Entries Tagged 'Art' ↓

“It” didn’t sell at last month’s auction, so maybe you still wanna try and pick “it” up: Artist Michael Whelan’s original acrylic painting, above, for the Jacksons’ famed 1984 work, Victory.

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Feast your eyes, folks, on the above test pattern. It’s from my personal collection, and was actually produced by yours truly: An embroidered reproduction of a compass-shattering piece by Phase II, writer, artist, musician (right), and historian in the trade of aerosol art.

After eyeing this immaculate conception in Phase and David Schmdlapp’s 1996 treatise, Style: Writing from the UnderGround, I strove to have it perfectly captured in thread, with the goal of licensing the design directly from the master. While those plans haven’t taken off yet, the image is so intricate and fetching that I use it as a desktop. But if you’re cogitatin’ about doin’ the same…don’t bite my style.

Do you like a good sword? Now available on DVD, the documentary Reclaiming the Blade geeks out on the history and power of “the Medieval and Renaissance blade, a profound and beautiful object hand-crafted by master artisans of old.” Indeed, the weapon is

an object of great complexity, yet one with a singular use in mind – it is designed to kill. The truth of the sword has been shrouded in antiquity, and the Renaissance martial arts that brought it to being are long forgotten. The ancient practitioners lent us all they knew through their manuscripts. As gunslingers of the Renaissance they were western heroes with swords, and they lived and died by them. Yet today their history remains cloaked under a shadow of legend.

Reclaiming the Blade is narrated by the stentorian John Rhys-Davies and features, among others, Lord of the Rings actor Viggo Mortensen talking on swordcraft. Sounds sharp.

In the work of L.A.-based artist Michael Hussar, nymphs decadently suck crimson fruit, their skin puffy and blanched, save for blackened, spearlike fingertips.

Crawling the razor’s edge between erotica and rot, pieces like 2008’s Cherry Pie, above, unnerve the viewer in the gut…before being snatched up hungrily by Francis Ford Coppolla, Leonardo Di Caprio, and their ilk. Bon appetit.

[via conceptart.org]

For decades, millions have been entranced by the mystical appearances and geometric precision of crop circles, like this one from 2001, above. From where do they come? How are they made? Are beings from other worlds trying to communicate with us?

All of which must have given John Lundberg and his chaps a right good laugh. He’s the founder of circlemakers, “a UK based arts collective famous for covertly creating hundreds of the world’s largest and most elaborate crop circles.” With Rob Irving and Mark Pilkington, he’s also the author of The Field Guide: The Art, History and Philosophy of Crop Circle Making.

Now, in the first book of its kind – part history and part how-to guide – the secrets of the crop circle world are revealed, by the people behind the modern era’s most astounding artform.

Whether you think crop circles represent a genuine mystery, a new kind of art, or an elaborate practical joke, The Field Guide is sure to leave a lasting impression. Join us in the fields for a unique exploration of this very English artform.

Mystery solved! Wow: Can’t wait to tell Bigfoot, the next time I take a trip through the Bermuda Triangle….

I wasn’t a big ThunderCats fan. They raised their leonine heads in 1985, long after I’d stopped watching violent, action-packed, Saturdaymorningesque animation. In fact, the only reason I probably know anything at all about this profoundly ugly pride of superheroes is that my youngest brother, Louis, couldn’t stop talking about them.

Well, Lou, knock yourself out: Early next year, Hard Hero Enterprises, makers of collectible fantasy and comic book statuary, will release a limited-edition, cold-cast porcelain statue of Lion-O, leader of the T-Cats, above.

Sculpted by master artist Paul Bennett, the fully-painted piece is a whopping 14 inches high from its rugged, stone outcropping base to the tip of Lion-O’s gleaming sword. Packed with detail, as you can see in this 360-degree QuickTime movie, the work comes with a “color collector box,” whatever that is, and retails for $199.00, $215.00 for one with Bennett’s John Hancock ‘pon, thus. Hey: Since Lou just had a birthday, maybe his wife will jump in with one more present. Cue intro.

[via tomopop.com]

Scottish knitter Anne-Marie Dunbar‘s designs border on the utterly bizarre. They range from webbed claw gloves to a knitted model of the acrylonitrile molecule and beyond.

“Beyond” is probably where this ram’s head balaclava, above, goes, or, as she calls it, a “baalaclava.” For those of you who swing needles like a samurai’s katana, the pattern, which she sells via the web,

is entirely seamless – the ears are worked by picking up stitches, and there’s a little grafting at the front – instructions for which are given in the pattern.

As per my previous mask patterns, I’ve used an aran weight yarn with 4mm needles. The pattern gives two sizes – standard (19″ to 23″) and extra large (24″ and up).

Plus, I just had this thought: Though Dunbar has strived for a…er…naturalistic appearance in the piece, this being yarn, you can color yours in any hues you want. Orange face with teal horns and nose, Dolphins fans?

So, sign up to Ravelry.com, order the pattern for $5, pay via Paypal, and knit one up for the Aries in your life. Just remind ’em not to wear it on their next SWAT call.

B3TA’s mashup movie poster contest resulted in a gang of inspired entries, like this fusion between Star Wars and A Clockwork Orange, above, or this melding of Das Boot and Yellow Submarine, below. Plus, there’s a lot more where that came from, too, on the site. Hooray for Hollywood! Hooray for Photoshop!

[via digg]

Robert Bechtle’s 1974, 48 in. by 69 in. oil, Alameda Gran Torino, is a masterpiece of the photorealistic style he mastered in the 1960s and ’70s.

In his 2005 review of the artist’s work, The New Yorker‘s Peter Schjeldahl called Bechtle’s images visions “from a prior life,” and Alameda Gran Torino, paradoxically, “a nova of banality.”

The station wagon can’t help but be only and exactly what Detroit fashioned. Hot sunlight can’t help but glint from a bumper and produce a faint reflection of the windshield on a garage door. A closeness between the green of the car and that of a background shadow is unusual, but so perfectly meaningless that your mind may panic at the waste of its energy in beholding the fact. Then something peculiar can happen: your reflexive sense of the picture as a photograph breaks down, and the object’s identity as a painting, done entirely on purpose, gains ground. Look closely. A congeries of tiny freehand strokes delivers an inconspicuous patch of foliage. The whole work is a feat of resourceful painterly artifice. At last, it’s as if the original photograph were a ghost that died and came back as a body.

And what a body it is.

Random thought I had today: With the King of Pop’s death in June, the price of superstar conceptual artist Jeff Koons‘ famed 1988 sculpture, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, above, must be rocketing in value. (Made in an edition of three, plus an artist’s proof, one of the life-sized, 42 in. x 70 1/2 in. x 32 1/2 in. porcelain tchotchkes sold at auction for $5.6 million in 2001.)

Indeed, legendary art dealer Larry Gagosian, who reps Koons, right, told The New York Times back in July that if one of the creations

was to come up for sale now, it could make more than $20 million. “And that’s conservative,” he added.

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