I bought a sketchbook

Yesterday I took advantage of the outflux of New Yorkers from the city and snagged a free parking spot on 84th and Madison so I could go over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's been a number of years since the last time I had been there, but I remember the futility of attempting to see too many priceless objects at one time -- it's too easy to burn out your brain's aesthetic centers that way -- so I stuck to only a few of the galleries. In the Museum Store on the first floor I bought an inexpensive set of drawing pencils packaged with a pad of drawing paper so that I could have some fun sketching a few pieces from the collection.


In the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts section, this Hanging Lamp with a Griffin Head appealed to me because of its Gothic spikiness and beautiful patina. Only dimly could I imagine what this would have looked like hanging in a niche in some cathedral or palace, oil blazing away.


This sculpture of cruise line heiress Nancy Cunard by Brancusi is on the first floor Modern Art gallery. The bronze surface polished to a high luster is protected from fingerprints by a Lucite case, because it is one of those things that would be nearly irresistible for the unruly visitors to touch, causing it to tarnish I am sure. Graphite pencil is wholly inadequate to represent the quality of the material, but it was enjoyable to trace the precision of the lines of this piece. I saw many striking paintings in this gallery more or less contemporary wi th this item, but could not figure out how on earth I would get anything out of sketching them, precisely because of the arbitrariness of their proportions, in most cases.


Upstairs a little ways from the Pollocks and Matisses is Damien Hirst's popular work The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living which is due to end its stay at the Met sometime this year. The interesting thing about this was how I grew to appreciate this work during the time it took to sketch it out (maybe a half hour, ensconced in a back corner of the gallery away from the families with small children thronging all around it), and to recognize that although everyone naturally focuses on the shark (the second to serve in that role since the work's completion), the massive formalin-filled tank also plays a significant role in the artistic statement, with its heavy riveted ironwork and ponderous dimensions serving to underscore the menacing thing. If it were just a shellacked shark on wires hanging from the ceiling, natural history museum-style, it would be mildly interesting but not nearly so monumental, I think. I also dug the way the water and glass refracted the contents so that I could get two views of the shark's mouth from where I stood.

After a few hours I took my artist materials and went back out to 5th Ave., where I bought a jumbo hot dog and a knish with mustard at a food cart. I did not in fact draw these, being famished, but I might have for all the perfection they too manifested.

By the numbers

Art movement: Abstract Microrepresentationalism

via flickr.com

You just need a good collection of these micrographs, a slide projector, a large canvas, some charcoal to trace the outlines out with, a few cans of acrylic paint, and some time to fill in the regions according to the original.

Posted via web from Poor Poor Thing

Wait till it blooms

sculptfull004-2,
originally uploaded by Meatspider Studios.

This picture of a Shoggoth sculpted in polymer clay reminds me of the very nice reading of the Hugo award-winning novelette Shoggoths in Bloom by Elizabeth Bear. Do go listen to it if you like Lovecraft. It's more to the ebon side than the transparent, but the mouth full of teeth is nice, I think.

The Gernsback biology lab

A little while back my friend D and I were bringing the snark concerning some vintage pulp SF covers via chat:

Me: But never mind that, take a look at this!
D: Those helmets were a SF prediction that never came to pass.
Me: It was rejected in the design meetings for the video iPod
Me: This one made me think of what we were saying yesterday.
Me: It looks like that alien has been working on his abs
D: To impress the Earth ladies.
Me: As always
Me: Now that I look at it, I can't tell whether it might be a guy in red spandex and a contraption over his eyes.
D: You have to read "Master Mind of Mars" to find out.
Me: I assume the guy who isn't red is the TA
D: TAs aren't supposed to be shirtless
Me: It must be an advanced lab
D: He should have a lab coat at least.
Me: He might be using his garments to wipe down that fork-holder
Me: Meanwhile the lady in the background is like "Can I get some service around here?!"
D: I wonder what "details" the second picture is supposed to be showing.
Me: Male pattern baldness?
D: Are those tufts of hair poking out of the red skullcap?
Me: I think he spent too much time inside the video diving helmet and this is what happened.
Me: At least they should have plenty of boysenberry syrup.
Me: I wouldn't be surprised if these covers were the reason the economy collapsed two years later.

We are by nature each too gentlemanly to make any snide comments about the appearance of the women, I would like to point out. It is not as if either of us have demonstrated a superior level of artistic achievement ourselves, but really, now.

Just slightly more wasteful than a Hummer

Please can we get over our international malaise and concern over the composition of the atmosphere so everyone can fly to work in one of these? The parking lots at the 7-11 will have to be modified to accommodate the airfoils as people stop by to grab a cup of coffee, of course.

But then again

This is a depiction of Judas betraying Jesus. That's a bad thing, right?

It's a sixteenth century masterpiece by the Italian painter Caravaggio. So that's good, then?

It was stolen from the Ukranian Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odessa last summer. A very bad thing, no doubt.

But then the authorities recovered it. Great!

Some experts, however, believe it might simply be a reproduction wrongly attributed to the master. So what should one think?

