You know what I never get tired of? Sassy ladies and their punk rock anthems. Seriously, I could listen to songs like “I’m Over It” from Los Angeles-based artist Blushh all day long. Because that is how I roll. We’re closing in on the end of summer pretty quickly, and I am trying to milk it for all its worth by posting any video with a vibe that’s even tenuously-related to summer, for which “I’m Over It” qualifies, because a swimming pool comes into play. Any port in a storm.
Anywhey, after sitting down to breakfast and discovering that she is out of her favorite cereal, Blushh takes the bus to a Birthday party that she seems to be concerned about arriving to on time. In fact, she arrives so late that the party is way over, and she wanders though the detritus of post-celebration decor (strongly influenced by the color scheme at IKEA) before snacking on admittedly-delicious-looking cold pizza, wandering out to the backyard, and diving fully-clothed into the pool. Because, she is over it. To find out what happens next, check out this rad video! Recommended to all who love the sassy punk ladies, “I’m Over It” can be found on Blushh’s recently released, 5-song EP Thx 4 Asking, out now on Yellow K Records. Enjoy!
David Hockney’s most famous paintings of Los Angeles, such as A Bigger Splash (1967), depict a commonplace aspect of the city: private swimming pools. This is the final and the largest of three versions on the same theme, all based on an image that the artist found in a book about home pools. Hockney took care to keep the backdrop as flat — almost abstract — as possible, using rollers to apply the acrylic of the azure sky. The splash, in contrast, meticulously rendered with small brushes, took the artist nearly two weeks to finish. “I loved the idea of painting this thing which lasts for two seconds,” he said. “The painting took much longer to make than the splash existed for.” The result is one of the most iconic depictions of a certain upscale California lifestyle; aspirational, and perhaps more Hollywood make-believe than real.
Photographed as Part of the David Hockney Career Retrospective, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC Through February 25th, 2018.
Ah, California at Christmastime is a singular experience, filled with visions of kidney-shaped swimming pools expertly re-created by the pool replastering Orange County company and of course, oversized Pink Flamingo statues.
David Zwirner Gallery is currently hosting its first exhibition with William Eggleston since having announced the gallery’s exclusive worldwide representation of the artist. On view at the space on West 20th Street in New York are works from Eggleston’s monumental project The Democratic Forest.
Over the course of nearly six decades, Eggleston has established a singular pictorial style that deftly combines vernacular subject matter with an innate and sophisticated understanding of color, form, and composition. His photographs transform the ordinary into distinctive, poetic images that eschew fixed meaning.
His 1976 solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by John Szarkowski, marked the first presentation of color photography at the museum. Although initially criticized for its unfamiliar approach, the show and its accompanying catalogue, William Eggleston’s Guide, heralded an important moment in the medium’s acceptance within the art historical canon, and it solidified the artist’s position as one of its foremost practitioners to this date. Eggleston’s work continues to exert an influence on contemporary visual culture at large.
The Democratic Forestis among Eggleston’s most ambitious projects and a prime example of his uniquely recognizable aesthetic. Likened to an epic journey or an enduring narrative, it comprises a careful selection of works from over ten thousand negatives he took in the mid-1980s across the southern and eastern parts of America and in several European countries.
These profiles of rural back roads, industrial and residential environs, architectural details, restaurant interiors, and parking lots, among other locales, eluded the conventions of both reportage and the black-and-white art photography practiced by many of the artist’s peers at the time, and instead shaped their own definition of what a photographic image could be—intuitive and charged with imaginative possibilities.
Collectively, the project echoes Eggleston’s predilection for the “democratic” vision of the camera, able to render equally what is in front of the lens.
The show will include over forty works from The Democratic Forest, the majority of which have not been exhibited previously. Although taken thirty years ago, the photographs appear to cast their subjects in a timeless light.
