artistexplorer

At age 72, David Hockney is residing in a quiet town on the northeastern coast of England, but shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Not only is he actively working on a series of large landscape paintings for an exhibition at London's Royal Academy of Arts in 2012, he has wholeheartedly embraced technology and integrates it into his creative process on a regular basis.

From The New York Times: 

It was immediately clear that — his new passion for plein-air painting aside — Mr. Hockney has a new love: digital technology. Around the room hung multiple photographs by Jonathan Wilkinson, his full-time technology assistant, of artworks that were also hanging on the walls. They were so exact that it was often hard to tell the originals from the photographs.

The confusion was intensified because some of the originals actually began life as photographs — like the two 27-foot-long friezes depicting a group of trees Mr. Hockney noticed at the edge of town, which he photographed individually, then collaged together and detailed in Photoshop. Others were made at home on a Macintosh, including portraits he painted earlier this year using Photoshop and a Wacom tablet. (A selection will be at Pace Prints.) Near a table covered with video cameras, someone had tacked up printouts of Mr. Hockney’s iPhone paintings.

Mr. Hockney also uses the computer to compose his paintings, either to help him step back and regard the whole of a multipanel work or to refine individual canvases. He often tries out colors and ideas on a photograph of an unfinished painting, or plays around with a JPEG of the image in Photoshop. Afterward he returns to the studio to put his ideas on canvas...

Click here to read the article
 

Artistic partners for nearly fifteen years and long-term roommates, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset invested in a property just outside of Berlin which is now their home and studio. They approached renovation of the former water-pumping station as they would an art venture. As Dragset put it, "...we love spatial challenges — so we were looking for somewhere we could apply the concepts we had been working with in our art."

Now that their project is complete, the space is exquisite. It does, however, seem to have greater potential as upscale gallery space than what I would consider a comfortable home setting. Having said that... I would still move-in in a heartbeat if given the opportunity.



From The New York Times: 

There’s no clutter: just white walls, glacial light streaming in through old warehouse-style windows, trees silently waving at visitors from the outside and what feels like acres of floor space.

The farther up and back one goes, the more private the space becomes. The back boasts five levels, including two private areas for the artists, a kitchen, an attic living room and four bathrooms. And the renovated attic space is reminiscent of a playboy’s penthouse. In this upper section, a window in the roof slides back at the push of a button like something out of Dr. Evil’s lair.

“We deliberately made the borders between the work and living spaces fleeting,” Mr. Dragset said. “The combination of vast floor space and the small, quirky nooks means you can be very hidden here, or very exposed depending on your moods or needs.”

Click here to read the article

In honor of an exhibition of his recent work, which opened on October 1, 2009 at the Paul Kasmin Gallery, Frank Stella gave an interview with Time Out New York. I love to hear and read what artists have to say about their work, creative process, career, etc. Stella is a particular favorite!



From Time Out: 

You’ve taken a lot of risks in your work over the years. Do you agree?
Other people talk about risk taking. I mean, I don’t see it as much of an issue, honestly, because this is what I want to do. In order to see something that you haven’t seen, which probably will never happen, but you’re looking all the time, and you are looking for things—in order to find something that holds your attention and you can work with and everything—what can the risk be? That it fails? And, I mean, failure is relative. And I don’t worry about taking risk. If something is not beautiful, then I’m unhappy with it, and there are some things that are certainly not so beautiful, but they get by. But you’re still striving for the ones that really feel beautiful in the end. And so that’s what it’s about. The risk is committing yourself to try to make art. It’s just one risk, and after that there’s no risk. You know, that’s what you are going to do: The die is cast.

When you said that the goal is “to see something that you haven’t seen,” have you ever done that?
Well, I’ve probably never really had it. I’ve had some things that, for a while, I thought I hadn’t seen before. I painted this painting in 1958 called Delta. I made a painting, and then I got mad at it and I painted it out, and then I went to sleep. And the next day I looked at it and I said, “Oh, that’s just a terrible mess, just like it was last night.” And then, I don’t know, it was just around and a couple days later I started to look at it and it was a kind of mess, in a way, but it seemed like there was something there, like something was coming through it. And then I really started to get interested in it. So, I hadn’t really seen it before. But then things always come back to you, like there’s a version of it out there somewhere.

Can you talk about the first time you used fluorescent colors?
I think the first time I used fluorescent colors was kind of deliberate in the paintings. But I don’t know what year it was: 1962 or ’63? I had an idea to make these paintings about Morocco—the heat, the desert and all of that. They were basically two-color paintings, but fluorescent yellow was one of the colors. There were stripes, which alternated colors: a color and yellow. So, red and yellow, blue and yellow, green and yellow, and they were all fluorescent. Fluorescent paint had been around—I just wanted to make paintings that had no other reference except the fact of them being fluorescent, and to see how they would look. What resulted is that they didn’t really seem that fluorescent, since fluorescence usually shows up better in relief against a color like black. That’s what nightclubs do; for effect, they put their fluorescents against black...

Established, contemporary American artist, Jeff Koons, is employed by New York City's New Museum to assist in organizing an exhibition scheduled for the spring of 2010. Last week it was reported by the New York Times that "A white foam-core model of the New Museum’s gallery spaces arrived at Jeff Koons’s Chelsea studio on Wednesday morning."

The exhibition will be dedicated exclusively to Dakis Joannou’s collection of artwork, which includes a number of pieces Koons's. This show will be the first in the museum's series, The Imaginary Museum, devoted to the public display of international private art collections.

I can just picture Koons in his studio, surrounded by works in progress, staring at the blank model of the museum's galleries as he waits for the flow of creativity to begin. I also look forward to seeing what he comes up with!



Read the New York Times article online: 
Jeff Koons Tries Hand as Guest Curator

 The January 2009 issue of W Magazine featured an article on the New York City apartment of Klaus Biesenbach, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art.  While the article is somewhat interesting, I couldn't help but get really fired up and annoyed at his way of living.  I know that it's none of my business how people want to decorate (or not) their homes, and there are far more important things in this world, but the images of his house really upset me.  At first glance, it seems like Biesenbach is living a calm, serene, monk-like existence, but I think the underlying tones are far from that.  First, the apartment alone had to cost a FORTUNE, so presenting the space as a simple peasant-like abode is a farce.  I understand the beauty of simplicity, and I know that minimalism is a really special quality to have in homes, but this extreme seems really elitist to me.  After all, people collect things out of instinct.  As humans, we want to surround ourselves with things today in case there is scarcity tomorrow.  While I'm not advocating clutter, or wasteful consumption, having the ability to "live for today" only is a rather high-class privilege.  See for yourself:



See the Klaus Haus slideshow

 This summer, the sculptor Antony Gormley has organized an ongoing piece on the Fourth Plinth of Trafalgar Square.  He has asked for volunteers to schedule an hour to stand on the empty plinth, and do whatever they like.  For 100 days, every hour on the hour, a new person takes over the space and acts as a kind of "living monument".  Well, the piece has certainly garnered a lot of press, and just this week, the piece helped a young man land employment.  



From the Daily Mail Online

I just saw this link (@MutualArt) on Twitter, and I was pretty struck by the piece - the CATcerto with the "soloist", Nora the cat. On the surface, it's silly and funny and has all of the makings of a perfect viral video. However, the composer Mindaugus Piecaitis seems to me more akin to sound and performance artists, and I must say, I haven't seen anything this good in a long time. It reminded me of Charlemagne Palestine's motorcycle piece, Island Song, in which he hums, murmurs and replicates the sound of his motorcycle while riding it around an island. The CATcerto, besides being sweet and cute, has every mark of my favorite sound art pieces - it makes me more in tune with sounds and who/what makes them, when they happen, and how I interpret them.

From the CATcerto website:

We all know quite well how therapeutic art can be. Especially when it involves tearing, ripping, cutting, and pounding stuff to a sappy pulp.


