Guest contribution by Zsar
metaphysics of presence
This photo was posted by Guest Contributor on Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 at 8:00 am and is filed under Abstract
SOURCE: Fine Art Photoblog - Read entire story here.
Book Review: “The Supermodel and the Brillo Box” – artmarketblog.com
When Tracey Emin’s controversial artwork “My Bed,” which as most of you will know consists of an unmade bed, smashed the auction record for the artist when it sold for a whopping 2.5 million pounds at Christie’s in London on July 1, 2014, it just so happened that I was reading a fantastic book on the art market that explores the inner workings of the often secretive and opaque contemporary art world.
The book in question is The Supermodel and the Brillo Box: Back Stories and Peculiar Economics from the World of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson, author of the much-lauded art market expose The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art which was released in 2007, just before the Crash of 2008 which burst the art market bubble that had produced so many astounding price records.
The Supermodel and the Brillo Box expands on the investigation that Thompson began with his previous book on the art market, adding insight into the events that led to the art market crash of 2008 and the amazing rebound that followed. The book is ambitiously billed as “an inside look at the evolution of the economics and psychology of the contemporary art market,” and it doesn’t disappoint.
What sets Thompson’s book apart is that it is written from the perspective of someone who has no real vested interest in glorifying the art market. Thompson is not an art market professional, he is an economist who currently holds the position of Emeritus Nabisco Brands Professor of Marketing and Strategy at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto.
If you think a book about the art market written by an economist could only be filled with dull facts and figures, you could not be more wrong. Thompson’s book is filled with tales of intrigue and desire that expose the complex mechanics of the art market, lift the veil on the opaque contemporary art world, and the reveal startling secrets of the art auction scene. Thompson still validates his claims and assertions with hard date, but does so within the context of fascinating and relevant stories.
The title of the book comes from two works of art: the first is Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s trophy-style wax sculpture supermodel Stephanie Seymour’s nude torso; and the second is one of Andy Warhol’s renowned “Brillo Boxes.” The case of the Cattelan sculpture offers an intriguing insight into the power of branding and marketing, while the case of the Brillo box tackles the controversial topics of authenticity and appropriation.
According to Thompson, The Supermodel and the Brillo Box “is about the themes that swirl around the top of the art market: about artists, auction houses and dealers, and prices.” If you want to know what motivates art collectors to pursue their trophies with such single-minded determination, why the top contemporary artists are as popular as they are, and how auction houses and art dealers motivate their clients, then this is definitely a must-read book.
Get your copy of The Supermodel and the Brillo Box here
**Nicholas Forrest is a Sydney/London based art market analyst, art consultant and writer. He is the founder of the Art Market Blog (artmarketblog.com) which offers independent commentaries as well as research and analysis on the current art market, and has recently been published in Fabrik magazine, Verve magazine, Visual Art Beat magazine, Australian Art Collector magazine, Art & Investment magazine and many others. Nic has made several radio appearances (both nationally and internationally) as an art market expert and has received press from the likes of the New York Times, Conde Nast Portfolio and Times of London.
SOURCE: Art Market Blog - artmarketblog.com - Read entire story here.
I had an idea after posting the "Flip City" update on Tuesday to buy one of Jonas Lund's paintings and put it up for auction. Why, I wondered, shouldn't artists get in on the action? As my dear father Dudley used to say: buy low, sell high.
Click for full story / links
SOURCE: Two Coats of Paint - Read entire story here.
I discovered the drawings of Milton Lozada while browsing through the artists on the Sktchy app (which by the way has been growing into a really great community). Milton is a tattoo artist working out of South Florida, whose style of drawing really came across to me in the portraits he inks with a simple ballpoint pen. To me, they all seem to be referencing a future we have yet to come across.
He's got a nice collection of work to be seen over on his Instagram feed as well. 
SOURCE: Doodlers Anonymous - Read entire story here.
Recognized as the most important British sculptor of the 20th century, Henry Spencer Moore was born on July 30, 1898, in Castleford, Yorkshire. Moore had an early interest in sculpting however he began his career as a teacher in Castleford. After serving in the military during World War I, Moore studied at Leeds School of Art on an ex-serviceman’s grant. In 1921 he won a Royal Exhibition Scholarship to study sculpture at the Royal Academy of Art in London. Between 1924 – 1931 Moore was an Instructor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy. His first solo exhibition was held at the Warren Gallery, London, in 1928
“Throughout his life Moore’s appetite for the history of world sculpture was insatiable. Drawings of sculptures in his early sketchbooks indicate that Palaeolithic fertility goddesses, Cycladic and early Greek art, Sumerian, Egyptian and Etruscan sculpture, African, Oceanic, Peruvian and Pre-Columbian sculpture particularly interested him. Moore believed passionately in direct carving and in ‘truth to materials’, respecting the inherent character of stone or wood. Almost all of his works from the 1920s and 1930s were carved sculptures, initially inspired by Pre-Columbian stone carving.” (MoMa)
Moore married Irina Radetsky in 1929. A student of painting at the Royal College, she would be Moore’s model for a series of life drawings over a six year period.
