Sunday Facepalm.

art

Something a little different today. I was asked in TNET to watch this video, and what I thought about it. A quick glimpse informed me that ‘LindyBeige’ is a person who lives to complain. I made it through the modern art hate video, decided to skip the rant about global warming. I’ve known a number of people who live to complain, and I can’t say I’ve cared for them much.

Oh, art. In general, people adore spouting off about art, and the sport of art hating has been going on since forever. That’s what a lot of modern art haters miss – they aren’t super bright and doing something new. I’m pretty comfortable saying there were most likely a host of cave art critics who never shut up, and had a great deal of trouble with that modern art. Every generation – modern art. All that said, most people operate on a “I know what I like” basis when it comes to art of any kind, and that’s fine. I do that myself, even when it comes to work I can appreciate, but don’t particularly like personally. There will always be things which grab you immediately, and things you’ll hate, and things which will leave you cold.

Mr. Beige had a problem with one artist in particular, I wasn’t able to catch the name, but this artist worked with shit, or least that was Mr. Beige’s assumption. [Being told who the artist was, and looking up some of their work, it seems rather doubtful dung of any kind was used.] That got a shrug out of me, because that’s hardly new or unusual. Such art tends to be done in order to make a statement. If you get so hung up on the material, you’ll miss that, and I guess that’s fine, too, you don’t have to ‘get’ everything in the art world.

I did almost snort my tea laughing when Mr. Beige announced, in such a sniffy manner, “It made no attempt to please me.” Spare me, please. Artists are not making the slightest effort to please you, Mr. Beige. I’d say most of us are gratefully unaware of your existence, like I was a short while ago. That’s not what art is about. Well, not most of it anyway. There’s an almost unimaginable amount of art in the world, and only a sliver of it ever gets into shows or museums. If you go looking, you’ll find plenty which manages to please you.

As for Mr. Beige’s “I am so insulted” reading of  Mirsad Begič’s blurb, I would have thought that a professional whinger would be, at the very least, marginally aware of all the pretentiousness in the art world, and know to take it all with a healthy dose of salt. That said, life, love, death? Yes, they all do involve a great deal of shit, on the physical and metaphorical levels.

There was then a very rapid look at some other work, and more complaining. All Mr. Beige saw were works which were made without taking his personal sensibilities into account. I saw a number of works which were thought provoking. One function of art is to make people think, to open up, change, or twist perception. It’s not all about painting a pleasing little picture, and if all you’re after is a pleasing little picture, there’s plenty of that to go around. If you’re a person who is going to get their knickers in a knot over going to a particular show based only on the pretentious blurb, that’s on you. A difficult to please person should learn to do their research.

I see a great deal of art work which I find disturbing on a personal level, but even then, I take the time to find out just what it was the artist was out to express, and view it all through different eyes. I may still not like it, or still find it disturbing, but I generally come away with a more thoughtful understanding, and often, a new perspective. That’s rather the point of art.

As for Mr. Beige, I can’t say I think much of his creative endeavors, but I don’t find whinging to be all that.

The artist who set Mr. Beige off?

Mirsad Begič

Graduate of art, born in Glamoč in Bosnia in 1953. After completing art school he continued his studies at the Academy of Art in Ljubljana, where he graduated from the sculptural department under Professors Zdenko Kalin, Slavko Tihec and Drago Tršar. Between 1982 and 1983 he undertook further training in London at St. Martin’s School of Art.

His creative heritage includes several independent exhibitions and many group exhibitions at home and abroad. He has taken part in various international sculptural symposium and colonies. He lives and works in Ljubljana.

He has received a number of awards for his work, including the Prešeren Award in 2000.

I’m now busy looking at a whole lot of Mr. Begič’s work, and I’d be more than pleased to see any of it in person.

In the Blink of an Eye.

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Remember Olek? An amazingly talented artist, specializing in crochet. Olek got a bit explosive this time around. There’s a video, and it is a very powerful one, and it might well trigger some people, so read first, and then decide if you want to watch.

In the Blink of an Eye consists of a 19th-century Swedish home crocheted by Olek and a team of assistants that was literally blown to pieces before it was shown to the public. No one but Olek and her team witnessed what the pre-destroyed building looked like, although the artist produced a video of the building while it was still intact and filled with crocheted furniture, decorations, and light fixtures, leading up to the moment of pure explosive destruction.

