It’s easy to be all ‘2.0′ and ‘open source’ when you’ve got nothing to lose. It’s an entirely different thing if you’re one of the biggest rock bands of our time (and indisputably the most influential band of the fin de siècle of the 20th century). I’m talking about Radiohead here. After they let their fans download their newest album directly form their website for free (paying was optional) and their innovative idea of selling the several separate tracks to their single ‘nude’, they’ve now put the source code of their new video ‘house of cards‘ online for all the vid-techie-fans out there to manipulate. (I’m a BIG sucker for ‘making of’ films, so that site’s an absolute treat for me…)
When I bought the DVD of the brilliant David Payne film ‘About Schmidt’ it included as an extra, some edits of the opening sequence, made by different editors. Very entertaining and inspiring to watch. The various remixes of ‘nude’ mainly proved the brilliance of Radiohead themselves; none of the remixes came close to the original. I still can’t wait to see some of the ‘fan-made’ video version of House of Cards. You may call Radiohead whatever you want, but you cannot deny the fact that their innovative ideas for making their fans experience their music keep revolutionizing the music industry.
In a previous post I briefly mentioned the artwork of Jason Shawn Alexander, whose work is currently exhibited in a group exhibition with, among others, Sarah Folkman. But Alexander is not an artist one can briefly mention without giving him your full attention, even if this is only for one blogposting.
Alexander’s work is a lot of things, but ‘cheerful’ is not one of them. As he puts it himself, on his website: “The subject is suspended in moments of pain or sorrow.” A description like that could point in the direction of adolescent paintings, filled with gore, but it could also describe the paintings of brilliant artists like Francis Bacon. Fortunately, Alexander’s paintings have a lot more in common with the latter. That is; had Bacon been employed by Stan Lee to do a comics version of his paintings. Alexander, who is also a very gifted illustrator, is a virtuoso with the brush.
Alexander does not overdo it with all the pain and suffering. He leaves his audience room to come up for air; “The ultimate expression, however, is one of survival, if not hope.” And he doesn’t overdo it with the realism either; even though his talent as comics artist shines through, on closer inspection the undeniable personality of the brush is there. It’s not work that would have looked just as good, had it been a pen and ink image.
Perhaps it’s not the sort of stuff you’d take your mother to go and see on a sunday morning (not that I know your mom’s taste), but that can be said for many works. To me, the paintings feel true and the images sincere.
Works by Jason Shawn Alexendar were recently in a group exhibition in the Corey Hertford Gallery. After taking a quick peek at his blog, I guess the results were pleasing to the artist. And as a fan of great painting, I can only agree to that,
‘Everybody’s a photographer‘ is just about as big a mistake as ‘everybody’s an artist‘. I am sympathetic towards the thought, but it’s just all wrong, dude. Photography is hard. It’s difficult to get a good shot with an intruiging subject, exciting composition… or just something that worth looking at. But since everyone is capable of the act of pushing the shutter button everybody’s able to make a registration of an image through a lens. And if the end result sucks… Let’s call it art.
Well… let’s not call it art. Let’s call it ‘crap’. Which is what it is, most of the time. With the rise of the digital camera, photography courses have been flooded and one amateur photography exhibition after the other has been organised. Flickr was worth millions when it was bought by Yahoo and why? Because everyone is a photographer.
I’ve just been leafing through the photography special of Juxtapoz, which is always a beacon of good taste in a world that’s becoming increasingly amateur-image-crazy, but in a lot of cases… I just don’t see it. Could it be that the photographer that managed to get his image up in a gallery and published in this magazine is way better at his/her PR than his/her photography work? I’d imagine so. Fortunately there are also a lot of gems to be discovered. Beautiful heart stopping images that made me gasp for air when I looked at them. My faith in photography as a mature art-form has been restored. With this posting, a couple of wonderful examples. Please click on images for links to the photographer’s websites.
Credit: all pictures published in the Juxtapoz photo-issue 2008 and taken from the Juxtapoz website. Photocredits top to bottom: Aaron Hobson, Patrick Smith, Alex Prager and Graham French (click on photos for their websites).
Men are strong, brave and dependable. Women are caring, loving and understanding. Those are easy to understand rules. Another set of rules determines that male artists get to paint monsters and gruesome images filled with torture and pain. Female artists on the other hand get to paint cute animals or, should they be politically active, perhaps a homeless or starving child. But not nightmares. That’s not in the female art-domain. Sarah Folkman doesn’t care one bit about those conservative and backwards ‘rules’. She paints your nightmares like the best of men. She even paints the nightmares you weren’t aware of you ever had them. … oh, and a couple of cute animals don’t hurt…
However, don’t let the ‘cuteness’ fool you. You’d better take these pets seriously. As in a David Lynch movie, or a Gregory Crewdson photo, there is always a hidden layer of suspense. Like a mortal threat buried just beneath the surface of the beautiful and tranquil lake.