Abstract Expressionist tattoos

I am disappointed not to be able to find examples of body art in homage to the giants of Abstract Expressionism. Neither color fields (Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman etc.), nor gestural tats (Jackson Pollock of course, or Willem de Kooning) turn up in my searches. I would think that California hard-edge monochromes (Ad Reinhardt and others) would be nearly ideal for the medium, say a bold patch of solid black across the chest, or maybe a subtle work where the recipient has been tattooed in the exact same color as their natural skin tone. Such a thing would be a pointed commentary on the experience of pain in the service of pure art.

I see a great need.

More crane fun

Here is a list of some other things that a household bridge crane could bring within reach of the ordinary kook like me.

• A visual artist could use it to paint canvases many meters across in the paint-drip style of Jackson Pollock, ones too wide to reach across normally without having to step onto them. You could either come up with some arrangement with paint pots and servo motors mounted on the hoist, or else a harness to lift the artist up to apply the paint by hand.
• Along the same lines, the kids could put on a production of Peter Pan. Test those wires before flying too high, though.
• It seems to that the main room cleaning chore remaining once you have a robotic vacuum cleaner is the need to shift the furniture both to spare the carpeting from getting those pits where the legs dig in and to give the robot a chance to hit those areas underneath. A judicious application of hoisting points on your sofa, coffee table, TV, etc., would allow you to whisk them away (perhaps just as the Roomba is heading in their direction) and to redo the room layout every single time a cleaning pass is done.
• You could have one of the world's largest games of pick up sticks using a pile of aluminum trusses.
• At the end of a dinner party, tie all the corners of the tablecloth to the hook and lift the mess out of the way in one dramatic gesture. Or if your gearing is up to it, tie only the corners at one end of the cloth and execute the classic tablecloth trick.

Really, it's surprising that more people aren't already clamoring for the personal bridge crane already.

The moon in your cup

I think OnLatte might have the best idea of all for consumable lunar art. The idea is to imprint a picture of the full moon on top of your latte, and as you drink it down, the eclipse would advance.

previously

Colorblindness, colorblindness, colorblindness!

The most popular page on this blog, by far, is one which people are attracted to because of the image of the random dot colorblindness test by Shinobu Ishihara. The two volume publication containing those illustrations, which was printed originally in the 1950s, is rather difficult to find at the major retailers (you know who they are), but those who are truly interested can buy used copies on the Web.

If only brand new will do, there is this place too.

Hope this helps you all.

Dada donkey dude

All the cool kids are doing the album cover meme, so here goes.

• The band
  
• The title
  
• The cover art

translate to this



The picture and the title go together suspiciously well, but I swear I didn't cheat. Much.

Fake book covers

When you're out in public reading something you perhaps would rather not be associated with, it might come in handy if you could slap a paper jacket around you reading material to camouflage what you are doing. Maybe you're a writer or undercover investigator and want to disguise the notebook you are using to write down people's words or actions. Or maybe you just like the way books look on your coffee table, but haven't seen something sufficiently eye-catching to fit your decor. I propose a line of almost-real book covers that look nearly convincing enough to pass as the real thing.

How about Sappho's Guide to Grilling on a Budget?
IMAGE NO LONGER AVAILABLE
Classy, huh? Simply get it printed out on legal-size paper (or maybe A3), trim as needed, and fold it around your book.

Oh, and by the way, it's chicken (courtesy freeimages.co.uk).

In the same series:

• The Prom Queen Wore Poplar


• The Webster Subversion


• Tau is for Toxikologos


• Living is the Lure You Can do Least Without


• A Child's Garden of Virtualization, and my favorite


• God Ran Over My Neighbor's Dog (And Made It Look Like I Did It Myself)

If you're dying to see one of these, let me know in the comments and I'll see what can be done.

Reasons to be of good cheer

Back before the big Treo disaster I used to keep a file on my PDA called "Reasons to be of good cheer" which I would update from time to time. I needed it to help during the difficult times encountered during self-employment, to remind me now and then about the little things that would make life worth living.

Now Pam and I are out here outside of San Francisco for a few days of vacation, which is normally a happy kind of thing, but found ourselves dealing with some heavy issues involving some elderly family members, which was starting to lay a bring-down on the two of us. It was cold and drizzly as we drove around searching for a place to have a bit of solace one dinnertime when at length we happened upon the Nayeb Restaurant (aka Luxor) in South San Francisco.

The food was tasty, but that turned out not to be the point, when the background music suddenly was turned up a dozen decibels and the waitress announced the arrival of the Belly Dancer.
IMAGE NO LONGER AVAILABLE
The young lady had long red hair and was several percent beyond the state of half-nakedness, I would estimate.

IMAGE NO LONGER AVAILABLE

She was generous in the way she bestowed her attention to the various tables, and the diners reciprocated in turn, tucking folding currency into the waistband of her garb. I learned that this operation was more difficult than it appeared, both because of the motion of the target and the way acute embarrassment affected performance. Ah well, I did only what was right. (No picture available.)

At last a reason to be of good cheer which I'd completely overlooked: the existence of belly dancing. Surely the only way one could grow tired of belly dancing would be to grow tired of life itself.

Tattoo

When I saw this, I wondered "Does this wrist belong to a girl named Ester Bond?"

