I was thinking of the hungarian photographer André Kertész, when I was pushing the ink and paint around. He made a series of distorted nudes, inspired by the properties of water on the human form, but using mirrors to metamorphicize the figure. My father Harry had a book of these photos and I recall first browsing through it as an 11 year old.
Elegy to Kertész, monotype, 17″ x 11″
I went to Montreal for a little rest and relaxation and while flipping through channels of French TV a little something caught my eye. It was an old man tearing subway posters, and while I have no idea what he was saying about it I kind got the gist that he goes around his town peeling bits off of walls and then rearranging them on canvas. The end result looks remarkably similar to what I photograph, the main difference being that he creates and I find, but our philosophies are very much the same. He says in an interview here:
“It is really a utopian view. You always cheat a little. But the lacéré anonyme exists to a certain degree. After the first exhibitions I thought people would go outside and take posters from the streets, just as I did. That was not so. It is a bitter victory for me, after all, I like to save myself the creative agony. The whole world makes work for me — I only have to collect it.”
I’ve often thought the same thing. When I started taking the photos of the subway billboards I thought, “This is just so easy I’m sure everyone must be doing it”, but as I looked into it a bit more I realized I was wrong. I belong to a group on flickr devoted to subway photography and not a single other person is shooting these, but I admit I was also a little relieved. His comment about cheating makes sense to me as well since these have always been my sneaky way of making abstract paintings without ever having to learn how to paint or face my fear of the dreaded blank canvas.
Anyway, go check him out, Jacques Villegle is a French institution and completely worth taking the time to navigate his nutty website. He even has a contact button so now I have to go brush up on my French and figure out what to say to the man who more or less invented what I do, I’m not sure, “Hello Daddy!” will translate with the right intent.
This piece and I have had a wrestling match on par with the endless fight scene between Rowdy Roddy Piper and Keith David in “They Live”. Which is ironic, because the original impetus for the piece was a reaction against the super-deliberation in many of my other pieces.
I usually work hard to strike a balance in the color schemes of these pieces. I don’t want them to be too uniform, but neither do I want to stray into too much chaos. The result is an agonized back and forth that usually isn’t worth the final result.
This was my reaction against that tendency. I wanted to embrace the chaos, and let it reign over a noisy, unbeautiful mess, if only to show how much work it is to avoid such things in other pieces.
“Noise” 36″ x 24″ Mixed Media with Safety Pins
Click for access to larger photos. Detail after the jump.
The gallery reception on Saturday night was lots of fun! The art, which was even more exciting than I’d expected, found a perfect setting in the refined but not overly slick space that is Wunderarts. The gallery, a beautifully transformed former auto parts shop, has a high-ceilinged, wide open interior that is partitioned by a simple configuration of low movable walls. The overall effect is neutral and elegant with definite spatial character–the sort of place you walk into and say, “What a great space!”. In Tulay’s series of charcoal, pastel and ink abstracted drawings he uses geometric forms suggestive of architectural elements against renderings of sky to define ambiguous moody spaces where form and formlessness shift seamlessly. The drawings, which were all cleanly floated on white mat backgrounds within narrow white shadowbox frames, manage to suggest both interior and exterior space within a single composition. Tulay stuck to a limited palette of black, grey, white and either warm or cool blue for every work. As I’m a sucker both for art that finds that sort of wonderfully tense balance between representation and abstraction and art that successfully uses a minimal color scheme, I found myself contemplating whether the soon to be new half a roof for my little old house could wait another few months so that I could hang this diptych in my living room:
charcoal/pastel diptych 22″ x 60″
Reality won so as of 9:00 Saturday night this gem was still available at a very reasonable price.
I didn’t manage to get many decent photos as my camera blows in anything but perfect light conditions. So in lieu of posting a bunch of dark, blurry pictures, I’m going to point you all to the artist’s site where you can see his work in as full glory as pixels on a monitor Read more »
I really didn’t do any Art this week. I mainly concentrated on my craft, design, and illustration stuff. Which, I’ve been keeping off of this blog, but I don’t know why exactly. Here’s what I’ve been working on this week.
Its weird having these two interests that don’t quite mesh. I’ve thought about Read more »
I can’t believe I forgot to post an announcement about this show opening tonight. I’ll blame it on the Benadryl again. I’m headed out the door shortly to an opening reception at Wunderarts in Amherst. Read a bit about the artist, Scott Tulay, and see images of his work on the Wunderarts website. He’s showing a series of drawings done in charcoal, pastel and ink that reference landscape and architecture. Maybe I’ll be able to update with some pics tomorrow. For now, here’s the show info:
April 25 – June 3, 2009
reception TONIGHT 6-9 pm
works by Scott Tulay
Wunderarts
383 Main Street
Amherst, MA
413-356-6600
oil on canvas, wood, burlap
stuffed with feathers
23 x 45 inches
The Red Crescent
click for larger pic
In my Benedryl-induced haze I nearly forgot to post today. This is an old piece I started way back in ’97 and didn’t finish until about 2000 or 2001. It was one of those works that goes through a million different transformations before ending up in a place where it finally feels finished. Read more »
Back in our old Myspace Group hangout, the World Artist’s Network we had a friend named Joey Thibault. It is impossible to explain the joy that Joey’s unique brand of insanity brought to us all in this small space, so I’ll save its own post. Joey kind of disappeared from online a while ago, but he left the group one of it’s most enduring threads, The Friday Night Music Thread, wherein each friday people would post beloved, hilarious or otherwise inane music videos to celebrate the coming of the weekend.
