esrosedotblog

I would like to meet this guy.

Martin Creed Unleashes His Demons in ‘Back Door’ at the Park Avenue Armory

The first thing I like is his awareness that "everything" can be turned into art with the proper intention and intuition. That second one is a brute though. To know what will work and what will not.

First, how he numbers the works. And that there is not Number 1 or Number 2.

I also like that he recognizes the place of humor and pranks in good art.

I know it is not hilarious to have someone flicker the lights off while you are in the can but it has happened in ever relationship that I have had and continues to this day. An annoying but somehow satisfying signal that I matter. Or that the other person is here too. "Hello".

I like the idea that "happenings" do not just happen. This is unsaid but look at the examples.

The piano lid that opens and closes is a totally recognizable sound. A mistake when the top stop is not properly engaged. Victor Borge recognized this and it was part of his standard bits in the Comedy in Music series of concerts.

But it is all in the timing. Like turning out the lights and flashing them on again during a critical moment.

I LOLed all through this review.

I suggest that you take a look as well. Fun is essential. So few people have it. My superiority talking because I think that I do. Sometimes I am the only one who thinks so.

Labels: art

Frederick Weisman is the rock god of documentaries.

Rock, because his vision for a documentary film is revolutionary. It is a bit hard to see this now as Weisman came along quite awhile with his approaches and so we expect the quality and insight that he delivers.

Here, he examines the British

National Gallery (2014)

in which we see the works, the people, the public, the experts, even the paint down to the framing.

It is three hours long and two sittings do not disrupt the watching of this excellent movie.

I am not an art fan. So I am not a good critical observer. I just sit and let it sink in. In that way, I suspect, an ideal audience for the Weisman approach to things including empty halls waiting for someone to show up. The ambient sound.

Wonderful. I would not mind seeing it again, in fact, I think that I will.

Labels: art, films, museums

I am cool to most painting art and the art world that glorifies it.

But I am enchanted by personalities, of artists who dared to be different and in doing so became singularly influential on others' work as well as their own.

One of these is Sargent whose work I have seen in the original several times. Stunning presences.

There is a fine review his work and a new show at the Met in the New York Times.

Review: Sargent’s Intimate Portraits of Friends at the Metropolitan Museum

All evidence would point to the fact that Sargent was straight. This is well before the time that such distinctions were thought to be either interesting or in good taste. How we have fallen.

In any event, since we have ended up here, let me observe that Sargent's work is intensely homo-erotic in many of his commissioned portraits of men and in some of his studies that have survived.

Never mind. We gays are always looking for the plum in the pudding. It comes with being a subjugated, repressed, and now, flamboyant group of people.

You will like the works in any case. They brim with life. If nothing else click onto the art link and see for yourself.

The portraits are beautifully done and while not photographic by any means allow us to see the personalities of the people portrayed.

On the other hand, the works that involve the world at large are full of innovation and delight. This is one, simply enough, an anonymous bather.

Labels: art, artists

Mike Leigh, a great director, has produced a marvelous film about another great artist.

I do not mean to put them on an equal plane but still, the approach to this life is often impressionistic and lets the viewer draw his own conclusions.

Bits and pieces form a whole as one of my favorite character actors gets a star turn. Timothy Spall is

Mr. Turner (2014)

Perhaps not realistically, I do not know. But he certainly gets to the heart of the man. The emotional core.

We see a lot of pictures. So many, the volume of the works is astounding. But I am told that this is how it was. Turner left the bulk to the British nation.

We see, in the end, a rich American making an offer he thinks Turner cannot refuse. But he does.

I really liked this film a lot. It has many twists and turns and is a bit messy. But that is life.

I have been waiting for Timothy Spall to get major recognition as an astute and talented actor and here it is, his breakout performance.

One of the things we hope for in any film about art and artists is that the film pay due attention to such things as color, composition and even the rhythm of a set or setting. Costumes in tune. This is a constant pleasure in this film. All hopes realized.

I will give this a 5 out of Netflix5 because I am committed to see it again sometime.

Labels: art, best films, films

There is a break in the production of paintings at some point about 400 years ago.

Suddenly, there was a realism that "came into the picture" that cannot be explained in terms of pure artistic talent.

