Belushi
On Yahoo! Answers someone asked for a list of famous artists who did drugs and the number one answer was, “The list of famous artists who didn’t do drugs would be a shorter one.” Creativity and drug use are inextricably tied, at least since the 60’s. Not just in fine art, but think about just your front of mind knowledge of musicians, writers, comedians and actors who were/are known mind-alterers. We’d like to believe that drug use is a product of idle hands, lack of direction, weak wills and irresponsibility driven by a wasteland mentality of the disenfranchised and lost. And while that may be true, you wouldn’t know it by the list of artists and creative minds who have done everything from recreational use to far far more.
Continue reading ‘The role of drugs in art.’
The Obamas at The Pompidou in Paris
In my lifetime, I’ve never seen an image of a President at an art museum with his kid. I mean, I’m sure they’ve gone, just never seen it. I can’t even imagine it. Bush, hand-in-hand with Barbara and Jenna, taking in the Denon Wing of the Louvre? I can’t formulate the image in my head. I really can’t even picture Bill and Chelsea walking the spiral pathway of the Guggenheim, even though it’s probably viewable from their home. And if they did, I picture him winking at girls the whole time.
This feels honest to me. I’m looking at this shot and I’m seeing all children like Malia, standing before this lost art called art with a person who is willing to point and say, “Here’s why this is important.” And knowing. I’ve felt waves of encouragement with the new administration, but until now I hadn’t felt anything emotionally charged. Obviously, this is my hot topic, so it’s more likely to hit me harder, but I also believe that where goes art, so goes the best parts of this country. Watching the importance of it die on the vine around here has been tough. This shot, and accompanying article (talking about the revamping of the White House’s art collection), is encouraging. And, yeah, gives me a little hope. I said it.
Art is so… fancy. Art tries hard to be cool. Art is bedfellows with intellectuals, critics and scholars. Art dresses in clothes that it feels it should be wearing, because that’s what’s in Vogue. Sketching, on the other hand, wears shorts. Sketching drives a ‘67 Ford Bronco and hides a bag of weeks-old Milano cookies in the glove compartment. Sketching is flippant, carefree and Summery.
No one pays much attention to the sketchers. It’s more like a means to an end. In the early days, sketches laid the foundation of bigger works. The da Vinci sketches, for example, aren’t so much art as a peek into the working mind of an artist. An artist meant for bigger things. The sketches, beautiful sure, but not a destination so much as the twiddling, tinkering, pondering train ride to Gettysburg.
The truth is, it’s all in the sketches. Sketches are the ideas. And Baldessari, Burden, Keinholz and Warhol destroyed the notion that art necessitates execution.With that being the case, I can see an argument for redefining the role of sketches. Or at least our perception of it. The materials and techniques need to advance, though. Watercolors, guache and other lame sounding materials need to give way to more innovative techniques. This site might be paving that way: http://www.urbansketchers.com/ These guys have got the goods, and they seem organized. Pass the cookies, fellas.
Balzak said, “I am a galley slave to pen and ink.” I just ordered a six pack of black ink Pigmas, which are insanely perfect. I rarely induldge in fine pennery, relegating myself to cheap Bics and those annoying click-pens that lay all over the office. Just as you are what you eat, so too are you what you draw with. And in that sense, this is the fois gras of art pens. And a pack of six was under $10 on Amazon. At that price, I’m not just a slave, I’m a cheap whore.
I was just reading somewhere that people don’t like long blog posts, so I’m really resisting the urge to write a short story here about my history with cassette tapes and my first “art canvases” – the cassette tape cover. Suffice to say, the art of cassette tapes, and their covers, was a love affair with music, the mix tape and popular culture. I’ve often thought that a collection of cassette tape drawings would make a really good art show. Now I don’t have to imagine it, as (of course) a Flickr group has arisen with the same thought in mind. If you’re from the time where this was an important part of your life, enjoy the walk down memory lane. If you’re not, just marvel at the obsessiveness of it all.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/creativecassettes/
I’ve said it before, illustrators have a tough road to hoe. Often under-appreciated for being more craft than art, the concepts behind their work can often go overlooked. I found it imminently appropriate, then, to find an illustrator whose theme is all about being overlooked. Zina Saunders is a New York illustrator who has created visuals for a number of books and magazines, but moonlights as a serious thinker on a variety of subjects in the art field. It is worth checking out her site, Overlooked New York, documenting the impassioned residents of New York in all their pigeon-raising, bird-watching and river-swimming glory. But the real treat for me is what appears to be a newer set of work, depicting those anthropomorphic water spigots that wriggle out of New York buildings all over the city.
The idea of being “overlooked” is something that touches us so deep that you can feel it in your shoes. It is the root of all our neuroses, issues and insecurities. It is buried in the human dilemma. It calls to larger questions, about the universe, about our role in it. It is touching to see it in the individual passions of NY City residents, but it is downright moving to see it in inanimate objects. We can map ourselves onto it better. Somehow, those gnarled objects sticking out of buildings, painted and beautified, but still ultimately odd, strange and unnoticeable… are just like us.
