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Eat My Seat

Tom Bennett — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:59:12 +0000

Argentinean artist Leandro Erlich has added new meaning to the phrase, “comfort food.” He created a sofa made out of chocolate cake.

Edible Furniture

But Is It Art? Feed Me, Seymour.

Tom Bennett — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:40:52 +0000

I need this in my neighborhood in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. It’s a newly discovered
Rat-eating plant.
What it does with the bones, I don’t know. Now if an obnoxious Donna Summer-playing neighbor-eating plant can be discovered, I’ll be set.

LizardMan Tips the Scales on Coney Island

Tom Bennett — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:41:15 +0000

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.

Better Late Than Never…

Jason Gray — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 05:42:07 +0000

O.k., so I’m posting late this week….In all earnestness, this is not going to be much of a post at all. I spent this last weekend in St. Louis, which is to be my new home, come May 1st. From all perspectives, this will be a good move, as it will allow my wife and I to save money, revolve around a smaller nucleus, have more space, do more things, etc.

Nonetheless, this post is centered around the photographs that I took while doing other things, this weekend. It is image heavy, so be forewarned…St. Louis, the aged, urban center:

At the turn of the 20th Century, St. Louis was the fourth largest urban area in the United States, and one of only six U.S. cities to have a population of more than 1 million people. Beginning in the 1960′s, it suffered the same fate as most of the other rust-belt metropolises, and as its industry dwindled, so did its population. Today, only about 350,000 people live within the city limits.

What I love about St. Louis is its somber moments; times for reflection even within city limits. St. Louis was built for more than a million residents, but now holds only about a third of that; the result is decay, disjunct, and duration. But that is all changing. In my mind, as the art world turns its focus more so away from New York, and the U.S., regional art will gain in precedence, and St. Louis has a self-sustaining, albeit isolated, art culture. Check out the City Museum for an example. As a photographer, the city (older than Chicago) itself presents some wonderful dialog…

St. Louis is not devoid of academic offerings either; the St. Louis Art Museum, constructed for the 1904 World’s Fair, features an impressive collection of artwork, and it’s free to enter:

Images removed per museum’s request. -JG

And the building and grounds have few rivals:

Images removed per museum’s request. -JG

I even had the opportunity to meet with a local artist, my disgruntled sister, Emma:

Written Letter Project: Update One

Jason Gray — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:39:27 +0000

Well, it has been nearly a week since I posted my intention to delete all of my internet accounts in favor of a more holistic approach to networking and associating with my friends and peers; since then, I have deleted my Etsy account, one of my ulterior Myspace accounts, my Linked-In Profile, and both of my Photobucket accounts. I also switched some of my information concerning business stuff over to my business email, in preparation for deleting my personal email address soon. On Facebook, I sent out a message to some of my friends, ones who I only have information for through that site, requesting their addresses. I will be deleting my Facebook account on next Tuesday.
So far, the ground beneath my feet has not opened up, and I have not been swallowed into an isolating abyss. Although, I did get one email back from a Facebook friend who refuses to send letters. She likened a typed (her handwriting is atrocious, she says) letter to “an email with a stamp on it”. It’s a good analogy, I think, except that a real letter is something tangible, that requires more energy in the activity of its inception and delivery, and that it articulates certain levels of experiential phenomena that we lose when we plop ourselves down in front of a glowing computer screen. Not to mention, when all activities become easy and instantaneous, we lose the awareness of what makes them activities worth doing in the first place. There is, of course, a lot of argument over whether we are really trading out anything that we need; isn’t the point of making one thing easy to expand our opportunities to engage in other things? If that is true, how could we really be losing experiences, and how could constant connectivity be something deleterious to the intimacy of our relationships? There is an interesting article, recently published by the Institute of Biology in the U.K., that seeks to answer some of these questions from a psycho-physiological standpoint.
At this stage in the process, it is difficult to say whether or not I stand to gain or lose anything in doing this. I will keep you all informed if anything changes.

Photo-Impressionism

Jason Gray — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:01:47 +0000

This is an update of a project that I started back in December. Over that time, I have experimented a lot within this series, and I think that the approach that I have arrived at has finally evolved into something pretty interesting. Currently, I am engineering and building a device that would give me better mobility for when I take these pictures. In terms of the process, these images are not the result of photochopping; they look almost exactly this way straight out of the camera. The only post-processing that I do is to the exposure properties.

Written Letter Project–Neo-Luddites, Unite!

