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Posts Tagged ‘art’

Teenagers put glasses on museum’s floor and people thought it was art

When we saw Brooklyn Beckham’s terrible photography being passed off as a talent for anything other than parody, we recalled another example of meaningless nonsense being passed off as art. In 2016, two pranksters placed a pair of spectacles on the floor at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. Before long the glasses were being viewed as a telling and important piece of art.

 

san francisco spectacles hoax prank art san francisco spectacles hoax prank art san francisco spectacles hoax prank art san francisco spectacles hoax prank art san francisco spectacles hoax prank art

 

The hoaxers, @TJCruda and @k_vinnn, would doubtless be delighted to realise that their artwork fared better than other proper arty things. Tate Britain once threw away a Gustav Metzger installation, a bag of paper and cardboard.

Meanwhile, my own artwork, Vomit In Sock, has been touring the country’s music festivals. Catch it where you can.

Is it art? Dunno. What do you care? It is if it looks like it is.

Spotter: Bored Panda

Posted: 28th, June 2017 | In: Key Posts, News, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment


White House bans cameras so a journalist drew the news

Not content with clamping own on free speech and the web, the White House banned cameras from a briefing. So CNN artist Bill Hennessy captured the action with pen and ink.

Hennessy’s presence highlighted the significant change in White House access that has taken place recently. Press secretaries for Democratic and Republican presidents have held on-camera briefings on a regular basis for the past quarter century. But the Trump White House has been cutting back on the frequency and the length of on-camera briefings.

 

 

Sean Spicer looks better in line drawings, no? The artist is undervalued. Time to bring cartoons and illustrations back to the fore.

Posted: 25th, June 2017 | In: Politicians | Comments (2)


Anthony Gormley should get over himself: Crosby beach statues are there to be enjoyed

Britain is replete of big ornaments, keepsakes and statues. Anthony Gormley made a few more and stuck his life-sized iron men statues into the sand at Crosby beach on Merseyside. Now someone’s gone and decorated them in bright bikinis and shirts with slogans like ‘This is Art’.

Gormley wants the paint removed. He says the painting is vandalism.

I’d argue that his statues modelled on Gormleys own body are worse. Who asked for them to be there? But since they are why not embellish them? And they look good, don’t they. The sinister grey lunks now carry a spot of seaside fun. It can’t be long before someone goes full gadabout Stag and Hen do and augments them with knobs and knockers. Ah, they have. The art world is nothing if not fast moving.

 

 

 

I understand Gormley’s cheesed off that his work has been subverted. But what his public work means is not set in stone, whatever he initially intended. Is it really art now it’s been updated? Dunno. What does it matter to you if it is or isn’t? Maybe better next time to make it very big or stick the statues on plinths, thereby reminding the great unwashed to look up at art and see it as something better than you. Of course, if the officials do remove the paint the statues become memorials to crowd control and conformity, which would be very fitting for our age.

Posted: 23rd, June 2017 | In: Celebrities, News | Comment


Phoenicopterus Rex: a giant pink flamingo looms over Black Rock City

Phoenicopterus Rex

 

The fetish for big man-made things is one of our pet loves. A trip round Australia in the 1990s introduced me to The Big… Ant, Apple, Avocado, Banana, Chook and lots, lots more big plastic landmarks. Artist Josh Zubkoff had added a Big Flamingo to the platoon of big objects. His 40-ft Phoenicopterus Rex will loom over Black Rock City.

Phoenicopterus allows flamingo enthusiasts to climb a ladder and look around inside. Naturally, the pink flamingo will be perched on a bright green lawn of fake grass and surrounded by the white picket fence.

 

Phoenicopterus Rex

Phoenicopterus Rex- prawn-eye view

 

The original pink flamingo lawn ornament was created by artist Donald Featherstone. His creation came to epitomise American suburban kitsch, an attempt at beautification in mass-produced, bright pink plastic.

The ornament’s ubiquity and inoffensiveness inspired John Waters’ to name his breakthrough film Pink Flamingos. Waters told Smithsonian:

“The only people who had them had them for real, without irony. My movie wrecked that.”

 

http://phoenicopterusrex.com/

 

Spotter: Josh Zubkoff

 

Posted: 19th, June 2017 | In: News, The Consumer | Comment


Artist creates brain-controlled sperm

thought-controlled sperm

 

If you sperm start swimming towards the front door and then onto Massachusetts, this is why? Ani Liu reveals her plan:

Reflecting on the cultural and scientific discourses that shape notions of the female body, and in an expression of female empowerment, I seek to challenge this status quo by engineering a system by which I, a woman, can control something inherently and symbolical male: spermatozoa (sperm). Through the use of a brain-computer interface, I control the movement of sperm along an XY axis with the agency of my thoughts.

While at first glance the idea of controlling sperm might be absurd, it is my hope that it causes the viewer to reflect on the very real absurdities of control happening to the bodies of women. Genital mutilation, forced sterilization, sexual abuse, rape, and contraceptive regulation currently occur as forms of control projected onto female bodies. In creating a subversive counter-narrative to these practices of control, this work presents a hope for reimagining and shifting our notions of gender.

