Art

Food Inspired Art - The Banana

From still life to Surrealism, Arcimboldo to Warhol, food has inspired great art. 

Artists today are no less inspired by the food on their plate. For instance, the banana.

  

 

Doug Fishburne a London-based artist got the publics attention when his 300,000 bananas were exhibited outside the National Gallery in central London. The pile of fruit was eight feet high and fifteen feet wide. The installation was dismantled by giving each passerby a free banana.

“Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far”, was an exhibition by Stefan Sagmeister at Deitch Porjects in New York. Sagmeister glued 7200 bananas to spell out “Self-confidence produces fine results.” The project looked oddly like needlepoint, the fruit ripened over time, changing color and beginning to smell.

Design

To repurpose is to use an item or substance for something other than it’s intended use. In this article, we celebrate four designers unique approach to recycling.

Ramon Coronado's project 'mercado negro' means “black market' in Spanish. The plan took 12-weeks requiring Coronado to dismantle and reassemble shopping carts (abandoned on the streets or thrown into the LA River) into his unique form of art. He built a chair, table and lamp. When photographed on the “beach” of the LA River, Coronado makes his comment on the lack of parks and functional recreational spaces within the city of Los Angeles.
http://www.ramoncoronado.info/

Joy van Erven (Dutch) and Finn Ahlgren (Swedish) met in an Israel. With a joint interest in the unconventional, they started a the design studio named Godspeed. Each piece they make is constructed from scraps in the space of one hour. The speed with which they create an object results in their signature, an honest, straight forward design aesthetic which captures the essence of whatever they choose to create.

Designer Andrew Rumpler built these chairs out of salvaged piano keys.
He calls them “Tatum’s Lounge” after the 1940s stride pianist. It’s a play on words derived not only from the “lounge” style chair, but also the Harlem venues Tatum frequented as a pianist. The ivories are white, while also being very “green.”

Suitcase Pet Beds - Although this idea has been around for a while, it recently has become the latest in DIY home projects. Take the challenge yourself, what can I reuse?

Guest Artist - Clara Montoya

1 in 2 399 

Clara Montoya

2007, 190 x 120 x 3 cm, 400 switches, electrical wire,wood.

Only one combination of 400 switches turns the lights on in the room. The probability of finding it by chance is extremely small, but nevertheless, exists.

Montoya studied in New York, London and Paris. She lives in Madrid.

montoyaclara@yahoo.es

Architecture

"A Room of One's Own"

Virginia Wolf said, “a woman must have money and a room of her own.” In 1929 she boldly proposed women’s independence and promoted their creative endeavors. Today most can relate to her desire for a quiet place to pursue thoughts and dreams. Not just for children anymore, the treehouse stands supreme, both a means of escape and a means of expression.

Takasugi-an is a tree tea house by Terunobu Fujimori. It translates,“a tea house too high”

Hanging in the trees, the Eco-ball is made of fiberglass and locally grown timbers. You may rent one of several spheres for your stay in the west coast rain forest of Vancouver Island, BC, Canada.

www.freespiritspheres.com/

The Yellow Treehouse Restaurant was designed by New Zealand based 
Pacific Environments Architects Ltd. Made of poplar and redwood, the 
structure stands grafted to a Redwood tree 40 meters from the forest floor.

http://inhabitat.com/yellow-treehouse-restaurant-by-pacific-environments-architects/

Art News

Minneapolis Institute of Art billboard replaced after clothes painted on nude Venus

By Tara Bannow, Associated Press

StarTribune.com Minneapolis - St. Paul, Minnesota - Feb. 2011

MINNEAPOLIS - A billboard for a Minneapolis museum has been replaced after someone spray-painted clothing and the word "Brrr!" in red over its depiction of nudity from a 16th-century Venus painting.

The advertisement is for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts' exhibition of works by the Italian master Titian. The museum chose to feature the famous "Venus Rising from the Sea" painting on the billboard because "it's very typical of paintings in the show," said MIA spokeswoman Anne-Marie Wagener.

The graffiti was discovered on a billboard in Long Lake, a western suburb, last week. None of the other Minneapolis area billboards advertising the show have been damaged. The one that was vandalized has been restored to its previous condition, despite objections from museum officials.

"We said 'We think it's funny, just leave it, don't bother replacing it,'" Wagener said Thursday.

But she said Clear Channel Outdoor, the company that owns the billboard, has a policy that ads with graffiti must be taken down so as not to encourage vandalism.

The billboards are slated to come down in mid-March.

The museum has fielded about 10 calls from angry passers-by who said they weren't comfortable seeing nudity outside of the museum, said MIA marketing director Kristin Prestegaard. Some people said it forced them to talk to their children about nudity in art, a conversation they weren't ready to have.

But during the Italian renaissance period, the human body was held in high esteem and wasn't seen as erotic, Wagener said.

"It was the absolute of perfection," she said. "I think it's only now that people project certain ideas — but it's art."

The billboard raises the question of whether it's acceptable to impose one's culture and aesthetics on others, said Paul Rosenblatt, a family social science professor at the University of Minnesota.

"That art comes out of a particular culture," Rosenblatt said. "I can really understand why there are plenty of people who, from their own cultural perspective, would be really uncomfortable."

