Mosaic artist Ed Chapman made this portrait of Jimi Hendrix out of 5000 guitar picks. The portrait was auctioned off during an event for Cancer Research UK. Good work Mr. Chapman.
Via Oddity Central
The artist Mark Rothko died today on the 25th February 1970. His body was found in his studio by his assistant. He had ingested an overdose of barbiturates and had slashed an artery on his right arm. He lay in a sticky pool of blood, dressed in white long-johns and black socks. Rothko was sixty-six. He had been suffering from depression, and had also been diagnosed with a mild aortic aneurysm.
His death increased the value of his paintings overnight - the price nearly doubled. More interestingly, his death led to legal suit by his children against his gallery and the executors of his estate.
The trial revealed that Rothko’s dealers, the Marlborough Gallery, and his executors had conspired to “waste the assets” and defraud his children out of their rightful share of their father’s estate. It was also found the gallery had deliberately stockpiled and undervalued Rothko’s paintings for years, with the intention of selling them at an increased value after his death. The Marlborough had purchased “one group of 100 paintings for just $1.8million, a sum it would pay over 12 years and with no interest, with a down-payment of only $200,000.” The total assets of 798 paintings were worth a minimum of $32million.
In 1975, the defendants were found liable for “negligence and a conflict of interest”. They were removed as executors of the Rothko estate, by court order, and, together with the Marlborough Gallery, required to pay a $9.2 million damages to the estate. Sounds a lot, but not much when compared to the value Rothko’s paintings have since attained - his 1954 painting, Homage to Matisse sold in 2005 for $22.4million, while his 1950 White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), sold for a record $72.8 million
Simon Schama’s excellent documentary on Rothko starts off with Schama’s own epiphany when first seeing the artist’s paintings:
“One morning in the spring of 1970, I went into the Tate Gallery and took a wrong, right turn and there they were, lying in wait. No it wasn’t love at first site. Rothko had insisted that the lighting be kept almost pretentiously low. It was like going into the cinema, expectation in the dimness.
Something in there was throbbing steadily, pulsing like the inside of a body part, all crimson and purple. I felt I was being pulled through those black lines to some mysterious place in the universe.
Rothko said his paintings begin an unknown adventure into an unknown space. I wasn’t sure where that was and whether I wanted to go. I only know I had no choice and that the destination might not exactly be a picnic, but I got it all wrong that morning in 1970. I thought a visit to the Seagram Paintings would be like a trip to the cemetary of abstraction - all dutiful reverence, a dead end.
Everything Rothko did to these paintings - the column-like forms suggested rather than drawn and the loose stainings - were all meant to make the surface ambiguous, porous, perhaps softly penetrable. A space that might be where we came from or where we will end up.
They’re not meant to keep us out, but to embrace us; from an artist whose highest compliment was to call you a human being.”
Schama is a cultured story-teller, who has a great enthusiasm for his subject, and he fully appreciates the value of the small tale by which an artist’s life can be apprehended. One particular sequence, highlights the irony of how Rothko, who famously removed his paintings from a swanky Four Seasons restaurant at the Seagram Building, in New York, because:
“Anybody who would eat that kind of food, for that kind of money, will never look at a painting of mine.”
has become the center of such phenomenal financial speculation.
Previously on DM
Revealed: Caravaggio’s criminal record
Notes towards a portrait of Francis Bacon
These video paintings were created in 1984 by Brian Eno with friend, photographer and actress Christine Alcino as his subject. The soundtrack is from Eno’s Thursday Afternoon album which he produced with Daniel Lanois.
The visuals are as ambient as Eno’s music and move with a kind of meditative pace and therefore are best appreciated when you can pay close attention to them.
Wow! Colorful and brilliant images of Cuban life and architecture by photographer Jeffrey Milstein. I just can’t get over how amazing these are. Truly top-notch work in my opinion.
Check out Jeffrey Milstein’s website to view Cuba 1 and Cuba 2—it’s worth it.
More photos after the jump…
DM pal David Flint has just uploaded a rare video interview with Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern from 1995, over on his always interesting site, Strange Things are Happening. As David explains:
In 1995, your Strange Things editor began work on a project for the freshly-launched Television X, which was aspiring to be more than simply a soft porn channel. I convinced them that a documentary about ‘transgressive culture’ would be a good thing, especially as many of the leading lights in the field were going to be in London over the next few months. In the end, the higher-ups decided that such noble aspirations were foolish and returned to the T&A, but not before we shot this interview with Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch.
The pair were in London for NFT screenings of Kern’s films and the launch of his book New York Girls. This interview took place the day after the launch party, which is one reason why everyone is so tired! Also in attendance was photographer Doralba Picerno.