Video game covers and trailers, to date, have taken on the same rule of thumb as comic book covers; gorgeously painted works of art on the outside but inside the numerous panels are too time-intensive to render in that kind of quality. Likewise, video games often look good in a trailer, filled with well-rendered cut scenes that don’t get lived up to in actual game play. That’s all changed.
Attending the press event for Playstation and then walking through E3 today, I was floored by the insanely good artwork all over the place – from posters, to trailers, to booth decorations to, yes, game footage. The frame rates, chip capabilities and disc sizes have all grown up before our very eyes, to a point where anything seems possible. That has actually been true for a while, but until this year, not many game developers were truly taking advantage of every piece of available space to them. They are now. And from an art direction standpoint, many games rival many movies. But more importantly, unlike movies, the gaming industry takes it on as a personal challenge to out-do itself every year with more stunning visuals and more engaging experiences.
Continue reading ‘Video games are gorgeous. The best part of E3 was the art itself.’
A few years back, The New York Sun ran an article about a (then) new art magazine, called Paper Monument. I have read and reread this article probably once a month since then. For one thing, it is exquisitely written and of course about my favorite topic of art, creativity and the importance of art and creativity. There is a lot of self-reflection involved in the launch of a new art magazine, that dares to print on paper, in the first place. But it begs questions about the role of art and how, in this crazy world, to reflect upon it. But it is a lesson for everyone, everywhere. I have used it, in speeches, as an example of how to think about new technologies, as well. Most importantly, this line “But nowadays, just standing still, and seeing, and thinking, is a revolutionary gesture.” I truly believe that is true. And it is a powerful notion. Following is the excerpt I try to remind myself of as often as possible, but the whole article is very interesting:
Continue reading ‘“Seeing and thinking is a revolutionary gesture.” An excerpt from a great article, resurfaced.’
Danger Mouse is the guy who did that mash-up album of The Beatles’ White album and Jay-Z’s Black album. He’s back with another album ensnarled in controversy, called “Dark Night of the Soul.” But you knew all that. The album is a who’s who of musical and cultural importance; from The Shins’ James Mercer to The Strokes to Sparklehorse to Iggy Pop to. What was strange was that David Lynch’s name was also attached to it. That didn’t ever seem to make sense. Well, now, because of some potential lawsuit, the album has been released but with, get this, no music. That’s right, it comes with a blank CD. One guess what you’re supposed to do with that thing as, oops, the songs have somehow all turned up online. The thing you might not know is that there’s a show opening tomorrow night (May 30th) of David Lynch’s photographs that appear in the music-less album’s attached book. The show is at the Kohn Gallery on Beverly and is also called “Dark Night of the Soul.” And the music playing in the background will be, you guessed it, the unreleased music of Danger Mouse and crew.
The chaos of it all got me thinking about David Lynch movies, shows, photos and weather reports. It’s all stream of conscious. It doesn’t move in a linear fashion, or even in a temporally correct kind of way. Instead it meanders in and out of environments and realities, the only thing you have left to hold onto are themes, which you eventually come to realize, are the most important thing anyway. It seemed weird for him to be involved in a music project from the beginning, but now that it’s all so confusing, it’s actually starting to make sense.
Here’s where you can listen to the album
Here’s the gallery opening info
Here’s David Lynch’s weather report
As you may have noticed, my RAM (Random Artist of the Month) is actually more like RAW. That’s what makes it random!
There’s so much to like about Robert Longo, for me. He studied sculpture, but preferred drawing. He was/is heavily influenced by all forms of popular culture and mass media. But he did something that no artist did for me – he bridged a gap between drawing and fine art in a way I hadn’t seen before. All the drawings I had studied and admired in art school, and before, were more like sketches. Rarely would you see a drawing for drawing’s sake and if you did, it was usually of the Picasso variety, which felt like the pen was held with two fingers near the top. Longo’s “Men in Cities” series, which depicted business men (and women, actually) against a white seamless background, were rendered to perfection. The images were stark and gorgeously applied with thick lines and layers of shading. It’s said that graphite is his clay.
The writhing poses of his figures in that series added to the effectiveness of the image and the white seamless background which served to single out the image in some kind of hero-ized fashion was, potentially, ground zero for all the ads we see today on white backgrounds. It is not as though he invented the white backdrop, but for many, it was the effectiveness of that series that burned that graphic style into our brains.
I followed Longo through his career for a long time, buying his books and prints and even spending time emulating his drawing style. He has other great pieces of work, most notably his “Black Flags” series, but also continues to do extraordinary charcoal drawings that blow your mind and challenge your brain. He has an incredible eye for iconic imagery and depicts them in such a way that you are forced to evaluate your belief system and understanding of it. From Longo’s drawings, one can learn about photography, sculpture, fine art and graphic art. But one can also learn about the world, media and the place of the observer.
You see remnants of his work and style all over the place. Take this Portland artist, Zach Johnsen. His drawings/illustrations are also top notch, and he’s certainly got his own thing going on, but there is a lotta Longo in there. And that ain’t a bad thing.