A group of army vets based out of Vermont started a collective called the Combat Paper Project to help soldiers recover from the trauma of duty in Iraq by turning their army fatigues into art work. For the past year they've been holding workshops around the country, where the soldiers break down the memories of combat into paper and canvas on which to paint, draw or write. The Associated Press quoted a 29-year-old soldier who found the art-making as a cathartic release from the imposing culture and expectations of the military lifestyle. The vet hasn't shaved or cut his hair since leaving the National Guard two years ago.

"When you hold these strips in your hand, you think about all the times you ironed it and spit polished your boots — all that was something the Army made you do," Hurd said. "This is my uniform now. I'm not Army property anymore, and neither is it."

One young vet embedded his paper with Topps Desert Storm trading cards with photos of tanks, planes and military vehicles from the first Gulf War. He bought them as a child, and now bitterly adds them to his art to criticize children's games and toys that glorify and glamorize war. He plans to turn his paper into a journal.

For the full story from the Associated Press, click here. 

For 2009, while a healthy portion of the galleries hail from California and the South and Southeast of the U.S., there will also be representation from Romania, Germany, Japan, and Puerto Rico, among a few others (for a full list of 2009 exhibitors, click here.)

I will definitely have some good artists to report on next week--hopefully the Artist Explorer find that diamond in the rough! Click here for the ART Santa Fe website.

It's rare that I get this bummed I live in New York and not L.A.--one of the shows at the Getty Museum this summer is called "Paul Outerbridge: Command Performance," covering all periods of the photographer's prolific career. Outerbridge worked both in fine arts photography and commercial photography from the 20s through the 50s. In the 1920s he worked throughout Europe, and showed in the now landmark exhibition Film und Foto. Upon his return to the U.S. in the 30s, Outerbridge mastered the carbro color process, which made his commercial career truly flourish, but he also used the process to expressive ends in highly-composed and often abstract photographs.

Outerbridge is one of the most remarkable photographers of the twentieth century. The exhibition, which is accompanied by a spectacular catalog, is on view until August 9. If you're lucky enough to be in the L.A. area, get your hide over there!



           

Left: Paul Outerbridge, The Shower, 1937, © 2008 G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Beverly Hills, California; Middle: Paul Outerbridge, Images de Deauville, 1936 © 2008 G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Beverly Hills, California, Digital image courtesy The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, New York; Right: Paul Outerbridge, Cheese and Crackers, 1922, © 2008 G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Beverly Hills, California

I love when art and humor intersect--I don't think it happens often enough (I've actually written an online article about humor and art--check it out). So when I find an artist who makes me giggle, I like to point it out.

I came across a new book called "On Tender Hooks," the first monograph of artist Isabel Samaras, which accompanied her exhibition "Into the Woodz" at The Shooting Gallery in San Francisco this past May. Samaras seems like a real character, and characters are what she does best: spoofing on some of the most recognizable old master paintings, Samaras draws her sitters and subjects from pop culture and classic television series, and inserts them into Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic compositions. According to the artist, she enjoys imagining different endings to common fairy tales or bedtime stories--such as her re-imagining of Goldie Locks and the Three Bears. Her wish to have Goldie fall in love with and marry Baby Bear spawned the series "Into the Woodz," with thugged out forrest creatures.

Thanks to Samaras's blend of old master tradition with sharp, contemporary witticism, some of her paintings can make you think, particularly about the ideals and conventions of social roles or beauty, instilled in us at the earliest ages in seemingly innocent bedtime stories (or TV Land, or Nick-at-Nite). But overall, her work is just plain old funny and clever.

For more information on the book, and to see a youtube video studio visit with Samaras, click here.

Below: Goldie and the Three Bears; The Birth of Ginger (from Gilligan's Island); Golden Silence (characters from I Dream of Genie)

You don't usually expect to hear of a powerhouse museum like the Tate promoting emerging artists, but today the Tate opened an installation in the Duveen Galleries, the museum's major exhibition space, which they hope will launch the career of a promising artist, Eva Rothschild. The commissioned work is called "Cold Corners" and is on view until the end of November. The artist, according to an article in today's Independent, is fairly well-known in art circles, but has yet to have much of a more public presence in the art scene.

