the Complutense University of Madrid began its operation, under the direction of the mathematician Florentino Briones. Starting in 1968, the Centre put into motion a pioneering project in the use of computers for artistic creation, by organizing a seminar under the title "Automatic Generation of Artistic Forms", which brought together an important group of artists, architects, mathematicians, economists, etc. The huge number of participants reveals to what point new technologies, the embodiment of the future society, were able to pull together the aesthetic and extra-aesthetic concerns in the Spain of the time. Despite its short duration, the experience marked the later career of many of its participants, not just in procedures and the use of the technologies, but also in the experimentation with materials, forms, and new work methods.

The New Topographers

2010-08-09T20:50:00.000-04:00

Robert Smithson's film, Spiral Jetty, was included in: The New Topographers at Museo Renia Sofia. The 32 minute film is a poetic account of the conception and execution of Smithson's most well-known work.

you can watch an excerpt from the film - click here

Spanish Figuration to Surrealism

2010-08-09T20:27:00.001-04:00

Jose Gutierrez Solana - The Showcases - 1910

Rosario de Velasco - Adam y Eve - c.1920s

As an answer to the revolutionary nature of the avant-garde and the climate of political instability after World War I, in the 1920's and 1930's there is a "call to order" in the European art world. Its origin is situated in metaphysical Italian painting and in German Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). It involved a re-reading of traditional genres through a return to representation and to a set of figurative visual codes which would reveal the tensions between Modernity and Anti-Modernity. In Spain, artists such as Ángeles Santos (1911), Alfonso Ponce de León (1906-1936), o the Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) of the 20's, would move between magical realism, metaphysical painting, Surrealism and even Hyper-Realism, with no perceived contradiction. On the contrary, this nomadism was characteristic of those years.

Angeles Santos - Tertulia (The Gathering) - 1929


Remedios Varo - Modernity - 1936

Man Ray - Dust Breeding (Duchamp's Glass with Dust Notes - 1920
(This photo is a document of The Large Glass after it had collected a year's worth of dust while Duchamp was in New York. The photograph was taken using a two-hour-long exposure.)


Ives Tanguy - Belomancia I - 1927

Maruja Mallo (1902-1995) - Earth and Excrement

alvin baltrop

2010-08-09T20:26:00.000-04:00

Alvin Baltop was my total fave from exhibition: Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices 1970s to the present. I remember the artforum piece on him, but hadn't seen the photos up close....this show was massive.....there was LOTS of Alvin's work. Alvin photographed the 'late night artworks' in and around the now gone West Side Piers in Manhattan (c. 1970s) View an amazing interview of AA Bronson about Alvin here -- DARK tab on website.

At the age of 26, Alvin Baltrop began photographing what was going on at Manhattan's West Side piers. The area, full of abandoned warehouses and dilapidated industrial piers, became a temporary home for queer teenage runaways and a cruising spot for gay men. It was a place that was under the radar. People went there to do drugs, muggings were common and so, unfortunately, were rape, murder and suicide. Baltrop's camera captured gay public sex, the public art of muralist Tava, various unknown graffiti artists, as well as pieces by David Wojnarowicz, who also visited the piers. Baltrop documented homelessness, death and the stark decay of run-down warehouses with depth and grace.

Of course, not everyone saw it that way. The mainstream art world, even the gay portion of it, couldn't see the value in Baltrop's work. Hostile reactions to his pictures were common. One curator he showed his portfolio to likened Baltrop to a sewer rat because of the content of his photos. Most art gallery owners and academic art critics could only see dirty homeless fags fucking in an abandoned warehouse, and stopped there." excerpted from article by Osa Atoe in Colorlines.

Sarah Oppenheimer | Project 610-3356 | Mattress Factory

2010-07-11T02:34:00.002-04:00

Check out SARAH OPPENHEIMER'S projects!

610-3356. View from the fourth floor.

Fourth floor opening dimensions: 84" x 16"

Mattress Factory. Pittsburgh, PA. 2008.

610-3356. Alternate view from the fourth floor.

Fourth floor opening dimensions: 84" x 16"

Mattress Factory. Pittsburgh, PA. 2008.

610-3356. View from the third floor.

Mattress Factory. Pittsburgh, PA. 2008.

610-3356. View from xbuilding exterior

Exterior opening dimensions: 48" x 36"

Mattress Factory. Pittsburgh, PA. 2008.

check out Sarah Oppenheimer's website here

Thanks for the tip SP.

after bathing at baxter's

2010-07-10T23:37:00.002-04:00

The Rock Scene, 14 Sept 1967
Jefferson Airplane - Ballad Of You And Me And Pooneil from After Bathing at Baxter's

HARRY SMITH | filmmaker | musicologist | painter | anthropologist | linguist | translator

2010-07-02T10:56:00.003-04:00

“You shouldn’t be looking at this as a continuity. Film frames are hieroglyphs, even when they look like actuality. You should think of the individual frame, always, as a glyph, and then you’ll understand what cinema is about.” – Harry Smith

The effects Harry Smith employed in his early films were often painted or manipulated by hand directly on the celluloid. Themes of mysticism, surrealism and dada were common elements in his work.

Information especially about Smith's early films is very contradictory. This is partly due to the work-in-progress nature of experimental filmmaking as films are often reedited (hence the different runtimes), occasionally incorporating reassembled footage of different films, or showed with varying music tracks. For instance, the handmade films now known as No. 1, 2, 3, and 5 were accompanied by an improvising jazz band on May 12, 1950 when they premiered as part of the Art in Cinema series curated by Smith's friend Frank Stauffacher at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Initially Smith intended to use Dizzy Gillespie songs (vide infra). Later he showed the films with random records or even the radio as accompaniment. Harry Smith stated that his films were made for contemporary music, and he kept changing their soundtracks. Harry also re-cut Early Abstractions to sync with Meet the Beatles! picked out by his wife, Rosebud Feliu-Pettet.

After Smith's death artists such as Philip Glass or DJ Spooky provided musical backgrounds for screenings of his films: Glass at the 2004 summer benefit concert of the Film-Makers' Cooperative and DJ Spooky at several venues in 1999 for Harry Smith: A Re-creation, a florilegium of Smith's films put together by his close collaborator M. Henry Jones who tries to screen the films in the manner intended by Smith - as performances - using stroboscopic effects, multiple projections, magic lanterns, and the like.

"Early Abstractions" (1946-57) part 3

The present-day numbering system which Smith introduced some time between 1951 and 1964-5 (the year the Film-Makers' Cooperative started distributing 16 mm copies of his films) includes only films that survived up to that point. Thus this filmography is in no way a comprehensive list of all the films he has ever made, all the more as he is known to have lost, sold, traded or even wantonly destroyed some of his own works. The dating of the film presents another puzzle. Since Smith frequently worked for years on them and kept little to no documentation, the information varies considerably from one source to another. Therefore all available information has been added to the following list, inevitably resulting in a loss of clarity but having the advantage of giving the whole picture. The films are also known by variant designation, i.e. Film No. 1, Film # 1 or simply # 1.

For more on the amazing Harry Smith (including info on his giant and influential Anthology of American Folk Music, check out his online archive here

strait jacket escape

2010-06-30T08:40:00.001-04:00

harry houdini

PLEASE JUMP AROUND HERE opens at STOREFRONT June 25, 6-9 pm

2010-06-09T11:26:00.006-04:00

PLEASE JUMP AROUND HERE
curated by Jessica Duffett

Brooke Moyse, EJ Hauser, Tamara Gonzales, Rico Gatson, Nathlie Provosty, Ariel Dill, Christian Sampson, Mamie Tinkler, Ted O'Sullivan, Rebecca Potts, and Robert Rhee

STOREFRONT 16 Wilson Avenue, Brooklyn
June 25-July 11 (open weekends 1-6PM)

*view exhibition online here

transformer.

2010-04-21T22:30:00.004-04:00

Amy Sillman
Walt Whitman, 2010
Oil on canvas
51 x 45 inches

Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

view online exhibition here 

April 15 - May 15, 2010 

----------------------------------------------------

from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman.

"...This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar of the old cartouches, These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas. This is the geologist, this works with the scalper, and this is a mathematician..."

painted rays (1725 - 2009)

2010-04-14T21:03:00.003-04:00

André Butzer
Nicht fürchten! (Don't Be Scared!), 2009
Oil on canvas
110 1/2 X 90 1/2 inches

Chaim Soutine
Still life with rayfish, 1923
Oil on canvas, 80 x 60 cm

James Ensor
Still life with skate, 1892
Oil on canvas, 31-1/2 x 39-3/8 inches.
Musées royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Brussels

Jean-Baptiste Chardin
La raie (The Skate), c. 1725-1726
Oil on canvas
H. 1.145 m; W. 1.46 m

more doctors

2010-04-12T23:03:00.007-04:00

Wilhelm Sasnal
A Gynecologist, 2007
Oil on  canvas
15 3/4 x 19 3/4 inches
Anton Kern Gallery

Otto Dix  (German, 1891–1969) 
Dr.  Hans Koch, 1921  
Mixed media on canvas; 39 9/16 x 35 7/16 in. 

Museum Ludwig, Cologne 

the doctor

2010-04-09T13:48:00.003-04:00

Francisco Goya
El Medico (The Doctor), 1780
Oil on Canvas
37.75" x 47.5"

joanna newsom - soft as chalk

2010-03-19T22:11:00.009-04:00

update: the video frame is distorted - click on video (or HERE) and watch on youtube

Joanna Newsom also played this song at Town Hall on 03/18/2010...beyond.

Soft as Chalk is from Have One On Me (Drag City).

first aid kit !

2010-03-05T12:04:00.005-05:00

This is the astounding band, First Aid Kit, a sisters-duo from Sweden. In the summer of 2008 they did this cover of "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" by Fleet Foxes.

"We went out in the forest this morning and recorded this cover of the wonderful song "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" by Fleet Foxes, our favourite band right now. We saw them live this weekend in Sweden and it was absolutely amazing. If you get a chance to see them live don't hesitate for a second!"

Their debut album "The Big Black & The Blue" can be bought from Rough Trade (click here).

dance ghost

2010-02-28T20:30:00.006-05:00

Vaudeville Park
26 Bushwick Avenue - Brooklyn, NY
March 3 - March 7, 2010
Opening: Wednesday, March 3, 7 - 9:30 PM

click here for ArtCat listing

the art of the steal

2010-02-28T19:18:00.003-05:00

click here for NY Times review, February 26, 2010

Heat Waves in a Swamp / Charles Burchfield

2010-02-13T23:40:00.006-05:00

Heat Waves in a Swamp will be the first major Charles Burchfield exhibition to be mounted on the west coast and the first in New York for more than twenty years. Arranged chronologically, it approaches Burchfield’s work with a new perspective facilitated in part by the curatorial sensibilities of Robert Gober. Working with Hammer coordinating curator Cynthia Burlingham, Gober has augmented a large selection of watercolors with the inclusion of extensive biographical material that continually infuses Burchfield’s own thoughts about his work and artistic practice. An obsessive collector, organizer, and archivist, Burchfield left a treasure trove of well-maintained sketches, notebooks, journals, and doodles spanning his entire career. This material is now part of the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College, which houses more than twenty five thousand objects by this visionary American artist. The exhibition will travel to the Whitney Museum of America Art in New York and the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

Although aware of the art of his time, Charles Burchfield spent his working life immersed in his own local environment in upstate New York, trusting and then challenging his creative instincts, often looking backwards in order to go forward, and steadfast in his belief of “the healthy glamour of everyday life.” His paintings vibrate with color and sound like visual symphonies where the humming of insects, rustling leaves, bells, moonbeams, and vibrating telephone lines are woven together to reveal the beauty and power of the American landscape. Side by side with his journals and notes these paintings explore both physical and psychological terrain. Edward Hopper, fellow artist and close colleague, once said that Burchfield’s work "is most decidedly founded, not on art, but on life, and the life that he knows and loves best.”

