Brassaï (b. 1899, d. 1944)
        from the top: Untitled [Futurist hair creation by Antoine], 1930; Culotte et bas, c. 1950;
        The Wall of Sante Prison, Boulevard Arago, Paris, c. 1932

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     Making up for my absence yesterday with a tripledose. Oh mama but consistency’s a bitch. So anyway: Brassaï. Blessed be but I could post his work from now ’til kingdom come (I couldn’t get enough of Paris by Night, staring at those shadowy Parisian alleys and wet moonglowy cobblestones — do you know it? Isn’t it beautiful?). ————–> So, the pieces at hand. Don’t you love the brassy lustre of the hair in the topmost shot? Something about the clump of murky shadow beneath it completes the composition, maybe by virtue of its counterpoise to the brilliant stuff above it. ————> The prison wall shot (first from the bottom) is simple in its perspective and composition but man how perfect is it? The wet shadows thrown against the wall, the dense clumps of naked branches all along its top. The misty glow at the end of the tunnel. ————> And the middle shot, rapturous. The contrast of her skin against the shot’s darks. Her legs bent just so, kicked out as if the rug were a raft and the floor a black river, languid trailing of her to in the cool water. All kinds of stories could emerge from these three.
 
 
 

For more, check out this great roundup of Brassaï’s photography at Vintage Vivant.

       Robert Adams (b. 1937)
       Longmont, Colorado, 1980

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     Sometimes you just need to let a piece stand sans text & just be. This is one of the times. Goodnight.
 
 
 
 

More of Adams’ staggering night work discussed over at ciips2010.blogspot.com.

       Helen Pynor
       Liquid Ground 1 (and detail from same), C-type photographic print face-mounted on glass, 2010

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     These are beautiful. Everything is gentle billow and float for these river brides. Viscera don’t even suggest violence to me. They trail & hover like the pale vulnerable little crab might if it felt safe enough to crawl from its shell armor. Serene in their presence as if they were taking river rinse. Or leisurely unfurling out from the fabric to take the pulse of the current, survey surroundings, act as periscope for the shy ghost of the drowned.
 
 
 
 
 
 

More of Pynor’s work over at her site.

       Paul McCarthy (b. 1945) & Mike Kelley (b. 1954)
       stills from Heidi: Midlife Crisis Trauma Center and Negative Media-Engram Abreaction Release Zone, 1992, video and installation (second image from top courtesy of Hauser & Wirth gallery)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     I know, I know, it’s been awhile — I should prolly rechristen to “Art of the Month” at this rate. Or “Art of the Indeterminate Multi-Weekly Interval”. And with that mega-syllabic title, I launch into another, that of today’s Art of the Day: “Heidi: Midlife Crisis Trauma Center and Negative Media-Engram Abreaction Release Zone” (1992) by Paul McCarthy & Mike Kelley.
     I saw five or ten minutes of “Heidi” in an NYC gallery years ago, I don’t remember which, might’ve been MOMA. I remember strolling about and suddenly finding my peripheral vision arrested by some kind of onscreen frenzy that disturbed me before I understood why, before I’d focused my full attention on it. I approached it and stood watching, embarrassed, compelled, fascinated, repulsed. If I remember correctly there was a man and a woman, both were manipulating some kind of mannequin torso, struggling to push what appeared to be sausages down its cavity & which exited the doll’s anus in some kind of basin of liquid. The adult figures went about their activity with haste & focus and urgency, splashing and slipping and wrangling with the doll in this weird pointless (and simultaneously deadly important) ritual of forcefeeding that sort of resembled midwifery or operating room surgery in its energy and concentrated involvement with the body. It was a weird tangle of fluid and skin and wet that suggested birth, death, defecation, abuse, parental care, discipline, emergency room, horror movie, the list goes on. It was just so stacked with meanings, so many of them charged and taboo.
     But it wasn’t just that richness of disturbing referent that compelled me to watch. It was the camera framing, the man’s monotone voiceover (disconnected from the immediate action), the direction, the focus of the piece that all helped it transcend mere grody viscera thrown in your face. A vision and a narrative structured all the onscreen juice & frenzy, even if I didn’t get to stand there long enough to see it all play out (eventually embarrassment got the better of me and I walked away). The memory of watching that video snippet remained with me for years whenever I’d see some video artist attempt to mine similar body-shock territory (rarely with anything close to the focused & thoughtful transgression I saw in that brief bit of “Heidi”).
     Fast forward about ten years to just the other day, when I was reminded of “Heidi” again, and decided finally to do some net-hunting for the artist(s) and title (I’d forgotten both years ago). After several wild weird online goose chases involving lots of amusing & pornographic Google results, I finally realized McCarthy & Kelly were the artists and “Heidi” the piece. I was thrilled. If anyone out there’s ever had an art object — be it book, poem, film or sculpture or whatever — whose title and creator you’ve forgotten gnaw away at your mind you’ll know the thrill I mean. You get this little pop of relief and excitement — because up until that moment the entire experience had begun to seem to me like some kind of incorrect dream from a decade ago, some amalgam of other artists, other videos, some bizarre sticky psychological stew I’d whipped up that had no reality-referent.
     At any rate, I didn’t find the full video, but I did manage to scrounge up some stills that (unfortunately) only hint at the sheer primal birth/sex/death/family/shit/pain/horror power this piece communicated. And I learned more about the artwork itself — it stems from co-creator McCarthy’s interest in Joanna Spyri’s 19th century novel “Heidi” (the chronicle of a young girl’s travels and experiences & Switzerland’s most well-known literary achievement) and, in his words, “consisted of a fabricated set, a group of partial and full life-size rubber figures, two large backdrop paintings, and a video tape shot entirely on the set.” (from eai.org). Enjoy & see the full-length version if you can/want. Oh & in the more-info links section below is a link to a small clip of the video I found on Vimeo — be warned, it’s pretty graphic.
 
