See Ugly Thrift Store Paintings through Artist Wayne White’s Pretty Eyes

in Art | October 15th, 2012

It reads like Hip­ster 101. Cre­ative mis­fit teen makes a con­scious choice to be a freak, grows up, sticks it to the main­stream, gains acclaim paint­ing fun­ny words and phras­es on ugly thrift store “art”. Except Wayne White, the man respon­si­ble in large part for the look of Pee­Wee’s Play­house and the sub­ject of a recent doc­u­men­tary, Beau­ty is Embar­rass­ing, isn’t much inter­est­ed in mock­ing easy prey. Pity. With those bed­room eyes and that ban­jo, he’d make a great a char­ac­ter on HBO’s Girls (pro­vid­ed, of course, he were thir­ty years younger).

Age has con­ferred a num­ber of lessons that he imparts on the thrift store ride-along above. For instance, those squares with whom less sea­soned artists are so pre­oc­cu­pied don’t give a hoot what the likes of him does or does­n’t do. Also, there’s no prof­it to be had in paint­ing on orig­i­nals. “That would be a com­ment on the artists.” Instead he trawls for repro­duc­tions, which he views as prod­ucts that have had all the pret­ty sucked out of them.

His plea­sure in find­ing a suit­ably unlove­ly Venet­ian scene in an ornate frame is refresh­ing, know­ing that it’s not pow­ered by snide irony. The only irony he acknowl­edges is that the uni­verse has seen fit to let him pros­per as an artist in this econ­o­my. Whether this will prove a last­ing lega­cy remains to be seen, but a few min­utes with Wayne White should be enough to per­ma­nent­ly alter your per­cep­tion of that hideous cov­ered bridge scene on your local Sal­va­tion Army’s wall.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of The East Vil­lage Inky zine, and author of sev­en books, includ­ing the forth­com­ing graph­ic nov­el, Peanut.

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The Uncensored Andy Warhol-Directed Video for The Cars’ Hit “Hello Again” (NSFW)

in Art, Music | October 15th, 2012

post_thecars_helloagain_andywarhol

Andy Warhol was many things to many peo­ple in his long and event­ful career: painter and provo­ca­teur, pro­mot­er and direc­tor. But it sur­prised me to learn that he also made music videos. Well, he made one music video, for The Cars sin­gle “Hel­lo Again” from their 1984 album Heart­beat City. The biggest hit from that album, “You Might Think,” was a mas­sive MTV video hit and one of the first music videos to use com­put­er graph­ics. Warhol plays on much of the aes­thet­ic of the “You Might Think” video, which kind of epit­o­mized the cheesy, slight­ly sex­ist, mid-eight­ies look The Cars made big: giant, scant­i­ly-clad women, rudi­men­ta­ry com­put­er graph­ics scenes fea­tur­ing sun­glass­es and cock­tails, and, of course, plen­ty of cars. But there’s also lots of sig­na­ture Warhol here: lots of par­ties, lots of bod­ies, lots of sex (and nudi­ty).

Pop music always played a sig­nif­i­cant role in Warhol’s work, so it seems only nat­ur­al that he would align him­self with the cut­ting-edge mid-eight­ies syn­th­pop of the Cars. What’s more, he appears in a cameo as a bar­tender in the video, which also fea­tures a very young Gina Ger­shon. For obvi­ous rea­sons, the extend­ed, uncen­sored ver­sion of Warhol’s video (watch it here) didn’t make the rounds on MTV. The cen­sored ver­sion is, you might say, just a lit­tle less sexy, and a lot less Warhol. Since Warhol died in 1987, this video rep­re­sents one of the last pieces of the artist’s work. Warhol, an ear­ly adopter of dig­i­tal graph­ics tech­nol­o­gy, had pre­vi­ous­ly used Ami­ga com­put­ers to ani­mate images of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe and cre­ate com­put­er art of his friend Deb­bie Har­ry. See him “paint” the “first com­put­er art­work,” a por­trait of Har­ry, on an Ami­ga com­put­er below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

