Half naked Pope's and Queens...oh my!

Paolo Schmidlin is cool. Paolo Schmidlin uses art to shock, which is even cooler. Paolo Schmidlin made a sculpture of the Pope in thigh high stockings, a stole, blonde bob, and panties, which has to automatically put him in the coolest of them all catergory. The Pope piece is called 'Miss Kitty.' It was banned for a while, I'm not sure if it's up anymore. The Catholics had a fit, they said it was “the vulgar offense against Christ’s vicar and the feelings of Roman Catholics.” It was prompted to be shown in Italy. Another one of Schmidlin's pieces I posted is called Statua Regina. I'm not sure who she is, but she looks pretty important. Sexuality and art meet again. These sculptures are so wrong that they are right.

Pornography and High Art

I went on a definition spree and decided to look up pornography in order to place it in to the preexisting definition of High Art. In one definition, pornography is said to be the explicit representation of the human body or sexual activity with the goal of sexual arousal. Whereas erotica is considered to be the use of sexually arousing imagery used for artistic purposes only. So I'm thinking that if John Curran paints over a pornographic image, does it skip over the high art category and go straight to erotica? Or, can porn turned into erotica go into the high art category depending on the materials used because it is considered to be artistic? Is porn just porn no matter how you jazz it up? Can erotica be high art? More questions, the cycle continues.

By the way, when looking up images of 'erotica', I found this piece by Raeford Liles. It's a painted sexual act titled 'Asian Erotica' of all things, and is on a fine arts website.


I'm thinking that more people would consider Liles' piece high art over John Curran because of the treatment of the subject matter. Curran paints over real porn, giving it that realistic touch, and the colors are muted. Liles piece shows real figures in a simplified way, and uses non realistic colors. I think that makes Liles piece easier to digest, while Currans piece is shocking. I much rather prefer Curran over that Asian Erotica piece, but I could see Liles in a run of the mill art gallery before Curran.

Clitter, Turn your Labia into YAYbia

Title says it all, watch the video.

John Curran....

......is a contemporary painter based out of Stamford, Ct/Manhattan that uses cheap downloadable internet pornography, and paints the scenes in a late renaissance/baroque -ish style. he replaces the bleach blonde hair and exaggerated faces with porcelain skin and textile patterns of the time. he draws much attention to the idea of kitch/low art by taking something that is supposedly cheap and artless and interprets it in a "classy" or avant garde sort of way. he is clearly using craft and medium as a way to question the idea of high and low art and the role of pornography in our culture.

it begs the question, can pornography be high art?

Pricasso

Man paints with penis.

Kid sews design into tounge for art class.

Kid Sews Picture Into His Tongue This kid claims he sewed this design into his tongue, and taped it for his art class. His parents must be so proud.

Chris Burden would be proud.

Hyper Real, Real, Performance, Beauty and Commodity Fetishism Prank

This was originally published in July 2007:

Last month, artist Damien Hirst unveiled the most expensive contemporary artwork ever made, a skull bedazzled with more than 8,000 fine diamonds. It's expected to sell for as much as $100 million. In response to the skull's exhibition at London's White Cube Gallery in Mason's Yard, an artist named Laura created a replica covered with 6,522 Swarovski crystals and dumped it outside the gallery in the middle of the night on top of a pile of trash.

First off, anyone who makes a bling bling skull is my boyfriend.

Here are photos of the actual piece, and the performance done by Laura. I love how she fucks with this.

Speaking of Hyper-Realism

1. Baudrilliard would be proud that were talking about hyper-realism.
2. This is Ron Mueck. London based sculptor. Does kinda the same stuff, but plays with scale.

QUESTIONS OF THE WEEK:
- what is beauty and how do artists use it?
- religion as commodity is a popular theme not only in art (Serrano) but also film (jesus camp). what are some other examples of religion as commodity?

Hyper-realism

Duane Hanson did it best. Creating life like sculptures that were just regular people, flaws and all, not exaggerated into some glossy clone of perfection. This is one of my favorites. Her name is Queenie.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

I felt the strange need to post this. This song is pure euphoria and the video is crazed.

watch this video on mute.

its fucking beautiful....... and the narrative is kind of intense

Baudrillard, betches.

