Mad Men Art

Illustrator for Mad Men's sixth season Key Art is Brian Sanders, a designer who started in the 1960s in print

a ten-part serial for Woman's Mirror, 1964

Brian’s first published illustration painted in acrylics

...was engaged by Stanley Kubrick to record on set, the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1966...

with paintings and drawings only, 

Did a Fante cover

a portrait of Noel Coward for Nova magazine

and was known for his Bubble & Streak style as used for this,
season 2013, Mad Men -

“Matthew Weiner, inspired by a childhood memory of lush, painterly illustrations on T.W.A. flight menus, decided to turn back the promotional clock. He pored over commercial illustration books from the 1960s and ’70s and sent images to the show’s marketing team, which couldn’t quite recreate the look he was after. ‘Finally,’ he said, ‘they just looked up the person who had done all these drawings that I really loved, and they said: ‘Hey, we’ve got the guy who did them. And he’s still working. His name is Brian Sanders.' NY Times

In the era that “Mad Men” depicts, Mr. Sanders said, his illustration “gods” were mostly Americans — Bernie Fuchs, whose work defined much of the 1960s’ look of magazines like McCall’s and TV Guide and who was perhaps Mr. Sanders’ strongest influence; Lynn Buckham, known for a clean, Norman Rockwell-like style; Jack Potter, who dropped out of advertising in the ’50s and became a renowned teacher; and Joe De Mers, whose impossibly curvy pin-up-type womenhelped set the template for a character like Joan Harris on “Mad Men.” NY Times

more here amctv and here Brian Saunders via whorange

Art, Film & Hopper

Austrian director Gustav Deutsch has recreated 13 of Edward Hopper's paintings into a film From Shirley - Visions Of Reality. The plot expands on the story of Shirley, a recurrent figure in Hopper's paintings.

From Shirley – Visions of Reality (2013). Photograph by Jerzy Palacz.

Office at Night (1940) by Edward Hopper

From Shirley – Visions of Reality (2013). Photograph by Jerzy Palacz.

Morning Sun (1952) by Edward Hopper

From Shirley – Visions of Reality (2013). Photograph by Jerzy Palacz.

Room in New York (1932) by Edward Hopper

more @ Phaidon

Detroit Summer

Home to Motown, Detroit will always hold a special place in my heart.  As the Motor City’s population and industry spiral further into disrepair Cass Tech – Now and Then brings the ghosts of Motor City to the fore, superimposing photographs taken of Lewis Cass Technical High School in it's hey day onto shots of the current abandoned condition. 

If it don't make dollaz

High Lights, Clear View on the Vista

Stars so close,
You can reach out and kiss one.

Salk Institute of California, Ezra Stoller image

Kennedy Airport, Ezra Stoller image

Architectural photographer Ezra Stoller was a nostalgic master of chiaroscuro, invoking Film Noir and the old world glamour of Hollywood with his deep focus and razor sharp foreground detail.

"My photos, tend to be confusing.  I show a great many vistas."

- Ezra Stoller

Stoller's images offer up a number of different framed views in each single shot, reflecting on his own photograph of the Salk Institute of California (Louis Kahn), Stoller says "there are I think nine separate areas you can view through, nine vistas."

Salk Institute of California, Ezra Stoller image
more here

Natalie Bookchin and Lev Manovich:Porno-Pictorialism, 1995

This digitally manipulated image by Lev Manovich and Natalie Bookchin, has us viewing a scene of viewing, though this time we do not see the viewer's gaze, only infer it from her legs and feet.  The oval framing of the scene suggests either peephole or classic oval frame, the latter associated with time remembered.  The spherical distortion of the end of the bed suggests a wide-angle lens, but in any case, the oval masking and optical distortion place us in the position of voyeur.  We do not see her expression to understand what she makes of her collection of art nudes and we do not see her hands.  The title suggests the erotic reverie of a teenager.  The picture reminds us that art has long sanctioned the viewing of naked bodies and one could do worse than these books of images when musing upon one's nascent sexuality.  The train bearing down on the bedroom would seem an obvious paste-in and portentous sign of the force and power of that sexuality.  It contrasts strongly with the delicacy and obliqueness of the rest of the picture. (Perhaps also an allusion to Alfred Stieglitz's The Hand of Man).

Alfred Stieglitz: The Hand of Man, 1902

Absorption/recognition: a notion that gained currency in the Diderot era of France that the viewer's pleasure in a painting with human figures, lies in the works ability to wholely engross the viewer.  It depends on the assumption that the subjects are not posing, rather, that they are absorbed in whatever they are about, and this absorption is a condition for our absorption in viewing them.  more here

Jeff Wall: The Destroyed Room, 1978

Jeff Wall considers this large format photograph to be his first successful attempt in challenging photography norms using lightbox transparencies. Referencing pop culture (illuminated cinema signs, advertising) and the sense of scale invoked by classical painting, The Destroyed Room is a staged scene of destruction in the bedroom of a young woman in which only the lithe figurine on the bureau and one black stiletto remain standing. The discarded objects are the debris of commodities that promise personal beauty, but are subject to constant changes in style and planned obsolescence.


