Art of the Future: 21 Century Techno-Impressionism

I found the name of this art movement to be very intriguing because seeing the word 'techno' and 'impressionism' together was a little odd. This new movement came about in the late 20 century with the debate of what future art was going to look like. Many feel that this is going to be the new art of the future and art historians have to accept it. After looking at some of the pieces of this 'techno-impressionist' art it reminds me of the Pop art Andy Warhol made of Marylin Monore in 1962.

Orphan Works Act of 2006

The College Art Association (CAA) has been working hard to get the US copyright law revised, to make it less risky and confusing for authors, artists, scholars, libraries, and museums to use "orphan" copyrighted works in publications and in artworks. These are works that are still in copyright but for which no copyright holder can be found.

The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee is now considering a bill, H.R. 5439, the Orphan Works Act of 2006, to address this problem. In a nutshell, if a user of an "orphan work," does a diligent search to locate the copyright owner, and is unsuccessful, the risks of using that work are greatly reduced.

Please write to the Committee and to your own Congressional Representative to urge enactment of H.R. 5439 during this Congress. To send a customized message, click here.

You don't need to know the name or address of your Representative; just type in your zipcode at the website and follow the instructions. A template letter will appear, with additional talking points, which you can customize.

Examples of problems with orphan copyrights experienced by CAA members can be read here (PDF).

Video Installations by Douglas Gordon

Douglas Gordon, will be displaying several video installation pieces at MOMA in New York City. Douglas Gordon is best known for his video installation pieces involving popular films such as Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" in which Douglas Gordon manipulated the film to play over a period of 24 hours. I saw this installation at MOCA in downtown L.A. several years ago as well as Gordon's other famous piece in which he uses two screens on opposite walls to project images of Robert De Niro's famous lines from the movie "Taxi" when he says, "You talkin' to me?" His most recent installation in New York, however, deals with different subject matter. The exhibition will be on display on the Special Exhibtion gallery, sixth floor June 11-September 4, 2006 and in the Film and Media Gallery, second floor June 11- October 2, 2006 at The Museum of Modern Art in New York city.

Minimalism

Minimal art is any abstract art charaterized by extreme simplicity of form. Minimalism emerged in the 1960s in New York. Donald Judd was the artist of this work. Donald Judd left many of his peices untitled because he felt, "if something is made to look like something else, the art was inferior to the object that it was trying to mimic." Minimalists created works that stood for what it is rather than making it look like somehting else.

Political Assemblage

The Riverside Art Museum is exibiting a collection of Tibbles’ L.A. Times Opinion-section assemblages in the Bobbie Powell Gallery. This exhibition is scheduled to travel on to the Laband Art Gallery, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and then to the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, California.

The art of assemblage has been around for a century or more. In that time, many of its practitioners, from the Futurists and Dadaists before and during World War I to the Beat and Pop-related artists working during the Vietnam conflict, have used assemblage to make political statements. Susan Tibbles is an assemblagist with a difference. She doesn’t make political statements with her constructions of found and acquired objects; she makes statements about politics.

For the last six years, Tibbles has produced a series of assemblages designed to appear – in two-dimensional photographic reproduction – on the Opinion-Editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times. Designed to appear with specific articles, the artworks do not function like political cartoons. They do not express the artist’s opinion about current issues. Rather, they function like illustrations or even illuminations, giving concise visual form to the concepts put forth in the articles they accompany.

The assemblages will be on view at the The Riverside Art Museum through this weekend, Sunday, July 2, 2006.



The quote above is from the exhibition description. I just wanted to point out that even if they are including the use of collage in art under the rubric of assemblage, it hasn't been quite a century yet. Very close, but a few years shy. The first use of collage in fine art is generally attributed to Pablo Picasso in 1912 for his Still Life with Chair Canning.

Time to Vote

Summer session is almost over. Some of you have still not participated on the blog website. Well this is your chance, I'll make it easy. We have studied many artists and art styles. Now is your chance to vote for your personal favorite. I will be making a list of a few for you to chose from, or you can write one in yourself. Maybe John can use this infomation in his following classes.

Leonardo da Vinci "Mona Lisa"

Raphael "School of Athens"

Jan van Eyck "Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife"

Caravaggio "Entombment"

Benjamin West "The Death of General Wolfe"

Gustave Courbet "The Stone Breakers"

Claude Monet "Boulevard Des Capucines"

George Seurat "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte"

Vincent Van Gogh "The Starry Night"

Pablo Picasso "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon"

TIME TO VOTE.......I vote 1 for Monet.

deep

Post-Impressionism with Divisionist techniques

The George Seurat's painting titled, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, is unique in that it was exhibited at an Impressionist exhibition, yet Seurat used an unusual divisionist technique called pointillism or tiny dots on canvas. This type of painting technique takes weeks or months to complete because the paint is applied using tiny little dots. Seurat also used striking complimentary colors of yellow and purple. Another artist who experimented with this technique was Camille Pissarro. Later in Pissarro's career, he had a crisis and began not to like his drawing ability, so he tried out different techniques, such as pointillism. After experimenting with this style awhile, he decided to go back to Impressionism because of the time it took to complete one painting. Seurat's painting here is alive and vibrant with color. The eyes are drawn to this striking composition. The colors are bright and intense that the painting almost seems to pulsate. One can not help being mesmerized by Seurat's use of tiny dots and strong use of color.

$135 million Klimt

I seem to have overlooked this last week. The 2004 record $104.1 million sale of Picasso's Boy With a Pipe has been unseated by Klimt.

LOS ANGELES - It has been a long journey for the lustrous and mysterious portrait in gold of the Viennese Jewish society lady Adele Bloch-Bauer -- a work at the center of one of the most sensational Nazi art theft cases ever -- but now the 1907 Gustav Klimt painting has found a permanent home.

"It was important to the heirs and to my aunt Adele that the painting be in a museum," and not in a private collection, said Bloch-Bauer's niece Maria Altmann, the 90-year-old former dress saleslady in L.A. who is among five heirs who will share the record-breaking $135 million that billionaire cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder and others reportedly paid for the painting.

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907

Viewing the Original

A group of students and a couple of their friends and family joined me at The Norton Simon Museum yesterday. Although it is a smaller museum, it has a very fine collection that spans Western history from the late Medieval through the 20th century. I only wish that a collection of this quality were in closer proximity to my college. Teaching by way of direct observation of the original artworks is preferable to the use of reproductions in a classroom. I hope those that attended yesterday enjoyed the experience.

I also attended yet another artist's talk on the Translucence exhibition. In the morning before the museum opened, a small group of maybe ten people joined artist DeWain Valentine in the gallery to discuss his work. It was a rare opportunity and an enjoyable morning.

Sadly, I forgot my camera, so sorry no photographs :(

Michael & Inessa Garmash

While scouting around on the Internet for blog topics, I found a very interesting article. These are some of the paintings that first attracted me to the article. According to the reading, Michael Garmash began painting at the age of three. By the age of six his teachers were sending his paintings to national juried exhibits where he won several first place awards (not too shabby for a six year old). Inessa, his wife to be in later life, attended school where she excelled in ballet, gymnastics, and music. At the age of fifteen, Inessa joined the Lugansk fine art school.



At seventeen she was accepted as that year's best undergraduate to the Lugansk state fine art school. While on a two week vacation from the army, Michael met Inessa at a bus station. Instead of returning to his army platoon that night, he spent the entire night painting her image on all the surrounding walls and staircases. Well long story made shorter, they did marry. Their painting style isn't refered to in this article. I would classify it as Romantic, and Impressionist. Many of their prints are shown on the internet, just type in their names or this site is http://www.fineartandsoul.com/Artist-Garmash.htm. I found these very attractive paintings, but chose them because these two extrodinary artists are not shown in our books. Maybe just a little to recent. Please leave your feedback and let me know what you think of them.

Photographs by Adam Bartos

Adam Bartos has some of his photographs on display at the Rose Gallery, which is part of Bergamot Station Arts Center, in Santa Monica. Bartos is a New York Native, but the subject matter in his photographs is Los Angeles. In particular, his pictures show Los Angeles' urban landscape during the 1970s. There are many pictures of everyday and mundane parts of Los Angeles, instead of the more iconic landmarks that are usually shown in photographs of L.A. The exhibition will be on display from June 10, 2006 until August 5, 2006 in Santa Monica.

