To celebrate his 68th birthday, illustrator Helen Green created an animated gif of David Bowie’s hairdos from 1964-2014. A print of the the black and white versions of 29 frames are avaiable as a print through Society6. Actually, if you look, there’s quite a lot of Bowie art on Society 6.
HEY, WANNA SHIP YOUR ENEMIES GLITTER?
I’m really not a mean person, but this made me laugh an evil laugh. Yes, this service is as simple as it sounds. Send glitter to someone you $%#@! hate. From their website:
Ready to f*ck up someones day? Ship some glitter now for only $9.99.
We fucking hate glitter. People call it the herpes of the craft world. What we hate more though are the soulless people who get their jollies off by sending glitter in envelopes. We’ll also include a note telling the person exactly why they’re receiving this terrible gift. Hint: the glitter will be mixed in with the note thus increasing maximum spillage. After we receive the payment & spend the profit on cheap booze we’ll get shit ready & have the mail sent to the person you hate.
You can go here to get that glitter bomb going. I really hope you A. don’t hate me and if you do, B. don’t know my address…
5 PHOTOGRAPHS BY 5 ARTISTS IN 5 DAYS...
Last week, I was nominated by my pal, artist Alan Belcher to post five black and white photos from five different artists in five days. I’m not sure how far back this exercise goes, in terms of who started it but here are my 5+ pictures along with some explanation of the work:
DAY ONE: David Wojnarowicz
I designed the 40th anniversary issue of Aperture magazine in 1992 (when its art director Yolanda Cuomo briefly handed me the reins.) The work, including this photo, in the issue was not chosen by me but rather my the magazine editor’s who wrote this…
“The process of bringing together a “forty years” celebration forces one to see photographs as, among other things, indicators of their time. Several photographers address AIDS in their text or images; the brutality of this devastating epidemic became all the more jolting when David Wojnarowicz died of AIDS during the preparation of this issue, having selected his photograph, but without having had the time to write his text.”
They chose these words by David to accompany this incredible image…
“All behind me are the friends that died; I’m breathing this air that they can’t breathe; I’m seeing this ratty monkey in a cheap Mexican circus wearing a red and blue embroidered jacket and it’s collecting coins and I can reach out and touch it like they can’t. And time is now compressed; I joke and say that I feel I’ve taken out another six month lease on this body of mine; on this vehicle of sound and motion, and every painting or photograph or film I make I make with the sense that it may be the last thing I do and so I try to pull everything in to the surface of that action. I work quickly now and feel there is no time for bullshit; cut straight to the heart of the senses and map it out as clearly as tools and growth allow….I see myself seeing death; it’s like a transparent celluloid image of myself is accompanying myself everywhere I go.” –David Wojnarowicz (died of AIDS, July 22, 1992)
DAY TWO: Helmut Newton
This picture was a “shot” heard round the world. It might look tame today, but this was a different kind of fashion, feminism and photo. There’s another frame with a nude woman next to Le Smoking and together they say volumes about the time…(but what do I know, I was 15 living in Houston?) One of THE most imitated photographs of the past 50 years.
“I want to do everything forbidden, everything you don’t do.” – Helmut Newton
DAY THREE: Vivian Maier
Vivian Maier’s photographs remained totally unknown until after her death in 2009. Many of her films remained undeveloped, until her boxes of possessions were purchased at auction by collector, John Maloof. Now she’s been exhibited throughout the world and has been the subject of books and documentary films. She worked as a nanny and took photos everywhere she went, without showing them to anyone. In her lifetime, she was completely unknown and today she is one of the 20th century greats, in the pantheon with the likes of Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus and Robert Frank.
See the fascinating documentary film, Finding Vivian Maier. You can see more of her work here.
DAY FOUR: Philippe Halsman
I know it’s cheating somewhat to show a dozen pictures but it was too difficult to pick a single image…
“Starting in the early 1950s I asked every famous or important person I photographed to jump for me. I was motivated by a genuine curiosity. After all, life has taught us to control and disguise our facial expressions, but it has not taught us to control our jumps. I wanted to see famous people reveal in a jump their ambition or their lack of it, their self-importance or their insecurity, and many other traits.” –Philippe Halsman
DAY FIVE: Cindy Sherman
In December 1995, The Museum of Modern Art acquired all sixty-nine black-and-white photographs in Cindy Sherman‘s Untitled Film Stills series insuring that this landmark body of work was preserved in its entirety in a single public collection. Sherman began making these pictures in 1977, when she was twenty-three. Although most of the characters are invented, we sense right away that we already know them. That twinge of instant recognition is what makes the series tick, and it arises from Cindy Sherman’s uncanny poise. There is no wink at the viewer, no open irony, no real camp. It’s been almost 40 years but this series changed photography and contemporary art in ways that are hard to quantify. And as Andy Warhol said;
“She’s good enough to be a real actress.”
FIRST JOAN, NOW JONI!? WHAT ABOUT BETTY WHITE FOR JCP...?
Yes, first it was Joan Didion for Céline and now Joni Mitchell for Saint Laurent. WTF, YSL!? Yesterday, Saint Laurent Paris (formerly YSL) tweeted this pic… what can you say but I guess fashion is always on a collective wavelength. Either that, or the trend forecasters said, Spring 2015, 70+ icons will be HOT! What next? Betty White for JCP!? Below is my imagining of that new campaign. It could happen!
THE BEVERLY CARLTON WAS HOME TO MARILYN MONROE
My old pal Susan Martin is an art PR legend. We’ve known each other for decades but now that she lives in New Mexico, we see each other rarely but keep in touch –how else?– on Facebook. The other day she posted the above pic of the Beverly Carlton Hotel ...
