ART REFERENCES

"...I’ve got these desperate feelings that nothing means anything"

2023-11-01T23:27:00.001-07:00

Andy Warhol & Jean-Michel Basquiat (1928-1987 & 1960-1988)
Paramount Pictures
signed and dedicated 'to Jon Jean-Michel Basquiat' (on the overlap)
synthetic polymer, silkscreen inks and paint tube collage on canvas
48 x 48 in. (121.9 x 121.9 cm.)
Executed circa 1985.

"For an artist, the most important and most delicate relationship he can have with another artist is one in which he is constantly challenged and intimidated... Jean-Michel and Andy had achieved a healthy balance." (K. Haring, 'Painting the Third Mind', Collaborations: Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, exh. cat., Mayor Rowan Gallery, London, 1988).

"...I’ve got these desperate feelings that nothing means anything. And then I decide that I should try to fall in love, and that’s what I’m doing now with Jon Gould, but then it’s just too hard. I mean, you think about a person constantly and it’s just a fantasy, it’s not real, and then it gets so involved, you have to see them all the time and then it winds up that it’s just a job like everything else, so I don’t know. But Jon is a good person to be in love with because he has his own career, and I can develop movie ideas with him, you know? And maybe he can even convince Paramount to advertise in Interview, too. Right? So my crush on him will be good for business." (Andy Warhol, Thursday, April 16, 1981).

The result of an innovative collaboration between two of the most culturally significant artists of the 20th century, Paramount Pictures blends together the distinctive styles of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, together with the heady atmosphere of 1980s New York. Painted in 1985, this work dissolves the boundaries between mass media and street art, merging the two distinct artistic identities together on one canvas. The heated expression of Basquiat’s gestural impulsivities contrasted with the cool commercialism of Warhol’s pop culture are described by a friend of both artists, Keith Haring, as being, “a physical conversation happening in paint instead of words. The sense of humor, the snide remarks, the profound realizations, the simple chit-chat all happened with paint and brushes… There was a sense that one was watching something being unveiled and discovered for the first time” (K. Haring, “Painting the Third Mind,” Collaborations: Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, exh. cat., Mayor Rowan Gallery, London, 1988).

Initially inspired by art dealer Bruno Bischofberger in 1983, the collaboration between Warhol and Basquiat was first part of an organized project which also included the Italian artist Franceso Clemente, however the relationship between the two Americans grew into a larger two- year artistic partnership. Paramount Pictures is an exciting amalgamation of Warhol and Basquiat’s visions; a base of three painted Paramount Pictures logos in various colors and sizes, visibly Warhol’s contribution, overlaid with Basquiat’s red, white, black, and yellow additions of text, figure, and gestural strokes, the painting is a palimpsest of ideas and styles. A red strip of Basquiat’s paint reaches both ends of the canvas, his iconic text and strikethrough of letters telling the viewer to “reevaluate,” however Basquiat’s messages are always layered, provoking the viewer to wonder his purpose and intention. In repeating the Paramount Pictures logo, Warhol borrows the household symbol to signify not only the company, but the filmmaking industry as well–perhaps in an effort to encourage the viewer to reevaluate what we see on the silver screen. Warhol’s Hollywood imagery evokes Ed Ruscha’s iconic appropriation of the 20th Century Fox logo (Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights, 1962. Whitney Museum of American Art), yet contrary to the LA artist, the New York sentiments of Warhol and Basquiat twist the Hollywood commentary to one of mundane cynicism.

The Paramount Pictures logo also has an important and specific connection to Jon Gould, who was gifted the painting by Andy Warhol and was the Vice President of Corporate Communications at Paramount Pictures. Andy Warhol and Jon Gould were together between the years of 1981 and 1985, during which time Jon lived with Andy in his stays in New York. According to Bob Colacello, Warhol spent a good deal of time and effort winning over Jon’s affection, and was desperate for his attention and love. Indeed, in Jon’s presence Warhol was vulnerable in a way that deviated from the distant and mechanical persona he typically employed in his life as well as his work. Due to their closeness, Jon was the recipient of many gifts from Warhol including the present Paramount Pictures.