This is not a new idea but no one has, before, managed to construct a simple lens/mirror arrangement that can explain the sudden change.

In this film, we see the engineer, not artist, Tim Jenison, do just that. Taking ideas that the artist David Hockney had proposed, the engineer undertakes a project to actually paint a Vermeer, an artist who is working at this time, who achieved some of the startling newly realistic images. Using actual sets, people, costumes and even light that Vermeer might have done, we watch him "paint" his, Tim's, own "Vermeer". It is quite fascinating to watch.

Not only does he explore use of the camera obscura approach, then surprisingly discredit it, he devises a simple mirror/lens device which would do the job instead. He also grinds paints, finds canvas, searches costumes and architectural detail that would have been present at the original creation. He even molds the vase which is prominent in the picture.

I don't much care whether Vermeer "cheated" or not by using mechanics. The artist was able to harness technology, either this arrangement, or another to create a whole new realism in his paintings. Others most likely did the same. Artists copy one another's techniques. That is how new movements are formed.

I liked this film a lot. It had nice soft humor and was careful to take us along into the world of creating an illusion.

No surprise that the writers and directors and producers of this film are none other than the famous "magic" duo, Penn and Teller. The masters of illusion.

This is a solid 4 out of Netflix5. It could easily be watched several times just to see, I mean see with the eye, an important work of art unfold in a way that is likely to have really happened. Or something like it. It took Jenison a very long time to do the work. We also get a sense of the difficulty of doing a work of this complexity. It is not dashed off. Time and thought, contemplation, even of a copy, are essential.

Labels: art, films

Go here right now.

Drawing Cristiano Ronaldo!

I love to look at him and here we have the sloooooow observation.

Labels: art, football

CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN OR WOMAN

Classical Sculptures Dressed as Hipsters

It make them look like the dude down the street. Or at least a closer to our time kinda dude.

It is a great idea beautifully executed. Not overdone, not underdone. Just right.

Labels: art, culture

NOT A GIFT

We don't give each other gifts.

Except when we do.

For our 38th anniversary, I got this soapstone sculpture from John.

It is called "lover's knot" or "love knot" depending on which import house you look in to.

Its infinite surface gets the idea across pretty well.

And it is very handsome.

Red is the color of passion and strong feeling.

It is about 8 inches tall and has a nice feel.

So it fits pretty well. Infinite, passionate, the size, the feel. It is an "us" thing.

I didn't know much about soapstone which they cut by hand and polish, then paint. Artisans.

I suppose I have to also accept that it was done by poorly paid workers in a third world country but for now, it is my beautiful symbol of the love of my life.

Labels: art, history, life

ELECTORALLY SPEAKING

This guy has, as an art project, developed geographical areas of equal population.

Electoral college reform (fifty states with equal population)

I am fascinated with the graphics of this. I also like the names.

A point of clarity. See the legend. Cities that already have 500,000 people in them are marked with a square. Los Angeles, Orange. Other cities are included in their own area. Bakersfield is in Tule. Santa Fe is part of Shiprock.

I am living in Temecula.

I love the names.

Tule is a thick grand fog that settles in the San Joaquin Valley. Shiprock is a prominent geographical feature sacred to the Navajo. Temecula is a town near us, on the other side of the mountain. I go through it when I go the scenic route to San Diego. "Exva Temeeku" is the name of a sacred place, the union between earth and sky. The peoples of this area were Temecula. Many tribes. This is their area. Right to go back, eh?

Actually, I think I am living in "Phoenix" which is named after, well, Phoenix but that is a city with a square. Somehow I think he took the easy way out here. I would rather be in Temecula. So I will say that I am.

I grew up in Pocono! In the Pocono Mountains. Pennsylvania.

Labels: art, elections

WHEN IS A PERFORMANCE A PERFORMANCE AND WHEN IS IT REAL?

Someone says when it is ketchup it is performance. When it is blood, it is real.

There is not very much blood in today's film, an HBO documentary about the work and most recent installation of the same name

Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present (2012)

I have mixed feelings about performance art. For the most part I think that once you get the concept it is boring. But then I have never seen any performance art.

In this film you see people seeing performance art and it makes all the difference. After all, there is no art unless there are observers or, in this case, participants with the artist.

