Archives For Art

The  famous “Walkie Talkie” building in London designed by Rafael Viñoly is being blamed for melting a parked jaguar. Apparently the intensely concave mirrored building was not tested for the obvious ability of creating a solar death ray (by concentrating the suns rays on small areas below).  Londoners call it the “Walkie Scorchie” phenomenon.  Apparently this is not the first building by the architect that has produced this effect. He has another in Las Vegas that managed to melt all the pool furniture on a hotel terrace.

 Image via the Evening Standard

 

Photography is a language and most important advances in the language/art of photography come from artists not photographers. ( See David Hockney for example)

Thomas Ruff is an exception to that rule. His entire career has been dedicated to challenging what we think a photograph is or could be.  His recent photograms were not photograms at all but computer generated works based on the idea of photograms. Both the objects and the light in Ruff’s photograms derive from a virtual darkroom built by a custom-made software program. He also did an entire series of images based on pixelated jpegs as well as a series of 3D and manipulated NASA Space images.

A survey of over 60 works are here.

A good interview about his photograms is here.

 

via http://www.davidzwirner.com

“For 20 years now, New York-based photographer Spencer Tunick has been creating human art installations all over the world, calling together volunteers by the hundreds or thousands, asking them to remove their clothes, and photographing them in massive groups. His philosophy is that “individuals en masse, without their clothing, grouped together, metamorphose into a new shape.” He aims to create an architecture of flesh, where the masses of human bodies blend with the landscape, or juxtapose with architecture. Collected here are images from several of his installations as they were being composed”.

Via The Atlantic

 

My favorite Chinese artist’s don’t copy tired and old western styles of painting like Zhu Jinshi (who for some reason is a very successful painter). I like Chinese Artists who exhibit their Chinese DNA in their work.You can’t help but love these  subversive self-portraits about Yue Minjun’s cynical take on the “new” China. The kind of artist you want to have a beer with.

Immediately humorous and sympathetic, Yue Minjun’s paintings offer a light-hearted approach to philosophical inquiry and contemplation of existence. Drawing connotations to the disparate images of the Laughing Buddha and the inane gap toothed grin of Alfred E. Newman, Yue’s self-portraits have been describe by theorist Li Xianting as “a self-ironic response to the spiritual vacuum and folly of modern-day China.”

via saatchigallery.com

via Galleri s . e

Georges Méliès was a huge inspiration for Martin Scorsese and his last film HugoCharlie Chaplin described him as “the alchemist of light.” Below are his two most famous films: Le Voyage Dans La Lune followed by The Impossible Voyage each shot in a large glass greenhouse  and outdoors, with incredible set design, each frame hand colored and now restored.

Le Voyage Dans La Lune

 

The Impossible Voyage (Music by The Musician’s Lounge)