Sunday, January 22, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
New Art - Rainbro Row
If you don't live in Charleston, S Carolina, or have never visited, then this probably doesn't make much sense. It is a cynical take on one of Charleston's most popular and photographed tourist attraction - Rainbow Row.
Rainbow Row is the name for a series of colorful historic houses located north of Tradd St. and south of Elliot St. on East Bay Street just before you hit High Battery. It is referred to as Rainbow Row for the pastel colors used to paint all of the houses. They exemplify everything that Charleston seems to sweat profusely - history, charm, nostalgia, etc., you get the picture. It is an assured stop on the carriage rides.
A little history on the non-historic (via Wikipedia). After the Civil War, this area of Charleston devolved into near slum conditions. In the early 1900s, Dorothy Porcher Legge purchased a section of these houses numbering 99 through 101 East Bay and began to renovate them. She chose to paint these houses pink based on a colonial Caribbean color scheme. Other owners and future owners followed suit, creating the "rainbow" of pastel colors present today.
Common myths concerning Charleston include variants on the reasons
for the paint colors. According to some tales, the houses were painted
in the various colors such that the intoxicated sailors coming in from
port could remember which houses they were to bunk in. In other
versions, the colors of the buildings date from their use as stores; the
colors were used so that owners could tell illiterate slaves which
building to go to for shopping (nice one, huh?).
Perhaps the second most photographed attraction in the Charleston area are the plantations, notably, Magnolia and Boone Hall. The grandeur of those places totally overshadow the squalid little huts known as slave cabins. In fine 'Plantation series' form, I decided that the slave cabins needed to be seen as equally as charming, so through the magic of Photoshop, I added an extra cabin to close the ranks and 'painted' the slave cabins behind the McLeod Plantation (originally whitewashed) in bright rainbow colors. Considering the original Rainbow Row has no real historic value and the slave cabins do, why not leverage the visual value of the valueless to make relevant the truly deserving?
I ought to have T-Shirts made of these.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
I agree wholeheartedly!
Saatchi's scathing portrait of the art world: 'Vulgar, Eurotrashy, masturbatory'
Leading British collector launches surprise attack saying buyers and dealers 'can't tell good artists from bad'
Leading British collector launches surprise attack saying buyers and dealers 'can't tell good artists from bad'
Mark Brown, arts correspondent
guardian.co.uk,
Charles Saatchi has launched an incendiary attack on the buyers and
dealers who populate the art world. Photograph: James King for the Observer
dealers who populate the art world. Photograph: James King for the Observer
Charles Saatchi, the most important British art collector of his
generation, has launched an incendiary attack on the buyers, dealers
and curators who populate the contemporary art world and concluded that
many of them have little feeling for art and cannot tell a good artist
from a bad one.
Writing in today's Guardian, Saatchi paints a scathing picture of the contemporary art world and says that being a buyer these days "is comprehensively and indisputably vulgar".
He says: "It is the sport of the Eurotrashy, hedgefundy, Hamptonites; of trendy oligarchs and oiligarchs; and of art dealers with masturbatory levels of self-regard." Saatchi described the Venice Biennale, scene of the world's biggest contemporary art jamboree, as a place where these people circulate "in a giddy round of glamour-filled socialising, from one swanky party to another".
"Do any of these people actually enjoy looking at art?" asks Saatchi. "Do they simply enjoy having easily recognised big-brand-name pictures, bought ostentatiously in auction rooms at eye-catching prices, to decorate their several homes, floating and otherwise, in an instant demonstration of drop-dead coolth and wealth? Their pleasure is to be found in having their lovely friends measuring the weight of their baubles, and being awestruck."
His comments will unquestionably cause waves in a world in which Saatchi has taken a pivotal role.
For some he is the less famous husband of Nigella Lawson but for the art world he is of immense importance. For 30 years he has been a voracious buyer of new art and was instrumental in the success of the Young British Artists movement, buying up the best of the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin and exhibiting it at the groundbreaking Sensation show at the Royal Academy in 1997.
But Saatchi says he finds the new art world toe-curling. "My little dark secret is that I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art and cannot tell a good artist from a weak one, until the artist has enjoyed the validation of others.
"Few people in contemporary art demonstrate much curiosity, and spend their days blathering on, rather than trying to work out why one artist is more interesting than another."
Many will be surprised at the ferocity of his opinions. The Turner-nominated artist Louise Wilson – half of the Wilson twins – said she did not recognise his characterisation of collectors. "Maybe Charles is upset because he is not longer the chief proponent of the vulgarity," she said. "There are more collectors out there as opposed to the late 80s and 90s when there was just one which is a good thing."
But she added: "Many artists and art works have now definitely become a brand in a sense and some people may well go 'I'll have a Koons and a Gucci.' You can see that happening in certain contexts so in a way he does raise some interesting observations."
