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- The Kiss
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- Is This Art?
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Category Archives: Sculpture
2 Art Installations You Won’t Forget!
"Trash People" 1996-2012
HA Schult (b. 1939)
TRASH PEOPLE
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure!
In today’s world of weird and amazing art some of the most compelling and creative works have been born out of the simplest and most abundant of materials: garbage.
HA Schult is a German installation artist famous for creating an army of 1,000 sculptures made from crushed cans and discarded computer parts. These are the “Trash People.”
The “Trash People” have traveled all over the world, from the parks of New York to the Great Wall of China and to Antarctica.
Astonishingly beautiful, they are meant to cause us to consider what we are throwing away…treasures?
Watch this phenomenal video on the “Trash People.”
Click here if unable to view the video.
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"Break Down" 2001
Michael Landy (b. 1963)
BREAK DOWN
London artist Michael Landy made an inventory of everything he owned: every item of furniture, every book, every piece of food, every cat toy, all his family photos, a valuable art collection, his Saab 900 car…The list took three years to complete and it contained 7,227 items.
Then, in a vacant department store, ironically in the most prestigious shopping area in London, with the help of a large machine and a team of operatives, he set about taking apart and destroying it all. After two weeks nothing but powder remained.
All Landy had left were the overalls he was dressed in, his girlfriend, and his cat.
Landy says the art installation, BREAK DOWN, was not a criticism of consumerism. He wanted to know what it felt like to see how much of his life depended upon what he used, what he owned…and therefore, inspire us to ponder the same.
Over 50,000 people came to watch during the two weeks of the installation, BREAK DOWN.
BREAK DOWN…Hard to imagine? You have to see this outlandish video.
Click here if unable to view the video.
Posted in Abstract Expressionist, Artists, Film, Installation, Sculpture
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Art…Here Today, Gone Tomorrow!
"Slits Cut into Frozen Snow" 1988
Andy Goldsworthy
"Yellow and Gold Leaves"
Andy Goldsworthy
Andy Goldsworthy
Most of us have had the pleasure of making a little pretend boat out of a leaf and watching it float away down a stream. Or the feeling of sand at the beach between our toes and the reflection that comes when we see our footprints completely erased by the waves.
Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy’s work is all about these moments of wonder. He explores and seeks intimacy with nature by using twigs, leaves, stones, snow, ice, reeds, and thorns. He assembles them into a kind of sculpture that weather and seasons change and destroy.
Goldsworthy makes his art, it stays for a while, and then it is gone.
The art may disappear but Goldsworthy photographs each piece, the process, and the moments of peak and decay. We may no longer have the art, but we have the memory.
Goldsworthy’s incredible art video!
Click here if unable to view the video.
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"Stonehenge" 3000 BC
Southern England
"Sacrilege"
Bouncy Stonehenge
2012 Olympics, England
Stonehenge
Hey, Andy Goldsworthy isn’t the only artist using nature as his art form!
5000 years ago (the Stone Age), Neolithic builders were erecting what today is Britain’s most treasured monument…Stonehenge. Although the 100 massive stones arranged in a beautiful circular pattern are still puzzling, most archaeologists now consider it an ancient burial ground.
Enter one more artist to the nature party. Jeremy Diller, 42-year-old Turner prize-winning English artist, was asked by the 2012 Olympic committee to make a large piece of art that was British through and through.
The cheeky Diller made an inflatable bouncy Stonehenge! The “art work” is the exact size of Stonehenge (which is huge) and is made for kids and adults to jump and play on. Thousands of Olympic fans did just that…jumped & played. The Brits loved it, but, aware of some “freaky art critics,” as he called them, Diller named his inflatable sculpture “Sacrilege.”
“Stonehenge 2012″
Click here if unable to view the video.
Posted in Ancient, Artists, Contemporary, Film, Installation, Museums, Photography, Sculpture
Tagged Diller, Goldsworthy, Museum, nature, prize, Stonehenge, Tate
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Art Oasis in Marfa, Texas!
Untitled, Milled aluminum, 1982-1986
Donald Judd (1928-1994)
Light Installation, 1996
Dan Flavin (1933-1996)
"Crashed Car Sculpture" 1960's
John Chamberlian (1927-2011)
In 1979, the phenomenally successful sculptor Donald Judd desperately wanted to escape glitzy and gallery-obsessed New York City, and go where “nobody knows you and nobody gives a damn.”
