Category: Art

Noah Kalina has been taking a photograph of himself every day for the past six years. The result is a strangely fascinating video. This is a work in progress. He wants to take it to the ultimate conclusion, releasing a video every ten years of his life.

Luis Rijo posts a photo of a poster, and I can only say in riposte that I have the selfsame image on a T-Shirt, nestling in a drawer along with dozens of other T-shirts with gay or political themes. Ah, those were the days…

Totally frivolous, but I couldn’t resist: Urinal.Net. A friend sent me a collection of photos of unusual urinals, so when I found this on the Net, I thought of him. In the nicest possible way, of course.

Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it, is to find a work of art that is more kitsch than this…

There’s a short interview with Alison Lapper in today’s Society Guardian. The interview ends with the question: "Who would be a good UK President". The forthright answer: "Me. I have a disability and take a different approach to things". I think she would make a pretty good president, certainly a better one than a certain Prime Minister who gives the appearance that he would jump at the chance if such a position existed.

I discovered today (via Sepia Mutiny) that Teju Cole is back blogging. Cole is a Nigerian who writes like a dream. His last blog was a series of wonderful entries, but alas, he took it down from the internet, and so the sentiments have vanished into the ether. This new blog will have a lifetime of only one year, so go and enjoy it while you can.

…on the island of La Grande Jatte. Well, perhaps not, but it does have echoes of Seurat’s masterpiece. I’ve been fortunate enough to have seen the original, and it’s one of the few paintings that I have sat and contemplated for more than 20 minutes.

…a chocolate teapot. Oh well, it’s art, I suppose. But the accompanying text on Culiblog deserves a place to itself in Pseud’s Corner… For a scientific approach to determining the utility of a chocolate teapot, please refer to this entry in Plotka issue 23, volume 6 number 2.

Peter Greenaway has built an Ark at Fort Asperen in the Netherlands. He says:

Methinks the "American experts" are over-reacting a trifle on the timescale, but flooding is definitely in the future of the Netherlands. Meanwhile, Greenaway has devised his own flood warning as a work of art to be shown at Fort Asperen until the 24th September 2006. I’ll certainly be paying it a visit, and leaving the relative safety of our home, currently at a vantage point of 19 metres above sea-level. 

 

(hat tip to Felix63 for the link. Some of his photos of the Ark exhibition can be found on Flickr)

I mentioned Theo Jansen and his Strandbeesten (beach animals) over a year ago. Now comes news that shooting has just started on a documentary about Jansen and his creations. Jansen will be at the ICA in London giving a lecture in early July, and from this weekend, his creations can be seen in Trafalgar Square and St. James Park for a couple of weeks…

Don’t believe everything you see on the Internet… A case in point: Genpets.

I assume that we are not to take this fashion outfit seriously, are we? I’d sooner suffer myxomatosis that walk down the street in that… More designs (owing a heavy debt to Edward Scissorhands, I feel) from Gareth Pugh here.

A bizarre little story today about the Victoria & Albert Museum authorities. They are refusing to invite Gerry Adams to an opening of an exhibition on Che Guevara next week, preferring instead to have a gaggle of fashion models and photographers attend the opening bash. The temple of art and culture has seemingly become merely a temple of convenience. To add insult to injury, the museum shop will apparently have Che Guevara lip balm on sale. The mind boggles.

Geoff Manaugh, over at BLDGBLOG, brings the work of Martin Kippenberger to my attention. The idea of Metro-Net is subtly intriguing. Somehow it nags at me, like a dream that hangs just beyond one’s reach in the conscious while simultaneously fading and fleeing from one’s grasp.

I think I’ve mentioned Cosmic View by Kees Boeke before. There was a copy in my local library when I was growing up that I came across and was immediately intrigued by. The online version of the book is here.

 

In similar vein – but with seemingly an infinite capacity to zoom in – here is the 10 ways interpretation of the same idea. Stunning.

 

(hat tip to Neatorama)

I wish I could write like this. It sends shivers down my spine and raises gooseflesh on my arms.

Yesterday I paid a visit to Rotterdam’s Boymans van Beuningen museum. One thing that caught my eye was a temporary exhibition of work by Sarah Morris. As well as producing large, geometrically abstract paintings, she has also produced some films. I saw her film of Los Angeles 2004 – a hypnotic look at L.A. in the days leading up to the Oscars ceremony. The film is without dialogue – the soundtrack is music only – and the end result is something like the films of Godfrey Reggio. A hypnotic look at the denizens of Tinseltown primping and preening themselves under the watchful eyes of thousands of cameras. The end result (for me) was a glimpse into the inner hell of Hollywood; a town where image is all, filled with beautiful people with empty souls.

The BBC’s Culture Show and the Design Museum are currently running a quest to find the public’s favourite British design icon. From a list of 25 choices, the first stage of voting by the public has now narrowed it down to 10.

 

There are some obvious, and (to my mind) well-deserved, contenders there, for example, Giles Gilbert Scott’s K2 Telephone kiosk, Douglas Scott’s Routemaster, Harry Beck’s map of the London Underground, and Percy Shaw’s Catseye.

 

There are also some bizarre choices: two video games have made it into the top ten: Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto – the latter seemingly a game that glorifies killing people, stealing cars and vandalising property. Charming. No wonder society is going to the dogs.

 

Be that as it may, for me there can be only one choice, and that is Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web. It strikes me that this candidate has a handicap compared with most of the others in the list – it’s not a physical object. It’s actually two complementary specifications – one for describing how web pages are constructed, and one describing how that information is carried over the Internet. An analogy would be with the DNA that forms the underpinning of all life on earth – whether the end result is a cat, a monkey, a human, a fly or a bacterium, all those organisms rely on DNA for their existence. Similarly, the specifications at the heart of the World Wide Web are the DNA behind all the information contained in the World Wide Web. And these specifications are the DNA of digital darwinism – the driving force behind the continuing and relentless evolution of the Web. I think that puts Berners-Lee’s invention into a category of its own. Other design icons have (mostly) had their day – but the WWW will continue to evolve and affect the lives of billions of people. Vote for the WWW today!

The photographs of Yann Arthus Bertrand are amazingly beautiful. I wish I had even a fraction of his talent.

 

(hat tip to Neatorama)

Paging Chris and Ed – here’s a collection of mid-20th Century advertising art that you might wish to browse through. There’s even a haunted wing – the gallery of Demonic Tots and Deeply Disturbing Cuisine. Shudder.