I HATE THIS SHIT! THIS ISN'T ART. ITS A BRIGHT GREEN SLAB OF BULLSHIT WORTH MILLIONS.
If that's what you thought, I bring good news, just lend me your patience. If you like it, great, stay with me.
Suggested Listening:
Okay. Modern art. I'll define it for this post as something you're meant to look at, whose creators you could have at least recently talked to, without concerning psychiatrists. Because you're talking to a dead guy. What I'm saying is the artist is alive, or recently alive. I tried to be funny. I'm sorry. Moving on.
For those who cringe at the mention of modern art, this post will have a few more words than I would normally intend for this tag, to provide explanation.
So! Here's rambling on my favorite modern artists, and a bit on how I love the way art has evolved, and that some of it is still okay:
I love the way art has evolved, and some of it is still okay. Now here's some art.
Leif Podhajsky: My favorite breathing artist. Vivid, Intense, Deep and Trippy are some adjectives I like. He uses computers and mixed media to create color that could not be as chaotic meanwhile intentional in the past. See my last post for just how close the expressionists got, and how far away it really is.
The rectangle is strong, but not dominant. The color is greater than any shapes or boundaries restricting it. The color exists on its own. The intended affect is a cool little exploration as you are now free to look around, without a recognizable subject or meaning to define the art for you. He also suggests LSD but you didn't hear it from me.
Another similar work, please take your time to take it all in if you like it.
I was never so entranced by art with human subjects till i saw this:
I wish I could say things got brighter.
here is his gallery, NSFW. Here's a summary: "His work explores themes of connectedness, the relevance of nature and the psychedelic experience. By utilizing these subjects he attempts to inspire the viewer into a realignment with themselves and their surroundings." Yeah, I know what you're thinking, but drama is how they get by. We'll let it slide.
[My father]name post-edited for confidentiality12/14: description removed for confidentiality 12/14
Texture. Most clearly noticed in-person: makes the painting more than just an image, because now there is tangible, physical depth, not this.
This is the painting from the side. See that brown spot on the border of red and the green? That is not canvas underneath, it's more damn paint... and its thick.
Go back to the full painting. You know that the rocky center line is raised out. The green circle is not just "asking" your eye to contrast from the red. It is literally on a different elevation.
My ex-girlfriend used to get mad when her paint overlapped and created physical texture. That was stupid of her, this is great.
Yves Klein: Klein was good with the color blue. Klein.... Blue.... kleinbl00... Anyway, Yves Klein patented the blue he used and called it "International Klein Blue," if you think that's interesting. I think it's stupid, but some people think it's interesting.
This painting is genuinely hot to me. Subtly. I'll make a post on nudes/eroticism in art soon, don't worry fellow horndogs. Klein defined sex appeal in his own art by letting you fill in the details with your mind. There is no divine nip slip, but that powerful blue pounces at you and gives you the rush; then your eyes notice the impression of a woman's curves, and your mind connects the dots. I guess.
HEY. REMEMBER THAT OBNOXIOUS GREEN PAINTING FROM BEFORE? THE BRIGHT SLAB OF INSULT TO THE CULMINATING CENTURIES OF ART, WHOSE CULTURAL REFLECTIONS DEFINE HISTORY FOR US TODAY, WHICH ARE NOW STAINED BY THIS DISGRACE?! yeah that's Yves Klein too, make of that what you will.
Yves Klein died 50 years ago, and this is the oldest I'll go for now; he's just super interesting, and new for those who think of art as the Mona Lisa and gray-haired white people. Klein's hair was great. Buy this for more; his personality and life story were more interesting to me than his paintings so do yourself some googling.
I didn't include hand-picked albums because I don't have time, I'll add those later. Also, thenewgreen or mk or whoever can help, is there ANY WAY to have some sort of auto-save or "create draft" feature for text posts? I lost a much better version of this post three weeks ago when I accidentally closed the tab while writing, and it took me ages to muster the nerve to start again as doing this does take time for me.
Shouts-out to Meriadoc who mentioned getting contemporary in my last post, figured I'd play around with some works
I'm still experimenting with the style of my tag, i really didn't want to write so much but I did anyway; anyone wanna get a workshop going on being succinct? Anyway, enjoy!
I agree, they're amazing images. I was thrown off by the NSFW warning as all the images seemed perfectly suitable for work. Then I scrolled down the site.... And wow.
Haha, I found them quite hilarious. 'Coagulated Physique', an apt description of it. More on the topic, I wonder if there is meaning to be sought beyond the aesthetic in these works? uh_oh, what do you think? I enjoy art way more when there's more in the painting, when there is an emotion or a thought that can connect this visual image to an idea.