Moore’s sculpture of the 1930s was influenced by the work of Picasso, Hans Arp and Alberto Giacometti. “The subject-matter of Moore’s work of 1932–6 is, in some cases, no longer readily identifiable, although the human, psychological element informs even the seemingly abstract work of the 1930s.”
In the 1930s Moore was a member of Unit One, a group of artists lead by English landscape painter Paul Nash. From 1932 to 1939 he taught at the Chelsea School of Art. Moore was “an important force in the English Surrealist movement, although he was not entirely committed to its doctrines; Moore participated in the International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries, London, in 1936.”
In 1940 Moore was appointed an official war artist and was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee to execute drawings of life in underground bomb shelters. From 1940 to 1943 he focused almost entirely on drawing. His first retrospective took place at Temple Newsam, Leeds, in 1941 and he was given his first major retrospective in the United States by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1946. Moore won the International Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale of 1948.
Moore’s bronze Reclining Figure commissioned by the Arts Council for the Festival of Britain in 1951 was key in Moore’s development. “Previously the holes in his sculptures were dominated by the solid forms surrounding them but here ‘the space and the form are completely dependent on and inseparable from each other’ His work became less frontal and more completely three-dimensional. The reclining figure and the mother and child remained the dominant subjects of his sculpture.”
After the mid-1950s, many of Moore’s sculptures were made from natural objects including bones, shells, pebbles and flint stones.
Until the mid-1950s Moore made numerous preparatory drawings for his sculptures as well as pictorial studies of interiors and sculptures in landscape settings. He drew little between 1955 and 1970 but during the last 15 years of his life, he devoted more of his time to drawing for pleasure, independent of his sculpture. He first made prints in 1931, and he experimented with a process he called collograph. By the end of his life Moore had produced 719 prints.
“Moore executed several important public commissions in the 1950s, among them Reclining Figure, 1956–58, for the UNESCO Building in Paris. In 1963 the artist was awarded the British Order of Merit. In the 1970s there were many major exhibitions of Moore’s work, the finest being at Forte di Belvedere, overlooking Florence (1972). The Henry Moore Sculpture Centre in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, opened in 1974. It comprises the world’s largest public collection of Moore’s work, most of it donated by him between 1971 and 1974. In 1977 the Henry Moore Foundation was established at Much Hadham, and Moore presented 36 sculptures to the Tate Gallery in 1978.”
Henry Moore died in Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, on August 31, 1986.
Sources: Guggenheim, MoMA, Wikimedia Commons (images), Tate, Oval With Points Photo by Maia C
SOURCE: Daily Art Fixx - Art Blog: Modern Art, Art History, Painting, Illustration, Photography, Sculpture - Read entire story here.
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Entering Constant Dullaart’s show Stringendo, Vanishing Mediators at Carroll/ Fletcher is like stepping into a Matrix. An immersive world where Photoshop filters, brushstrokes, masks and marching ants come to life in unexpected forms, where Google search box recites its Terms of Service in a seductive voice and where a lonely piano plays an autistic version of Together in Electric Dreams.
Jennifer_in_Paradise
12 lenticular prints depicting an idyllic image of a young woman sitting on a beach get distorted, as you pass along them in the gallery. They are part of ongoing series of a total of 72, each manipulated by one of the currently available Photoshop filters. The original photograph was taken by John Knoll, the co-founder of Photoshop, in 1988 and portrays his future wife Jennifer during their vacation in Tahiti. It was this photograph that Knoll first used to demonstrate the possibilities of his new groundbreaking software.
“Jennifer has been in my life for a while now”, says Constant. Last year he tried reaching her through a beautiful personal letter, asking permission to use her photograph – that although an ancestor of all digitally manipulated images, was nowhere available – but in vain. At the end he recreated the photograph from video screenshots.
However when The Guardian newspaper interviewed the artist about his project and in parallel asked John and Jennifer Knoll for a comment, it turned out John was not getting the artistic approach of Constant. And although Jennifer seemed to appreciate that the Internet allows appropriation of her image, she categorically said no to the artist’s idea of them meeting and reliving that moment on the beach. “A bit of a sad end to a story that I was deeply involved in for the past 24 months. It feels a bit like a breakup.” laughs Constant.
