- The Most Offensive Painting Ever Made
Posted on 15 Jul 2010 in Africa, After Image, Art
Yiull Damaso has achieved a true artistic milestone. He has created what is quite possibly the most offensive image ever made. The BBC reports that the forty-one year old South African artist is completing a large painting depicting former South African president and Nobel Laureate, Nelson Mandela as a corpse in the process of being dissected.
- Larry Rivers, NYU, and Child Pornography
Posted on 09 Jul 2010 in After Image, Art
How should we respond, however, when sexual abuse is the subject of a piece and a means by which it is created? A recent scandal involving the archives of the late pop artist, Larry Rivers is forcing us to engage with this issue.
- Paul Emmanuel: Transitions: Identity Construction in South Africa
Posted on 29 Jun 2010 in After Image, Art
As Emmanuel watched black and white soldiers go through the same seminal moment of transition, he discovered that the process now represented community building, national pride, and the overcoming of past evils rather than prejudice, violence and control.
- Arizona and the Politics of Mural Painting
Posted on 07 Jun 2010 in After Image, Art
Murals are designed to unite communities, create beauty and celebrate common values. The horrific reaction to “Go on Green” makes a mockery of these noble intentions. One cannot help but wonder how this fallout is being interpreted by the children of Miller Valley Elementary, who learned at a young age that their faces are seen as an insult to their community.
- Alice Leora Briggs: Art from Juárez
Posted on 03 Jun 2010 in After Image, Art, Death, Mexico
While Briggs subject matter is unpleasant, her work has a dark beauty and an immediacy not often seen in contemporary art. Its visual strength and documentary quality compels you to keep looking and inspires you to learn more about the tragic situation that she chronicles.
- Art Review: Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers at the Hirshhorn, Washington, DC
Posted on 03 Jun 2010 in Art, Art & Design
In one of Klein’s, racier projects, the Anthropometry series, the artist dressed to the nines and directed naked ladies while they painted themselves in IKB paint and impressed their bodies onto the canvas. Musicians played in the background and an audience of art lovers watched the spectacle.
- Pritzker Prize goes to Bowery Museum’s Architects
Posted on 24 May 2010 in After Image, Architecture
The 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize was awarded to the Japanese duo, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa. Their firm, Sanaa, is responsible for creating some of the most daring and elegant buildings of the last decade, including the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York (2007), and the 21st Century museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan.
- Recycling Meets Recreation
Posted on 17 May 2010 in After Image, Architecture, Environment
Last year Macro-Sea conceived of the Dumpster Pool. The designers constructed what they call a “lo-fi country club” in a trash-filled lot in Brooklyn. The mini oasis consisted of three adjacent swimming pools made out of repurposed dumpsters.
- The Life and Work of Eadweard Muybridge
Posted on 07 May 2010 in After Image, Art, Photography
Muybridge had married his young assistant, in 1871. After a while, he began to suspect that she was having an affair with theater critic, Harry Larkyns. In 1874, Muybridge found a photograph of the couple’s baby son, on the back of which, his wife had scralled “Little Harry.” Enraged, he tracked down Larkyns and shot him dead. The jury deemed Muybridge’s vengeance justifiable and he was acquitted. The couple’s young son was deposited in an orphanage.
- Artist’s Blacklist Fights Speculation
Posted on 30 Apr 2010 in After Image, Art
Although the market has been good to Ms. Dumas, the artist’s distaste for speculative art buyers has led her to create a ‘blacklist’ of individuals to whom she will not sell a piece. If she and her dealers discover that a collector has been buying paintings only to turn them over for a profit, they add said philistine to the index.
- Suburban Gothic: A. Clarke Bedford’s America
Posted on 28 Apr 2010 in After Image, Art
Bedford explains “one begins to wonder if every snapshot of grandparents in a Model A Ford in Yosemite National Park, every image of a postwar father in an Army uniform, every mother in a 50s suburban kitchen, every painful Vietnam-era Christmas morning isn’t essentially the same.” The artist is able to look beyond the individual objects and snapshots and begins to view them as evidence of certain cultural practices. He examines why taking pictures is an important American pastime, and why certain types of photographs, like wedding pictures and portraits of stoic soldiers in uniform surface so frequently.
- How to Get Your Work in the Louvre? Hang it up Yourself!
Posted on 26 Apr 2010 in After Image, Art
Ironically, while Mr. Guérineau has indicated a desire to infuse France’s museums with fresh blood and new ideas, his recent stunt is essentially an imitation of a more complex prank pulled off in March of 2005 by Banksy. The English graffiti artist smuggled four of his own artworks into four of New York’s major museums. While Guérineau’s actions seem to stem from desperation and barely disguised megalomania, Banksy’s prank was an intelligent, well thought-out experiment. The pieces he proffered were designed to act in conversation with existing museum exhibits and to express his political oppinions about a variety of issues.
- Running Fence: Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Masterpiece Revisited at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Posted on 19 Apr 2010 in After Image, Art
While one might be tempted to attribute the project’s failure to grandiose ambition, the success of Running Fence, an older Christo Jeanne-Claude collaboration, shows us that The Gates was not nearly ambitious enough.
- Where’s the Love? Robert Indiana Sued by Former Business Partner
Posted on 12 Apr 2010 in After Image, Art
With the possible exception of Milton Glaser’s I love New York, no single piece of typography has garnered more attention than Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE design. The artist originally created the image in 1964 to adorn a Christmas card being sold at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1970, a sculptural version made of corten steel was exhibited in New York.
- A Match Made in Heaven: Jeff Koons’ BMW Art Car
Posted on 12 Apr 2010 in After Image, Art, Design, Sports
Jeff Koons: design sketch for the 17th BMW Art Car 2010 © Jeff Koons, Image Source: Cartype On April 6th, international art star, Jeff Koons revealed his design for his BMW art car. The company has been commisioning artists to adorn vehicles since 1975. The project started when Hervé Poulain, an auctioneer and race car driver asked his friend, Alexander Calder, to [...]
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