Her dad was architect Sam Reisbord, who died 30 years ago this week and one of his most notable projects was the Beverly Carlton. Marilyn Monroe lived there in the early 50s and was photographed there many times by photographers like Phil Burchman, André De Dienes & Phillipe Halsman, among others. Below are pics of the original hotel, Marilyn in her room and by the pool and The Avalon Hotel, where you can stay today. The pool area and lobby look much like the original hotel.
ANDY WARHOL WILL BE (EVEN MORE) WORLD FAMOUS FOR '15
“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” –Andy Warhol
Yes, Andy’s most famous quote WAS prophetic. And starting this year, he’ll be MORE famous himself, if that’s even possible. About 40 exhibitions of his work, much of it unseen by the public — will be out there in university art museums and institutions. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, which is ending its final round of a record-breaking program of donations, has given away more than 14,000 works, mostly photographs and prints, with the proviso that the work be exhibited within five years. The foundation has distributed an astounding 52,786 works by Warhol to 322 institutions since ’99.
In the next six weeks alone, Warhol exhibitions are opening at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, (including a screen print of Nixon’s face titled “Vote McGovern”); the Middlebury College Museum of Art in Vermont (featuring a screen print of Mao Zedong); and the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson (Polaroids and gelatin-silver prints of the downtown New York scene in the ’70s and ’80s).
The foundation has $280 million in an endowment and their assets close to $350 million. This year alone it’ll give away almost $14 million in cash grants, mostly to institutions in the U.S. Joel Wachs, the foundation’s president said about the number of works Andy created;
“They didn’t call it the Factory for nothing.”
The Cantor Arts Center received the largest of the recent Warhol gifts, including a staggering 4,115 sheets of negatives — covering the entire collection his of black-and-white photography — and 3,624 contact sheets. Connie Wolf, the Cantor’s director says;
“Stanford can do something other institutions couldn’t, which is take a truly interdisciplinary and multilayered approach to Warhol, which is appropriate.”
Warhol assembled six “family albums,” with varying numbers of Polaroids. The foundation gave one album each to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; the George Eastman House and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.
So, you’ll be seeing a LOT of work of all sorts throughout the US this year. And the question of whether all of this work is exhibition-worthy or even art at all, was answered by Andy himself;
“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
(Images, The Andy Warhol Foundation: via The New York Times)
LOST NYC: 14 NEW YORK LANDMARKS THAT VANISHED (OR RELOCATED) IN 2014
Yes, people are forever complaining about disappearing businesses and institutions in New York City and for the most part, I think it’s just the way New York has always worked. But when you look at these places listed here, combined, it’s a drag, no question. There are lots of forces at play that made these joints close up or move, but sentiment is not one of them. Bottom line, NYC is about money and business –it’s not a museum to the past or your fixed idea of what New York is. Plus, a lot more besides these 14 have shuttered. Next up in 2015? – more closings no doubt, to make way for new, but not necessarily better.
(via BuzzFeed and Vanishing New York)
PICTURE THAT: JAMES NARES' "NEW YORK 1974"
British-born James Nares became was a central member of the New York art scene in the 70s and early 80s, making experimental Super 8 films, playing in bands, and staging live performances. The following decade, he turned to painting, using handmade brushes to create monumental strokes that seek to capture the very moment of creation. His oeuvre uses similar preoccupations involving space, motion, and time. Nares’ photographic series, New York 1974, records this deserted, dreamlike impression of a long-gone NYC. Nares explains;
“I took these photos in 1974, when I had just arrived in New York at 21 years old. Upon arrival in New York, I was immediately fascinated by the streets. I carried my 35 mm Nikon camera with me at all times. I was particularly drawn to the environment of my neighborhood, TriBeCa. At that time it was a ghost town, with dilapidated buildings neglected after businesses had crumbled. I chose these ten photographs because they capture time and place. This selection of photos emerged from a cache of negatives I recently unearthed; they hadn’t seen the light of day since I took them. Looking back through the film, I was pleased to find the themes I explore in my current works – most notably STREET and even my new body of paintings, ROAD PAINT – are reflected in these early photographs.”
James Nares, New York 1974, ten 16 x 20″ prints, is available in an edition of 25 for $12,000 through Paul Kasmin Gallery.
PICTURE THIS: CORINNE VIONNET'S ICONIC "PHOTO OPPORTUNITIES"
These images are “layered”, to say the least. Starting a decade ago, the French-Swiss artist Corinne Vionnet, created online keyword searches of vernacular images of tourist landmarks from around the world. She began to examine how we pick the optimum spot to photograph an iconic image and literally thousands of images went into the making of this series Photo Opportunities, a commentary on tourism and digital culture. Using multiple found images of different monuments, she collates around a hundred appropriated photographs for each of her layered, ethereal compositions. Landmarks like the World Trade Towers, the Pyramids at Giza, and the Hollywood sign float in a surreal haze. They are mesmerizing and unique and banal all at once. The exhibit opens tonight at Danziger Gallery through February 6, 2015.
DIY REAL ESTATE PORN: THESE OWNERS BUILT THEIR OWN MIAMI HOUSE
Jacob & Melissa Brillhart, both trained as architects, hand-built this 1,500-square-foot house in downtown Miami (with the help of plumbers, electricians, welders and roofers.) Using some old techniques;
“Cross-ventilation and orienting the building so the front porch blocks the direct sunlight on the glass, so you don’t heat up the interior.”
Completed this fall, it cost about $375,000 + $165,000 for the lot. It’s beautifully simple but the cost per square foot seems high for DIY. But like anything else in life, the joy and appreciation are exponentially higher when you do it yourself. For the full story and more pictures, go here. (Photos, Bruce Buck; The New York Times)