It’s good to see Doc Martens taking fast fashion at a walking pace.
Dr Martens to get foot in the door of resale market with help from Depop – The Guardian Under Dr Martens’ ReSouled scheme with Depop, ageing DMs can be repolished, given new laces, soles, heel loops and insoles before being put back on the market. The footwear is priced at about 80% that of a new pair. The lower price is likely have wider appeal after Dr Martens raises the price of its classic 1460 eight-hole boots in the UK by £10 a pair to £159 in July.
The shoes went viral on Weibo this week and were widely criticised as being too ugly to be an effective awareness tool but more as an example of tone-deafness from wealthy people. “I can find a pair of these shoes in the bin for free,” one person wrote. Another asked: “Wouldn’t it be more eco-friendly not to sell these shoes?”
From the sublime to the ridiculous ridiculous to the even more ridiculous.
The Mullet Shoe is here! – Sad And Useless The Mullet Shoe is a high-top with silky smooth set of light brown locks cascading down the back. It’s a mullet… for a shoe… ready to swish all sultry when you walk, and blow romantically in the breeze. And also get muddy, matted, and rank when you drag it through the dirt, and possibly make you trip and fall on your face if you don’t mind its flowing length, which appears to be couple inches longer than the shoe itself.
Finally, here are some shoes making a more artistic spectacle of themselves.
Assembled sculptures by artist Willie Cole cluster high hHeels into expressive masks – Colossal Artist Willie Cole juxtaposes readymade footwear and African tradition in his series of sculptural masks. The figurative assemblages stack women’s heels into clusters that are expressive and distinctly unique, an effect Cole derives from the shoes’ material, color, and pattern rather than a preconceived plan or sketch. Depicting exaggerated toothy grins, pointed brows, and outstretched tongues, the sculptures span more than a decade of the artist’s career.
“I will show your Lordship what a woman can do”: Artemisia Gentileschi’s compelling feminist life – Hyperallergic Arguably, the sexual assault she suffered aged 17 at the hands of her father Orazio’s colleague Agostino Tassi has come to define her, if not in art historical terms then certainly in the popular imagination; her images of powerful female figures are easily summarized in auction or museum blurbs as avatars for feminist strength in defiance of (or revenge against) this singular biographical event. The 2020 show made inroads toward shaking off this reductive and emotionally driven interpretation. Barker deliberately sets out to correct “panegyric” accounts of her life and work, bringing together the most recent art historical developments and discoveries of primary documents to flesh out her biography, and asserting that we “have only begun to get to know her.”
For more on this powerful artist, you really must check out these reviews of her (and others’) paintings of Judith and Holofernes, both part one and part two, that I shared a while back.
And it was nice to see Sheffield’s Women of Steel statue as today’s Bing background image.
Women of Steel bronze sculpture in Sheffield city centre, by sculptor Martin Jennings – Peapix With working-age men away fighting, women – some girls as young as 14 – were conscripted to work in Sheffield’s factories and steel mills, often undertaking dangerous and physically demanding work. But when the war ended, they were dismissed and their contribution went unrecognised for decades until, after a fundraising campaign, this sculpture was unveiled in 2016.
That recent post about the not-really-“homecoming” of the Nedra Sky Disc got me thinking about those culturally significant artefacts and paintings that really do need to go home. Here’s a brief list of recent articles from The Art Newspaper to get us started. I’m sure there are unfortunately many more.
A pair of articles from Hyperallergic on two pairs of artists.
The neglected afterlife of the great Georges Braque – Hyperallergic Why is this show by Georges Braque such a quiet, hole-in-corner sort of affair? I find myself wondering as I wander around The Poetry of Things, a new exhibition at Bernard Jacobson Gallery of 14 magnificent still life paintings (and a single collage) by the man who is best known as the co-creator, with Picasso, of Cubism.
It doesn’t always work, though. Take this exhibition of the works of Marisol Escobar and Andy Warhol, for instance, “the queen and king of Pop“.
Does a pairing with Warhol do Marisol any favors? – Hyperallergic The basic plan of this show reveals an unfortunate curatorial lapse. To put Warhol’s famous works alongside Marisol’s now relatively unknown art does no favors for her. Rather than lift up her art, this strategy makes it look marginal and obscure, a minor version of what he did with such success. Jeffrey Deitch, whose judgments I take seriously, says in the catalogue, “Marisol, for me, was one of the geniuses who defined contemporary art. . . .” I would love to see a full Marisol show, so as to come to grips with her work on its own terms. These present comparisons don’t do that.
Honey, we shrunk the art! The return of the micro gallery – Elephant Simon Martin believes it’s the little things that count. As the coronavirus pandemic forced museums the world over to temporarily close, the director of Pallant House Gallery quietly reached out to a cohort of British contemporary artists with a simple yet challenging proposition: to create a small-scale artwork measuring no more than 15 sq cm.
More than 30 creative luminaries have contributed original works to the 2021 Model Art Gallery, ranging from a pair of terracotta vessels by studio potter Magdalene Odundo and a painting by Sean Scully, to a Julian Opie sculpture and a miniature print from photographer Khadija Saye, the only work from her Crowned series not destroyed in the Grenfell Tower fire which took her life.
It’s not the first time the Chichester institution has scaled down: the earliest model gallery in Pallant House Gallery’s collection, The Thirty Four Gallery, debuted in 1934 after art dealer Sydney Burney invited his contemporaries (including Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Vanessa Bell) to create miniature artworks to fill a dollhouse for a charitable cause. Lost for decades, some of the works were later rediscovered in a suitcase by Burney’s grandson. The model was recreated by Pallant House Gallery in 1997 based on photographs of the original designed by the architect Marshall Sisson.
Following on from yesterday’s post on successful and unsuccessful restoration projects, here are a few more. Let’s start with this example of when a more cartoony, less realistic painting was deliberate rather than the result of a botched job.
Ghent altarpiece restorations reveal the alarmingly humanoid face of the famous mystic lamb – Smithsonian Magazine To be fair, the lamb—which features prominently in a panel appropriately titled Adoration of the Mystic Lamb—is meant to represent Christ himself. But perched atop its fluffy woolly-white body, the penetrating, close-set eyes, full pink lips and flared nostrils of the original lamb are, at a minimum, eye-catching, if not alarmingly anthropomorphic. Its “cartoonish” appearance is a marked departure from the serene, naturalistic style characterizing the rest of the scene surrounding it, as well as the other panels, Hélène Dubois, the head of the Royal Institute’s restoration project, tells Hannah McGivern at the Art Newspaper.
For that reason, during the century or so that the painting hung in its full, unadulterated glory, onlookers gazing upon the lamb probably got a more “intense interaction” than they bargained for, Dubois suggests. Perhaps the anomalous nature of this riveting stare was part of the motivation behind a spate of modifications to the painting in 1550, when a second set of artists swapped the lamb’s soul-penetrating gaze for a more “impassive and … neutral” expression, restorers explained in a statement, as reported by Flanders Today’s Lisa Bradshaw in 2018.
As we read yesterday with the Vermeer, these restoration projects can take years…
The restoration of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch begins: Watch the painstaking process on-site and online – Open Culture “It is like a military operation in the planning,” said Dibbets, and it has required the utmost precision and expert teams of restorers, data experts, art historians, and the professionals who moved the enormous painting into the glass case it will occupy during this intense period. The crew of restorers will work from digital images taken with a macro X-ray fluorescence scanner, a technique, says Dibbets, that allowed them to “make a full body scan” and “discover which pigments [Rembrandt] used.”
…but here’s an approach I wasn’t expecting with this painting.
AI helps return Rembrandt’s The Night Watch to original size – The Guardian In 1715, three-quarters of a century after it was painted, the canvas was trimmed – 60cm (2ft) cut from the left side of the painting, 22cm (9ins) from the top, 12cm from the bottom and 7cm from the right – so that the masterpiece might fit between two doors at Amsterdam’s city hall. But using high-resolution photography of what is left of the original, computer learning of Rembrandt’s techniques and a contemporary copy of the full painting by Gerrit Lundens hanging in London’s National Gallery, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam was able to reproduce the work in all its glory.
I’m a big fan of Antony Gormley’s spooky and solemn sculptures on Crosby beach near Liverpool, so I was happy to read that they’re being looked after.