Olek isn’t a nihilist or looking to make a statement of artistic disownment by burning her own works…In fact, the artist didn’t originally intend to blow-up the work at all. “I had originally intended to just recreate a traditional Swedish home. It was the summer of 2015 and the refugee crisis had started to explode,” Olek explains to The Creators Project. “Since I always work with assistants, I asked the museum to help me get connected with refugees who might need work.”

This proved to be a turning point in the artist’s project: “After a couple days of crocheting, sewing, and listening to music from various countries and audiobooks, me and the refugee assistants broke ice and a conversation started that changed me forever. It is one thing to read about the events in those parts of the world, but it is something totally different to actually look in the eyes of those women who lost everything while running from the war,” the artist reveals.

“These women not only lost their physical home due to the war conflict, but also lost the feeling of home as their families got separated. The idea of exploding the house became clearer and clearer to me,” Olek adds. “Lama’s husband, who had been helping us quite often, brought me a folder with many photographs from their hometown, including their own house and other homes before and after explosions, which served as a source of inspiration for me.”

The Creators Project has the full story.

“If only God would rid us of men.”

A music video with Saudi women is challenging restrictive gender norms in the country — and it’s quickly going viral.

“Hwages,” by director Majed al-Esa of 8ies Studios, a production company based in Riyadh, shows the women skateboarding, playing basketball, dancing, driving bumper cars, and even bowling with a set of pins with men’s faces taped on them. It was first posted two weeks ago and already has over 3 million views.

Loosely translated as “concerns,” Hwages is based on an older Arabic song, and some of the lyrics include “May all men sink into oblivion” and “If only God would rid us of men.”

[…]

There are also scenes with Donald Trump, who in the video is leading the “House of Men.” You can probably interpret that how’d you like — it could be referring to Trump’s history of sexual assault, his degrading language towards women, the way his offensive rhetoric about Islam actually helps Muslim extremists, or just simple comedy.

Many have already commended the video, including Saudi Arabian daily Al-Bilad. Amera al-Taweel, the ex-wife of Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal also shared the video with her 1.39 million followers on Twitter.

They did a great job capturing the creepiness that is Trump; they did a great job with the whole video. There’s true resistance and courage.

Via Think Progress.

Cool Stuff Friday.

Weather. We all live with it, complain about it, cope with it. And some people take stunning photos of it:

Credit: Camelia Czuchnicki.

Credit: Camelia Czuchnicki.

A clash between two storm cells in New Mexico, US in June 2014, each with it’s own rotating updraft. It appeared as though one updraft was anticyclonic, resulting in a very turbulent scene. The curved striations of the oldest noticeable against the new bubbling convection of the newer.

You can see 2016 Weather Photographer finalists here.

Everyone knows the importance of kerning, right? Nope:

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Bored Panda has many more fine examples of the fine art of kerning being egregiously ignored.

And, the coolest way to stay safe! Monkey Lights:

MonkeyLectric.

A Most Colourful Labour of Love.

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In Afghanistan, several men are at work in a smoke-blackened room. They sit between buckets of thick grey paint, working on benches made of dark grey stone. Lonely beams of white light shine through skylights in the vaulted ceiling onto stacks of clay tiles coated with a fine layer of grey dust. Monochromatic as the scene may seem, these men have one of the most colourful jobs in the world: making tiles for Herat’s Jama Masjid (Great Mosque).

This is an amazing story, and an astonishing labour of love and art, and the saving of living history. You can read and see much more at BBC.

Artist Unite for Orlando Benefit Comic.

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Some of the biggest names in the comic book industry are contributing their talents to Love Is Love, a 144-page comic book made in collaboration by IDW Publishing and DC Comics to benefit Equality Florida, and honor the victims, survivors, and families of the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

Contributors include Brian Michael Bendis, Gail Simone, Scott Snyder, Grant Morrison, Jock, Cat Staggs, Paul Dini, James Asmus, Ming Doyle, and a ton more as well as names outside of the comic industry like Damon Lindelof, Patton Oswalt, and Patty Jenkins.

This oversize comic contains moving and heartfelt material from some of the greatest talent in comics, mourning the victims, supporting the survivors, celebrating the LGBTQ community, and examining love in today’s world. All material has been kindly donated by the writers, artists, and editors with all proceeds going to victims, survivors, and their families.

You can order and preview Love is Love here.