The classic paintings in the MIA exhibit — on loan from the National Galleries of Scotland — feature a number of Venetian women, religious figures, mythical Cupids and soldiers. The exhibit closes on May 1.

Wagener denied that the graffiti was a publicity stunt to attract attention to the exhibit, which she said is exceeding attendance projections.

"We're not that creative," she said flatly.

Nonetheless, both Prestegaard and Wagener said they think whoever did the graffiti was probably just trying to be funny, not censor the image.

It would be different "if the words 'Brrr!' weren't there and they hadn't given her such a nice, shapely swimsuit," Wagener said. "I mean, if you were angry, why would you make it kind of pretty?"

Heidegger & Art

by Thomas Cummins

In his essay 'The Origin of the Work of Art,' Heidegger noticed that all artworks have a thingly character to them. But it is also obvious that art is something more than simply just a thing. Heidegger insists that artworks are different from useful equipment-type objects because artworks "in setting up a world, sets forth the earth." In his attempt to find the essence of being, Heidegger focused on clarifying language and uses terms, such as earth and world, in an idiosyncratic manner that often tend to be much more complex than their typical, everyday usage. The earth and world are intricate terms in Heidegger's vocabulary but, basically, the world refers roughly to the history of mankind, while the earth represents what we normally refer to as nature. Accordingly, these two realms are forever conflicted in essential strife. 

Works of art have a special place in this strife between the earth and world because art belongs to both of these realms simultaneously. Art is not like the rock or plants of the earth but it is also not exactly like the "equpiment-type" things associated with the world. Art is a crossroads where the earth and world share a symbiotic relationship and "When art works disclose entities, they bring the meeting of earth and world to our attention." To demonstrate this point, Heidegger uses a Greek temple and Van Gogh's painting of shoes as his main examples. The world is obviously manifested in the temple as the focal point of Greek culture but the order established in the temple also works to accentuate the rockiness of the earth underneath and "the temple's firm towering makes visible the invisible space of air." A tension arises in this stife between the earth and world which works in the sense that, over a certain period of time, a new perspective can be eventually achieved. It is precisely through time how this "work" transforms our meanings accordingly. In the case of Vincent Van Gogh's painting, it is as if the non-usefulness associated with art forces one to contemplate - Why would someone focus so much time and effort on a pair of dirty-old peasants shoes and raise them to the platform of art? We come to realize, in our contemplation, the actual being of shoes and how "the equipment belongs to the earth, and it is protected in the world of the peasant woman." Art is a continual creation for the artist and also the viewer. Gauguin, Van Gogh's roommate, described this process similarly when he wrote "Art is an abstraction; extract it from nature while dreaming in front of it." Art enacts essential strife or, in other words, the happening of truth at work. In Hediegger's words - "In the artwork, the truth of beings has set itself to work. Art is truth setting itself to work." Consequently, Heidegger has completely redefined art and he tells us "The setting-into-work of truth thrusts up the awesome and at the same time thrusts down the ordinary." This actually sounds a lot like Van Gogh's own words when he stated his objective for art to "exagerrate the essential and leave the obvious vague."

Heidegger, however, did have problems with the history of aesthetics which he refers to as a specialized form of thinking on art and the artist. Heidegger writes "The way in which aesthetics views the artwork from the outset is dominated by the traditional interpretation of beings." By this, Heidegger intends that artworks have traditionally been viewed only as mere things for consumption and as trophies which demonstrate man's mastery over nature. Focused solely on the thingly aspect of art, aesthetics has managed to completely disregard the work-character of art which brings about truth. Heidegger tells us "The essence of art would be this: the truth of beings setting itself to work. But until now art presumably has had to do with the beautiful and beauty, and not with truth." Accordingly, aesthetics has been primarily concerned with beauty while truth has been mistakenly relegated to logic. Heidegger claims that it is the artist, and not the scientist, that actually shows us the truth. Following Nietzche's lead, Heidegger inverts the hierarchy established by Plato and he, therefore, effectively places art at the pinnacle as the beacon from which the rest of his philosophy would follow.


http://thomaslcummins.tripod.com/index.html

Fashion

The Sharpie® marker first appeared in 1964, it was a disposable multi-surface fine point pen filled with black permanent ink. Since then the line has expanded to include nearly every color and is used to embellish almost anything.Yet the oldest, the classic black permanent marker still leads the pack as it gains even more steam as the newest, hottest fashion accessory. Seen on both the runway and the raceway (Sharpie® sponsors NASCAR) the pen and the artists who use them are still going strong.

Lamborghini - The design on the Lamborghini took two weeks to draw and was covered with clear coat. 

Mike Niemann took 22 days and invested $100 in Sharpies to pimp his Miata.

Seen on the runway... 

According to Wikipedia Sharpie® claims the ink is not dangerous for use on the skin yet they admit the pens contain: n-propanol, n-butanol, diacetone alcohol and cresol. N-propanol, is often used in cosmetics. The other three, are industrial solvents, chemicals that should not be sniffed, eaten, or put on the skin. As solvents, they penetrate the skin and fingernails and can enter the bloodstream. 
Qasimi Fall Collection 2010 followed by Rodarte Spring/Summer 2010