Favourite Pictures Of Artists

[carlos]

serra.jpg (217.82 KiB) Viewed 16420 times

Richard Serra

[billygomberg]

Richard Serra

Serra has made some of my favorite artworks...and I luv'd his cameo in Cremaster 3

[surfer]

Giorgio di Chirico

[surfer]

G.L. Bernini


Self Portrait as a Young Man


Self Portrait as a Mature Man

(I can say pretty confidently, that the single most moving and aesthetically stunning piece of art I've ever seen in person, is Bernini's The Rape of Proserpina, followed closely by Apollo and Daphne)

[carlos]

love that di Chirico photo you posted surfer

here's another of Serra- this one with Robert Smithson:

32-robert-smithson-and-richard-serra-1970.jpg (166.44 KiB) Viewed 16344 times

[yonhosago]

Are they walking the Spiral Jetty?

[carlos]

i think so- photo came from here: http://historyofourworld.wordpress.com/ ... hp?s=SERRA

[Jesse]

Carlos, thanks for the great photo of Serra [the first one] - I riffed on it briefly here:

http://crowwithnomouth-jesse.blogspot.com/

[cheerios]

the spiral jetty, is that in provincetown? looks like it to me, awfully so

[RFKorp]

the spiral jetty, is that in provincetown? looks like it to me, awfully so

wat?

it's in the great salt lake. in utah.

[billygomberg]

[surfer]

I saw a Yves Klein retrospective at the Hirshhorn in DC this summer. I thought it was such a bore. Sponges, cerulean blue, naked painting, drawing with fire, all of it really.

[RFKorp]

I saw a Yves Klein retrospective at the Hirshhorn in DC this summer. I thought it was such a bore. Sponges, cerulean blue, naked painting, drawing with fire, all of it really.

you forgot to mention the lens flares.

edit: oh wait, those are BILLY's specialty.

[billygomberg]

I saw a Yves Klein retrospective at the Hirshhorn in DC this summer. I thought it was such a bore. Sponges, cerulean blue, naked painting, drawing with fire, all of it really.

ugh that's too bad, was the curation poor or is the work just not yr thing? Klein is one of my favorites and I believe this is the show I'm looking forward to seeing next Dec in Minnesota.

[billygomberg]

[surfer]

I saw a Yves Klein retrospective at the Hirshhorn in DC this summer. I thought it was such a bore. Sponges, cerulean blue, naked painting, drawing with fire, all of it really.

ugh that's too bad, was the curation poor or is the work just not yr thing? Klein is one of my favorites and I believe this is the show I'm looking forward to seeing next Dec in Minnesota.

he's not my thing. the curation seemed fine. my own opinion is that Klein missed his calling as a fashion designer, because he has that "flair" and "attitude" that certain designers seem to have, the interest in spectacle, and because his works often seem to me to be accessories (like symbolic earrings and handbags) for the Yves Klein brand, more than aesthetic works for contemplation.

Often he takes uninteresting ideas (the sponges, the paint-everything-blue) and makes them more uninteresting, and other times he takes somewhat interesting ideas (drawing with fire, and naked people painting) and makes them uninteresting. I honestly dont remember the lens flare stuff Richard. There was also something with a judo video maybe? And there was a transaction with a donor that ended up with the donor burning several thousand francs and throwing it into the Seine? Maybe I'm misremembering. I cant remember now.

With the sponges, apparently he was using them as applicators on canvas of his famous cerulean blue (actually more aquamarine I suppose) when in a moment of "enlightenment" he realized that the sponges THEMSELVES were works of art. brilliant



The idea of using the human body (well at least the female body) as a brush is interesting to this red-blooded and horny art patron, but Yves manages somehow to TAKE NAKED WOMEN SMEARED WITH PAINT, IN PAIRS AND GROUPS, WRITHING AROUND TOGETHER ON CANVASES and make that boring and staid, and not even titillating! I have no idea how he managed that, but he did, so maybe that's a triumph somehow. (and forget about the actual products of this process, those are afterthoughts, its all about the video)

The drawing with fire stuff, again, is somewhat interesting as an idea, but the works themselves are poorly executed imo, and aesthetically dull.



Again this is just my opinion, and I dont mean to rain on your parade here Billy, especially is Klein's work is important to you. If it is, I'd be interested to hear what you like about it, and why. Maybe it would make me look at it in a new light. But perhaps this isnt the thread and I'm sorry for hijacking this picture stream.

As a postscript, I saw this exhibit after going to the Museum of the American Indian which was incredible, and seeing the modern work of Brian Jungen, a Canadian artist who uses (appropriates) sporting goods to create modern Indian totems and ceremonial garb. Astonishing, relevant, profound, and aesthetically beautiful:









In contrast, Yves' work just seemed so banally and predictably and humorlessly "postmodern" and of-its-time.

[Wombatz]

Viewing Klein's work does nothing for me also. But he only lived to be 34 and had written a symphony with a 20-minute chord followed by 20 minutes silence, had exhibited nothing and people queued up to (not) see it, had painted with fire and naked women. All of that between 1948 and 1962, so it's not exactly that he followed any well-trodden paths. It's maybe better to read a book about him than see the stuff, but that's ok with me.

[surfer]

And there was a transaction with a donor that ended up with the donor burning several thousand francs and throwing it into the Seine?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_de_Se ... 3%A9rielle

[billygomberg]

yeah well it's really the big IKB paintings and architectural stuff that gets me. say/write whatever you want, but I love that blue, and it never fails to make me stand still for 10 minutes when i encounter those paintings.

I agree that, essentially, he was very attracted to the spectacle & "personality" of his work, and himself as the artist. He was a judo champion of some kinda, and member of a rosicrucian sort of order.

Yeah I can understand a lot of his acts being truly dull, and painting naked girls blue and having them roll around on canvas seems pretty meh in 2010. I take an artist with some faults. it's ok.

[Gaendaal]

With the sponges, apparently he was using them as applicators on canvas of his famous cerulean blue (actually more aquamarine I suppose)

It's neither. It's International Klein Blue; derived from ultramarine but recognised as a distinct colour. Like billygomberg I have to admit that I could quite happily look at it, simply as a colour, for ages.

As a postscript, I saw this exhibit after going to the Museum of the American Indian which was incredible, and seeing the modern work of Brian Jungen, a Canadian artist who uses (appropriates) sporting goods to create modern Indian totems and ceremonial garb. Astonishing, relevant, profound, and aesthetically beautiful.

Interestingly, I actually find this "humorlessly "postmodern" and of-its-time". Takes all sorts, though.

And:

Martin Creed