It was filmed by a TVX staffer on Hi-8, without any lighting - so was never going to be broadcast standard. It was several years before I was given the tape, and a few more after that before I could actually play it. But while the quality might be a bit murky, the content is, hopefully, worthwhile.I believe this was the first - and possibly only - time the pair were interviewed together.
Part two of the Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern interview, after the jump…
Via Strange Things
Zimoun is a simply wonderful Swiss installation artist that I’ve blogged about previously. Here is some of his quite recent work from shows in San Francisco and Quebec. Somehow the combination of the soft, yet industrial materials amassed in large numbers coupled with the live acoustics leads one to think of any combination of rain, the purring of cats or distant, menacing drummers.
More Zimoun installation clips after the jump…
“Crybaby” oil on steel wah-wah pedal, 4"x10"x3”
Amusing John Boehner wah-wah pedal entitled “Crybaby” by San Francisco-based artist Jesse Wiedel.
Thanks, Kenneth Thomas!
We’ve posted before about both South African artist Spoek Mathambo and amazing photographer Pieter Hugo (his book Nollywood
You think there’s nothing new under the sun, jaded reader? That every good idea has already been used up by music video directors? Guess again because this will knock your socks off!
Via Dazed Digital:
‘Control’, the fourth single from Spoek Mathambo‘s debut album Mshini Wam, is a ‘darkwave township house’ cover of the Joy Division classic ‘She’s Lost Control’. In collaboration with one of South Africa’s most influential photographers Pieter Hugo, and cinematographer Michael Cleary, the new video explores township cults and teen gangs. Shot on location in a squatted train boarding house in Langa, Cape Town, the video features a cast mostly made up of local neighborhood kids who run their own dance troop, Happy Feet. Spoek Mathambo has been pioneering a progressive take on African music for the last few years via his DJing (as HIVIP), solo and live band projects, having featured on Boysnoize Records and Top Billin.
Directed and shot by Pieter Hugo & Michael Cleary. Edited by Richard Starkey
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Voodoo Dubstep: Cape Town, South Africa’s rising star, Spoek Mathambo
The wonderful Eliane Radigue now composes exclusively for acoustic instruments but here are a couple of her slowly unfolding and deceptively complex electronic works for your listening pleasure along with an utterly charming video portrait. These works, composed entirely on the ARP 2500, the same model that was used in Close Encounters to communicate with the E.T.s, and recorded to a consumer grade reel-to-reel are a mind-clearing delight and will reward the patient listener with layers of subliminal tones and rhythms. Listen carefully.
An excerpt from Adnos 1 (1975)
An excerpt from Σ = a = b = a + b (1969)
A brief visit to the home studio of Eliane Radigue and her beautiful (and keyboard-less!) ARP 2500:
With thanks to Justin Meldal-Johnsen !
Jack MacGowran was a frail-looking, bird-like man, whose frame belied his power and talent as an actor. You’ll recognize him from The Excorcist, where he played alcoholic director Burke Dennings, or perhaps from Polanski’s Cul-de-Sac, or as Professor Abronsius, in The Fearless Vampire Killers.
If Billie Whitelaw was Samuel Beckett’s favorite actress, then MacGowran was his favored actor. The pair met in the bar of a shabby London hotel, an unlikely start to an “intimate alliance” that saw MacGowran collaborate with Beckett on the definitive versions of Waiting for Godot and Endgame. From this, their partnership led to a further legendary collaboration Beginning to End. As Jordan R. Young noted in his book, The Beckett Actor:
...Jack MacGowran in the Works of Samuel Beckett (aka Beginning to End) [is] one of the most highly-acclaimed one-man shows in the history of theatre, [which] changed forever the public perception of Beckett from a purveyor of gloom and despair, to a writer of wit, humanity and courage. It also brought the actor widespread recognition as Beckett’s foremost interpreter. “The first time I saw Jack, in Endgame… I came away haunted by the impression he made on me,” said Paul Scofield. “I have remained so ever since.”
The production was filmed to celebrate Beckett’s sixtieth birthday:
Beginning to End [which] features the peerless Jack MacGowran in his one-man show, devised with Beckett and recorded for RTÉ Television in 1966. “Jack’s stage presence stays with me more than anything,” said Peter O’Toole. “This frail thing with this enormous power. He walked a tightrope as if it were a three-lane highway.” Martin Esslin, in The Theatre of the Absurd, commented on Beckett’s deep affection for MacGowran: “If ever there was a perfect congruence between a great poet’s imagination and an actor, this was it ... Jack MacGowran’s individual quality and life story are an essential ingredient in our understanding of the life and work of one of the outstanding creative minds of our time.”
Rarely seen, and long thought lost, this is a must-see, for it is one of the greatest stage performances ever committed to film.
Previously on DM
Billie Whitelaw’s stunning performance in Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not I’, 1973