Societe Anonyme, Inc. Modernism for America

Look familiar? From now through August 20, the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center will be displaying over 200 works of art that now serve as a time capsule of modern art practice from 1920-1950. Many of the artists whose work will be displayed make up a kind of "who's-who" of what our class will be studying in its last week. Among these artists are Marcel Duchamp, Vasily Kandinsky, Fernand Leger, Paul Klee, Paul Gauguin, and of course Pablo Picasso. This might be a perfect chance for anyone interested in seeing in real life, what we see in our text books everyday. Who knows, maybe in person we can understand what Picasso was doing. For more info, go to www.hammer.ucla.edu

Eliot Porter

Eliot Porter (1901-1990) introduced color to landscape photography. Porter started adding color to his photo prints in 1939, long before any others photographers had accepted this process. He added color to both landscapes and especially birds to create and celebrate the colorful beauty of nature in general. His 50 year career put out tens of thousands of artworks. These artworks are on display from now until september 17 at the Getty Center, Los Angeles, Ca, 310-440-7300. www.getty.edu

Ceramic Exhibition & Benefit

The McGroarty Arts Center is holding its 3rd annual ceramics exhibition and benifit now through July 7. The featured artists are Lesley Anton, Luis Bermudez, Steve Davis, Stan Hunter, Victor Lozano Jr., Junzo Mori, Ray Yocum and Fred Yokel. The exhibition is open Monday through Friday from 10 am to 4 pm and Saturday from 10 am to 7 pm.

From their site:

McGroarty Arts Center plays a pivotal role in the local community by offering affordable, ongoing eight-week classes for adults and children in many varieties of fine, literary and performing arts, as well as many cultural and community events throughout the year.

Built in 1923, this beautiful home, alive with mementos of California's colorful history was declared a Historic-Cultural Monument (#63) by the City of Los Angeles on February 4, 1970. In 1974, the City began operating McGroarty as an arts center. In 1995, budget cuts forced the city to divest six community arts centers, including McGroarty. It is now the responsibility of a volunteer Board of Directors called the Friends of McGroarty Cultural Arts Center to raise the majority of the operating costs and manage the Center.

McGroarty Arts Center
7570 McGroarty Terrace
Tujunga, California 91042
818.352.5285

Russian Impressionist

This is a Russian Impressionist painting from the mid-twentieth century, by Meta Antonovna Dreifeld. It is from the Nedra Matteucci Galleries in Santa Fe New Mexico, if you happen to be in the area. I was trying to compare this to artists such as Claude Monet. I feel that it is very similar to Monet's Boulevard des Capucines (1873). The name of this Russian Impressionist painting is Perislavi Zameski. It looks like this artist used small dabs or short brush strokes throughout, it also looks like this is a contemporary urban scene. I feel that this painting displays many Impressionist characteristics.

Translucence, Artists' Talk

Friday night I went to the Norton Simon Museum for a special lecture with artists Peter Alexander, DeWain Valentine and Larry Bell, whose cast polyester resin and glass works are featured in the Museum's exhibition Translucence: Southern California Art from the 1960s and 1970s. The artists discussed their work and the development of their techniques, which included some great stories about being young, unknown artists in Venice Beach in the 1960s.

This period was very unique and innovative in the early history of the Los Angeles art scene. When compared to the history of the New York art scene at the same time, L.A. was barely on the radar. By the 1960s New York had a decades old and well established Modern art market with its many internationally known artists, art critics, gallery owners and museums. Los Angeles was just getting off the ground with a small handful of notable galleries and museums with limited Modern collections. The mixture of the Beatniks of the 50s, the later hippies, and the surf culture created something daring and undeniably different, undeniably West Coast.

Yes, I know I just posted about going to view this exhibition last Friday, but it's not everyday you have a chance to hear artists from the Finish Fetish and Light & Space movements talk about their work in such an intimate setting. In addition to these three artists, Helen Pashgian was in the audience and shared a few comments at the end. I'll pass along a few of their stories about their early beginnings.

It was a joy listening to Peter Alexander's genuine and humorous stories of those early years. Personally I was also pleased to hear his frequent use of art historical references to make a point or clarify his impression of a work - I know I'm biased ;) Alexander got his start working with resins through glazing surfboards at the age of 13. In his twenties he started creating translucent and colored cubes and wedges that reflected the light and water of the area. He said he was influenced by his impression of paintings by Vermeer. The smooth, glossy surface of the paintings made him think of them as being under water. Alexander stopped working with resins in the early 70s when he realized the toll it was having on his body. He told a story of drinking a bottle of vodka everyday for a week without much effect when he realized how the toxins from the resin must have been impacting his system. When he stopped working with the resin he also stopped drinking the vodka.

