“Any art worthy of it’s name should address ‘life’, ‘man’, nature, death, tragedy.”
“I hope my painting has the impact of giving someone, as it did me, the feeling of his own totality, of his own separateness, of his own individuality.”
(Barnett Newman (1905-1970)
Brontosaurus.
Video. Sam Taylor Johnson (née Wood)
“Naked and alone in his bedroom, the dancer is performing an activity which usually takes place in a public space and which mixes acting with self-expression. By projecting the dance in slow-motion, Taylor-Wood has broken it down into a series of poses. The dancer appears to be lost in his own private ritual and oblivious to the camera's eye, and thus becomes an object of voyeurism, exposed in a state of extreme vulnerability. The chasm separating him from the viewer is extended by the poignancy of Barber's Adagio of 1936, which was used by the directors Oliver Stone in Platoon 1986 and David Lynch in Elephant Man 1980, two films which address male heroism and deformity. Moving between almost neo-classical heroic elegance and beauty, awkwardness, pathos and sheer ridiculousness, Brontosaurus covers a range of contradictory but co-existing human states and feelings. The archeological or primal nature of these is suggested by the title, which is the name of a dinosaur. This is comically referred to by a pink stuffed version visible in a corner of the room".”.
(Taylor-Wood quoted in Celant, p.192)
Click on on link below to read more.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/taylor-johnson-brontosaurus-t07545
Transfiguration
(Raphael. 1483-1520)
Ascension
Video. Bill Viola (1951-)
Like the protagonist of Ascension (2000), who suddenly plunges into the water from above as if involved in a choreographed baptism, in this retrospective the spectator was given the chance to drown into a spiritual element. As Viola says, ‘the artist must immerse himself in a world so intimate and private, with the aim to create something that may be shared with many and different people’.
In this video from Tate (gallery) shots Bill Viola discusses his work.
Setting sun over lake
JMW Turner (1775-1851)
Magnitude
Video. Robert Seidel
Magnitude, a new series of “laser choreography” work by Berlin-based artist Seidel. His exhibition is a sequence of time-based laser drawings developed alongside the mountain terrain of the San Andreas Fault spanning from the Coachella Valley to the edge of the Imperial Valley’s Salton Sea.
grapheme
Robert seidel.
Sculpture & projection: robert seidel / sound: heiko tippelt
permanent installation at Museum Wiesbaden, Germany 2013
Blind Eye
Digital work. Jennifer Steinkamp
Blind Eye, The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts June 29 - October 8, 2018.
Blind Eye was conceived to interact with the Clark's 140-acre setting and the architecture of the Lunder Center at Stone Hill designed by the architect Tadao Ando. The art engages with one of the oldest themes in art history nature and landscape. Blind Eye depicts the seasonal phases of a birch grove. The composition is a play on monocular perspective, with no forest floor or way out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzBnRdm6oxQ
Winter Fountains
Digital work. Jennifer Steinkamp
Winter Fountains will run Nov. 30 through March 18 along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The domes are part of Parkway 100, a celebration of the historic road’s centennial.
From sunset to midnight, any passerby can see Steinkamp’s colorful pieces. The installation features four domes that are each 13 feet tall and 26 feet wide that glow with Steinkamp’s animations.
Each of the eight animations will be projected onto the domes in distinct colors. The images are representative of Benjamin Franklin’s research, as some animate the formation of electricity in clouds. The animations show dust particles colliding to create lightning or to spark static electricity; others illustrate water combusting into gas and steam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFa-6951KYM
Still Life with Lobster, Fruit and a Nautilus Shell
Ottmar Elliger the Elder. (1663-1679)
Still Life (2001)
Sam Taylor-Johnson (Born 1967)
“In this piece Taylor-Johnson (formerly Taylor-Wood) references vanitas, a type of still-life prominent in 16th- and 17th-century Northern European painting. Artists working in this style paired symbols of death and decay with fruits and flowers, a haunting reminder of the fleeting nature of life on earth and the decadence of worldly pleasures. In Taylor-Johnson’s time-based work, a tray of beautiful fruit decomposes until nothing is left but a formless grey mass. The cheap plastic pen on the table, however, remains unchanged, quietly raising the environmental question of what will be left behind after we are gone.” (https://collections.mfa.org/objects/518595)
Here are stills from the original video showing the decomposition of the fruit.