The semantics of software
Jennifer_in_Paradise is part of a broader interest Constant has in the semantics that lie inside consumer software programs: “I am interested in reflecting on why certain things were developed the way they were and I want to understand the background stories of the people who took these design decisions. As an artist, I would like to help people consider the impacts of technology on our behavior and to do it through poetic means. Most of the attention today goes to the facts, such as why and how Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook. But I am interested in how the design of Facebook changes existing relationships and in the human stories that sit behind those facts.”
He talks with passion about the need for interpretation and misinterpretation of the new cultural memes that the digital age brings. “I want to investigate how these new tools can be used as conceptual means. Take for instance the semantics of Photoshop. Why is the healing brush called “healing”? Is it to imply that there are sick images? And because the task of healing brush is to take away detail and imperfections, mostly from skin, is it to say that there is a “good skin” and a “sick skin?”
Our conversation also covers the ethical implications of using certain software and the consequences of choosing a proprietary or open source. “We now come to a critical time when we, as consumers, should make ethical decisions not just about eating meat or locally grown food, but also about things like using Skype – a software that is effectively a Trojan horse for governments to spy on innocent citizens who think they have free access to communication.”
Quantification of emotions
Such ethical decisions also come back to how we deal with images. Big corporations such as Adobe have made it possible to run powerful image manipulation software on accessible consumer hardware. “But giving a mass audience access is not innocent, since the architecture of the software is actively influencing what users are able to do with it and the narrative they can create. In that sense, the industrialisation of image manipulation that Photoshop enabled is actually a form of corporate cultural imperialism” says Constant.
“Another example is Instagram. I liked it at first as purely visual platform, but as soon as we start adopting the features such as filters, likes and comments, it influences the way we looks at pictures. Suddenly it is not just about my picture and what I saw or felt at that point in time… I realize that I start evaluating it on the number of likes it gets, I start thinking about who will comment on it, how will it reflect on me…and that’s where it gets tricky. It is that quantification of emotions that fucks with our minds.”
Bill Atkinson, TOS and Balconism
Constant’s favorite pieces in his London show are the ones paying tribute to Bill Atkinson – the creator of MacPaint and inventor of the “drop-down” menu, the “undo” function or the HyperCard. One of them is the Hamm’s Ripple beer sign, which inspired Atkinson to create the “marching ants selection” feature. Others show Atkinson’s nature photographs animated with these marching ants selection paths.
“Bill is a living legend. He created – as a designer and computer engineer at Apple from 1978 till 1990 – some of the most important graphical user interface elements that we take for granted today. I am very happy I could work with him. He is a normal 63-years’ old guy living in San Francisco, but talking to him is like talking to a guy who invented the bicycle!”
Terms of Service is part of a series of works about the continuously changing conditions of several Internet services. The TOS‘s (Terms of Service) define our relationship with companies such as Google, but contrary to a normal relationship where you have an open discussion if the existing “status” changes, Google amends the nature of the relationship unilaterally. You could perhaps find a tech blog or the odd email that explain these changes in detail but most users just implicitly accept them. By hiring a speaker on Voices.com and letting her read out loud the TOS, Constant uses a radical form of anthropomorphisation to critique this lack of transparency.
There are also two balconies mounted on the gallery walls and a text of the Balconism manifesto is projected by RGB laser light on the concrete walls of the staircase. “It’s a long story” Constant tells us. “When talking about the Internet, people use analogies of space – cyber space, the web, chat rooms. It feels like we need to introduce a spatial reference to understand where information collects. When I saw Julian Assange standing on a balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, I suddenly thought: we are not standing on the threshold of a new space, we are standing on the balcony. We cannot enter this new space, we can peek into it and we need to make a conscious decision if we are going to stand up and speak out or if we are going to sit and watch.”
A paragraph from his manifesto sums it nicely up: “The balcony is both public and private, online and offline. It is a space and a movement at the same time. You can be seen or remain unnoticed, inside and outside. Slippers are ok on the balcony.”
On the threshold
Computer graphics and designs that changed the course of history are recurring theme in Constant’s work: Jennifer_in_Paradise is the first photoshopped image, another of his works refers to Utah Teapot, which is the first 3D computer model. We wonder what would he like to create for the first time, if money and technology were not a barrier? “Actually I am much more interested in contextualizing” says Constant. “In a weird way I am almost allergic to the ambition of being the first. There is already so much shit out there… instead of creating more, I would rather help the world dealing with what already exists.”
Stringendo, Vanishing Mediators runs at Carroll/Fletcher, London, till 19 July 2014.
