Coffee Portraits of John Lennon, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe & Other Icons

in Art, Creativity | August 3rd, 2015

Coffee Lennon

Paint­ings by Maria A. Aris­ti­dou

As philoso­pher Mar­shall McLuhan wrote in Under­stand­ing Media, “the medi­um is the mes­sage.”

Artist Maria A. Aris­ti­dou’s medi­um is cof­fee, and late­ly, she’s been gar­ner­ing a lot of atten­tion for java-based por­traits of such cul­tur­al lumi­nar­ies as Ein­stein, Darth Vad­er and The Bea­t­les.

The pro­lif­ic and high­ly-caf­feinat­ed artist found her niche when an acci­den­tal spill gave rise to a some­what sullen fac­sim­i­le of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring.

Girl-with-Pearl-Earring

She has since applied her espres­so blends toward the Mona Lisa and one of Baroque era painter Juan de Arel­lano’s flo­ral still lifes, but for the most part, she draws her sub­jects from the realm of pop cul­ture.

Dorm room faves like Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, Bob Mar­ley, and John Lennon are over­shad­owed by fic­tion­al super­stars like Frozen’s Queen Elsa, Nintendo’s Mario, and var­i­ous per­son­ages from Game of Thrones.

My favorite? Kyle MacLach­lan as Twin Peaks’ Agent Dale “Damn fine cup of cof­fee, Diane!” Coop­er. That’s not just medi­um. That’s meta!

Aris­ti­dou is not the only artist find­ing inspi­ra­tion in this non-tra­di­tion­al pig­ment. A recent NPR sto­ry on the trend cites cof­fee artists Angel Sarkela-Saur and Andy Saur and Giu­lia Bernardel­li.

Scroll back­wards to the mid-1800s and you’ll find author—and gift­ed drafts­man—Vic­tor Hugo exper­i­ment­ing with the stuff. Nor was his promis­cu­ous nib a stranger to the artis­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties of soot, coal dust, and blood.

Aris­ti­dou, who holds degrees in Fine Art Print­mak­ing and Arts Health, eschews the tra­di­tion­al artist’s web­site in favor of social media. Not only is she a mas­ter of the hash­tag, she also designs cakes. View her com­plete oeuvre—including sev­er­al car­tons of cor­po­rate logo East­er eggs and some recent fash­ion illus­tra­tions that com­bine water­col­or with java—on her Face­book or Insta­gram pages.

Above you can watch Aris­ti­dou paint por­traits of Ein­stein, the Bea­t­les and R2D2 in quick time-lapse motion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vic­tor Hugo’s Sur­pris­ing­ly Mod­ern Draw­ings Made with Coal, Dust & Cof­fee (1848–1851)

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

The Fine Art of Paint­ing Por­traits on Cof­fee Foam

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Endangered Species (Including Cecil the Lion) Projected Onto the Empire State Building

in Art | August 2nd, 2015

Any­one with a Face­book or Twit­ter account last week could­n’t avoid hear­ing about Wal­ter James Palmer, the Min­neso­ta den­tist who alleged­ly went tro­phy hunt­ing in Zim­bab­we and killed Cecil the Lion, a local favorite who had been ille­gal­ly lured away from a pro­tect­ed wildlife pre­serve. I won’t say any­thing more about it, oth­er than that you can sign a peti­tion to get Palmer extra­dit­ed to Zim­bab­we and let him defend his actions to local author­i­ties.

Mean­while, back in New York City, two artists Travis Threlkel and Louie Psi­hoyos were get­ting ready to turn The Empire State build­ing into a Noah’s Ark of Endan­gered Ani­mals. And that’s exact­ly what hap­pened on Sat­ur­day night. Plac­ing “40 stacked, 20,000-lumen pro­jec­tors on the roof of a near­by build­ing,” Threlkel and Psi­hoyos pro­ject­ed an array of endan­gered ani­mals “onto a space 375 feet tall and 186 feet wide cov­er­ing 33 floors,” reports The New York Times. You can see pho­tos of the ani­mals over at the Rac­ing Extinc­tion Twit­ter stream. Touch­ing­ly, there was an homage to Cecil the Lion. A video from the Times appears above; anoth­er from The New York­er below.