He found a place where nobody gave a damn…Marfa, Texas.
The tiny (pop. 2,000 souls) West Texas/Mexico border town is 200 miles from nowhere! Fly to El Paso and drive three hours and you’re there.
Judd bought dozens of abandoned buildings…among them an old US Cavalry base (later used by the U.S. Government as a camp, housing German POW of WWII), a defunct bank, an empty Safeway, 6 homes and the local hot springs. Judd wanted to use the spaces as they were…the good, the bad, and the ugly, to install his and other works of artists he admired.
Today, Judd’s sculptures and other artists’ world-class art pieces breathe life into the desert. Judd’s most famous installation is a series of 100 aluminum cubes, each one different from the other. Although they are housed in two of the abandoned POW barracks, they reflect the light of the desert streaming in through huge windows. After awhile one can’t tell which is the industrial material and which is nature. It is stunning.
A light installation by acclaimed artist Dan Flavin lines up tubes of bright florescent light overlapping complimentary colors, causing the optic nerve to literally shimmer.
John Chamberlian, who wrested rough magic from scrap metal of wrecked automobile parts, smashing and twisting together fenders, fins, bumpers and hoods, made history in sculpture. Ironically, what we might consider sculpture, glorious in color and form, was mistaken by garbage collectors for scrap metal and two pieces were towed away from outside a Chicago gallery warehouse in 1973.
Visitors are encouraged to get close to the art…and to get close to the spaces AROUND the art. Some even take their morning run through the art.
But Marfa isn’t just a sleepy little art town. Marfa is a state of mind.
Art students, emerging artists, famous artists, movie stars, poets, filmmakers, and renowned architects, can all be seen either giving formal lectures or hanging out at Brooklyn abstract painter Jeff Elrod’s studio. Elrod’s funky studio serves as a clubhouse/crash pad for the artists and is the scene of outlandish plays, alternative rock band music and just plain acting out!
Just a few hotels…historic El Paisano (the movie Giant was filmed there) and El Cosmico (rent nightly your very own Airstream trailer!)
Food…this is a different country, where you can do doughnuts in the middle of town in your jeep, and then go and eat escargots with parsley and garlic butter, drink a $200 bottle of wine and watch an experimental play.
¡Vamos a Marfa!
Art in the Desert! Watch this remarkable video of Marfa, Texas.
Click here if unable to view the video.
Posted in Artists, Contemporary, Film, Installation, Sculpture
Tagged Chamberlian, Flavin, Judd, Marfa, sculpture
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The Kiss
"The Kiss" 1907
Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)
By a fortuitous happenstance, Austrian painter, Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece, “The Kiss”, survived the German occupation of Austria during WW II. Adolph Hitler and Hermann Goring considered all modern art “degenerate” but made an exception of the iconic Klimt painting, “The Kiss”, in the Austrian National Belvedere Museum where it had been displayed since 1908.
However, many of Klimt’s canvases along with hundreds of treasures by other artists were not so fortunate. Most of these irreplaceable pieces of art were confiscated from Jewish galleries and victims of the Holocaust and kept “safe” in a castle in Southern Austria…until the night of May 7, 1945. Germany had signed their surrender to be in effect the next day. In a final act of destruction, the SS laid explosives in the castle, lit the fuse and walked out. The castle burned for days and not a single work of art survived.
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"The Kiss" 1889
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)
Auguste Rodin originally intended his sculpture “The Kiss” to represent Dante’s “Gates of Hell” and the consequences of crossing the line between lust and love.
The tale behind “The Kiss” and crossing that line is a 14th century tragedy with which Dante was familiar and included in his epic poem, “The Inferno.”
As the story goes: Francesca da Rimini, a young and innocent woman was tricked into marriage to Gianciotto, a wealthy but disfigured and uncouth aristocrat. She fell passionately in love with Paolo, a handsome and elegant nobleman…who happened to be Gianciotto’s brother. Gianciotto caught the two lovers together and lunged at Paolo with a sword, accidentally killing Francesca who had stepped between the two men. Gianciotto then turned on his brother, Paolo, fatally piercing him with the same sword.
Francesca and Paolo were buried in the same tomb. Five centuries later, Rodin’s sculpture, “The Kiss”, is immortalized as a world wide symbol of erotic passion.