Andy Warhol’s ‘Screen Test’ of Bob Dylan: A Clas­sic Meet­ing of Egos

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Philosophy Made Fun: Read the Free Preview Edition of the Action Philosophers! Comic

in Art, Books, Philosophy | October 13th, 2012

“Imag­ine Pla­to as a wrestling super­star of ancient Greece, Niet­zsche as the orig­i­nal uber­men­sch, and Bohid­har­ma as the grand mas­ter of kung fu. These are not just great thinkers they also make great comics. Action Philoso­phers! details the lives and thoughts of his­to­ry’s A‑list brain trust in hip and humor­ous com­ic book fash­ion. ”

That’s how the Action Philoso­phers! com­ic book was pitched when its cre­ators, Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey, pub­lished it in 2009. The com­ic book is still in print, and you can read the fun pre­view edi­tion online. It starts, of course, with the Pre-Socrat­ics — Thales, Anax­i­man­der, Par­menides, and the gang. Enjoy.

Bonus — Read more Action Philoso­phers! online:

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

55 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

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Braque in Bulk: Costco Gets Back into the Fine Art Market

in Art, Business | October 10th, 2012

In 2006, Louis Knicker­bock­er, a meat dis­trib­u­tor from New­port Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, bought a Picas­so draw­ing online. The price looked too good to be true, $39,999.99. But why have con­cerns when the piece was being sold by the rep­utable art deal­er, Cost­co. That’s right, I said, Cost­co! Said Knicker­bock­er: “They just sell the top qual­i­ty — what­ev­er you buy at Cost­co, whether it’s a wash­ing machine or a vac­u­um clean­er.”

The Picas­so draw­ing end­ed up falling under sus­pi­cion, and Cost­co exit­ed the fine art mar­ket. But now, six years lat­er, they’re back. Accord­ing to The New York Times, Cost­co recent­ly opened a Fine Art sec­tion on its web site and start­ed sell­ing lith­o­graphs by Braque, Matisse, and Warhol, most­ly in the $1,500 range. Per­haps because of The New York Times pub­lic­i­ty, these objets d’art are now all sold out.

The next time you’re fill­ing your cart with 10 pounds of cof­fee and 1728 bot­tles of water (you need to hydrate after all of that caf­feine, you know?), pay anoth­er vis­it to the Fine Art sec­tion. They may have the deal of the cen­tu­ry wait­ing for you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

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John Lennon’s Victorian Circus Poster Lovingly Remade by Artists and Engravers

in Art, Music | October 9th, 2012

This won­drous lit­tle video is, as they say, guar­an­teed to raise a smile. Accord­ing to Bea­t­les leg­end, John Lennon was shoot­ing a pro­mo­tion­al film for “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” in ear­ly 1967 when he passed by an antique shop and dis­cov­ered a poster from 1843 trum­pet­ing the arrival of Pablo Fan­que’s Cir­cus. The cir­cus, the poster pro­claimed, was to be “for the ben­e­fit of Mr. Kite.” Intrigued, Lennon bought the quirky Vic­to­ri­an poster, hung it on his wall at home, and then pro­ceed­ed to write “Being for the Ben­e­fit of Mr. Kite!,” the sev­enth track on Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band.

Almost 45 years lat­er, Bea­t­les fans still can’t shake the poster from their minds. And, just recent­ly, Peter Dean and a team of artists decid­ed to recre­ate the poster using tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of wood engrav­ing and let­ter­press print­ing. They share their expe­ri­ence in the ele­gant video above. Your can buy your own copy of the lim­it­ed edi­tion print here.

via Kot­tke

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 Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er Demos: The Mak­ing of a Bea­t­les Clas­sic (1966)

