This is the belated first post about my trip to New York. We came across this exhibit while walking to the Guggenheim Museum while it was closed. Why were we going to a closed Guggenheim? Because I wasn't paying attention, and who doesn't love a freezing cold walk in the rain up 5th Ave.? A friend on the phone had just mentioned how much she loved Basquiat a few minutes before. Then I saw the sign above. A small Pakistani man invited us inside, for free, and we gladly accepted. The exhibit was worth it, and not just because it gave us a chance to warm up and dry off. It was a spectacular collection of drawings and paintings, only a few of which I had seen before, and none that I had seen in any other exhibition.

Unfortunately, many of these photos (like the one above) also have me in them. I couldn't use a flash, of course, and it wouldn't have helped anyway since I didn't have a polarizer to get rid of the reflections in the glass. Sorry about the quality. But at least I got a picture with Basquiat, right?

See the whole set at my Flickr page.

If you have never heard of Jean-Michel Basquiat, here's the brief story:
Born December 22nd 1960. Died August 12 1988 in his studio from mixing cocaine and heroin. Probably a lot. He started his art career as a graffitist in Manhattan. His tag was "SAMO." The art world took notice. He became friends with Andy Warhol in 1982, and the two worked together on projects. Lars Ulrich of Metallica sold one of Basquiat's paintings at auction for over five and a half million dollars.

Read more about Basquiat at Wikipedia.

Labels: Arty, Basquiat, Travel

Laurie Lipton

Laurie Lipton was born in New York but now draws in London. Like Schween, Lipton plays on our hopes and fears in her work. Lipton is not notable just because her drawings are exceptional renderings. The power of her work comes from the fact that it somehow creates conflicting feelings in the viewer of both personal jeopardy and something more soothing, maybe contentment. Death and the Maiden at first glance might seem horrifying, but upon closer examination, it look as if the little girl is comforting the skeleton who cradles her. The image is actually quite peaceful. It's hard to look away. I can't get enough.

Asya Schween

My Own Self is the online portfolio of Russian-born photographer Asya Schween. Her photographs are heavily manipulated, heavily costumed self-portraits which often create an effect of eerie desperation. There is a certain playful creepiness to her work which offsets the disturbing nature of her photographs. See "Werde der du bist" for an example of the juxtaposition of humor (the Mickey ears) with the angst apparent on artist's face. The artist describes herself (circa 2002):

I'm an ambidextrous, color-blind math grad student, 22. I have two master degrees and I'm two years away from my Ph.D. in Bioinformatics. From time to time I want to ditch my college and do photography but I'm afraid I appear to be a coward and of course such attitude doesn't lead to anything except mediocrity, to be generous.

She also has a portfolio on Deviant Art. Read a full (I believe reprinted) interview on Digital Photography Review.

Claude Cormier

Claude Cormier is a landscape architect. If you think it's a little odd that I am including a glorified gardener in this list, then go look at his glorious gardens. This is a type of art too easily dismissed: installation art. It isn't permanent, but I hardly think that is the reason many people can look at this and say things like, "That's not art," or "I could do that." Art is not an ability, and it's not a skill. It's an idea acted upon. It is making something exist for no other reason than its own existence. Cormier's work is an exploration of public spaces. Picasso explored the two dimensional space with Cubism. These installations makes us reexamine our ideas of what gardens are. Sure his "Fantasy Landscapes are strange, but they are also beautiful. They could not exist in nature, so they have to exist in art.

A footnote

Dirty Car Art Gallery Think about this the next time you start to write on your friend's dirty car window. And then realize that you cannot do anything this good, so just write "Wash me," and be done with it.

Last Week's Posts

Labels: Arty

I'm leaving for New York in a week, so posts may be a little slow next week. But when I get back, expect to see something about:

• The Appleseed Cast at The Knitting Factory
  
• The Shins at Madison Square Garden
  
• (Maybe) Sleepytime Gorilla Museum at The Bowery Ballroom (We'll see. I don't like anything I've heard, but it's supposed to be a great show.)
  

And I'm sure I will find plenty in the galleries in Chelsea to show you.

And you better believe I'm going record shopping. Last time I stopped in Generation Records I found a treasure trove, plus a store cat that took a shine to me.

Plus there's whatever else we do. I'll be here for a week still, but my head left yesterday. Can't wait!

Oh, and if you find yourself needing great maps and travel guides Not For Tourists have their entire guides online for free, in PDF format. I'm sure they would appreciate if you'd buy one. I used them last time I went. They are excellent guides in every conceivable way, but their best feature is the fact that they are essentially Moleskines. People write about these things incessantly for a reason.

Labels: Arty, Indie, Music, Shows, Travel

I went to San Francisco in February of 2004 to visit my friends Heather and
Nathan. I hadn't ever been there before, but I knew that I was heading to a
vibrant art community, so after taking all of the jokes about my sexuality and
how much time I might spend in the Castro district from the guys at work, I was
ready to go see art. That's just what I do when I travel. First things first,
and art is first for me.
It was a short trip, and there was just way too much to see, but there was only one thing that blew me away: the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) Awards exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art
(MOMA). Each year SECA presents the work of four artists, and in 2004, one of them was Simon Evans.
Evans was at one time or another a professional writer and professional skateboarder. He claims to have begun his art career at the behest of his girlfriend, who was also an artist. Whatever the reason he began, I doubt if he had any real choice in the matter. It seems like his head might have exploded, filled as it was with maps of non-existent places, false ID's of fictional people, and strange contents of ordinary household items.

I know Evans is still working, and is still living in San Francisco, but it is extremely difficult to find any current information about him. For one thing, when you google him, many of the results are for a Welsh comedian or a professional rally car driver who both share the name. So I found as much as I could. These images aren't the greatest, but it's a start, and maybe I will find more later on.

Zach Feuer Gallery An exhibition from 2005.

One image in an unrelated article.

Four Images. Almost all the way at the bottom, but there is a lot of good stuff on the page.

3 images from The Highest Number.

Ten images from White Columns.

One image and an interview from the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

10 images from a 2003 show atJack Hanley Gallery.

6 images from a 2005 show at Jack Hanley Gallery.

Labels: Arty

High Dynamic Range photography is a relatively new technique to solve a very old problem in photography. It can be very difficult to get a good exposure with only one image, so HDR uses multiple images at different exposure settings and combines them all. To better illustrate this, look at the example on this page. Look under "When to use HDR." It would be impossible to get an exposure that would let you see inside the arch and outside with only one image, so in that case, the photographer uses three. Sometimes you might use more than that, and in many of the examples below, that is the case.

Examples of HDR photography:

This is the image that got me interested in HDR.
Flickr Group for HDR. Flickr is Yahoo's photography sharing site.
17 amazing HDR photos. From 17 Things.
HDR Photography from It's Knuttz
Trey Radcliff's HDR photography. From HaHa.nu
And if that's not enough beauty for you to look at, how about 100,000+ images from Flickr.

This post will be updated with my own HDR photography, just as soon as I get around to doing some.

Labels: Arty