Category: ART

Posted on

Bullshit and Van Gogh’s Ear

What leaves you most wary during Election Season with its Polls (scroll down)

<> <> Silent Majority by Janet Paparelli
(Janet Paparelli sent me her new year’s greeting with this image.)

Democrazy is here to stay. (Mark Young who posted this shortest blog entry is a poet from Australia)
Dogmacracy (Daisy and Spike – or Hillary vs Obama, the two chihuahuas’ one act play) now enters another round for a re-run. (They can’t raise money but they can growl and pretend better than any of the current candidates. Growling politicians is universal, here is Issay Ogata playing a politician.)
Matt has two great links on Why not outsource American politics? and Bullshit

Clinton Diebold Bump

The point is this: Voting machine security is essential to our democratic process, and remains a problem that has not been resolved.
As long as these devices have serious vulnerabilities, doubt is possible, and a healthy democracy cannot function effectively in the shadows.

He lost to Nixon in 1972, still speaks to us with the voice of reason.

And something else that turns your ear to dead meat.
David Ireland David Ireland
Three Attempts to Understand Van Gogh’s Ear in Terms of the Map of Africa, 1987 (image source)
David Ireland’s 500 Capp Street: Inside And Soon To Be On The Market. (David Ireland mini retrospective is long overdue, stay tuned.)


(Directed by Alfonso Cuarón)
“The Shock Doctrine” is high lighted at agog for people who don’t have time to read.

Posted on

Peter Hutton – At Sea

At Sea by Peter Hutton (image source)

A restrained Hutton explained onstage that — having spent 10 years as a merchant marine in his youth — he initially wanted to make a film about ship-breaking, the messy and dangerous process by which rusting hulks are broken down into their component elements in cash-starved countries like Bangladesh. After three hours of shooting in one of these ship-breaking yards, he was kicked out, but the usable footage prompted him to construct a trilogy of sorts: the building, voyage and dismantling of a ship.(the reeler – scroll down)

Peter Hutton Peter Hutton

After experiencing mankind’s ability to create such a monstrosity once it’s at sea the camera is locked on to a wide shot of many cargo boxes. I couldn’t help but begin to become concerned with what all those cargo boxes contain. Perhaps some of them are full of grain and other essentials but more than likely they contain garbage that will be consumed and tossed out on to the trash heap, just like the ship that carries them.
At Sea is a 60minute motion picture postcard that delivered an experience distinct in the cinema a un-tethered, by the constraints of conventional story-telling, look at commerce and its consequences. Tim Massett

Part I discussion Peter Hutton had after his retrospective screening at the Capitol Theater in Windsor Ontario for Media City 13 on February 17, 2007 on Youtube.

Thanks Hal Lum for sharing and introducing Peter Hutton to us.

Posted on

Happy New Year 2008

<><><><><><>Happy New Year 2008 by Fung Lin Hall Palm tree trunks

Marjorie Perloff
The Palm at the End of the Mind:
Thomas Hines’s Wilshire, Ed Ruscha’s Sunset, Robbert Flick’s Pico

This piece is about 13 printed pages long.

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze décor,

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

— Wallace Stevens, “Of Mere Being”[1]

Ed Ruscha talks about the magic of Intaglio (etching) process here on video.

Crash by Jim Dine and this from John Baldessari

Posted on

Doodle 13

Doodle 13Xmas image by Fung Lin Hall

Head by Louise Bourgeoise

This head belongs to Gordon Matta Clark

Kara Walker did this cover design for New Yorker Magazine.

Wayne Thiebaud did too.

Paint by Pixels,” Harry Bliss.

A sad Christmas cover design by Anita Kunz, 2005 (See all of holiday cover designs here)

Iberia Quarries by Burtynsky He did not do the New Yorker cover.

That’s all folks, be good, don’t drink and drive.

Doodle 13 Xmas image by Fung Lin Hall Plus something or other. (Actually a photo of palm trees trunk repeated three times)

Posted on

Gif Collection II

Kenneth Noland Kenneth Noland from Anaba.

Click on HO HO HO Happy action gif and Well well well Melancholy – they are a few of my favorite gif animations from Hans Heiner Buhr.

Jarmananimation In the spirit of Derek Jarman

Alice by Jan Svankmajer. (via)Alice by Jan Svankmajer

Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla

On Dec 25 2007, Louise Bourgeois will be 96 years old, Happy Birthday Loubou.
Louise Clowning (This is a repost.)

Let us not forget Quentin Crisp who was also born on Dec 25.
He said England was a mistake.
A real cool gif map to find his apartment.
The trailer for Orlando is at Sally Potter’s homepage. Watch Quentin Crisp as the Queen of England.

Grayland and Gif Collection I – (enough motion already)

Posted on

Before and After

Trader Joe’s bathroom wall has been newly renovated with underwater painting.
New Bathroom Trader Joe bathroom digital image by Fung Lin Hall design at Trader Joe.

Before the wall depicted desert landscape.
Old BathroomTrader Joe's bathroom digital image by Fung Lin Hall
A digital montage of Trader’s Joe’s bathroom wall.

Speaking of bathroom, here are three images using toilet paper.
TP Meditation I~digital image by Fung Lin Hall
TP Meditation II digital image by Fung Lin Hall

TP Meditation IIIdigital image by Fung Lin Hall

Humans are the only creatures who use toilet paper – and what a nightmare!! (Don’t know who designed this paper toilet site.)

Update: this guy did the Toilet Paper web art.

Posted on

Rain

First winter rain by Matsuo Basho

First winter rain–
even the monkey
seems to want a raincoat.

Rain Rain Rain Rain Monoprints by Fung Lin Hall
Three Monoprints by Fung Lin Hall

The Rain by Robert Creeley

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quite, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent–
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

Marjorie Perloff on Robert Creeley’s Radical Poetics.

