Llyn Foulkes

I was in LA this past weekend and had the privilege of hanging out with Llyn Foulkes. He invited me into his studio and put on a private concert for myself and a friend. Here is a link to his website.

http://llynfoulkes.com/

the boxer

I also participated in the Scavenger Hunt last Thursday. During the hunt, I came across The Boxer, a sculpture by SAIC Alum Richmond Barthe. Barthe modeled The Boxer after Kid Chocolate, a Cuban featherweight in the Thirties. He supposedly was impressed by the boxer's delicacy and recalled the boxer moving 'like a ballet dancer.'

Frederick Wiseman, director of Boxing Gym, a documentary set to open this week at the Siskel Film Center, also describes many of the boxers in his film as delicate and ballet-like. On the surface, boxing seems so rough and masculine while ballet is feminine and graceful. Now I'm realizing boxing is much more of a dance than I had previously thought.

Scavenger Hunt

For last Thursday's discussion I decided to do the scavenger hunt. One artist I found who attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and who is related to feminist art is Georgia O'Keefe. In the Art Institute several of O'Keefe's paintings were up. I was able to find her "Yellow Hickory Leaves", "Black Cross, New Mexico", "Cow's Skull with Calico Roses", "Red Hills with Flowers", "Red and Pink Rocks and Teeth", "The Black Place", "Blue and Green Music", "Ballet Skirt or Electric Light", and "The Shelton with Sunspots, New York" paintings. Georgia O'Keefe's work has often been tied to feminist art because many of her paintings reference the vagina and the female/feminine form.

Film - You Won't Miss Me

Relatively new New York filmmaker Ry-Russo Young is about to release her (I think) third film "You Won't Miss Me." The film uses a variety of different formats including HD, DV, Super 8, and 16mm. The film also stars Julian Schnabel's daughter Stella. Could be interesting...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq_E7RwUC88

pop art

More auctions....

Christie's.

And, insuring your art....

ARIS.

So the world of film is constantly referencing fine art...typically this involves contemporary directors referencing old or modern masters (Guillermo del Toro references Goya quite a bit and there are countless films referencing Bacon paintings (Alien, Silence of the Lambs, Jacob's Ladder)). However, it is fairly uncommon, I would argue, to see contemporary art referenced in film. 2000's "The Cell", directed by Tarsem Singh, is one of few films to use contemporary art as a main source of inspiration. So if u haven't seen it Jennifer Lopez goes into the mind of a serial killer and so on and so on. The most interesting scenes show the inner workings of the killer's mind which resemble a contemporary art gallery. In the first clip im attaching the three women sitting down are from an Odd Nerdrum painting. In the second clip he is referencing Damien Hirst. There are also nods to Gotfried Helnwein, Jane Alexander, and I'm sure other artists.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zCICwYt9cU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbrqV2httgI&feature=related

As a photographer, I am really interested in different photographic processes that are being used today. Right now at the Kavi Gupta Gallery, Curtis Mann's work is being shown. Bleaching is a technique that has been used in dark room photography creating an effect similar to dodging. Curtis Mann's work takes the idea of bleaching in photography and uses it in a contemporary way. He prints found pictures on a Lambda printer and dips them and paints bleach on them to discard some of the information that was in the photos before.

Here is a link to the gallery and his work:

http://www.kavigupta.com/