Showing posts with label Artists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Artists. Show all posts
Monday, October 24, 2016
Saturday, January 16, 2016
All things are made better with cats (especially art)
The paintings 'made better with cats'
By Genevieve Hassan Entertainment reporter, BBC News
Venus of Urbino happily ever after, based on Titian
Russian artist Svetlana Petrova has become known for her online artwork of famous portraits featuring her big ginger cat Zarathustra.
Ahead of a new exhibition bringing the internet meme into a physical setting, the artist tells the BBC why she first created the artwork and how digital technology is helping to create new art forms.
"I lost my mother in 2008 and she left me Zarathustra. I got horrible depression after her death and for two years I was unable to do something creative. By chance a friend asked me 'why don't you make an art project with your cat because he's so funny'.
"I've had cats before and included them in my work, like playing in theatre shows and I've made costumes for them. But I thought, 'What can I do with Zarathustra, because my mother spoilt him and he's so fat'.
Occupy the Sky, based on Marc Chagall, Over the town
"Zarathustra likes posing and is a really intelligent cat. He likes to lie on his back and make strange faces like he's speaking with somebody, so I began to take photos of him and inserted them into paintings.
"I liked the result so I sent it to some friends, other artists and galleries. Everyone laughed so much, so I made a website, but then forgot about it because I had another project.
"After a few months, another friend saw my cat work in my albums and asked why I had it. I told him it was my cat and he said: 'Your cat is all over the internet!'
Portrait of an Unknown Woman in Russian Costume and a Very Known Cat in a Vet Collar, based on Ivan Argunov
"Now we have special photo sessions with a professional photographer and a team who entertain Zarathustra. But sometimes he's not in the mood and I have to wait months until he agrees to make the right face.
"I see his pose and imagine what painting he can enter, or I find a painting and try to make him play that role of the character I see in the painting.
Mona Lisa true version, based on Leonardo da Vinci
"Sometimes it's a character in the original painting, sometimes it's an added character.
"Like with the Mona Lisa - in the original photo, Zarathustra was really sinking in my hands on my lap and sliding because he's too big - it makes Mona Lisa look like a modern girl who's taking a selfie with her cat.
Arrangement in Grey, Black and Ginger. Whistler's Mother and the Cat, based on James Abbott McNeill Whistler's Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1
"I also now make digital paintings - I use high-resolution digital reproductions of the artworks and insert the cat in the style of the painting.
Then I print them on natural canvas in the size of the original and paint over them with textured gels and oils and match the colours as closely as possible.
Portrait of Catherine II the Legislator in the Temple Devoted to the Cat, based on Dmitry Levitsky
"Sometimes people don't realise it is not the original painting - my friend went to the airport with a gift I gave her of one of the artworks in a museum-style frame and it was very hard for her to prove to customs it wasn't an old painting.
"She tried to explain: 'Do you think an 18th Century painter would really draw cats instead of horses?' She had to scratch it with her nails to show it was printed underneath.
Heroes (Bogatyri), based on Viktor Vasnetsov
Ameri-cat Gothic. I can has cheezburger? Based on Grant Wood's American Gothic
"People usually think art is something they cannot touch, but there is a lot of art in the viral internet world - like internet memes. There is a new trend and generation of artists and critics thinking about it.
"For me it was a possibility to create something that is beautiful and make people investigate something new and interesting, and try and create some art themselves.
"Digital technology gives people the opportunity to make art and museums should be more attentive to it."
Kitteh givez new hope, based on Shepard Fairey's Hope
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Sugar Sphinx
Artist Kara Walker Draws Us Into Bitter History With Something Sweet
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Kara Walker was barely out of art school when she won a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, in 1997. Back then, her early work shocked audiences in part because her murals looked so charming from a distance. Black paper shadow portraits of colonial figures seemed to dance on white gallery walls; but lean in and you'd find your nose pressed up against images of slavery's horrors — mammies, masters, lynchings and sexual violence.
In other words, Walker is used to filling a room. But this spring she was asked to fill a warehouse — the abandoned Domino Sugar factory in New York. It's about to be leveled to make way for condos and offices, but before it goes, Walker was asked to use this cavernous, urban ruin for something special.