Baudrillard expanded on his theme. "We say that Disneyland is not, of course, the sanctuary of the imagination, but Disneyland as hyperreal world masks the fact that all America is hyperreal, all America is Disneyland," he said. "And the same for art. The art scene is but a scene, or obscene"—he paused for chuckles from the audience—"mask for the reality that all the world is trans-aestheticized. We have no more to do with art as such, as an exceptional form. Now the banal reality has become aestheticized, all reality is trans-aestheticized, and that is the very problem. Art was a form, and then it became more and more no more a form but a value, an aesthetic value, and so we come from art to aesthetics—it's something very, very different. And as art becomes aesthetics it joins with reality, it joins with the banality of reality. Because all reality becomes aesthetical, too, then it's a total confusion between art and reality, and the result of this confusion is hyperreality. But, in this sense, there is no more radical difference between art and realism. And this is the very end of art. As form.

And speaking of music...noise...etc.

Tonight I saw the State Symphony Orchestra of Mexico. One of the pieces that stood out to me was Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor. Insane, In freaking sane. The composition of the piece was wild, you couldn't predict the next note that was going to be played, and there was crazy layering of the piano with the violins which creating this sense of a rich, heavy atmosphere. The randomness of the notes reminded me of noise art, even though it was played by traditional instruments. I happened to run across a statement Rachmaninoff which I believe is how all forms of art, regardless of the medium, should be.

"The first theme of my Third Concerto is borrowed neither from folk song forms nor from church sources. It simply 'wrote itself' If I had any plan..I was only thinking of sound. I wanted to 'sing' the melody on the piano..and to find a suitable accompaniment...that's all."

This beautiful piece, which is obviously emotionally driven, did not have a theme or a point. He just wanted the listener to feel. The piece developed itself. High Art.

Speaking of Noise.......

Matmos, a San Francisco based sound/performance art group performed in Baltimore, Md last night. I went with a few friends and it was insane. I need to do more sound art.
They use objects such as electric hair trimmers and roses to create their sounds.
This is high-fucking-art. And please note the video complement in the Germs Burn for Darby Crash piece.

Also, check out Syphilis Sauna. They played at the SHED in Hampton, Va a few weeks ago. I need to organize a field trip to that place. Matt posted some of their shit.

Craved noise music in the 757

Some footage from a noise show from this place called the SHED in Hampton. The band is Syphilis Sauna.

From Matt for Nia's obsession

There's nothing better than theremin music. Well, maybe "Over the Rainbow" played on one.

I'm Genderless

Andre J aka Gaymonn




Do you know how many people live in fear? Fear runs in our community. It's easier to assimilate. Being an individual takes much courage."

"We're all made up of X and Y chromosomes. I'm just utilizing both. I'm an expression of both. It's not about labels or stereotypes."

-Andre J

Through my looking glass

Crazy hate group protesting homosexuals + lesbian yelling at protester + psychedelic colorization = one boss photo

Shake it

I found this polaroid picture while cleaning out a drawer in my bedroom. I took this picture of myself when I was around 16 I guess. I'm apparently wearing some sort of wig and have drawn on a beard...who knows what I was doing. The picture is so random and unedited. I love how it didn't develop correctly. In the last post, Nia mentioned polaroid cameras, which reminded me of this picture. This picture is random, cheap, poorly developed, and probably only lovely to me because it shows a moment in time that I don't remember happening. High art maybe?

Googled "art of the day" and this is what i got.

magic.
the cheapness of the weird photoshop filter used in the bunny ranch photo really seems to deliver here in terms of conceptual intent on the part of the viewer (and perhaps subject and viewer). The only way this photograph could be better executed is if it was shot with a polaroid camera. Theres something about the cheap, crass, and honest reality of the situation that requires that kind of editing.
Regarding the van, this is just beautiful on so many levels. The suburbia, documentary style, nan golden-esque, raw shot of something that is unimportant to anyone but the photographer themselves really catches my attention. It speaks to the whole "celebrity of my own life" idea. You know, the one where people make entire web blogs about themselves. I like that. I like that blatant narcissism.