Alias Arts

I have been on the road for the past week exploring a few places that I thought I might like to move to (see earlier post), which has slowed posting down. Friends were renting a massive holiday apartment on the Gold Coast so I invited myself around to stay. It was on the 70th floor of a building which claims to be the tallest residential building in the world. It was like living on a plane without all the turbulence and flight attendants offering coffee and bad food.

Here’s some storm clouds rolling in..

Here’s a painting that I couldn’t stand looking at in the apartment, so I turned it around as it would have ruined my week. Friends thought I was crazy but I didn’t want it to influence me in any way.

People looked like ants on the beach.

I have a few more places to explore, but I’m starting to think I will just travel around Europe and America for the next year or two.

I knew there was something strange about these portraits when I first looked at them but I just couldn’t figure out what it was. I thought the eyes had a realness about them that is hard to create, which turned out to be partly correct.

The artist Heide Hatry created these weird little creations with animal skin and body parts. So the eyes are real, but they’re real pigs eyes. The lips are raw flesh and the skin is from a pig.

In her statement from here website here, Heide Hatry says.. “My intention with the work was to make it as life-like as possible, vivid and sometimes disposed in positions suggesting movement. I used untreated pigskin to cover a sculpture I had made out of clay, with raw meat for the lips and fresh pig eyes in order that the resulting portrait would appear as if it were looking at the viewer with a vital expression which the photographer had just captured at that moment. In fact, a photographer taking a picture of a model does more or less what I’ve done with my sculptures: the model will be made up, its hair will be done, appropriate lighting and pose will be chosen, etc. Or, if you prefer, what I am doing is reminiscent of what a mortician does in preparing a corpse for viewing: creating the illusion of life where there is none.”

She is currently showing at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Heads and Tales” finishes on the 17th of March. View more of the portraits at the artist’s website here or see a slideshow of images on the Phoenix newspaper.

Two of Australia’s best known art prizes recently announced their winners. The Archibald prize is best known for creating controversies and receiving lots of mainstream media coverage, even if there isn’t a controversy, and the Doug Moran portrait prize is known for having a first prize booty of $150,000.

The 2009 Archibald prize winner was Guy Maestri with his portrait of the singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. I can’t say I was very impressed with the portrait but the Gurrumul CD is amazing. He’s a blind indiginous artist that plays the guitar upside down and sings like an angel. There’s some videos of him on Youtube.

The 2009 Doug Moran portrait prize winner is Ben Quilty for his portrait of the singer Jimmy Barnes, titled There But For The Grace Of God Go I No. 2. Quilty collected $150,000 for his entry.

The Archibald finalists can be seen here and the Doug Moran finalists can be found here.

Here’s an interesting interview with a working artist, meaning an artist that makes a living from painting. He’s humble about his work and he hasn’t been tempted to add too many zeros to the price of his paintings. Most works can bought from his website for a few hundred dollars which means almost anyone can afford to buy a painting. He seems to be a prolific painting machine with tens of paintings added to his site each month, so there’s always something new to look at.

See more paintings by Matt Sesow at his website here. One thing that I love about his website is that he isn’t afraid to use good size images of his paintings online. I have been visiting his website for at least five years because he doesn’t try to frustrate the viewer with minuscule image sizes covered with ridiculous copyright notices.

The best art to come out of Australia is Aboriginal art, both old and contemporary Aboriginal art. Everything else in Australian art is either derivative and/or regional and will never leave the shores of Australia.

The best Aboriginal art deserves so much more credit than it currently receives. Auction prices for Aboriginal art have been increasing and international collectors are buying more but I think it should be getting a lot more loving than it does.

The auction house Deutscher and Hackett will be holding their inaugural Aboriginal art auction in Melbourne on the 25th of March. They have a range of paintings, sculptures and weavings with prices ranging from a couple thousand dollars through to a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Here’s a few that I liked..