Jason Gray — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:25:52 +0000

Generally, on every one of my days off, I clamber out of bed, put on some water for coffee, and go straight to the computer. Once there, I proceed to worship, red-eyed and impervious to the real world; but what am I worshiping, and why? I am inexplicably drawn to the scale of human broadcast, and to the scope of internet-bred, interconnectivity. The pull is something preternatural; something I desire without real necessity for it. In concept, the abstract of social networking sites is fairly sound; people who are looking to connect with other people, for the purpose of soliciting trades, work, objects, new experiences, discussion or closure to previous real encounters, are lured together by their common aim. The hope is that these searches will be fulfilled, and in truth, there has been a degree of that fulfilled for me since I began to “link myself in”. I have found jobs, found old friends, found new friends, found creative outlets, found great discussions, and sold goods. However, I’ve also found my excursions into the real world diminishing.

The core concept of the social networking site is sound, and it works. Problems arise however, when too much variety is induced due to the risen commercial viability of these sites. Opportunities to “connect” spring up innumerably within a climate of profitability. These extra choices mean that people can pick and choose where they want to associate based on trends, features, and popularity. The negative counter effect is that in order to completely achieve the potential of the original, core concept, one needs to be a member to a growing number of different social sites; “Etsy” to sell your creations, “Craigslist” to find work and living situations, “MySpace” to indulge your vanity and connect with half the people you want to speak to, “Facebook” for inane, “Sportscenter”-like updates on your friends’ moods and to connect with the other half of the people you want to speak with, “Classmates” to find links to your high school buddies, “Linked-In” to prove you are professionally aware, and not to mention, the billions of blogs that are commensurate with our unequivocal allegiance to reading them. The result is that the original, core concept has been eradicated, impossible to achieve because we have diluted it beyond recognition. The promise of all of this social connectivity was to subsidize our experiences, but instead it has replaced them, and in the process, we have even changed the purpose of the social site; no longer do we subscribe to them seeking a connection, now we subscribe to them to eliminate the risk of missing one. The difference is profound. We have successfully traded the murmur of people in a cafe and the warmth of sunshine on our faces for the profile tune of some static avatar and the blinking lights of a computer screen. And after all, what’s wrong with being anonymous?

The internet is not the “Great Equalizer” that it marketed itself to be; instead of awakening our understanding, it has subjugated it. There is a lot wrong with gaining whatever truth you want at the click of a mouse, and it is something even worse that we have conditioned ourselves to accept it. What’s the answer? There isn’t one; the internet will continue on, social sites will continue to spring up, and we sorry fools will continue to spread ourselves thin trying to enlist their promises. For me, however, I’m going to try swimming in a somewhat different direction with the Written Letter Project. Over the course of the next six weeks, I am going to cancel all of my social networking site subscriptions, and provide my address to any of my friends who want it. If you write me, I will write you back, and the best part is that we are both engaging in something tangible. No User ID’s or Logins required.

Neo-Luddites, unite!! The project will consist of me analyzing how easily I reconvert to reality, whether or not my friends are willing to participate, and what the true benefits are.

Schedule for my cancelations:

1. By March 24- I will cancel Facebook, Etsy, and Linked-In, as well as any other small tangental connections that I have made online.

2. By April 7- I will cancel my email account.

3. By April 21- I will cancel my MySpace account.

I have chosen the cancelations in this order due to the amount of associations that I have made through them; less to more. The only exceptions that I will make to my online exposure will be to the blog that I write for once a week d’ArteBoard.com, and for all of my accounts associated with my business, LibertinePhotography.net(I rarely check these). The goal is to limit my computer exposure to one day a week, and to minimize it at that. I want to get back out into the world and start enjoying reality!

Synesthesia

Jason Gray — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:10:35 +0000

Scientific American: Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes [ NEUROSCIENCE ]
People with synesthesia–whose senses blend together–are providing valuable clues to understanding the organization and functions of the human brain