Wall has said that he “filtered” the work through Eugene Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalous (1827), a painted depiction of aggression and violence. Thus, Wall has associated his picture with the tradition of Western painting just as it was turning from the idealization of historical painting toward a preoccupation with the late Romantic emotional turmoil or psychological disruption.

Eugene Delacroix: Death of Sardanapalous, 1827

The personal possessions strewn across the floor invoke not only images of anger, the state of mind the imagined gestures might have revealed, but also, the notion of the abject embodied in commodity fetishes in a culture of waste. This photographic tableau is a beautiful picture of a devastated interior in a present marked by the commodity culture of late capitalism. more here

And so apt that Sonic Youth made use of it then for their compilation album of tracks (hand picked by the band) previously only available on vinyl, limited-release compilations, imports, and b-sides to international singles, including unreleased material:
The Destroyed Room: B-sides and Rarities. 

Pure Heart

Sandra Eterovic

Limpia el camino de paja

Que yo me quiero sentar

  Ghoul                                                    Callow

Luna

Peach

Lagoon

Kirra Jamison is a Melbourne artist.

Hey Future

Quietus

Agora - Miniartextil Como 2012

Quietus

 

Gone to Seed

- Claire Morgan

Power 100 - 2012 Art Review

It’s been 11 years since ArtReview first produced its annual ranking of the most influential people in the artworld.  Since its inception, the Power 100 has aimed to map and document the complex and shifting network of factors at play and as a result, their list is founded on observation rather than judgements about who is best and who is worst.   The entire list is here.

Ai Wei Wei
	1. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev 2. Larry Gagosian 3. Ai Weiwei 4. Iwan Wirth 5. David Zwirner 6. Gerhard Richter 7. Beatrix Ruf 8. Nicholas Serota 9. Glenn D. Lowry 10. Hans Ulrich Obrist & Julia Peyton-Jones 11. Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani 12. Anton Vidokle, Julieta Aranda & Brian Kuan Wood (e-flux) 13. Cindy Sherman 14. Alain Seban & Alfred Pacquement 15. Adam D. Weinberg 16. Annette Schönholzer, Marc Spiegler & Magnus Renfrew 17. Marc Glimcher 18. Marian Goodman 19. Massimiliano Gioni 20. Jay Jopling 21. François Pinault 22. Klaus Biesenbach 23. Matthew Slotover & Amanda Sharp 24. Barbara Gladstone 25. RoseLee Goldberg

Posting your comment.

Jeff Koons

26. Eli & Edythe Broad
27. Patricia Phelps de Cisneros
28. Bernard Arnault
29. Nicholas Logsdail
30. Liam Gillick
31. Ann Philbin
32. Victor Pinchuk
33. Maja Hoffmann
34. Tim Blum & Jeff Poe
35. Marina Abramović
36. Dakis Joannou
37. Udo Kittelmann
38. Monika Sprüth & Philomene Magers
39. Matthew Marks
40. Gavin Brown
41. Damien Hirst
42. Rosemarie Trockel
43. Wolfgang Tillmans
44. Agnes Gund
45. Chus Martínez
46. Isa Genzken
47. Iwona Blazwick
48. Anne Pasternak
49. Sadie Coles
50. Daniel Buchholz
51. Toby Webster
52. Adam Szymczyk
53. James Lingwood & Michael Morris
54. William Wells & Yasser Gerab
55. Michael Ringier
56. Theaster Gates
57. Pussy Riot
58. Jeff Koons
59. Steve McQueen
60. Takashi Murakami

Cindy Sherman

Resilience and Existentialism

"A person's character is their destiny."
Heraclitus

 

Essentially, character is about what's under the surface, the principles and values lived by day in, day out.  Most would say they believe in common values such as freedom, justice, truth, peace, love and acceptance but as we live in a cause and effect world, mere belief is not enough.

"Action is character."
F. Scott Fitzgerald

A value is not a value unless you're willing to pay a price to uphold it - and in most cases the price paid will be at a loss of some beneficial outcome to yourself.  So what happens when we do things that compromise our values?  Even if no one ever finds out, you will always know.

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."  Martin Luther King Jnr. 

We tell this story about who we are, based on what we've done.  This story about ourselves lives in the past and helps us to construct our story about who we are, our place in the world and how the world works.  We carry these stories with us wherever we go and these stories can either strengthen and nurture us or they can become unwanted baggage, weighing us down.

 Resilience is about building a strong foundation and then acting with integrity, aligning being and doing.  An internally self sustaining system is one which is internally supportive.  In an existential sense this means recognising the benefits of doing in a way that supports your intended state of being.

"Excellence is not an act but a habit"
Aristotle

So first clarify your vision and values and then, put them into practice.  Set out your intention on being in the morning and at the end of the day, reflect on how it went.  Daily practice becomes a weekly routine that soon becomes a supportive internal story - remember you can't escape yourself so even better if your internal story is self supportive, promoting resilience.

So: resilience, existentialism and self mastery - recognise that we all exist in these three domains and in each domain there is work required to establish and then maintain a sustainable system for being.

- More wisdom here  more images here