We watch people watching Abramovic and it is deeply moving. They are there in front of her and they are surrounded by reproductions of her past works performed by young artists who spent thirty days with her to "train" for the installations.

We meet her partner and lover Ulay and the two together are quite powerful. A reunion of sorts occurs.

I am not sure that I would go very far to see someone perform some mutilation or extra stressful performance or, for that matter, want to see this film again. But I have to admit that I was deeply moved.

I credit the maker of the documentary Matthew Akers.

He chose the time and place and the edits as well as how to use Abramovic in his film. So, the film is not the performance art.

I am glad that I saw the film. I would not want to see it again. But what I did see was very good and satisfying.

Someone in the film says that most people spend no more than 30 seconds looking at an art piece. Even the Mona Lisa. One thing about this artist is that she bears watching a lot longer than this and there will be a reaction. Even if it pisses you off, there is a reaction. The art worked. She would assert this and so do I.

I would be willing to watch this again with my hand on the FF so that makes it an almost 4 out of Netflix5.

Labels: art, films

DOCUDRAMA

Today's gay interest film was

A Bigger Splash (1974).

This film was a phenom when it came out. It was a movie about a real man, master artist David Hockney with his friends acting out a story which might or might not be true but was pretty close to what was happening to them. Psychodrama? Some of it seems so.

That Hockney was and is homosexual necessitated a pretty open telling and showing of who and what. The story is about Hockney's life in London and his longing to get away.

We see elements of his creation of the first California paintings. The talk is endless but interesting.

There is real live sex!

Most of the story revolves around the breakup of the relationship between Hockney's most famous model Peter Schlesinger. Who is in the film!

The whole enterprise is crazy good. Visual excitement with the paintings. His personality. And remember at the time of this film, thirty seven years ago, he was already famous or, certainly after this film, infamous.

"The gays" lined up outside the theater in Boston. Most saw it twice. I have seen it at least five times. It was better stoned, then. But today it is fascinating to see into gay lives at that time. Gay bohemia.

Wonderful wonderful. A five.

Today, Hockney is still a great innovator. One part of the story of this film is the end of his "people" paintings. Masterpieces that show all of his friends in some aspect of their lives. His "disappearance" is emblematic of the end of this part of his career. He still does portraiture but it is quite a different thing.

A 5! A five!

And if you get some insights from seeing it let me know because I am still trying to figure everything and everyone out.

Oh. Just for the record, the film was met by contempt and bafflement by the art and cinema world. Making it all the more gay and very special.

The trailer is sort of a goof. Satire on a tongue and cheek film.

Labels: art, films, gay films

SURREALCHRIS

It would not be Columbus Day without celebrating with Salvador Dali's The Dream of Christopher Columbus;

They don't make much of Columbus Day out here. Not the same as Boston and New York where it was a major thing particularly for Italian Americans.

I will not be deterred by local disinterest.

Labels: art, history

STREET ART

Today's film was

Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

So, maybe not street art. Graffiti?

In any case this is a fun film that has several things going for it. Lots of video shots of graffiti artists at work. I have never seen this before. Some stuff about Banksy, who produced this film, that I did not know before. His is high-graffiti in the sense that he is an excellent draftsman (stencils mostly) and very witty.

And, the through story is about this french guy who does the early videos, gets to know Banksy, tries to make a graffiti film, fails, Banksy takes it over and, in the end, the video guy tries to do a big show of pop art which, incredibly or not, wows the LA art scene and he makes millions of dollars and goes on to do the new Madonna album cover. Whew. One breath.

What is the point? Some think that the whole thing is a hoax. I did not. Time has shown not.

Look. I know that graffiti is vandalism and against the law. But I also know that I like it when I see it when it is "good". Whatever that means.

I used to enjoy the railroad ride into New York City because it had some of the best graphical graffiti that I have ever seen.

Banksy is a different case. A provocateur. His work on the Gaza wall in Israel is stunning. Mockery is his forté.

All this is rather Warholian. So, I am an audience.

As a former art buyer I would not be interested in any of this. But one guy we collected, Sam Earle, is strongly influenced by street art and, I am reasonable sure, had a history of this kind of thing in his past. He uses icons, he makes his paintings on real doors, he covers them in a kind of plate that looks laid down. It has nails or nail heads throughout. The subjects are often ironic.

