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Named after Blanche Dubois, the self-deluded protagonist of Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire, Shiro Kumata‘s Miss Blanche Chair (1988) is an icon of postmodern design. Kamata originally experimented with embedding natural roses in the chair, but the flowers burned in the acrylic resin, so he instead used artificial flowers. Continue reading Eye On Design: Miss Blanche Chair By Shiro Kuramata
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In 1988, film director John Waters created a new level of shock by making a family friendly, PG-rated movie. Set in 1962, two years before the Civil Rights Act, Hairspray centers on Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake), a self-identified “pleasantly plump” teenage girl, who attempts to racially integrate a teen dance show.
Continue reading Pink Thing of The Day: Tracy Turnblad’s Roach Dress from Hairspray
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Jack Goldstein (1945 – 2003)’s career encompassed film, performance, sound, painting, and writing. Associated with the pictures generation, a group of artists whose works are rooted in appropriation and media theory of the late 1970s and ’80s, Goldstein painted from found images such as World War II photographs, and stills of astrological and natural phenomena.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Jack Goldstein, Untitled
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Jeff Koons’ Woman in Tub (1988) combines a cartoon-like rendering of a nude woman startled by a submerged snorkeler with the exquisite, hard-paste porcelain finish of typical 18th-century Rococo figurines. Part of Koons‘ Banality series, which is characterized by oddly eroticized, comic and kitsch images, this work takes personal taste — good and bad — as its primary subject.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Woman in Tub By Jeff Koons
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David Wojnarowicz (1954 – 1992) used red string as a material throughout his practice. From his early supermarket posters to the flower paintings, he stitched red string into the surface of his compositions to suggest the seams and irreconcilable breaks in culture. In his unfinished film, A Fire In MY Belly (1986 – 87), Wojnarowicz included footage of the stitching together of a broken loaf of bread.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: David Wojnarowicz, Bread Sculpture