The Four Seasons (1949-60)

The Man and His Art
The exhibition begins with work Burchfield created in 1916 while living in Salem, Ohio and follows his career with special attention to transformative and often reflective moments in his life and work. For example, drawings from a 1917 sketchbook entitled “Conventions for Abstract Thoughts” represent human emotions with semi-abstract shapes that would appear in his work for years to come. This is followed by an entire room dedicated to the 1930 Burchfield exhibition at MoMA, which was the first solo artist exhibition in the museum’s young history. About half of the twenty-seven watercolors originally featured in the MoMA show will be exhibited alongside the correspondence between Burchfield and then-MoMA curator/director Alfred Barr. This early period of Burchfield’s career also features a room with wallpaper from his time as a wallpaper designer combined with watercolors of industrial landscapes from the same period.

More than a decade later, Burchfield returns to his early expressionistic watercolors for inspiration. He begins to make monumental pieces created by literally transforming a number of small-scale watercolors from 1916-1918 -- pasting large strips of paper around the early watercolors to increase their size and reworking these new compositions into unusually large ecstatic watercolor visions. This return to his roots results in an explosion of color and the exhibition culminates in the late, transcendental watercolors of the 1950s and 1960s. These monumental paintings are accompanied by a central vitrine containing some of the 10,000 handwritten journal pages that Burchfield kept throughout his life, from a young teenager until his death from a heart attack in 1967. These rich and complex journals demonstrate the extent to which this artist was continually immersed in rigorous self-reflection and the documentation of his artistic process.

Opens June 24, 2010 at the Whitney Museum.

space window

2010-02-11T22:00:00.002-05:00

"Crews tell us that Earth gazing is important to them," says Julie Robinson, the ISS (International Space Station) Program Scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center. "The astronauts work hard up there and are away from their families for a long time. Observing the Earth and the stars helps relax and inspire them."

Until now, space station astronauts have been confined to looking out small portholes or at best the 20-inch window in the US Destiny Laboratory. The Cupola will dramatically expand their view.

"The Cupola's 80-cm diameter circular top window is the largest window ever built for space," says Robinson. "Rather than peering through a little porthole, the Cupola will allow a stunning look at the cosmos and unprecedented panoramic views of Earth. Astronauts will share these views with the world through photographs taken through the windows and posted online."

double black diamond

2010-02-11T10:24:00.004-05:00

Jeret (Speedy) Peterson, freestyle skier (aerials)

US Olympic Team

Hannah Kearney, freestyle skier (moguls)
US Olympic Team

"....a truly breathtaking Olympic fashion mash-up, check out Ryan McGinley’s portfolio of athletes dressed by Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy...the photo editor of The New York Times Magazine [asked Rodarte] to design a collection of the looks for the shoot...The photos feature a cast of high-fliers, from the snowboarders Shaun White, Kelly Clark and Hannah Teter to the figure skater Johnny Weir and the freestyle skier Jeret “Speedy” Peterson in custom Rodarte knitwear." from the NYT Magazine, Rodarte, and photographer Ryan McGinley.

...cows in the field.

2010-02-02T22:45:00.001-05:00

'the whole scene rocks and quails before the horrid clangour'

2010-01-29T09:31:00.006-05:00

CHARLES BURCHFIELD

Church Bells Ringing - Rainy Winter Night, 1917 (30 x 19 inches)

From a letter dated March 5, 1929:

"It was an attempt to express a childhood emotion - a rainy winter night - the churchbell is ringing and it terrifies me (the child) - the bell ringing motive reaches out and saturates the rainy sky - the roofs of the houses dripping with rain are influenced; the child attempts to be comforted by the thoughts of candle lights and Christmas trees, but the fear of the black, rainy night is overpowering. When I think back on such things I know what R ----------- means by the 'pang in the middle of the night."
Charles Burchfield

the shadow of your smile

2010-01-28T01:30:00.006-05:00

The Sandpiper (1965) - 117 minutes / color.
Starring Elizabeth Taylor + Richard Burton.
Directed by Vincente Minnelli.

"The Shadow of Your Smile," also know as "Love Theme from the Sandpiper," was written by Johhny Mandel, the lyrics by Paul Francis Webster. The song was introduced in the 1965 movie The Sandpiper with a trumpet solo by Jack Sheldon. It won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year, and the Academy Award Song of the Year.

The Sandpiper was mainly shot in Big Sur, California.

i see rainbows in the evening.

2010-01-21T01:33:00.009-05:00

check out 'i can hear the grass grow' from The Move, a seminal British pop/rock group of the late 1960's and early 1970's. The Move are often cited as one of the main progenitors of power pop...the group eventually morphed into ELO.

'tonight' from a 1971 German television program.

'the words of aaron' also from 1971.

Lenore Tawney

2010-01-03T23:15:00.008-05:00

Lenore Tawney, an artist whose monumental sculptural weavings redefined the possibilities of both sculpture and weaving in the second half of the 20th century and helped create the genre of fiber art, died Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 100.

Her death was confirmed by Kathleen Nugent Mangan, her assistant and a friend who was the curator of a retrospective of her work in 1990.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when art and crafts were viewed in America as mutually exclusive disciplines, Ms. Tawney united them decisively and controversially. Trained as a sculptor and as a weaver, she combined several different techniques — plain weave, gauze weave, slit tapestry and open-warp weaving — to invent large, abstract and free-standing, or rather free-hanging, sculptural forms.