Antony Gormley asks for ‘vandalised’ beach sculptures to be cleaned – The Guardian Antony Gormley has asked for paint to be removed from his iron men sculptures on Crosby beach after they were embellished with colourful outfits by an unknown artist. At least nine of the famous group of statues, which face out to sea and have been standing naked on the Merseyside beach for a decade, have been brightly decorated in the past week.
Antony Gormley hopes Crosby statues last 1,000 years after reset – The Guardian One hundred cast-iron statues modelled on Gormley were installed in 2005 at Crosby beach, spread across 3km (2 miles) of the foreshore and stretching almost 1km out to sea. The installation, Another Place, was only supposed to last 16 months in Crosby, and the men were almost sent packing early amid safety complaints including cases of the coastguard being called out to “rescue” them. Sixteen years on, the artwork has become a tourist attraction for the Sefton borough of Merseyside and a beloved local institution. But unnoticed by all but the keenest eye, 10 of the men have been missing in action for the past few years after their concrete support piles disintegrated, plunging them face-first into the mud.
Of course, restoration isn’t just limited to paintings and sculptures. There are people who also want to restore … letters of the alphabet?
Petition · Restore the ampersand as the 27th letter of the alphabet – Change.org The ampersand dates all the way back to 45 AD and Johannes Gutenberg even included it on his first printing press in 1440. During the 19th century, American schoolchildren were taught to end their ABC’s with “X, Y, Z, and per se and” because the ampersand was indeed the 27th letter. But then it mysteriously and inexplicably disappeared from the alphabet. […]
This isn’t just for us. Think of all the uses of the ampersand out there, and all the people and organizations that could benefit from allowing the ampersand back into our alphabet. We’re not asking for much. And to be completely honest, we’re not exactly sure who calls the shots on these sorts of things, but having Merriam-Webster on our side seems like a good start.
For law firms, the ampersand is a character worth saving – ABA Journal Paul Hastings, Norton Rose Fulbright, Hogan Lovells, Proskauer Rose, Baker Botts: the list of new BigLaw titles built on the corpses of ampersands is almost endless. All these firms discarded their ampersands as if they were ashamed of them. The BigLaw ampersand now stands on the precipice of extinction. Accordingly, it is up to BigLaw partners and associates to see to its survival. You’re thinking, “But what can I do? I’m only one lawyer among tens of thousands?” You have answered your own question: You are one of tens of thousands. Your voice, added to the voices of your brother and sister lawyers across the land, can be a mighty chorus demanding the restoration of the ampersand to its rightful place in American law.
Here’s another bookish sculpture to go with the others I found a while back.
Idiom installation – Atlas Obscura For bibliophiles, an infinite tower of books is a nightmare disguised as a dream—a huge collection of literature that you can’t get at because pulling a book or two out will cause the collapse of the tower. But it does make for a wonderful sight.
A real-life iteration of this dream-nightmare is on display at the Prague Municipal Library. Artist Matej Kren’s “Idiom” is a long-term art installation where hundreds of books are stacked in a cylindrical tower. Mirrors placed at the bottom and the top give the exhibit the illusion of being infinite. A tear-shaped opening on one side of the tower allows visitors to peek in and experience what it would be like to drown in a book well.
Matej Kren’s ‘Idiom’ – Awayn Located quite centrally, it’s a fun five minute stop to get some fresh photos and look at the book tower. Though it’s a lovely way for people to step into the building, you don’t have to go too far into it, so you don’t disturb anyone who goes for the actual library. As you come in the main entrance, it is literally in front of you; need to walk upstairs.
Here are some more photos of this little/infinitely large landmark. (via)
Time for another post about trees, I think. Here are a couple of links that have been languishing in my drafts folder for a while.
Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich plants ‘future tree’ in Swiss courtyard – designboom This structure — known as the ‘future tree’ — combines state-of-the-art design techniques, material science, and robotic fabrication to create an eye-catching architectural object. Demonstrating the latest research of Gramazio Kohler Research at ETH Zurich, the ‘future tree’ consists of a funnel-shaped, lightweight timber frame structure built by a robot, and a bespoke concrete column created using an ultra-thin 3D printed formwork. The entire design and fabrication were developed as inseparable and fully digital processes.
The photographs documenting its construction are extraordinary.