To learn more about how Project Map­ping works, and to see oth­er exam­ples of Threlkel’s work, see the videos on this page.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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School Teachers Turn Old Lockers Into Literary Works of Art

in Art, Books | July 22nd, 2015

At Biloxi Junior High School, the teach­ers are spend­ing their sum­mer pret­ty pro­duc­tive­ly. They’re tak­ing an entire hall­way lined with dull green (cur­rent­ly unused) lock­ers and they’re repaint­ing each and every­one of them — 189 in total. By the time stu­dents return in the fall, each lock­er will look like the spine of a famous book, and the hall­way will be known as the “Avenue of Lit­er­a­ture.” One teacher told WLOX, “We want stu­dents to come back to school in August and … be absolute­ly amazed with what we’ve done and be curi­ous. We want that to be the spark for read­ing in our class­rooms… We’re hop­ing the stu­dents come and they become com­plete­ly immersed in a col­lec­tion” that con­tains every­thing from Water­ship Down and John­ny Tremain to books in the Twi­light series, reports Elec­tric Lit.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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The (F)Art of War: Bawdy Japanese Art Scroll Depicts Wrenching Changes in 19th Century Japan

in Art | July 15th, 2015

he gassen 5

When you think of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese art, you might think of a sumi‑e ink paint­ing that evokes a copse of bam­boo with a few mas­ter­ful lines. A haiku that cap­tures the fragili­ty of beau­ty in the length of a tweet. A gar­den that some­how con­veys the tran­scen­dence of all things by ele­gant­ly fram­ing the wind in the trees.

hegassen1

While the He-Gassen scroll from rough­ly the 1840s has lit­tle of the Zen-like restraint of the above exam­ples, it def­i­nite­ly shows the wind in the trees. He-Gassen (屁合戦) lit­er­al­ly trans­lates into “fart bat­tle” and it shows var­i­ous men and women with their rears in the air, break­ing hur­ri­cane-strength wind — blasts so pow­er­ful that they can launch cats into the air, blow through walls, knock over build­ings and gen­er­al­ly send vic­tims reel­ing. The scroll is eas­i­ly one of the most remark­able, and hilar­i­ous, pieces of art I’ve seen in a long while.

hegassen3

The whole thing might look like an extend­ed sketch from Ter­reace and Phillip, those gassy Cana­di­an TV stars from South Park, but some argue that He-Gassen might have a polit­i­cal dimen­sion. Dur­ing the Edo peri­od (1603–1867), flat­u­lence was used as a way to mock west­ern­ers. Japan was closed off from the out­side world and they were feel­ing more and more pres­sure from the West until final­ly Amer­i­can gun boats led by Com­modore Matthew Per­ry forced the coun­try open in 1853. What bet­ter way to thwart these West­ern inter­lop­ers than with a cav­al­cade of indus­tri­al strength gas?

hegassen4

You can see a few choice pic­tures above, or head over to the Wase­da Uni­ver­si­ty dig­i­tal archive and see the whole thing. 38 images in total.

via i09

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Hōshi: A Short Film on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Fam­i­ly for 46 Gen­er­a­tions

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Vintage 1930s Japanese Posters Artistically Market the Wonders of Travel

in Art, Travel | July 13th, 2015

Vintage-Japanese-Tourism-Posters

Ear­li­er this year, we fea­tured vin­tage Japan­ese print adver­tise­ments from the gold­en age of Art Deco and for such prod­ucts as beer, sake, and cig­a­rettes. If you like that sort of thing, you might con­sid­er pay­ing atten­tion to the recent­ly launched Brand­ing in Asia, a site detect­ed to cov­er­ing “the art of brand­ing” as expressed in “the excit­ing new ideas and con­cepts explod­ing from the mind of Asia” — or the excit­ing old ideas and con­cepts which, aes­thet­i­cal­ly speak­ing, remain pret­ty explo­sive still.