My reaction:
After reading this article, it seems that synesthesia might be a completely perceivable condition, or at least that its possibility appears logically explicable. As our society becomes more so dependent on color, as an advertising vehicle, fashion concept, safety coding device, etc., I would imagine that the prevalence of synesthesia would increase exponentially in proportion to that dependency. I would also not be surprised if, as the article suggested, all of us whom possess subtle or dormant synesthesia might learn in the future how to awaken and harness it. Instinctively, I believe that our primary use for color differentiation was to alert us to aberrations in the appearance of our environment that might conceal a stealthy predator from our other senses. However, it seems increasingly so that color has expanded upon its initial role to correlate also to our vocabulary. To simplify, we now use color to communicate much more than we use it to avert ourselves from danger.
If this is true, then it is not at all surprising that we should intermingle color into other facilities governing visual interpretation in our brains. After all, doesn’t society teach us to decipher abstract messages hidden in color all of the time? For instance, imagine how different going to the grocery store would be if everything appeared black and white; furthermore, close your eyes and imagine a Tide detergent bottle, is it not bright red-orange? I am particularly interested in whether or not a correlation exists between visual shapes (numbers, lines, symbols, etc.) and the color that a synesthete assigns them. Do all synesthetes see “5″ as red, for example? If society truly does encourage us to abstractly interpret color into a particular concept or realization, then a pattern should emerge in how all synesthetes see certain things.
In respect to the article’s precept of creative people being more prone to synesthesia, the writings of Wassily Kandinsky would certainly serve to strengthen the idea. The artist, whom co-founded “Der Bleu Reiter”, wrote excessively concerning the correlation between colors and a concrete interpretation of them. He saw “bright yellow in the bass notes, and dark lake in the treble”.* He even, it seems, wrote specifically about a synesthete at one point .$ However, some of his own, unique perspectives toward color can be found in his formulations. He did not view color as most of us now understand it, in the traditional color wheel relationship of primary and secondary colors. Kandinsky viewed color as either concentric (having energy that moves inward), eccentric (having energy that moves outward), or neutral (no movement at all). One color possessed both concentric and eccentric qualities, and that was red. In his color studies, he positioned at one end blue, as concentric, and moving away: violet, green (neutral) and red in the center, then orange, and at the opposite end, yellow, as eccentric. Looking at his abstract work, with this scale in mind, relays intense discoveries.
If synesthesia indeed becomes a proven condition, the resulting science might have innumerable applications. At the least, it suggests humans may be able to communicate on a separate level then either traditional verbal or body language currently enables us to. The implication on future art, for instance, is beyond imaginable. One aspect in the article, that I wished had been explored further and which left me unclear, was how synesthetes process stimulations to the other senses into experiential data. Although there was some explanation of the neurological functions compelling all of the senses, most of the case examples written about were for vision in specific, and I wonder how synesthetes experience the mixing up of the other senses, as it was presented in the opening paragraph.

* “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, Wassily Kandinsky, Dover Publications (1977), p.25
$ “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, p. 24

Who’s your Favorite 20th Century artist?

Tom Bennett — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:01:04 +0000

The Times Online and the Saatchi gallery have put together a list of 200 twentieth century artists and is asking visitors to vote for their favorite. They include famous painters, sculptors, photographers, video and installation artists.

You can vote for your favorite artist/s on the
TimesOnline website

My current pick is Willem de Kooning; of course painting would have suffered without the likes of Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Gerhard Richter, Philip Guston, Wassily Kandinsky, Anselm Kiefer, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Auerbach and well, the list goes on…

Here’s the list of 200 artists arranged alphabetically..