I’m thinking about bidding on this little beauty. It’s by unknown artist and has a low estimate, so readers of this post are NOT allowed to bid on it!

ARTIST UNKNOWN
Fish, c1950 (Groote Eylandt) natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark 28.0 x 49.0 cm
ESTIMATE: $1,500 – 2,000

PINTA PINTA TJAPANANGKA
Untitled, 1981 (c1937 – 1999) synthetic polymer paint on linen 186.5 x 154.0 cm
ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE
Untitled (Alhalkere), 1995 (c1910 – 1996) synthetic polymer paint on linen 110.0 x 201.0 cm
ESTIMATE: $150,000 – 200,000

NAATA NUNGURRAYI
Marrapinti, 2002 born 1932 synthetic polymer paint on linen 168.0 x 46.0 cm
ESTIMATE: $4,000 – 6,000

See the full online catalog of the Aboriginal art auction at the Deutscher and Hackett website here.

My posting pauses seem to be getting longer and more frequent, but I have a good excuse this time. I have been looking around for a new area to live. I live in the suburbs which is as noisy as a city without all the conveniences of city, so I thought I should just move to a city (Sydney.) When I went to the city to look for an apartment I spent the whole time in my hotel room sick, so I took it as a sign that Sydney isn’t the place for me right now. I probably look for signs that aren’t really there and place too much importance on feelings but that’s just how it is for me.

Anyway, I have one more area to explore next week and if that doesn’t work out I’m going to travel the world for a year or two or three. It’s a place called Bellingen, which is a quiet little place close to the beach and lots of good walking trails.

If Bellingen doesn’t work for me I plan to visit lots of art museums around the world. Starting with Italy, then France, Spain, England, maybe Germany and possibly the United States. I would just stay in each place until my visa expired, so it wouldn’t be a rushed trip. Flying anywhere from Australia is a loooong flight so when I land somewhere I’m never in hurry to get back on a plane.

I’m challenged by the burden of freedom. I have no responsibilities holding me down in any one place, I have been saving for a rainy day, and I have a job that can be done anywhere in the world. Every week I seem to have a new plan and a whole new direction, but each new week seems to create a more interesting plan. So I spend my time thinking about life while life marches on around me.

The Times Online and the Saatchi gallery have put together a list of 200 twentieth century artists and is asking visitors to vote for their favorite. They include famous painters, sculptors, photographers, video and installation artists.

You can vote for your favorite artist/s on the TimesOnline website here.

I was boring and voted for Pablo Picasso, but painting would also be less interesting without the likes of Paul Cezanne, Francis Bacon, Marc Chagall, Lucian Freud, Alberto Giacometti, Philip Guston, Wassily Kandinsky, Anselm Kiefer, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and a few others.

There’s quite a few artists on the list that I have never heard of. Here’s the list of 200 artists arranged alphabetically..

