Oil on canvas panel, 16" x 16"
Friday, April 29, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
8 Reasons Why Stealing an Art car is a Bad Idea - Stolen Art Car ALERT
This is a stolen art car ALERT - Dennis Dillow from Fort Bend County, Texas has his station wagon art car covered in comic strips stolen right in front of his house Easter morning. First of all who would steal and art car and secondly who would steal one on Easter morning? For the most part stealing art cars is not a very good idea and here is why:
- REAL easy to spot
- Not reliable
- Most people know who the owners are
- Not a good get away car.
- Resale value is lousy
- Gas millage is poor
- Everyone stares at you
- The art car community looks out for each others cars
Monday, April 25, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Carpool For Dummies - Art Car Central Moron Alert
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| There needs to be a book called Carpooling for dummies written by art car central that helps people drive and park in around swimming pools. Holy smokes!!! do we need special protective barriers around pools to stop some folks from driving their precious vehicles into the pool??? By the looks of it I think we do. I want to know how on earth does one get that close to a swimming pool to actually drive their car into it. None of these cars is a Prius, so the sticky gas pedal excuse wont work here. Was there no parking space available left that the pool seemed like the next best thing? Was the pool gravity so strong that it just sucked these cars into them? The only answer I can come up with is "The Devil made them do it", what do you think happened ? Some of the cars found in the bottom of these pools include: Mazda, Jeep, MiniVan, even a very expensive Rolls Royce, ouch!!! | |
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MENE, MENE, TEKEL UPHARSIN
The traditional recipe for a mural requires:
The reason for this probably dates back to ancient Babylonia. The cruel and powerful King Belshazzar, worshipper of gold and merchandiser of the souls of men, had conquered all his neighbors. He had nothing left to fear from anyone. Yet, when he held a victory feast for a thousand of his princes and warlords, Belshazzar became rattled by markings he discovered on his palace wall:
Poet Sir Osbert Sitwell beautifully described this biblical story, and what happened when the great king saw the famous writing on the wall:
British shipping magnate Frederick Leyland commissioned James Whistler to paint a mural on Leyland's wall but then refused to pay Whistler's price. Whistler returned to Leyland's house and changed the mural to portray Leyland as a vain peacock squabbling over a bag of gold.
Whistler proudly proclaimed that he had immortalized Leyland as a peacock (and in fact most people today probably remember Leyland this way).
In 1925 the great Frank Brangwyn was commissioned to paint a mural of "the British Empire" for the House of Lords.
Brangwyn put his heart and soul into what he hoped would be a great masterpiece, but after only five of the eighteen panels were completed, Brangwyn too was weighed in the balance and found wanting. the Royal Fine Art Commission, in a stunning display of bad judgment, rejected the mural. Among the excuses later offered was the fact that the panels, designed as “a profusion of motifs drawn from all over the world, a rich brightly-hued tapestry of allusions to Africa, India, Burma and Canada, teeming with humanity and exotic birds and beasts,” were not appropriate for the traditional staid English decor.
Five years later, Brangwyn became enmeshed in another controversy over his murals for Rockefeller Centre in New York. In 1934 he was selected by the fabulously wealthy Nelson Rockefeller to paint a mural on the theme “Man at the Crossroads.” Brangwyn's mural included a picture of Jesus but the Rockefellers ordered it removed, so Brangwyn ended up repainting Jesus with his back to the viewer. In the words of Bertram Wolfe, Brangwyn made Jesus turn his back “upon the Temple of the Money Changers.”
But Brangwyn had it easy compared to another muralist for Rockefeller Center. Diego Rivera's entire mural was famously destroyed by the Rockefellers because Rivera refused to paint out an image of Lenin.
Which brings us to Paul Le Page, the buffoon currently serving as Governor of the State of Maine. LePage removed a mural from the state's Department of Labor because the mural offended his "pro-business philosophy." In what must be a new low in the history of human reaction to art, Le Page cited an anonymous fax complaining that in “communist North Korea... they use these murals to brainwash the masses.”
The artist, Judy Taylor, claimed that the mural was intended to depict milestones from the state's labor history, including Rosie the Riveter at Bath Iron Works and a famous 1937 shoe worker’s strike. “There was never any intention to be pro-labor or anti-labor, it was a pure depiction of the facts.”
At the time of Diego Rivera's battle with the Rockefellers, E.B. White wrote the following poem, which appeared in the New Yorker:
- One (1) person wealthy enough to own a big wall; and
- one (1) person talented enough to paint on it.
The reason for this probably dates back to ancient Babylonia. The cruel and powerful King Belshazzar, worshipper of gold and merchandiser of the souls of men, had conquered all his neighbors. He had nothing left to fear from anyone. Yet, when he held a victory feast for a thousand of his princes and warlords, Belshazzar became rattled by markings he discovered on his palace wall:
Poet Sir Osbert Sitwell beautifully described this biblical story, and what happened when the great king saw the famous writing on the wall:
And this was the writing that was written:Whatever the origins of the bad blood, trouble seems to flare up regularly when artists write on the walls of the rich and powerful. One side or the other seems to get weighed in the balance and found wanting.
