The Arts in NYC

Okay, so they’re not eyes exactly, but it’s basically as close as you can get.

NYU photography professor Wafaa Bilal has installed a camera in the back of his head. This camera has been programmed to take a picture every minute. Each image will automatically be streamed to a computer database and will be organized into an art project entitled “The 3rd I” to open in Qatar on December 30th.

Don’t believe me? Check out the New York Times article about it here.

I am personally fascinated by this undertaking. I personally would not want a camera fastened to the back of my head, even in the name of art, but I am extremely curious as to what is to become of this professor and his proposed project.

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade usually features floats from iconic American cartoons, like SpongeBob SquarePants or Charlie Brown. This year, many of the same familiar characters will still be there, but there will also be two floats that you definitely won’t recognize from Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. The two floats that I’m referring to “do not promote any televsision cartoon shows or breakfast cereals, and are merely ambassador’s of Mr. [Takashi] Murakami’s own playfully esoteric art.” Mr. Murakami is a Japanese pop artist, whose work is being displayed in the parade as a result of Macy’s attempt to display balloons designed by an internationally diverse group of artists. The executive producer of the parade, Robin Hall, believes that “there’s room in this parade- and always believed this – for high art.” Murakami’s two characters that will be floating in the parade are Kaikai and Kiki. Kaikai, a childlike character in a rabbit costume, and Kiki, a character with three eyes and two dangling fangs epitomize Murakami’s artistic style and aesthetic philosophy. What I found particularly interesting, is the way that Murakami describes them: “cute yet fearsome.” Does this remind any of you another Japanese artist’s work? When I read this quote and saw a picture of the Kaikai float, I was immediately reminded of Yoshimoto Nara’s style. As many of us saw last week at the Asia Society Museum and all of us discussed in class, many of Yoshimoto Nara’s character’s can also be described as “cute yet fearsome.” I wonder if these two artists, who are both modern Japanese artists around the same age, have influenced each other’s works in any way.

Compare Takashi Murakami’s Kaikai from above to Yoshimoto Nara’s White Riot below:

Read The New York Times Article

If I had to choose a favorite art gallery in the city it would have to be the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Whitney is the only gallery that I’ve gone to socially and with my parents. The first time I went was with my sister, who was in Macaulay at the time, to see the Biennial. It was amazing. There was tons of work by up-and-coming artists with commentary by students.

The next Biennial is slated for 2012 and there’s a lot of buzz surrounding it. On one hand there’s the new plans to open up a space downtown in the trendy meatpacking district. The anticipation for the new move was celebrated at the Whitney Museum’s annual gala. Chuck Close and Jeff Koons both attended the event. Back in the day, Close’s art hung as part of the Biennial.

The Biennial has a tradition of being a haven for emerging artists. While the next one will be taking place in 2012, the buzz has already begun. The New York Times recently published an article about the newly announced curators. I personally can’t wait to use my cultural passport to see the next Biennial, even if it won’t be for another 2 years.

Until recently, I had never heard of the Museum of Arts and Design.  I was just looking around online for some new exhibits and I stumbled upon this museum which is now featuring, since November 17th, an exhibit called The Global Africa Project.

The Global Africa Project explores contemporary African art, design, and crafts, featuring the work of over 100 artists from Africa, Europe, Asia, the US, and the Caribbean.  The exhibit features a broad variety of African arts, such as ceramics, basketry, textiles, jewelry, furniture, fashion, and selective examples of architecture, photography, painting, and sculpture.  Lowery Stokes Sims and Leslie King-Hammond are co-curators of this exhibit.  Their aim was to include a diverse group of creators and expose the various dimensions of the work of African artists and artisans worldwide.  Some themes of the exhibit include, “the phenomenon of intersecting cultures and cultural fusion; the branding and co-opting of cultural references; how art and design is promoted in the international market and the creative global scene; the use of local materials; and the impact of art-making on the economic and social condition of local communities”.

I think that this exhibit would be really interesting to go see.  I like that the exhibit includes a large variety and I find African art to be interesting.  I also think that this exhibit could teach us a bit about African culture.

Check out some pictures from the exhibit 🙂  Here is the site if anybody is interested!

