Sometimes art is a geometrically majestic manicure. Best enjoyed when popping a Coke with Kathy.
arthipstory
makin' art real talk
Monthly Archives: August 2014
ghost
This is a pretty awesome video describing Rachel Whiteread’s process for the work Ghost. Easily her most recognized work, Ghost is a set of plaster casts that provides three-dimensional, positive space to negative space. She cast the space of a parlor in a Victorian townhouse in North London (then abandoned, now demolished). She wanted to “mummify” air.
I love Whiteread’s approach of trying to make the negative positive. I sometimes think about doing that with Gauguin, but I just can’t, Rachel. I just CAN’T.
She took the plaster mold approach to an entire house in Wennington Green, East London, shortly before its demolition. The name? Get ready…Ghost House.
hbd, andy warhol
Happy birthday, Andy Warhol. I’ll crack a cold Coke, or a bunch of ’em, for you.
Fun fact: Coca Cola’s swirl, known as the Dynamic Ribbon, was part of a graphic re-design in 1969. Its design is made to look like the bottle’s contour. Snazzy!
in the vanilla grove, man and horse
Paul Gauguin created this travesty in 1891. You can pass by it at the Guggenheim.
Gauguin wanted to go to Tahiti to
“immerse [himself] in virgin nature, see no one but savages, live their life, with no other thoughts in mind but to render the way a child would . . . and to do this with nothing but the primitive means of art, the only means that are good and true.”
Ugh. What a nightmare. What’s worse about this is scholars think he looked to the Trajan Column and the gosh darn PARTHENON when painting this guy and his horse. He wanted to make the primitive accessible to a Western art audience. YEESH, what a clown.
cymbal mobile
People are encouraged to bang this cymbals mobile at the Guggenheim. I’m usually not shy, but I didn’t do this. The whole, “No, really, touch the art!” movement still freaks me out. I just took a bunch of photos in the atrium area and got tsk-tsk’d by multiple security guards. All in all, a beautiful visit.
milk river
Agnes Martin was well-known for painting grids. She once said,
“That which takes us by surprise — moments of happiness — that is inspiration.
I don’t know about you, Agnes, but my personal inspiration would inspire paintings filled with Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers, not the mathematical perfection of a grid. Ah, well. Agree to disagree.
flamingos
Sometimes art is a full-scale flamingo mural at the American Museum of Natural History.
kosuth
Way to state the obvious, Joseph Kosuth. If I had one of these signs, it would say, “I love Doritos and hate Paul Gauguin.”
Also, major high fives to Kosuth who admires the concept of a work over an object’s physical being. I’m always saying things like “Words are deeds,” but am never actually doing anything about either one of them.
grant’s tomb
Sometimes art is a well-manicured, sun-speckled promenade to a presidential tomb.
cindy sherman
Cindy Sherman has taken about thirty years of selfies. Above, she staged her self-portrait to look like Caravaggio’s Bacchus from 1593-94, shown below. A recent study said Caravaggio looked like he had malaria at the time he painted the self-portrait, maybe some sort of liver disease. Ugh, Caravaggio, you’re my favorite artist, but gross. I am impressed by those muscles though, on both artists.
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