Photo By Gail
John Giorno (1936 – 2019) had a rare gift for turning language into a visual event. In We Gave a Party for the Gods and the Gods All Came (2015), words don’t sit quietly on the canvas — they announce themselves. Rendered in stark black and white, the poem painting reads like a proclamation, part invitation, part cosmic punchline.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: John Giorno, We Gave a Party for the Gods and the Gods All Came
Central Park is so rich in sights that planning a visit to it can feel overwhelming. In addition to all the greenery and animal life, there are iconic landmarks such as Bethesda Terrace and Belvedere Castle. There’s shopping and refreshment in the Victorian Gothic-style Dairy, and educational material in the gabled DanaDiscovery Center. These monumental stopping places, though, are usually mobbed with both tourists and native New Yorkers seeking refuge from their busy lives.
Continue reading Welcome to Central Park: 5 Secret Places off the Crowded Path By Aaron Poochigian
Photo By Gail
The sitter of this arresting work, Portrait of a Young Man (1530s) remains unknown, but he was part of Bronzino’s close circle of literary friends in Florence, and probable holds a book of poetry. The artist was himself a poet, delighting as much in the beauty of language as he did in the witty and fanciful details of his paintings. Here, viewers would have appreciated the carved grotesque heads on the table and chair, and the almost hidden, mask-like face suggested in the folds of the youth’s breeches as comments unmasks and disguises. Bronzino has delineated a sophisticated visual identity for the sitter.
Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
All Photos By Gail
If you travel all the way to the back end of Freeman Alley (right by the city’s most secret restaurant) you may still be able to find this Astronaut floating amid a constellation of stickers, stencils and paste ups, accompanied by the phrase “Fly me to the moon!” spray painted in vibrant pink. How delightful.
Continue reading Astronaut Paste Up By Poet
This Image By Poet, Other Photos By Gail
Poet is the name of a street artist whose work I discovered through his Pink Mail Box series, which is called Love Letters. I started following him on Instagram under the hashtag #poetwastaken and, over the weekend, I went out looking for a few of the works he’s been posting on his feed. This piece, which includes an image of Kurt Cobain alongside a spray painted quote, is located in Freeman’s Alley on the LES.
Once I found the piece in person (and if you’ve seen Freeman’s Alley, you know that’s no easy feat) I was disappointed to discover that the quote had already been pasted over by another artist’s work, even though Poet’s piece had only been up since January 28th. This kind of thing happens so often that Poet said he has learned not to let it bother him. Everything is a work in progress.
Poet, who is based in Los Angeles, told me a bit more about the Cobain piece in a chat via Instagram. “The Kurt Cobain piece was actually initially derived from his quote “Thank you for the trajedy (sic), I need it for my art.” I had spray painted that next to that paste up, but the very next day it was covered by another paste up. This lead me to a add a short and sweet message of “I’m so happy” over Kurt’s image. I’ve been painting that quote for about a year now, and with paste ups only for a few months.”
Watch for more street art by Poet to be featured here in the coming weeks!