This collaboration brought together two icons of the New York art world. Not only producing an innovative body of work, but also providing a platform on which mentor and protégé could create together. Basquiat represented the generation of artists to come after Warhol’s legacy and balanced his admiration for Warhol with an eagerness to challenge him as well, recollecting the experience: “[Warhol] would start most of the paintings. He’d start one, you know, put… something very concrete or recognizable like a newspaper headline or a product logo and I would sort of deface it and then when I would try to get him to work some more on it, you know, and then I would work more on it. I tried to get him to do at least two things. He likes to do just one hit, you know [laughs] and then have me do all the work after that… We used to paint over each other’s stuff all the time” (J.-M. Basquiat, quoted in B. Johnston and T. Davis, ‘I Have to Have Some Source Material Around Me: Interview 1985’, in D. Buckhart and S. Keller (eds.), Basquiat, exh. cat., Fondation Beyeler, Ostfildern, 2010, p. xxxi). Warhol matched Basquiat’s method of working by abandoning the silkscreen and painting only by hand, leveling the playing field in the match between these two painters, a notion realized in the 1985 promotional image for the Tony Shafrazi Gallery opening of the two artists, side-by-side, clad in boxing gloves.

Basquiat admired Warhol’s work and in turn, Warhol was captivated by Basquiat’s youthful energy, the two coming together as equals in their collaboration. The viewer’s eye moves from a recognizable image to an enigmatic one all within the same canvas. Not only does this pairing reveal the difference in the social and political concerns of both artists, but also shows how easily these themes intersect–deeply personal sentiments of Basquiat bleeding into the popular culture icons of Warhol, making the personal public and the public personal. In doing so, Warhol’s reflections on logos, products, and mass culture represent the artist just as Basquiat represents himself through expressive painting. Both introduce something uniquely their own in the styles that have made them icons.

Source - https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-andy-warhol-jean-michel-basquiat-1928-1987-6110370/?

'Paintings are always mortal enemies." Richter's abstract paintings strike a balance between the conceptual and the emotional.

2023-04-29T04:39:00.002-07:00

Watch a tour of Gerhard Richter's critically-acclaimed solo exhibition at this New York gallery, led by gallery founder David Zwirner and the celebrated curator and author Dieter Schwarz. The last abstract painting by Richter was in 2017. Learn more about the exhibition: https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibiti.. #davidzwirner #gerhardrichter #abstractart #painting

Christopher Wool & Richard Hell (2008)

2023-04-18T12:22:00.003-07:00

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/christopher-wool-richard-hell#slideshow_22.1

Richard Hell: We first got acquainted when Christopher called me up about using some words. This was 1997 or 1998. He wanted to ask my permission to use the words that I’d written on my chest on the cover of my Blank Generation album, as the text for a word painting.

On the original album cover I’m standing there holding my jacket open, and I don’t have a shirt on underneath. And in Magic Marker I have across my chest, in all caps: YOU MAKE ME ____.

GO: I used to sit with Jean-Michel Basquiat when he was painting, and he’d cover up a section of finished work with paint and I’d think, Oh, God, he’s ruining it.

THE ECSTATIC TRUTH

2015-02-11T07:16:00.000-08:00

Werner Herzog suggests a new reality which he calls 'the ecstatic truth'.

"Everything is pointing towards a re-definition of reality"...

The Internet
Virtual Realities
Pyramid Energy
Vitamin Eating
Surfing
Text Messaging
Special Effects in Cinema
Video Games
Reality TV
Smart Phones
Breast Implants
Photoshop
Television
Radio
Stretch Limousines

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64qu1mdl5R8

http://www.wernerherzog.com/52.html

2013-10-02T02:38:00.001-07:00

http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/art/universal-addressability-dumb-things

Mark Leckey curated this show which considers how the new digital paradigm of connectedness reflects beliefs from the medieval and ancient. Also worth noting is the video proposal.

2012-10-17T07:26:00.000-07:00

Claire Fontaine

Untitled (What a load of rubbish)

Frieze, it's like being in a washing-machine full of art.

Click link below for highlights from this year's fair

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.494241973933987.115637.100000445658569&type=1&l=eb2eebc942

MIKE NELSON - The Coral Reef

2012-04-25T06:24:00.000-07:00

First exhibited in Matt's Gallery in London's East End in 2000 'The Coral Reef' is Nelson's seminal installation work which establishes many of the concerns in his practice. Ten years later Tate Britain exhibited the rebuilt work which perhaps indicates how much of a difference there is between East and West London.
Nelson is more influenced by writers than by artists. Those central to his work are Jorge Luis Borges, HP Lovecraft, Joseph Conrad. He quotes the preface to Borges's A Universal History of Infamy: "I should define as baroque that style which deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) all its possibilities and which borders on its own parody." Most of us are familiar with the baroque as an architectural style. Nelson thinks about it, as defined by Borges, as a kind of fiction in which stories have other stories concealed within them, or in which - an effect Nelson loves - a preface turns out to be the story.

