Protecting Perishable Art

One of the problematic aspects of the ever-progressive art scene is the growing use of perishable materials and food items in installations, sculpture and paintings. Artist's work shown in NY museums and galleries have featured animal remains, Amazonian fruit and even human waste. This work can be provocative at best and gimmicky at worst, but the fact remains that a lot of it is being put into galleries to be seen by a large audience. The question posed in an article in The Christian Science Monitor today is, "how are these piece's utilizing perishable materials to be preserved?" It's an interesting read about an interesting subject - follow the link below for the entire article.

Preserving Art Not Meant to Last

Fashion and Fantasy

The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a new exhibition earlier this month titled Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy. I saw a handful of photographs from the celeb-filled opening a few weeks ago, but I hadn't gotten around to investigating further until today.

It turns out, Fashion and Fantasy is a whole lot more than I'd expected it to be. For some reason, I'd gotten it in my head that the exhibit was going to be a collection of super hero costumes and possibly a few original editions of the comics that inspired the larger-than-life get-ups. As it turns out, in addition to the costumes and comic books, there's also a huge display of haute couture themed designs based upon some of the most notable comic book characters around.

The result - a series of dark and webby dresses that look like something out of the dark side of Spiderman, a Catwoman inspired leather outfit complete with pointy ears and some incredibly gothic Ghost Rider gear. After having a look around the website I think it's definitely going on my "things to do list" for sometime in the next few weeks. Follow the link I've posted above to see photographs of some of the wilder creations featured in the exhibit.

A Tower of Folk Art Rubble in the East Village

I just came across an interesting article over at NY Magazine's website about a monumental (and bizarre) piece of artwork in the East Village. Jerry Saltz, the author, used to live right down the street from the site where folk artist and shoeless neighborhood personality Eddie Boros erected what is now known as "The Tower of Toys."

The piece is a massive play on the concept of organized chaos. A tower of what amounts to most people as junk, Boros built the "sculpture" one piece of lumber, piping and rocking horse at a time. The way Saltz explains, the pile of junk just kept building outword and upword until it transitioned into something ugly and beautiful at the same time. I reccomend checking out the entire article, it's a fast read and has a photo.

"The Tower of Toys"

Sydney Pollock

One of my favorite director's and Hollywood personalities passed away over the weekend. Sydney Pollock was a talented filmmaker and will be sorely missed in the filmmaking community. For more information on Pollock's background and filmography, have a look at the article published in the NY Times today.

Summer Movies and Charlie Kaufman

Today is a big day for me. Ever since I was a small child I've been a massive fan of the Indiana Jones films. The first had me enraptured, the second scared me to death and the third solidified the trilogy as one of my all time favorites. It's been nearly twenty years since The Last Crusade, and Harrison Ford has finally picked back up the whip and fedora. I'll be attending a screening tonight in NY that is sure to be raucous, loud and undeniably wonderful. That being said, I'll now segue into the notably more "arty" topic of the Cannes film festival, where Indy, Spielberg and George Lucas made their glorious return this year.

Another of my film-related obsessions is the quirky, wonderful world of esteemed screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. His work (most notably Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) has gone out of it's way to defy convention and expand the idea of what a screenplay can be. In his most recent film, Synecdoche, NY, he finally has the chance to pick up the director's reigns. Awhile back a film critic at the LA Times got his hands on the script and sang it's praises in a long and passionate column. The final product debuted at Cannes as well this year, and the critic from The NY Times had very enthusiastic things to say about it. I'm hoping against hope that it's picked up and distributed here in New York sooner rather than later. For more skinny on the new Kaufman film, as well as an interesting look at Steven Soderbergh's newest film, follow the link below.

NY Times

Cindy Sherman's "Untitled Film Stills"

I came across an interesting article on NY mag's website today. It's a one on one interview with photographer Cindy Sherman, who shot to notoriety as a result of a series she shot focusing on herself as an actress at different points in a career. The series, "Untitled Film Stills," was done between 1977 and 1980, and since has provoked a lot of interesting papers and analysis. One of the questions in the interview focuses on the idea that the series is at least partially a statement on men's objectification of women, but Sherman claims that wasn't an intention, saying - "I was totally unaware of that. In the late seventies, fresh out of college, I was trying to come to terms with my own ambivalence about liking to put makeup on but feeling, “Oh no, we have to be natural here, you’re not supposed to try and enhance anything."" If you're interested, follow the link below to read the entire interview.

Cindy Sherman

The Scream Returns to the Public Eye

Four years ago Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream was stolen from a German museum by masked gunmen. After bouncing around for more than a year and finally being recovered by police, it's now finally being put back on display. The news is wonderful for art lovers itching at a chance to see such a well regarded piece. Unfortunately, however, both The Scream and the other piece stolen back in 2004 wear everlasting reminders that they were given less than the royal treatment after being lifted.

