In my last couple of postings that were about art (if you skip some of the nonsense articles, you’ll end up there) I wrote about how the artists used paint. How they made you see things that weren’t there, with the almighty powers of suggestion. Also, for all those articles it was quite easy to find more background information about them. For this posting… things are slightly different.

Just a couple of minutes ago I stumbled across some images by American artist Joey Monsoon on the Juxtapoz website. Juxtapoz did a small article on him, mainly because he’s been buying all the copies of Juxtapoz from newsstands since Winter 1994. Which is quite an achievement, I won’t disagree. Fortunately they also added a work he made himself, called ‘Ohio style’, which immediately grabbed my attention and a link to his website. On his site I found a lot of really cool works, yet little information. His artist statement “i draw heads. and knuckles.”didn’t help me much either, even though it did make me laugh. And at the same time, it made me think. I was seriously doubting whether I would write a post on his work (which I think is great) on the basis of the question ‘is there enough information about his work to write about’? In short; I was in danger of becoming an art theory fetishist instead of remaining an art lover. And I love his art damn-it!

His cartoonish style works have that edgy streetart feel to them. Looking at his works I got that buzz in my stomach I have when I discover a really cool piece somewhere in a slightly hidden place. I caught myself murmuring ‘oh wow’ a couple of times going through his site. From his website I also wound up on his own (wordpress) blog. On that site he also posted a picture of a first stage and finished ’saint’ he did for a live painting event. I love seeing unfinished works and not just because I learn a lot from them, but also because they reveal a lot about the process of creation. You can this artist’s work in progress here.

You can see the finished works, real life at chop chop gallery and skylab gallery and if you are going to see it, I envy yoo. So, dear reader, not too much background information in this posting, just my expression of admiration for Joey Monsoon’s art and some really great images to go with the letters. I have come to terms with it, and hopefully, so can you. But if you promise not to hold this against me, I’ll promise to try and keep you updated on news. Deal?

Like I mentioned a couple of postings ago, I account my liking of New York largely to a mild tv addiction. Walking through Manhattan for the first time felt really familiar. You’ve probably seen a cheesy flick or read a cheap novel where at some point someone says: “It felt like coming homing to a place where I’d never been.” It was something like that.

A very cosmopolitan thing to be able to say to people: “Oh, you’re going to other side of the world? I know a good place to eat.” This works even better in my case, where seemingly everyone I know is turning vegetarian… in some cases with the exception of fish, which actually does not make you a vegetarian at all (…but in the back of my mind, the late mr. Cobain is wailing ‘it’s okay to eat fish ‘cos they, don’t have any feeeeeelin’…). Anyhow; why does that work even better? Because the ‘place to eat’ in this case is a very vegetarian friendly place and those kind of places are a teeny bit harder to find than a ‘cow and chicken processing’ cholesterol palace. I’m talking about ‘Quantum Leap‘ in the West Village.

I visited that place a couple of times, because of the great ambiance, the friendly staff, the nice location… but the main reason is: they make absolutely breathtakingly, apetite fulfillingly(?), gorgeous food. I don’t vegetarian beacuse I don’t like the taste of meat, I love it. When I eat vegetarian food it is because of my poor conscious. The vegetarian options at Quantum Leap however are so incredibly good that I would turn full time vegetarian straight away, would I live anywhere near that place. Best burgers I ever ate, but no one gets hurt. But the same goes for all the other meal options we’ve tried.

Quantum Leap alone is plenty of reason for me to want to go back to Manhattan. And I haven’t even told you about Gobo restaurant in the West Village yet… what a yummy place!

[translated from Dutch]

“Ladies and gentlemen. Shortly we will be arriving at Amersfoort trainstation. After Amersfoort, this train will proceed as an intercity train for the direction of Zwolle, Assen and Groningen. Travellers for Ede, Bussum and especially Barneveld… what on earth do you think your doing!?”

In my previous post, I wrote about the wonderful works of Dutch painter Aaron van Erp. In this one I want to bring your attention to another star on the rise of the Dutch artscene; Marjolijn de Wit. Even though van Erp and de Wit may not appear to have much in common on first sight, my believe is that they actually do. De Wits style seems to be a lot more realistic than the obviously comical style in which van Erp makes you laugh about tragedy and drama. But both artist possess that quality that makes you watch again, they both prevent the eye from wandering. And both painters rewards the viewer for giving their works a second look, revealing hidden meaning and making you see the bizarre scenes they have created.

