Category Archives: art

Faultlines in 20th century art

Fault lines caused by an ancient earthquake

Faultlines in 20th century art

The classification above is indebted to Sex in History by Gordon Rattray Taylor (see Matrism and Patrism) and the work of Camille Paglia, especially Sexual Personae. Both theorists classify along Apollonian and Dionysian axes.

Lost and found: biomorphism

Unidentified Art Nouveau/Art Deco object

The previous post by >dmtls Merzbau on Carlo Mollino prompted me to Google for the term biomorphism once more and there it was, the image I had found on the web a couple of years back but had since been unable to find again. Biomorphism connects with anthropomorphism, zoomorphism, Casa Milà, Surrealism, the grotesque, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Isamu Noguchi, Carlo Mollino, Luigi Colani in the visual realm and with literary tropes in the work of H. P. Lovecraft and Lautréamont; and provides a potent antidote to sexless modernism.

Mr. Bataille loves flies, so does Boiffard

Mr. Bataille loves flies. Not we: we love the miters of old evocators, the miters of pure linen to whose front point was affixed a blade of gold and upon which flies did not settle, because they had been purified to keep them away.” -André Breton

The photograph of the Papier colant et mouches is by J.-A. Boiffard, first published in 1930 as an illustration for George Bataille’s article “L’esprit moderne et le jeu des transpositions,” in Documents, 1930. No.8, p. 488.

Via Contact Images by Georges Didi-Huberman

See Bretonian and Bataillean strains of Surrealism and toilet philosophy.

See also this wonderful post by Mark Dery on the big toe.

Diamond skull by Hirst sold … to himself

 

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For the Love of God [Google gallery] is a sculpture by artist Damien Hirst produced in 2007. It consists of a platinum cast of a human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless diamonds, including a pear-shaped pink diamond located in the forehead of the skull. Costing $28 million to produce, the work went on display at the White Cube gallery in London at an asking price of $100 million. It was sold on August 30, 2007 for its asking price, making it the most expensive single work by a living artist. Sold to an unnamed investment group, Hirst has kept a share in the work.

Genetologic Research, Very Short Novels and Cinema 299

I am not particularly a fan of “internet memes“, the internet equivalent of chain letters. The “Thinking Blogger Award” is a case in mind which was analyzed most satisfactory by Surreal Documents. However, the current meme started by Broken Projector in response to the work of David B Dale is too good to ignore. Apparently, Gautam of Broken Projector discovered Very Short Novels, an experiment in constrained writing by David B Dale, and liked it so much that he decided to write a 299-word piece on cinema, called Cinema 299. David D Bale responded by writing Surprise Ending, a “very short novel” on cinema, making the circle complete.

From memes to genes is a small step, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce the work of Maarten Vanden Eynde and Koen Vanmechelen.

Genetologic Research is a blog by Belgian/Dutch artist Maarten Vanden Eynde, subtitled “The Science of First Things”. Randomly picked, interesting posts include Mice and Men, Black Hole House, and The Cosmopolitan Chicken, a work by Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen who cross-breeds chickens. His work is currently on display at the Verbeke Foundation.

P. S. Although I stated that I am not a big fan of internet memes, I was very proud and honored to receive the “Thinking Blogger Award” in the past from Tales from the Reading Room, Beyond Groovy Age and Tim Lucas.