ART

that sounds pretty cool, cow_art. i do communications for a small art company. i can't give away too many details without revealing what it is. but i read gallery press releases all day long and it's amazing how rote so much of it is. often, the language feels very detached from the work.

Oh man, that would be the worst. You have my deepest sympathy.

ART TALK is the worst. Writing an Artist Statement is my least favorite thing to do as an artist.

I consider myself an artist, inasmuch as I have spent many years in the study & practice of making artworks. I'm also in the art handling business in a contemporary art museum, which I've done for over a decade. At this point I believe my perspective is utterly warped. after overcoming many of the traumas that grad school put me through, it is peculiar to feel so shook in relation to something I've held so central to both my identity and my sense of how to process thoughts, feelings etc. I'm so burnt on art and artists. The only work I care about or am interested in at all is work being made by people I know personally. I don't know if this feeling will change, but that's life rn.

and yes, International Artspeak is pretty tedious drivel and rarely worth unpacking. It's about The Body, you say?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyoArCL7byE

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/strang10.jpg

JUst discovered this guy cos he's one of the 3 artists illustrating the copy of A True History by Lucian that I just got.
At first I wasa bit disappointed cos I thought it was all by Aubvrey Beardsley but now think wow new guy with interesting qualities.
http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2014/06/06/william-strangs-baron-munchausen/
is more of his illustrations for Baron MUnchausen

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/strang_william.html
is more of his other stuff elsewhere online

Someone is going to send (representations of) my buddy’s paintings to the moon:

https://www.lunarcodex.com/gallery-a

Really nice work!

Abolish art:

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/05/30/man-dressed-as-old-lady-in-wheelchair-smears-cake-on-mona-lisa-in-suspected-climate-protest?

abolish cake also

keep caek

the smear is far more visually interesting than the actual painting tbf.

the painting is fine but there is no point ever going to see it, the crowd in front of it is insane. plenty of other rooms in the louvre with good art and zero people in!

hueg hi res version preferable to peering over the heads of 200 rubes all holding up their phones: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Mona_Lisa%2C_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci%2C_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpg

Or, just stroll over the nearest bridge to the Musee D'Orsay which is 1000x better than the Louvre.

having fun reading about the tumblr campaign to restore the mona lisa!!!! and comparing this restored copy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa_(Prado) - the original's extreme yellow tint adds to the mystery imo.

stick the googly eyes back on

"The cleaning lady at a museum in the German city of Dortmund thought she was just doing her job when she… ruined… the installation When it Starts Dripping From the Ceiling by the late Martin Kippenberger in 1987…. In 1986 a 400,000-euro grease stain by Josef Beuys was simply mopped up in Duesseldorf. In 1973 two women cleaned up a baby bathtub Beuys had wrapped in gauze and bandages so they could use the container to wash dishes after an event."

The best art!

"The artwork, named 'Where shall we go dancing tonight?', was thrown away by a cleaner who mistook it for a mess from the previous night. It consisted of cigarette butts, empty champagne bottles and confetti."

"A bag of rubbish that was part of a Tate Britain work of art has been accidentally thrown away by a cleaner."

"A cleaner thought the piles of full ashtrays, half-filled coffee cups, empty beer bottles and newspapers strewn across the gallery were the remnants of a party in the west London gallery. Although that is what it was..." SAY NO MORE

"A cleaner at an Italian art gallery has thrown away contemporary artworks valued at $15,000, after mistaking them for a pile of rubbish. The unnamed cleaner swept up the paper, cardboard and pieces of broken biscuit"

divert the canals thru the museums

i'm also inordinately fond of this story: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-58529069

police are rounding up all known drunken tuba-players

Art as hazardous waste:

Lee Bull’s Majestic Splendour:

In 1997, during the Projects showing at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the exhibit had to be removed because the smell got so powerful that guards at the museum were becoming physically ill. After this Lee began using potassium permanganate, which is combustible, to help neutralize the smell.

n 2018 Majestic Splendor was intended to be on display at the Hayword Gallery in London …While it was being removed from the premises the potassium permanganate activated and started a small fire, delaying the opening of the exhibition.

Acord was the only private individual in the world licensed to own and handle radioactive materials, and acquired nuclear fuel rods containing depleted uranium from the completed but not operated German SNR-300 breeder reactor to use as artistic materials. He had his nuclear license number tattooed onto his neck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Acord