The curator Norman Rosenthal said it was impossible to generalise.
"It is very difficult to make a good exhibition," he said, "and the real problem is the art world has become so huge. When Charles and I were younger and doing the world of art it used to be much easier to sort it all out."
Rosenthal said Saatchi had put on extremely good shows but also shows that were not so good "and I speak as a dear friend of Charles."
Rosenthal was speaking from Miami where most of the people Saatchi is talking about have gathered for the latest fair on the contemporary art calendar. Rosenthal admitted that if 95% of the art there were destroyed then it would be no great loss.
What effect Saatchi's intervention will have on a buoyant contemporary art market remains to be seen but Sarah Thornton, the author of Seven Days in the Art World, predicted it would change little.
"This is so disingenuous of Charles Saatchi because he is selling art to these people and he is their role model. I find it shocking that he would come out and say this because his gallery has become a showroom for upcoming auction lots."
Thornton said Saatchi had made many millions selling on much of his collection. "He is feeding the people he is condemning." She put his comments down to "misanthropy".
Saatchi has had a London gallery for contemporary art since 1985 in different locations including St John's Wood, County Hall and since 2008 the former Duke of York's HQ in Chelsea.
According to the Art Newspaper's survey, in 2009 and 2010 the most visited UK show was Van Gogh at the Royal Academy followed by five shows at the Saatchi.
In 2010, Saatchi said he wanted to leave the gallery and part of his collection to the nation. A spokeswoman said negotiations to make that happen were continuing.
Saatchi is so synonymous with contemporary art that some readers may be baffled by his anger at the current state of it. Surely he is Mr Modern Art? Absolutely, but Saatchi has always been a collector who took risks for artists he loves. His championing of Damien Hirst two decades ago was not an attempt to follow fashion but a genuine act of enthusiasm for an artist widely attacked by critics (then as now) and mocked by the tabloids: he was right.
For me, the moment I first saw Hirst's shark seemingly swim through green formaldehyde at the Saatchi Gallery was when I knew the art of my time had teeth.
Saatchi's brand of provocative art collecting, daring the public to like what he likes, made him the natural patron of artists likesuch as Hirst and Sarah Lucas who, in the punk tradition, did not care what the public wanted and grew great on irritation. Everything is different now because, as he says, there are many collectors, and it's hard to see how they have individual taste or a sense of mission. Mega-dealers such as Hauser & Wirth and Gagosian happily "educate" the tastes of these collectors. Art fairs popularise the idea of art as cool shopping even with those who cannot afford to shop.
Here is the one weakness in his argument. While it is undoubtedly the moneyed global elite and their suck-ups who dominate the art world, there is no revolution at the gates, for art fans from much wider social spheres are sucked into this uncontroversial, irrelevant neophilia.
A broad swathe of the middle class, not just collectors, lap up the videos and pretentious installations he lambasts (he has never collected video), and dismiss any skepticism as "conservative". The art world has taken a lot of innocent people with it on the road to mindless corporate fashionability. It needs an honest critic, and maybe Saatchi's Robert Hughes moment has come. No one can accuse him of being a stick-in-the-mud.
Jonathan Jones
Writing in today's Guardian, Saatchi paints a scathing picture of the contemporary art world and says that being a buyer these days "is comprehensively and indisputably vulgar".
He says: "It is the sport of the Eurotrashy, hedgefundy, Hamptonites; of trendy oligarchs and oiligarchs; and of art dealers with masturbatory levels of self-regard." Saatchi described the Venice Biennale, scene of the world's biggest contemporary art jamboree, as a place where these people circulate "in a giddy round of glamour-filled socialising, from one swanky party to another".
"Do any of these people actually enjoy looking at art?" asks Saatchi. "Do they simply enjoy having easily recognised big-brand-name pictures, bought ostentatiously in auction rooms at eye-catching prices, to decorate their several homes, floating and otherwise, in an instant demonstration of drop-dead coolth and wealth? Their pleasure is to be found in having their lovely friends measuring the weight of their baubles, and being awestruck."
His comments will unquestionably cause waves in a world in which Saatchi has taken a pivotal role.
For some he is the less famous husband of Nigella Lawson but for the art world he is of immense importance. For 30 years he has been a voracious buyer of new art and was instrumental in the success of the Young British Artists movement, buying up the best of the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin and exhibiting it at the groundbreaking Sensation show at the Royal Academy in 1997.
But Saatchi says he finds the new art world toe-curling. "My little dark secret is that I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art and cannot tell a good artist from a weak one, until the artist has enjoyed the validation of others.
"Few people in contemporary art demonstrate much curiosity, and spend their days blathering on, rather than trying to work out why one artist is more interesting than another."
