Pimped out Mercedes rat rod low rider art car

Its been a while since my last post and I wanted to post this multi-faceted unit I found on the 24 hour lemons facebook. This older stretch Mercedes is complex work of art complete with spoke rims, rusty flame job, low rider suspension and some checkers to complete the weirdness. Not sure were its headed but its weird enough that it ended up making me smile. Will the owner of this Mercedes step forward and be congratulated:):):)

CONFIDENCE

Artistic confidence is a valuable asset when it is warranted, but a terrible liability when not.

Unfortunately, the nature of confidence is that it blinds us to whether it is warranted or not.

Picasso's huge ego was an asset when it gave him the courage to break with a lot of traditions.  On the other hand, Julien Schnabel's ego did him no favors when it led him to claim, "I'm the closest thing to Picasso that you'll see in this fucking life." Confidence can be the Jekyll or Hyde of art.

Artist Markus Lüpertz certainly had the confidence to stand up to his critics. When he erected his latest public artwork -- a creepy, 60 foot sculpture of Hercules with one arm, a big nose, blue hair and a stunted body-- the New York Times reported:

in the past his work has been, to put it kindly, misunderstood. One piece was smeared with paint and covered in feathers. Another was beaten with a hammer. Another was removed altogether after protesters demanded it be taken down. “It doesn’t matter,” said Mr. Lüpertz....“The general opinion of my art is that it is rejected. I attribute this to a lack of intelligence among the people.”

 Some of Lupertz's confidence comes from avoiding nay-sayers:

I only work with students who admire me and think I am great.  If I am not the one that takes their breath away, I don’t feel like working with them, because this would be a waste of time. It’s not about their individualism, it’s about my individualism. It’s not about their genius, it’s about my genius.

Lupertz shows us that confidence can transform bad art into immense, unavoidable bad art.

At Stone Mountain, Georgia, sculptors Augustus Lukeman and Walter Hancock defaced an entire mountain with a sculpture the size of three football fields.

The sculpture, which depicts heroes of the Confederate Army, was sponsored by the Ku Klux Klan and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.  As a work of art, it exemplifies the struggle between a pathetic lack of talent and disgusting racism.  Most artists might look for a more inconspicuous location for such a struggle-- perhaps hidden in the back pages of a personal sketchbook.  But if you have unquestioning confidence, you try to assert your position bigger and bolder and more permanently than anyone else's. 

The jackhammer and dynamite are apparently favored tools of the overly confident.  Consider this awful sculpture of chief Crazy Horse, currently on its way to becoming the largest sculpture in the world:
 

The sponsors of this statue hired sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski in 1948 to begin reshaping a mountain into a figure larger than Mount Rushmore.  The head of Crazy Horse alone is 87 feet tall.  The scale model pictured here in front of the despoiled mountain is so bad, an artist with any  judgment would have returned to the drawing board.   But confidence never heard the Turkish proverb, "No matter how far you've gone down the wrong road, turn back."

Confidence has served many artists well, giving them the strength necessary to undertake difficult projects and make bold decisions.  Illustrator and art teacher Sterling Hundley reports,

I've had students in the past ask me the question: "Do you think that I am good enough?"
My answer: "If anyone could say anything in that moment that would keep you from pursuing your dreams, then you should find something else to do with your life."

This is surely true.  On the other hand, when writer Flannery O'Connor was asked whether college writing programs were discouraging young writers, she responded "Not enough."  This is surely true too.

Distinguishing between helpful and unhelpful confidence is one of the greatest challenges facing any artist.  When is it Jekyll and when is it Hyde?  If there is a formula, I lack the confidence to articulate it here.

Trattoria Contadina

Oil on canvas panel, 14" x 18"

How It Works

You do things.
You try it, this way, that way. You stray, you flop and then you flip again, and something, some things come out of it.

You do them and please, please, you think, do not ask me what I'm doing, what my political take on this, for the moment now I just have a political in-take, the out is not political to my best knowledge. Fortunately, your knowledge is not best. You see, you do things.
And although most of them, you can honestly say, you know little about, the matter speaks for you. (Which, of course, does not mean you do not try to talk with it, for it, explain it, relate it and convey it, extrapolate it, and prove where it, the matter, stands).
Some of the works you work, frankly, are worthy of the highest criticism. They are, yes it has been said before, the flops. Or worse, they have the wrong ideas, wrong media, wrong impressions and plenty-wrong outcomes.

Yet within these plenty-wrong outcomes, things are born. And these things might just make connections, little roots holding on to little pieces of earth. Not that roots hold on to any particular piece, but this metaphor just decided to go its own way, and we at New Art listen to metaphors, so yes, there might be no palpable piece of anything that the roots hold to, yet the work (by now it is work) is starting to appear as if it were actually something, about something, into something, for something. It gains weight.