Vintage-Japanese-Travel13

Take, for instance, their col­lec­tion of clas­sic Japan­ese steamship ads. “In the ear­ly part of the 20th cen­tu­ry,” writes Steph Aromdee, “Japan’s increas­ing­ly pros­per­ous mid­dle class was tak­ing to the high seas for trav­el. One com­pa­ny, the Japan Mail Steamship, adver­tised heav­i­ly, hop­ing to attract would-be tourists to their lux­u­ry ships. What were like­ly at the time regard­ed as sim­ple adver­tise­ments and brochures that sim­ply showed depar­tures and des­ti­na­tions, have today become viewed as stun­ning works of art.”

Vintage-Japanese-Travel4

Here we’ve excerpt­ed a few such adver­tise­ments from their impres­sive selec­tion which, as you can see, ranges artis­ti­cal­ly from the styl­ized to the real­is­tic, and con­cep­tu­al­ly from the prac­ti­cal to the pure­ly evoca­tive. They might entice read­ers onto a steamship voy­age with an Art Deco bathing beau­ty, a con­trast of human trav­el­er against moun­tain’s majesty, a detailed map enu­mer­at­ing a vari­ety of pos­si­ble des­ti­na­tions, or, as in the case of deer-filled Nara, a scat­ter­ing of local icons.

Vintage-Japanese-Travel11

The age of the steamship has, of course, long since dis­solved into the roman­tic past, even in Japan. Or per­haps I should say espe­cial­ly in Japan, whose shinkansen bul­let train not only put every oth­er mode of trans­port straight into obso­les­cence, but — at least to my mind — also boasts a cut­ting-edge romance of its own.

Vintage-Japanese-Travel-posters7

And so these adver­tise­ments, more than 70 years after their print­ings, still get me plan­ning my next trip to Japan, a coun­try that knows a thing or two about desire and place. “Even in Kyoto,” wrote 17th-cen­tu­ry poet Mat­suo Bashō, “I long for Kyoto.”
Vintage-Japanese-Travel-posters12

via Brand­ing in Asia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Adver­tise­ments from Japan’s Gold­en Age of Art Deco

Glo­ri­ous Ear­ly 20th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Ads for Beer, Smokes & Sake (1902–1954)

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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178 Beautifully-Illustrated Letters from Artists: Kahlo, Calder, Man Ray & More

in Art, Letters | July 9th, 2015

AAA_herreric_3369

Eight years ago—that’s some­thing like five decades in Inter­net time—the Smith­son­ian held an exhi­bi­tion, “More than Words: Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from the Smithsonian’s Archives of Amer­i­can Art,” which fea­tured a curat­ed selec­tion of 178 hand-illus­trat­ed let­ters, love notes, dri­ving direc­tions, and jot­tings of cur­rent events, from var­i­ous artists. The selec­tions can still be found online, even though Liza Kirwin’s selec­tions for the exhib­it can now also be found in an accom­pa­ny­ing book.

The illus­trat­ed let­ters make for human­iz­ing insights into the pri­vate world of artists that we usu­al­ly only expe­ri­ence through their work.

The 1945 let­ter from George Grosz to Erich S. Her­rmann (above) is to invite his friend (and art deal­er) to his birth­day par­ty, promis­ing not just one glass of Hen­nessy, but six (and more). “Lis­ten: boy!” he declares. “You are cor­dial­ly invit­ed to attend the birth­day par­ty of ME.” This was when Grosz was in his 50s and liv­ing in Hunt­ing­ton, New York. It should be not­ed that Grosz met his end falling down a flight of stairs while drunk, but the man knew how to par­ty.

