Komar and Melamid make art by surveying sample groups, an idea that blurs the lines between collaboration and artistic control. Their artists’ statement nearly demolishes the notion of “people’s art”:

In an age where opinion polls and market research invade almost every aspect of our “democratic/consumer” society (with the notable exception of art), Komar and Melamid’s project poses relevant questions that an art-interested public, and society in general often fail to ask: What would art look like if it were to please the greatest number of people? Or conversely: What kind of culture is produced by a society that lives and governs itself by opinion polls?

Born, raised, and educated in the former Soviet Union, where government was intended to be designed in the “people’s” interest, yet where people were never asked their opinion, Komar and Melamid, ironically, offered the Russian people an opportunity to exercise their taste. Their project took on even greater significance as capitalism—armed with its market-research consumerism and opinion-poll politics—begins to spread unimpeded throughout the former Soviet Union and the rest of the world.

When they took their concept to Americans, they expected a larger diversity of musical tastes. They were instead surprised with the uniformity of the survey results, which is probably why the “popular” song sounds so familiarly banal.

As an artistic concept,  People’s Choice Music is an amazing experiment in quantifying the unquantifiable, and how one-size-fits-all is bound to be one-size-fits-none when it comes to art. Of course, as music, it’s damn near unlistenable (though the “worst” song is clearly superior).
 

 
Parlour Games is a series of stunning pen drawings by artist Sig Waller.

‘The drawings are based on some sixteenth century engravings called Theatrum Crudelitatum (Theater of Cruelty),’ Waller tells Dangerous Minds.

‘I’ve appropriated some of the imagery and drawn directly onto antimacassars and napkins. These cloths are generally used to wipe away and protect from grease and dirt and in this sense the series is about denial (personal or societal). Our capacity for cruelty and suffering is timeless, as is our ability to look away.

Waller studied Fine Art & Art History at London’s Goldsmiths College, before moving to Berlin, where she started her career as an artist under the alias Sig Waller’s paintings explore “the dark borders of our culture of excess, drawing attention to human destructiveness, human frailty and the delicate balance of life on Earth.”

Now based in Berlin and Brighton, Sig is planning her next artistic collaboration with her dead grandmother (using some of her sewing) and writing a book The Day the Women Stopped Listening.

See more of Parlour Games and Sig Waller’s brilliant work here.
 

 

 
More of Sig’s superb ‘Parlour Games’, after the jump…
 

 
An incredible life-like silicone bust of Sigourney Weaver as “Ellen Ripley” in the Alien series by Steve Scotts.

Talk about labor of love! BTW, this wasn’t a prop for the film, just someone with an amazing talent paying homage to Alien!

Check out more photos and works by Scotts over at his Facebook page.
 

 

 
More photos after the jump…
 

 
Illustrator artist Tim Anderson came up with this neat concept of Pee-wee Herman’s most valuable possession—his bicycle—as an ad for the Planet Pulp online exhibit, The Tim Burton Show.

Click here to see a larger image.

Via Laughing Squid

Busted in Milwaukee
 
George Carlin, now more than ever!

Carlin speaking before the National Press Club on May 19, 1999 is a reminder that in 13 years little to nothing has changed in America’s political and cultural landscape. If anything, it’s gotten worse.

What a brilliant human being.
 

 
The “Venus of Cupertino” by London-based designers Venus Design Studio is “a sculptural docking station inspired by the curvaceous forms and symbolism of ancient Venus figurines—she is a fertility goddess for the technology age.”

You can pre-order one now for $199.00 at their website.
 

 

 
Via The World’s Best Ever

Artist’s rendering of the finished piece

The BBC reports that British light installation artist Bruce Munro is attempting perhaps the largest piece of breast cancer iconography ever created. His project, Beacon on the Hill, will be a “breast-shaped illumination,” 5m (16ft) by 3m (10ft), built on the dome of Long Knoll in Kilmington, in southern England.  It will be made up of 2,730 illuminated plastic bottles and is intended as a tribute to breast cancer awareness.

While the idea of a giant glowing tit is kind of awesome, I’m skeptical of projects that tout “awareness” about breast cancer. Since this is in England, a developed nation with socialized health care, everyone who sees this is probably already “aware” of breast cancer. The cancer non-profit Munro is working with, Cancerkin, is focused on emotional support for patients and their families, but I’m not sure that a giant, disembodied shimmering boob would make any of the women I know feel much better about their chemo, mastectomies, or possibly impending deaths.

There is so much low-hanging (forgive the pun) aesthetic potential when it comes to breast cancer. Bumper stickers and t-shirts can cutely and benignly proclaim to “save the ta-tas,”  and avoid conjuring images of sick and dying women (and men, who also get breast cancer).

This sort of boobs-not-women approach to breast cancer has been analyzed over and over, particularly by the patients themselves. When noted socialist feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer, she wrote in her book,
Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America:

“Something about the conjuncture of “breast,” signifying sexuality and nurturance, and that other word, suggesting the claws of a devouring crustacean, spooked almost everyone. Today however, it’s the biggest disease on the cultural map, bigger than AIDS, cystic fibrosis, or spinal injury, bigger even than those more prolific killers of women - heart disease, lung cancer, and stroke.”