Traditionalists on both sides of the art-craft divide found fault, but she persisted in work that came to assume a grand architectural scale. Her “Waters Above the Firmament” (1976), the last work she made on the loom, was 12 feet by 12 feet. The 1983 “Cloud Sculpture,” a suspended environment made of thousands of knotted blue threads, was three times as large, an ethereal Niagara.

Lenore Agnes Gallagher was born in Lorain, Ohio, in 1907. She moved to Chicago in 1927 and worked as a court proofreader while taking evening classes at the Art Institute. At the city’s Institute of Design she studied sculpture with Alexander Archipenko, drawing with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and weaving with Marli Ehrman. Later she studied tapestry with the Finnish weaver Martta Taipale at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.

In 1941, in Chicago, she married George Tawney, a psychologist. (Ms. Tawney leaves no immediate survivors.) After his sudden death a year and a half later, she began to travel, first to Mexico, then to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

Back in Chicago in 1957, she packed a few possessions into a car and drove to New York City. “I left Chicago,” she later wrote, “to seek a barer life, closer to reality, without all the things that clutter and fill our lives. The truest thing in my life was my work. I wanted my life to be as true. I almost gave up my life for my work, seeking a life of the spirit.”

She settled in Lower Manhattan as one of a handful of artists who, seeking space, quiet and a chance to work apart from the New York art world, lived on Coenties Slip, near the South Street Seaport. Her neighbors in the late 1950s included the artists Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin. She and the slightly younger Ms. Martin were close friends and influenced each other’s work.

Beginning in the 1950s, Ms. Tawney executed several large-scale commissions in Chicago, New York and Santa Rosa, Calif. None of them remain on view.

In the 1960s, in addition to small-scale weavings influenced by American Indian, Peruvian and African art, she began producing enigmatic assemblage boxes and collages, including postcard collages, which she sent to friends.

Many of the postcard collages she made over the years had fragile objects attached to their surfaces: seashells, feathers, tiny bones of birds and the like. But she did not consider a piece finished until it had traveled though the mail, and she never enclosed it in an envelope when she did. She would take the postcard to the post office to be hand-stamped and leave it with the clerk.
Ms. Tawney said that over decades of sending art this way, no piece was ever lost. Every piece arrived at its destination intact, she said, its fragile attachments unharmed as if it had been carried every step of the way by loving hands.

In 1990 she was given a career retrospective at the American Craft Museum, now known as the Museum of Arts and Design. Her work has entered the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

At one point Ms. Tawney made repeated trips to India to study meditation. She considered much of her repetitive and labor-intensive work — the thousands of knotted threads in “Cloud Sculpture,” for example — a form of meditation.

“I’m not just patiently doing it,” she said of such work. “It’s done with devotion.”

By HOLLAND COTTER
Lenore Tawney, an Innovator in Weaving, Dies at 100
NY TIMES OBIT from 11/24/2007

insomnia

2009-12-18T13:14:00.002-05:00

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.

Elizabeth Bishop

OMG. explode into colors

2009-11-28T21:18:00.003-05:00

super amazing...check it out

used to be / Beach House

2009-11-24T19:36:00.003-05:00

from Beach House's upcoming album Teen Dream.

matthias grünewald | the isenheim altarpiece

2009-11-09T09:51:00.008-05:00

Matthias Grünewald
(c. 1470 – August 31, 1528)

The Isenheim Altarpiece is an altarpiece painted by the German artist Matthias Grünewald between 1512 and 1516. It is on display at the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar, Alsace now in France.

By far his greatest, as well as his largest work, it was painted for the Monastery of St. Anthony in Isenheim near Colmar (then in Germany), which specialized in hospital work. The Antonine monks of the monastery were noted for their treatment of sufferers of skin disease, such as ergotism, symptoms of which are displayed by figures including the crucified Christ in the altarpiece.

The altarpiece has two sets of wings, displaying three configurations. The first view shows a Crucifixion scene, flanked by images of Saint Anthony and Saint Sebastian. There is a predella with a Lamentation of Christ, which remains in the second view also. When the outermost wings are opened, the second view shows scenes of the Annunciation, the original subject of Mary bathing Jesus to the accompaniment of an Angelic choir (or various other titles), and the Resurrection.

The innermost view shows the Temptation of Saint Anthony and the Meeting of Saint Anthony and the Hermit Paul to the sides, and a pre-existing carved gilt-wood altarpiece by Nicolas Hagenau of about 1490. Now the altarpiece has been dis-assembled (and sawn through) so that all the views can be seen separately, except that the original sculpted altarpiece is no longer flanked by the panels of the third view, which are instead shown together. Carved wood elements at the top and bottom of the composition were lost in the French Revolution, when the whole painting survived nearly being destroyed. The iconography of the altarpiece has several unusual elements, several derived from closely following the accounts left by Saint Bridget of Sweden of her mystical visions.

reading the news and it sure looks bad

2009-10-08T11:38:00.004-04:00

October 9, 1970.

Joni Mitchell singing, California, from the album Blue.

jack tworkov / the extreme of the middle

2009-09-30T23:03:00.008-04:00

Check out painter Jack Tworkov's work at the UBS Art Gallery New York, NY. The show runs from August 13-November 13, 2009.

"June 21." 1964. Oil on canvas. 62 x 80 in.

And coinciding with the show at UBS is the publication of a new collection of insightful writings by Jack Tworkov from Yale University Press, and edited by Mira Schor.

Jack Tworkov (1900–1982) was a significant figure of the Abstract Expressionist period. A noted painter, he was one of the first group of artists who defined the ideals of the New York School, along with Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, and Franz Kline, among others. This book, the first collection of Tworkov’s writings, sheds new light on the lives and studio practices of Tworkov and his colleagues as well as on Tworkov’s artistic theories and values.

These enlightening and intimate writings—personal journals and letters, teaching notebooks, correspondence with other artists, previously unpublished essays, and published articles—are introduced and annotated by Mira Schor, who provides an informed account of an important artist and thinker. The book is enriched by photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn, Arnold Newman, and Robert Rauschenberg; family photographs with Hans Hofmann, John Cage, Kline, and others; and reproductions of some of Tworkov’s finest work.