HIRST=POPE

2012-04-03T08:17:00.004-07:00

Is Damien Hirst the Pope of art? Are dots the new crosses? Are diamonds the new pills? Yes, yes and yes.

Hirst is a child of Warhol certainly, but more a product of Post-Punk England. Somebody who understood Malcolm McLaren's admonishment that;

"Authenticity has been replaced by karaoke"

He just took it to it's logical conclusion in a market on fire, an astute player all the way to the museum retrospective in Tate Modern, which sells him to the mass audience of the London Olympics. This is art taken to the n'th degree of banality and nihilism and they can't get enough of it.

If you don't feel a bit sick then your not getting the point, as Johnny Rotten said;

"Ha Ha, ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

Tate Modern presents the first major Damien Hirst exhibition in the UK. Until 9 September 2012

GILBERT & GEORGE

2012-03-13T04:17:00.011-07:00

GILBERT & GEORGE - LONDON PICTURES

Great art is timeless and a good example of this is the latest offering from Gilbert and George, the dynamic duo of London's East End.

For six years G&G collected (by stealing) newspaper headline posters from local newsagents and this collection of 3700 posters forms the basis of this new series of works which have been installed in all three of the White Cube galleries in Bermondsey, Piccadilly and Hoxton.

Grouped together using recurring words in the headlines such as 'Yobs', or 'Death Plunge' the works make grim reading but the artists make the point that the Dickensian backdrop of London is alive and well in contemporary life where every day makes an unbelievable story, and even though the headline may be sensational it is inexorably linked to an inescapable reality.

This overwhelming banality is what G&G deal with, and the inflection point is where their performative selves look out from behind the text to challenge, cajole and provoke the viewer with a sneer, a grimace or benign gaze.

G&G are quintessential 'cheeky chappies'. They first become recognized on the London art scene when Charles Harrison was curating a survey exhibition at the ICA in 1969 entitled 'When Attitude becomes Form'. G&G were not selected, but undaunted they attended the private view dressed in full 'human sculpture' make-up, and stole the show. Gallerist Conrad Fisher was there and invited them to Dusseldorf for a show, they never looked back.

Now they are household names, and Gilbert obviously takes satisfaction from telling the story of the passing truck-driver who sticks his head out of the the window to shout across the street;

'Oi! My life's a fucking moment, your life's an eternity!'

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Click here for more exhibition photos on my Facebook

Gilbert and George - London Pictures is at all three White Cubes until 12th May 2012.

THE RELATIONAL AND THE PERSONAL

2012-02-26T08:44:00.001-08:00

Deller and Shrigley at The Hayward, an interesting contrast of practices - Deller is all about the 'relational aesthetic' while Shrigley is all about the personal. Until 13 May, 2012.

http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/hayward-gallery-visual-arts

Frieze Art Fair 2011

2012-01-31T08:52:00.000-08:00

Much less frenzied at the 2011 Frieze Fair but still lots to see.

Click this link for an album on my Facebook

HENRY THE MODERNIST Versus ACHILL THE POST-MODERN

2011-07-12T11:02:00.001-07:00

Paul Henry is shorthand for a romantic vision of Ireland which he developed during his stay on Achill Island from 1910 to 1920. The lakeside cottages and billowing clouds are ideally rendered with a modern treatment and perhaps his legacy is a lasting example of how The West of Ireland is located within a critical dynamic which involves modernism, tradition and the post-modern world we inhabit today. The past comes in neatly-bound packages of cultural history, while the present appears messy and contradictory, deconstructing the myth is a continuous process and the difficulty is in forming a conclusion - hence today's 'ambiguous narrative'. Because Achill is a self-contained unit of context (an island) perhaps this makes it most suitable as a place which can be described as continuously living within these liquid cultural dynamics while still retaining it's unique identity.

So why did Henry choose Achill? Obviously the island has a rugged beauty, and easy access was permitted by the railway line which transported passengers directly from Dublin to the last stop of Achill Sound, which was opened in 1894. Henry was delivered to the island after it became part of the transport grid which ended it's distinct isolation - in a final twist the railway link was closed again in 1937 as the road network became more viable. Curiously, this coincided with Henry's work becoming the state-sanctioned aesthetic of the newly-formed Free-State Republic and The Irish Tourist Board began publishing posters advertising holidays in Ireland which featured Henry's paintings. The unique, the isolated and the mythic was now available for mass-market consumerism and by default Paul Henry tumbled into the post-modern era as his work became part of the spectacle of tourism.

