Artist, photographer, filmmaker Cindy Sherman made this short stop-motion film, Doll Clothes, in 1975. I only just realized during my most recent viewing that she was actually continuing the conversation with Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.’
There’s a glitch in the YouTube video, so you’ll need to drag the slider a bit to get the movie started.
Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2’ (1912):
I found this via the Echo Park Film Center.
Here’s some action art complete with painters scaling buildings at night, secret identities and even a police chase. Artist X made the beautiful ‘Thank You Andy Warhol’ images that went up across L.A a few months ago. I drove by one that was attached to one of the pillars holding up a major highway overpass and was struck by it immediately. I even tried to video it with limited success through my windshield.
The film is by Adolfo J. Lara.
You may recognize the source of the quotation that serves as title to this post. It’s Ralph Waldo Emerson writing in his 1844 essay, ‘The Poet.’ Emerson is the intellectual bedrock of America. He is a founding father of thought. He embodies the true spirit of America and represents her coming of age. Certainly, there were smart people before him. But something in his character and thinking best express the searching confidence of the American intellect that flourished between the Revolution and the Civil War. If you are a bit lost, a bit depressed, creatively mired, at sea, confused by the cascade of information delivery, then just go pick up a book of Emerson’s essays. You will become calm. You will wonder why he gets such a sudden grip on you. You will read and re-read nearly each and every single sentence. You will then ignite. Your depression, your stasis will be ended. You will be leaping ahead of yourself to learn something new – to make something – to observe something. Do not doubt me. I know whereof I speak. Emerson is the most modern and most quintessentially American mind in the history of this country. He is also one of the greatest and most productive philosopher poets to have ever lived. Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, two of this country’s greatest writers, were friends of his. In fact, the three men are essentially responsible for the entire construction of the American mind. Their basic contribution, as I see it, was to modify the puritanical sense of religion that was rampant in this country and inject it with something based on Eastern thought. The mode of thinking which most closely resembles Emerson’s is Buddhism.
Here’s a fascinating line of thought from Emerson’s ‘The Poet’ essay:
The poet knows that he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or “with the flower of the mind”; not with the intellect used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life; or as the ancients were wont to express themselves, not with the intellect alone but with the intellect inebriated by nectar.
Most poets and musicians actually misinterpret that part to mean that they should experiment with drugs as mind-openers. Everyone from Jack Kerouac to Bob Dylan to Keith Richards has apparently made this rather simple-minded misreading of Emerson. Or perhaps they didn’t read him at all. I suspect they could have saved themselves an enormous amount of distraction and a few suspect singles if they’d simply finished reading this magnificent essay.
He goes on:
This is the reason why bards love wine, mead, narcotics, coffee, tea, opium, the fumes of sandalwood and tobacco, or whatever other procurers of animal exhilaration. All men avail themselves of such means as they can, to add this extraordinary power to their normal powers…
But it’s a false road. He continues…
Hence a great number of such as were professionally expressers of Beauty, as painters, poets, musicians and actors, have been more than others wont to lead a life of pleasure and indulgence; all but the few who received the true nectar; and, as it was a spurious mode of attaining freedom, as it was an emancipation not into the heavens but into the freedom of baser places, they were punished for that advantage they won, by a dissipation and deterioration.
If writing today, Mr. Emerson might well add Internet information overload to his list of baser and false nectars.
Milton says that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl.
If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New York, with fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine and French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste of the pine woods.
One must keep it simple. Emerson defines the poet as someone who can free us from thoughts that bind us. We can, like the man who freezes in a snowstorm just a few steps from his door, be locked forever in a single thought that lies just next door to the thought that could completely free us. A single liberating thought can be inches away but forever locked out of view. The poet can, by breathing his or her truths into our ear, unlock our thoughts and free us in a split second. A flash. We don’t even need to understand what it is that the poet is saying.
The poets are thus liberating gods.
I like that. It just sounds awesome.
And here is an excellent documentary film about Ralph Waldo Emerson. Watch it.
I was filming a ton of shots on Melrose Avenue this past Friday and I stopped purely by chance in front of this piece at the De La Barracuda wall where I took closeups of various parts of the image. I didn’t realize it had just gone up and was a collaboration by artists Chad Muska and Cyrcle. This fun art film is by Adolfo J Lara.
Found the film via Melrose & Fairfax.
