Ottmar Horl makes subversive little statues--garden gnomes, birds, all kinds of things. and for a recent project, hundreds of Karl marx statues in vrious shades of red. Fun, I want one, they are not that expensive, so maybe I'll save up and get one. He also makes statues of Martin Luther,
Picasso, in the year I was born. He already had a movement or two under his belt and was, along with some peers, changing the face of art. I love this picture, it is just alive with creativity and focus--I love the way so many things, in so many media, are gathered around him like a man clad in armour.
In a piece he painted in his new studio he put a blank white canvas in the middle of the work--picasso creates out of nothing--and the two partially completed works next to it are a sign perhaps that art conquers the void--this is a man who is fully connected to himself and very very sure of his own power, and definitely of his drivenness. He was about 75 in this photo.
I like tattoos, not all of them, there are many epic fails that I have seen and wouldn't wish on anyone, but overall, I find them a fascinating glimpse into who we perceive ourselves to be. As part of some doctoral research some years back I did a body-piercing/tattoo field research project and found it both fascinating and enlightening to discover from both tattooists and their customers, the reason for inking themselves. Ultimately I think it is a phenomenon related to late 20th cenutry loss of stability and security in external sources--be they insititutional or relational--and that the body is often perceived as the last 'permanent object' a person feels they have and thus it becomes the site of self-perception and inscription.
The rise of tattoos from the margins to the centre of cultural life has been something I have witnessed over the course of my life. There was a time when tattoos singled a person out as a less than deisrable type-to be tattooed was to enter the realm of the morally questionable and corrupt, but these days it seems to be a rite of passge for many people, and begins quite early in life. First tattoos can be quite naive, but even then they are often infused with some meaning however percious or destined to be eclipsed by life as it unfolds.
I came across a fascinating article today on tattoos, wth particular focus on the rise of female tattoos, apparently there are now more women with tattoos than men for the first time in recorded history. the article is based on the latest edition of Margot Mifflin's book, Bodies of Subversion, which is due out this month. Lutheran minister, Nadia Bolz-Weber is featured in the latest edition, she has some fine work on her person, as colorful and insightful as she is.
The article, cites Kat Von D as a major link in this chain. For the unitiated, KVD is a fixture on the LA scene, a majorly tattooed artists, whose reality shows have made her perhaps the world's best known tattoo artists. Anyway, the article is well worth a read, and the book will be as well.
There's little doubt in my mind that Heironymus Bosch would be a very interesting dinner guest. his paintings are mind-blowing on so many levels. I have been spending a lot of time with art lately, I do anyway, but I am currently teaching a class on art, cinema and theology--exploring how these three meaning making media intersect and invite us to think about what it means to be human.
I am not teaching on Bosch, although were there a film about him (which I don't think there is, I don't mean documentary but biographical film which is what I am using in the class) I certainly would. There is very little known about him; no letters or diaries, nothing but the barest biographical information and only about twenty-five paintings have been attirbuted to him. Rumours and opinions about his trippy content and painting style. Some say that his works were inspired by heretical religious views on certain heremetic practices-nobody really knows because he didn't say.
The painting above depicts a supposedly hypothetical 15th century medical practice, in which a stone, which was thought to be the cause of madness, was extracted by essentially digging a hole through the scalp and skull until the dura was exposed and the 'stone' could be extracted, thereby bringing healing. The medical practitioner wears a funnel hat, very reminiscent of the Tin Man, and the woman watching has ahuge book resting on her head! This topic isn't exclusive to bosch, others depicted it as well.