Ai Weiwei: Iron Tree – Yorkshire Sculpture Park Iron Tree is the largest and most complex sculpture to date in the artist’s tree series, which he began in 2009. Inspired by the wood sold by street vendors in Jingdezhen, southern China, Iron Tree comprise of 97 tree elements cast in iron and interlocked using a classic – and here exaggerated – Chinese method of joining. Iron Tree expresses Ai’s interest in fragments and the importance of the individual, without which the whole would not exist.
Artificial trees of a different kind, now. OK, so the trees are real, but their glitch-art shapes certainly aren’t natural.
A Japanese forestry technique prunes upper branches to create a tree platform for more sustainable harvests – Colossal Literally translating to platform cedar, daisugi is a 14th- or 15th-century technique that offers an efficient, sustainable, and visually stunning approach to forestry. The method originated in Kyoto and involves pruning the branches of Kitayama cedar so that the remaining shoots grow straight upward from a platform. Rather than harvesting the entire tree for lumber, loggers can fell just the upper portions, leaving the base and root structure intact.
A recently unveiled memorial to Mary Wollstonecraft, the “mother of feminism,” has raised many an eyebrow, though I think people are coming round now.
Mary Wollstonecraft statue: a provocative tribute for a radical woman – The Conversation Ultimately, statues don’t represent people, they represent ideas. Ideas of how we choose to see the world. Hambling’s more abstract and representative form perhaps tries to do too much: to celebrate the life and contribution of one woman, whilst celebrating the life and possibilities of all women.
Of, or For Mary Wollstonecraft? – History Workshop Hambling asserts that it is a sculpture, rather than a statue, that is for Wollstonecraft, not of her. A video to mark the unveiling of the statue premiered on the Mary on the Green social media profile in which Hambling describes the design as ‘a tower of intermingling female forms, culminating in the figure of the woman at the top who is challenging, and ready to challenge, the world.’ The ‘intermingling’ forms are suggestive of a historic community of women, out of which the more detailed, lone female figure is born into the ‘now’. This design choice is intended to represent the legacy of Wollstonecraft’s feminist work.
But, as this piece from The Art Newspaper says, even backlashes get a backlash.
What I like about Hambling’s figure is that it is nude, but not erotic. Wollstonecraft would have recognised the honesty of Hambling’s focus. “For man and woman,” she wrote in The Vindications of the Rights of Women (1792), “truth… must be the same; yet the fanciful female character, so prettily drawn by poets and novelists, demanding the sacrifice of truth and sincerity, virtue becomes a relative idea, having no other foundation than utility, and of that utility men pretend arbitrarily to judge, shaping it to their own convenience.” Naked, stripped of outward signs of wealth and privilege, we are all equal.
This status, for a very different woman, is also proving controversial, though for very different reasons.
Is Margaret Thatcher’s hometown ready to put her on a pedestal? – The New York Times [W]hile the unveiling of a statue is usually a festive occasion, few in Grantham expect Mrs. Thatcher’s homecoming to be celebrated as a hero’s return. “If you’re a Conservative,” said Graham Newton, the news editor of the weekly Grantham Journal, “you want a statue, and you want her recognized. But if you’re not, there’s a lot of people who — not to put a fine point on it — hated her.”
“She was never very fond of Grantham, and so Grantham was never very fond of her,” said John Campbell, a biographer, pointing out that Mrs. Thacher rarely visited the town as prime minister, and did not mention it in speeches. “She was happy to leave it behind,” he said.
Margaret Thatcher statue: More than 1,000 vow to attend ‘egg throwing contest’ at unveiling amid backlash – Sky News Councillors say the sculpture will be a fitting tribute to the Iron Lady, who was born and brought up in the town, and that the local authority will seek to raise as much of the £100,000 as possible through donations from the public and local businesses. But the potential outlay sparked anger among critics who suggested it was excessive during a time of national hardship.
Meanwhile.
Provocative Marilyn Monroe sculpture to return to Palm Springs—permanently – The Art Newspaper When it was first shown in the California desert town, from 2012 to 2014, Forever Marilyn was a popular tourist attraction, with many visitors posing for photographs between the statue’s feet. But its return is seen as an embarrassment to the feminist movement and the local art community, and the art museum’s director has spoken out against it.