Walker took me on a tour of the show a day before it opened. The factory is covered in sugar — it almost looks like insulation or burned cotton candy.
"It's a little bit sticky in some areas ..." she said. "There's sugar caked up in the rafters."
I was so busy trying not to get molasses on my shoes that when I turned the corner, I was stunned. There in the middle of this dark hall was a bright, white sphinx. The effect is the opposite of those white-walled galleries; a dark space and a towering white sculpture made of — what else? — sugar.
"What we're seeing, for lack of a better term, is the head of a woman who has very African, black features," Walker explained. "She sits somewhere in between the kind of mammy figure of old and something a little bit more recognizable — recognizably human. ... [She has] very full lips; high cheekbones; eyes that have no eyes, [that] seem to be either looking out or closed; and a kerchief on her head. She's positioned with her arms flat out across the ground and large breasts that are staring at you."
Walker has dreamed up a "subtlety" — that's what sugar sculptures were called in medieval times. They were a luxury confectioners created for special occasions.
To understand where all this is going, you need look no further than Walker's teasingly long title for the show: "A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant."
I know, it's a mouthful. But Walker has this wide smile and as she sweeps her hands around in broad gestures, white tides of sugar dust ripple at the edge of her feet — and she sells it.
"It was very fun and childlike to, you know, have your hands in a bucket full of sugar, or a 50-pound bag of sugar, throwing it out onto the floor," she says.
She's doing what she does best: drawing you in with something sweet, something almost charming, before you realize you've admired something disturbing. In this case, that's the horror-riddled Caribbean slave trade that helped fuel the industrial gains of the 18th and 19th centuries; a slave trade built to profit from an insatiable Western market for refined sugar treats and rum.
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"Basically, it was blood sugar," Walker says. "Like we talk about blood diamonds today, there were pamphlets saying this sugar has blood on its hands."
She explains that to make the sugar, the cane had to be fed into large mills by hand. It was a dangerous process: Slaves lost hands, arms, limbs and lives.
"I've been kind of back and forth with my reverence for sugar," Walker says. "Like, how we're all kind of invested in its production without really realizing just what goes into it; how much chemistry goes into extracting whiteness from the sugar cane."
Walker went down a rabbit hole of sugar history, at one point stumbling on some black figurines online — the type of racial tchotchkes that turn up in a sea of mammy cookie jars. They were ceramic, brown-skinned boys carrying baskets. Those were the size of dolls, but Walker's are 5 feet high, some made entirely of molasses-colored candy. Fifteen of them are posed throughout the factory floor, leading the way to her sugar sphinx.
The boys are cute and apple-cheeked, but they're also kind of scary — some of the melted candy looks a lot like blood.
"I knew that the candy ones wouldn't last," Walker says. "That was part of the point was that they were going to be in this non-climate-controlled space, slowly melting away and disintegrating. But what's happened is we lost two of these guys in the last two days or so."
"Also in a nutshell," Walker says, "and maybe a little bit hammer-over-the-head, is that some of the pieces of the broken boys I threw into the baskets of the unbroken boys."
OK, that's not so subtle, but it's also not unusual for Kara Walker. She's dressed in a shiny, oversize baseball jacket emblazoned with the gold face of King Tut on it. I ask her if at a certain point she worries about doing work that is seen as being just about race.
"I don't really see it as just about race," she says. "I mean, I think that my work is about trying to get a grasp on history. I mean, I guess it's just kind of a trap, in a way, that I decided to set my foot into early on, which is the trap of race — to say that it's about race when it's kind of about this larger concern about being."
I tell her it's almost impossible to talk about our history without talking about race. She replies: "There [are] scholarly conversations about race and then there's the kind of meaty, unresolved, mucky blood lust of talking about race where I always feel like the conversation is inconclusive."
Inconclusive, but for artist Kara Walker, ongoing.
BLOGGER'S BLAH BLAH BLAH. When I first read about this today, I was astonished. It was the most innovative thing I'd seen in years, gorgeous in a scary, monumental way. It's Mammy as Ramses, as Isis, as Mount Rushmore carving, as the Venus of Willendorf with a scarf tied around her head. She's Goliath, she's Gulliver, she's everything God-sized and oversized and improbable. Everything about it, from the jutting fertility-symbol breasts to the enormous rounded butt thrust up either as an offering or a giant ass-up fuck you, to the face that is Sphynxlike and impossible to read, is provocative and even thrilling.