Sarah is currently (till June 21st) exhibiting her work at the Corey Helford Gallery, in Culver, California, with colleagues Karen Hsiao, Jason Shawn Alexander (whose works pretty much ‘rock’ as well), Miso and Melissa Forman. You can check out some opening photos at the Juxtapoz website.
A thing I really should’ve find out is whether or not the artist Sarah Folkman is also the singer and songwriter Sarah Folkman of the trophop band T.H.C. . Should’ve, could’ve, but didn’t. Guess I’m just not a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer music…. Go check out her art!
Beautifully painted, utterly uneasy, often disturbing works. I have declared before that I am a great admirer of the work of Kendrick Mar. There are many other artists that try the same trick: “I’ll paint a beheaded teddy bear and make my parents worry about my emotional state.” More often than not: this only leads for very immature and shallow works (granted: it does usually make me wonder about the emotional state of the maker…) Not so for the works of Luke Chueh (pronounced Luke ‘Chu’). This wonderful artist manages to paint sceneries that have all the aforementioned qualities, but add that extra layer that separates the men from the traumatised boys.
Over the last couple of years Luke Chueh’s become a very popular artist. His works are very accessible to look at, without seeming to want to be pleasing. Chueh says his work is ‘character driven’ which helps in this age where you can stick a Disney or Looney Tune sticker on just about anything imaginable; we’re used to this sort of iconography. (Much like those cartoons; Chueh’s characters make for very good toys indeed.) However, in contrast to the overly commercial happy cartoon animals, Chueh’s work seems to carry a message (even though his paintings are enjoyable without seeing it).Take his work ‘reach‘ for example, where an obese bunny can’t bend over to pick up a carrot. This can easily be seen as a comment on our consumption society and fat-addiction.
Unlike a lot of paintings depicting ocean sceneries and mountain views, this sort of work is generally very personal, even though in this case I would not go so far as to label it: unprocessed childhood trauma. Chueh’s work is clever, wonderfully executed but personally I prefer the work of artists like Kendrick Mar that use a lot of the same iconography. Chueh graduated from the California Polytechnic State Uni with a BS in graphic design. Since he had a hard time finding employment after employment (any companies that turned him down should feel very stupid indeed) he resorted to painting stuff to keep busy. That background is still very visible in his work. They’re not so much paintings as they are painted designs on a painted background. Which is not criticizing his work by any means, but merely my personal preference.
Should the non-US readers of this site/blog want to see some of the works of Luke Chueh in real-life, as I can imagine, he has working relations with galleries all over that states from NYC, to Detroit to LA. Have a look at his site for some cool works and info on expositions.
We’ve known it for a long time and we stood by, watching it happen. The Chinese are coming. And they’re ready to take over. Bad news? Not really. Okay, so there’s a lot ‘not quite right’ yet about China and the Chinese politics… that does not mean it’s all bad over there. And you certainly can’t blame all Chinese. Especially not the Chinese citizens I would like to discuss here; Chinese artists.
Fact: China is a big place. And there are a whole lotta Chinese people. So, statistically, there should be quite some very good Chinese artists among them. for the last couple of years we’ve been seeing more and more of them, their works are no longer a rarity in Western contemporary art galleries. And that’s not just because the works are, by default, politically charged since they’re from China (although it does help: paint a building with some Chinese writing on it and the work immediately gains in meaning when it is shipped to the western hemisphere, deny it as much as you like).
Too much talk, not enough images. For your enjoyment, some images of talented and hyped Chinese painters. (click on artist’s name for a link)
As we announced a couple of days ago, CultBlender is working on the definitive tool to make the final, objective and irrevocable verdict whether a work can be called ‘art’ or not. One aspect we will surely be part of the tool is that a work of art should move you in a way. There are some artforms however, where the movement is not merely a result of the art, it is a part of it. And I am not talking about the art of driving a Formula One car here.
The internet is a great place for making discoveries and expanding you world, but for theatre based arts it’s usually insufficient to give you a sufficient experience. Dancecompany ‘Zure Room‘ (translation: Sour Cream) have made a ‘Zure Room for beginners’ video, an introduction to their work that’s perfectly fitted for Youtube and all those who wander the world by roaming the internet in their small, damp, sweaty and unlit rooms. Art that moves, Movement as art, it’s all moving towards the digital age.
Sometimes you’d think that ‘we the people’ are in control since everything is rapidly becoming a popularity contest. Voters get to choose their political leader, consumers get to choose what products are on the shelves, fans get to choose their next idols. There are polls on everything and this also means that serious discussions can get cluttered and important decisions get made on the basis of uninformed opinions, fed back to us in incomplete and misleading questionnaire reports (”53% of population opposed to roundabout” usually means, 53% of online voters are not completely satisfied with the current plan of a roundabout for various reason and 47% of online voters don’t care one bit, which is a completely different result than the headline in your local weekly.)