Marina Abramovic
Tomma Abts
Vito Acconci
Ansel Adams
Bas Jan Ader
Eileen Agar
Craigie Aitchison
Josef Albers
Pierre Alechinsky
Kai Althoff
Francis Alys
Carl Andre
Karel Appel
Nobuyoshi Araki
Diane Arbus
Alexander Archipenko
Arman
Jean Arp
Art & Language
Antonin Artaud
Richard Artschwager
Eugene Atget
Frank Auerbach
Richard Avedon
Milton Avery
Gillian Ayres
Francis Bacon
Leon Bakst
John Baldessari
Miroslaw Balka
Giacomo Balla
Balthus
Ernst Barlach
Matthew Barney
Georg Baselitz
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Willi Baumeister
Lothar Baumgarten
Bernd And Hilla Becher
Max Beckmann
Hans Bellmer
George Wesley Bellows
Thomas Hart Benton
Joseph Beuys
Ashley Bickerton
Max Bill
Peter Blake
Umberto Boccioni
Alighiero E Boetti
Christian Boltanski
David Bomberg
Pierre Bonnard
Michael Borremans
Fernando Botero
Louise Bourgeois
Arthur Boyd
Constantin Brancusi
Bill Brandt
Georges Braque
Brassai (Gyula Halasz)
Victor Brauner
Marcel Broodthaers
Glenn Brown
Cecily Brown
Chris Burden
Daniel Buren
Victor Burgin
Edward Burra
Alberto Burri
Pol Bury
Jean-Marc Bustamante
Alexander Calder
Sophie Calle
Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller
Anthony Caro
Carlo Carra
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Maurizio Cattelan
Patrick Caulfield
Cesar
Paul Cezanne
Helen Chadwick
Lynn Chadwick
Marc Chagall
John Chamberlain
Dinos and Jake Chapman
Judy Chicago
Eduardo Chillida
Giorgio De Chirico
Larry Clark
Christo And Jeanne Claude
Franceso Clemente
Chuck Close
Prunella Clough
Hannah Collins
George Condo
Le Corbusier
Lovis Corinth
Joseph Cornell
Tony Cragg
Martin Creed
Robert Crumb
John Currin
Salvador Dalí
Hanne Darboven
Stuart Davis
Willem De Kooning
Richard Deacon
Tacita Dean
Sonia Delaunay
Robert Delaunay
Paul Delvaux
Thomas Demand
Charles Demuth
Maurice Denis
Andre Derain
Jan Dibbets
Richard Diebenkorn
Jim Dine
Otto Dix
Theo Van Doesburg
Willie Doherty
Peter Doig
Oscar Dominguez
Kees Van Dongen
Arthur Dove
Jean Dubuffet
Marcel Duchamp
Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Raoul Dufy
Marlene Dumas
William Eggleston
Lissitzky EI
Olafur Eliasson
Tracey Emin
James Ensor
Jacob Epstein
Max Ernst
M.C. Escher
Richard Estes
Walker Evans
Luciano Fabro
Oyvind Fahlstrom
Jean Fautrier
Lyonel Feininger
Eric Fischl
Fischli & Weiss
Barry Flanagan
Dan Flavin
Lucio Fontana
Tsugouharu Foujita
Sam Francis
Robert Frank
Helen Frankenthaler
Lucian Freud
Lee Friedlander
Elisabeth Frink
Katharina Fritsch
Roger Fry
Naum Gabo
Antonio Lopez Garcia
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Paul Gauguin
Isa Genzken
Alberto Giacometti
Gilbert & George
Eric Gill
Albert Gliezes
Robert Gober
Nan Goldin
Andy Goldsworthy
Leon Golub
Natalia Goncharova
Julio Gonzalez
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Douglas Gordon
Arshile Gorky
Anthony Gormley
Adolph Gottlieb
Dan Graham
Paul Graham
Duncan Grant
Juan Gris
George Grosz
Andreas Gursky
Philip Guston
Renato Guttuso
Hans Haacke
Peter Halley
Richard Hamilton
Ian Hamilton-Finlay
David Hammons
Duane Hanson
Keith Haring
Rachel Harrison
Marsden Hartley
Hans Hartung
Mona Hatoum
Raoul Hausmann
John Heartfield
Mary Heilman
Jean Helion
Barbara Hepworth
Patrick Heron
Eva Hesse
Gary Hill
Roger Hilton
Damien Hirst
Ivon Hitchens
David Hockney
Howard Hodgkin
Hans Hofmann
Carsten Holler
Jenny Holzer
Edward Hopper
Roni Horn
Rebecca Horn
Gary Hume
Jorg Immendorff
Robert Indiana
Robert Irwin
Alfred Jaar
Alexei Von Jawlensky
Augustus John
Gwen John
Jasper Johns
Joan Jonas
Allen Jones
Asger Jorn
Donald Judd
Isaac Julien
Ilya Kabakov
Frida Kahlo
Wassily Kandinsky
Anish Kapoor
Alex Katz
On Kawara
Mike Kelley
Ellsworth Kelly
Mary Kelly
William Kentridge
Anselm Kiefer
Ed and Nancy Kienholz
Martin Kippenberger
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Per Kirkeby
