a multi-disciplinary dialog
Keystoning or the distortion of vertical lines was a concern last year when I photographed paintings. On dpreview.com, I learned that to avoid keystoning one should hold the camera on a parallel plane to a painting and then shoot at the longest zoom setting. more… »
Sure the title is a pun I couldn’t resist, but it’s also the lead-in to a serious question about art and perception. It arose in the context of a photography trip to Utah last April, which began in Arches National Park. A few weeks ago, in Bones of the Earth, I made my first post about the project with that tentative title, which comes from the impression that the exposed rocks represent structures normally below the skin of the Earth.
The rock formations in Arches and elsewhere are of many shapes. Among them are ones that can’t help but bring the word phallic to mind. The first picture I took that first morning (first image below) already fit into that category. That’s not why I made the photograph — at least not consciously — but it’s something that occurred to me at roughly the same moment I decided to set up the camera. And although the rock can certainly stand on its own as subject, it’s possible that the subliminal association helped draw my attention to it.
In a small art group that Jer and I belong to, we were given a challenge: for the next meeting, we were each to create some form of art based on “biscuits.” That meeting will be next week. I have to make some art. Using “biscuits” I came up with an anagram: “is Cubist.” I will make a Cubist-style painting, containing biscuits.
I thought the exercise would be simple. I would look at some Cubist works, get a couple books from the library and raid my bookshelves to see what others had to say, decide on motifs beyond the biscuits, and do a few sketches. Then, I would be ready to paint. more… »
Last week I postulated that Art Deco as an art movement speaks a distinctly queer language. This week The New York Times asks how openly and assertively gay artists reflect the emergence of gay culture into the mainstream. It’s a fascinating article that speaks very much to the issue of how art both reflects and influences cultural change. While words are one thing, the work itself goes a lot further in answering the questions. What is gay art? What is it reflecting? How is it reflecting and changing gay culture and the culture at large? Rather than talk about the work of the artists discussed in today’s Times, I attempted to visually represent the leading edge of this supposed new school of art. As a gay man I am of course fascinated by this work and its collective messages, but I’m more curious to know what straight men and women think. However, while I look forward to your opinions I would also postulate that even those of you who are “straight” are, as artists, absolutely queer as well, regardless of who you bed so I’m not really sure you can provide a “straight” perspective…nonetheless…
EXODUS 20:2-14: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
I’m fascinated by the relationship between secular and religious iconography. In particular, I have an intensely passionate emotional and intellectual relationship with one of the world’s most compelling and famous secular icons: the Empire State Building and it is through that passion that I’ve come to understand something more about religious iconography.
When it comes to religious iconography I am seriously handicapped as an agnostic, a cynic and as a Jew. This subject is particularly challenging for a Jew, secular or otherwise. Even a secular Jew grows up “understanding” that iconography is simple-minded at best, blasphemous at worst. The truth is found within our hearts and minds and to seek the truth through images is false, intellectually lazy and in opposition to the absolute word of God.
But my life long relationship with the Empire State Building has defied my Jewish perspective and seditiously lured me into the world of image worship. (Just one of the commandments I routinely break.) more… »
Why do artists create them? Why are viewers interested in them? Is it exhibitionism on one side and voyeurism on the other? For reasons I can’t clearly explain I’ve never been comfortable with self portraits by any artist. So that’s what you look like or want me to see about you? Fine. Thanks. Now go away. I would love to hear from others how they feel about self portraits, their own and those by other artists, any other artist. At the risk of revealing too much about myself and just how fucked up I am, I’m simply going to express–in a kind of stream of conciousness way–how my own self portraits make me feel. Uncomfortable (obviously). Silly. Naked. Exposed. Self-indulgent. Egotistical. Awkward. Embarrassed. Validated (like a parking ticket). On the record. That’s all I have to say on this subject. Short, sweet and revealing.