The other main guy is less streety but still uses icons, has DNA symbols working around his work and uses high art as a take off point.

So there you are. This is right in my area of interest. A ittle rough and a bit cheesy and seedy but it is mostly stuff that is made on the run, at night, with the cops breathing down their neck.

I liked the film. I thought it funny and a little scary at the same time. I would not mind seeing it again as it goes fast. there is a lot to miss.

There is nothing like the exhilaration of the early videos with young guys doing the derring do thing up the side of buildings. Like parkour with a mission.

I will give it a 4 out of Netflix5.

Labels: art, films

MISSING LINK

Labels: art

MODEL CITIZENS

The models for Grant Wood's "American Gothic".

In 1930, Grant Wood, an American painter with European training, noticed a small white house built in the Carpenter Gothic architectural style in Eldon, Iowa. Wood decided to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house."[2] He recruited his sister Nan (1900–1990) to model the woman, dressing her in a colonial print apron mimicking 19th century Americana. The man is modeled on Wood's dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby (1867–1950) from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The three-pronged hay fork is echoed in the stitching of the man's overalls, the Gothic window of the house and the structure of the man's face. Each element was painted separately; the models sat separately and never stood in front of the house.

Labels: America, art

PERFORMANCE ATE

I love shit like this.

Art at MoMA: Tuna on Wheat (Hold the Mayo)

What I like most is that Alison Knowles has been doing this since the sixties, this particular piece.

And that she can still find new twists.

I like the conviviality of it and the aspect of chance among the participants.

I love the spirit which is both organized, highly, and anarchic.

I would love to be invited but these days you have to sign up and be in New York. At the MoMA.

Labels: art, fun

HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY

I get to post my favorite Columbus painting by Salvador Dali.

The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1959)

The story of the painting is interesting. You can see it here.

Dali meant it as a study of Spain and Spanish culture. And so on.

Labels: art, holidays

MARKING

I am a secret admirer of graffiti.

Secret because there is a lot of disapproval surrounding the practice.

I am not fond of poor graffiti scrawled on the walls of the flood channels here or on sidewalks or buildings.

It is a public scandal and disgrace.

But there is a fuzzy line. There is good graffiti. I can't really describe it, but like pornography, I know it when I see it.

In a way, graffiti is like pornography. Transgressive and, if done "well", thrilling.

I used to relish the train ride into New York City partly because I would get to view the sometimes wonderful work of "taggers" on the embankment walls of the railroad cuts.

So, I was really interested in this.

An Artists Al Fresco John Hancock

An eight mile long graffiti and signature.

It is only one line.

There is a film about it. Beautiful.

It is here.

Lovely.

Labels: art

BEAT UP

We saw some of these photographs in Provincetown a decade or more ago. They are quite something to see.

Poet With a Kodak and a Restless Eye

Allen Ginsberg took many snapshots of his friends when he was young.

Many of the friends are now iconic.

What is more, he wrote on the prints, by hand, commenting on the time or place or situation that the photo represents.

One feature of this collection is, sadly, the price that many of these guys paid for their "experiences". Over time, there is a kind of fall from grace that occurred. Only a few survived unscathed. Ginsberg for one.

We saw him in the hallway at Boston Symphony Hall shortly after seeing the photos. He looked pretty good and was almost totally ignored by the crowds. His time had passed, icon or not.

Now he will have a movie about his life and he is James Franco. I will be watching with interest.

Take a look at the slide show.

I think that the show we saw had as many photos in them. Fascinating.

Labels: art, history, photography, photos

ART UP

The last of the paintings were hung yesterday.

Two young, strong friends came. They also have some carpentry skills.

They helped put up the big stuff. The big panels. Artwork on doors. Sam Earle.

This is the first time since Boston that we have properly displayed several works.

This is because our house didn't have the requisite high ceilings and this stuff wants to be high.

The new home has very high ceilings. Eleven feet! Clerestory windows. Great light.

The paintings look great. You can really see them.

The big "christ" painting especially.

I was a little worried about earthquake risk putting them up so high.

The guys made them very secure.

This is a real final step in getting moved in.

We feel very comfortable but this is putting the frosting on the cake so to speak.

Labels: art