 
 
 

A short clip from “Heidi” (warning: graphic) at vimeo.com.

More about McCarthy & Kelley’s “Heidi” at arttorrents.blogspot.

More Kelley at pbs.org.

More McCarthy at Hauser & Wirth.

       Artist(s)/ Artisan(s) unknown
       Two views of a pair of Louis XV rococo ormolu chenets, ca. 1740s

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     Ormolu was a painstaking process whereby finely-ground high-karat gold was applied, using mercury and kiln-firing, to a bronze object d’art. The effect achieved is said to have been unequalled in terms of lustre & richness of color (and based on the examples I’ve offered here, I can see why). But the process was also pretty heavy on the mercury fumes, so gilders didn’t live very long, and in 1830 mercury was banned from this kind of gilding process. When I look at these two pictures I think of the gilder (or gilders) who helped create them and works like them: probably forgotten, brainpans swimming with quicksilver and dead early, unwitting sacrifices to… what? Rococo? The refined tastes of royalty? A R T ? Look at these andirons, licking up into the void like the flaming logs they were designed to support, beautiful, serpentine, alien — who made them & what kind of lives did they lead? I wish the love and praise lavished on these objects could somehow add to the souls of those whose lives were cut short crafting them. That they could somehow witness what’s come of their efforts in whatever incarnation their souls inhabit, bear witness to how their poisoning wasn’t in vain.
 
 
 
 
 
 

For more related info, check out this great post about 18th and 19th century gold leafing, ormolu, & other related decorative methods over at Decor To Adore.

       Robert Frank (b. 1924)
        From the top: London, 1952-53; Elevator—Miami Beach, 1955

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     ”London” belongs in that special class of photograph that is not only strikingly composed but is also able to generate a powerful & complexly emotional narrative interest. Why is the woman running in the rain? Is it even raining or just damp and dewy out? Did she jump from the back of the car to rush to some appointment? Late for work? Look at the way the car’s backdoor window frames, like a camera, the person across the street. Look at the long beam of flagstone sheen flanked by dark bricks and the black of the car. Look at the haze settling over everything like a blanket. I see this and feel so many things at once… fear, thrill, gloom, curiosity, a sense of delight and discovery, wonder.
     Love the Miami shot as well, the way the camera finds her and her eyeroll while socialites pass out into the rotty flowered hall. Does she envy them? Or does she it all clearly as sham? Is she resentful, jealous, or just bored? Elevator operator or hanger-on lagging behind? And does she know she’s being snapped? We share her viewpoint no matter what, we become her, unite with her as she stands still, out of step with everyone but following them all closely with her eyes.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Great article on Frank, including more of his work, over at Transmopolis.com.

   S. Brown, “Somebody Order a Pie?”
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     Just a sad, partially-animated face-fusion hungry to understand the answer to one of life’s great questions.
 
 
 
 

More of Brown’s work here.