But I always have a strange stab when I see art like this. I truly think, whether this is irrational or not, if I had been able to get a career like this going when I was that young, if I had had that much acclaim and affirmation, recognition of my talent, opportunities even, my life would have been totally different. Happier? Hell, it would've been ecstatic, and the problems I've had - oh God, let's not get into the problems I've had - never would have happened at all, because I would have been an Artist.
Logic tries to scream at me that women artists, in particular, can be self-destructive and even suicidal, that no amount of acclaim or even love is ever enough. And I don't believe it, because in the core of my doomed little brain I think success solves everything. I just feel that way, I am convinced.
But that's a mere sideline. This was a headspinning project that must have been built to scale by a huge team of people, and I am not sure how all that sparkling white sugar was layered on. I know there are other articles about this astonishing display, but right now I'm tired and I don't want to read any more. My own life is mystifying, not very productive it seems, and I'm not expressing anything of note. But maybe I should take heart in the fact that at least somebody is.
Order The Glass Character from:
Thistledown Press
Amazon.com
Chapters/Indigo.ca
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
The Woody Allen scandal: call me a victim, and I'll kick your ass!
Blogger's note: I didn't write the piece below, but it raises many interesting points. For one thing, it applies directly to my own family system and describes with hair-raising accuracy just what happens when one person finally stands up and cries 'Abuse!'. It amazes me how similar the reactions are, as if abusive families are all part of one big clan secretly trained to behave the same way. I DID go see Blue Jasmine, and I tried to push Woody Allen into the background. Though he still turns out a picture a year, I wonder how much of it is actually him, if he's doing the work, or if he's a sort of cardboard veneer. I have often heard that he doesn't really direct at all, just lets the actors figure it out for themselves. In my books, this is called "phoning it in".
His strenuous denial that he was ever a father-figure to "Mia's children" is violently contradicted by these photos, in which he snuggles a very unhappy little Dylan against himself. The fact is, and most of us know this, he was "around" as a quasi-Dad ( or at least willingly posing for publicity photos with them), for years and years. And then came the rape of Lucretia, bearing away Mia's daughter Soon Yi (who may have been as young as 17), while being completely incapable of seeing anything wrong with it. "The heart wants what it wants," he famously said.
And then tonight on one of the entertainment shows, a woman comes forward claiming that she knows Allen, and is certain that he "would never" sexually abuse a child (the Great American "Would Never" defense, which seems to hold up well in a court of law). She just knows. Then it comes out that they dated years ago, back when he was 42 and she was 17. This precariously-teetering-on-the-verge-of-statutory relationship was supposedly the inspiration for one of his creepiest movies, Manhattan, in which middle-aged Woody "dates" a girl still in high school. No one sees the irony of the fact that this woman with her strident defense of Woody Allen was one of his victims and apparently didn't even know it.
My husband, generally an accepting soul who seldom judges a book by its cover, saw a picture of Allen on TV recently and said, "No wonder they're saying that about him. Look at him" (meaning his general air of squirm-inducing creepiness). Certainly it looks as if he has caved in on himself. There is a cost to this, not just to the "victim". And oh, how I wish Tanya Steele would stop using that term, which appears about 35 times in this piece! "Survivor" would be much more respectful and even accurate.
But why are the men and women who lived through this private holocaust still labelled "victims", a passive, wounded term that implies a slinking, ashamed, or at least damaged and incomplete life? The survivors I know, men and women alike, quite frankly kick ass. No matter what the obstacles, they all seem to move forward. As, gentle reader, I have had to do myself. But inevitably, these articles seem to imply that anyone who has been molested has either been completely demolished, gone irretrievably crazy or committed suicide.
As usual, the text is broken up with photos, mainly so you won't be left with an unmanageable block of often-repetitive, sometimes preachy text. But I still think this is worth a read.
