Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

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Obit watch: May 12, 2016.

Thursday, May 12th, 2016

Jok Church, creator of the “You Can With Beakman & Jax” comic and the “Beakman’s World” television show.

I know a lot of people who loved “Beakman’s World” and anybody who teaches science to children is doing the lords work, as far as I’m concerned. Thing I didn’t know: Church was also Christo’s webmaster.

Mark Lane, noted JFK assassination conspiracy theorist.

Posted in Art, Christo, Geek, History, TV | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch (#51 in a series)

Thursday, April 21st, 2016

And speaking of Damien Hirst:

“One of Hirst’s main subjects is the setting-up of giant fish tanks filled by thousands of liters of FA, in which intact biological specimens are immersed, such as zebras, cows, calves, even sharks,” the abstract of the article said, referring to formaldehyde fumes. “It has been found that the tanks are surrounded by FA fumes, constantly exuded in the atmosphere (likely via the sealant), reaching levels of 5 ppm, one order of magnitude higher than the 0.5 ppm limit set up by legislation.”

In other words, some people are concerned that a tank full of formaldehyde with a dead shark in it may be leaking formaldehyde fumes. Shocked, shocked I am.

The museum also provided a statement from Pier Giorgio Righetti, a professor at Politecnico di Milano university in Italy and an author of the paper, saying that the research “was intended to test the uses of a new sensor for measuring formaldehyde fumes, and we do not believe that our findings suggest any risk for visitors at Tate Modern.”

Posted in Art, Clippings, Geek, Hysteria | Comments Closed

This brought a much needed smile to my face.

Thursday, April 14th, 2016

Classic Programmer Paintings.

Some of my personal favorites.

(Hattip: Morlock Publishing on the Twitter.)

Posted in Art, Geek, Perl, Programming Languages | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch (#50 in a series)

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2015

I don’t remember how this originally came up – I’m pretty sure it was by way of someone’s Twitter – but over the weekend Mike the Musicologist and were discussing odd gingerbread constructions. I wouldn’t exactly call them “houses”…

I got to wondering: has anyone ever done a gingerbread Fallingwater?

That would be a “yes”, Bob. And the conversation moved on from there. But I had it in the back of my mind: could you do a gingerbread Guggenheim? Doesn’t seem like it should be that hard, should it?

The answer is also “yes”.

And a gingerbread Tate Modern. And five other museums.

(Now I want to do a gingerbread Reichstag. Mostly because at the end of the Christmas season (which, as we all know, is January 6th), I can pour brandy on it and set it on fire.)

Posted in Art, Christmas, Food | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch (#49 in a series)

Tuesday, December 1st, 2015

By way of Borepatch: Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s most famous work sold at auction for $658,000.

Sotheby’s auction link. Yes, that did include the buyer’s premium.

Obligatory.

Posted in Art | 1 Comment »

Short random notes: September 24, 2015.

Thursday, September 24th, 2015

James Mee has his job back.

I feel sure I’ve written about this before, but I can’t find the post now. Mr. Mee was a deputy with the LA County Sheriff’s Office. He was fired because of his alleged involvement in a police chase that ended when the vehicle he was supposedly chasing crashed into a gas station.

At least, that was the claim. So why was he really fired? Well, Mr. Mee was also one of the officers who arrested Mel Gibson back in 2006.

Mee’s lawyers argued that sheriff’s managers falsely blamed Mee for leaking details of Gibson’s 2006 arrest and the actor’s anti-Semitic tirade to celebrity news site TMZ.com. Mee, his attorneys alleged, was repeatedly subjected to harassment and unfair discipline in the years that followed, culminating in his firing over the 2011 crash.

This one’s for Lawrence: Frank Gehry is working on a project to rehabilitate the Los Angeles River. This has some people upset.

(Obligatory. Plus, the video I’ve linked to before has been taken down, so call this a bookmark.)

Posted in Art, Bookmarks, California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Gehry, Law, TV | 1 Comment »

Random notes: July 15, 2015.

Wednesday, July 15th, 2015

The Shep turned himself in to the Detroit PD. (Previously.)

Correction: July 13, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated Modern Farmer’s new “it” grain. It is sorghum, not quinoa.

Posted in Art, Clippings, Media | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch (#48 in a series)

Tuesday, July 14th, 2015

Apparently, the Detroit PD doesn’t want Shepard Fairey extradited from California to face vandalism charges there. (Previously.)

This comes by way of a LAT think piece:

Fairey’s arrest, and his release, provides a window into the evolution of street art, its growing acceptance in American culture and the extent to which an old question, “Is it art or is it vandalism?” now gets answered through new eyes. The social media and press attention that the Detroit incident received speaks to the artist’s fame, which is itself a marker of how street art has become part of the zeitgeist, public art expert Ed Fuentes said.