Even though both paintings underwent an extensive restoration since they were recovered, each of them now have a small amount of water damage. The other painting, The Madonna, suffered both cuts and tears during it's stay with the burglars. Due to new, high-tech restoration methods and the diligence of the museum's curators, all the damage has been repaired except some smaller, less noticeable marks. For more information on the back story of the heist and now resurfacing of The Scream, have a look at the article I've linked to below.

The Scream Returns

Robert Rauschenberg

As many of you may know, the much beloved and talented American artist Robert Rauschenberg passed away last week. As it were, he's been in the news quite a bit since then. One of his pieces just sold for a record price at Sotheby's and just about every major news outlet in the country ran obituaries for the artist. Today I came across an article on NY Magazines website that is both passionate and insightful, as well as being interesting. If you aren't familiar with Rauschenberg's work, I highly recommend that you search some out. If you are, you may not be a fan but you can't certainly appreciate the talent the man had. If you're interested in learning more about him, I've posted a link to the fore mentioned article here:

http://nymag.com/arts/art/features/47019/

Featured Artist: Spencer Tunick

Over the weekend I discovered some really amazing photographs by NY installation artist and photographer Spencer Tunick. If you haven't seen any of his work before, I strongly suggest following the link at the bottom of this post to his website. Tunick specializes in massive nude installations which he photographs. The home page of his website features an overhead shot of a square in Mexico City that's filled to the brim with 18,000 nude people lying in the fetal position.

Upon first viewing, I was convinced that the photo had been doctored or layered in someway, but after looking into it, it turns out that he actually manages to get thousands of people to pose for all of his photos. Tunick lives and works (mostly) in New York, but his work is on display in museums all over the world. If you're interested, have a look at his website and select the "artwork" tab to see some of his incredible work.

http://www.spencertunick.com/index.html

How A Navy Officer Saved Some Amazing Iraqi Art

There's a really interesting article over at NY Magazine about a Naval officer who saved several pieces of Iraqi art by taking it out of Baghdad and back to New York with him. While he was working at the US Embassy in Baghdad, Christopher Brownfield befriended the owner of a local art shop who eventually led him to a ton of different struggling artists. During his stay in Iraq, he gradually got his hands on dozens of pieces, which he in turned shipped home with the hope of eventually selling to help out his new Iraqi artist friends. The article is genuinely fascinating, so you should head to the NY Mag site to read it for yourself.

http://nymag.com/arts/art/features/46794/

The Tate Gets Streetwise

Once again, street art is at the forefront of the news this week. I know, I know, I've mentioned Banksy several times since I started this blog, but can I help it that the dude is all over the place? It's no secret that street art's been around awhile. A ton of the graffiti in the NYC subway tunnels is older than I am, so why is it that it's still considered by a lot of scholars to be one of those "un-arty arts?"

Like most good art of the last 500 years, street art is frowned upon in it's time and subversive at its best. It looks like we may finally be hitting that point where graffiti and the many other variations of the genre are finally starting to gain some respectability. As I mentioned last week, Banksy recently had a gallery show in London where Brad and Angelina picked up at least one of his pieces for over a million dollars. Now, the Tate Modern, one of the biggest modern art galleries in the world, is putting on a massive perspective on the street art movement. Banksy will be there, as well as dozens of other artists from all over the globe.

I think it's just about high-time that gallery owners and museum curators started to realize that there is something substantial going on in the streets, and it's worth putting on view for a larger audience. I guess the only question now is, how many times does an artist have to have work shown in museums and sold for absurd amounts of money before they're no longer "street?" I guess if Jay Z can be a bigillion air and still be street, Banksy can hang onto his street cred for a little while longer.

Michel Gondry on Life, DIY Movies and Working With Jim Carrey

My Friday Night adventure over to the Times Center to see Michel Gondry turned out to be well worth the $25 I paid for it. As I mentioned at the end of last week, The Museum of the Moving Image presented "An Evening with Michel Gondry," the french filmmaker behind many of the best music videos of the past fifteen years and popular feature films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and this years Be Kind, Rewind starring Jack Black.

The two hour event started off to an awkward start, when the lights dimmed and a pair of music videos began without, well, any video. It set the trend for an a barrage of technical problems that turned out to be more funny than frustrating. Gondry, who's accent is so thick it took a few minutes to get used to, has a hilariously dry, caustic sense of humor that pairs well with awkward situations. Each time a clip was introduced, a great disbelieving smirk and a shrug of the shoulders kind of made you wish it wouldn't work, just so the audience could hear him quip again.

Amongst the topics of the night, Gondry touched on kick starting his career with Bjork, honing his directing skills by trying to keep Jim Carrey from over-acting and hanging out in Take out chinese joints in BedStuy with Dave Chapelle. I'd seen most of Gondry's work before attending, so few of the clips shown were new to me, but there was a compliation of videos made at a recent installation of props and costumes that was put on at the Reitch gallery recently. Be Kind, Rewind centers around re-making (or as it's coined in the movie, "Sweeding") Hollywood movies. The installation offered to seperate workshops and supplies that allowed attendees to create and then watch their own movies. The reel shown at the Times Center had quite a few funny moments and a guest appearance by Tim Robbins.