When An Artist You Admire Is An Accused Predator
Recently, I read “An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow’ in the New York Times. Immediately, I posted it on my social networking accounts. I stopped paying to see Woody Allen movies when I learned of his marriage to Mia Farrow’s daughter, Soon-Yi. The fact that he married his lover’s child was enough to disgust me.
I was not aware of the other allegations until Ronan Farrow’s Tweet the night of the Golden Globes: “Missed the Woody Allen tribute - did they put the part where a woman publicly confirmed he molested her at age 7 before or after Annie Hall?” Honestly, I thought he was referring to Soon-Yi. However, when I discovered he was referring to his other sister, I was not surprised. Offenders have patterns.
I am a former counselor to victims and survivors of incest. I also counseled sex offenders. At a very young age, I was trained to understand the culture that is created around sexual violence, how sexual violence is enacted and how victims/survivors respond. I was also trained to understand how perpetrators respond. Because of this, I try not to become too involved in discussions about sexual violence. Who did what? Did he actually do it? Is it a rush to judgment? Usually, from looking at the patterns of someone’s life, professionals can identify a sexual predator. As a rule, I choose to believe the accuser.
I try not to become involved in discussions on these topics because the public is not trained to understand the dynamics of abuse, sexual violence or predatory behavior. And, people who are in denial about their own abuse, people who are predators or may be, unconsciously, acting in defense of a predator, in their own life, are also a part of the discussion. So, these discussions get stalled with word play, tempers, “you weren’t there” type accusations. For me, it’s best to avoid them.
Sexual violence happens in secret. It can happen to a child (includes teenagers); a girl or a boy. It also happens, primarily, to women and, yes, men. In this piece, I am not going to explain the dynamics of abuse. I will not explain why I believe Dylan Farrow and how I came to that decision. What I will do is try and help you find another way to approach the very complex terrain that surfaces when an Artist that you admire is labeled a perpetrator.
I was not aware that Marvin Gaye was involved with a 16 year old girl when he recorded the album ‘Let’s Get It On’. Mind you, I learned this, casually, as I sat with a friend who is a musician. She said, “did you know that he is singing to a 16 year old?”. Stunned. The first reaction was guttural. No. No. Just no. I did the research. Yes. Wow. Okay. Breathe. That is one of my favorite albums.
What was I to do? Marvin Gaye had already entered the most intimate aspects of my life with that album. I had grown to love Marvin through that album (clearly, never knowing him). But, the gentle, tender way that he sang his love was arresting. Not to mention the genius with which it was constructed and delivered. As an Artist, I admired the craftsmanship. As a woman, I admired the sentiment. I have been listening to that album since I was a child. Marvin Gaye’s music was a part of me.
How was I to reconcile my beliefs with attachment to this music? Simply, I was not aware of his actions when I allowed the music into my spirit, into my soul. Marvin Gaye had firmly situated himself in my heart and mind long before I knew the transgressions in his life. This is not a question of my right and wrong, the issue is more complex. Marvin did not sing, “I am a 33 year old man molesting a 16 year old girl.” I had no knowledge of that. So, I won’t allow myself to feel like I am in any way complicit with his actions. I did not cause them. I did not give consent to them.
He reached that place in me, that Artists do, the crevices of my being. They come into your life and situate themselves in your interior, sometimes, more than friends can. Music, film, painting, literature, we form connections to these Artists. They sing our life. They help us to understand what love is. How to express it. They even assist us while loving our beloved. I am aware of that. And, I respect that my relationship with them was formed before my knowledge of their personal behavior. One cannot take these connections for granted. They are very deep and personal.
For the longest time, I couldn’t listen to the album. I couldn’t. One day, a song from the album came on my Spotify station. I sang along. At the end, I realized, holy crap, what did I just do? I stopped. I forgave myself. Look, I did not molest and form a relationship with someone under age, he did. I am not, in any way, complicit with his behavior. Although, it is easy to get caught up in the ‘right and wrong’ argument. I understand that Marvin Gaye was in my heart long before I knew what he did. I had to develop a way to reconcile these two worlds. So, what I do now is say, at this time, I choose to honor the 16 year old girl. So, I will not listen to the album. Slowly, this takes away my desire to engage with the Art. If I should listen, I make sure I’m consciously aware of the choice I’m making.