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"From Here to Eternity"
The greatest beach-kiss scene in film was made in 1953 in a tiny cove on Oahu, in the Hawaiian Islands. The film was adapted from James Jones’ excellent novel, “From Here to Eternity.” Not only does your devoted blogger recommend this read, but it was voted one of the 20th century’s best by the Modern Library Board.
Take a look at this video and you will see why Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr made movie history!
Click here if unable to view the video.
Posted in Artists, Film, Sculpture
Tagged Art, From Here to Eternity, Klimt, Rodin, sculpture, the kiss
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Is This Art?
"Fountain" (urinal)
Marcel Duchamp, 1917
"The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" (shark preserved in formaldehyde)
Damien Hirst, 1991
Is This Art?
Marcel Duchamp, one of the most important artists of the 20th century, stunned the art world in 1917 by displaying an upended urinal as a sculpture. This was considered a landmark event, which began the movement of using an ordinary object and elevating it to a work of art.
Damien Hirst, born in 1965, is Britain’s richest living artist. He is famous for his works of art in which dead animals are preserved in formaldehyde. The above pictured dead shark suspended in formaldehyde sold in 1991 for a reported $8 million dollars.
Does taking an object out of context and displaying it elsewhere make us see it differently? Are the curving lines and the smooth porcelain of the urinal beautiful? But what can we say about the shark? Is this art? What do you think?
Posted in Artists, Contemporary, Film, Installation, Sculpture
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3 HOT, new museums you must see!
The Barnes at Philadelphia
Philadelphia, PA
The art thieves of the world are poised for action!
The Barnes Foundation’s $25 BILLION art collection is moving! The works of art; 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes, and 59 Matisses, along with works of Monet, Degas, Seuret, Titian and Picasso with many, many other artifacts are being transported from Dr. Albert C. Barnes’ private mansion/museum, located in a quiet suburban town outside Philadelphia, to the heart of Philadelphia’s downtown museum complex. The convoys of trucks will be rollin’ down Philadelphia’s expressways and via short cuts through sketchy neighborhoods. The FBI has been called in and cloak and dagger tactics are being taken with police escorts and double-bluffs with some convoy trucks heavily guarded carrying only one painting, others loaded to the brim with anti-hijack security systems. Not since World War II, when governments moved their collections from the museums to prevent their destruction, have we seen the magnitude of a move like this.
Dr. Barnes, 1872-1951, born to a working class family, grew up in Philadelphia, made his fortune in the pharmaceutical industry, and became passionate about bringing art to the underprivileged. He began his collections of Impressionist artists long before they were recognized as masterpieces. Now these masterpieces will be displayed just as Dr. Barnes desired, in their own brand new museum, The Barnes at Philadelphia.
Watch this video of the intriguing mystery surrounding the move of the Barnes Collection.
Click here if unable to view the video.
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Crystal Bridges Museum
Bentonville, AK
The dream of Alice Walton, heir to the Wal-Mart fortune, has come true! The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in 2011 in the small Arkansas town of Bentonville. The architect for the buildings was the brilliant Israeli-born Bostonian, Moshe Safdie. The land is wooded and intimate (the setting of Ms. Walton’s father, Sam Walton’s, first five-and-dime store in 1951.)
And the collection…Wow! Works by American giants, from Benjamin West and Georgia O’Keefe, to Jim Dine and Joan Mitchell, are brought to a region that has until now had little opportunity to view the glories of America’s artistic heritage.
The Crystal Bridges Museum will very possibly be a place of pilgrimage for art lovers from around the world.
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Clyfford Still Museum
Denver, CO
A graceful, small museum, reserved for experiencing just ONE great artist’s work has just opened in downtown Denver! Clyfford Still, 1904-1980, was a notoriously cantankerous and private artist who kept almost every piece of art he ever made; paintings on canvas (825), works on paper (1,575) and sculptures (3). He still is renowned for lighting the fuse for the movement of Abstract Expressionism…a movement of hugely scaled style with no recognizable subject matter. Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Barnett Newman followed his lead a few years later.
Still’s will stipulated that his estate be bequeathed to an American city that would build a museum exclusively for these works of art. None of the works could be sold, or given, or exchanged for funds. And Denver did it!! The private community raised $47 million with NO taxes levied! The result is an exquisite and light-filled space for this marvelous artist.