for your consideration

11.5.10

bring the noise: responding to ofili

Virgin Mary 1996

INSA shoes

"TATE Britain is hosting a side event entitled Bring the Noise that respond and resonate with the exhibition of Chris Ofili...

London’s writer and artist INSA was invited amongst many others to partake in the event and have produced an one of pair of Heels that is unusual to say the least. The piece is entitled “Anything goes when it comes to (s)hoes…”, a play on the lyrics from classic Big Daddy Kane track Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy which is referenced by Chris Ofili several times in his paintings. The highlight of the heels are the elephant dung that is used as the platform of the heels. INSA retraced the footsteps Chris Ofili made over 15 years ago and sourced dung from the same family of elephants that produced the dung used in Ofili’s infamous paintings of the nineties."

From Freshness Mag

6.5.10

picasso sells for $106.5 million

"A painting that Picasso created in a single day in March 1932, “Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur (Nude, Green Leaves and Bust),” sold for $106.5 million, a world record auction price for a work of art, at Christie’s Tuesday night. The painting, more than 5 feet by 4 feet, shows Picasso’s mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, both reclining and as a bust. Picasso’s profile can be discerned in the blue background."

By Carol Vogel for the New York Times

19.4.10

bravo's work of art

"WITH VERY FEW EXCEPTIONS—PBS’s Art:21 and the occasional British import—contemporary art is conspicuous by its absence from mainstream American TV. To some this might seem a rank injustice, but given the obvious pitfalls, it may equally represent a lucky escape. Arriving at the Paley Center for Media for a Wednesday evening preview of Bravo’s new reality series Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, I felt more trepidation than would have accompanied any insider event. How would the art world fare at the hands of producers who aimed to do for it, in the words of the cable channel’s Frances Berwick, “what we’ve done for fashion and food”? Would the featured artists (who are, of course, pitted against one another in the bankable manner of Project Runway, Top Chef, and RuPaul’s Drag Race) survive the presumed emphasis on pizzazz? And would the judges shed all credibility by association with this demotic form?"

Art created within the mass-marketed framework of a reality show... not sure what to think. Brilliant or ludicrous?

See full article here on Artforum: Alternate Reality

15.4.10

more mcqueen

A Timeline of McQueen's Life & Career

14.4.10

graffiti in caracas: government sponsored political promotion

See the rest of the slide show here: Political Graffiti

"CARACAS, Venezuela — Of all the murals and graffiti that adorn this anarchic city’s trash-strewn center, one creation by the street artist Carlos Zerpa fills him with special pride: a stenciled reinterpretation of Caravaggio’s “David with the Head of Goliath,” in which a warrior grasps the severed head of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The more overtly political images tend to glamorize President Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution, and his demonization of Washington is a favorite subject.

Mr. Zerpa, 26, a slightly built painter sporting a few days of stubble, shrugged at the possibility that American visitors to Caracas — or Mrs. Clinton for that matter — might find the mural offensive. “It’s a metaphor for an empire that is being defeated,” he said nonchalantly in an interview. “My critics can take it or leave it, but I remain loyal to my ideas.”

So does the government, which supports Mr. Zerpa’s creations and the work of many other street artists, and is increasingly making them a central element of its promotion of a state ideology. Government-financed brigades of graffiti artists and muralists are blanketing this city’s walls with politicized images, ranging from crude, graffiti-tagged slogans to bold, colorful works of graphic art."

By Simon Romero for the NYTimes

See the rest of the article here: Artists Embellish Walls With Political Visions