Category Archives: contemporary art

Lydia Lunch @50

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

“Stained Sheets” (1979) Lydia Lunch

“Stained Sheets” is World Music Classic #325

Introducing Lisa Yuskavage

Lisa Yuskavage (1999) by Katy Siegel [Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

I’ve mentioned the work of Yuskavage several times[1] [2][3][4][5] before but never dedicated a post to her.

Lisa Yuskavage (Born May 16, 1962 in Philadelphia) is a contemporary American figurative painter. She is a controversial painter with loaded subject matter such as that has been referred to as “outrageous quasi-pornographic sirens” and “anatomically impossible bimbos” as they mock the male desires of male fantasy.

Yuskavage is classified as a new figurative painter, to which American artists such as John Currin and Graydon Parrish also belong.

Lisa Yuskavage attended Tyler School of Art and received her MFA from Yale in 1986 but came to prominence in the mid-nineties in a series of seminal museum shows “Figure as Fiction” (1993) Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; “My Little Pretty” (1997) Museum of contemporary Art, Chicago; “Presumed Innocence” (1997) “Pop Surrealism” (1998) Aldrich Museum; “The Nude in Contemporary Art” (1999).

Wei Dong, and, Icon of Erotic Art #40

Chinese contemporary art is the most creative strain of contemporary art. I’ve previously featured work by Yue Minjun [1] and Liu Jianhua [2].

Over the past couple of days (an intensive browsing session) I find Wei Dong [3], who can best be described as the Chinese John Currin [4].

I could have discovered Dong in 2006 when Bait (2005) was featured on phantasmaphile [5] and in that same year when PonyXpress featured him[6], but I didn’t.

For those of you in NY, please visit the Nicholas Robinson Gallery and check Dong’s Playmate, (2008)[7].

Playmate is Icon of Erotic Art #40.

Frank Gehry @70

Frank Gehry@70

Dancing House Prague by Frank Gehry by ccwrks

Dancing House, Prague by Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunić (photo by ccwrks)

Frank Gehry (born 28, 1929) is a Canadian-American starchitect based in Los Angeles, California, primarily associated with a strain of postmodern architecture, known as Deconstructivism.

His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions. Many museums, companies, and cities seek Gehry’s services as a badge of distinction, beyond the product he delivers.

His best known works include the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Spain, Walt Disney Concert Hall in the United States, Dancing House in the Czech Republic, and his private residence in California, which jump-started his career, lifting it from the status of “paper architecture“, a phenomenon which many famous architects have experienced in their formative decades through experimentation almost exclusively on paper before receiving their first major commission in later years.

Introducing Outrepart

Outrepart.com

Outrepart.com is an image aggregator run by French web designer Omer Pesquer.

Omer Pesquer also runs Lewub.com and maintains Stéphane Blanquet’s site.

Stelarc’s third ear

Stelarc’s third ear, photo by Nina Sellars from the Flickr stream of k0re

Stelarc’s third ear[1] is performance by Australian body artist Stelarc consisting of a subdermal implant of a cell-cultivated ear in his left arm, thus becoming a living example of transhumanism.

Maybe?

Scatole d’Amore in Conserva

Maybe Marinetti‘s 1927 book Scatole d’Amore in Conserva (boxes of love conserved) later inspired Piero Manzoni so famously to can his own excrement. “Conjecture, your honor!”

“Merda d’Artista” by Piero Manzoni by Flickr user [AMC]

Introducing Yuka Yamaguchi

Yuka Yamaguchi

I found this image[1] by Japanese artist Yuka Yamaguchi yesterday. Artwork which features innards of bodies are a personal favourite, I first realized this after discovering Ferdinand Springer‘s Ecorché I[2] some years ago.

I can’t tell off hand who else belongs in this category from an artistic point of view, but from a utilitarian point of view there is the anatomical art by the lickes of Vesalius, Jacques Gautier d’Agoty [3] and John Bell [4]. Perhaps my first exposure to the subversion of inside and outside was David Cronenberg‘s Videodrome in which a videotape and a pistol are inserted in the belly of James Woods.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytp69fBh0J8&]

Videodrome (belly insertion scene at 2:54)

More of her art can be found by clicking this[6] Google gallery. She also has presences on Youtube[7] and Flickr[8], as well as a blog[9].

She is a woman with excellent and adventurous tastes. From her Flickr profile:

Favorite Books & Authors: Mishima, Osamu Dazai, Mitsuo, Cyu-ya, Oliver Sacks, Murakami Haruki, Saki, Yourou Takeshi, Tsurumi Shunsuke, Kindaichi Haruhiko, Malcom Gladwell, Jan Wong,

Favorite Movies, Stars & Directors: Ozu, Kurosawa, Yamada Yoji, Wong Kar Wai, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, Coen Brothers, Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry

Favorite Music & Artists: Aeroplane, Superpitcher, Junior Boys, Jacques lu Cont, DFA, France Gall, Daniel Wang, Kelley Polar, Loo & Placido, Alpha, Satie, Kahimi Karie, Tom Waits, Stereolab, Yuzo, Fujiyama Ichiro

Most of the comments on Yamaguchi’s work focus on the fact that she transcends the “weird for weird’s sake” aesthetic found in many of her contemporaries (think many of the lowbrow Americans presented by Wurzeltod). Her work is an uncanny mix of cruelty and innocence, benign in spite of its undercurrent of disturbance.

Her closest percursor is probably Roland Topor.

anyspacewhatever, or, in search of philosophical poetry and poetic philosophy

in search of philosophical poetry and poetic philosophy

Time-image is a concept of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze which argues that because of film’s inherent ambiguity (it must be “read” as much as it is “seen” and “heard”); it produces what Deleuze calls “any-space-whatever.” The theory was first brought up in his books on film in relation to such directors as Yasujiro Ozu. He borrowed the term from Pascal Augé (although some scholars erringly reference Marc Augé).

Now Guggenheim chief curator Nancy Spector appropriates (borrows) French philosopher Deleuze’s concept as theanyspacewhatever, an exhibition which brings together new installations by 10 artists including Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Jorge Pardo and Carsten Höller. Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho will be shown backwards in 24-hour sequences during which the museum will remain open.