Marina Abramovic
Tomma Abts
Vito Acconci
Ansel Adams
Bas Jan Ader
Eileen Agar
Craigie Aitchison
Josef Albers
Pierre Alechinsky
Kai Althoff
Francis Alys
Carl Andre
Karel Appel
Nobuyoshi Araki
Diane Arbus
Alexander Archipenko
Arman
Jean Arp
Art & Language
Antonin Artaud
Richard Artschwager
Eugene Atget
Frank Auerbach
Richard Avedon
Milton Avery
Gillian Ayres
Francis Bacon
Leon Bakst
John Baldessari
Miroslaw Balka
Giacomo Balla
Balthus
Ernst Barlach
Matthew Barney
Georg Baselitz
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Willi Baumeister
Lothar Baumgarten
Bernd And Hilla Becher
Max Beckmann
Hans Bellmer
George Wesley Bellows
Thomas Hart Benton
Joseph Beuys
Ashley Bickerton
Max Bill
Peter Blake
Umberto Boccioni
Alighiero E Boetti
Christian Boltanski
David Bomberg
Pierre Bonnard
Michael Borremans
Fernando Botero
Louise Bourgeois
Arthur Boyd
Constantin Brancusi
Bill Brandt
Georges Braque
Brassai (Gyula Halasz)
Victor Brauner
Marcel Broodthaers
Glenn Brown
Cecily Brown
Chris Burden
Daniel Buren
Victor Burgin
Edward Burra
Alberto Burri
Pol Bury
Jean-Marc Bustamante
Alexander Calder
Sophie Calle
Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller
Anthony Caro
Carlo Carra
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Maurizio Cattelan
Patrick Caulfield
Cesar
Paul Cezanne
Helen Chadwick
Lynn Chadwick
Marc Chagall
John Chamberlain
Dinos and Jake Chapman
Judy Chicago
Eduardo Chillida
Giorgio De Chirico
Larry Clark
Christo And Jeanne Claude
Franceso Clemente
Chuck Close
Prunella Clough
Hannah Collins
George Condo
Le Corbusier
Lovis Corinth
Joseph Cornell
Tony Cragg
Martin Creed
Robert Crumb
John Currin
Salvador Dalí
Hanne Darboven
Stuart Davis
Willem De Kooning
Richard Deacon
Tacita Dean
Sonia Delaunay
Robert Delaunay
Paul Delvaux
Thomas Demand
Charles Demuth
Maurice Denis
Andre Derain
Jan Dibbets
Richard Diebenkorn
Jim Dine
Otto Dix
Theo Van Doesburg
Willie Doherty
Peter Doig
Oscar Dominguez
Kees Van Dongen
Arthur Dove
Jean Dubuffet
Marcel Duchamp
Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Raoul Dufy
Marlene Dumas
William Eggleston
Lissitzky EI
Olafur Eliasson
Tracey Emin
James Ensor
Jacob Epstein
Max Ernst
M.C. Escher
Richard Estes
Walker Evans
Luciano Fabro
Oyvind Fahlstrom
Jean Fautrier
Lyonel Feininger
Eric Fischl
Fischli & Weiss
Barry Flanagan
Dan Flavin
Lucio Fontana
Tsugouharu Foujita
Sam Francis
Robert Frank
Helen Frankenthaler
Lucian Freud
Lee Friedlander
Elisabeth Frink
Katharina Fritsch
Roger Fry
Naum Gabo
Antonio Lopez Garcia
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Paul Gauguin
Isa Genzken
Alberto Giacometti
Gilbert & George
Eric Gill
Albert Gliezes
Robert Gober
Nan Goldin
Andy Goldsworthy
Leon Golub
Natalia Goncharova
Julio Gonzalez
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Douglas Gordon
Arshile Gorky
Anthony Gormley
Adolph Gottlieb
Dan Graham
Paul Graham
Duncan Grant
Juan Gris
George Grosz
Andreas Gursky
Philip Guston
Renato Guttuso
Hans Haacke
Peter Halley
Richard Hamilton
Ian Hamilton-Finlay
David Hammons
Duane Hanson
Keith Haring
Rachel Harrison
Marsden Hartley
Hans Hartung
Mona Hatoum
Raoul Hausmann
John Heartfield
Mary Heilman
Jean Helion
Barbara Hepworth
Patrick Heron
Eva Hesse
Gary Hill
Roger Hilton
Damien Hirst
Ivon Hitchens
David Hockney
Howard Hodgkin
Hans Hofmann
Carsten Holler
Jenny Holzer
Edward Hopper
Roni Horn
Rebecca Horn
Gary Hume
Jorg Immendorff
Robert Indiana
Robert Irwin
Alfred Jaar
Alexei Von Jawlensky
Augustus John
Gwen John
Jasper Johns
Joan Jonas
Allen Jones
Asger Jorn
Donald Judd
Isaac Julien
Ilya Kabakov
Frida Kahlo
Wassily Kandinsky
Anish Kapoor
Alex Katz
On Kawara
Mike Kelley
Ellsworth Kelly
Mary Kelly
William Kentridge
Anselm Kiefer
Ed and Nancy Kienholz
Martin Kippenberger
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Per Kirkeby
R.B. Kitaj
Paul Klee
Yves Klein
Gustav Klimt
Franz Kline
Oskar Kokoshka
Kathe Kollwitz
Komar And Melamid
Jeff Koons
Leon Kossoff
Joseph Kosuth
Jannis Kounellis
Lee Krasner
Barbara Kruger
Yayoi Kusama
Wolfgang Laib
Wilfredo Lam
Dorothea Lange
Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Marie Laurencin
Sol LeWitt
Fernand Leger
Percy Wyndham Lewis