DeWain Valentine first came into contact with acrylic and polyester resin while in junior high school in Colorado at the end of World War Two. In 1945 the government had declassified acrylic, which they had used for the cockpits of airplanes. The following year polyester resin was also declassified. DeWain had been interested in the cutting and polishing of stone at the time. When pieces of these new materials arrived at the school his teacher showed him how they could be cut, formed, polished and colored much easier than the stone. This experimentation would lead to his creation of new technologies that would allow the creation of his monumental resin works starting in the 1960s. He moved to Venice Beach where his works were inspired by his view of the joining of the sky and ocean at the horizon. DeWain's Blue Circles (1970) reflect his experience of swimming in the ocean off Catalina Island, which struck him for its drastic difference in color from the water along the shore near his home.

Larry Bell worked in glass rather than resin, though many similar issues and ideas are reflected in his pieces. He also lived in Venice Beach just a half block from DeWain. Bell started working with glass while a student at Chouinard School of Art. He was working at a frame shape where he learned to cut glass. After school in 1958/59 he worked in paint creating abstract and volumetric forms. He said he became frustrated by the limits of paint and started incorporating cut glass into his works using the skills he had learned at the frame shop. An example seen here, A Wisp of the Girl She Used to Be from 1963. Eventually he left out the canvas and worked exclusively in glass. By cutting, plating and sandblasting glass and mirror he was able to create his volumetric forms in a more interesting way. Bell explained the interest in his work lies in changing a mundane, common object, that of glass, into an object "charged with an energy" created by simply manipulating the mundane into something now viewed as special.

The exhibition will be on display at the Norton Simon Museum through August 28, 2006.

Art by Dennis Hopper

Dennis Hopper, who acted in such films as Easy Rider with Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda, is also a painter and a photographer. His work is currently being displayed at the Ace Gallery on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles. There are paintings and photographs of some of Hopper's famous friends, and fellow artists, before and after they came to be known by the public. The exhibition entitled "Dennis Hopper a survey" runs from March 31, through July 2006.

"nympheas"

Okay John, this is my first attempt at this blog thing. Since there are no real rules I thought I would try something different. I went to the study guide number two, and chose the painting that most appealed to me. The painting is entitled "Nympheas", and the artist is Claude Monet. I know nothing of this painting or of its history. Instead of looking it up I thought I would just take a few minutes, study it, try to understand it, maybe even try to enjoy it, and then try to put my feelings into this blog for others to comment on as they see fit. My grandma was an oil painter before she passed. Her paintings were always of the simple landscape type, small houses, trees, streams, and beautiful mountains. I believe her paintings have kind of influenced my thinking on paintings. I have found simple nature among my favorites. When I first looked at this, my immediate attention was drawn to the reflections in the water. My grandmother was known for this technique, and it has always stuck with me. Although the painting itself is of these beautiful water lillies, I can't help but think he wants us to see more. Perhaps he wants us to look deeper past the lillies into the reflections, or maybe he wants us to just picture the calmness of the time and maybe just image the flowers gently floating in the pool of clear water. My thought is this painting was created for those who enjoy beautiful colors, peaceful surroundings, and great art. I open to anyone else who may want to responde to this.

Francisco José de Goya Lucientes

Oh! I just realized this exhibition is ending, so it looks like I'm heading to San Diego this weekend.

This spring, a special focused exhibition of approximately ten paintings by the Spanish master Francisco de Goya will be presented exclusively at the San Diego Museum of Art from April 8 to June 18, 2006. The display will highlight one of the Museum's most notable paintings, Goya's Marquis of Sofraga, providing context for Goya, his work, and the sitter of the SDMA painting.

Portrait of the Marquis of Sofraga, ca. 1795.

I think I actually wrote a paper on this painting as an undergrad.

David Hockney Portraits

LACMA presents David Hockney Portraits, June 11 – September 4, 2006, the first exhibition devoted solely to Hockney’s portraiture, one of the most significant facets of his work. Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Portrait Gallery, London, in collaboration with LACMA and senior curator Stephanie Barron, the groundbreaking exhibition surveys half a century of the artist's career, revealing some of his most profound compositions, new and old.

The Photographer and His Daughter, 2005.
Oil on canvas, 56 x 76 in.
A few reviews and essays on the exhibition:

• Facing off at the line dividing life and art
  By Doug Harvey
  
  
• Painting with friends
  By Tom Christie
  
  
• 'Hockney Portraits' in L.A. Traces 50 Years of Friends, Lovers
  By Stephen West
  
  
• David Hockney Portraits: On staying true to life
  By Lawrence Weschler
  

Flag Day

Childe Hassam, The Fourth of July, 1916 (The Greatest Display of the American Flag Ever Seen in New York, Climax of the Preparedness Parade in May), 1916, oil on canvas

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-55,
encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood

Wayne Eagleboy, We the People, 1971,
acrylic paint and barbed wire on buffalo hide

Andy Warhol, Andy Painting American Flag, 1985

Shi-Zhe Yung, Corporate Flag, 2000
(created for AdBusters' "Creative Resistance" competition)

cheese

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Translucence

Through August 28, 2006, The Norton Simon Museum presents Translucence, an exhibition of 23 works from ten artists working in Southern California in the 1960s and 1970s. These artists were part of innovative movements referred to as Finish Fetish, Light and Space or L.A. Glass and Plastic, which were influenced by the craftsmanship of the automobile, surfboard, boat, and aerospace industries. The works focus on an obsession with surface finish, light and perception and make use of high-tech materials such as plastics, polyester resins, Plexiglas and fiberglass.

It was nice to see a collection of classic examples from this period. A few of the works included in the exhibition have not been on public view for more than thirty years.

Craig Kauffman, Untitled, 1968

Norman Zammitt, Opal, 1966

Myspace and MOCA?

Every Saturday night during the summer from 6pm to midnight. I went last Saturday and it was alot of fun. Many college-ish-aged people come from all over California to talk about art and enjoy the music.

If you have nothing to do, take a trip to LA. I wont be going this weekend, but I'll for sure be there next. E-mail me if you want to carpool.

-Julie Mason

For a full listing of scheduled events go here.

Mentos & Diet Coke Performance Art

What happens when you combine 101 bottles of Diet Coke and 523 Mentos mints? Well, Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz created this piece of performance art to demonstrate. Click on the image.



Hmm, but what happens if you drink a carbonated beverage and eat Mentos? You'll find that answer here.

What does LA have against art in public spaces?

In the last year at least three bits of public art have been destroyed in LA. LACMA destroyed the Margaret Kilgallens and Barry McGees that it commissioned for its parking garage, installations made by the French artist Invader -- including private commissions -- were destroyed, and now Kent Twitchell's giant downtown mural of Ed Ruscha has been painted over by persons unknown.

- ArtsJournal

Damien Hirst's Diamond Skull

I think I will just let this one speak for itself.

The latest project of British modern artist Damien Hirst, a skull cast in platinum and encased in diamonds, will be the most expensive piece of artwork ever created, The Observer newspaper said yesterday.

Entitled For the Love of God, the life-size human skull, covered in 8,500 diamonds, will cost between eight and 10 million pounds ($15 and $18.8 million, 11.8 and 14.7 million euros) to create, the British weekly said.

Hirst remains best known for earlier conceptual works in which creatures including a shark and a cow were pickled in formaldehyde inside glass tanks.

more...

ARTWALK Culver City

Yesterday we participated in the first annual ARTWALK Culver City. The free, self-guided tour of thirty local art galleries and exhibition spaces was sponsored by the Culver City Redevelopment Agency and Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Platinum Sponsorship to Culver City.

ARTWALK Culver City is intended to introduce a wider audience to the newest art scene on the Westside of Los Angeles, which includes twenty spaces in Culver City and ten spaces along its Los Angeles border.

Participating art venues include Anna Helwing Gallery, Bandini Art, Billy Shire Fine Arts, BLK/MKT Gallery, BLUM & POE, Cherry and Martin, Corey Helford Gallery, d.e.n. contemporary, Denizen Design Gallery, Fresh Paint Art Advisors, George Billis Gallery LA, Gregg Fleishman, Harvey Levine Gallery, Hedi Khorsand Gallery, The Lab 101 Gallery, LAXART, LightBox,
Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery, MC, MODAA, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, OVERTONES Gallery, Q.E.D., SANDRONI.REY, Scion Installation LA, sixspace, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Taylor De Cordoba, walter maciel gallery and Western Project. This event will especially celebrate the Culver City Art District, a cluster of galleries exhibiting emerging and established artists, which has formed in the area bordered by Washington Boulevard in Culver City and La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles.

We were able to view about twenty of the participating galleries. The galleries ranged from cavernous and immaculate spaces with thirty-foot ceilings to small, cramped backrooms reminiscent of a VIP room at an alternative dance club. This area, with some more development, does have the potential to draw a regular art viewing audience. The artists, as well as the clientele, are diverse enough to keep it interesting and provide a few welcomed surprises.