In Joey’s honor, we’ve decided to bring a form of that to d’Arte Board to help kick off the weekend while sending a psychic shout to a ^^an dear to our hearts.
Happy Friday, everyone.
-JD
In the next year or so companies will start releasing EEG machines that plug into your computer so you can control aspects of your machine directly with your brain.
While I’m sure the initial applications will be somewhat rough, I imagine it will be refined fairly quickly as the hardware is unleashed to hobbyist tinkerers to come up with new software and application. You think the Wii was neat? Wait until you can play tennis directly with your brain.
The first video game I want to see released specifically for this? Scanners: The Video Game
wearable “Sophia” cat mask by Carrie Rouillard
paper mache
Sans Souci Studios website
and the etsy shop where you can buy Rouillard’s handmade masks
OK, what I really need is a break. The last few days have been a highlight to what is turning out to be a sucktastically rotten spring. Plumbing trouble, phone trouble, the nagging leftovers from a tenacious head/chest cold and a nasty case of poison ivy in a highly inconvenient spot have left me feeling like I just want to crawl under the bed and hide for a month. But if it’s impossible to avoid all the crap, and the raw, itchy slab of meat masquerading as my left buttcheek tells me it is, then maybe I could settle for hiding behind this gorgeous handmade cat head. One part cat + one part alien via the pearlescent color=total awesomeness. I’m certain that were I to don this guise my life would improve exponentially. I don’t know exactly how it would work, but still, I’m convinced. At the very least, I’d be entertained by the looks I’d get wearing it at Ye Old Stop & Shop… that and maybe it would muffle my nonstop whining.
Check out Rouillard’s website and shop to see more wonderful mask designs.
-Steph Gerolimatos
Sometimes I find visual demonstrations of my anxieties in subway billboards. I can’t figure out if I find that comforting or not.
I was thinking about the drawings of Annibale Carracci, which I was fortunate enough to actually handle in the Uffizzi Gallery in Florence once years ago. That, and the atmosphere of Turner as this image – generated from a photographic collaboration of sorts with Toni Tiller – was developing.
Tom Bennett
Elegy to Carracci, monotype, 9″ x 12″
Click here for larger size
Nobody doesn’t like naked people. This site is like having X-ray glasses. Something very interesting happens as the models “transform”. its definitely an fascinating little social experiment and it will also make you a better public speaker.
So my niece Margaret (Meg), a fine photographer – Meg’sBlog– comes over to hang out and paint, but we decide to head on out to Coney Island instead, to shoot some photos and maybe spot LizardMan. Steph prompted the whole idea in an earlier post, but it was well past his show time when we got in the car. The fog was thick as soup and Meg and I were crawling around in the misty mess when finally we spotted the Circus Sideshow Freak Bar, and low and behold, there was Lizardman hmself, holding a post-performance chat with his fans and a few gecko groupies. He spoke of his sword swallowing techniques among other things, and we took some pictures. His dedication to his self-mutilation –– that is, uh, craft – is remarkable. Well, here are some shots.
Tom Bennett
This was Coney Island in the fog :
And then we meet Jim Morrison- uh, I mean, the Lizardman:
French kisses are a dollar.
LizardMan and BatsBoy.
Meg and the Fire Eater’s chin.
Meg is pleased by snakes.
It’s bacon. In a SQUEEZE BOTTLE. Enough said.
But I can’t seem to put my finger on why.
I almost had new art to post today, but the revision process took too long, so hopefully that’ll come next week. Instead, I’m posting this old piece, from 2005, maybe early 2006.
31″ x 31″ Acrylic on Canvas w/ glue. Click for access to larger version
Coney Island
TUESDAY, APRIL 21ST @ 8:00 pm – $10
The Lizardman is tonight’s feature performer in the 3rd Annual Congress Of Curious Peoples at Coney Island’s Sideshow By The Seashore.
image borrowed from The Lizardman’s website
If you’re in or near NYC, I urge you to make a point of going to see the green man perform. Had I the means, I’d be there in a heartbeat. Not only is The Lizardman a guaranteed spectacle of entertainment, he’s also one fine and brilliant spark in the sea of humanity, or at least he was way back in the day. And his personal transformation from handsome human to herpetological wonder as an ongoing artistic project is thoroughly fascinating both aesthetically and conceptually. Go go go!
From the Coney Island website: Read more »
“Are your Breasts Healthy?”
This is a 1930 government ad and it advises women to take care of their breasts by massaging them in cold water. Hmmm. Pert. Isn’t that the brand name of a soap?
I’ve been a fan of soviet constructivist art and the post revolutionary russian poster. I found this
Soviet Poster Blog and this Digital archive with telling translations.
–Tom Bennett
Lady Hearts, 6″x6″, paper collage, 2009
This is one of three collages made in collaboration with Carmen Dominguez. The other two will be sent back to her for more work.
I like working in collaboration with other artists. I like the surprise and lack of control that comes with it. I am definitely going try to do more of this kind of project whenever I can. In fact I have another project going on right now.This
Agora Gallery - the proud sponsor of the Chelsea International Fine Art Competition, which offers contemporary artists the opportunity to show their original art at one the most acclaimed juried art shows in Chelsea, New York’s art galleries district.
darteboard
jdhastings
ssstephg
Tom Bennett
Toni Tiller
Jason Gray
probrucer
laelia e. mitchell