R.B. Kitaj
Paul Klee
Yves Klein
Gustav Klimt
Franz Kline
Oskar Kokoshka
Kathe Kollwitz
Komar And Melamid
Jeff Koons
Leon Kossoff
Joseph Kosuth
Jannis Kounellis
Lee Krasner
Barbara Kruger
Yayoi Kusama
Wolfgang Laib
Wilfredo Lam
Dorothea Lange
Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Marie Laurencin
Sol LeWitt
Fernand Leger
Percy Wyndham Lewis
Roy Lichtenstein
Max Liebermann
Jacques Lipchitz
Richard Long
Robert Longo
Morris Louis
L.S. Lowry
Sarah Lucas
August Macke
Rene Magritte
Aristide Maillol
Kasimir Malevich
Robert Mangold
Piero Manzoni
Giacumo Manzu
Robert Mapplethorpe
Franz Marc
Brice Marden
Walter De Maria
John Marin
Marisol
Kerry Marshall
Agnes Martin
Kenneth Martin
Andre Masson
Henri Matisse
Roberto Matta
Gordon Matta-Clark
Paul Mccarthy
Steve McQueen
Cildo Meireles
Ana Mendieta
Mario Merz
Annette Messager
Henri Michaux
Lee Miller
Joan Miro
Joan Mitchell
Paula Modersohn-Becker
Amedeo Modigliani
Tina Modotti
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Piet Mondrian
Claude Monet
Henry Moore
Giorgio Morandi
Yasumasa Morimura
Malcolm Morley
Robert Morris
Robert Motherwell
Ron Mueck
Matt Mullican
Edvard Munch
Juan Munoz
Takashi Murakami
Elie Nadelman
Paul Nash
David Nash
Bruce Nauman
Alice Neel
Mike Nelson
Louise Nevelson
Barnett Newman
Ben Nicholson
Hermann Nitsch
Noble and Webster
Isamu Noguchi
Sidney Nolan
Kenneth Noland
Emil Nolde
Maria Nordman
Georgia O’Keeffe
Albert Oehlen
Chris Ofili
Helio Oiticica
Claes Oldenburg
Jules Olitski
Yoko Ono
Julian Opie
Meret Oppenheim
Gabriel Orozco
Tony Oursler
Nam June Paik
Eduardo Paolozzi
Cornelia Parker
Martin Parr
Victor Pasmore
Max Pechstein
A.R. Penck
Giuseppe Penone
Roland Penrose
Beverly Pepper
Grayson Perry
Elizabeth Peyton
Niki de Saint Phalle
Vong Phaophanit
Francis Picabia
Pablo Picasso
Adrian Piper
John Piper
Michelangelo Pistoletto
Serge Poliakoff
Sigmar Polke
Jackson Pollock
Liubov Popova
Maurice Prendergast
Richard Prince
Marc Quinn
Arnulf Rainer
Neo Rauch
Robert Rauschenberg
Man Ray
Charles Ray
Odilon Redon
Paula Rego
Ad Reinhardt
Pierre Auguste Renoir
Jason Rhoades
Germaine Richier
Gerhard Richter
Daniel Richter
Leni Riefenstahl
Bridget Riley
Jean-Paul Riopelle
Pipilotti Rist
Diego Rivera
Larry Rivers
Norman Rockwell
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Auguste Rodin
James Rosenquist
Mimmo Rotella
Dieter Roth
Susan Rothenberg
Mark Rothko
Georges Rouault
Henri Rousseau
Ed Ruscha
Robert Ryman
Doris Salcedo
David Salle
Lucas Samaras
Cheri Samba
Fred Sandback
August Sander
Wilhelm Sasnal
Jenny Saville
Christian Schad
Miriam Schapiro
Egon Schiele
Oskar Schlemmer
Julian Schnabel
Gregor Schneider
Thomas Schutte
Kurt Schwitters
Sean Scully
George Segal
Kurt Seligmann
Richard Serra
Gino Severini
Ben Shahn
Charles Sheeler
Cindy Sherman
Stephen Shore
Walter Sickert
Santiago Sierra
Paul Signac
Roman Signer
David Smith
Kiki Smith
Robert Smithson
Pierre Soulages
Chaim Soutine
Stanley Spencer
Nancy Spero
Daniel Spoerri
Nicolas De Stael
Frank Stella
Joseph Stella
Jana Sterbak
Alfred Stieglitz
Clyfford Still
Thomas Struth
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Graham Sutherland
Rufino Tamayo
Yves Tanguy
Dorothea Tanning
Antoni Tapies
Vladimir Tatlin
Pavel Tchelitchew
Wayne Thiebaud
Wolfgang Tillmans
Jean Tinguely
Mark Tobey
Rosemarie Trockel
William Turnbull
James Turrell
Richard Tuttle
Luc Tuymans
Cy Twombly
Euan Uglow
Maurice Utrillo
Victor Vasarely
Ben Vautier
Jack Vettriano
Bill Viola
Banks Violette
Maurice De Vlaminck
Edouard Vuillard
Jeff Wall
Mark Wallinger
Alfred Wallis
Andy Warhol
Gillian Wearing
Max Weber
Weegee
William Wegman
Carel Weight
Lawrence Weiner
Franz West
Edward Weston
Rachel Whiteread
Hannah Wilke
Richard Wilson
Gary Winogrand
Wols
Grant Wood
Christopher Wool
Jack Butler Yeats
Gilberto Zorio