AAA_smitjose_croppedjpg

Joseph Lin­don Smith was an Amer­i­can illus­tra­tor best known for being the artist who trav­eled to Egypt and doc­u­ment­ed the exca­va­tions at Giza and the Val­ley of the Kings, very faith­ful in their rep­re­sen­ta­tion. But in 1894, this let­ter finds Smith, 31 years old, liv­ing in Paris, try­ing to make a go of it as an artist, and hav­ing enough suc­cess to tell his par­ents: “Behold your son paint­ing under a show­er of gold,” he writes. Check out that hand­writ­ing: it’s beau­ti­ful.

calder illustrated letter

Sculp­tor Alexan­der Calder wrote this note to Vas­sar col­league and friend Agnes Rindge Claflin in 1936, con­tin­u­ing some con­ver­sa­tion they were hav­ing about col­or, and not­ing her choic­es mark her as a “Parcheesi hound,” and adding that he’s a fan of the game too. The lit­tle illus­tra­tion, which is straight Calder, is cute too. Claflin would lat­er go on to nar­rate one of MOMA’s first films to accom­pa­ny an exhib­it, Her­bert Matter’s 1944 film on Calder, Sculp­ture and Con­struc­tions.

man ray illustrated letter

This Man Ray let­ter to painter Julian E. Levi looks like it has been wor­ried over or recycled—-“Dear Julian” appears sev­er­al times on the sta­tionery from Le Select Amer­i­can Bar in Mont­par­nasse. It’s a bit dif­fi­cult to make out all his writ­ing: he starts men­tion­ing “Last year’s 1928 wine har­vest is sup­posed to be the very finest in the last fifty years” at the begin­ning, but I’m more fas­ci­nat­ed with the bot­tom right: “I have sev­en tall blondes with 14 big tits and one with sap­phire garters.”

o-KAHLO-900

Final­ly, we close out with a let­ter Fri­da Kahlo sent to her friend Emmy Lou Packard in 1940, where she thanked Packard for tak­ing care of Diego dur­ing an ill­ness. The let­ter gets sealed, Priscil­la Frank notes at Huff­Po, with three lip­stick kiss­es — “one for Diego, one for Emmy Lou, and one for her son.”

There’s plen­ty more illus­trat­ed let­ters to explore at the Smith­son­ian site and in Kir­win’s hand­some book, fea­tur­ing artists well known and obscure, but all who knew how to com­pose a good let­ter.

via Huff­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

Six Post­cards From Famous Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Kaf­ka, Ker­ouac & More

James Joyce’s “Dirty Let­ters” to His Wife (1909)

Read Rejec­tion Let­ters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Von­negut & Andy Warhol

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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The Art of Restoring a 400-Year-Old Painting: A Five-Minute Primer

in Art, History, Museums | July 6th, 2015

Look­ing to expand your capac­i­ty for art appre­ci­a­tion, with­out spend­ing much in the way of time or mon­ey?

You could play Mas­ter­piece, or check some Sis­ter Wendy out of the library…

Or you could watch con­ser­va­tor Michael Gal­lagher ten­der­ly min­is­ter­ing to 17th-cen­tu­ry painter Charles Le Brun’s Ever­hard Jabach and His Fam­i­ly, above.

Long con­sid­ered lost, the life-size fam­i­ly por­trait of the artist’s friend, a lead­ing banker and art col­lec­tor, was in sor­ry shape when the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um acquired it from a pri­vate col­lec­tion ear­li­er last year.

Gal­lagher worked for ten months to coun­ter­act the var­i­ous indig­ni­ties it had suf­fered, includ­ing a re-stretch­ing that left the orig­i­nal can­vas severe­ly creased, and a Gild­ed Age appli­ca­tion of var­nish that weath­ered poor­ly over time.