But Bosch's work offers some slightly different commentary I think. Rather than a stone, the doctor in the painting extracts a flower bulb, and there is another on the table in front. It could be quite simply that what Bosch is aiming for is a critique on those who would substitute the search for wisdom with foolish shrotcuts. A big idea of the period concerned the relationship between chemistry and alchemy--the sort of magical approach to life and science that was conducted principally vis the religious communities--the highest goal of which was the production of a transmuted lealing property known as the philosopher's stone--it was often called the 'flower of wisdom'and was depicted as a golden flower, which is exactly what bosch creates here. The golden flowers of chemistry were not easily discovered, and they were the result of great learning, endless patience, hard work, and suffering (in the service of God). However, Bosch’s patient, Lubbert (we know his name from the inscription and it is a dutch name for a fool) wants it extracted 'quickly,' and would rather submit to painful surgery than endure the long hours of study and repeated failures required for success.
The other two characters are a monk and a nun, the nun wearing a big red book on her head. there was apparently a flemish practice of wrapping oneslef with pieces of text, kind of like phylacteries, the idea being that the wisdom could be transmitted by osmosis rather than study--the nun is gooing for it big time and has put the whole book on here brain! And she is perhaps even worse because there is a golden flower on the table in front of her, right under her nose (i.e. within her religion?).
foucault wrote about this painting and of it he said that, "Bosch's famous doctor is far more insane than the patient he is attempting to cure, and his false knowledge does nothing more than reveal the worst excesses of a madness immediately apparent to all but himself." The doctor is a bigger fool than the patient, false wisdom is a greater folly than foolishness and we are awash in it these days. I think the apostle paul talked about that somewhere.
According to Complex, the number 2 and 17 most iconic artworks of the past five years belong to the same artist, Ai Weiwei, the embattled Chinese protester, provocateur and all-round avant-garde creative. I recently got a copy of his little book of aphorism and sayings titled, Weiwei-isms. It's a great read, just a simple collections of Wei's thoughts and ideas really,one of my favourites,
"I want to prove that the system is not working...You can't simply say that the system is not working. You have to work through it."
Back in the early 1980s Frank Gehry was invited by Formica to design a series of objects using one of its new plastic called Color-Core. Apparently he dropped one of the pieces, and it shattered, leaving fragments all over the floor. The pieces struck him as similar to fish scales, and he began to cobble them into fish-like compositions. Those early lamps were part of a restaurant in LA that Gehry (pre-Guggenhiem and Disney Hall), which is now defunct. But at 83 years-old Gehry has come back to those fish lamps--he has said that the 'fish' shape has been influential in much of his architectural work--and produced a new series of fish lamps which are on display at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, which is fortunately, just down the street from where I work.
They are beautiful, I doubt that the photos will do justice to how beautiful and mobile they seem in person.
The Museum of Contemporary Art is proud to present Blues for Smoke, a major interdisciplinary exhibition exploring a wide range of contemporary art, music, literature, and film through the lens of the blues and “blues aesthetics.” Turning to the blues not simply as a musical category, but as a web of artistic sensibilities and cultural idioms, the exhibition features works by more than 50 artists from the 1950s to the present, including many commissioned specifically for this occasion and others never before shown in Los Angeles, as well as a range of musical, filmic, and cultural materials.
I decided that I needed to get out of my head for a few hours, get away from some of the things that have been troubling me of late and expose myself to some creativity and beauty. The Blues for Smoke exhibit ends on January 7th so I thought I would check it out before it went away. It didn't disappoint--the idea seemed a little bit of a stretch on some levels, but the art was fantastic anyway, so it worked for me. I was particularly struck by the work of LA-based painter Henry Taylor and Romare Bearden's fantastic collages. There were familiar faces--Basquiat feautured---there was music, photogrpahy, installations (which I am realIsing impacts me more than I thought).
After that exhibit, I nipped next door to the Japanese American National Museum and checked out ther Giant Robot Biennale 3---I love Giant Robot, and Asian pop culture in general--so it was a treat--cools dolls/robots/figures, some interesting art pieces-both figuative and graffiti style.
Then it was Olvera Street, the cradle of Los Angeles to look at wrestling masks,baby Jesus' in every size imaginable, day of the dead skulls and cheesy tourist souvenirs--all in all, a delightful way to spend the day.
