They’re building a Prada store just outside
They’re building a Prada store just outside the town of Valentine, TX (population: 187) with no door. It’s art!
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kottke.org posts about art
Fun bunch of Flickr photos from mleak
Fun bunch of Flickr photos from mleak depicting bugs and slugs shilling for the man: Pepsi Ladybug, Nike Water Strider, FedEx Grasshopper, Coke Slug, and Adidas Spider. (via bb)
“Floating Island” is a mini version of
“Floating Island” is a mini version of Central Park being towed around Manhattan by a tugboat (photos here)…it’s a conceptual art piece by Robert Smithson. This weekend, a group of folks in a motorboat tried to board the floating park and install a miniature version of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates. When the captain of the boat towing the island “looked out across the East River Thursday afternoon and saw another piece of conceptual art gaining on him, he did not view the development kindly”.
Cory Arcangel has gone INSANE and is
Cory Arcangel has gone INSANE and is offering original signed posters of his work for like $20. The posters feature the haunting landscape of the old school Famicom driving game F1 Racer.
The MoMA has acquired The Plum Blossoms
The MoMA has acquired The Plum Blossoms by Henri Matisse (picture), the whereabouts of which have been unknown for 30 years.
And as long as we’re on the
And as long as we’re on the subject (you didn’t think we were even on a subject, did you?), I’m a fan of how Maciej is displaying his oil paintings. For each of his newer paintings (like this one of a West Village scene), he’s documenting the progress of the work as it goes along so you can see how the painting becomes a painting.
Update: Eric writes that he uses this technique for displaying how his art progresses as well (sample).
Pan of the newish MoMA building in
Pan of the newish MoMA building in NYC. I like the new building, but I agree that there are too many people sometimes; they’re certainly not having a problem with that $20 admission price. (via cdl)
Update: a rebuttal by Greg Allen.
Flickr set of glitch art created when
Flickr set of glitch art created when digital satellite TV goes a little wonky.
Art experts choose 10 of the worst paintings hanging in Britain.
Art experts choose 10 of the worst paintings hanging in Britain.
Short interview with Josh Davis. More of
Short interview with Josh Davis. More of his work can be found at joshuadavis.com and once upon a forest.
Bitfall makes images out of falling water droplets. (via infosthetics)
Bitfall makes images out of falling water droplets. (via infosthetics)
Great influence map of European art and
Great influence map of European art and sculpture (looks largely French), detailing relationships between masters and students as well as collaborations. Reminds me of a Feynman diagram.
Seyed Alavi’s carpet for a Sacramento airport
Seyed Alavi’s carpet for a Sacramento airport walkway features an aerial view of the Sacramento River. “It is truly amazing what is possible to print images on these days. Of course, for home use the cost is still somewhat prohibitive, but that is slowly changing as well.” (thx dunstan)
Gallery of work by guerilla artist Banksy
Gallery of work by guerilla artist Banksy from the West Bank barrier in the Palestinian territories. “An old Palestinian man said his painting made the wall look beautiful. Banksy thanked him, only to be told: ‘We don’t want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall. Go home.’”
A history and examination of paint by number
A history and examination of paint by number. “It invited people who had never before held a paintbrush to enter a world of art and creativity.”
Cezanne and Pissarro at the MoMA
Cezanne and Pissarro at the MoMA. “Working in tandem or with each other in mind, Cezanne and Pissarro formulated a distinctly modern art, simultaneously self-confident and self-critical.”
J. Seward Johnson, Jr. recreated a bunch
J. Seward Johnson, Jr. recreated a bunch of impressionist paintings as sculptures you can walk around in. Looks very cool…the photos are from a show going on through Aug 7th at the Nassau County Museum of Art.
Duccio’s Madonna and Child
The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently purchased a painting called Madonna and Child by Duccio di Buoninsegna. The Met paid $50 million for the early Renaissance piece, more than they’ve paid for any single acquisition to date. The New Yorker has the story of how they came to own the last Duccio in private hands. In the article, Calvin Tomkins explains the reason for the painting’s importance:
Small as it is, the painting has a powerful presence. It captures the eye from a distance, and commands, up close, something like complete attention. Holding the Christ child in her left arm, the Virgin looks beyond him with melancholy tenderness, while the child reaches out a tiny hand to brush aside her veil. Centuries of Byzantine rigidity and impersonal, hieratic forms are also brushed aside in this intimate gesture. We are at the beginning of what we think of as Western art; elements of the Byzantine style still linger—in the gold background, the Virgin’s boneless and elongated fingers, and the child’s unchildlike features—but the colors of their clothing are so miraculously preserved, and the sense of human interaction is so convincing, that the two figures seem to exist in a real space, and in real time. Candle burn marks on the frame, which is original, testify to the picture’s use as a private devotional image. It is dated circa 1300.
I had the good fortune to stumble across the Duccio at the Met a few weeks ago (I was there for the Diane Arbus exhibition and passed it by accident on the way to another part of the musuem). What struck me at the time was a certain oddity of the piece…almost like it wasn’t what they’d said it was but magical all the same. I know Jack about art[1], but after reading more about Madonna and Child, it probably seemed odd to me because it’s a transitional piece, not quite Renaissance but not quite Byzantine either. The piece is a thin slice of a phase transition that had barely begun, a moment frozen from when the artists of the day were collectively working out how a Renaissance painting would eventually differ from earlier European styles and represent the wider cultural changes then occurring. Marco Grassi writes in The New Criteron:
More importantly, the artist places the Virgin at a slight angle to the viewer, behind a fictive parapet. She gazes away from the Child into the distance while He playfully grasps at Her veil. One must realize that every aspect of this composition represents a departure from pre-existing convention. With these subtle changes, Duccio consciously developed an image of sublime tenderness and poignant humanity, almost a visual echo of the spiritual renewal that St. Francis of Assisi had wrought only a few decades earlier.
More more on Duccio, check out his biography on Wikipedia and some collections of his work (1, 2, 3), including other Duccio representations of the Virgin and Child),
[1] I wish I’d taken an art history class in college, but my 18-yo self wasn’t that interested.
Age Maps
Age Maps. “Two photographs of the same person, from different periods of time (child and adult) are spliced together.” Very cool effect.
Eyebeam is looking for R&D Fellows
Eyebeam is looking for R&D Fellows for their new OpenLab. “The ideal fellow has experience creating innovative creative technology projects, a love of collaborative development, and a desire to distribute his or her work as widely as possible. We encourage artists, hackers, designers and engineers to apply.”
Photomosaic version of Van Gogh’s Starry Night
Photomosaic version of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The image is made up of over 210,000 individual photographs.
Delettering the public space
Delettering the public space. “In a remarkable display of cooperation for the sake of art, every store on a popular shopping street in Vienna allowed their signage to be masked in yellow fluorescent foil.”
How Danny Gregory makes those nifty watercolors
How Danny Gregory makes those nifty watercolors that illustrate The Morning News. “Roz, the color theory teacher, warned against it, but I laid down a blue underpainting!”
Photographer Clayton James Cubitt interviews Tom Carden
Photographer Clayton James Cubitt interviews Tom Carden about their Metropop Denim collaboration. “I don’t think the work ever belongs to the computer, any more than a photograph belongs to a camera. The computer is a tool — there wouldn’t be any artwork if I didn’t tell the computer exactly what to do — it just works a hell of a lot faster than I do!”
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