The last time I saw paintings as deluded as Damien Hirst’s latest works, the artist’s name was Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. A decade ago the son of Libya’s then still very much alive dictator showed sentimental paintings of desert scenes in an exhibition sponsored by fawning business allies. Searching for some kind of parallel to the arrogance and stupidity of Hirst’s still life paintings, I find myself remembering that strange, sad spectacle.

There is a pathos about Two Weeks One Summer, in which Hirst shows paintings of parrots and lemons, shark’s jaws and foetuses in jars in a vast space in White Cube Bermondsey. It is the same kind of pathos that clings to dictators’ art. This is the kind of kitsch that is foisted on helpless peoples by Neros and Hitlers and such tyrants so beyond normal restraint or criticism they believe they are artists.

{ Jonathan Jones/Guardian | Continue reading }

photo { James Friedman }

Although organic foods are often marketed with moral terms (e.g., Honest Tea, Purity Life, and Smart Balance), no research to date has investigated the extent to which exposure to organic foods influences moral judgments or behavior. After viewing a few organic foods, comfort foods, or control foods, participants who were exposed to organic foods volunteered significantly less time to help a needy stranger, and they judged moral transgressions significantly harsher than those who viewed nonorganic foods. These results suggest that exposure to organic foods may lead people to affirm their moral identities, which attenuates their desire to be altruistic.

{ via peer-reviewed by my neurons | Continue reading }

art { William Bailey, Mercatale Still Life, 1981 }

Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz (September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Russian-American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an “abstract painter.” […]

A rise of Nazi sympathy in the United States heightened Rothko’s fears of anti-Semitism, and in January 1940, he abbreviated his name from “Marcus Rothkowitz” to “Mark Rothko.” The name “Roth,” a common abbreviation, had become, as a result of its commonality, identifiably Jewish, therefore he settled upon “Rothko.” […]

He apparently stopped painting altogether for the length of 1940. […] The most crucial philosophical influence on Rothko in this period was Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. […]

The year 1946 saw the creation of Rothko’s transitional “multiform” paintings. The term “multiform” has been applied by art critics; this word was never used by Rothko himself, yet it is an accurate description of these paintings. […] For Rothko, these blurred blocks of various colors, devoid of landscape or human figure, let alone myth and symbol, possessed their own life force. They contained a “breath of life” he found lacking in most figurative painting of the era. […]

By the mid 1950’s however, close to a decade after the completion of the first “multiforms,” Rothko began to employ dark blues and greens; for many critics of his work this shift in colors was representative of a growing darkness within Rothko’s personal life. […]

In the spring of 1968, Rothko was diagnosed with a mild aortic aneurysm (defect in the arterial wall, that gradually leads to outpouching of the vessel and at times frank rupture). Ignoring doctor’s orders, Rothko continued to drink and smoke heavily, avoided exercise, and maintained an unhealthy diet. However, he did follow the medical advice given not to paint pictures larger than a yard in height, and turned his attention to smaller, less physically strenuous formats, including acrylics on paper. Meanwhile, Rothko’s marriage had become increasingly troubled, and his poor health and impotence resulting from the aneurysm compounded his feeling of estrangement in the relationship. Rothko and his wife Mell separated on New Year’s Day 1969, and he moved into his studio.

On February 25, 1970, Oliver Steindecker, Rothko’s assistant, found the artist in his kitchen, lying dead on the floor in front of the sink, covered in blood. He had sliced his arms with a razor found lying at his side. During autopsy it was discovered he had also overdosed on anti-depressants.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

artwork { Mark Rothko, Orange Red Yellow, 1961 | sold for $86,882,500 yesterday at Christie’s, a new auction record for post-war art }

Face recognition techniques usually come with a certain amount of controversy. A new application, however, is unlikely to trigger any privacy concerns because all of the subjects are long dead.

Before photography took over, oil painting and portraiture was used to record what important people looked like. As a result for every artistically important painting there are a lot of “instant snaps” that fill museums and art gallery vaults. What would make these paintings much more valuable is knowing who all of the people in the portraits are.

The solution might be to apply face recognition software. This is the project for which three University of California, Riverside researchers have just received funding.

{ I Programmer | Continue reading | UCR }

art { Piero della Francesca, The Legend of the True Cross (detail), 1452-1466 }

{ Roy Lichtenstein’s estate claims copyright over the images he appropriated, 2010 }

The instruments of critical theory can take down any piece of contemporary art by treating it as a symptom of the inequalities of the society that produced it. The art objects don’t become racist, sexist, or classist, but are revealed as inevitably so as superstructural products of a capitalist society. I don’t mean to make it sound like that means this line of critique isn’t valuable, because I think it’s right-on nearly all the time. But does that mean so-called “fine art” is fully subsumed by control society?

I don’t think so, lately I’ve been feeling like we’re about to see art (and not just individual artists) sprint ahead of its criticism for the first time in decades. And watching the critical side in denial as art whooshes past is painful.

{ Malcolm Harris/The State | Continue reading }

images { 1 | 2 }

{ Mathilde Roussel }

In Bailey’s Democracy, David Bailey photographed a raft of people in the nude, including Damien Hirst, pulling his prepuce and mugging at the camera. A telling image of Hirst’s skills – not that much, stretched not very far.
 
{ Craig Raine/New Statesman | Continue reading }

For decades in art circles it was either a rumor or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years. (…)

Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.

{ Independent | Continue reading }

photo { Jackson Pollock, Clement Greenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner and an unidentified child at the beach, 1952 }

I’ve heard a few stories, over the years, of what happens when collectors who own art try to sell that art through a gallery. In the first instance, the gallery is always very bullish, and promises to sell it for a high price at a modest commission. But then it somehow never sells, and the consignor becomes increasingly desperate, and eventually accepts a sum of money from the gallery which is a mere fraction of the amount originally mooted. It’s a standard m.o. in the gallery world: never sell anything too quickly, and wait instead for the seller’s need for cash to be as urgent as possible. That minimizes the amount the gallery needs to pay the seller, and therefore maximizes the amount the gallery can keep for itself. (…)

In a nutshell, Jan’s no-good son Charles got desperate for cash, and so sold her Lichtenstein through Gagosian without her knowledge or consent. What’s more, his desperation was so obvious to Gagosian that he wound up getting spectacularly ripped off: while Gagosian had initially promised him $2.5 million for the piece, the final payment to Cowles was just $1 million. (…)

No matter who wins the legal case, is that the opacity, skullduggery, and information asymmetry in the art world should put off anybody who ever thinks they’re dealing fair and square with a prominent dealer.

{ Felix Salmon/Reuters | Continue reading | via Ritholtz }

{ The New York Times’ City Room blog reports that Koons is in talks with Friends of the High Line, the conservancy group charged with managing the park, to bring one of his sculptures to the converted greenway. What sculpture would that be? A full-sized replica of a 1943 Baldwin 2900 steam locomotive. | Gawker | Thanks Tim }

If you’re looking to enhance your experience of abstract art, you may want to consider spending some pre-gallery time watching a horror film. Kendall Eskine and his colleagues Natalie Kacinik and Jesse Prinz have investigated how different emotions, as well as physiological arousal, influence people’s sublime experiences whilst viewing abstract art. Their finding is that fear, but not happiness or general arousal, makes art seem more sublime.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

{ Marcel Duchamp, 50 cc of Paris Air, 1919 }

Jellyfish will not plague our oceans in the future as was previously thought, say researchers who have found no evidence for global increases in jellyfish blooms.

Despite media claims over the past few years that worldwide jellyfish numbers are increasing at an alarming rate, there has been no database of jellyfish numbers to back this up.

{ Cosmos | Continue reading }

artwork { Ellsworth Kelly, Study for Rebound, 1955 }

{ Cai Guo-Qiang, Head On, 2006 | 99 life-sized replicas of wolves and glass | The wolves were produced in Quanzhou, China, from January to June of 2006. They are fabricated from painted sheepskins and stuffed with hay and metal wires, with plastic lending contour to their faces and marbles for eyes. | Deutsche Guggenheim }

{ Guggenheim Museum, New York; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao }

{ Adrian Piper, Out of the Corner, 1990 }

In 2008 just over $270m-worth of art by Damien Hirst was sold at auction, a world record for a living artist. By 2009 Mr Hirst’s annual auction sales had shrunk by 93%—to $19m—and the 2010 total is likely to be even lower. The collapse in the Hirst market can partly be ascribed to the recession. But more important are the lingering effects of a two-day auction of new work by Mr Hirst that Sotheby’s launched in London on September 15th 2008. (…)

Miuccia Prada, an Italian designer and longstanding Hirst collector, for example, spent £6.3m acquiring a trio of Mr Hirst’s trademark animals in formaldehyde: “The Black Sheep with the Golden Horn”, “False Idol” (a calf), and “The Dream” (a foal made to look like a unicorn). “I think it was an incredible conceptual gesture, not a sale,” she says. (..)

The Mugrabi family owns some 110 Hirsts, including an installation that features 30 sheep, two doves, a shark and a splayed cow in formaldehyde. The Mugrabis offered $35m for the artist’s diamond skull, “For the Love of God”, but failed to secure the work that was marketed at $100m and has never sold. “The Mugrabis rarely buy directly from me,” says Mr Hirst. “We can never work out a deal because they want such fierce prices.”

The Mugrabis liken the tumble in Mr Hirst’s secondary prices to Andy Warhol’s in the early 1990s.

{ Economist, 2010 | Continue reading}

His jam-packed 2000 Gagosian exhibition of medical equipment, anatomical models, live fish, pharmaceuticals, floating skeletons, and fake cut-up cadavers showed Hirst to be an artist whose No. 1 urge is to make a wow. Sadly for him, that urge got the best of him, turning him into a brand name and self-parody. By 2005, we saw Hirst the stagy photorealist making banal, insipid images of Iraq, autopsies, and bits of brains. Then there was a failed series of academic-looking Francis Bacon–like paintings. Finally, there was that $100 million diamond-encrusted skull. At the time, it seemed interesting, even though the object itself was visually dead. Now it only seems like a dull, neo-imperialistic bauble. He’s making mostly exhibitionistic schlock these days.

{ Jerry Saltz | Continue reading}

The Velvet Underground sued the Andy Warhol Foundation, accusing it of infringing the trademark for the banana design on the cover of the rock group’s first album in 1967.

The band’s founders, Lou Reed and John Cale, said that the foundation infringed the design by licensing it to third parties, according to the complaint filed yesterday in federal court in Manhattan.

The band, which was active from about 1965 to 1972, formed an artistic collaboration with Warhol, who designed the banana illustration for “The Velvet Underground and Nico,” which critics have labeled one of the most influential rock recordings of all time, according to the complaint.

The Warhol Foundation claimed it has a copyright interest in the design, according to the lawsuit. The Velvet Underground partnership said in the complaint that the design can’t be copyrighted because the banana image Warhol furnished for the illustration came from an advertisement and was in the public domain.

Warhol’s copyrighted works have a market value of $120 million and the foundation has earned more than $2.5 million a year licensing rights to those works, according to the complaint.

The Velvet Underground is seeking a judicial declaration that the foundation has no copyright to the banana design, an injunction barring the use of any merchandise using the artwork and monetary damages. The group is requesting a jury trial.

{ Bloomberg | Courthouse News Service }

{ Toilet Paper magazine | Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari | Maurizio Cattelan Launches the Latest Issue of Toilet Paper At His Guggenheim Retrospective }