A thing shared by both painters is an apparent love for paint. The paint is not carefully, mechanically placed on the canvas, but it is ’smeared on’, the paint is lushly welcomed on the canvas, creating lustful paintings. (if ‘lustful’ is not a word… it should be one…) It is quite bizarre to think that de Wit, while an artstudent, didn’t actually want to be a painter, but a sculptor. However, she has been discovered by the artworld (making my prediction that she’ll go far, a very safe one indeed) and next year she’ll have an artist in residency at the Dutch Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Besides solely being a very gifted painter (as if that weren’t enough), de Wit is also a very conceptual artist, who just happens to work with paint. There are a lot of different suspected meanings in every work. Paintings that are somewhere in between a still lifes and landscapes. A regularly recurring ‘icon’ for example is a television. Could this be her way of commenting on the way people see reality nowadays? Through a television screen? Or how about the painting of an attic where we see discarded jerrycans and an apparently melting iceberg. What would the message be of this work? There is so much to see in her paintings that they make great subjectmatter for debate and philosophy and at the same time they are absolutely beautiful enough for a lot of people to be willing to do so.

Once in every while you see a painting and you know in an instant; the artist just loves paint. Give ‘em half a chance and they would have paint for breakfast. In this particular case I saw paintings by a young Dutch painter (undoubtedly heading for greatness…), Aaron van Erp (1978). He stands out, not only because of the way the brushes the paint on the canvas (which makes the artlover really hungry for more) but also because of his choice of subjects. Seemingly everyday scenes turn out to be quite bizarre and… ‘funny’. Which isn’t a bad thing considering the subjects..

Aaron van Erps works are part of the collection of no less than Charles Saatchi and this December he will have a soloshow in the citymuseum of The Hague (something I’ll definitely be going to). What is it that is so appealing about paintings with titles like ‘Terrorist with corpse and shopping cart’ (thumbnail to the left), ‘PSV man with decapitated chicken’? As van Erp puts it himself: “it’s possible to laugh about horrible things”. Some of his subject are horrible, they could have given Francis Bacon nightmares. But at first glance, they don’t seem horrible.

With the title and with van Erps seemingly naive way of painting it takes the initial effect of horror away. And that’s a good thing, effect-wise. In my previous post I wrote about the works of Kendrick Mar. A parallel between his and van Erps work is that they both may have seen the (actually quite dreadful) film ‘The devil’s advocate’. At one point Al Pacino, playing the devil, says to his protegee, Keanu Reeves; “what makes me so good is that they never see me coming”. Van Erps and Mars works do exactly that. You get drawn in by a cute and appealing iconic figure (Mar) or a beautifully, lushly painted, slight bizarre scenery (van Erp). Then you look further and the sadness or even horror, strikes you with double force: “what the hell am I looking at!?” Right after that, appreciation sets in. Or, perhaps, even admiration. Isn’t it fantastic that a painter can do all that with an image?

One thing I’ll always remember from artschool is the morning when I walked in and the painting I was working on (A Baconesque image of an industrial chicken ‘production-line’) was suddenly gone. It was on the wall when I went home on friday, what happened? I asked the teacher where it was and she told me that students that were taking lessons there after I left had asked if it could be taken down. It made them feel depressed and nauseous and they could no longer focus on their work. Obviously, I was thrilled. It wasn’t an image of severed heads or explicit sex or anything, but still it had enough power to give people an actual physical response. Sure, it was a negative one but the way I see it, that’s still way better than leaving your viewers indifferent to what they see. Something that’s merely ‘pleasant to look at’ is, in my humble opinion, not art, but craftsmanship. Anyway; I managed to write a whole lot about me in a post that is actually dedicated to the art of Kendrick Mar. But, as you will read later on, it was relevant.

Kendricks works give me a physical sensation. Looking at his works make my stomach twist and turn. I would never want to see anything he makes, if his works weren’t so incredibly beautiful and well painted. Seemingly simple shapes, forms and minimal composition mare the reason that his paintings are very accessible, from a distance. If you look at the thumbnails you might even think you’re looking at the website of a Hallmark greetingcard collector. But when you move in closer, things get more interesting. The iconic puppets and figures that seemed to have been copied straight out of cartoons or toy-stores are not the straight lined, cheerful little people you’d expected. The minimalistic backgrounds are not uni-coloured, boring shapes, but vibrant and energetically painted. You can see red shining through the grey, adding to the magnificent malaise. Without losing any of its charm (cuteness) the figures represent emotions like fear, distress, sorrow or sadness. The works represent the artists own emotional states. in present or in the past.

The paintings feel like nostalgic childhood memories, but not the one-dimensional happy ones. Growing up can be a scary, confusing and lonely experience. And that’s exactly what Kendricks paintings make me feel. I want to jump in and comfort the figures, tell them everything will be alright. I just want to look at the works over and over again, hoping that things have gotten better for the cuddly figure, loving the feel of nostalgic sadness. So, part of me wants to help Kendrick, but I won’t. Because that might mean he will not make those beautiful works ever again.

If you would like to know more about Kendrick Mar (believe me, you do), there’s an interview with the artist on the creepmachine website, or alternatively visit kendrickmar.com for some works.

Some art is seemingly indistinguishable from a good, yet elaborate prank.