There's just no way to see it coming, I had to ease my way into looking at them. them. I love that post of yours that you linked, our intentions are similar. In my first post of this tag I was in awe of how art can do things to me, its audience. When we look at a painting, really experience a painting, it's no longer striking a pose for us on a wall. We step into the painting's house now man. It can and will make its statement and will not hear your replies or care about your reaction. If we want to appreciate the art and find the meaning, we'll shut up and listen. So, if you connect to a painting it will offer you the ideas you're referring to, regardless of "how much" is in it. I dont imagine a painting to he quantifiable like that. That green rectangle didn't have as much variety of color but it still made me really damn frustrated. If I just scrolled by the first Podhajsky, I would notice the vivid colors but I wouldn't have felt it's particular statement, which in that case to me personally was an invitation to explore. You got me rambling, it would be better to ask you, is there truly art that can't be connected to an idea?
A lot of art for me appears unconnected to an idea. On first look, Vermeer's Het Straatje appears to be nothing special, just a Dutch street. It appears to be nothing more than it depicts (I just read something about Kant, so dare I say ding an sich?) But after being pointed out by that very same Art is Therapy tour that it can be seen as a celebration of everyday life, the painting made some ideological sense. The Rijksmuseum had tons of paintings to which I don't know the backstory, the context, the influences well enough to understand what it really tries to say. Most of the paintings there I valued on not much more than their aesthetics. Oh, look, a vase painted with really nice lighting. That's nice. Maybe the painter tried to say something beyond 'I can paint', but to me, that message is lost.
Forgot to mention this in my second time writing, thanks! Also, I saw Foals in concert and they had a HUGE "Buddha & Cobras" print as their stage backdrop. Just an incredible show. I'll link the image when I get home. These prints are available as €300 t-shirts in Germany by the way -_-
Double commenting because I wanted to link to one of my favorite art blogs. He does a really good mix of everything, but especially modern stuff, as well as some of his fantastic own work. http://hijaktaffairs.tumblr.com/ Sadly it looks like he's changed the layout recently, so if you want to get information on any piece ,you have to click on it.
Fantastic blog post.Really looking forward to read more. Really Cool. i follow you now dear
- I've closed or backspaced tabs accidentally when I've been making a post/comment and I've found that each time, on simply returning to or restoring the tab, that what I typed is still there. To prove my point, I exited this tab and restored it before posting this comment. This is on Chrome. - I can't say I'm much affiliated with modern art and who's doing what. However, the Leif Podhajsky pieces were fantastic and I absolutely adore the first one. The detailing on the second one is also great. I also very much liked the final Klein piece you showcased. It's very melancholic; to me it's like tears running down a dilapidated window . I'm afraid I don't have anything more astute to say than that.
"The final Klein piece" is Leap into the Void from 1960. It's photoshoppery before photoshop; a composite exposure of an empty street and Yves Klein jumping out of a window onto a bunch of mattresses that got edited out. Best part is he published (and sold) it as a broadside against NASA because they dared to imply that "technology" was necessary to reach the moon. Yves Klein managed to die of a heart attack at 34. It takes a lot of hard living to do that. Patrick Nagel only pulled off 38, and he did stupid shit like "aerobithons" while high as fuck on cocaine. Klein was a goddamn rock star. Prior to Banksy he'd do shit like paint girls blue, film the painting, have them roll around on canvas, sell the canvas, sell the movie, then rent a gallery and charge admission to see the canvasses and then instead have the gallery be empty and say that the emptiness was the art. It's worth pointing out that his paintings simply don't translate. IKB is outside the gamut of everything but IKB. In other words, you can't see it unless you're looking at it; no print, no jpg, no book shows it properly. I didn't buy an original for $2k right about the time Damien "fuckhead" Hirst was busy selling pickled sharks. I saw another edition of the same work for sale last year; it was going for $1.2m. Kinda makes me wonder what my $70 Magritte is worth in these heady days of art market insanity.
Well put. To be honest I haven't read too much on him yet so I didn't want to make any claims, but I can only imagine what kind of insanity he was cooking up back then. It seems like he had the collective energy of a culture about to burst into a new era, and he'd just been poking at the social tension that was building towards intense progressiveness (dead center of the 40s & 50s!). I could add a link to your comment in the Klein intro if you dont mind. That Magritte is worth something proper I bet, find a reliable art collector/broker and see what they say.Klein was a goddamn rockstar.
I actually meant the penultimate picture, my bad. That probably makes my comment on it make slightly more sense too. I actually completely overlooked 'Leap into the Void'. However, now I look at it along with your explanation it is quite incredible. Thanks for sharing the knowledge.
i've noticed that but I actually quit chrome (cmd+Q instead of alt+tab, my hands are dumb). I also didn't mention this but Podhajsky did a lot of album artwork for Tame Impala, Youth Lagoon, Foals and other bands and they're all awesome. I have neither degree nor skill in painting or visual art, I just think it's cool.I don't really dig the pseudo-intellectual hivemind that everyone has to walk into a gallery with something deep and insightful to say about the art. It's just a thing to look at:P I'll try to fit something in there to provoke discussion next time, glad you liked it!I can't say I'm much affiliated with modern art and who's doing what...