We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all ‘now,’ in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.
“I think this is good news. As people become increasingly comfortable with drawing their culture from a rich range of sources — cherry-picking whatever makes sense to them — it becomes more natural to do the same thing with their social, political and other cultural ideas. The sharing of art is a precursor to the sharing of other human experiences, for what is pleasurable in art becomes thinkable in life.
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Hein Heckroth, “The Ballet of the Red Shoes” (1948)
The zenith of Powell and Pressburger’s masterpiece THE RED SHOES comes during its 17-minute ballet number, but Heckroth, a surrealist painter, was the one largely responsible for the famed sequence’s design. He made hundreds of oil paintings (like the one above) that were turned into an animated film, which in turn inspired the set-piece’s choreography and score.
My favorite image-based site on the web alongside If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats is this terrific blog, which compiles amazing images across time and cultures. To give you an example of what the site offers, there have been recent posts on Year of the Monkey postcards, vintage souvenir magician programs, Tibetan anatomical paintings, and so much more, all in luscious hi-res. But like If Charlie Parker…, Ephemera Assemblyman is really a triumph of curation, an education in photos and drawings.
Letter from Mick Jagger to Andy Warhol, on designing album art for the Stones.
David Hockney, “Untitled” (2009)
Famed painter David Hockey has been making hundreds of pieces of digital artwork with the iPhone’s Brushes application. He emails each to a dozen or so friends, and lets them distribute from there.
There are plenty of sites out there that feature old pulp paperback covers and B-movie posters, but there’s something about the collection of this blog’s subversive esoterica and rare exotica that sets it apart. In particular, I’m thankful for FringePop turning me onto the wildly lurid cover art of Tom Cannizaro.
A charming drawing by illustrator Pierre Le Tan, whose work has appeared in publications like The New Yorker. I discovered Le Tan, though, through his wonderful cover designs for the Criterion editions of Whit Stillman’s METROPOLITAN and THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO.
“Foggy Forest” (1992)
Tokyo sculptor Nakaya Fujiko doesn’t work with the traditional materials like clay or marble to create her work; instead, she uses fog. Her artificial fog is chemical free, using water pushed through mounted nozzles. You might call her sculpture a continutation of the work of her father Ukichiro Nakaya, a researcher who supposedly invented the first artificial snow crystals.
Walter Potter, “Squirrels Take Tea” (c. 1870s)
Potter was a famed English taxidermist known for his incredibly lifelike (and creepy, and funny) stuffed animals aping everyday human behavior, often in richly detailed dioramas. I see some of Potter’s style and sense of humor in Wes Anderson’s upcoming rendition of FANTASTIC MR. FOX.
I’ve been reading up on the curious trend of “dummy boards” for the past few days, although I’m surprised by the lack of information on them online. From roughly the 1650s through the 1730s, these painted, life-size, incredibly lifelike (and somewhat terrifying) figurine standees became common fixtures in English country homes, often depicting not historical figures, but commoners — children, servants, soldiers, family members. Though many suspect their purpose was merely decorative (something to put in front of the fireplace during the summer months), many believe they were intended to ward off intruders or, more interestingly, help fight loneliness.
Clare Graham has written a book on the subject, where she laments this fallen art form: “It is usually suggested that the earliest figures were the sophisticated creations of well known artists, designed to stand in great houses. Gradually, they yielded to mass production and, as the eighteenth century wore on, became props for theatres, inns and pleasure gardens, gradually sinking to their current ignominious position of holding menus in front of restaurants.”
Jordan Wolfson, “Untitled (Frank Painting Company, Inc.)” (1966/2006) From artist Jordan Wolfson at the 2006 Whitney Biennial, a very clever minimalist piece.
A photograph by David Byrne, courtesy of his online journal, of a room designed by the great Christian Marclay (of A Record Without A Cover fame) from the Sonic Youth exhibition “Sensational Fix,” currently on display in Dusseldorf.
Byrne writes perceptively of the famed band, and the show: “This is closer to how they must see themselves — as the hyphenate legacy of both the Beat and performance art worlds, and the wacky fringes of pop culture — death metal, freaky cults, underground comics, vinyl junkies and the dark side of Madonna and Karen Carpenter. What’s nice about it is the thread that ties together the art world with the pop music world with the Beat poets and a million others — and it stretches through time, backwards, forwards and sideways. It’s also a world of fandom — in a way, Sonic Youth are impresarios presenting the work of others that they love.”
John Lurie, “Bear Surprise” (2006)
A wonderfully funny, faux-primitivist painting by the great John Lurie, who has turned to art over the last decade (from his incredible film, TV, and music work) since falling ill. Strangely, this particular painting became something of an internet sensation in Russia.
A famous pop artist, teacher, and counter culture hero — not to mention practicing nun — Sister Corita Kent’s positive-themed serigraphs drew the love of hippies and the ire of the Catholic church in the 60s and 70s, landing her at one point on the cover of Newsweek. Here is an inspirational list of rules for her art students.
