Category Archives: art

They’re so irritating, those lists

After 1001 Books (2006), 1001 Films (2004) and 1001 Albums (2006), it is now time for:

1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die (2007) – Stephen Farthing
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

They’re so irritating, those lists of the best ten paintings, the best five novels… It’s ludicrous: if you’re ever in a position where your options are so reduced then the chances are you won’t have any choice. OK, you might be torn between which books to take on a long flight or for a weekend in the country but, asked to choose in some definitive way between Tolstoy or Dostoevsky the only reasonable response is “both”. Likewise, if you’re forced to choose just ten great paintings then what is at stake is probably not your personal preference but the fate of art and civilisation itself. –Geoff Dyer via http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Does anyone have a digital list of the painting entries?

Related: painting – greatness – visual arts – lists

See also: 1001 Books (2006) – 1001 Films (2004) – 1001 Albums (2006)

This is obscene art

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAIIogcH49I

LUX – The Chapman brothers at Tate Modern.

Lux is a television show on culture presented by my youth hero Luc Janssen. His radio show Krapuul Deluxe was highly influential and he has been described as Belgium’s answer to John Peel. Recently, Janssen has fallen out of favour, especially since an interview I read with him in De Morgen where he said something stupid about the identity-creating-capabilities of owning a Le Corbusier chair.

Taxidermia (2006) – György Pálfi

Taxidermia (2006) – György Pálfi

It’s difficult to write much about Taxidermia in a blog that my parents read! The film, directed by György Pálfi, is visually and thematically grotesque. It’s full of startling, transgressive images. (Even the original poster had to be obscured, though the poster used for the Cannes Film Festival premiere is uncensored.) www.matthewhunt.com/blog

György Pálfi’s grotesque tale of three generations of men, including an obese speed eater, an embalmer of gigantic cats, and a man who shoots fire out of his penis. www.imdb.com/title/tt0410730/

Taxidermia is a 2006 film about three generations from Hungary, including a taxidermist, starting during the Second World War. The film is surreal in nature with dark comedy. The director is György Pálfi. The film is a Hungary / Austria / France collaboration and the language is Hungarian. The film is based on short stories by Lajos Parti Nagy. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxidermia

Aside from his albums and collaborations, Amon Tobin has also produced the composition to the Hungarian film, Taxidermia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amon_Tobin

György Pálfi est un réalisateur et scénariste hongrois né le 11 avril 1974 à Budapest. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gy%C3%B6rgy_P%C3%A1lfi

German language trailer at YouTube:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMODCtHZmJo]

Hungarian trailer at YouTube

French trailer at YouTube:

Amon Tobin soundtrack excerpt of same

The breeding of money

Donald Kuspit on contemporary art in Artnet:

By way of introduction, I want to quote some lines from the tenth and final Duino Elegy of Rainer Maria Rilke. Describing the “booths” in a fair — let’s call it an art fair — “that can please the most curious tastes,” he asserts that there’s one “especially worth seeing (for adults only): the breeding of Money! Anatomy made amusing! Money’s organs on view! Nothing concealed! Instructive, and guaranteed to increase fertility!”

I will suggest that the irrational exuberance of the contemporary art market is about the breeding of money, not the fertility of art, and that commercially precious works of art have become the organ grinder’s monkeys of money. They exist to increase the generative value and staying power of money — the power of money to breed money, to fertilize itself — not the value and staying power of art. —Donald Kuspit