Oil on canvas,20" x 30"
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Vanadu Ford - Post Apocalypse Gothic Hunter Camper
You start with the fencing up on the roof with a broken spire that looks like a grave site. And various decorative flourishes scattered around to give it the Gothic retro look.
You continue with various car parts welded together, fins, grill, lights, vases, horns, chimneys, lamps, and bars over the windows to give it the "I just survived an atomic blast" apocalypse look.
You then move to the rustic hunter elements with large moose antlers on the roof, mounted fish and deer antlers on the inside. I think I saw an old pistol hanging there to round out the hunter "I am going to get those mutants" motif.
All this wrapped up in a ford Econoline camper that looks like it has some empty spaces to be completed at a later time. I contacted this person for more info but did not get word back, so I made up my own story. Don't get me wrong, this art van rocks and I am sure its very cozy in a Post Apocalyptic Gothic Hunter way.
Retro Vinyl SSR Art Car - Artefacts
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
THE TASTE OF METALLIC KISSES
What topic has been more intriguing for artists than the sympathy of mortal flesh for mortal flesh?
From the beginning it has been Topic A: "Always Interesting."
Prehistoric kiss, 3500BCE
Nefertiti's kiss, 1350 BCE
John Gannam, Good Housekeeping 1954
While the ballet between living organisms continues to fascinate, the more recent relationship between organisms and machines has emerged to command the attention of artists, sometimes in profound ways.
After the industrial revolution, artists began to look at engines, gears and wires (which were born with a function but no inherent design) and integrate them into nature's laws of design as if they were some new species of flower. For example, the first locomotives were raucous, clanking intruders that frightened horses and scarred the landscape but artists such as Turner and Monet began to place them in an aesthetic framework.
And consider how artists projected notions of beauty onto flying machines:
Illustrator Henry Reuterdahl imagined airships of the future for one of the earliest science fiction stories. In the following picture, a beam of light zaps an airship over the ocean at night. Reuterdahl did not strive for technical accuracy but instead depicted the machine using the same naturalistic approach he used for the sea gull.
"She falls stern first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her."
N.C. Wyeth, too, used his powerful imagination to conjure up this lyrical vision of early aircraft:
Colliers
As machines have expanded into more important and intricate roles, their relationships with human beings have become more open ended. Artists' observations have graduated beyond the external designs of machines, sometimes assigning them character and personality.
Compare French illustrator G. Dutriac's early depiction of technology from the sky, a pyramid of light triumphing over the primitive and savage Berbers fighting on horseback in North Africa...
1911
...with Picasso's pyramid of light from a later airplane (depicted as an electric light bulb placed in the fearsome eye of a wrathful machine-deity in the sky). The two beams share a similar shape, but you can tell the moral character of the machine has changed dramatically.
Guernica
Just as God is supposed to have breathed life into Adam, thereby transforming inert dust into a living being, artists imbue lifeless machines with character, meaning and even moral content. Artists "design" the character of the machine, and then take as their subject the relationship between the character of a human and the character of the machine.
For you skeptics out there saying, "yeah, but machines will never make it past first base in their relationships with humans," I refer you to the work of Ashley Wood, who has built a career on the aesthetics of juxtaposing the tender places of nubile women against giant war robots:
Or painter Phil Hale, who vividly pits human muscle and sinew against machinery in an endless, iconic struggle.
Living organisms now have no choice but to share the stage with machines. It remains to be seen whether their relationship offers artists opportunities for Shakespearean level profundity, or whether this new relationship is just the thrill of encountering something different that by the way vibrates.
Perhaps our relationships with machines only appear more profound as relationships between humans become more superficial. When mortal flesh is downgraded to the status of mere meat, interactions with machines can begin to seem pretty interesting by comparison.
From the beginning it has been Topic A: "Always Interesting."
Prehistoric kiss, 3500BCE
Nefertiti's kiss, 1350 BCE
John Gannam, Good Housekeeping 1954
While the ballet between living organisms continues to fascinate, the more recent relationship between organisms and machines has emerged to command the attention of artists, sometimes in profound ways.
After the industrial revolution, artists began to look at engines, gears and wires (which were born with a function but no inherent design) and integrate them into nature's laws of design as if they were some new species of flower. For example, the first locomotives were raucous, clanking intruders that frightened horses and scarred the landscape but artists such as Turner and Monet began to place them in an aesthetic framework.
And consider how artists projected notions of beauty onto flying machines:
Illustrator Henry Reuterdahl imagined airships of the future for one of the earliest science fiction stories. In the following picture, a beam of light zaps an airship over the ocean at night. Reuterdahl did not strive for technical accuracy but instead depicted the machine using the same naturalistic approach he used for the sea gull.
"She falls stern first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her."
N.C. Wyeth, too, used his powerful imagination to conjure up this lyrical vision of early aircraft:
Colliers
As machines have expanded into more important and intricate roles, their relationships with human beings have become more open ended. Artists' observations have graduated beyond the external designs of machines, sometimes assigning them character and personality.
Compare French illustrator G. Dutriac's early depiction of technology from the sky, a pyramid of light triumphing over the primitive and savage Berbers fighting on horseback in North Africa...
1911
...with Picasso's pyramid of light from a later airplane (depicted as an electric light bulb placed in the fearsome eye of a wrathful machine-deity in the sky). The two beams share a similar shape, but you can tell the moral character of the machine has changed dramatically.
Guernica
Just as God is supposed to have breathed life into Adam, thereby transforming inert dust into a living being, artists imbue lifeless machines with character, meaning and even moral content. Artists "design" the character of the machine, and then take as their subject the relationship between the character of a human and the character of the machine.
For you skeptics out there saying, "yeah, but machines will never make it past first base in their relationships with humans," I refer you to the work of Ashley Wood, who has built a career on the aesthetics of juxtaposing the tender places of nubile women against giant war robots:
Or painter Phil Hale, who vividly pits human muscle and sinew against machinery in an endless, iconic struggle.
Living organisms now have no choice but to share the stage with machines. It remains to be seen whether their relationship offers artists opportunities for Shakespearean level profundity, or whether this new relationship is just the thrill of encountering something different that by the way vibrates.
Perhaps our relationships with machines only appear more profound as relationships between humans become more superficial. When mortal flesh is downgraded to the status of mere meat, interactions with machines can begin to seem pretty interesting by comparison.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Art Car submitted by Ghetto MySpace
***MATURE CONTENT WARNING***
Explicit Material Depicting:
men with guns, women with guns, kids with guns, guns with guns, lots of cash, art made with cash, more cash, people eating cash, gold teeth, booty shots, guns and cash, drugs and guns, drugs, cash and guns, art made with guns, guns pointed at you, dead gang members in coffins, tattoos and guns, tattoos guns and cash, tattoos and cash, strippers with cash, strippers with cash and guns, corn rows with guns, corn rows with tattoos cash and guns, the bird with guns, the bird with cash, the bird with booty guns cash and tattoos, babies and guns, dogs cash and guns and the one that freaked me out...babies with guns and cash.
You have been warned...
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