Finished my 6 page midterm essay on Benjamin and Dziga Vertov. feels so good to have done! i’m loving this theory and crit of 20th century art class. professor wears bowties and when talking about mansard roofs he mentions that there’s “some death cab song or something about one”
Phenomenal snow art by Simon Beck - created by walking in the snow wearing raquettes (snowshoes). 10 Years ago this probably would have been on “unsolved mysteries” as the work of aliens…but now we know, it’s just Simon with snow shoes.
Source: magnolius
Graffiti artist Tilt has created Panic Room inside the Au Vieux Panier hotel in Marseille, France. One half of the room is covered in Tilt’s graff (including the bed), while the other is crispy clean white. This is one of the 5 rooms where the hotel invites artists from around the world to re-design and re-imagine.
Source: magnolius
By renowned Photography duo Winkler + Noah. Part of THE WITNESS: Fall of the Berlin Wall Anniversary 1989-2009 series.
Growing up on the wrong side of the wall might mean becoming blind. Everything that is behind it seems muffled and invisible. The reality is just a surrogate offered by the authorities, and it marks the passing by days till they become years. This is why we have chosen to portray symbolically 20 blind young people in their twenties, photographed in a tight close up of their faces, where the eyes are as if covered up by a white patina that makes impossible the vision of the world - W + N
Source: magnolius
Abraham Lincoln
Alexander Gardner
1863, printed 1901
Gelatin silver print
Source: fyeshistoryofart
Cross-stitched pieces of model Freja Beha Erichsen by Inge Jacobsen - Inge was commissioned to rework a series fashion photographs by Sebastian Faena For Georg Jensen‘s 2012 spring/summer jewelry ad campaign.
Source: magnolius
Robert Frank, Rodeo, New York City, from The Americans, 1955
From the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History:
This photograph is one of the more benign, if jarring, images in Frank’s watershed book, The Americans, published in America in 1959 (the book was originally published in Paris in 1958) to an outcry of public controversy. Half of the country felt that Frank had betrayed his adopted home, and half felt his criticism was not only warranted but necessary. What is clear is that the photographs pierced the core of a country saturated with complacency and not entirely comfortable with its world persona. As it happened, the cowboy in the city was a good metaphor for America on the world stage in 1955: the country had emerged victorious from World War II, saving the world for democracy; at the same time, it had done so by unleashing the most terrifying weapon ever invented. Moreover, its egalitarian political ideals were severely undermined by a growing intolerance for racial and ideological differences, which intensified in the Cold War climate of the 1950s. The hypocrisy of such a position was perhaps most apparent to recent émigrés like Frank. While the specific antecedents of this image are a matter of interpretation, this ten-gallon-hatted, plaid-shirted, jeaned, booted, and silver-belt-buckled Tex leaning against a wire garbage can in the middle of New York are an undeniably odd sight—although his self-absorbed preening may not be. It highlights Frank’s talent for spotting camera-ready incidents that resonate far beyond the character’s immediate significance.
Source: metmuseum.org
Tower of Books - by The Slovakia-born artist Matej Kren - The installation is created with hundreds of books and mirrors to create the illusion of an endless book abyss. Currently on display at the Prague Municipal Library
Source: magnolius
A phenomenal animation Directed & Animated by Ben Richardson & Daniel Bird
An egg and an apple build competing broadcast towers that vie for the attention of a transistor radio. With its complex characterization and narrative of animal evolution, competition and reproduction, SEED is a beautiful and sinister stop-motion story about the struggle to survive.
Source: magnolius
Vito Acconci, Grasp, 1969
From the Guggenheim:
In Grasp, Acconci acknowledges the archival capabilities of photography—“camera as grasp, photo as storage”—but foregrounds the performative act of picture taking, of physically seizing an image. This project announces the dialogue between camera and body that is essential to Acconci’s subsequent work, particularly in the series of videos and Super-8 films made between 1969 and 1974 in which he obsessively contemplates his own body as a (gendered) site. These privately filmed performances (which are also documented in photo/text panels) involve a level of corporeal manipulation that borders on masochism—Acconci is shown plucking hairs from around his navel, throwing soapy water into his eyes, and cramming his fist in his mouth.
Source: guggenheim.org