Dear prof. Dawkins,

I have really enjoyed reading your book ‘The God Delusion’. The way you have argued that it is both highly unklikely as highly undesirable that a personal God exists, is very convincing. Not suprisingly, the main ammunition you use to shoot holes in religion comes from the theory of evolution. Also, as to be expected, a lot of your attention is directed towards one of the most religious western countries: the USA. It appears that you think religion, or: believing in a supreme being, is a bad thing for the USA, the most powerful nation in the world, as well as for the rest of the free world. I think it is not and I would like to explain why.

You may have heard the stories, which may well be urban legends, about a man who put his wet cat in a microwave oven to ‘dry it off’ and got a lot of financial compensation from the manufacturer because they did not state in the manual that a microwave oven was not intended for such use. Or a woman who got financial compensation from a fast food chain because she pilledtheir hot tea over her leg which hurt quite a lot. I also heard of a traveller that slipped on a wet floor at an airport, broke a leg, then sued the airport and is now a millionaire. There are a lot of these stories around, undoubtedly some of them are true. The basic idea of alle these financial compensation stories seems to be: stupidity pays. Not everyone that sues for financiel compensation is stupid ofcourse, but a lot of times… stupid people get rewarded.

I think you can, quite roughly, describe ‘evolution’ as; the traits of a species that are most benificial to this species will be passed on and amplified to future generations of this species. Should that indead be the case, and if we can assume that on the basis of the above examples we may conclude that it can be very benificial to be stupid, would the theory of evolution not say that we, Westerners, get more stupid with every generation? This cannot be true, can it? (Please note that it is not my opinion that everyone in free world countries are stupid, I am merely pointing out that it seems stupidity -like putting your pet in a microwave oven- is rewarded and therefor is a desirable trait. ).

If there is a God up on the skies looking down on us, personally creating each and every individual and granting parents the honour of having this Godmade person born into their families, we would not be getting more and more stupid at all. There could be a divinely set level of stupidity/intelligence. You also wrote about cases where a placebo can have as much effect as the actual medcine. So, suppose that the evolution theory is true and there is in fact, no God. Could we then, perhaps, let our religious brothers and sisters believe that there is a God after all? If only for their sake? For their mental health? Their self esteem? How do you think they would feel if we found out that with any passing generation we are getting dumber, all because of Charles Darwin.

I hope, with this short message I will have helped in making you see the light. If you do insist on providing clear scientific evidence there the can be no God, it might very well be that you get sued by a believer.

Sincerely yours.

Guilty as charged; up until I read about him in Juxtapoz magazine, I had never heard of the guy. Which is both a bit strange (since his imagery is very familiair to me) as to be expected; streetartist don’t sign with their name, address and phone number, for obvious reasons. I am guessing that most of you will never have heard of him either, mr. Shepard Fairey, but there’s quite a good change you have seen his work somewhere. Actually, if you have never seen a sticker of André the Giant (’Obey Giant’ to avoid confusion with the WWF legend) or any other ‘Obey’ signed work before, you must have been living on the moon.

The Obey sticker campaign can be seen as an Phenomenology experiment, Phenomenology being “the process of letting things manifest themselves. Ever since Shepard first drew the Obey Giant (While attending the Rhode Island School of Design, he was teaching a friend how to make a stencil and saw André the giant’s face in the paper. His friend said something like “no way, that’s stupid” to which Shepard replied with “What are you talking about? André’s posse is the new shit.” The rest is history.) the estimate that over a million stickers with his image have been produced. The bulk of these can be found on walls and in toilets around the globe. The stickers can be ordered through his website and so you can easliy become apart of this still emerging André the Giant craze.

Even though the Obey Giant may be his most known claim to fame, in my humble opinion, it is nowhere near his best work. In the works he does now you can still clearly see that it’s made by a king of streetart. On the streets an image gets very little time indeed to make an impression, it has to grab you in a second. That’s just what his works do, they grab you straight away, lure you in and then.. erm… ’sprinkle you eyes and imagination with visual magic. Even though the works can now be viewed and bought in respected art galleries, you may still find them on the streets around the world, put there by Fairey himself. The work seem to be made to get a message, or a worldview across, not to be pleasing. The fact that they’re beautiful to look at it is just a plus.

As can be expected, Shepard works a lot with aerosols and stencils. The way he then limits himself in the use of colours an still get a lot of visual power across is intimidating. His works show depth, urgency and intelligence, which i something a lot of other ‘gallery artists’unfortunately miss. If you want to see Shepards works; go outside. If you want to buy some to be able to look at it ll the time, early 2008 he’ll open up his own gallery in LA. If that’s a bit too far; he sells new works online every week and you can also get you Obey Giant sticker there. Start posting!

(never over other people’s work though, it’s against his streetethos….)

As an extra bit of service to all those visits this posting seems to get all of a sudden (and only since two weeks… odd):
Can’t get enough of Shepards works? There’s a whole lot of them on this Flickr page…