"MENE, MENE, TEKEL UPHARSIN"
"THOU ARE WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE AND FOUND WANTING."
In that night was Belshazzar the King slain
And his kingdom divided.
British shipping magnate Frederick Leyland commissioned James Whistler to paint a mural on Leyland's wall but then refused to pay Whistler's price. Whistler returned to Leyland's house and changed the mural to portray Leyland as a vain peacock squabbling over a bag of gold.
In 1925 the great Frank Brangwyn was commissioned to paint a mural of "the British Empire" for the House of Lords.
Brangwyn put his heart and soul into what he hoped would be a great masterpiece, but after only five of the eighteen panels were completed, Brangwyn too was weighed in the balance and found wanting. the Royal Fine Art Commission, in a stunning display of bad judgment, rejected the mural. Among the excuses later offered was the fact that the panels, designed as “a profusion of motifs drawn from all over the world, a rich brightly-hued tapestry of allusions to Africa, India, Burma and Canada, teeming with humanity and exotic birds and beasts,” were not appropriate for the traditional staid English decor.
Five years later, Brangwyn became enmeshed in another controversy over his murals for Rockefeller Centre in New York. In 1934 he was selected by the fabulously wealthy Nelson Rockefeller to paint a mural on the theme “Man at the Crossroads.” Brangwyn's mural included a picture of Jesus but the Rockefellers ordered it removed, so Brangwyn ended up repainting Jesus with his back to the viewer. In the words of Bertram Wolfe, Brangwyn made Jesus turn his back “upon the Temple of the Money Changers.”
But Brangwyn had it easy compared to another muralist for Rockefeller Center. Diego Rivera's entire mural was famously destroyed by the Rockefellers because Rivera refused to paint out an image of Lenin.
Which brings us to Paul Le Page, the buffoon currently serving as Governor of the State of Maine. LePage removed a mural from the state's Department of Labor because the mural offended his "pro-business philosophy." In what must be a new low in the history of human reaction to art, Le Page cited an anonymous fax complaining that in “communist North Korea... they use these murals to brainwash the masses.”
The artist, Judy Taylor, claimed that the mural was intended to depict milestones from the state's labor history, including Rosie the Riveter at Bath Iron Works and a famous 1937 shoe worker’s strike. “There was never any intention to be pro-labor or anti-labor, it was a pure depiction of the facts.”
At the time of Diego Rivera's battle with the Rockefellers, E.B. White wrote the following poem, which appeared in the New Yorker:
Said John D's grandson, Nelson.I think that White put his finger on the heart of many of these disputes. Wall owners and muralists sometimes have different notions about who owns the wall in the more meaningful sense. There is more than one kind of property.
[T]ho your art I dislike to hamper,
I owe a little to God and Gramper,
And after all,
It's my wall.....
We'll see if it is, said Rivera.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Mutant Jesus Vehicle Fish Makes and Appearance at Burning Man
The Jesus fish is pretty standard these days but a big giant one is an entirely different story. This mutant Jesus vehicle fish and fish-let made its appearance at the 2010 Burning Man
10 Art Vespas of Magnificent Proportion
A while back I posted the Disco Vespa or the disco ball on wheels and now I am totally stoked to introduce 10 magnificent art vespas that would definitely turn heads riding down any street in the world.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
An ODE to CONTRAST (verse 6)
Because contrast is a game of extremes, it gives an artist license to cast aside nuance and embrace all kinds of lurid and gorgeous combinations of color and form.
Still, it's not true that the farther apart the elements, the greater the contrast. On the contrary, contrast has to remain confined by a common set of rules or it becomes less effective. Contrast between elements of equivalent weigh tends to create tension, while contrast between elements of unequal weight tends to create movement. Either of these relationships can be powerful, but they require the elements to be tethered together if we want to create the illusion of greatest distance between them.
If you just try to place elements as far apart as possible, without a common set of assumptions, you run the risk of punching a hole in your picture, through which all of the integrity of the image will simply drain out onto the floor:
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| Frank Tenney Johnson |
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| George Innes |
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| Carl Spitzweig |
Still, it's not true that the farther apart the elements, the greater the contrast. On the contrary, contrast has to remain confined by a common set of rules or it becomes less effective. Contrast between elements of equivalent weigh tends to create tension, while contrast between elements of unequal weight tends to create movement. Either of these relationships can be powerful, but they require the elements to be tethered together if we want to create the illusion of greatest distance between them.
If you just try to place elements as far apart as possible, without a common set of assumptions, you run the risk of punching a hole in your picture, through which all of the integrity of the image will simply drain out onto the floor:
5 Ways To Boost Morale in 2011 - Smurf Mobile Art Car Comeback
I finally found 5 smurf mobiles here on Art Car Central to boost morale in 2011 both environmentally and psychologically. What better way to say 'I (heart) mother earth" than with a tiny powered electric smurf art car with just enough power to get the mail at the end of the driveway. And then psychologically speaking what better way to boost morale in this current sad state of affairs that the renewed hope of a big smurf comeback in 2011.
If these five smurf art cars don't restore your hope in cleaner air and better TV season next year, nothing will.
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