Posted on

Man Ray and Steichen

May Ray died twenty-nine years ago today on Nov. 18, 1976

Hero I Monotype by Janet Paparelli Monotype by Janet Paparelli

Six Man Ray films at Ubuweb

Lee Miller, an assistant, muse and onetime girlfriend of Man Ray is getting a lot of attention these days.

Lee Miller Lee Miller photograph by Man Ray(image source)

Portrait Imaginaire de Marquis de Sade this one without the burning building.

His portrait of Antonin Artaud is all too familiar for Artaud fans.

Marcel Duchamp with shaving cream from Man Ray and its double.

Unlike American born Man Ray who died in Paris, Steichen was born in Luxembourg, he lived a long life and died in America. Both men started out with painting, however Steichen burned all of his paintings in the 1920’s.

Edward Steichen Steichen

A novel based on Edward Steichen is out recently.

This first novel of London born Mitchell deals with the life of real world photographer Edward Steichen during two period of his long life 1906-1914 when he lived and worked in France and 1917 to 1923 with the American entry into WWI and events immediately after the war. An American in Paris – The Last Summer of the World, Emily Mitchell, 2007

Self Portrait with Photographic Paraphernelia

Portrait of Brancuci among his sculptures

Looking back on Edward Steichen with a photo of Fred Astaire (Time magazine)

Match and MatchboxesMatches and Matchboxes by Edward Steichen (image source)

Posted on

Y Tu MoMa También

Looking at Flavin’s neon wall sculpture Flavin

Two ravers who came home from a club and decided to take more ecstacy. after a walk in the park, they found the museum. They are both dancing to the same album on their headphones (Beaucoup Fish by Underworld) but are slightly out of synch. Dan Flavin’s work looks brilliant on drugs, they both think. The Backstory of Minimoma -Drawing-Animation 2000, Minimoma by Craig Robinson

Looking at Looking at Martin Puryear by Fung Lin Hall wall sculpture by Martin Puryear.

The above photo was taken at DC Hirshhorn Museum long long ago.
This photo was incorporated in my Post Mutant Eggplant index page. If you were the girl with a great t-shirt looking at Martin Puryear thanks for being there that day. (I will not make up your background story.)

Martin Puryear:Thirty Year Retrospective, at the MoMA

The above clip was recorded by James Kalm.

Coming upon sculptures by Martin Puryear is always an arresting pleasure. – Peter Schjeldahl (Seeing Things – the New Yorker)

Here is another short clip on youtube from Nebraska, showing a piece by Puryear called a Nightmare.

Puryear is certainly one of my contemporary heroes.
I got to meet him a few years back at Penland. He seemed like a really gentle soul with little pretense. (A note from Robert Gardner, the Asheville Glass master.)

And one more see Dennis Kucinich and his wife (Minipops by Craig Robinson).

Posted on

Fastest Cochroach – Norman Mailer R.I.P.

  • If Fred McDarrah was the eyes for the Voice, Norman Mailer would have been the eyebrow and the brain for the Voice. Norman Mailer who co-founded the Village Voice passed away following the death of the Voice Photographer Fred McDarrah.

    Obit by David Wiegand (SF Gate), Obit by Louis Menand of the Newyorker. BBC here, Villagevoice here.

    Mailer as Houdini Norman Mailer from Cremaster 2 Mathew Barney
    Norman Mailer, who mythified Gilmore in his best-selling book The Executioner’s Song, plays the escapologist Harry Houdini. (Mathew B. plays Gary Gilmore in his Cremaster 2.)

    Mathew Barney spoke of Mailer, Gary Gilmore and Houdini.

    Well, I think what Norman Mailer’s book The Executioner’s Song does so elegantly is it describes the psychological state that landscape creates.

    I think he has (qualities) not so different from this idea of Houdini having himself chained and locked and blindfolded and thrown in a box and this is the procedure to make a light, creative gesture. There’s a brutality in there that appeals to me in the same way. There’s a brutality and a physicality… that combination of accuracy and speed and violence. (Read more here)

    Mailer on reincarnation

    You believe in reincarnation. So what are you coming back as?
    Well, I’m waiting, right? I’m in the waiting room. And finally my name is called. I go in and there’s a monitoring angel who says, Mr Mailer, we’re very glad to meet you. The good news is you’ve been passed for reincarnation. I say, Oh thank you, I really didn’t want to go into eternal peace. And the monitoring angel says, Well, between us, it isn’t really necessarily eternal peace. It can be a little hectic. Let me see, before I look and see what we’ve got you down for, we always ask people, What would you like to be in your next life? And I say, Well, I think I’d like to be a black athlete. I don’t care where you put me, I’ll take my chances, but yes, that’s what I want to be, a black athlete.
    And the monitoring angel says, Listen, Mailer, we’re so oversubscribed in that department. Everybody wants to be a black athlete in their next life. Let me see what we’ve got you booked for. So he opens the big book, looks, and says, Well, we’ve got you down for a cockroach. But here’s the good news: you’ll be the fastest cockroach on the block. (From here)

    My country is my spiritual wife and I lost respect for her. (Mailer on Youtube with French subtitle)

    Mailer and his perfectionism – the sound of punching himself to eternity. Tough Guys – Nostalgia

    Cinematic Life of Norman Mailer (Harvard Films Archive)

    Mr. Tendentious and his enemies.

    The last word was reserved for Andy Warhol: ‘I always thought Norman kept a low profile, that’s what I liked about him. (via greencinedaily also from Norman Mailer writes his own Obituary)

    Mailer was an Aquarius dog – Brash Rescuer DOB:January 31, 1923