Many will be surprised at the ferocity of his opinions. The Turner-nominated artist Louise Wilson – half of the Wilson twins – said she did not recognise his characterisation of collectors. "Maybe Charles is upset because he is not longer the chief proponent of the vulgarity," she said. "There are more collectors out there as opposed to the late 80s and 90s when there was just one which is a good thing."
But she added: "Many artists and art works have now definitely become a brand in a sense and some people may well go 'I'll have a Koons and a Gucci.' You can see that happening in certain contexts so in a way he does raise some interesting observations."
The curator Norman Rosenthal said it was impossible to generalise.
"It is very difficult to make a good exhibition," he said, "and the real problem is the art world has become so huge. When Charles and I were younger and doing the world of art it used to be much easier to sort it all out."
Rosenthal said Saatchi had put on extremely good shows but also shows that were not so good "and I speak as a dear friend of Charles."
Rosenthal was speaking from Miami where most of the people Saatchi is talking about have gathered for the latest fair on the contemporary art calendar. Rosenthal admitted that if 95% of the art there were destroyed then it would be no great loss.
What effect Saatchi's intervention will have on a buoyant contemporary art market remains to be seen but Sarah Thornton, the author of Seven Days in the Art World, predicted it would change little.
"This is so disingenuous of Charles Saatchi because he is selling art to these people and he is their role model. I find it shocking that he would come out and say this because his gallery has become a showroom for upcoming auction lots."
Thornton said Saatchi had made many millions selling on much of his collection. "He is feeding the people he is condemning." She put his comments down to "misanthropy".
Saatchi has had a London gallery for contemporary art since 1985 in different locations including St John's Wood, County Hall and since 2008 the former Duke of York's HQ in Chelsea.
According to the Art Newspaper's survey, in 2009 and 2010 the most visited UK show was Van Gogh at the Royal Academy followed by five shows at the Saatchi.
In 2010, Saatchi said he wanted to leave the gallery and part of his collection to the nation. A spokeswoman said negotiations to make that happen were continuing.
Expert view: Saatchi's Robert Hughes moment
The first thing to be recognised about Charles Saatchi's Swiftian explosion of rage against the art world is that he is uniquely qualified to say it. The second is that broadly speaking, he is right.Saatchi is so synonymous with contemporary art that some readers may be baffled by his anger at the current state of it. Surely he is Mr Modern Art? Absolutely, but Saatchi has always been a collector who took risks for artists he loves. His championing of Damien Hirst two decades ago was not an attempt to follow fashion but a genuine act of enthusiasm for an artist widely attacked by critics (then as now) and mocked by the tabloids: he was right.
For me, the moment I first saw Hirst's shark seemingly swim through green formaldehyde at the Saatchi Gallery was when I knew the art of my time had teeth.
Saatchi's brand of provocative art collecting, daring the public to like what he likes, made him the natural patron of artists likesuch as Hirst and Sarah Lucas who, in the punk tradition, did not care what the public wanted and grew great on irritation. Everything is different now because, as he says, there are many collectors, and it's hard to see how they have individual taste or a sense of mission. Mega-dealers such as Hauser & Wirth and Gagosian happily "educate" the tastes of these collectors. Art fairs popularise the idea of art as cool shopping even with those who cannot afford to shop.
Here is the one weakness in his argument. While it is undoubtedly the moneyed global elite and their suck-ups who dominate the art world, there is no revolution at the gates, for art fans from much wider social spheres are sucked into this uncontroversial, irrelevant neophilia.
A broad swathe of the middle class, not just collectors, lap up the videos and pretentious installations he lambasts (he has never collected video), and dismiss any skepticism as "conservative". The art world has taken a lot of innocent people with it on the road to mindless corporate fashionability. It needs an honest critic, and maybe Saatchi's Robert Hughes moment has come. No one can accuse him of being a stick-in-the-mud.
Jonathan Jones
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Friday, December 2, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
'Malcom X - A Life of Reinvention' Review
A Man for Many Seasons
by Darryl Lorenzo Wellington
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
by Manning Marable
Viking Adult, 2001, 608 pp.
Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention hit the book stands last spring with considerable
buzz, given the allure that accompanied Malcolm X’s life story, as well
as the drama of Marable’s personal tragedy. Marable died of
complications resulting from pneumonia at age sixty a few days before
the publication of his magnum opus. His sudden demise heightened the impression
that his Malcolm—the product of ten years of work— would be definitive.
The man euphemistically known as “the
Brother X” has become iconic. He has been the subject of a major Hollywood
biopic. But his legacy remains contested. Critics and admirers alike pick and
choose from among the images of Malcolm X. There is the majestic freedom
fighter, admired by Spike Lee and Barack Obama. There is the Brother X
associated with parochial-minded anti- Americanism; the race-baiting Malcolm X
recently denounced by Stanley Crouch as “a maskmaker from his days as a hustler
to the moment at which he was shot to death”; Malcolm the global humanitarian,
the symbol of world brotherhood; Malcolm the sectarian, the divisive influence.