Roy Lichtenstein
Max Liebermann
Jacques Lipchitz
Richard Long
Robert Longo
Morris Louis
L.S. Lowry
Sarah Lucas
August Macke
Rene Magritte
Aristide Maillol
Kasimir Malevich
Robert Mangold
Piero Manzoni
Giacumo Manzu
Robert Mapplethorpe
Franz Marc
Brice Marden
Walter De Maria
John Marin
Marisol
Kerry Marshall
Agnes Martin
Kenneth Martin
Andre Masson
Henri Matisse
Roberto Matta
Gordon Matta-Clark
Paul Mccarthy
Steve McQueen
Cildo Meireles
Ana Mendieta
Mario Merz
Annette Messager
Henri Michaux
Lee Miller
Joan Miro
Joan Mitchell
Paula Modersohn-Becker
Amedeo Modigliani
Tina Modotti
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Piet Mondrian
Claude Monet
Henry Moore
Giorgio Morandi
Yasumasa Morimura
Malcolm Morley
Robert Morris
Robert Motherwell
Ron Mueck
Matt Mullican
Edvard Munch
Juan Munoz
Takashi Murakami
Elie Nadelman
Paul Nash
David Nash
Bruce Nauman
Alice Neel
Mike Nelson
Louise Nevelson
Barnett Newman
Ben Nicholson
Hermann Nitsch
Noble and Webster
Isamu Noguchi
Sidney Nolan
Kenneth Noland
Emil Nolde
Maria Nordman
Georgia O’Keeffe
Albert Oehlen
Chris Ofili
Helio Oiticica
Claes Oldenburg
Jules Olitski
Yoko Ono
Julian Opie
Meret Oppenheim
Gabriel Orozco
Tony Oursler
Nam June Paik
Eduardo Paolozzi
Cornelia Parker
Martin Parr
Victor Pasmore
Max Pechstein
A.R. Penck
Giuseppe Penone
Roland Penrose
Beverly Pepper
Grayson Perry
Elizabeth Peyton
Niki de Saint Phalle
Vong Phaophanit
Francis Picabia
Pablo Picasso
Adrian Piper
John Piper
Michelangelo Pistoletto
Serge Poliakoff
Sigmar Polke
Jackson Pollock
Liubov Popova
Maurice Prendergast
Richard Prince
Marc Quinn
Arnulf Rainer
Neo Rauch
Robert Rauschenberg
Man Ray
Charles Ray
Odilon Redon
Paula Rego
Ad Reinhardt
Pierre Auguste Renoir
Jason Rhoades
Germaine Richier
Gerhard Richter
Daniel Richter
Leni Riefenstahl
Bridget Riley
Jean-Paul Riopelle
Pipilotti Rist
Diego Rivera
Larry Rivers
Norman Rockwell
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Auguste Rodin
James Rosenquist
Mimmo Rotella
Dieter Roth
Susan Rothenberg
Mark Rothko
Georges Rouault
Henri Rousseau
Ed Ruscha
Robert Ryman
Doris Salcedo
David Salle
Lucas Samaras
Cheri Samba
Fred Sandback
August Sander
Wilhelm Sasnal
Jenny Saville
Christian Schad
Miriam Schapiro
Egon Schiele
Oskar Schlemmer
Julian Schnabel
Gregor Schneider
Thomas Schutte
Kurt Schwitters
Sean Scully
George Segal
Kurt Seligmann
Richard Serra
Gino Severini
Ben Shahn
Charles Sheeler
Cindy Sherman
Stephen Shore
Walter Sickert
Santiago Sierra
Paul Signac
Roman Signer
David Smith
Kiki Smith
Robert Smithson
Pierre Soulages
Chaim Soutine
Stanley Spencer
Nancy Spero
Daniel Spoerri
Nicolas De Stael
Frank Stella
Joseph Stella
Jana Sterbak
Alfred Stieglitz
Clyfford Still
Thomas Struth
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Graham Sutherland
Rufino Tamayo
Yves Tanguy
Dorothea Tanning
Antoni Tapies
Vladimir Tatlin
Pavel Tchelitchew
Wayne Thiebaud
Wolfgang Tillmans
Jean Tinguely
Mark Tobey
Rosemarie Trockel
William Turnbull
James Turrell
Richard Tuttle
Luc Tuymans
Cy Twombly
Euan Uglow
Maurice Utrillo
Victor Vasarely
Ben Vautier
Jack Vettriano
Bill Viola
Banks Violette
Maurice De Vlaminck
Edouard Vuillard
Jeff Wall
Mark Wallinger
Alfred Wallis
Andy Warhol
Gillian Wearing
Max Weber
Weegee
William Wegman
Carel Weight
Lawrence Weiner
Franz West
Edward Weston
Rachel Whiteread
Hannah Wilke
Richard Wilson
Gary Winogrand
Wols
Grant Wood
Christopher Wool
Jack Butler Yeats
Gilberto Zorio

Photo Technique

Jason Gray — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:39:15 +0000

Here is a little secret that I like to do to create interesting shots. I cut the bottom off of a cup, paper or plastic, each give individually distinct results, and place it around the barrel of my camera lens so that it is pointed through the new hole in the bottom. By doing this, you can isolate the subject for more dynamic compositions or even to suggest motion or create mood. Give it a try, and put all those empty coffee cups in the recycling bin to good use!

You can get similarly interesting results by rolling a piece of paper into a cone around the lens,

or by placing objects into a plastic bag and photographing them there. Have fun!!