Tag Archives: 1968

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins By Karl Wirsum

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screamin jay hawkins photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

Karl Wirsum (1939 – 2021) used the clean style of commercial graphics and the abstracted form of a dissected frog Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (1968). who used this painting as the cover for his album Because Is In Your Mind (1970). Best known fir his 1956 song “I Put a Spell On You” and his sensational live performances, Hawkins appears here in full song, raining amoeba-shaped sweat down on a man wearing “armpit rubber,” like old fashioned galoshes, to keep the moisture at bay.

Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins By Karl Wirsum →

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Jean Dubuffet Study for Tower with Figures

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study for tower with figures jean dubuffet photo by gail worley
All Photos By Gail

Jean Dubuffet’s Study for Tower with Figures (1968), standing nearly ten feet tall, makes a striking statement when encountered outdoors; its painted polyurethane on epoxy facade, bold black outlines and puzzle-like shapes making it instantly recognizable as part of Dubuffet’s famous Hourloupe cycle.

At first glance, it looks playful — almost cartoonish. Tangled forms, bulbous limbs, and abstracted faces interlock like a jigsaw puzzle sprung to life. But beneath the humor lies Dubuffet’s serious artistic mission: to challenge the polish of modernity and instead celebrate the raw, the provisional, and the imperfect. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Jean Dubuffet Study for Tower with Figures →

Film and Television, Pop Culture

Instagram Photo of The Week: Rosemary’s Baby Mural

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Can those us familiar with the 1968 horror classic Rosemary’s Baby all agree that this scene of the eponymous character’s desperate call from a phone booth is one of the most nail-biting moments in the movie? And now . . .it’s a fantastically hyperrealistic mural in NYC’s East Village! I spotted this work of  by Street Artist @bkfoxx on New Year’s Day.

See More Street Art From My Walks by Following Me on Instagram at @WorleyGigDotCom!

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Alma W. Thomas, Wind Sunshine and Flowers

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wind sunshine and flowers photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

Alma W. Thomas derived her vibrant color palette and lyrical brush work from the shapes and movement of foliage, flowers, and other natural forms. The stripes of bright pigment in Wind, Sunshine and Flowers (1968) create an engrossing effect that recalls feelings of awe inspired by nature

For Thomas, the visual realm of natural phenomena offered a way to transcend the racial biases she experienced as a black painter and educator in the early to mid -20th century. In 1972 she wrote, “man’s highest aspirations come from nature. A world without color would seem dead. Color is life. Light is the mother of color. Light reveals to us the spirit and the living soul of the world through colors.”

Photographed in The Brooklyn Museum.

 

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Sam Gilliam, Carousel State

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carousel state photo by gail worley
Photos By Gail

Liberated from its stretcher, Carousel State (1968) explores the material and chromatic possibilities of canvas, a traditional painting support. Gilliam developed his unique approach in the 1960s while working with the Washington Color School, whose compositions emphasized the flatness of the picture plane. This is an early example of the artist’s signature ‘Drape Paintings,” made through a novel process of dripping, smearing, staining, and splashing paint onto raw canvas.

Colors often spread and merged as Gilliam pressed and folded the fabric. He has described this as a kind of equilibrium: “This liquidity of the colors is reinforced by the fluidity of the canvas.” The final step in the creation of Carousel State is its installation, suspended and extending into space.

carousel state detail photo by gail worley

Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.