In a google search, I came across a 2007 Roberta Smith review of the artist's New York debut show at 303 Gallery. At the time, Roberta felt that Rothschild had "her work cut out for her:" 

Rothschild demonstrates that there is more to her work than sharp and shiny black geometric silhouettes, including an involvement with materials and process that takes her work beyond garden-variety goth-flavored Minimalism. But it doesn't take her far enough in any one direction, which creates an aura of generic professionalism.

The two years since this review must have been gestational for the artist, for she has garnered praise from the outgoing Tate director Stephen Deuchar, who said Rothschild has "skillfully taken on the challenge of the Duveen Galleries which are huge, and architecturally rather pompous." (I guess he has no qualms about bashing his own gallery spaces if he has one foot out the door.)

Will the critics take the Roberta Smith point of view, or will the Tate emerge victorious in finding a new rising star? We'll have to see.


      

When I first read that Pharrell Williams and Takashi Murakami collaborated on a work called Simple Things for Art 40 Basel, I made a mental note to blog about it (I know the fair is over, but trust me, read on...). I have always liked Pharrell Williams, as he is a talented musician and producer and clothing designer. Starting last year, Williams took a turn into furniture design, collaborating on a chair with Domeau & Pérès called the "Perspective Chair" (above); from my perspective, it has that dorm room aesthetic with its sexual innuendo, easy-to-clean plastic and edgy color that still manages to match your bean bag chair.

This new Simple Things project marks a more distinct turn into fine art, in which Pharrell and Murakami, just like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst before them, ask the (tired, in my opinion) question of what constitutes fine art, and challenge the value of art by ironically using gems and jewels to decorate "simple things."

In what I think is a very humorous and somewhat awkward interview with Ute Thon of Art Magazin, Pharrell shares some insight into the piece. For instance, the seven "cherished" items that he selected for bedazzlement in the art piece are the "glue to his personality." Really? Baby lotion and Doritos are the glue to your personality? Ahh Pharrell, you just dropped a few notches in my book. Pharrell also adds that, for him, “the taste of cupcakes is worth far more than diamonds could ever be.” I'll keep that in mind next time I see him, to see if he'll swap a diamond ring for one of Magnolia bakery's "gems." 

Also worth watching is the interviewer's semi-racist question if Pharrell is wearing any "bling," which prompts the musician-cum-producer-cum-artist to lecture her on the difference between being wearing tasteful diamonds and wearing a rapper's bling. See what I mean? Awkward.

Click here to watch the full youtube clip of the interview.

While perusing art articles on MutualArt.com this morning, I came across a piece about Russian Art at this year's Venice Biennale. The artists mentioned, collaborating art duo Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov, were particularly apropos given my posting yesterday. I looked them up on the gallery website Deitch Projects and thought their 2003 work Our Best World an extremely interesting contrast to Bratkov's Glory Days.  According to the Deitch Projects press release,

The imagery ranges from the commonplace to quotations from classical and avant-garde art. The characters in the paintings are burlesque and cinema stars, top models, politicians, and animals. Our Best World is formed from this kaleidoscope. Some people find the work to be sophisticated parody, others find it foolish and naïve. Another group finds it harmonious and comforting. The artists leave it without commentary. The spectators possess all rights to interpret.

Also mentioned in the article was the artist group AES+F. Read the full article about the Russian presence at the Biennale this year.

I recently came across a copy of the exhibition catalog to the show Glory Days, photographs by Sergey Bratkov from 1989 to 2007 currently on view at the Sala de Exposiciones Canal de Isabel II in Madrid (originally curated and shown at the Fotomuseum Winterthur in 2008 in Zürich). The Ukrainian artist's work immediately grabbed me. This work is dubbed "post-Communist," not only for the literal reason of dates, but also for the mood of the photographs: ironic and humorous, raw and uncomfortable, Sergey's images reflect the Eastern bloc's self-discovery and self-creation of a new identity in the 1990s and 2000s. In his "Secretaries" series (2000, below, left), Bratkov ruptures the male sexual fantasy of the secretary pin-up girl by rendering visible the constructed studio space, the white background just a sullied sheet of paper in a dull room with tacky wall paper. In a vastly different potrayal of women, Bratkov snapped photos of "Army Girls" (from 2000, image below) challenging gender stereotypes and histories of Soviet military service. Some of his most difficult images are of children, such as "Glue Sniffers," (left) double-exposed photographs of extremely young, glue-addicted delinquents, and "Birds," photos of adorable orphans exhibited intermittently with photos of stuffed birds (from 1997, below, right). But as charged as Bratkov's photographs are, they simultaneously refuse the Westerner's construction of the former Communist states--the gaze of Bratkov's subjects are often self-possessed, assertive and proud, and ultimately optimistic that these countries indeed are, or soon will be, celebrating "glory days." The catalog is available for purchase on Amazon.