(via)

Though I think that if one wished to use a tattoo to cheat on Organic Chemistry exams one might be better off using a programmable one for versatility.

Fun with mirrors

Apparently last week there was a flurry of activity concerning hidden messages in Leonardo's painting of the Last Supper.

Now Slavisa Pesci, an information technologist and amateur scholar, says superimposing the "Last Supper" with its mirror-image throws up another picture containing a figure who looks like a Templar knight and another holding a small baby.

Well certainly we wouldn't expect any random painting superimposed on its mirror image to show any recognizable shapes. Or would we?

I have included links to depictions of the original art. Click on the images to see a larger version of each.

• Peter Paul Rubens, The Judgment of Paris.
  
  Looks like an x-ray radiograph of a spine of a conjoined unpleasantness there in the middle surmounting a mass brown and foul. Overhead, there is a ghostly outline of the head of a bear - to which the twins seem to be paying homage (?). Indications are that a BAD THING is about to occur, definitely.


• Pablo Picasso's Guernica (though I grabbed the original from another site).
  
  My gaze is drawn by the light-colored Latin cross just below dead center, then, zooming out, the way the pair of lightbulbs up top assume the place of eyes for a long-snouted animal face. So this we can take to be an indictment of the destructive powers of superego and id respectively.


• William Blake's Ancient of Days.
  I see a cat's face clearly there, made up of the deity's brow and its mirror, with a backdrop of wings of a huge bird of prey. Something hearkening back to ancient egyptian worship perhaps? I kind of like how the compasses aren't precisely aligned on the centerline of the print.


• A venereal diptych: Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus (folded along a horizontal axis) and Giorgone's Sleeping Venus
  
  
  "Double your pleasure, double your fun!"


• Michelangelo's Last Judgment
  
  Aaah, it's a giant blue Stormtrooper helmet!!!

If anyone runs with these ideas and gets a thesis out of them, I'd surely like a copy, thanks.

A sculpture I want to see

It's Omnia Vincit Armor, in the Smithsonian Archives. Based on the description as "A nude male and female figure, with winged scarab, symbolic of immortality.", I would guess that it doesn't look too much like this modern version (Link broken).

I think that shirt should come with Kevlar plates attached. It should be quite popular among our troops.

What to do when encountering snakes on a beach

I would like to promote the adjective laocoonic, meaning one who seldom speaks except to say 'aaah, get them off of me, get them OFF!' Have we not all had days like that?
IMAGE NOT AVAILABLE

Or maybe "your hair - it's so awesome."

I do like this guerrilla art item: anonymous plaques in public places. Here are a few other sayings one could put on a plaque.

• 


• 


• 


• 


• 


• 


• 

As you can see, I favor the creepy/morbid angle here.

Art with broad appeal

I read about the Maserati covered in shattered glass via The Cellar and thought that an artist over here should buy a car from an DEA auction (like the Porsche 911 Turbo described here) and cover it in thousands of hypodermic needles. If it is possible to get thousands of crack pipes without too much trouble, you could bust these up and sprinkle some of these on too. People will love it either because of the free speech aspect or because of the anti-drug angle. Or because there's a hot car underneath!

Signs for the colorblind

I'm putting this out now even though the cool illustration of the concept has not worked out to my satisfaction.

Color blindness is a condition that a bit over 1% of the population possesses, something like ten times more prevalent among males as compared to females. Here is a typical colored dot test for one of the most common types of color blindness:

If you see the number 21 instead of 74, you probably have red-green color blindness.

The issue is one that web designers need to be concerned with as they put together websites. Here is a tool (broken link) that lets you visualize what a given website looks like under the different types of color blindness - you can try typing in the URL of this page to see what happens. It would be cool if they could build this into a head-mounted display so a person could go out into the world and experience what it is like to see things with altered color perception.

My idea is to use this phenomenon to make signs that display different messages to different people. For instance, suppose a couple is made up of a normal vision wife and a red-green color blind husband. We could make a design for the bathroom floor out of appropriately tiles that would show the word UP to those with normal vision and DOWN for the color blind viewer, as an aid to behavior modification. My discovery last night is that even though it isn't terribly hard to make words when you're working with just two colors of tile, one needs a hell of a lot of tiles - hundreds, preferably - to display even a short word in a random color pattern in this way legibly, and as tiresome this would be to depict in a drawing program on the computer, it would be even more of a chore to do in actual colored tiles. (Even if the tile-setter isn't color blind.) Perhaps it would be better just to reproduce a pattern in miniature, as a wall hanging instead.

Another idea would be to make little tags which you would sew into your clothing, identifying which tops and bottoms go together when viewed by someone of the majority group - the color blind person would just have to match A with A and B with B instead of relying on their own distinctive color sense.

I think there are probably other applications if one just thinks about the subject for a bit more. I look forward to the comments.

Update (June 2008): In this post I have tracked down a source for those original color plates, if anyone is interested in owning a second-hand set.

Update (December 2010): This T-shirt (broken link) incorporates some of what I had in mind, although the non-textual part of the design kind of makes it less cool than the full-blown concept, along with a bit of a bad attitude.