(images from mitchell-innes & nash)

"Variables," 1963. Oil on canvas. 56 x 80 in.

michael berryhill

2009-09-21T11:33:00.006-04:00

Check-out Michael Berryhill's new show, Basement States, at Horton and Liu until October 10. Berryhill's work ponders a unique intersection of painting history, rockers, and the concept of stage. There are some super complex larger paintings that will grab your attention, but don't miss the smaller equally gorgeous paintings (see below).

arty-facts, 2009

three piece, 2008

shrown of cloud, 2008

raoul de keyser

2009-09-17T16:12:00.006-04:00

Was interested in Raoul De Keyser's show up at David Zwirner until October 24. RDeK is obviously working FROM something. I kept noticing the under-painting...especially the washes of reds and blues located just below the painting's surface. Trees, rocks, mountains, logs, flags, water, and floating space are implied. Small canvases with a kind of warm Hartley minimalism.

the XX

2009-09-16T15:05:00.002-04:00

so the XX has made a big impression....mad love for their new album. Check it out.

rebecca warren

2009-09-16T14:57:00.006-04:00

Very excited to let you know about Rebecca Warren's latest show. You have until October 24th to see her elegant synthesis of the lady-man-new modernist-sculpture-trajectory. At Matthew Marks 522 W 22nd St.

heavy rotation

2009-08-03T13:28:00.001-04:00

from the album Veckatimest, by Grizzly Bear.

burning

2009-07-27T08:39:00.006-04:00

I breathe in the cool incense smoke from the metal brazier,
While thinking about a poem for my dear friend Lu Wa.
My sandalwood-hearted companion spits out plum blossoms of smoke,
Looking like the cloudy fog of the other world.
Perhaps it's the soul of my friend the old mountain man
In the smoke's dense patterns?

Kan Po, in memoriam (undated)

Incense wood was recorded for the first time in Japan in 595, during the reign of Empress Suiko. Not long before that date, in the mid-sixth century, Buddhism had been introduced into Japan from the continent, and along with Buddhist images and sutras, incense and its implements were also imported. From the end of the Nara period (710–784), courtiers inspired by the use of incense in Buddhist rituals in temple settings also began to burn incense in their homes. The incense they used was kneaded and mixed into balls, which served not only to "perfume" the air of the rooms, but also—as an indicator of refined taste—to perfume clothes and hair. The incense culture referred to in the Heian-period (794–1183) court classic, The Tale of Genji, formed the basis of the association of classical literature and incense. There were lacquer utensils and sets for the preparation of the incense. A typical incense set would have included an outer box containing smaller boxes for the storage of raw incense materials, such as aloe, clove, sandalwood, deer musk, amber, and herbs, as well as small spatulas for preparing the mixtures.

By the time of the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate in the twelfth century, a new approach to Buddhism had been introduced from China. It was through the introduction of this new organization, Zen, that a new way of appreciating incense developed among aristocratic warriors. It became popular to hold ceremonies during which guests took turns enjoying ten different pieces of incense. At these gatherings, it was not the earlier kneaded and mixed incense compositions that were used, but the incense woods themselves. Incense games, comparing named incense woods, were also organized.

During the Muromachi period (1392–1573), the etiquette of "the way of incense" developed in tandem with the tea ceremony. Along with the fashion of sponsoring incense games connected with poetry or literary classics such as The Tale of Genji, the collecting of famous named incense wood pieces also flourished. The burning of expensive, rare incense woods on special occasions increased their value, and made them a "once in a lifetime" experience.

Around the beginning of the Edo period (1615–1868), the aristocracy in Kyoto realized that the revival of the traditional "way of the arts" was essential to preserving their cultural identity, counterbalancing the various new rules enforced by the recently established Tokugawa shogunate to restrict the aristocracy's influence and representative power. Later, the "the way of incense" (kôdô) became a popular pastime of the Tokugawa clan and their cultural circle as well, and incense game sets became part of the wedding trousseau of provincial warrior families (daimyô). By the mid–Edo period, the wealthy merchant class also had access to incense, so incense games became more widespread. The use of incense sticks was popularized along with many other new forms of enjoying incense. With woodblock prints and woodblock printed books fashionable at the time, literary forms such as novels and poetry hitherto confined to social elites became accessible to the urban middle classes (chônin). Symbolic representations of incense or decorative crests associated with incense games (such as the Genji-mon) appeared on kimonos and screens, or on applied art objects. Incense, or the incense game itself, was depicted on woodblock prints (even on surimono), sometimes in the context of Kabuki theater. Various complex incense-comparing games, many of which were associated with poetry, were created, and the utensils of the games were perfected. Different schools relayed knowledge regarding incense and the practice of its usage. Besides incense game sets, there were several types of utensils, such as the incense burner, the kôro, for perfuming clothes, hair, and rooms, and various kinds of boxes for the storage of incense wood. For the incense games, several utensils were needed; their type and number varied according to the incense school and the game being played.

In a typical game, a small incense-heater (kikikôro) was passed among the guests. The heater could be made of porcelain, in which case it had three legs, or of maki-e decorated lacquer, in which case it had a metal plate inside. Inside the heater, a hot charcoal piece was placed in ash to warm a small piece of incense wood placed on a mica plate so it would release its smell. A lacquer incense burner in the shape of a pumpkin was called an akoda-kôro. A jûkôgô was a small-sized tiered incense box, usually with three tiers to store different kinds of incense. The best-known game is the jusshûkô, or "Ten round incense game." In this game, different incense were passed around ten times. The necessary utensils were held in a decorative lacquered box, which was often part of a wedding set. Small boxes (kôgô and kôbako) for the storage of incense (incense wood or incense mixture balls) were prepared in a great variety of shapes, materials, and motifs.
With the Meiji reforms (1867–68) and the "westernization-modernization" of Japanese culture in the second half of the nineteenth century, the practice of incense became passé. Thus, in the second half of the century, incense utensils entered the art market in large numbers, and a substantial portion of them ended up in Western collections. However, from the 1890s, partially due to foreign efforts to revalue Japanese culture, appreciation of "the way of incense" was gradually reborn.