Dutch artist and webdesigner Jacco van de Post has made a cool online application that let’s everybody vote
on the news. It would simply be the next democratic step to take; news we like can make it to the final and news we don’t like, gets voted out. If news is injected in us with this big hypodermic needle, than at least let it inject us with a big dose of ‘happy’ (or perhaps, ‘denial’).
Besides it being a clever comment on our voting addiction his work also comments on the media-age we live in. bringing news is one thing, but what if you only bring news that (potential) viewers don’t like? That would cost you loads of money from advertisers wouldn’t it? So clicking and voting would bring CNN (which is where the app gets its headlines from) valuable information which, I am sure, Jacco would be willing to sell to them for loads of money.
I remember a primary school teacher saying to her class (including me), “Everyone can draw”. This is, of course, bollocks. It’s the same to say that just because there is an overwhelming majority of mankind that can produce oral sounds everybody can sing. It’s a nice and generous thing to say, however it’s also a lie. Various seasons of those horrendous talent-scouting tv-programs like ‘popidol’, ‘fame academy’ and so on, have made this painfully clear.
Most of us are able to put down lines on paper which may be concisered ‘the act of drawing’. The end result of this intentional scribbling is, more often than not, not very appealing. Not everyone can draw. I would like to focus on the works of some of us that can.
There is some much mediocre drawing going on around us that the true art is very much under-appreciated. Drawing is perceived as a children’s hobby or something you do while on the phone or in a boring meeting. If you truly want your work to be considered art you should have used a form of paint, or perhaps ink. A drawing isn’t a finished work.
On the picture log ‘This isn t happiness‘ I found works by the artist Chris Scarborough that prove differently. Chris makes brilliant drawings. Any application of paint whatsoever would have made his works much less effective. His drawings, to me, seem to be what the drawing of Belgian artist Michael Borremans would may have looked like, had he chosen a career in Manga art. Beside his drawings you can also find (photoshopped) photo-works on Scarborough’s site, which give further evidence to the idea that he enjoys investigating undervalued fields of the art-spectrum; many of his portraits (with the blown up eyes) may be mistaken for copycat works of Loretta Lux. Again, many people can think they can pull that stunt off (just browse through Flickr for the proof of this) but very few have the vision, the technique and the finesse to be able to create something good, like Chris Scarborough has. His various photography works of plastic people are no copycat works at all.
Should you be visiting NYC anytime soon, you can have a look at his works at Foley Gallery until may 30 (2008). Judging by what he shows at his site, it’s worth the effort.
I believe that over 85% of all e-mail traffic consists of so called ‘unsolicited spam’ (what ’solicited spam’ would be… I have no idea). You would think that if an industry is as big as the spamming industry, where you reach so many consumers just waiting to spend their money on stuff they don’t need, that it would employ state of the art copy writers. Writers of spam e-mail can potentially reach an incredibly large audience. With just a little scientific research you could upgrade the response on your spamming from, I guess, o,0001% to 0.001%. This would make you a tremendous amounts of money! I know spam sucks and we really shouldn’t advocate it, but all the other advertising sucks too and that industry brought us beautiful artists and philosophers like Roy Lichtenstein, Matt Beaumont and Paul Arden. ‘Even evil will spawn good’ which sounds like an awful quote from a Star Wars film, but in fact; I just made that one up. I apologise.
For an art project I decided to jump into my spamfilter and read the spam I received (over a weekend, this amounts to over 1500 messages), or actually… I just read the subject lines. I was very eager to be seduced into actually opening an e-mail that I thought would make interesting reading. “Come on, show me those creative, witty, intriguing subject lines that lure me into worlds of pleasure, self fulfillment, comfort and profitability!” Instead, I found creative, lingual carnage.
“‘Do you want a -insert designer name- replica at -insert number-% discount?” How is that going to seduce me? Personally, I am not triggered. Or how about ‘university small business loans’ (you can replace university with government, insurance, national, small business or whatever) as a subject line. That’s not really going to make anyone think that’s an e-mail worth reading, is it? Not even an attempt to target on sex: ‘I wanted to get even with my cheating girlfriend‘ with could appeal to me, being a man - even though I don;t have a cheating girlfriend, as far as I know) became ‘I wanted to get even with my cheating partner’ thus making it even more impersonal. ‘I wanted to find out if I could get that girl in bed’ is turned into the hideous ‘I wanted to find out if I could get that person in bed’. Yep, that makes me curious… NOT!
Personally I think that that is adding insult to injury. Those b#*tards are clogging up my e-mail server and they’re not even taking it seriously. Come on guys; if efficient communication was that easy, would Coca Cola spend all those millions of dollars on making their 3D commercials? Just put a little effort into it, you lazy slackers.
A raw selection of poor copywriting material is being refined at the CultBlender site.
