Beautiful Women

Susanna Hesselberg, No title

Melanie Bonajo, Bears


Why hide the face? What is there in a face that demands to be hidden? Identity, or the appearance of identity, of course. However, there is more. Although the concept of the mask has been written about extensively, and the mask as an element reappears in all sort of constellations, here we have a mask that is a non-face. It is the erasing of any face-ness. Why is that? Why would we want to go as far as run away from the perfect reference?
For one, it - the face - remains. The face tends to appear as soon as we know it's there. But that is not enough. What is here is an escape from identity, or rather, from identification.
I would like to think it is not a coincidence that both artists whose work is above are women. And that it is no coincidence that their subjects are women also (uhmmm...in the first case it may be debatable). This feminist interpretation is "false", of course, but it would lend itself wonderfully as a weapon against the beauty of this:



And to end on a pretty, feminist and identity-less line,

I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
by Emily Dickinson

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know!

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one's name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Technorati: painting, photography, art history, feminism, feminist art, fine art, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Blue.

Untitled

Technorati: photography, fine art, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

A Few Good Poets

Not that there aren't plenty. But a few good ones can be found on this Favorite Poem Project site.
(As you will notice, the page is an absolute of absolutes of nec plus ultras of political correctness. Does that make the poems - and their readers - any more problematic?)

To all the bloggers, I dedicate the first verse of Block City, by Robert Louis Stevenson:

What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home.

Mind you, Stevenson was a great traveler, author of Treasure Island and many other adventure novels, inspired by his own voyages.

An advertising gem

I always wonder if these really clever, subtle ads ever work, or if they are created to get the creators some publicity. If they do work, how come there aren't more of those?
(via)

Technorati: publicity, advertising, art, contemporary art, vvoi

JAMES MONTGOMERY FLAGG

James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960) drew the same way that he lived: brash and arrogant.



Flagg's confidence was understandable. He worked at a time when illustrators were national celebrities. His famous poster, Uncle Sam Wants You, made him a household name. The press sought him out for his strong opinions. He consorted with hollywood stars, judged beauty contests, seduced young and impressionable models, frolicked at bohemian parties, and traveled back and forth to Europe with the beautiful people.



I like his work a lot. My biggest complaint is that Flagg rarely let a single well-considered line suffice where five additional lines might fit:



In this way, his style reflected his personality: never waste a minute reconsidering your initial line-- just keep underscoring it again and again.



Flagg led a privileged life and had little understanding or sympathy for those who did not. He was a member of exclusive men's clubs from whose barricades he merrily indulged his sexist and racist views. His invitation to the annual minstrel show at the elite Lotos club in New York was a beautiful painting of an odious subject:



No fan of government welfare programs, here is Flagg's sketch of the government after sodomizing the people.



Life was mighty fine for Flagg. But like many people who happened to be born at the right time, it never occurred to him that luck might have played a role in his success, or that the conditions that catapaulted him to fame might someday change. Flagg began his career when technical improvements in the printing process and the rise of popular magazines created a huge new market for his work. But his pictures that once commanded the public's attention were eventually eclipsed by Hollywood pictures that moved and talked. Flagg found himself on the wrong side of history. He did not respond well to public neglect, and died a sour and bilious old man. But his terrific drawings from his peak period stand alone and untarnished.

Experimental

trying new ways to simulate real paints in photoshop, closeups included

One last explosion

Part of the final sequence of Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (music by Pink Floyd). Here is an enthusiastic reading of the film, and here is a description of how it was actually received (quite lengthy text, with an accent on the soundtrack which shows Antonioni's way of dealing with other artists).