What survives this relentless process of cultural manufacture is the site of Achill Island itself, the bucolic myth continues and now it comes complete with surfers, caravan parks and cappucchinos. The billowing clouds still do their work but the lakeside cottages have been traded up for an estate of empty holiday-homes which is probably very fitting as the cottages of Henry's imagination match this era's dream of a debt fueled boom turned bust.

Fintan Friel is the author of this text which was a result of his residency at The Heinrich Boll Cottage in Achill, Co.Mayo. Ireland.
Thanks to Heinrich Boll Residency Association for supporting my research.

Click below for a series of landscape photography by Fintan Friel
http://www.anyminutenow.com/wp/gallery/landscapes/

TAKASHI MURAKAMI (Kawaii in Versailles)

2011-02-04T10:40:00.000-08:00

Here comes Murakami, all the way from Tokyo to Versailles, a perfect Twenty First Century addition to the Baroque opulence of the Palace which was built in 1682. Traditionally Eastern (Chinese) porcelain was highly prized and collected in Europe and so this is just an updated version of the 'ancient industry of beauty'. Cuteness seems to be the latest installment in the story, and 'Kawaii' (literally, adorable, precious, lovable, or innocent) is everywhere in Japanese popular culture. This is an ultimate context for these works which become activated by the surrounding architecture of historical power, the Kawaii reference becomes transformed into something much less innocent or adorable, usually that ambiguity remains veiled in Murakami's work but here it's quite obvious that the latest cute thing can easily be the latest horror, depending on your point of view.

Takashi Murakami at The Palace of Versailles, France. (2010).

FRIEZE ART FAIR

2010-10-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

Napoleon said that 'The English are a nation of shopkeepers' but a visit to the Frieze Art Fair in London's Regent Park may convince you that contemporary England is full of Art consumers who populate the fair enthusiastically looking, considering and sometimes even buying. This kind of Ultra-Consumption is nothing new on the trail of fairs and biennales but there is something very local about a big fair in a big tent in the park.

LOTHAR HEMPEL

2010-10-05T04:57:00.001-07:00

Sometimes the entry-point to understanding an artist's work can be a simple phrase, and for me it was a description of Hempel's sculptures as 'suggestions of TV chat-show sets'

The artist says his work ‘doesn’t have a beginning or an end’ and describes his creations as ‘situations that have a dreamlike quality’ but there is also a gritty reality in the work which uses found imagery from advertising and media sources. Hempel previously worked as a DJ and it's easy to see this sensibility playing through his work which (seemingly casually) samples and re-edits material to suggest an ambiguous narrative.

There is ambiguity in the work but also specific references from wide range of disciplines and media, such as psychology, geology, cinema, and music (e.g. the dancer Pina Bausch) and I guess that Hempel's success in these works is making us care, establishing an emotional centre in the work which generates a human interest. Unlike most collaged/assembled art, I'm interested enough to find out more about these shiny creations because the artist has swept me (visually) off my feet and grabbed my attention. The quiet intrigue lies in the meta-cultural narrative which bubbles under the slick surface of these suspended moments of sculpture and photography, the theatrical suspense perhaps of a quiet director working from behind the scenes.

ANDY WARHOL

2010-08-29T10:38:00.000-07:00

The Andy Warhol room in Tate Modern is an example of a total art-work which uses the developed vocabulary of the artist to communicate an index of concerns.

It's visually stunning enough to overwhelm the viewer and in the film (at 1.01) an audience member actually comments;

'This is mental'

----------------

Some Andy Warhol self-portraits at Ronald Feldman Gallery

http://www.artreview.com/video/warhols-andys-at-ronald

The Andy Warhol Foundation

http://www.warholfoundation.org

FIONA BANNER

2010-08-04T08:49:00.001-07:00

Two jets hanging around in a gallery, just another day in the art-world. Seeing this work and being physically in the same space as these two fearsome war machines is a visceral experience. The futuristic technology on display is from 1979, the year when both Margaret Thatcher and The Ayatollah Khomeni came to power, and these two gigantic readymades seem to absorb and reflect the architecture which contains them at The Tate Britain Museum. (Until Jan.3 2011)

Photos by Fintan Friel

WOLFGANG TILLMANS

2010-08-04T08:28:00.000-07:00

If Thomas Struth visited The Wolfgang Tillmans show at The Serpentine Gallery maybe he would have taken a photo like this, if you want to see what happens when a photographer gets his hands on all the art-toys take a look at this show.

