Category Archives: ART

ART, Photography

GRACIELA ITURBIDE : “The camera is just a pretext for knowing the world. “

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Mexican artist Graciela Iturbide is considered on of the most important and influential Latin American photographers of the past four decades. Born in 1942 in Mexico City to a wealthy, conservative Catholic family, Graciela Iturbide was the eldest of 13 children. Despite her ambitions to be a writer, family and societal pressure persuaded her to marry at the age of 20 and have three children.

In 1969, she decided to enroll at the Centro de Estudios Cinematográficos at the Universidad Nacional Autónama de México to become a film director. When she took a class with master photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo, she began concentrating her interests on photography. Bravo was greatly impressed with Iturbide’s talent and invited her to be his assistant. She worked closely with Bravo from 1970 to 1971 and was deeply influenced by his poetic style, however, Iturbide wanted to focus her efforts on what she described as “photo essays” as opposed to individual photographs as works of art. Continue reading GRACIELA ITURBIDE : “The camera is just a pretext for knowing the world. “ →

ART

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL

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3681-007.jpg Kerry James Marshall Our Town, 1995 acrylic and collage on canvas overall: 254 x 314.96 cm (100 x 124 in.) Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
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Kerry James Marshall challenges the marginalization of African-Americans through his formally rigorous paintings, drawings, videos, and installations, whose central protagonists are always, in his words, “unequivocally, emphatically black.” As he describes, his work is rooted in his life experience: “You can’t be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central [Los Angeles] near the Black Panthers headquarters, and not feel like you’ve got some kind of social responsibility. You can’t move to Watts in 1963 and not speak about it.” Marshall’s erudite knowledge of art history and black folk art structures his compositions; he mines black culture and stereotypes for his unflinching subject matter. In Black Star (2011), a nude black woman bursts through a Frank Stella-like canvas, commanding attention and daring viewers to consider how she has been (and how she should be) seen and portrayed. – artsy.net

 

American, b. 1955, Birmingham, Alabama, based in Chicago, Illinois

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ART, Music, Video

CORNELIUS CARDEW :: TREATISE, performed by the Cardew Trio, maskfest, 1.12.2010

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Treatise is a musical composition by British composer Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981). Treatise is a graphic musical score comprising 193 pages of lines, symbols, and various geometric or abstract shapes that eschew conventional musical notation. Implicit in the title is a reference to the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, which was of particular inspiration to Cardew in composing the work. The score neither contains nor is accompanied by any explicit instruction to the performers in how to perform the work. Cardew worked on the composition from 1963 to 1967. Continue reading CORNELIUS CARDEW :: TREATISE, performed by the Cardew Trio, maskfest, 1.12.2010 →

ART, design

HAROLD KRISEL, MID-CENTURY HARD-EDGE ABSTRACTION

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Harold Krisel was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1920. He studied architecture in Chicago at the New Bauhaus from 1946-1949 on the G.I. Bill after he was discharged from the army where he served from 1942-1945. Just 26 at the time he had been interested in art since studying in New York in the 1930s with Carl Holty and Harry Holtzman. He became a member of American Abstract Artists in 1946, and retained this membership for the duration of his life. In 1942 he married Rose Breuer and the couple had three daughters.Krisel completed his graduate studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1952.

His many influences there helped direct his course of study and his career path. Founder Lazlo-Nagy had just stepped down and the new director, Serge Chermayeff, recognized something special in this new student and committed to his education as an architect. Krises met famed artist Mondrian and developed friendships with Gyorgy Kepes, who founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT; Martin Rosenzweig, noted graphic designer; and Harold Cohen the distinguished designer and architect.

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ART, Photography, Uncategorized

GERHARD RICHTER :: OCTOBER 18,1977 The Baader-Meinhof (RAF) Cycle

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Gerhard Richters 15-painting cycle, October 18, 1977 is arguably one of the most important works of art of the second half of the 20th century. Now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, the collection of black and white oil paintings drew from ubiquitous photographs of the Baader-Meinhof era. Angering the German public when it first appeared in the late 1980s, it has become recognized as Richter’s masterwork.

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ART, Video

THE COOL SCHOOL, THE STORY OF THE FERUS GALLERY, DOCUMENTARY, 85 MIN.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEmmDOpL2NQ

THE COOL SCHOOL is the story of the Ferus Gallery, which nurtured Los Angeles’s first significant post-war artists between 1957 and 1966.”
I remember the word ‘Ferus’ outside had this kind of magic to it. Ferus had a much sparer approach to showing art. If you want to put a tiny painting on a single big wall, you’re welcome to it. And the artist is the boss.”
—Ed Ruscha, Ferus Gallery artist
The Ferus artists in 1962 in a black and white photo. From left to right: Ed Kienholz, Allen Lynch, Ed Moses, Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John Altoon
The Ferus gang, 1962. L-R, Ed Kienholz, Allen Lynch, Ed Moses, Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John Altoon

In late 1956, medical-school dropout Walter Hopps met artist Ed Kienholz for lunch at a hot dog stand on La Cienega Boulevard. The two drafted a contract on a hot dog wrapper that stated simply, “We will be partners in art for five years.” And with that, the Ferus Gallery was born. Continue reading THE COOL SCHOOL, THE STORY OF THE FERUS GALLERY, DOCUMENTARY, 85 MIN. →

ART, Video

Marcel Duchamp, 1968 BBC interview

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BBC’s Joan Bakewell interviewed Marcel Duchamp in June 1968, just months before his death. Bakewell asks the artist about his life and relationship to retinal art and Dada, as well as his thoughts on more contemporary works by Happenings artists such as Allan Kaprow. Duchamp speaks about individualism in face of the group think that occurs in self-defined movements such as Dada.

ART, Music, Video

COSEY FANNI TUTTI :: TIME TO TELL, 1983

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HudSwX3aiyo

Cosey Fanni Tutti (born Christine Newby, 4 November 1951) is a performance artist and musician best known for her time in the avant-garde groups Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey.

Time to Tell was a 1983 cassette-only release on the Flowmotion label (though it has since been rereleased on CD).

It came as a one-sided C60 tape with a newspaper magazine insert featuring articles, readings and interviews on Cosey, Throbbing Gristle and Coum Transmissions.

It was Cosey’s first solo release, a foray into early dark ambient territory,with sultry spoken word passages.

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ART, Cinema, Video

STAN BRAKHAGE :: CAT’S CRADLE, 1959, 6.5 min.

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Stan Brakhage created Cat’s Cradle in 1959. The 19th film by Brakhage is a montage of two couples, a cat, and the inside of a house.  The four people that were documented in Cat’s Cradle are Brakhage’s friends James Tenney, Carolee Schneemann, his ex-wife Jane, and Brakhage himself.  Continue reading STAN BRAKHAGE :: CAT’S CRADLE, 1959, 6.5 min. →