MATURE CONTENT AND NUDITY:
This is Michel Montecrossa’s peace and climate change musical. It tells a great passion story which is the love-tale of cyberrocker-astronaut Starlight and his mate Earthpower and how they change hellish mega city planet through their music into a free world. It’s full of rock & roll, motorcycles, leather jackets, keyboards, cowboy hats, sex drawings, mirror sunglasses, hip rocker women, New Age and science fiction. I don’t know who these people are, but they sure do look fun and they have some kind of wild movie going on here. It features the poetry of Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound and William Wordsworth! My general take on it is that the film is a cry for individual expression and freedom in a time of unending war and conflict managed by the forces of homogenous corporate control. Director Michel Montecrossa is described as a ‘prolific songwriter, orchestral composer, painter, writer, moviemaker, futurist architect and cyberartist.’ Wild people like this should make more films.
Here’s a very nice short film about artist Shepard Fairey whose Obama poster in 2008 became one of the most well-known symbols of the campaign. I started off not liking Fairey’s images even though I purchased one of the Obama posters. I saw lots of reuse and fascism. But I usually have great trouble with and distaste for things that I wind up genuinely admiring. I think Fairey makes absolutely stunning images. I recently purchased a brand new signed print of his. I can’t wait to hang it! Their beauty is both easy and difficult. They are harsh and bombastic even while containing great subtlety. Fascinating artist. I think the statements he makes about copyright are generally correct. But I also think that he was rude in not crediting the original photographer behind the Obama poster image. But rudeness does not make for copyright infringement. I’m sure he’s a very nice guy and I’ve noticed that he has no problem with crediting photographers on his web site. I also have a secret little reason for liking the T-shirt he’s wearing.
This film was made by Gestaltin TV in Germany.
Brazilian artist Claudio Ethos works on his first Los Angeles art piece. I happened upon him down on Main Street and thought he was a worker about to paint over a painting of a face. I started shooting and after several minutes realized that he was the artist.
Here’s some painting going on in Coney Island. The video was made by No Longer Empty NYC, which organizes free art showing in empty storefronts and other odd locations. They also hold children’s workshops, artist discussions, and musical performances.
I found this via Wooster Collective.
This is a film presented at the TED conference from the famous Chinese artist who was recently kidnapped by Chinese authorities. He has completely vanished along with thousands of other artists, journalists, writers, intellectuals and human rights workers who have been taken in the past several months. This artist speaks very simply and clearly about the situation in his country where his government watches him all day long and sees nothing wrong with bulldozing his studio to the ground because he expresses some criticism of what he sees around him.
What I do not respect about this video is the simpering nitwit from TED who introduces the film by stating that the TED conference takes no position on China. He then goes on to bend over for China and mentions how many people have been lifted from poverty in China. How far up China’s ass can this guy fit his head, I wonder? How can any organization not take a position on China? I’m sure if Hitler were around today and rambling across the land on an extermination campaign, this bunch from TED would take no position on that.
Look at this little notice on TED’s YouTube page where the film is hosted:
TED is a non-partisan, nonpolitical organization and we understand the Chinese authorities concern at anything which might provoke social unrest. But for anyone who believes in the power of ideas, of human imagination, it is heartbreaking to see one of the world’s great artists shackled in this way. We will be tracking developments carefully. Here is the film.
TED ‘understands the Chinese authorities concern at anything which might provoke social unrest!’
Oh my god! Yes indeed. They understand this concern of a totalitarian murdering government that is more than happy to make people vanish into prison because they want to complain about being beaten by a policeman.
Hey TED, here I come with my ticket! Gosh, I wouldn’t want you to be concerned that I might boo one of your presentations. Wouldn’t want that, would we?
Lifting people out of poverty in China is not what we need to be doing. We need to be shutting these people out entirely. We need companies that do not fill their computers with Chinese parts. We need toys that do not come painted with Chinese lead poison. We need to treat this totalitarian country the way it deserves to be treated. A rich China doing business with every company on the planet is not going to advance freedom for anyone. China needs to be pushed into abject and brutal poverty. Only then will the conditions exist for a revolution.
I opened up my Dell computer the other day to blow some dust out. The first things I saw were multiple ‘Made in China’ stickers on various components. Screw Dell. Screw every Western company that buys a single circuit board from China. Screw China.
More artists should do this. Make their own documentary about themselves. Great idea. I like the jazz paintings. Harold Smith is a visual artist who just likes painting.