Similarly, as a filmmaker, I was influenced by Woody Allen long before I was aware of any of his behaviors. I stopped going to Woody Allen films when I learned that he married Soon-Yi. That was my choice. But, before this, he inspired me. There is one film of his that I love- “Broadway Danny Rose”. And, as a filmmaker, it is a reference source for me. “Broadway Danny Rose” made such an impression that I don’t have to revisit it. I fell in love with that film long before I knew about Soon-Yi or the molestation allegations. The imprint of that film is in me and influences me. I can’t feel guilty about that. I acknowledge it. And, I don’t let it interfere with my support for his accuser.
I have not listened to R. Kelly for over a decade. If I am in a club or environment where he is played, I go and stand or sit in silence. I choose to honor the victims. And, that is what I say when I no longer listen to Marvin or watch Woody or, or, or. I simply say, right now, I am honoring the victim. It is a way to bring compassion to the victim. It is a way to relax that muscle that wants to flex in resistance because someone tells you you’re wrong for listening to or admiring the work of an Artist you loved before their truth surfaced. It is a way for family members to not get caught in the web of deciding whether or not to continue a relationship with a family member who abused another relative.
As a child, I was best friends with my grandfather. He taught me many things. I loved sitting on the bathroom sink and watching him shave as I popped the peanut M&M’s that he gave me. I loved my grandfather. Later in life, I learned that he beat my grandmother and molested children in the family. How in the hell am I supposed to reconcile that? He never harmed me in any way. Immediately, a burden is placed at my feet that I did not create.
I have fond my memories of my grandfather. I hold them a little less dear because I honor the victims in my family. I give space to understanding the wreckage that he caused. When I’m in the presence of someone he abused, I do not mention him. I allow the survivor to speak in any way they choose to and I respect that. Their pain trumps anything in that moment. My memories of him will be what they are. I have enough space in me to allow their to grief to take center stage. My love is expansive enough to honor their pain.
Predators create a vortex. When it’s a celebrity, we are invited into that vortex. They commit their violations in private and then create a web of confusion. They blame the victim, speak of being the victim and create smoke and mirrors to divert from the truth. Predators are cagey and tricky individuals. They only show their demon side to the child or adult that they violate. They make a conscious choice to enact their violence in private. And, on the most vulnerable among us- children. Silence protects them. If it comes to light, the rest of us are asked to side with or against them. The same choices we are presented with in the discussions around Farrow vs. Allen, are the same choices that are thrust upon us in our families. It is the other level of horror that the abuser creates. Choose. Choose your family or me. Choose my financial contribution to your life or lose it. Choose to believe a “fickle” child or me. Choose to engage with my Art or lose it.
Honor the victim. I understand the complex nature of abuse. The dynamics that are created. Most importantly, I understand the insurmountable pain it causes in the victim. I am the person who honors the victim. And, if I could erase the artistic contributions of the perpetrator to ease the pain of the victim- I would. The perpetrator has infected the life of the victim. The perpetrator, as Artist, infects, in a different way, our lives, too. I cannot erase the footprints that were laid long before the truth of an individual is revealed.
What can I do? Certainly, I can sacrifice a song or movie, in protest, as an offer of peace to another human being. I can stand with the victim. The culture has been terribly lacking in support of victims when it comes to celebrity. Why is this happening? I don’t know. I think people are defending against the guilt they may feel for appreciating an Artist’s work. I let go of that guilt. The artwork is not the act of molestation. But, it is created by the individual who did great harm to another human being. So, I close my senses and pocketbook to the Artist as a form of protest. And, I open my heart to the victim. It’s the least I can do.
I do not want this piece to devolve into the right and wrong. What is true or not. I want this to promote understanding and healing for victims who live with a pain that is unfathomable. Certainly, we can figure out ways to honor victims without throwing them under the bus in defense of Art. In that vein, I ask you, how do you show support to strangers who are victims of sexual violence? How do you show support to your loved ones who are victims of sexual violence? How do you show support for yourself as a victim of sexual violence?
Follow Tanya Steele on Twitter at @digtanya. Or on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SteeleInk. Or visit digtanya.com.
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