And then, at some ungiven points, not necessarily at the end or at any sort of finale, the Holy-Flip happens. It could be a form, it could be filled with air or helium, it could be pretty far away from you, but still yours, still stemming from this surprizing head. You might say "things came into place", but you have no clue what you are saying, you don't have the perspective, you just enjoy it, the fact that now it seems clear, there is a connection, things are being said which you knew you wanted to say or wanted someone to say, some other head maybe.
And you know what? When it works, it's so simple.

* * *

All the works above are by Marina Decaro. The first and last image are from a work called "4 ojos" ("4 Eyes"), 2007.

Disclaimer: Marina De Caro was not consulted before writing the above text, and it is not meant to portray the development of her career. The above text is fiction and any resemblance to real art life stories, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
(via)

Tartan Mobile For Sale - What a Bargain

This Tartan art car beauty is for sale for anyone looking to make a fashion statement this summer, here are the details:

Selling my car in Texas while visiting 7-14 days from now (Austin, then Dallas). I've inherited a newer vehicle which I'll be driving back home to SF instead of the Plaid. Asking $1,000, 1986 Toyota Camry, 177K miles, two owners in 15 years. Lots of new parts, repairs, updates--extremely well-maintained. No AC. Serious inquiries only, please contact me through Facebook: Thanks a bunch!

THE ERA OF CELEBRITY ILLUSTRATORS

Once upon a time, the world's largest media companies bragged in full page ads about their upcoming illustrations:

From the back cover of Life Magazine.  When was the last time you saw an ad like this?

Magazines urged readers to spend more time studying illustrations:

This was all driven by economics, of course.  The general public followed the work of top illustrators and made purchasing decisions based on their art:


Before the invention of movies and computer videos, illustrators were the George Lucas and Steven Spielberg of their day. They created magic images that captured the public imagination and shaped public taste.  They invented cultural icons:

This was the great power of stationary images in an era before people learned that pictures could also be made to move and talk.

Like the Cecile B. DeMille of his day, Gustave Dore (1832-1883) shaped the world's image of epic stories such as the Bible, Paradise Lost and Dante's Divine Comedy.  His books (and his visions) were everywhere.

Celebrity illustrators were were richly paid for their contribution to the mass entertainment industry. Charles Dana Gibson, who created the popular Gibson Girl, went from being a cartoonist for Life Magazine to taking over the entire magazine.  His work enabled him to retire to his own private 700 acre island. Illustrator Henry Raleigh earned enough from drawing illustrations for three or four months to spend the balance of the year traveling the world lavishly with family and friends. He spent freely, giving away thousands of dollars. He maintained a yacht, owned a mansion and kept a large studio in downtown Manhattan.

Those days are gone.  Like a huge peristaltic wave, the mass entertainment market has moved beyond illustration to other media.

There is nothing surprising about this.  The golden age of illustration began in the 19th century by crushing  the old fashioned wood engraving industry, which could no longer retain an audience when compared to color photo-engraving. Later, silent movies could not hold out for long against sound movies.  Black and white movies were similarly vanquished by color movies.  It remains to be seen what will happen with 3D, or 48 frame per second movies, or the next development after that. 

This evolution seems to be powered primarily by the economics of mass marketing.  There will always be a significant role for still pictures, but a medium that talks (and therefore doesn't require the consumer to read text), that moves (and therefore doesn't require the consumer to imagine the implications of a moment isolated by a static drawing), a medium that completely fills our sight, sound, olfactory and other senses, allowing us to passively absorb, seems to have a natural advantage over a medium that doesn't fill in all the blanks for us. 

I see no prospect of this trend reversing itself, barring a global electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from thermonuclear war that renders all electronic viewing devices useless.  If nuclear winter ever comes, illustrators can look forward to returning to their historic birthright as the powerful shamans who make magic images on the cave walls.

But for now, I think it is important to emphasize that, while illustration is no longer the centerpiece of the entertainment world, and the great peristaltic wave took celebrityhood and money with it, it did leave the "art" portion behind.  And that, my friends, is the most important part.

The Bel Red Paintings

KOMO News Article



Bellevue Reporter Article



Bellevue Patch Article



City of Bellevue Press Release



August 13 - September 23, 2011.



The Bel Red Paintings, An Expressionist's View, is an art project funded by the City of Bellevue, WA, Arts Program and 4Culture. The artwork will be exhibited by Marketplace at Factoria, Bellevue, WA. The paintings are of cityscapes and landscapes in Bel-Red which is a 900-acre area east of downtown Bellevue and characterized by low-rise retail and light industrial businesses.



Map of Bel Red 900-acre area (Right click to download PDF map)



City of Bellevue Special Projects Information



Marketplace at Factoria



More details and announcements will be forthcoming.