On the whole, the event was a lot of fun. The Museum of Moving Image is putting on several of the events over the next month, and any one interested in a thoughtful and interesting evening would do well to check them out. If you also haven't seen any of Michel Gondry's work, I suggest starting with his collection of music videos, The Work of Michel Gondry. It's got some classic songs and fantastic to put on in the background at parties.

The Museum of the Moving Image

One of my all time favorite museums, The Museum of the Moving Image, lies just across the river from Manhattan in family friendly and semi-hipster haven Astoria. Unfortunately, MOMI's main attraction, the Behind the Screen Exhibition, is closed for renovation through the Summer. But, that hasn't kept the curators from putting together a fantastic Spring Series of events staged at the Times Center in the city.

Over the course of next month, MOMI will host a string of Inside the Actors Studio-esque "Evening With" sessions with renowned directors. I was lucky enough to score some tickets for tonight's event, "An Evening with Michel Gondry." The director, best known for his music video work with the likes of The White Stripes, Radiohead and The Foo Fighters, picked up quite a large following of young film-o-philes after the release of his break-out film written by Charlie Kaufmann, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I'm super excited about hearing the Frenchman discuss his quirky visual style and seemingly infinite imagination and I'll be sure to post Monday with more info about the night.

Other events in the Spring series include discussions with Stanley Tucci, Werner Herzog and a pair of German/Turkish films screenings in collaboration with the Goethe Institute. For further information, check out the Museum of the Moving Image's website -

http://www.movingimage.us/site/site.php

Graffiti Research Lab & BAM

I mentioned a few weeks ago the Graffiti Research lab and their massive digital tagging. They've hit the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as a ton of other notable buildings around the globe. The laser technology they use is amazing, and apparently they've scheduled another Brooklyn tag for later this month.

The GRL will be tagging the side of the Brooklyn Academy of Music Peter J. Sharp building later this month (May 29th & 31st) to coincide with two midnight screenings of a documentary about their methods titled Graffiti Research Lab: The First Season at midnight on the 31st. The GRL events are part of the Sundance Series BAM is putting on from May 29th to June 8th.

For more scheduling details, head over to BAM's website at:

http://bam.org/sundance/frontier_2008_LASER.aspx

More on Banksy - The Michelangelo of Graffiti?

Banksy is back in the news this week, but this time for more . . . respectable reasons than his around town "vandalizing" and street art. A reputable West End gallery in London is staging a show of his work which is raking in a lot of money. The London Telegraph article, cleverly titled the Michelangelo of Graffiti, gives some interesting background on the artist, as well as highlights some of the more comical aspects of a self proclaimed anarchist, street artist and man of the streets selling pieces to Brad and Angelina for millions of dollars. Have a look at the article for all the juicy details on the new billionare (ok, not quite).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/05/06/bafest106.xml

Francis Bacon as the Next Picasso

I know it sounds crazy, but when you start talking price points and sales . . . there's not much of a difference these days. NY Mag has an article/interview discussing a Francis Bacon triptyche that's going on sale at Sotheby's this month for a whopping $70 million. Not bad for a guy who specialized in blurry pope portraits.

The article serves as an interesting lesson in how the art world works. A specific artist starts to sell well and the snowball just keeps getting bigger. As it's put the the NY article,

“Bacon used to be priced within the contemporary-art market,” says Sotheby’s Tobias Meyer. Then, starting in 2006, the Bacon market “started to align itself with the twentieth-century-masterpiece market, particularly toward Picasso.”

And that is that. People keep buying, prices escalate, and the next thing you know your work is selling for almost 100 million dollars. My mind is blown. Below, I've posted a link to the full interview.

http://nymag.com/arts/art/features/46641/

Grand Theft Auto Comes To New York

This weekend it seems like the media is deluged with images of two things, Iron Man and the most recent installment of the wildly popular video game series, Grand Theft Auto. This time around it's set in New York, which got me interested and prompted a little research into the topic. The more I read, the more impressed I was by the scope and detail that went into the design of the game.

With the release of next-gen platforms like PS3 and X-Box 360, the graphics of video games are more intricate than ever. Some people might argue with me, but there's something really artful about designing an entire city (including grafitti, architecture, clothing design and lighting) from the ground up. I used to wax philosophical on the subject of film as the ultimate artform because it incorporates photography, music, fashion, lighting, acting and set design, but as video games become more elaborate, you could make the same argument for them.

I don't own a PS3 or an X Box 360, I just can't bring myself to shell out that type of money, but I do want to try out the new GTA game. There's got to be something oddly satisfying about wandering around your real life neighborhood in a virtual setting, freed from the boundaries of all law and consequence.