(Photo by Fintan Friel)

Exhibition runs until Aug.29

OLIVER PIETSCH

2010-07-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

Oliver Pietsch from Fintan Friel on Vimeo.

This video work is a treat, re-assembling dream sequences from a variety of movies Oliver Pietsch shows the beauty and the horror as the dream becomes a nightmare before the dreamer awakes, if you liked 'Inception' you will love this. Debord's spectacle has become a plaything but Pietsch flirts deliciously with Hollywood kitsch in this work which is part of a group show at Nettie Horn.

Video excerpt courtesy of Nettie Horn.

ALBERT OEHLEN

2010-07-15T05:46:00.000-07:00

Why does Germany produce these big meaty painters that just paint and paint and paint? It's hard to imagine an Italian or French man churning out works like these, an English artist would be more concerned with being ironic and the Irish take on things is far too retro and scholarly to produce a practice that's equally fluid, ponderous and energetic. Maybe it's all that beer and meat.

BARRY McGEE

2010-06-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

Barry McGee's work is a great example of a practice which just spins out new images from a seemingly endless oeuvre, but what I really like is the fact that he takes something and just runs with it. Central motifs are linked to graffiti, skater and hobo sub-cultures which have a history in the USA, the work reflects these 'genres' but in the act of encompassing these, McGee surpasses and transforms this raw (cultural) material into something else.

So what. So what has been made? Perhaps it's an entry point into these sub-cultures which most folks remain oblivious of, maybe that's a suggestion in the later Trompe l'Oeil works which remind me of painted faux brick-work on the corner of houses in The West of Ireland which is a folk-aesthetic fading away. These colourful pieces energize the work with more than a nod to the minimalism of the white cube, off the street where McGee's references exist in the everyday.

ISA GENZKEN

2010-06-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's a German thing, maybe it's just something that happens when an artist has been practising for years, but these works by Isa Genzken from 2000 and later have a kind of rare tension between losing it and revealing it - between getting the picture right and simply making a mess - between nonsense and a kind of beautiful mix reflecting the swirl of media we live in everyday.

'Media' is a shorthand, so is 'architecture', so is 'ambiguous' and this type of description is often used to situate her work but there is also a great deal of visual pleasure which operates in the realm of Punk, kitsch and trash, a kind of Vaudevillian TV knee-jerk humour which owes something to Brecht and the Three-Penny Opera and Coney Island on a sunday, when New York has faded away for the afternoon.

SIGMAR POLKE (1940 - 2010)

2010-06-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

'The Watchtower' (1984) for me is a seminal work from Polke which uses the image of a watchtower as a loaded metaphor on a background of ready-made pattern as a postmodern signifier. Famously eclectic and undefined he is perhaps a father of the Christopher Wool aesthetic of tounge-in-cheek abstraction.

CHRISTOPHER WOOL

2010-06-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

Christopher Wool's new show at Gagosian in Rome (June, 2010) reminds me of the time I brought a friend to see one of his shows, her comment was;

"Well this just looks like Noddy went to art-school."

It's a kind of ultra-abstraction, full of pleasing texture - a very seductive surface which can suggest anything really but what does it actually do? What would Noddy paint? And would he let you in on the joke?

Bruce W. Ferguson has written, "Wool accepts that he is and that his paintings are, at any moment, within what Richard Prince calls 'wild history', subject to the intertextual meeting of various discourses."

Besides the affinity that Ferguson describes with Prince, Wool has also shared his interest in aspects of mass culture (film, television, music) with other close colleagues of his generation, including Robert Gober, Cady Noland, Philip Taaffe, Albert Qehlen, Martin Kippenberger, Mike Kelley, and Stephen Prina. Wool was particularly affected by the attitude of the painters of his generation in Germany - especially Oehlen and Kippenberger - whose work, as Friedrich Petzel has written, "hailed the productivity of failure, claiming that the discrediting of painting's effective capacity has opened yet another discursive field."

The ambiguous narrative allows the artist a unique lateral reign on the cultural plateau where everything has equal value, all the way from The Ayatollah Khomeni to Paris Hilton and I think this is the joke that Noddy (Wool) is making with these works.