But glowing arterial plaque, blackened lungs, or damaged brain tissue doesn’t look quite as pretty, does it? Munro seems more artist than activist, and that’s fine. His other work looks interesting, creating landscapes of luminescence that appear to have a lovely, strange, ethereal effect. When it comes to art that discusses disease though, I think “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) does a much better job of creating an emotional dialogue with the audience.

People like boobs, obviously—hey, boobs are great! But when we’re talking about a disease where your breasts can actually kill you, is it really particularly artistically insightful or helpful to disembody them, both literally and figuratively? Can’t we just let a giant glowing tit be a giant glowing tit?

 
The poet Thom Gunn reads 2 of his poems, “Jamesian” about “the connection or lack of connection between people,” and “Home”, which was inspired by the chilling response to a question Gunn once asked.

As an admirer of Gunn’s poetry, it is wonderful to hear his voice and the audience’s response to his reading.

More audio of Thom Gunn (1929-2004) reading his poetry can be found here.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Thom Gunn: On the Move

 
The artist, writer and dandy Sebastian Horsley claimed he was an accident, the product of a split condom. His mother drank through her pregnancy, and tried to abort the unwanted child. She failed and Sebastian was born in 1962. This might explain Horsley’s difficult relationships with women in later life, preferring to use prostitutes rather than share any emotional intimacy with another.

Horsley was originally called Marcus, which he may have preferred as it was closer to his idol Marc Bolan. But after registering his name as a baby, Horsley’s mother knew she had made a mistake, and opted instead for Sebastian. It only took her 5 years to change it by deed poll.

The name Sebastian suited Horsely. It suggested the Christian martyr Saint Sebastian, who was tied to a tree and shot full of arrows for his faith. In the same way Horsely was nailed to a cross in the Philippines for his art. Or, Sebastian Flyte - Evelyn Waugh’s character from Bridehead Revisited, whose beauty and desire were numbed by addiction to alcohol. As Horsley in his way was addicted to heroin and cocaine - a mixture of which eventually killed him. Or, Sebastian Dangerfield, J. P. Donlevy’s dissolute bohemian artist of The Ginger Man.

Horsley briefly attended St. Martin’s Art College but was kicked out after only a few months.

“I don’t think by going to college you can really achieve anything whatsoever - except perhaps they teach you how to be ordinary.”

He taught himself how to be an artist, and saw painting as a way of creating a new, unspoken language. Yet, he often felt incapable of expressing this language, and destroyed many of his paintings. He died in 2010 from an accidental overdose, leaving a life that was, in many respects, his greatest work of art.

In this brief interview from 1995, Sebastian Horsley talks about his background, his view of art, and his sartorial style.
 

Faust at The Comet, Seattle, 10/15/2012 by Ian Buck

A friend of mine asked me the other day if I was going to see Faust play and I said “No” and then I saw this apocalyptic footage of Tuesday night’s show at The Comet Tavern in Seattle and I think I might change my mind!

Emily Pothast writes on the translinguistic other blog

“HAVE YOU EVER PARTICIPATED IN A GENOCIDE?” a wide-eyed Jean Hervé-Péron asked a roomful of enraptured onlookers. “YES,” he answered himself, with a near-maniacal grin. “AND SO HAVE YOU.”  As the improvised cacophony swelled around him, abstracted, acid-damaged images of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama arose and melted away like candied phantoms emerging from a zig-zagged field of processed video feedback.

I’m admittedly biased, since I had something to do with coaxing the event into existence in the first place, but I’m fairly certain that I just witnessed history being made.  Faust—yes that Faust, the sublimely absurdist German “krautrock” band—just performed a concert that opened with an improvised soundtrack to a live feed of the US presidential debates, psychedelicized by Hair and Space Museum (the multimedia duo comprised of David Golightly and myself.)

The happening happened at the Comet Tavern, a Seattle dive bar that barely accommodates 150 patrons (a far cry from the music halls that Faust has commanded in Europe for decades). It came together at the last moment as the result of a half-joking fantasy about how to best spend the day off that Faust had to kill between scheduled Seattle and Vancouver shows.  (My band Midday Veil played both shows with Faust. I am infinitely humbled by the opportunity to spend time with these amazing artists.)

If it weren’t for Faust, many people in the room would have probably been at a regular bar watching the debates for real, myself included, but I think this actually may have been the more informative way to experience them. There was a moment during the set, when Jean-Hervé was singing into the cement mixer, the sound of gravel nearly drowning out his voice as a horrific, hot-pink Romney floated ominously overhead, when I thought to myself, “Huh. This may well be the single most inspiring artistic performance I’ll ever witness.”

What the hell was I thinking? Faust play tonight in Los Angeles at REDCAT and tomorrow night at CalArts.
 

 
Thank you Chris Musgrave of Lumerians!