Posts tagged visual arts
"Untitled" (Stedelijk Museum 1, 2008), by Pasquale Ottaiano :: via FILE Magazine
I'm not sure I'm as into this particular painting as this young woman in the photo, but I love the depiction of art-contemplation -- and the bodily symmetry: is the art falling into her, or is she falling into the art? I also appreciate the fact that she's away from the museum description on the wall, taking it in on her own (well, and the bench-placement-department's) terms.
Nate: 
This song's been stuck in my head off and on for the past few months. My gut interpretation was that it was about the sacrifices involved in pursuing an artist's vocation. The Wikipedia page suggests it's more about frustration with judgmental hipsters, artistic posers, et al. So go figure. Nima Nourizadeh's oddly alluring/disturbing video treatment, meanwhile, is itself a (pretentious? sincere?) homage to a 1973 cult film, The Holy Mountain, itself a psychedelic reworking of material from St. John of the Cross's "Ascent of Mt. Carmel"
Nate:
Water Flames Passage II
(10 x 10 in., gold and mineral pigments on paper), by Makoto Fujimura, from the exhibition Charis, at the Dillon Gallery, New York City, through 2 Aug 2008
In the book Andy talks about Fujimura's use of very basic elements--mineral pigments rather than paints, and of course gold leaf--in his paintings, something that echoes the seeming overabundance of natural resources in the Biblical accounts both of Eden and, more glaringly, in the New Jerusalem. Our task as humans is to make something--ideally, something beautiful--from those very basic elements.
Nate: