Posted in Art or Commerce?, Authorship, Exhibition, Internet, New Media, Old Media, Photography, Popular Culture, tagged art world, artists, commerce, creativity, Design, Etsy, Etsy.com, galleries, Popular Culture, selling on December 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Happy news! Artists and the people who love them meet at last, on mutual ground. No more stark, unfriendly gallery spaces where some intern behind the front desk refuses to acknowledge your arrival. No more standing around at openings with a plastic cup of lousy wine in one hand and a gussied-up Ritz cracker in the other, hoping for a chance to speak with the artist. No more stratospheric prices that make you feel like a dwarf star in the vast art world universe. Really? Really! (more…)
Posted in A Picture is Worth..., Design, Exhibition, Installation, Photography, Popular Culture, Theater on February 4, 2009| Leave a Comment »
I took this photograph with my cell phone a couple of months ago, at a local Staten Island diner. It is not an unusual scene in a diner. The monster cookies. I was enamored of their inflated forms piled high on a metal pedestal. Who eats these cookies? Does anyone? Does anyone eat the lemon meringue pies with the fake egg white swirl that’s higher than Elvis’ hair? I’ve never seen a person eat a slice from one of those pies. Do the same cookies and pies stay in their respective spots, uneaten, forever? Are they immortal props that complete the “authentic” diner experience? Maybe they were bought 25 years ago when the diner first opened and have stuck around ever since — dusted occasionally — along with the framed first fiver over the cashier’s counter. (more…)
Posted in A Picture is Worth..., Design, Installation, New Media, Old Media, Photography, Popular Culture, tagged cupcakes, Obama, Obama Volunteers, pixelated art, politics, Polling Places, Upstate New York on November 11, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Not since Marie Antoinette uttered, “Let them eat cake!” (not!) have cake and politics been so closely related. Zilly Rosen, a cake maker and artist living in Buffalo, New York created a 1,240-pixel, er, cupcake portrait of Barack Obama to express her excitement and gratitude for the presidential election process. Interviewed by Cupcakes Take the Cake bloggers, Zilly explained the source of her genius idea:
“I knew I wanted to do something to be part of this moment in history. I wanted to send up my creative energy to the “ether” in the days preceding the election. I’m a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo, and they always have a bake sale on Election Day for the people voting at their polls. I first thought about making this installation for their bake sale, but then realized I couldn’t have an image of Barack within 100 feet of the polling place!” (more…)
Posted in Art or Commerce?, Photography, Popular Culture, tagged David Levinthal, fiction, illustration, Photography, The New York Times on October 31, 2008| Leave a Comment »
© David Levinthal / The New York Times
I’ve written about artist-photographer David Levinthal on this blog before. Now I’ve discovered he does photo illustrations, too. Regular New York Times readers may have seen his soft-focus photos in the August issues of the Times Sunday Magazine, illustrating “Mrs. Corbett’s Request”, a serialized story by Colin Harrison. Levinthal captures the weary, down-at-the-heel atmosphere of Harrison’s tale perfectly.
Just last week I noticed another Levinthal photo in the October 26, 2008 Travel Section (page 1, top of the fold) accompanying an article on winter vacations. The scene of brightly colored skiers in a clichéd winter landscape feels like a snow globe diorama. (more…)
Posted in A Picture is Worth..., Check out..., Photography, tagged Blue Lagoon, geothermal power, Iceland, Reuters on May 16, 2008| 1 Comment »
Check out this incredible photo (detail, left) taken in Grindavik, Iceland, by Reuters photographer Bob Strong. This is a BorderTalks image! Talk about conflicting (co-existing?) territories! Within one frame the photographer captures the hallucinogenic combination of a geothermal power plant and one of Iceland’s tourist “hot spots,” the 104-degree Blue Lagoon spa.
This coupling of industry and leisure is a jolt to the eye. In fact, it is such a strange image that I initially thought it must be a composite of two photos. Which brings up an interesting question. If it were a Photoshoped composite rather than a “real world” juxtaposition, would it matter to the viewer? (more…)
Posted in Border Violations, Photography, Popular Culture, surveillance, tagged erotica, harem, Japan, odalisque, Orientalism, Polaroid, shunga netsuke, voyeurism on May 14, 2008| 1 Comment »
In my recent post on American artists who work small scale, I forgot to mention photographer David Levinthal. He works with small-scale figures (often toys), but the final artifact is usually a 20 x 24 inch Polaroid. Polaroid film has a particularly malleable and atmospheric quality that’s magnified when using a macro lens in combination with a shallow depth of field. The effect is cinematic.
Levinthal takes as his subject the myths that preoccupy America and the West. His series titles say it all: Modern Romance, American Beauties, The Wild West, Barbie, Baseball. His minstrel series (Blackface), his re-imagining of the Holocaust (Mein Kampf) and his WWII “documentary” war images (Hitler Moves East, co-created with Garry Trudeau) have been controversial, though critically acclaimed. (more…)
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