Archive for the ‘ART’ Category

Hey everyone!

I asked one of my blogging buddies, Courtney of Breaking Down the Big Beige Box to sub in for me while I was away. Court and I have a lot in common; we generally love the same art, design and fashion… and of course, we have a great time hanging around in NYC together. I know I’ve said this before, but remember when meeting people you met on the internet was generally a good way to get killed? Well, now it’s the source of half my friendships! Ha!

Enjoy this post- I really loved it!

-N

Sequence by Richard Serra c/o: Moma.org

“September” by Richard Serra 

“Damien Hirst died,” the salesperson at Barney’s told me in earnest this Friday. WHAT? Why hadn’t I heard? I asked, and promptly googled it. The first hit was an article in The Village Voice entitled “Damien Hirst: (1965-2012) In Memoriam.” IT’S TRUE! I told her, although, confused, I tried looking for a NYTimes obit. Then I got home and read the article. They were talking about his career. WHOOPS!

The original spot painting By Damien Hirst, 1986

I wasn’t going to write about the showing/publicity stunt of Damien Hirst & The Gagosian Gallery’s THE COMPLETE SPOT PAINTINGS 1986-2011.

I really wasn’t. Every major news source has had an opinion on it thus far, Huff Post even wrote a recap of all the different reviewers opinions, which you can check out HERE.

My favorite quote was from the NYTimes reviewer who said “The good news, of course, is that they’re not all in one place. And none involve dead animals, maggots, encrusted diamonds or vats of formaldehyde. They’re mostly just grids of repeating, neatly made circles, each a different color. How bad can it be?” Answer: The show is at times “rather good” at times, and at others “oppressive”, “ludicrous” monotonous and “very bad.” Some canvases pulse and sing while others fall flat.

Basically, Damien Hirst and his assistants have produced over 1500 of these paintings between 1986 and 2011, and are showing 331 of them simultaneously in Gagosian galleries worldwide, prompting one attendee to say “The sun doesn’t set on the spot paintings.” (Hirst is also rewarding anyone who visits all 11 galleries with a signed print. HA!)

The spot paitnings are a series of enamel high gloss circles painted onto canvases. The diameter of the spot is equal to the space between them, and no color can repeat on a canvas, although they come quite close.  Apparently, Hirst has only painted 5 of the 1500 of these paintings himself, although he claims that true art is in the conception and that he has been involved in every aspect of their making. He even went so far to say  ”The best spot painting you can have by me, is one by my assistant Rachel. Mine are shite compared to hers.” (The highest price ever paid for one was $3.48 million.)

Why am I writing about it then? Because I LOVE seeing the original spot painting and where Hirst took it conceptually from there. Personally, I enjoy the original the most: the messy, drippy, blobby conceptual fetus of a canvas. Its interesting to me to see how far he took it. It really is. The problem is, that the entire formula and the idea of this formulaic making of art has gotten a bit boring after 1500 different incarnations, obviously.What could motivate this man to keep making these things other than money?

Furthermore, the original painting reminds me a lot of my mini paintings: a somewhat under baked idea that is a visually appealing expression of color… It makes me want to develop it further, but not to the point of 1500 paintings.

As Andy Warhol has famously said ” Art is what you can get away with.” Right?

You can visit the spot paintings in a Gagosian Gallery near you until late February. Click HERE for details.

When you put something into the universe, you never really know where those ideas are going, who sees them and what happens afterward.(Unless they come back and tell you, hey I saw this on your blog and it made me do X,Y &Z. Which is GREATLY appreciated btw.) Apparently, the image of my black and white striped chair inspired a graphic designer to make this print!

Cute, huh? Her etsy shop, Third Floor Design, makes adorable brightly hued prints of both classic and traditional chairs, vespas, horned animals and more… Adorable.

Do you think the dude who sold me that chair on Ebay had any idea what would become of it? Ha!

Not every idea has to be complicated to be brilliant. Since I was a kid, this has always been one of my favorite installations at The Met. Its called Spectrum V and its by Ellsworth Kelly an American painter who was an influential during the mid century movements in art including post painterly abstraction, color field painting, and Minimalist painting.

Another one of my favorite paintings in the Museum. The artist Morris Louis was actually influenced by Helen Frankenthaler’s staining of raw canvas and thats the technique he used here. If you have seen this in person, you know, its HUGE.

It hangs in the a gallery of the museum that was largely part of the The Newman Collection.

