Tag Archives: death

Instagram Photo of The Week: RIP Photographer Mick Rock

Anyone who grew up in the 70s, loving bands like Queen and David Bowie, knows the legacy of photographer Mick Rock. Along with the equally phenomenal Bob Gruen, Rock was a photographer whose skilled eye captured images – fleeting moments in rock history – that were every bit as important to the times as the music being made by those he was shooting. It is not at all surprising that Mick Rock is also known as “The Man Who Shot the 70s.” It was sad news indeed to hear of Rock’s passing on November 18th due to complications from a two-year battle with cancer. He is surely irreplaceable. RIP, Mick!

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The Story Behind A Charming Street Art Enigma: The Spray Paints Series

beauty photo by gail worley
Beauty (All Photos By Gail)

While most of the street art that I discover on my adventures is clearly tagged, sometimes that tag is hard to decipher, and I need some assistance identifying the artist. By connecting with artists on Instagram, I’ve learned that they all seem to know and support each other, which is cool and very helpful.  If I don’t know the artist behind a work that I want to put on the blog, and the first person I ask doesn’t know, then they know someone who does.

This is how I ended up connecting with the creator of an unsigned series of works that I’ve been seeing on the streets, and documenting, since around Christmastime last year. Each of the paste-ups in this very distinctive series features one to three still life images accompanied by a one-word title, with the artist’s signature being  conspicuously absent. If you live in the east village or downtown, there’s no way you haven’t seen them. All I can say is that they speak to me.

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Trump As The Grim Reaper Mural By Pure Genius

dont be afraid of covid mural photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail Worley

Yes, that is in fact Dump as the Grim Reaper himself in this expansive mural from street artist Pure.Genius. The Dump Reaper’s ignorant declaration, “Don’t be afraid of Covid,” perfectly distills his administration’s campaign of propaganda and misinformation that has lead to hundreds of thousand of needless deaths in this country to date.
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Modern Art Monday Presents: Bruce Nauman, Human Nature / Life Death

Human Nature / Life Death
All Photos By Gail

Bruce Nauman’s neon sculpture, Human Nature / Life Death (1983) is a circle of words corresponding to the defining contradictions of human existence — life and death, love and hate, pleasure and pain — are trisected by the words Animal, Human and Nature.

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Modern Art Monday Presents: Rosalyn Drexler, Marilyn Pursued By Death

Marilyn Pursued By Death
Marilyn Pursued by Death, 1963 (Photo By Gail)

Roslyn Drexler (b. 1926) is usually associated with Pop art, but her work often explores the darker backstories and seedier manifestations of postwar media culture and gender roles. She clipped her subjects from printed materials — here, a news photograph of Marilyn Monroe fleeing the paparazzi with her bodyguard in tow — then enlarged and collaged them onto canvas, and painted over the image. In the artist’s words, her source images were “hidden but present, like a disturbing memory.” On the day that this source photograph was taken in 1956, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller were to announce their upcoming marriage; in the frenzy to cover the event, a car carrying reporters crashed, killing at least one member of the press. Drexler’s painting is an eerie evocation of the sometimes tragic results of our society’s insatiable desire for celebrity news.

Photographed at the Whitney Museum in NYC