“You come out of the museum and the first thing you’re going to see is a 26-foot-tall Marilyn Monroe with her entire backside and underwear exposed,” Grachos pointed out. “We serve over 100,000 school-age children that come to our museum every single year. What message does that send to our young people, our visitors and community to present a statue that objectifies women, is sexually charged and disrespectful?”
Update 22 June 2021
Despite widespread opposition, ‘sexist’ Marilyn Monroe statue installed next to Palm Springs Art Museum – The Art Newspaper Both of these groups sent protestors to the dedication ceremony on Sunday, with chants that drowned out some of the speakers. “It was nonstop chanting, both pro and con—you couldn’t really hear the speakers,” said modernism connoisseur Chris Menrad, who co-founded Crema with the Palm Springs fashion designer Trina Turk. “The goal of us being there was basically to disrupt the event and communicate our displeasure.”
Has anyone checked for any radio signals being transmitted to Jupiter?
DPS Aero Bureau encounters monolith in Red Rock Country – DPS News Official Statement from the Bureau of Land Management: “Although we can’t comment on active investigations, the Bureau of Land Management would like to remind public land visitors that using, occupying, or developing the public lands or their resources without a required authorization is illegal, no matter what planet you are from.”
Even Utah’s mysterious monolith may be no match for Google Earth – The Verge A Utah DPS public affairs officer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the supposed location of the monolith. And I’m not printing the alleged coordinates beyond confirming that the place is remote and highly inhospitable. In all seriousness: please don’t visit the mysterious Utah monolith.
That said, the monolith-hunting process is impressive in its own right. And the evidence for its location, put forward by Reddit user Tim Slane, is strong. Slane pinpointed the coordinates of a small redstone canyon with a narrow gap that closely matches the social media photos. Satellite images from Google Earth reveal something in the middle: a hard-to-see object that casts a sharp, tall, and narrow shadow across the ground. The object seems relatively new. Google Earth photos from 2013 and mid-2015 show no trace of it, but it’s clearly visible by October of 2016, when the surrounding ground has also been apparently cleared of scrub.
Update 29/11/2020
Looks like the aliens have come back for their property.
Earthlings, it seems, not aliens, removed the Utah monolith – The New York Times He did not photograph the men who took down the sculpture, saying he “didn’t want to start a confrontation by bringing out my camera and putting it in their face — especially since I agreed with what they were doing.” But a friend who accompanied him on the trip, Michael James Newlands, 38, of Denver, took a few quick photographs with his cellphone.
Utah monolith copycat appeared in Romania, but just as quickly disappeared – Hyperallergic Shortly before the sudden disappearance of the Utah monolith on the evening of November 27, a similar sculpture popped up near a fortress in the Romanian city of Piatra Neamt. The monolith has since disappeared, and police in Piatra Neamt have launched an investigation into the illegally-installed sculpture.
I love the idea of an abstract, sculptural painting.
But wait, here’s more Van Gogh. Lots more.
Dive into Van Gogh Worldwide, a digital archive of more than 1,000 works by the renowned Dutch artist – Colossal A point of levity during the temporary shutdowns of museums and cultural institutions during the last few months has been the plethora of digital archives making artworks and historical objects available for perusing from the comfort and safety of our couches. A recent addition is Van Gogh Worldwide, a massive collection of the post-impressionist artist’s paintings, sketches, and drawings.
Dutch museums unveil free digital collection of 1,000+ artworks by Van Gogh – My Modern Met Van Gogh Worldwide is a new project by a group of Dutch museums which presents a digital collection of over 1,000 of the artist’s masterpieces. Building off the digitized collection begun several years ago by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, almost half of the post-Impressionist works of this prolific artist are now available to view—with scholarly commentary—from the safety of your own home.
Take a wander yourself, there’s so much to take in.
Van Gogh Worldwide Van Gogh Worldwide is a free digital platform providing art-historical and technical data about the work of Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). The artist produced a total of approximately 2000 artworks, and the aim of Van Gogh Worldwide is to present data for these in an accessible way, via a user-friendly website.
The resolution of each image is wonderful, allowing you to get closer to the paintings than you probably could in real life.
And you can even view the paintings in a raking light, to get a sense of just how heavily textured and expressive these were. Not quite as three-dimensional as Timur Zagirov’s wooden blocks, but still.