Monika Bincsik
Jane and Morgan Whitney Art History Research Fellow, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

for even more info click here

wish number 1

2009-07-20T22:36:00.003-04:00

albert oehlen/alice neel (day)

2009-05-29T22:31:00.002-04:00

This is the last weekend...don't miss the superforce that is
Albert Oehlen
at Luhring Augustine April 25-May 30

Albert Oehlen
39,90, 2008
Oil and paper on canvas
106 1/4 x 122 inches

Albert Oehlen
Del ahorro, 2008
Oil and paper on canvas
106 1/4 x 122 inches

------------------------------------------------------
and MAJOR amazement at David Zwirner
Alice Neel Selected Works
May 14 through June 20, 2009

Alice Neel
Rita and Hubert
1958
Oil on canvas
Image Size: Framed: 36 3/4 x 42 3/4 x 1 7/8

Alice Neel
Dana Gordon
1972
Oil on canvas
Image Size: Framed: 51 3/8 x 35 1/2 x 1 7/8

Alice Neel

Young Woman
c. 1946
Oil on canvas
Image Size: Framed: 34 3/4 x 27 3/4 x 1 3/4

neilyoungbender

2009-05-24T08:37:00.002-04:00

don't let it bring you down (bbc, 1971)

when sculptors paint

2009-04-22T21:38:00.004-04:00

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875)
Costume Ball at the Tuileries, 1867
Oil on canvas H. 56; W. 46 cm

Achille Emperaire Peintre - Cezanne

2009-04-22T09:00:00.003-04:00

Paul Cézanne (1839-1902)
Achille Emperaire (between 1867 and 1868) Oil on canvas
H. 200; W. 120 cm
Paris, Musée d'Orsay

Born in Aix, like Cézanne who was his elder by ten years, Achille Emperaire was also an artist. The two men met in Charles Suisse's studio in Paris in the early 1860s and were close friends for at least a decade.

Cézanne often spoke fondly of the companion of his youth saying: "He's a very talented boy and nothing in the art of the Venetians has been lost on him. I have often seen him do as well!" Unfortunately, out of money and luck, Achille Emperaire failed to establish a reputation and all that survives of him are a small number of rather spirited works.

A contemporary reported that in the two charcoal sketches made before the painted portrait of Achille, we see "a magnificent knight's head, in the style of Van Dyck", and sense "a burning soul, nerves of steel, and iron pride in a misshapen body [...], a cross between Don Quixote and Prometheus."

In the painting, on the contrary, Cézanne emphasises Emperaire's sickliness and deformed body. However, far from being a caricature, the work plays on its monumental format – the frontal view, the majestic chair and the ostentatious inscription echo Ingres' Napoleon I on the Imperial Throne, right down to the pun on Emperor/Emperaire.

Going beyond the lessons in realism learnt from artists such as Courbet and Manet, Cézanne's vision is here infused with a raw kind of romanticism, which marks the apogee of this period that the master of Aix himself described as "ballsy".

(my next few posts are going to be pictures of paintings, taken from books...some of the inspiring painters rattling around my thoughts this spring.)

Leon Kossoff, From the Early Years 1957-1967

2009-03-21T11:03:00.007-04:00

This will be on my list of best shows from 2009.
Don't miss your opportunity to see this many early Kossoff's all in one place.
Kossoff sweeps mountains of heavy fleshy paint into being...this is what it's all about.

Leon Kossoff c.1957-1967
(from Mitchell Innes & Nash show)

painting detail #1

painting detail #2

painting detail #3

painting detail #4

Leon Kossoff, From the Early Years 1957-1967
Mitchell-Innes & Nash
534 West 26th Street
February 17 - March 28, 2009

As a key figure in the School of London, Leon Kossoff (b. 1926) has been described as one of the greatest British artists of the past four decades. He grew up in the East End of London and has lived in the city all his life. His work focuses on London's changing urban landscape and the human figure. Loyal to a limited number of models, Kossoff’s portraits are mostly of
members of his own family or very close friends.

click here for an article (and a video interview with Kossoff) published in March 2007 during Kossoff's exhibition at the National Gallery in London.

seen.

2009-03-18T11:08:00.006-04:00

Martin Kippenberger at MOMA.
This is THE show of shows.
Closes on May 11, 2009.

Lisa Yuskavage at Zwirner.
Wasn't expecting to dig this show, but totally did.
Closes March 28, 2009.

Was expecting to dig, and didn't.
This was the best (and smallest) Thomas Scheibitz painting at Tanya Bonakdar.
Closes April 18, 2009.

Simon Evans at James Cohan.
Smart obsessive work and well made.
Easy to like.
Closes April 4, 2009.

be back in March.

2009-02-10T10:58:00.004-05:00

I am moving my studio....C-H-A-N-G-E-S.
Not much time to blog or anything else.
I'll be back in March.

Marc Handelman & David Schutter

2009-01-25T23:08:00.003-05:00

Marc Handelman & David Schutter
This was one of my favorite shows last Friday.

David Schutter, after AIC W x3, 2008
Oil on canvas (19.125 x 25.625 inches)

Marc Handelman, Monumental Solutions, 2008

Oil on canvas (72.75 x 62.25 inches)

Marc Handelman & David Schutter (Installation View)

January 17 - February 21, 2009
at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (click here)

madness.