     

I know I posted about David Lynch recently, but this follow up was too good to resist: Time magazine is running a feature this week on how Twitter is changing the way we live. One of the articles included lists the top 10 celebrity twitters feeds. In addition to the thousands of people who follow Ashton Kutcher's grammatically incorrect updates (And now the good news. my lovely wife through me a surprise party tonight with all of my friends. She's the best and I love her so much.) are the David Lynch tweet followers, who get their daily dose of enlightenment from the eccentric director. June 2 tweet: In the age of enlightenment, it is not that the difference dissolve, only they will be glorified...they will be harmonized in an automatic manner in the vision of all the people.

Of course the majority of the 10 Top Twitters are pop culture stars and politicians who are pop culture stars (i.e. The Governator), but I think it is great David Lynch made the top 10! And it is also nice to see him embracing this new medium of communication, especially considering he railed on the iphone. If anyone has recommendations for good artists twitters, let me know.

Follow David Lynch's Twitter feeds here.

Ragnar Kjartansson, The End, at the 2009 Venice Biennale
(photo from The New York Times)

In keeping with the excitement over the Venice Biennale, which officially opened to the public yesterday, I am taking a look at Ragnar Kjartansson, the young artist officially representing Iceland this year. Although he is primarily a performance, video and installation artist, Kjartansson displays creative excellence in a variety of media. The artist is a self-proclaimed romantic, and his work at the Bienniale, which has already garnered much attention in Biennale preview articles and blogs, is a case and point example. The performance piece is called The End, and it lasts the entire six months of the biennial, as the artist paints the portrait of an aloof model (an artist-friend) posing in a speedo and smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, day in and day out. Kjartansson will paint one portrait of the model every day, letting the fruits of his daily labor stack up around him in the 14th century Palazzo he occupies. The model will also toss his cigarette butts and beer cans on the floor, so that together with the scattered paintings, the palazzo floor will I'm sure eventually approximate the pungent charm of a rock star's hotel room. In an Art in America Venice Preview article, the artist noted that "by November, the end of the biennial, it should be glorious—the space littered with beer cans, cigarette butts and lots of paintings. The paintings are just props. It’s about quantity, not quality, even though I will become fond of them.”

I see in the self-referentiality of the piece a distant homage to Courbet's The Artist's Studio of 1854-55, but Kjartansson's allegory is one of ritualistic futility as he harps on the same subject for six months. The smoking, drinking, listless model is hardly a muse. But the artist still maintains the romantic roots of the painting, noting the intersection of art and life. A second component to the Venice installation also directly references his romantic roots: The End--Rocky Mountains (2009) is a video piece documenting a musical collaboration Kjartansson completed in the snowcovered Rocky Mountains, in which Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Two Men Contemplating the Moon served as inspiration. Kjartansson's piece should truly be a highlight this year at the Biennale.

I recently came across a posting over at Edward Winkleman's blog about the lives and times, the trial and tribulations of the spouse of an artist.  Posted back in September of 2008, the open thread entry spurred several interesting responses. 

An exerpt:

"Nora Joyce once notoriously quipped that she too might write some day, like her world-famous husband James. Only her book would be titled My Twenty Years with a Genius — So-Called.

Indeed, much overlooked or under-appreciated in the biographies of most great artists is the long-suffering spouse who puts up with the non-conventional lifestyle, the years of financial instability if not outright poverty, the emotional roller coaster that can accompany good reviews and bad sales or good sales and bad reviews, and the relative lack of attention or total ambivalence paid by the other half's adoring fans to what it takes to live with an artist.