The Newman Collection is considered one of the greatest collections of Abstract Expressionism, and the only one collected at the time of creation. It was collected by  Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman. Muriel was an accomplished portrait painter, newly married and traveling to New York from Chicago many times a year. On a visit to New York in 1949, one of her art professors from Chicago introduced her to The Club, the hangout of a new generation of American artists. Known there as a fellow artist, she met the Abstract Expressionist painters who were just about to achieve recognition. Though at first the Steinbergs had collected works by better known European artists, by the early 50s Muriel was interested in  the American painters and the New York movements. Many of these painters became her personal friends, gifting her with exquisite paintings. She was obviously an astute and keen eye, because her choices were obviously validated  by history… Because she was also a painter, she bought and acquired paintings that moved her. She wasn’t motivated by the appreciation value of paintings, she was motivated by how much she liked them. She also eventually stopped painting because she felt her work could not stand along side the masters she collected.

The collection includes every major American Abstract Expressionist including de kooning, Rothko, Franz Kline , Helen Frankenthaler, Clifford Still, Pollack and more… The paintings have had their home at the Met since the 70s and a major exhibit was put on in 1981. Although some of the paintings hung in her home for 50 years until she gifted them to The Met in 2006.

Franz Kline painted this on the back of window’s roller shade. The critic Paul Brach wrote: “Painting, drawing and writing; the structure and
its meaning; the symbol and the physical fact—are all united in a single gesture. And though it is deceptively spontaneous in appearance, that gesture is the millionth try—the final effort with all its failures behind it.”

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy reading about these things… I thought it was really interesting. Plus, there is insight into how I came up with them. The idea for the mini paintings actually came from a few places… One being a series of black and white paintings I saw at the Centre Pompidou, and the others being these paintings. Panels of color + color field painting+ dripping/staining + action painting === mini paintings. Throw all those in a blender and this is what comes out… Although when I FIRST FIRST bought them, I really truly intended to paint them all black or white and make a checkerboard type of thing. That could still be awesome though, couldn’t it? The bottom line though is, ideas come from everywhere, and they take time to incubate. Everything you see and do gets stowed away somewhere for you to trot out and make use of it one day. You just have to be ready to go with it!

Im talking like I think the mini paintings are the most brilliant thing in the world, I don’t. I just think they are very fun and interesting way to make a painting and this is how they came about. Plus I really like working on a piece that is more than just a flat canvas on wood. I enjoy that the piece is partly made up of its surroundings. Its fun to try new things!

Enjoy your day everyone!

(Sources: The Met website… Wikipedia was down, remember! I was searching for more information on Spectrum V when I stumbled upon a 30 minute talk on their site by the dude who restored the paintings from her collection…  technical but very interesting!)

After seeing my work around the web, I was commissioned by the lovely girls over at IPG MediaBrands to create a 100 piece mini painting wall installation for their office… I was super excited about it, but so freaking worried about how the heck I was going to install 100 paintings evenly.

Paintings drying in the studio…

The original 36 paintings that I hung over my son’s crib with nails were always falling off, or just constantly tilted. Plus, that kind of precise measuring is so not my strong suit.

Packed up and ready to go! 

Then my handyman Chris had a fab idea: Velcro! Now the paintings won’t shift, and can be adjusted easily. Plus we didn’t have to hammer 100 nails into a wall…

iPhone pic from the installation… It was SO FREAKING TEDIOUS! 

He came to help me with the installation, armed with a laser beam level, and like 10 other things I would never have thought of.(Bottom line, could not have done this myself. Know your strengths and weaknesses and thank you Chris!)

We decided to space them about an inch apart… Each canvas is 4″ x 4″ and is about an 1.25″ thick. The entire piece is 50″ x 50″. Obviously, there is no way to hang them completely perfectly, but when you look at the piece as a whole, it works!

And there you have it! 100 paintings installed on a dark gray wall at an awesome company’s office. They also have 4 other pieces of mine scattered about the office.

The piece is really fun up close, but its killer from a distance. I wanted to give you a better view, hence the picture with doorways in it… So imagine me sitting there all day, working and listening to water cooler chat? I felt like I was on the set of The Office. I was also getting a lot of ” what the heck are those!” and “Thats cool!” and even ” what do those represent?”  Represent? Hmmm….Should I make something up?!? Ok here goes: The mini paintings represent the different ways we compartmentalize our lives in 2012. They are reminiscent of the iPhone apps and keyboards we are so reliant on as a technology-obsessed culture. The paintings are applied randomly, but appear ordered. From the a distance it is beautiful and balanced, but when you look closer, it is just fragmented little pieces of life being held together by an idea of whole. 

How did I turn this into a sad painting? Its really just blobs of color on canvases… although my fake explanation does give some insight into my mental state, right? Stressed much?

Anyway, thanks to IPG Mediabrands for the opportunity to make such a fun piece!