Here’s a BBC documentary about one of the most famous images in the world, the Japanese woodblock print of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, by 18th century artist Hokusai.
Part 2:
Parts 3 – 5 after the jump
Here’s a 1971 art documentary featuring five black artists. Compare this to a bloodless piece of work like the NOVA documentary I posted yesterday where artists are posed on a red pillow in front of a blue wall to spout off about their ‘brands’ and the business of art while a DSLR camera puts them either to the right or the left of frame because that’s what good composition looks like in 2011.
The artists featured are:
Barbara Chase-Riboud, a sculptor living in Paris
Charles White, a painter in Los Angeles
Betty Blayton, a painter-collage artist and director of the Moma Art School In Harlem
Richard Hunt, a sculptor in Chicago
Romare Bearden, a New York painter who uses collages and cut-outs
Enjoy these five artists who actually sound like artists.
I wanted to like this film. I tried really hard. It was filmed during the Nova Contemporary Culture which happened in July and August 2010, at the MIS-Museum of Image and Sound, and SESC Pompeia, in São Paulo, Brazil.
It put me off with a few too many artist comments about art being a business and branding. There are a few real pretentious twits running through this art documentary. There’s also a lot of very nice, clean, well-behaved, pleasant, comfortable, easygoing, precise, smooth, color-balanced art going on here. I’ll be clear and remind my hesitant readers that I’m really quite the shining example of a creep. When I walk into a gallery I’m looking for the artist who is capable of throwing dirt into my eyes and laughing at me while I wipe it off. Most of the art in this film looks like it has been pre-approved for use by IBM in their next commercial.
I’m not looking for an artist who can tape off their lines straight and make them intersect at the farthest corner of the room. Draw crooked why don’t they? There’s so much goddam masking tape in this film it could wrap the Empire State Building six times over.
But if you watch this thing all the way through you just have to notice that out of all these young up-and-comers there’s apparently not a single black artist involved. I couldn’t find one. Maybe I missed something. But I went back and checked. How do you achieve something like that in 2011? Seriously? Don’t you have to work overtime hours to purposely exclude black artists from a documentary or a major art show like this? Can it be true that there are no black artists capable of sticking masking tape to a museum wall and painting inside the lines? Don’t black artists travel to Brazil?
It may not be director Isaac Niemand’s or producer ROJO‘s fault that the cast excludes black artists, but then perhaps they should have filmed a different art show. Maybe it’s Brazil’s fault.
I feel a little bad about criticizing a documentary film on Vimeo because their service is so based on mutual support and respect between artists. But that kind of thing has severe limits in the world of grownups and serious people.
Art is not preschool. It’s not about support and encouragement of creativity. Self-help bullshit doesn’t have a place in art. Art is about beauty, ugliness and thought that gets up in front of you and is willing to knock you unconscious without apology, willing to scare you, horrify you, enrage you, enrapture you, unsettle you, save you, uplift you, insult you, smash you, whither you, confuse you, ennoble you, or destroy you. But it does not ever want to please you.
Keep the pleasant art in Brazil thank you.
Ryan Spring Dooley (aka MarvinTiberious on YouTube) and Juppy Nash made a catchy little tune and played it on an Italian rooftop where they could enjoy the place they were in and become infected with art. Dooley’s films are a constant stream of creativity and artistic perception unlike anything else. He combines old and new and creates works so easily expressive that you wonder why anyone needs anything more than paper, paint and a camera to do anything. Watch this film and wonder at just how good it really is. Masterful.
The filmmaker is also using Kickstarter to fund a bigscreen project:
I’m going to be somewhat cryptic in this post because I’m attempting to get in underneath China’s diligent web checking people.
China has been kidnapping large numbers of artists and intellectuals who completely disappear. They recently took the artist in this photo. While he was being taken away he snapped the photo of his reflection inside an elevator. He’s very famous. He has been totally vanished by the Chinese.
Many others have too. They are being taken and vanished because China is very afraid of something.
They are afraid of something big. Something that was to be peaceful – the way it has been in some other countries recently. But in China you cannot do it peacefully. You will be murdered if you try to do it peacefully.
You must do it with an explosion.
You must do it quickly.
The Chinese can eliminate their problem. The problem is usually to be found wearing a uniform. It must be eliminated quickly and by any means at hand. If you are in China, you are living in a massive slave camp that provides slave labor to Western corporations. You might decide that you want to end your slavery.
That is my message to the people of China.