Spotter: MIT

Posted: 16th, June 2017 | In: Strange But True, Technology | Comment


How to Draw Facial Expressions: 6 Different Ways

Michigan-based author and illustrator Mark Crilley has a great YouTube channel for anyone who wants to draw better.

 

Posted: 1st, June 2017 | In: The Consumer | Comment


Mic Drop: winner declared in New York City’s Post It Wars

mic drop post it notes

 

When someone wrote the word “Hi” on a New York window using Post-its, two office blocks engaged in a contest. The @Postit war between @havasnyc and @harrisonandstar was on.

And the winner was clear:

 

post it notes war

post it notes war post it notes war post it notes war

 

Here’s the mic drop:

 

Posted: 30th, May 2017 | In: Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment


Travelers: figures trapped in eerie snow globes

Travelers is a series of snow globes by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz. Their snow globes features figures trapped in eerie scenes. Martin and Muñoz’s snow globes are yours for a mere $750 each.

 

snow globe peril snow globe peril snow globe peril snow globe peril snow globe peril snow globe peril snow globe peril snow globe peril snow globe peril snow globe peril

snow globe peril

Note: It´s in Spain

snow globe peril

Posted: 28th, May 2017 | In: The Consumer | Comment


The Starbucks mermaid reimagined by South Korean artist Soo Min Kim

starbucks cup  art starbucks cup  art starbucks cup  art starbucks cup  art starbucks cup  art starbucks cup  art starbucks cup  art starbucks cup  art starbucks cup  art starbucks cup  art starbucks cup  art starbucks cup  art starbucks cup  art starbucks cup

 

Via Soo Min Kim, Hint

Posted: 15th, May 2017 | In: The Consumer | Comment


How to recognise the artists of classic paintings

 

how to recognise the artists of painting

 

Spotter: antique-royals

Posted: 7th, May 2017 | In: Key Posts, Strange But True | Comment


Artist turns the dead into pencils

dead pencils

 

When you die, you can spend eternity sliding about the bottom of a kitchen drawn, stuck down a sofa and having your head shaved into a point. Artist Nadine Jarvis turns human remains into pencils.

She takes the carbon left on the floor in crematoria and as part of her “research project into post mortem” turns the dust into pencils. It turns out that “240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash – a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind”.

The pencils are not graded. Although it would be nice if the ‘H’ (for hardness) and ‘B’ (for blackness) could reflect the donor’s personality, disposition and lifestyle.

Spotter: Cribcandy

Posted: 27th, March 2017 | In: Strange But True | Comment


Bacteria of the New York City subway: artist captures tiny life forms

Artist Craig Ward took sterilized sponges onto the New York sUbway system. He was looking for life invisible to the naked eye. He pressed the swabs into agar plates  and incubated them in his Brooklyn studio.

“Over the summer of 2015, I rode the trains of each of New York City’s twenty-two subway lines, collecting bacterial samples from hand rails, seats and other high traffic surfaces in an attempt to create an unconventional series of portraits of the city’s complex eco-system and a snapshot of the city at large,” says Craig. “The resulting images are a portrait of the complex microcosm that each of us contribute to and are a part of.”

 

NY subway bacteria

 

“When you hold onto the handrail it’s like you’re shaking hands with a hundred people at the same time.”

 

 

“You look at the subway and it’s all just different shapes and sizes and colours of people and you look at it at a microscopic level and it’s all just different shapes and sizes and colors of bacterial colonies,” Ward tells Bernstein & Andriulli. “It’s a nice kind of portrait of the city on a very small scale.”

 

The S Train - here the agar was actually removed from the plate in the shape of an S for visual variation.

The S Train – here the agar was actually removed from the plate in the shape of an S for visual variation.

 

Among the bugs are strains of E. coli, serratia marcescens,  proteus mirabilis and salmonella.

 

The B, D, F and M group

The B, D, F and M group

Microbial residents of the L Train. They were here before it was cool.

Microbial residents of the L Train. They were here before it was cool.

 

You can buy Craig’s work here.

Posted: 21st, September 2016 | In: Key Posts, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment


John Waters explains the purpose of contemporary art

John Waters explains the purpose of contemporary art:

“Contemporary art’s job is to wreck whatever came before it. And from the very beginning after the Old Masters, from then on, each generation wrecked that. That something is pretty and beautiful is probably the worst thing that you could say today in contemporary art about something, unless it’s so pretty it’s nauseating.”

 

Posted: 3rd, September 2016 | In: Celebrities, Film | Comment


Estate by Robert Clayton: buy the book, see the show, love the pictures

Robert Clauton esate

 

Robert Clayton’s Estate is now on display in a major solo exhibition at Four Corners, 121 Roman Road, London E2.

The exhibition also sees the launch of his new short film about the work featuring Jonathan Meades. Large scale prints and a film are on show for free until May 29th.

Find out more here.

You can see a selection of Robert’s wonderful photographs on flashbak.

And then you can buy the book. Do so. It’s really terrific. Buy it here.

 

estate robert clayton

Posted: 16th, May 2016 | In: Books, Reviews, The Consumer | Comment