Spindly trees, I’m a big fan. They’re just giant, 3D pen and ink drawings, really, and I’ve been snappingphotos of them for a while. Though none of my pics come anywhere close to capturing the atmosphere of these tulgey woods, as Things Magazine described them.
Mystical – Neil Burnell “There’s real magic in this series, with thick fog shrouding the gnarled moss-clad oaks, one can almost visualise fairies flying effortlessly into the scenes.”
Perhaps my love of twisty, organic lines explains why I found these sculptures by Sun-Hyuk Kim so fascinating.
Stainless steel roots sprawl into figurative sculptures by artist Sun-Hyuk Kim – Colossal Just like a tree, the spindly branches that shape Sun-Hyuk Kim’s sculptures extend from a larger, sturdy limb—or in the South Korean artist’s case, neck or spine, too. Kim creates sprawling artworks that merge human anatomy and the root systems that crawl underneath the earth’s surface. Sometimes painted in neutral tones and others plated in gold, the sculptures are composed of stainless steel that trails out into figurative forms.
Something about them reminds me of Kumi Yamashita’s installations.
Banksy’s not the only street artist out there trying to make a difference.
Stik hoping to raise £120k at auction to fund sculptures by local artists – Hackney Citizen Hackney’s street art megastar Stik is to auction off a unique model of his first ever public sculpture, Holding Hands, to fund a series of outdoor artworks by local artists. The maquette, a one-off, small-scale version of the sculpture, is predicted to fetch around £120,000 when it opens for bidding at Christie’s tomorrow as part of the auction house’s ‘Post-War and Contemporary Art’ sale. All proceeds will be donated to Hackney Council to help bankroll a series of public works by East London artists.
Hackney Street artist Stik to ‘empower’ local artists by funding a series of sculptures – Hackney Gazette Hackney Mayor Phillip Glanville thanked the artist, who has lived and worked in Hackney for 20 years, for his “record of activism” and generous donation. “We’re proud in Hackney to be able to support and share the creativity of our residents. This represents a long-standing commitment to inclusive public art that can be enjoyed by everyone in our parks and public spaces and I can’t wait to see the creativity that Stik is helping us to showcase and unlock,” the mayor said.
Check out Christie’s video about the original sculpture.
Detective Constable James Readman said it is “really encouraging” that the public has listened to the appeal and “done the right thing by returning a large proportion of the prints”.
Watch a Korean chef make the perfect tornado omelet – The Awesomer We have a hard enough time making omelets that don’t break apart on us when folding them over, but this Korean chef makes it look easy to create one with a swirled design that looks like a tornado.
Ingredients. — Thin cold toast, thin slices of bread-and-butter, pepper and salt to taste. Mode. — Place a very thin piece of cold toast between 2 slices of thin bread-and-butter in the form of a sandwich, adding a seasoning of pepper and salt. This sandwich may be varied by adding a little pulled meat, or very fine slices of cold meat, to the toast, and in any of these forms will be found very tempting to the appetite of an invalid.
Don’t forget your five portions of fruit and veg.
The value of a banana: understanding absurd and ephemeral artwork – The Conversation In September, the Guggenheim Museum in New York acquired Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian by anonymous donation. … Comedian reignited a set of questions that seem to flare up with some regularity: what makes something a high-priced artwork when another, seemingly identical, object is not?
A couple of recent Colossal finds that I thought went well together.
Rope twists into massive, fibrous circuit boards by artist Windy Chien – Colossal I find the metaphor of the journey to be potent and relevant here. For me, the visual pleasure derived from the Circuit Boards comes from choosing one rope end and following it to the conclusion of its journey through the work. Electronic circuit boards connect and conduct power; subway maps (maps in general) provide a kind of simulation of a journey, a guide to choices and paths.
Constellations of found electronics shape faces on vintage rackets by Artist Leonardo Ulian – Colossal The egg shape of the “head” of these vintage rackets reminded me of something yet familiar but at the moment lost. The result is a composition that resembles vaguely a human face made from a recycled object from the past, the racket, clashing with the rest of the elements, electronic parts, and the found objects. Then, an anomaly called “pareidolia,” the mechanism that leads our brain to bring things and objects of all kinds back to known and sensible forms does the rest. Will these be the faces of the future?
