by David Burn | Dec 9, 2006 | Art
“All Cats Are Grey at Night” by Sam Gilliam
This afternoon with Stefania in town we opted for culture, which brought us to The Telfair Museum’s exhibit on contemporary American visual artist, Sam Gilliam. Sam Gilliam: a retrospective, organized and circulated by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. is an interesting collection of draped art, sculptural pieces and paintings that benefit from unique use of materials. I particularly liked seeing how much paint the man places on a canvas. For Gilliam, in many cases paint becomes a structural element, like wood or metal.
Sam Gilliam (b. 1933) established himself as a major artist in 1968 when he jettisoned the wooden stretcher bars that had previously determined the shape of his paintings and allowed his vivid, sometimes ecstatic, rushes of color-stained canvas to hang, billow, and swing through space. This was not the first time an artist working in the venerable tradition of painting had decided to abandon the conventional rigid support. But it was the only time someone had done so to create a complete painterly environment. Gilliam’s idea that modernist painting could be sculptural and, moreover, theatrical, radically distinguished him from his contemporaries, including minimalists Donald Judd and Robert Morris, color-field painter Helen Frankenthaler, and the artists associated with the Washington Color School, such as Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. Since that time, Gilliam has gone on to create work in an astounding variety of styles and media. Sam Gilliam: a retrospective explores many of the artist’s most important innovations while highlighting the aesthetic ideals that have remained constant throughout his career. Most important among these is his consistent disregard for the boundaries that have traditionally separated the disciplines of painting, sculpture, and architecture.
by David Burn | Oct 22, 2006 | Art, The Environment
Jon Armstrong and his wife Heather recently journeyed 100 miles northwest from their Salt Lake City home to Golden Spike National Historic Site in Box Elder County, Utah. Their destination was Spiral Jerry, a 1,500-foot coil of rocks placed there by Robert Smithson in 1970.
Smithson built the spiral out of black basalt rocks taken from the shore and arranged them to a height just above the surface of the water so people could walk on the earthwork as if on a pier. The sculpture can appear white today (as it does in the photo above) due to salt encrustation.
Smithson was one of a number of artists in the 1960s and early 70s who chose to build site-specific pieces outdoors in the West, far from the commercialism of art galleries. I first took an interest in this art form after discovering the work of Andy Goldsworthy, a contemporary British artist.
by David Burn | Oct 18, 2006 | Art
Nora Ephron witnessed some crazy shit in Las Vegas recently. And everyone was fully clothed!
According to her report on Huffington Post, billionaire developer Steve Wynn (a friend of Ephron’s) put his elbow through a Picasso he was about to sell for $139 million (he paid $48.4 million for it in 1997). No painting has ever sold for that amount. Not yet. But this one–Picasso’s 1932 portrait of his mistress–almost did.
Ephron says Wynn was glad it was him who did the damage. You have to admire a man who can accept responsibility and shrug off a nine-figure loss like that.
For more on the story see The New Yorker’s version.
by David Burn | Dec 14, 2005 | Art
National Geographic: Archaeologists revealed the final section of the earliest known Maya mural ever found, saying that the find upends everything they thought they knew about the origins of Maya art, writing, and rule.
The painting was the last wall of a room-size mural to be excavated. The site was discovered in 2001 at the ancient Maya city of San Bartolo in the lowlands of northeastern Guatemala.
The mural was painted by skilled artisans and reads like a Maya book, telling the story of creation, the mythology of kingship, and the divine right of a king, according to William Saturno, the University of New Hampshire archaeologist who leads the San Bartolo excavation project.
The painted wall dates to 100 B.C., proving that these stories of creation and kings–and the use of elaborate art and writing to tell them–were well established more than 2,000 years ago ago, centuries earlier than previously believed.
[via Boing Boing]
by David Burn | Sep 16, 2005 | Art
The first artist one encounters in the Lowcountry is Jonathan Green. But let’s also look at the fine work of Leo Twiggs.
“Veterans with Flag,” 1970-71 (batik and paint on cotton mounted on board)
The Chronicle of Higher Education: In the middle of one of the interminable brouhahas over the Confederate Battle Flag here in the South, I heard of an African-American artist who was using the symbol in innovative ways: He was painting it in batik to infuse it with new meaning. These images were no paeans to a lost cause, no emblems of a mythic past. They were, however, in the hackneyed phraseology of contemporary criticism, “comments” on society through “appropriation.” In this case, theoretical cliché comes close to truth. Leo Twiggs, with gentle but unswerving irony, takes the flag and claims it as part of his Southern heritage. Tattered, disappearing almost on its support, the standard about which there is so much controversy becomes in Twiggs’s hands an ambiguous metaphor of unresolved conflict, yes, but also of a shared history. In addition to the Civil War, it calls to mind equally for Twiggs the suffering of slaves, the turmoil of Reconstruction, the indignity of Jim Crow, and even the promise of the Civil Rights era, and, of course, the aftermath, when this piece of cloth, venerated by some, reviled by others, continues to inspire argument and dissension. Twiggs transforms the image through shaping a new iconography for it, one in which he finds the possibility, albeit remote, of accord.
by David Burn | Aug 11, 2005 | Art, Media
DK invited me to prepare a paper and attend an Ethics conference at Ringling School of Art + Design in Sarasota this November.
Here’s the synopsis: The “creative class” has emerged as a hot job market in the 21st century economy. Artists and designers increasingly shape not only the art of the gallery or museum, but also consumer products, public and personal spaces, films and TV programs, and corporate images. With the rise of “new media,” images have become more powerful, and new non-linear, digital, and interactive modes of storytelling have challenged us all to new standards of visual and media literacy. This long reach of the arts into everyday and public life raises a variety of ethical issues pertaining to the social responsibility of artists and those who teach them. Government funding, artistic collaboration and appropriation, sustainable design, freedom of expression, ethnic representation, and commodification are just a sample of the topics that arise as we attempt to assess the impact of artists on society. How can we encourage aspiring artists and designers to anticipate these issues and respond with a strong sense of social responsibility?
by David Burn | Jul 23, 2005 | Art, Music
photo by Evil Vince
Our friend, Chris May, a.k.a. DJ Evil Vince, is out on tour with Ben Harper this summer and his photos are being showcased on the Ben Harper site, under On The Road (on the nav bar). When you get to the tour page, click the letter [P] in brackets for the photos to pop up.
It’s nice to see Evil’s work get this type of high level exposure.
by David Burn | Jul 9, 2005 | Art, Lowcountry
Pluff Mudd is a term indigenous to the South Carolina Lowcountry. It refers to the odiferous ooze that carpets marsh bottoms and riverbeds in the tidal zones of the May and Colleton rivers. Pluff Mudd smells of rotten eggs, and is the reason why salt marshes have that typical smell at low tide—the result of anaerobic bacteria that proliferate in the muck. Pluff Mudd is rich in nutrients, and supports a rich ecosystem for the oysters, shrimp and other aquatic creatures.
Wilderness Way by Peggy Duncan
Pluff Mudd is also a Calhoun Street gallery in historic Bluffton, owned and operated by painter, Peggy Duncan.
by David Burn | Jun 1, 2005 | Art
Washington, DC-based artist, Mark Jenkins, is doing some interesting things with clear packing tape.
Thanks to Idle Type for the pointer.
by David Burn | May 26, 2005 | Art
All architecture can be considered public art. Although, much of the slap-and-paste variety so prevalent in American communities today, falls well short of such a lofty designation.
Not so in Japan, where even the manholes receive thoughtful treatment from city planners.
In a related note, Good Graffiti showcases another form of (unsanctioned) public art.