2009-01-25T22:57:00.002-05:00

Twin Solid State Musical Tesla coils playing the Ghostbusters theme song at the 2007 Lightning on the Lawn Teslathon sponsored by DC Cox (Resonance Research Corp) in Baraboo WI. The music that you hear is coming from the sparks that these two identical high power solid state Tesla coils are generating. There are no speakers involved. The Tesla coils stand 7 feet tall and are each capable of putting out over 12 foot of spark. They are spaced about 18 feet apart. The coils are controlled over a fiber optic link by a single laptop computer. Each coil is assigned to a midi channel which it responds to by playing notes that are programed into the computer software. These coils were constructed by Steve Ward and Jeff Larson. Video was captured by Terry Blake. What is not obvious is how loud the coils are. They are well over 110dB If you look at another You Tube video which is from a different angle, you can hear the echo off the building and get a better idea of how loud it is.

Plato's may not be for everyone...but you won't know until you try it

2009-01-15T22:40:00.001-05:00

the pleasure and the fun will keep you feeling young

paul laffoley, painter.

2009-01-11T20:03:00.012-05:00

like wow...and right now.
PAUL LAFFOELY: THE SIXTIES at KENT Gallery 541 West 25th Street Second Floor
8 January - 21 February, 2009

paul laffoley website here

again, from the Scott Bodenner hotline (here)

this coming gladness

2009-01-07T22:15:00.009-05:00

in heavy rotation, this coming gladness (and everything else) by josephine foster.

"Josephine Foster...a veritable Shirley Collins...manages what some might liken to clandestine amateur opera: her voice is quiet, shaky even, but she manages a practiced control over her pitch and delivery. Which is important: Foster often taps into a certain melodrama that finds a face only in the most assuredly private bathroom mirrors. The glam works here perhaps to its own chagrin because it sounds quite real and vulnerable..."
- Pitchfork

"With wailing singing reminiscent of such fringe folkies as Magic Carpet songsmith Alisha Sufit and one-time Loren Mazzacane Connors collaborateur Kath Bloom, Josephine Foster stirs stirring life into every one of the odes herein, her boisterous voice swooping and soaring like a kite caught at the top of the breeze..."
- Neumu

"Josephine Foster sounds like a time lost singer from the Snow White and Cinderella animated films. If Iggy Pop would be your deranged grandfather who takes you to brothels and slips you some weed, Foster would be the mother who sings you lullabies and strokes your hair to put you to blissful sleep."
- the Manila Standard

"Plenty of so-called acid folk singers sound like rock vocalists trying to backtrack into a purer, more idiosyncratic style, but Foster has been idiosyncratic from the start. The former opera student has a startlingly clear voice, wonderfully mannered articulation, and an impeccable sense of pitch...Her timbre isn't as plush but otherwise she sounds strikingly like Shirley Collins, the matriarch of the 1960s British Folk revival."
- the Chicago Reader

listen here

Delaney, Bonnie & Friends - Poor Elijah

2009-01-06T02:51:00.010-05:00

On the strength of Accept No Substitute, and at his friend George Harrison's suggestion, Eric Clapton took Delaney & Bonnie and Friends on the road in mid-1969 as the opening act for his band . Clapton became fast friends with Delaney, Bonnie and their band, preferring their music to Blind Faith. Clapton would often appear on stage with Delaney & Bonnie and Friends during this period, and continued to record and tour with them following Blind Faith's August 1969 breakup.

Delaney Bramlett 1939-2008

monzogranite / joshua tree, ca

2009-01-01T18:57:00.005-05:00

welcome 2009.
peace from joshua tree, ca

Geologists believe the face of Earth's modern landscape was born more than 100 million years ago. Molten liquid, heated by the continuous movement of Earth’s crust, oozed upward and cooled while still below the surface. These plutonic intrusions are a granitic rock called monzogranite.

The monzogranite developed a system of rectangular joints. One set, oriented roughly horizontally, resulted from the removal—by erosion—of the miles of overlying rock, called gniess (pronounced “nice”). Another set of joints is oriented vertically, roughly paralleling the contact of the monzogranite with its surrounding rocks. The third set is also vertical but cuts the second set at high angles. The resulting system of joints tended to develop rectangular blocks. (figure 1) .
As ground water percolated down through the monzogranite’s joint fractures, it began to transform some hard mineral grains along its path into soft clay, while it loosened and freed grains resistant to solution. Rectangular stones slowly weathered to spheres of hard rock surrounded by soft clay containing loose mineral grains. Imagine holding an ice cube under the faucet. The cube rounds away at the corners first, because that is the part most exposed to the force of the water. A similar thing happened at Joshua Tree but over millions of years, on a grand scale, and during a much wetter climate. (figure 2)
After the arrival of the arid climate of recent times, flash floods began washing away the protective ground surface. As they were exposed, the huge eroded boulders settled one on top of another, creating those impressive rock piles we see at Joshua Tree today. (figure 3)

Suggesting the work of a stonemason, they broke into uniform blocks when they were exposed to the surface.

Of the dynamic processes that erode rock material, water, even in arid environments, is the most important. Wind action is also important, but the long-range effects of wind are small compared to the action of water.

The erosion and weathering processes operating in the arid conditions of the present are only partially responsible for the spectacular sculpturing of the rocks. The present landscape is essentially a collection of relict features inherited from earlier times of higher rainfall and lower temperatures.

above information taken from the Joshua Tree National Park Website

saturday painting stars...

2008-12-06T18:14:00.006-05:00

FRANK STELLA: Works on canvas from the 60's,
Van de Weghe Fine Art -- 521 West 23rd Street
November 8 - December 20, 2008

Trenton Doyle Hancock / FEAR
James Cohan 533 West 26th Street
November 20, 2008 - January 10, 2009

one pure thought

2008-11-11T09:01:00.001-05:00

superpopsong! thanks, hot chip.

