A Mound of Space
Kipple is a word invented by the science fiction author Philip K. Dick for a concept similar to entropy. It has inspired many of the photographs seen in the Kippleverse, discussed below and sprinkled into this post. But first let’s dive into the concept itself. (more…)
a mound of space
an indeterminate bush
a subtle apocalypse
an encouraging utopia in the works
a boatload of talcum
an Iliad of peppers (more…)
The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10 (pronounced “zero-ten”) was an exhibition presented by the Dobychina Art Bureau at Marsovo Pole, Petrograd, from 19 December 1915 to 17 January 1916. … The mysterious number 0,10 refers to a figure of thought: Zero, either because it was expected that after the destruction of the old world, the year zero could begin again, or because the artists exhibiting wanted to find the core of painting, and ten, because ten artists were originally scheduled to participate. In fact, there were fourteen artists who participated in the exhibition. | Wikipedia: 0,10 Exhibition (more…)
What is going on here? What incident has taken place? It is a mindblowing 1991 installation at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, by the great Russian artist Ilya Kabakov, called The Bridge. Below are some excerpts from the book, Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away, 1996, by Amei Wallach, describing this strange and haunting installation: (more…)
From Four Text Collages [Project for a New Novel], by J. G. Ballard © J. G. Ballard. Reproduced by permission of the J. G. Ballard Estate.
J. G. Ballard created a series of four graphically experimental text collages in the late 1950s. The work was later titled Project for a New Novel. (more…)
Masquerade Costume Of A Bush Buffalo, from the Nunuma culture of Burkina Faso. Stanford Art Museum, October 28, 2017. (more…)
If you a looking for proof that physicists are among the best artists working today, beyond the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland, look no further than the Large Helical Device Project in Japan.
Whatever this thing does, it does it beautifully.
Joseph Beuys, Zwei Fräulein mit leuchtendem Brot (Two Young Women with Shining Bread), 1966. Lithograph, chocolate, and oil (Braunkreuz) on paper. SFMOMA. Photos: Jay Jurisich.
I just came across this passage from an old journal, written on Friday, January 25, 1985, after visiting the great Max Beckmann retrospective at the LA County Art Museum (9 December 1984 – 3 February 1985) for the second time: (more…)
Einstein: Wikimedia Commons | Swan: Robert Woeger
I have been searching online for years for this story that’s been half-submerged in my memory, with no luck. The story concerns one Albert Einstein, a blind man, and a swan. I finally found it in an old journal entry dated June 8, 1985. The story is but a fragment that I cut out of a newspaper and saved. However, I have no idea which newspaper it came from, and I can’t find this exact version of the story anywhere: (more…)
Saul Leiter, Snow, 1970. Source: The Saul Leiter Foundation.
Saul Leiter, perhaps the most famous non-famous New York street photographer, has just passed away at age 89. A pioneer who worked mostly in color in an age when street photography was still a predominantly black and white medium, Leiter captured the ineffable details than can only be seen and appreciated if you slow down and pay attention.
Notes the obituary in today’s New York Times: (more…)
Now considered a cult film, Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 film, Zabriskie Point, was a huge commercial flop, costing $7 million to make — a huge sum back then — and grossing less than $1 million in its brief theatrical run. The director of the very successful Blow Up , his first of three English-language films, had blown up at the box office.
The film also literally — as “literal” as a fantasy sequence can be in any film, especially this one — blew up at the end, as this clip of the final scene depicts: (more…)
Colin McCahon: Six days in Nelson and Canterbury, 1950. Oil on canvas. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
This intense, early landscape painting by New Zealand artist Colin McCahon compliments my previous post about McCahon’s later text paintings. McCahon divides the space in this painting according to at least three different conceptual models: spiritually, based on the Biblical six days of creation; phenomenologically, based on his snapshot visual observations of the New Zealand countryside as he traveled it by bicycle; and pictorially, puncturing the painting’s surface with the spaces of six different landscape views.
Below are several different commentaries that each shed light on this remarkable painting straddling the conceptual border lands between representation and abstraction, symbol and sensation, theology and phenomenology, memory and perception. (more…)
Colin McCahon, The Lark’s Song, 1969. Acrylic on two wooden doors, overall 162.6 x 198 cm.
Unless, like me, you are not from New Zealand, you’ve probably never heard of the artist Colin McCahon.
Regarded by many as New Zealand’s greatest painter, McCahon (1919-1987) created many works in a variety of styles, from landscapes to religious-spiritual narrative paintings, to cosmic spiritual abstractions. But it’s his strange, (mostly) religious text paintings that really stand out for me. And not surprising for someone so compelled to put many words into his paintings, he has some great titles; here are some of my favorites:
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The Danish “Dogme 95” directors created some amazing films, and their famous Manifesto, below, still resonates with with me as a way of getting outside of myself, my work, and aesthetic preconceptions. (more…)
R.I.P Cy Twombly, one of the great ones! I hope you are sailing along the Wilder Shores of Love.
Art is a thought experiment communicated through some physical means to other people.