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constantdullaart.com
@constantdull
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BIO
Constant Dullaart (*1979) studied the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. Recent solo exhibitions include Brave New Panderers at XPO gallery in Paris, Jennifer in Paradise at Future Gallery in Berlin and Onomatopoeia at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City. Group exhibitions include Casting A Wide Net at Postmasters, NYC, Online Mythologies at Polytechnic Museum, Moscow, Genius without Talent at De Appel, Amsterdam and Off the Record at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. He lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin.
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Elastic Minds is a series of interviews about creative people working at the intersection of various disciplines. With these interviews we would like to explore the network of these creatives and add an element of chance by giving each of them the power to select the next person. Rather than static players chosen by us, they become dynamic parts in the system, able to define the evolution of the entire project.
Other Elastic Minds interviews:
Tobias Klein (October 2012)
Ruairi Glynn (November 2012)
Ollie Palmer (December 2012)
Cohen Van Balen (June 2013)
SOURCE: Happy Famous Artists » Blog - Read entire story here.
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Born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Andy Warhol was a painter, printmaker, and filmmaker and a pivotal figure in the formation of the Pop Art movement.
Warhol was the son of working-class Slovakian immigrants. His frequent illnesses in childhood often kept him bedridden and at home. During this time, he formed a strong bond with his mother. It was what he describes an important period in the formation of his personality and skill set.
Warhol studied at the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University), majoring in pictorial design. In 1949, he moved to New York City where he quickly became successful in magazine illustration and advertising, producing work for publications such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and the The New Yorker.
Much of Warhol’s work the 1950’s was commissioned by fashion houses and he became known for his whimsical ink drawings of I. Miller shoes. In 1952, Warhol’s illustrations for Truman Capote’s writings were exhibited by the Hugo Gallery in New York and he exhibited at several other venues in the 1950′s including a 1956 group show at the Museum of Modern Art. Warhol received several awards during this decade from the Art Director’s Club and the American Institute of Graphic Arts.
Warhol was enthralled with Hollywood celebrities, fashion, and style and by the early 1960’s these interests were reflected in his artwork. Borrowing images from popular culture, Warhol’s “Pop Art” paintings were characterized by repetition of everyday objects such as soup cans, Coca Cola bottles, and 100 dollar bills. He also began painting celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor.
Most of Warhol’s paintings were produced in his studio that he called “The Factory” with the help of assistants. Photographic images were screen-printed on to painted backgrounds and mechanically repeated – a process that mimicked the manufacturing industry and parodied mass consumption. During the Factory years, Warhol associated with and “groomed” a variety of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities including Edie Sedgwick, Viva, writer John Giorno, and film-maker Jack Smith.
Warhol worked prolifically in a range of media including painting, photography, drawing, sculpture, and film. Between 1963 and 1968 he produced more than 60 films and about 500 short “screen test” portraits of his studio visitors. His most popular and successful film was Chelsea Girls, made in 1966.
On June 3, 1968, Warhol and art critic/curator Mario Amaya, were shot by Valerie Solanas after she was turned away from the Factory studio. Warhol’s wound was almost fatal and would affect him physically and mentally for the rest of his life.
The 1970’s was a quieter decade for Warhol who concentrated more on portrait commissions for celebrities such as Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Michael Jackson, and others. He founded Interview Magazine and in 1975 published “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol” which expressed the idea that “Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art.” During the 1970’s Warhol was also involved in a number collaborations with young artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente and Keith Haring.
In general, Andy Warhol was consistently ambiguous on the meaning of his work and appeared indifferent and ambivalent. He denied that his artwork carried any social or political commentary.
Warhol died in New York City on February 22, 1987 of a cardiac arrhythmia while recovering from routine gallbladder surgery. In his will, almost his entire estate was dedicated to the “advancement of the visual arts”. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was founded in that same year and it remains one of the largest grant-giving organizations for the visual arts in the United States today.
Sources: MOMA, Guggenheim, National Gallery of Canada, Andy Warhol Foundation, Wikipedia
SOURCE: Daily Art Fixx - Art Blog: Modern Art, Art History, Painting, Illustration, Photography, Sculpture - Read entire story here.
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MOBILE, Alabama -- If you want a hint of the achingly beautiful music in Mobile Opera's upcoming production of Massenet's tragic work "Werther," you should treat your ears to "Night of Song" on Monday, Aug. 18. Mobile Opera star soprano Megan King , who will play Sophie in "Werther," will be among the superb singers performing favorites from opera ... (more)
SOURCE: Opera News - Read entire story here.
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Hockney and Bourgeois go head-to-head for the most beautiful, and its a face-off between Picasso, Mondrian and Hirst for the ultimate shock of the new effect. Now you can pit legendary artists against each another in a card game for art lovers
Buy The Art Game here from 1 September
SOURCE: Art and design | The Guardian - Read entire story here.