It’s a painstak­ing process, restor­ing such a work to its orig­i­nal glo­ry, requir­ing count­less Q‑tips and a giant roller that allowed staffers to safe­ly flip all 9 x 10.75 feet of the mas­sive can­vas. Gal­lagher iden­ti­fies the last step, a sprayed-on coat of var­nish nec­es­sary for teas­ing out the painting’s orig­i­nal lus­ter, as the most nerve-wrack­ing part of the odyssey.

Now that you know what went into it, you real­ly should go vis­it it in per­son, if only to mar­vel at how the major­i­ty of vis­i­tors stream obliv­i­ous­ly past, bound for the gift shop, the cafe, or oth­er more name brand attrac­tions.

(Cer­tain­ly Le Brun, First Painter to Louis XIV, was a name brand in his day.)

Get even more out of your vis­it by bon­ing up on some notable aspects of the work itself, such as the geom­e­try of the sub­jects’ place­ment and the artist’s self-por­trait, reflect­ed in a mir­ror over his patron’s shoul­der.

Gal­lagher and oth­er Met staffers kept a detailed account of the restora­tion process on the Met’s Con­ser­va­tion blog. Read their posts here.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

Down­load 448 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Artist Turns 24-Volume Encyclopedia Britannica Set into a Beautifully Carved Landscape

in Art, Books, English Language, History | June 29th, 2015

Not too long ago, an old­er rel­a­tive tried to donate the Funk & Wag­nalls ency­clo­pe­dia he’d owned since boy­hood to a local char­i­ty shop, but they refused to take it.

What an igno­min­ious end to an insti­tu­tion that had fol­lowed him for sev­en decades and twice as many moves. Like many such weighty pos­ses­sions, its prove­nance was sen­ti­men­tal, a grad­u­a­tion gift I believe, bestowed all at once, rather than pur­chased piece­meal from a trav­el­ing ency­clo­pe­dia sales­man.

By the time I came along, its func­tion had been reduced to the pri­mar­i­ly dec­o­ra­tive. Every now and then, he’d find some pre­text to pull one of its many vol­umes from the shelf.

Did I know that Tan­za­nia was once called Tan­ganyi­ka?

And Thai­land was once Siam!

The vin­tage Funk & Wag­nalls’ many facts, maps, and illus­tra­tions were not the only aspects in need of an update. Its pre-Women’s Lib, pre-Civ­il Rights atti­tudes were shock­ing to the point of camp. There was unin­ten­tion­al com­ic gold in those pages. A col­lage artist could’ve had a ball. Wit­ness the suc­cess of the Ency­clo­pe­dia Show, an ongo­ing per­for­mance event in Chica­go.

encyc brit carved

Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary artist Guy Laramée takes a much more sober approach, above. Adieu, his sculp­tur­al repur­pos­ing of a 24-vol­ume Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca feels like a memen­to mori for a dim­ly recalled ances­tor of the infor­ma­tion age.

Quoth the artist:

I carve land­scapes out of books and I paint roman­tic land­scapes. Moun­tains of dis­used knowl­edge return to what they real­ly are: moun­tains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flat­ten and become fields where appar­ent­ly noth­ing is hap­pen­ing. Piles of obso­lete ency­clo­pe­dias return to that which does not need to say any­thing, that which sim­ply IS. Fogs and clouds erase every­thing we know, every­thing we think we are.

An ene­my of 3D print­ing and oth­er 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­no­log­i­cal advances, Laramée employs old fash­ioned pow­er tools to accom­plish his beau­ti­ful, destruc­tive vision. What’s left is a delib­er­ate waste­land.

Kudos to film­mak­er Sébastien Ven­tu­ra for tran­scend­ing mere doc­u­men­ta­tion to deliv­er the befit­ting ele­gy at the top of the page. He presents us with a beau­ti­ful ruin. What­ev­er hap­pened there, nature will reclaim it.

You can see more of Laramée’s work at This Is Colos­sal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artist Takes Old Books and Gives Them New Life as Intri­cate Sculp­tures

The Sketch­book Project Presents Online 17,000 Sketch­books, Cre­at­ed by Artists from 135 Coun­tries

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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