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

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Art.sy Rolls Out Huge Archive of Fine-Art Images and an Intelligent Art Appreciation Guide

in Art, Technology | October 9th, 2012

Yes­ter­day saw the launch of what you’ll sure­ly find the most intrigu­ing use of Syr­i­a’s domain name exten­sion yet, espe­cial­ly if you fol­low the visu­al arts. It serves the pun­ning site Art.sy, to which you’ll soon point your brows­er when­ev­er you want to dis­cov­er new imagery that appeals to your aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty. Thus holds the the­o­ry, in any case, behind this ser­vice cre­at­ed by the Art Genome Project. It aims to become to visu­al art what Pan­do­ra has become to music: a vir­tu­al mind that can take your tastes, turn right back around to rec­om­mend works that please those tastes, and — in the best of all pos­si­ble out­comes, lit­tle by lit­tle — broad­en those tastes as well. Tell Art.sy what has recent­ly cap­ti­vat­ed you in the muse­ums, and it will dig through pieces from Wash­ing­ton’s Nation­al Gallery, the Los Ange­les Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, the Coop­er-Hewitt Nation­al Design Muse­um, the British Muse­um, and else­where, try­ing its best to find some­thing else that will do the same. In total, Art.sy hosts “17,000+ art­works by 3,000+ artists” from “300+ of the world’s lead­ing gal­leries, muse­ums, pri­vate col­lec­tions, foun­da­tions, and artist estates from New York to Lon­don, Paris to Shang­hai, Johan­nes­burg to São Paulo.”

Mele­na Ryzik in The New York Times describes Art.sy’s elab­o­rate sys­tem of code-based aes­thet­ic clas­si­fi­ca­tion as devel­oped by “a dozen art his­to­ri­ans who decide what those codes are and how they should be applied,” in which “some labels (Art.sy calls them “genes” …) denote fair­ly objec­tive qual­i­ties, like the his­tor­i­cal peri­od and region the work comes from and whether it is fig­u­ra­tive or abstract, or belongs in an estab­lished cat­e­go­ry like Cubism, Flem­ish por­trai­ture or pho­tog­ra­phy,” while oth­ers “are high­ly sub­jec­tive, even quirky.” Ryzik lists the pos­si­ble codes for a Picas­so as includ­ing “Cubism,” “abstract paint­ing,” “Spain,” “France” and “love,” and those for a Jack­son Pol­lock as “abstract art,” “New York School,” “splattered/dripped,” “rep­e­ti­tion” and “process-ori­ent­ed.” Here we have yet anoth­er rea­son to main­tain a high artis­tic aware­ness in our high-tech time. Still, I can’t help but recall the wise coun­sel Stephen Fry offered in an inter­view we fea­tured back in August: a tru­ly life-enrich­ing rec­om­men­da­tion engine would­n’t give you the same art you’ve always enjoyed; it would give you the exact oppo­site.

You can learn more about the ins-and-outs of Art.sy here.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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How Indie Video Game Makers Are Changing the Game

in Art, Technology, Video Games | October 5th, 2012

In a fol­low-up to its fea­ture on Glitch Art, which we wrote up in August, PBS’s Off Book series has released this short video pro­mot­ing indie video games. The video packs a lot of infor­ma­tion into a very short time frame, so it’s worth watch­ing twice. Over­all, the take­away here is that indie game design­ers can do inno­v­a­tive, quirky things the big guys–the so-called AAA games–can’t, since the indies can fund their own projects through enti­ties like Kick­starter and Indiegogo. It’s a per­sua­sive mes­sage giv­en the amaz­ing vari­ety of sound and vision on dis­play; in sev­en and a half min­utes, we get a glimpse of over two dozen indie games rang­ing from throw­backs to clas­sic 8‑bit ani­ma­tion to gor­geous, painter­ly envi­ron­ments and land­scapes.