Over at the Artopia blog is an interesting post on shit. I don’t know why it’s interesting to me and I probably should stop mentioning shit on this blog before I develop some kind of shit fetish. I just thought I should point it out as John Perreault has obviously spent some time thinking about the topic.

He focuses on the shit of Piero Manzoni, the Italian artist that is best remembered for his canned artist shit, but also mentions the shit of a few other artists like Andres Serrano and Paul McCarthy.

To be honest, I only know of Piero Manzoni because of his canned shit, but according to the post over at Artopia, the artist produced more work..

1. All-white paintings initially made of clay-soaked canvas.
2. Balloons containing the artist’s breath.
3. Living sculptures signed by the artist.
4. Pedestals for “living sculptures” — and one for the earth itself.
5. Very long lines inscribed on scrolls and sealed in tubes.
6. Most notorious and victorious, his very own canned shit.

Shepard Fairey’s Barack Obama campaign poster is still in the news even though people now refer to the subject as President Obama. Fairey has filed a lawsuit against The Associated Press, requesting the judge to state that he is “protected from copyright infringement claims.”

The Barack Obama photograph used in the Fairey poster was taken by freelance photographer, Mannie Garcia for The Associated Press in 2006. The A.P. recently demanded a portion of any money made from the image and now the artist has decided to the let a federal judge figure out if the matter is a copyright infringement.

A lawyer for Fairey, Anthony T. Falzone said the Garcia photograph was transformed into a “stunning, abstracted and idealized visual image that created powerful new meaning and conveys a radically different message.”

NY Times has more on the copyright lawsuit. Brian over at MyArtSpace blog has a more in depth post on the Fairey case too.

Shepard Fairey is also currently showing at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

If you like sleeping and like art the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York is looking for you. You also have to be female, be between the ages of 18 and 40, and be prepared to take a sleeping pill before your performance.

The sleeping women are an installation by the contemporary Chinese artist Chu Yun. Yun will be showing at the New Museum’s “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus” exhibition of emerging artists, from April 7 to June 28.

If you don’t mind people watching you sleep and want to be a part of the installation, contact the New Museum asap. Details can also be found on the Idealist website here.