Perhaps I am naive. Perhaps I shouldn’t try to be an art critic. But it seems to me that there’s a very simple answer to the “art or vandalism” question: if you have permission from the property owner, it is art. If you don’t, it is vandalism.

Speaking of art being above the law, Joe Gibbons was sentenced yesterday.

Mr. Gibbons, a former lecturer in art at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was sentenced on Monday to one year in prison after he pleaded guilty in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to third-degree felony robbery for entering a Capital One Bank in Chinatown this past New Year’s Eve, stealing $1,002 and filming it all on a pocket-size pink and silver video camera. He claimed it was an act of performance art coupled with dire financial straits.

…

While acknowledging that Mr. Gibbons had dubious legal standing, Ann Pellegrini, a professor of performance studies at New York University, called the case a classic example of “performance becoming performative,” an act that questions “the relationship between actor, audience and enactment.”

Posted in Art, Clippings, Law | 2 Comments »

After action report: Spokane, WA.

Saturday, June 27th, 2015

The Smith and Wesson Collector’s Association annual symposium was in Spokane this year.

(more…)

Posted in Apple, Art, Beef, Books, Endorsements, Food, Guns, Knives, Photography, Travel | Comments Closed

…it’s the hole.

Thursday, May 21st, 2015

From the NYT, a short documentary about Chris Burden and “Shoot”.

(Subject line hattip.)

Posted in Art, Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 11, 2015.

Monday, May 11th, 2015

Conceptual artist Chris Burden.

(Edited to add 5/12: NYT.)

I’ve touched on Mr. Burden and his work before, particularly the notorious “Shoot”. This is one work I was not aware of:

For his master’s thesis, he executed “Five Day Locker Piece,” a durational performance in which he locked himself inside an ordinary school locker measuring just two feet high, two feet wide and three feet deep. The locker directly above contained five gallons of bottled water, and the locker directly below held an empty five-gallon bottle.

Posted in Art, Clippings, Obits | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch. (#47 in a series)

Tuesday, March 10th, 2015

Headline:

Dead Drops: what to do if you see a USB stick sticking out of a wall

Stop! Don’t touch! Tell an adult!

But I digress.

But in 2010, Berlin-based artist Aram Bartholl decided to adapt the idea for public use. His Dead Drops involve people hiding USB flash drives in cities around the world and embedding them into walls, fences and kerbs. The idea is that you look up their location, access the drive, and do what you see fit with the files – add your own, remove or copy them over.

I’m not going to say this is the dumbest idea I’ve heard recently. But it is in the top 100.

(Per the DeadDrops.com database, there are six of these within 100 km of Austin. Five are marked as broken or missing. The sixth is actually in Bastrop. While it is marked as working, the status hasn’t been updated since 2011.)

Posted in Art, Clippings, Geek | Comments Closed

After action report: Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Monday, November 17th, 2014

I’ve sort of hinted at this, but now the full story can be told.

Mike the Musicologist and I went on a road trip to Oklahoma the weekend of November 8th.

(more…)

Posted in Art, Beef, Books, Food, Guns, History, Mammals, Museums, Photography, project_e, Thanks, Travel | 1 Comment »

Gehry watch.

Friday, October 17th, 2014

The LAT reviews the Gehry designed Louis Vuitton Foundation museum.

The Eisenhower Memorial design has been approved with revisions. (Previously.)

The revised design replaces the memorial’s east and west steel tapestries — depicting the Kansas plains where Eisenhower spent his boyhood — with single columns that mark the north corners of the site, preparing visitors for the entrance. The south columns and tapestry aim to define the memorial’s space and frame the views of the Capitol.

Posted in Art, Clippings, Gehry, Museums | Comments Closed

Random notes: October 3, 2014.

Friday, October 3rd, 2014

Good coffee is important.

I’m a big fan of both Jimmy Stewart and Carol Burnett, so this makes me very happy. (I have family in the area around Indiana, Pennsylvania, but I’ve never had the chance to visit the Jimmy Stewart Museum. Perhaps I will remedy this on a future visit.)

Five rules for viewing art, damn it, art! There’s much here that I agree with; seek silence, take your time, do some research. On the other hand, I don’t see anything wrong with purchasing postcards or posters at the gift shop. I do think the rubber van Gogh ear is a bit over the top.

Some practical advice: If you feel better about yourself when you leave a museum, you’re probably doing it all wrong.

This bothers me as well, but I’m not sure I can articulate why. I need to think on it some more.

Posted in Art, Clippings, Coffee, Food | 1 Comment »

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