As the art historian Alexander Nemerov writes in a new catalogue published by David Zwirner Books/Steidl on the occasion of the show:
Eggleston’s work—the great flow of it— feels…impelled by the world. It feels, to put it another way, pulled along by the world, by things outside the artist, rather than compelled by something inside him . . . [O]ne feels him being borne along by a current… [T]he current [he] rides along is simply the proliferation of scenes — the great panoramic film strip of it, never ending in its flow of gas stations and horse buggies and parking lots and roadside trees and filigreed urns stamped in tin. But more than that…there is the feeling that the infiniteness of the world, the sheer extent of it, is its own kind of eternity.
William Eggleston was born in 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee, where he continues to live today.
William Eggleston’s The Democratic Forest will be on Exhibit Through December 17th, 2016 at David Zwirner Gallery, Located at 537 West 20th Street in the Chelsea Gallery District.
National Donut Day falls on the first Friday in June, but you love Donuts all year long, so one day is just not enough! Since it’s almost summer, so how about having some fun in the sun…with donuts!? All products courtesy of Bigmouth Inc!
I’ll admit that I was feeling rather nonchalant about seeing the Henri Matisse exhibit at MOMA and believed it would not be big deal if I missed it. But, man, am I glad that Geoffrey and I happened to see it this past weekend, because it is a phenomenal show that has totally changed my mind about Matisse, an artist whose work I never took that much interest in. Great art can do that to you.
This was one of no those “No Photography Allowed” exhibits, so I will apologize in advance for getting heads in some shots and occasional lack of focus or composition that is indicative of the “Spy Pic.”
Here’s a bit of background on the exhibit from Moma Dot Org:
In the late 1940s, Henri Matisse turned almost exclusively to cut paper as his primary medium, and scissors as his chief implement, introducing a radically new operation that came to be called a cut-out. Matisse would cut painted sheets into forms of varying shapes and sizes—from the vegetal to the abstract—which he then arranged into lively compositions, striking for their play with color and contrast, their exploitation of decorative strategies, and their economy of means.
Initially, these compositions were of modest size but, over time, their scale grew along with Matisse’s ambitions for them, expanding into mural or room-size works. A brilliant final chapter in Matisse’s long career, the cut-outs reflect both a renewed commitment to form and color and an inventiveness directed to the status of the work of art, whether as a unique object, environment, ornament, or a hybrid of all of these.
Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs is a groundbreaking reassessment of this important body of work. The largest and most extensive presentation of the cut-outs ever mounted, the exhibition includes approximately 100 cut-outs — borrowed from public and private collections around the globe — along with a selection of related drawings, prints, illustrated books, stained glass, and textiles. The last time New York audiences were treated to an in-depth look at the cut-outs was in 1961.
This exhibition was sparked by an initiative to conserve The Museum of Modern Art’s monumental cut-out The Swimming Pool (1952), a favorite of visitors since its acquisition by MoMA in 1975. The Swimming Pool is the only cut-out composed for a specific room — the artist’s dining room in his apartment in Nice, France. The goals of the multiyear conservation effort have been to bring this magical environment back to its original color balance, height, and spatial configuration. Newly conserved, The Swimming Pool — off view for more than 20 years — returns to MoMA’s galleries as a centerpiece of the exhibition. Unfortunately, I could not get a photo of The Swimming Pool room but, trust me, it is amazing.
Here are a few more photos I was able to snap of this must-see show!
Henri Matisse The Cut Outs will be on Exhibit only until February 10th, 2015 at The Museum of Modern Art, Located at East 53rd Street, NYC. As part of its Special Extended Hours for this Exhibit, the Museum will be open continuously for the show’s final weekend, from February 6th at 10:30 AM to February 8th at 5:30 PM. Timed tickets are required for Non-members. Members get in free and skip the line. Find out more at This Link.
Did you know that legendary Hollywood movie actress /sex symbol Jayne Mansfield and her husband, Mickey Hargitay, once lived in a mansion that was known as The Pink Palace? While it was painted pink on the outside and had a pretty crazy Pink Bathroom (that was not only carpeted wall to wall but also floor to ceiling) few of the interior rooms had a pink color scheme. Still, The Pink Palace – which included a custom-designed, heart shaped swimming pool — had a unique design aesthetic and no shortage of over-the-top decor! See more photos of Jayne and The Pink Palace, which was demolished in 2002, at This Link.