A few days ago I commented on the work of Chad Robertson at SIXSPACE. His talent as an illustrator and figurative painter is apparent and possibly more powerful viewed through his muted monotone approach. He comes out of the tradition of photorealism where the artist works from a photographed image rather than directly from nature. Artists in this area you might be familiar with are Chuck Close, Robert Bechtle, or Ralph Goings. Robertson’s compositions become more intriguing through his process of choosing the "poses" of his figures. He uses digital video to record his sitter and then watches it at a slow speed that allows him to view as he says, "the moment in between the moment". He can then select an observation of his sitter that is usually missed in between the traditional poses captured by the still photographer. This is reminiscent of the work of the video artist Bill Viola over the last few decades. A specific Viola piece I remember seeing in Texas consisted of three video portraits. The video was shown on a framed flat screen monitor at such a slow speed that one would think it was a still photograph. Only if you looked long enough would you experience that the portrait was transitioning through various emotions. The intimate experience the viewer has with the sitter far exceeds either the photograph or the video played at regular speed. Robertson, like Viola, uses this technique to successful yet different ends.

Zachary Wollard at LIGHTBOX has been building a reputation over the last few years in both Los Angeles and New York. The writer turned painter attacks the canvas with a montage of images articulated in a variety of styles, patterns, contrasting scales, often incoherent settings, and a full range of artificial and natural colors. References to his literary influence permeate his fragmentary works, drawing the viewer in to reconstruct the intent of the artist, if any. In Wollard's work you might sense the influence of late Surrealist and Pop artists among others.

Billy Shire Fine Arts is exhibiting the collages of Tony Fitzpatrick. These works are highly obsessive and compulsive collections of images from a time gone by. They are reminiscent of the style of Barnum and Bailey Circus posters from the turn of the last century. A description of the images in his upcoming book states, "Tony Fitzpatrick spins magical tales from his own history and that of his beloved city Chicago via drawing-collages, vivid combinations of drawing, text and applied elements like matchbooks, postcards, gambling slips and ballgame stubs."

BLK/MRKT presents a retrospective of Tara McPherson's rock concert posters. As an artist and a musician she started working in this genre in 2001. "Tara's array of art includes painted covers for DC Vertigo Comics, advertising and editorial illustrations for companies such as Fanta and Spin Magazine, and numerous gig posters for rock bands such as Green Day, Modest Mouse and Death Cab For Cutie. She also has exhibited her paintings and prints in fine art galleries all over the world."

I recommend that you take the time to visit the galleries. I've provided only a few comments here on a handful of the dozens of contemporary artists we viewed in order to give a taste of the diversity on display at ARTWALK Culver City.

Art of Science

Princeton University has collected 56 images that were "produced in the course of research or incorporating tools and concepts from science." The 2006 Art of Science exhibition gallery is now online.

The practices of science and art both involve the single-minded pursuit of those moments of discovery when what one perceives suddenly becomes more than the sum of its parts. Each piece in this exhibition is, in its own way, a record of such a moment. They range from the image that validates years of research, to the epiphany of beauty in the trash after a long day at the lab, to a painter's meditation on the meaning of biological life.

By the way, this is a fly egg.

No one will confuse it with an actual Jackson Pollock, but it will keep you entertained for a few minutes.

Miltos Manetas has set up a site, jacksonpollock.org, to allow you to create your own Jackson Pollock-esque artwork. Just move your mouse to "drip" paint and click to change the color.

1000 Paintings

Here's yet another example of late capitalist, postmodern, viral marketing art. Sala, an artist in Zürich, Switzerland, is offering 1000 Paintings of 1000 sequential numbers. Although maybe not as engaging as Jasper Johns' Numbers (or even Anthony White's Money Series being sold on ebay), the concept is interesting for its variation on later postmodern frontal assaults on the notion of originality. The generic, ubiquity of the simple images taunt the viewer, while the series of blue numbers on white canvases try to persuade you to accept them as uniquely individual.

The sales started off slow, but with increased Internet exposure (um, through blogs like this one) the demand for the gimmicky art has created a popular buzz that seems to be outweighing all other considerations. Asked, "What's special about these paintings?” the artist replied:

One number, one painting - the number is the art is the limit is the price. Each of the one thousand paintings is unique, showing a number between 1 and 1000. This is an experiment of art and mathematics, on the web, the first of its kind.