There is the religious Malcolm, potentially the new face of Black Islamic
America.
But there is another Malcolm, the male
chauvinist, who bragged in his autobiography of never having trusted a woman,
and whose image reified ugly strains of Islamic sexism, as well as its capacity
for radical violence. Marable notes, “An al-Qaeda video released following the
election of Barack Obama described the president as a ‘race traitor’ and
‘hypocrite’ when compared to Malcolm X.”
Martin Luther King’s career fits easily
into the mold of a martyred civil rights hero. He promoted social
integrationism and was murdered by a white racist. For most of his public life,
Malcolm X belittled social integrationism and was murdered by other blacks in a
sectarian feud. Malcolm X’s break with the Nation of Islam defined the final
period of his career. But after he put aside the NOI’s half-baked philosophy of
“white devils” he still extolled the power behind a collective racial identity.
He ultimately “changed,” but to what? There is not a clear version of what the
final Malcolm X represented.
Malcolm’s legacy has been interpreted to
be culturally black nationalist or capitalist (in the Marcus Garvey tradition
of black entrepreneurship) or socialist. His last phase coincided with the
period of anticolonialist socialist revolutions in Africa. He identified
strongly with Pan-Africanism. But Pan-Africanism has come and gone; where does
this leave Malcolm X in history?
A Life of Reinvention is heavy on particulars, or minutiae—a narrative retelling by
a zealous researcher. Isn’t this a biographer’s task? Yes, and yet for all that
Marable accomplishes, a certain disappointment haunts the reader. A Life
of Reinvention may fill in certain blanks and provide salacious details (a
normative practice in this day and age of tell-all biographies); it may
“humanize” Malcolm X, if you will, but its struggle with the Brother X’s
political legacy is perfunctory, while it could have been Olympian.
The primary source behind the multiple
constructions of Malcolm X’s legacy is The Autobiography of Malcolm X,
compiled over a two-year period from interviews conducted with journalist Alex
Haley. The Autobiography has sold millions, its popularity driven by the
charismatic power of Malcolm X’s story of sin and redemption, and his
conversion from a life of crime to one of political and religious commitment.
Haley’s narrative has made Malcolm X hip, threatening, or cool, and promulgated
many of the alternative Malcolms. Marable clearly has a bone to pick with The
Autobiography, averring that “Malcolm X had no opportunity to revise major
elements of what would become known as his political testament.” Furthermore,
“A deeper reading [of The Autobiography of Malcolm X] also reveals numerous
inconsistencies in names, dates, and facts. [After years of teaching the Autobiography]
I was fascinated. How much it true, and how much hasn’t been told?” ponders
Marable. But both books relate basically the same story.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
New Art - Faces of Color Series
As many of you may know by now, I tend to paint in spurts and change my style of art and ideas about as often as I change my underwear. Well, here's another pair to try on. These next few images that I will be delivering over the coming weeks were actually inspired by my good friend Tyrone Geter. Tyrone is a master with charcoal and often uses them on dark backgrounds. I love the effect he was achieving but charcoal is a medium I have zero love and tolerance for - way too messy for me to fool with. I decided to do my version of the charcoal look with oil which I call 'charcoil'. (Use that and I will sue!) Each of the images will be on a different background color to mimic the various color papers that charcoal is often used on.
I recently was working on the Plantashun series that included some realistic images of actual slaves. I loved the look of despair and strength on the faces and wanted to continue with them. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a lot of detail out of the faces in many of the century old photos, so I decided to start using live models. The lady below is actually my long time neighbor, Ms. Margaret Sass. I love her face and asked if I could take her picture months ago, but didn't know what to do with the image afterwards and stored it away. When this idea came to me I knew she was the perfect start. The next image is that of another neighbor who lives across the street. I'll have that one ready sometime next week.
SELECT HERE TO PURCHASE A REPRODUCTION
Monday, October 24, 2011
New Commissioned Art
The portrait of his lovely wife, Gina Torres, was commissioned by Laurence Fishburne earlier this year. It was supposed to be presented to her on their anniversary (Sept. 22), but alas, they are both successful actors and as such have overlapping schedules. He finally presented it to her yesterday and thank goodness, she loved it. Whew! Portraits are difficult business. The margin for error is great and a high profile commission like this keeps the artist on pins and needles until you get the thumbs up from commissioner and recipient. I'm not well known as a portrait artist but I do enjoy the challenge.
"Portrait of Gina Torres"
Oil on Linen
54" x 42"
(select to enlarge)
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