The Off Book video breaks its sub­ject into four basic cat­e­gories, each one cov­ered by dif­fer­ent gam­ing jour­nal­ists or game cre­ators: Mechan­ics, Sound, Visu­als, and Sto­ry­telling. The last cat­e­go­ry is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant since it real­ly is an emo­tion­al engage­ment with a game’s char­ac­ters and plot­lines that push­es peo­ple through the game. At least I can say that’s always been the case for me. My fond­est mem­o­ries of the games I sat up all night with are those that pulled me into a world through, yes, fan­cy graph­ics and com­plex moves, but even more so through nar­ra­tive: from the sim­ple, repet­i­tive tales of the Mega Man series to the glo­be­trot­ting intrigues of Tomb Raider. For some­one who remem­bers the first incar­na­tions of both of those games, it’s excit­ing to see indie game design­ers draw­ing on nostalgia—in graph­ic pre­sen­ta­tion and in the small craft stu­dio pro­duc­tion teams—while also inte­grat­ing con­tem­po­rary sounds and ideas. Like many of their con­tem­po­raries in var­i­ous indie music nich­es, indie game design­ers are push­ing the medi­um for­ward by scal­ing back to basics and by draw­ing on the trea­sures of their past.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye, a Revealing Look at “The Father of Modern Photography”

in Art, Photography | October 4th, 2012

More than any­one else, Alfred Stieglitz helped raise the sta­tus of pho­tog­ra­phy to the lev­el of art. As a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, pub­lish­er and gallery own­er, Stieglitz was a key fig­ure in the birth of Amer­i­can mod­ernism. His own sta­tus as an arbiter of taste in pho­tog­ra­phy was bol­stered by his uncan­ny knack for quick­ly rec­og­niz­ing the great­ness of artists work­ing in oth­er media. He was the first gallery own­er in Amer­i­ca to exhib­it Picas­so, Matisse, Bran­cusi and oth­er great fig­ures in mod­ern art. As the nar­ra­tor of this fas­ci­nat­ing 1999 doc­u­men­tary puts it, Stieglitz opened the eyes of Amer­i­ca to the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye was direct­ed by Per­ry Miller Ada­to for the PBS Amer­i­can Mas­ters series, and builds on his ear­li­er doc­u­men­tary work on Stieglitz’s wid­ow, the painter Geor­gia O’Keefe.

Hav­ing shot many reels of film show­ing O’Keefe talk­ing about Stieglitz, Ada­to was a nat­ur­al choice to direct a full-length doc­u­men­tary on Stieglitz. As he told PBS in an inter­view:

We knew we had an ace up our sleeve–unique, invalu­able, nev­er-seen film footage of Geor­gia O’Ke­effe speak­ing about Alfred Stieglitz. In 1980, at the request of O’Ke­effe her­self, I had flown to New Mex­i­co with a small film crew and inter­viewed the artist at great length about Stieglitz.. On cam­era in her home, her gar­den and her stu­dio, she speaks frankly and inti­mate­ly, her rem­i­nis­cences salt­ed with her dry humor. O’Ke­effe talks about Alfred Stieglitz–the stu­dent, the man, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, the pio­neer in the intro­duc­tion of avant-garde Euro­pean art to Amer­i­ca, the defend­er of strug­gling young Amer­i­can mod­ern artists; her own views on the artists of the famed “Stieglitz cir­cle” and of their life togeth­er. This film, rare dur­ing her life­time, became unique after her death in 1986. The 1980 project for a film about Stieglitz using this footage was nev­er real­ized. For 19 long years, eight large flat reels of 16mm film (work-print and synced mag track) lay buried in the stor­age room of my house in West­port, CT. Buried, but not entire­ly for­got­ten.

The doc­u­men­tary is round­ed out by inter­views with lead­ing Stieglitz schol­ars and muse­um cura­tors. Ada­to told PBS he was con­fi­dent the film would help reawak­en inter­est in Stieglitz, whose fame in recent decades has been over­shad­owed by that of O’Keefe. “It will help to restore his right­ful place in the his­to­ry of 20th cen­tu­ry art and cul­ture,” he said. “We hope that the pro­gram will also reveal Stieglitz as a charis­mat­ic, com­plex and fas­ci­nat­ing indi­vid­ual ‘whose ide­al­ism wres­tled with his human frail­ties.’ ”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Geor­gia O’Keeffe at 92

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