Shaker Visual Poetry (Gift Drawings & Gift Songs)

2008-10-22T22:27:00.006-04:00

Sacred roll [untitled booklet], 1840-43. Anonymous. Ink and watercolor on paper.

from ubuweb:

The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing — called "Shakers" — originated in England in the mid-eighteenth century and soon centered around the person of Ann Lee (Mother Ann, or Mother Wisdom, or simply Mother), who became "the reincarnation of the Christ Spirit … Ann the Word … Bride of the Lamb." The group practiced communal living and equality of the sexes, along with a reputedly complete abstention from sexual intercourse. After persecutions and jailings in England, Ann brought them to America in 1774, where for many years they thrived on conversions, reaching a maximum size of 6,000 before their demise in the twentieth century.

Between 1837 and 1850 ("known as the Era of Manifestations") the Shakers composed (or were the recipients of) "hundreds of … visionary drawings … really [spiritual] messages in pictorial form," writes Edward Deming Andrews (The Gift To Be Simple, 1940). "The designers of these symbolic documents felt their work was controlled by supernatural agencies … — gifts bestowed on some individual in the order (usually not the one who made the drawing." The same is true of the "gift songs" and other verbal works, and the invention of forms in both the songs and drawings is extraordinary, as is their resemblance to the practice of later poets and artists.

N.B. "To be sure, the term drawing is a misnomer, because the Shakers did not use it themselves when they were referring to these works. In the few Shaker documents in which the gift drawings are mentioned, they are typically referred to as sheets, rolls, signs, notices, tokens of love, presents, rewards, hearts — sometimes prefaced by the adjective sacred. This definition focuses on the function of the works as gifts from heavenly spirits, rather than on the form in which the gifts were materialized. In fact, the gift drawings often include titles, captions, inscriptions, and extended texts, in English as well as in scripts written in indecipherable tongues, that place them on an uninterrupted continuum with other manifestations of belief, such as inspired writing, ecstatic movement, and spontaneous speech, especially in the form of song." (Thus: France Morin, in Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs, The Drawing Center, New York, and UCLA Hammer Museum, 2001 — a book packed with generous examples, from which those shown here have been extracted.)

Spirit Message, 1843. Anonymous.

"The [Shaker] drawings … are documents of ‘visions’ taking a physical form that is, in most instances, highly contained and organized. Nonetheless, within this ordering are chaotic details and decorations, flourishes of line and color, as well as indecipherable texts and, alternately, those that read with heart-stopping clarity. A vision seen or heard by one Shaker member as a divine manifestation is then transcribed by another, assaulting on several fronts the modern notion of authorship. Whether intentionally or not, the Shakers contradicted many traditional notions of art-making, just as the relative freedom afforded them in their chosen home, the United States, allowed them to pursue a rigorous life of communal devotion very unlike the ‘cult of the individual’ that the new country promulgated." (Ann Philbin and Catherine de Zegher, in Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs, The Drawing Center, New York, and UCLA Hammer Museum, 2001.)

Tree of Heaven, 1844. James M. Mott. North Union, Ohio.

"Gift drawings are also typically distinguished by their precise graphic quality, which links words elegantly written in upright, noble scripts with their delicately rendered visual counterparts as unified elements of thoroughly structured designs." (France Morin, in Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs, The Drawing Center, New York, 2001.)

Love, Giorgio Morandi

2008-10-19T22:06:00.008-04:00

Morandi's paintings aren't big....they are sort of quiet and yet really alive....I really dug the consistency of his paint, the non-color colors, the crowds of bottles, cartons, shells, and pared-down landscapes....the roominess of his small compositions....the proto-Guston, proto-Rothko, proto-Cezanne-ness of his work....and yet they're entirely Morandi paintings....his brushwork will surprise you....the watercolors and etchings will surprise you.....his three horizon lines will surprise you.....there are 110 works in this comprehensive survey, the first of its kind in the US.....don't miss it, it is up at the Met until December 14. (Thanks MBH)

i love you do you love me [LB]

2008-09-28T21:08:00.006-04:00

Caught the last few minutes of the Louise Bourgeois show at the Guggenheim.
I love LB's brave and energetic paintings from the late 40's.

15 minutes with you

2008-09-20T23:26:00.001-04:00

The Smiths - Reel Around the Fountain - Live at the Hacienda, Manchester, 6 July 1983.

Party at Phong's | Curated by Chris Martin

2008-09-10T17:24:00.007-04:00

Reception, Friday, September 12

7-10 pm
Janet Kurnatowski Gallery
205 Norman Avenue, Brooklyn NY

allison schulnik, thursday night at mike weiss.

2008-09-06T00:54:00.006-04:00

Allison Schulnik

Niagara Falls #5 (Currier & Ives), 2008
oil on canvas
84 x 136 inches

(detail) Niagara Falls #5 (Currier & Ives), 2008

some of her other paintings featured kind of scary weird clowns.

Big Hobo Clown Head, 2008
oil on canvas
72 x 60 inches

see it in person -- September 4, 2008 - October 11, 2008
mike weiss gallery (click here)

relation(s)

2008-08-24T18:20:00.003-04:00

mellow candle

2008-08-19T18:54:00.005-04:00

If you've been getting your hippy on this summer like I have, you may want to check out, Mellow Candle. I was turned onto Mellow Candle a few years ago, and just today finally got copies of their records, "Swaddling Songs" and "The Virgin Prophet-Unreleased Sessions 1969-70." Outrageously good if you're at all interested in the British/Irish Folk Rock Psychedelic Explosion at the end of the 1960's - beginning of the 70's.

Described as, "Dynamic arrangements, exquisite harmonies, lyrically intoxicating and mischievously mysterious, the voices, songs and vision of the writers within Mellow Candle are, like a wardrobe into Narnia or the sleepinduced faerie of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the gateway to another world. Often compared, erroneously, to Renaissance — with whom there is only the superficial comparison of piano-led arrangements — Mellow Candle occupy a unique place in the prog pantheon, an Irish group with almost no Irish reference points and bearing more relation to Jethro Tull as fronted by Siouxsie Sioux and Judy Dyble with Vincent Crane on the keys. It’s crazy but it’s true."

superthanks DK.