Of all the senses, touch is the most valuable and is the only sense of the five senses which is directly within our control. Yet, we often take for granted how useful and unbelievable our fingertips are. Design artists Barry M. Katz and Branco Lukic have teamed up to pay homage to our fingertips – for being so loyal to us when we need them and for considering their importance in our lives. In Katz’s book called “Nonobject” he addressed this issue saying, “All we can do is point our fingers accusingly at myriad keys and buttons and touch screens, hoping that something will happen. They deserve greater respect than designers have given them.” As for nature, we have also lost touch, for nowadays, all things are created in identical designs, whereas nature has no regularity or congruity. For example, we create all technology to have straight lines, curved edges that are stable objects. Katz elaborates on this point, saying that it does not matter “which can of tennis balls, which pair of jeans, or which holiday cruise you buy off the shelf” – they’re all virtually the same! Designers have been following the dictum of 1896 American architect Louis Sullivan who said “form ever follows function.” Well, according to Katz and Lukic, it’s time to break this notion. The cellular microchip is one example of this, allowing tiny cellular devices, like the BlackBerry, to perform numerous functions from checking fantasy football stats to keeping an organized calendar. Some of Katz and Lukic’s “nonobjects” “evoke the inconsistencies of nature”, for instance, by creating a perfect, “ideal” cellphone that gradually collapses into a crumpled and dented piece of metal. Other “nonobjects” focus on the idea that we abuse our fingertips by jabbing them into things all day long and thus have created a cellphone where one pushes their fingers through holes on the keypads, rather than at them. These nonobjects will most likely never go on sale – rather they are more conceptual objects. However, Dutch designer Hella Jongerius succeeded in mass-maufacturing “humane” designs and is featured in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam through Feb. 13. Her work, titled “Misfit”, is all about humanizing industrial designs. One of her projects includes 300 colored vases, each one of them unique by using “different combinations of more than 200 historic mineral-based paints and modern chemical glazes”. The act of humanizing industrial designs in “Misfit”, along with the “Nonobjects”, helps to restore emotion into our routine ways of life.
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Get ready for some food for thought! Or not, I suppose. Even though I found this in the New York Times, the exhibition is located at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. What is this exhibition about though? “Art and Appetite” is a display of paintings, photos, and other such images throughout the centuries which depict food as well as a lack of it as well.

There are bright, fun and recent pictures (well compared to the date of the other images, they could be considered recent) which give a fun and whimsical approach towards food. A good example I came across while reading the article was Claes Oldenburg’s “Flying Pizza.” With its bright red colors and pizza slices which seem to magically separate themselves from the pie, this particular picture represents one part of the exhibition.

Claes Oldenburg's "Flying Pizza" 1964

However, a major portion of this exhibition is dedicated to something more depressing: starvation. This is where the guilt-tripping comes in. The exhibition became public on a day so close to Thanksgiving, so imagine the pang of pain some Connecticuns will feel when stopping to see this exhibition after coming from the turkey market. An interesting concept pointed out which still exists today is the fact that it’s “cheaper to buy empty calories than real food.” For example, in the 1930s, Milk cost 6 cents, while soda cost a penny less. What’s even more interesting was that this was also noted by artists in the 16th century. Pieter van der Heyden’s 1563 pair, “The Fat Kitchen” and “The Thin Kitchen” shows two different dinner situations.

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves here:

Fat Kitchen

Thin Kitchen

As you can see, even the people in both images clearly depict the big difference. Skinny, emaciated figures all reaching into one bowl, versus heavier people with piles of meat on top of the table.

I think this especially, should remind us to give lots of thanks as we feast with our families on Thanksgiving. Even if this was in New York, it wouldn’t be an exhibit worth going to, but just knowing about it and seeing these examples with Thanksgiving approaching upon can have a great affect upon our mindset.

Happy early Thanksgiving everyone!

I have always been confused by the fact that many artists and musicians become the most famous after they are dead.  As morbid as that sounds, it is often the truth.  Artists such as Shakespeare, Picasso, and Beethoven were the most well known and appreciated only after they had died.  I mention this because I came across a New York Times article talking about a forgotten cartoonist who has recently been rediscovered.  Denys Wortman, who is no longer alive, contributed six cartoons a week to The New York World from 1924 to 1954.  His drawings portrayed daily life in Gotham, and featured small clips of speech along with the sketches.  These cartoons were adored for their seemingly simple nature, not over the top, and completely natural.  Fellow cartoonist Jules Feiffer said about Wortman’s work, “His work didn’t seem studied. It was as if you were looking out the window — or my window in the Bronx.”

Click here to see a slideshow of some of Wortman’s cartoons!

However in 1958, Wortman passed away from a heart attack, and his work was virtually forgotten.  The types of cartoons changed, and Wortman’s works just disappeared–that is until recently when graphic novelist James Sturm came across some of Wortman’s cartoons.  Sturm, along with Wortman’s only son, set out on a mission to resurrect Wortman’s career.  Just a few days ago at the Museum of the City of New York, a retrospective opened called “Denys Wortman Rediscovered: Drawings for The World-Telegram and Sun, 1930-1953.”  Hopefully, this will encourage others to seek out and resuscitate the artwork and music of others long gone.

You can read the NY Times article here.