Don't get me wrong. I adore artists. But they tend not to be as financially secure a choice for mate as say an accountant or doctor."



To read the full post, and see the responses, click here.

The filmmaker and director David Lynch was born in 1946 in Montana.  He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director three times: for The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive. 

According to his wikipedia page: "Over a lengthy career, Lynch has employed a distinctive and unorthodox approach to narrative film making (dubbed Lynchian), which has become instantly recognizable to many audiences and critics worldwide. Lynch's films are known for surreal, nightmarish and dreamlike images and meticulously crafted sound design. Lynch's work often explores the seedy underside of "Small Town U.S." (particularly Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks), or sprawling California metropolises (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and his latest release, Inland Empire). Beginning with his experimental film school feature Eraserhead (1977), he has maintained a strong cult following despite inconsistent commercial success."

Through his cult-like following, Lynch has gained quite the reputation of having bizarre, or obsessive, eating habits, that seem to fit the personality of the oddball director.

In a 2001 LA Weekly interview with John Powers:

I originally wondered if his fabled obsessiveness was a sly shtick, a way of giving reporters something droll to write about while throwing them off the scent. No doubt this is partly true. But in 1989, I spent a week interviewing Lynch for a French documentary and saw firsthand how thoroughly his obsessions shaped his life. Back then he wouldn't allow any food in the house (he hated the smell) and ate exactly the same thing every day (as I recall, a tuna sandwich for lunch). Since then, the menu has changed but not the obsession:

"I'll have the same thing every day for six months maybe, or even longer," he says. "And then one day I just can't face it anymore.

"Now, I have cappuccino in the morning, many coffees during the day, and salad that's put in a Cuisinart so each bite tastes the same. No meat. This has got nuts and eggs and some lettuce and different kinds of greens. So it's a little bowl of Cuisinart salad with Parmesan cheese on top. And then at night I have a block of Parmesan cheese, maybe a 2-inch cube, and red wine. Mary [Sweeney, with whom he lives] cuts it up for me into little chunks and gives it to me in a napkin."

When I ask why he wants to stick to this redundant diet, he tells me that it's "reassuring . . . there are no surprises there." Lynch's inner life is obviously so fertile and turbulent -- a steaming Amazon of run-amok impulses -- that his culinary routine provides a kind of sanctuary. Like the concrete walls that house him, his dietary rituals help him fend off the outer world so he can devote all his time to work.

And in a 1990 Time Magazine article by Elizabeth Bland:

Some people want to know who killed Laura Palmer, the Twin Peaks homecoming queen with a past, the identity of whose murderer has been kept secret nearly as long as that of Jimmy Hoffa. More people, it seems, want to know about David Lynch's eating habits. How many damn fine cups of coffee (lots of milk, gobs of sugar) does he drink each day? Does he share the cherry-pie fixation of his TV hero, Special Agent Cooper? On the Tonight Show, Jay Leno quizzed Lynch about his Guinness Book-worthy consumption of chocolate milk shakes at the Bob's Big Boy chain in Los Angeles. The astounding stats: one every day at 2:30 p.m. for seven years, 1973-79.

So let's break the big news first: David Lynch's current favorite liquids are red wine, bottled water and coffee. "I like cappuccino, actually. But even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all. New York has great water for coffee. Water varies all around. We've got to drink something. Do you just drink water, sometimes? It's very good for you." And, stop the presses, David Lynch doesn't cook at home. "No, ma'am! I don't allow cooking in my house. The smell. The smell of cooking—when you have drawings, or even writings— that smell would go all over my work. So I eat things that you don't have to light a fire for. Or else I order a pizza. The speed at which I eat it, it doesn't smell up the place too bad. The smell doesn't last too long."

Although it comes as no suprise that Lynch would have these particular quirks, considering his films and the characters he creates, it is completely fascinating to me that one could be so regimented and specific about their food.  However, he's not alone - afterall, Woody Allen cuts his bananas in seven pieces and won't have salt passed to him.