Artistic Parallels 2.0

Ellsworth Kelly - Colors for a Large Wall



vs. my own Random Color Generator



Chance shall displace decision and reason.

Artistic Parallels

Some finds from working on my art paper:

Jeff Wall, A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai):


Hokusai, from 36 Views of Mount Fuji:


Cezanne's vision (from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Sense and Non-Sense):

In Le Peau de chagrin Balzac describes a "tablecloth white as a layer of newly fallen snow, upon which the place-settings rise symmetrically, crowned with blond rolls." "All through youth," said Cezanne, "I wanted to paint that, that tablecloth of new snow...Now I know that one must will only to paint the place-settings rising symmetrically and the blond rolls. If I paint 'crowned' I've had it, you understand? But if I really balance and shade my place-settings and rolls as they are in nature, then you can be sure that the crowns, the snow, and all the excitement will be there too."

Finally, some similarities between the Van Gogh Portrait of Pere Tanguy and the walls in my room:


Percentage of paper written: 0%
Van Gogh appreciation: 60%

Media in constellation form

We can imagine that people first made constellations to humanize the sky, to make the infinite darkness seem less foreboding. Now that we live in cities of light, bathed in the glow of televisions, headlights, shops, signs, and streetlamps, our battle with darkness seems to be won. But the things that darkness represents — the unknown, the unconquered, and the endless — live on as ever, and we continue to need mythology to help us reconcile that which science and technology cannot answer. So, what is the mythology of today? What are the great stories? What are the great journeys? Who are the heroes and villains? When we step back and look at life, what are its overarching themes?

Go view the amazing Universe. I only wish they had data more centered on culture and less on politics and celebrity. The creator Jonathan Harris has a really impressive collection of works.

Now, I have a lot of time wasting to catch up on..

On Fashion

If you’re a girl in New York and you don’t have bangs, you’re kind of in trouble.

From the Vice Global Trend report. The key themes seem to be skinny pants, black leggings, tweed. Beyond that it all just seems kind of weird and ugly.

Meanwhile, on the runways..

Valentino’s set looked like something out of the Playboy Club from the 1970s, with a broad marquetry runway leading up to a suggestive floor-to-ceiling “V,” and bits of Bette Davis dialogue from “All About Eve” piped into the jazzy music as a topless woman writhed on the floor. (Truth be told, the woman was a fur protester, and she was being held down by security at the time, but it all had a very sexy retro vibe.)

And finally, a bit of wisdom from the Times Magazine and Style editor to try to justify all of this:

To explain why I do love T, and why I was eager to launch it here –- maybe sometime in the future Stefano Tonchi, the editor of T, will answer readers' questions and give you his take -- I am going to float back up into the high ether again, and bring in one of my heroes (I don’t have many), the Czech playwright, dissident and eventual president Vaclav Havel. Among his voluminous writings is an essay I remember in which he defends the preservation of a number of villas in Prague, villas denounced by the Communists as the old palaces of the grand bourgeoisie. (Raze them for workers’ housing!) Havel writes warmly of the villas, and counsels his fellow citizens -– whom Communism delivered into block after block of drab, Soviet-style housing – to try to understand that much of the best of the West’s cultural legacy was produced by the wealthy and, at least originally, for the wealthy, and that should in no way undermine the truth that these objects or things are interesting and beautiful – interesting and beautiful, potentially, for everyone, even those who don’t own them.

I think T is interesting and beautiful, potentially, for everyone – even those who will never own a suitcase that cost a thousand bucks. I think fashion, like wine (which I do shop for, alas, from magazines, or, anyway, newsletters), is something you can learn more about and thus appreciate more, even if you feel a little silly saying so.

So there! *pets bangs lovingly*

On Art

But the point that is not to be glossed over here is that like fashion, contemporary art has infiltrated all aspects of life, influencing the ways we travel, spend our time and increasingly our money, and the way we organize our surroundings. And if we can relax for a moment, we might find how much pleasure it brings. This thing we like to think of as art has as much to do with work hanging on a wall in a museum as fashion does with clothes on models walking down a runway. Which is to say everything and nothing.

-- from the Times Magazine

Going along with the rise of Chinese artists, one of my favorites is Cai Guo Qiang. An image from "99 Golden Boats" is below: