if you’re an unemployed liberal arts major feeling shitty,

here’s a nice article to make you feel intellectually superior to all the employed econ majors you know.

 

also let’s take a minute for louise bourgeois, who died last week after almost a century of creating art of all shapes and sizes, who was still creating oozing guttural imploring encompassing emotional sculptures and drawings well into her eighties, what a cool lady right?

 

(louise with her 1970 sculpture eye to eye, from le centre pompidou)

 

(legs, 1986, the hirshhorn)

 

(10am is when you come to me)

 

(donne ou prend, 2002, tate modern)

 

her art is about “consider[ing] the whole range of intimacy, desire, and the human need to connect or belong, to be part of the family”. she has a drawing from 2007 that reads,

 

it is not so much

where my motivation comes from

but rather

how it manages

to survive

 

it’s wild how much her childhood affected her; she had enough pent up emotion to fuel 70 or so years of prolific art making.

 

another melancholy but appealing line from a 1947 drawing, il disparut dans un silence total, that was hanging at her pompidou retrospective in 2008:

 

he was of a quiet nature and rather intelligent but he was not interested in being loved or protected because he was interested in something else

 

she was very special & let’s all love the pieces she’s left behind.

 

[ stefanie ]

Read Full Post »

Quiet (and not so quiet) Social Commentary

Richmond, Virginia artist Allison Andrews softens her voice so that her work may speak for itself.

I was first drawn to Allison Andrews’ sculpture installation Zen Garden, pictured above, due to the piece’s ironic profundity.  The juxtaposition of a Hummer frame with a Japanese Zen Garden speaks volumes about the globalization of cultures and the influence Eastern philosophy has on the West.  In short, I saw it as peaceful commentary, a quiet reflection of commoditization and spirituality, begging our own questions of meaning and purpose as we advance into the future.

After meeting Allison, I discovered that my interpretation was not far off from her own.  I also learned that, for her, the success of the piece was simply that it made me think.  While she has strong concepts which lead her in the beginning of a project, she feels strongly that ultimately, her responsibility is to the viewer.  When creating, the first thing cut away is her opinion, allowing the work to speak for itself, and leaving the viewer to interpret freely.

Through the use of iconic images, Allison is capable of creating juxtapositions which suggest meaning to the viewer, rather than spell it out.  Minimal amounts of information are best, considering that during the artistic process, she finds herself forced to go with the flow.  The artwork often takes off in its own direction, becoming something completely different from the original concept upon completion.  In her work, she must leave room open for the message to take its own shape, empowered by her choice of materials and her technical skill. 

Humbly, Allison told me, “I don’t know why I make the stuff I make.”  It is as if the art is using her as its means of manifestation.  “Anytime I force anything, it doesn’t work.  Anytime I cling to anything, it doesn’t work.”  For artist Allison Andrews, both her art and her life alike are a practice in discipline, service and letting go.

I encourage you as readers to take the time to look at the following works and ruminate on the meanings they have for you, or simply appreciate their success or failure in the case of stimulating your thought process.

Above: Happy Birthday Mr. President

Above: Hummer Pie

Above: Androgynous

Above: Suspension

[diane]

Read Full Post »

thank you andy warhol

the latest issue of interview, is superb. it is the so-called art issue. inside find interviews with richard prince (who owns the original scroll of big sur by mr. jack kerouac), jeff koons (more on him in a sec), cate blanchett (interviewed by jack white, which brings to mind coffee and cigarettes, and also the two of them are quite witty with each other), william eggleston (who is color blind?), rei kawakubo (have you gotten a chance to shop for comme des garcons at h&m yet?), gus van sant (i fell asleep during paranoid park but still claim to have really liked it), AND MORE!

jeff koons was all, “i don’t think my shit is ironic, or tongue-in-cheek” (that was paraphrased, badly, by the way) and i was all, reeeally? because you sculpted a giant balloon animal and put it in the palace at versailles… but then jeff koons was all, “living at versailles must have been like living in a fantasy, where you could go to sleep one night with a garden full of blue flowers and wake up to find a garden full of red flowers, because a staff of gardeners had been up all night uprooting and planting your fantasy, fuckin louis xiv, and my pieces relate to that fantasy in contemporary ways” (again, paraphrase-age) and i was all, hey i kinda like that, way to go jeff koons, this is the first time i’ve ever had tender feelings towards you and your art.

(photo from nytimes.com)

and then i was all, happy hannuka, and stuff.

[ stefanie ]

Read Full Post »

Have you seen Buddha on the road?

Not much of my own words will be in this post, mainly because I live in VA and am physically unable to see this exhibition myself.  However, I found the subject fascinating and I wish to share this with those interested.  If you’re in CA I suggest taking the time to experience this art, and artist, for yourself.

This work Ronny Joe Grooms‘ MFA Thesis Show at John F Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, CA.  This particular campus houses their  school of Holistic Studies where they offer three degrees under their department, “Art and Consciousness.”   Each degree approaches the arts as firmly integrated with culture, spirituality and personal development.  I dig it.

Below I have pasted the excerpt for the  exhibition as listed on the university’s website.

The exhibition Killing Buddha, by artist Ronny Joe Grooms culminates his Master of Fine Art study at John F. Kennedy University Arts & Consciousness program. Grooms, son of a Vietnam veteran, and a former Army reservist who filed for Conscientious Objector status during the Gulf War, draws on those experiences and current events to explore the shadows of the warrior male. The Zen Koan, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him,” inspires the shows title. The koan has painful implications to Grooms as the invasion and occupation of Iraq takes on its 5th year and continues to escalate with no end in sight.

In this exhibition Grooms, a dharma practitioner and multimedia performance artist, presents an array of video imagery and sculptural environments set to dissolve the subject/object relationship. Illustrating movement and stillness as essential human languages, he presents “meditation-sculptures” that are both spiritual asanas and non-violent actions that merge the inner-work of deep personal contemplation as ritual with the outwardly expressive forms of activism and art. Evoking these personal/social processes, he has challenged his own arbitrary differentiations between meditation, art, and creativity as well as promoting meditation and radical transcendence as a public act thereby awakening creative spirit in all.

[diane]

Read Full Post »