Some time in the 90s, I was convinced, absolutely convinced, that I had come across a secret Christo within the grounds of the University of Leeds. Of course it turned out just to be some wrapped scaffolding for a building renovation project. It did look pretty cool, though, and gave me just an inkling of what looking at the Reichstag (and perhaps still the Arc de Triomphe?) might have been like.
Christo (1935–2020) – Christo and Jeanne-Claude Artist Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, known as Christo, passed away of natural causes today, on May 31, 2020, at his home in New York City. He was 84 years old. Statement from Christo’s office: “Christo lived his life to the fullest, not only dreaming up what seemed impossible but realizing it. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s artwork brought people together in shared experiences across the globe, and their work lives on in our hearts and memories.
How the visionary artist Christo (RIP) changed the way we see the world – Open Culture After removing the wrapping from the Biscayne Bay islands, a project he called “my Water Lilies” in honor of Claude Monet,” Christo remarked that Surrounded Islands lived on, “in the mind of the people.” So too will Christo live on—remembered by millions as an artist who did things no one else would ever have conceived of, much less carried out.
The story behind Christo′s ′Wrapped Reichstag′ – DW In 1978, Christo presented a model of a veiled Reichstag at the Zurich Museum für Gestaltung (Museum of Design). Despite the troubled history of the structure built in the late 19th century under Kaiser Wilhelm II, Christo saw it as a symbol of freedom: the Republic was proclaimed there in 1918. Freedom had been a recurring theme in Christo’s art since his escape from communist Bulgaria in 1951.
Let’s have a break from all that, with news of an exhibition in London I’d love to see, Among the Trees: “By turns poetic, adventurous and thought-provoking, this group exhibition explores our relationship with trees and forests.” As we saw earlier, they can be remarkably eloquent.
Five things to know about Among the Trees – Southbank Centre
There are artworks that push at the very limits of the building, and celebrate the soaring scale of trees. Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s huge, cinematic portrait of a 30-metre spruce, for example, takes over almost the entirety of one of the lower galleries, while Guiseppe Penone’s Tree of 12 Metres (1980–82), a sapling painstakingly excavated from an industrially planed piece of timber, stops just short of the ceiling.
Among the Trees review – a knotty problem – The Guardian
Running the entire width of one floor at London’s Hayward gallery is a six-screen video which depicts, at about life size, a spruce tree swaying in the breeze in Finland. To accommodate its scale, the tree is projected horizontally, and at its foot stands the artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila, in a blue parka, dwarfed by the spreading conifer. The six projected sections of the tree tremble and sway out of sync with one another, adding to a growing sense of majestic befuddlement. You can’t take it in all at once, any more than you could if you stood before the real thing. Distantly, I hear the branches soughing and faint birdsong. Titled Horizontal – Vaakasuora, it makes you look and look some more.
Here’s some more artistic woodwork.
Trees at night: stunning Rorschach silhouettes from the 1920s – Brain Pickings
In his fifties, Young’s imagination fell upon a subject both wholly natural and wholly original — the expressive humanlike shapes, states, and emotions emanating from the silhouettes of trees at night. He began rendering what he half-saw and half-imagined in pen and ink — haunting black-and-white drawings full of feeling, straddling the playful and the poignant. These visual poems, replete with the strangeness and splendor of nature and human nature, become the kind of Rorschach test one intuitively performs while looking at the sky, but drawn from the canopy rather than the clouds.
Dancing twigs – Kottke
Artist Chris Kenny uses bits of twig from tree branches to make these interesting found art pieces that exploit the human tendency for pareidolia.
Wonderfully hypnotic wooden kinetic wall sculptures – Laughing Squid
A self-taught artist with a background in physics, David C. Roy has been creating mesmerizing wooden kinetic sculptures for nearly 40 years. Powered solely through mechanical wind-up mechanisms, pieces can run up to 48 hours on a single wind.
And finally, here’s a request for us to reconsider our view of trees within cities, and to appreciate the many benefits mature trees can bring to society. (via Sentiers)
Trees as infrastructure – Dark Matter Laboratories
[T]he ecological benefits of trees substantially start after 50 years of existence; we are currently building a deficient urban forest. Shifting our view to perceive public trees as assets rather than liabilities is an important aspect of maintaining and enhancing the benefits that trees provide in an urban setting.
Miscellaneous Details 