Texture my world

Peter Beard is a well known fashion photographer..He spent many years documenting his life and experiences while living in Africa...Lesser known, his journals are incredible examples of what can be done out of alternative materials...He utilizes, animal parts, blood and other natural objects, along side his photographs to create beautiful collages...they personify nature...neutral color schemes, visceral and organic...

This piece is a nice example of the scope of materials he uses...the texture is the main character and the focus in this piece, existing in the center of the picture plane...around the edges exist small scale, detailed photographs...framing the main image and collaged on the surface...blood is brushed on the inner edge, reinforcing the rectilinear quality of the piece...which also functions as a decorative element...the conceptual implications of this material is charged and interesting...the blood brush work adds to the overall organic feel of the collage...Peter Beard does an amazing job of combining many different materials, but ties them together with neutral colors, organic forms and black and white photographic imagery...

Something spiritually street

This early Untitled painting has a similar feel to the most interesting subway graffiti drawings...like friend and confidant, Jean Michael Basquiat, their work formalizes street art...I wonder about the status of graffiti in contemporary society...there is something fashionable about it, something base and too self promotional...Keith Haring's works are contemporary, yet reference the past...they are smarter, better organized and pushed art and street together into one harmonious note...

This work is symbolic...simplified...decorative...abstract...curious...balanced and intelligent...the line work on the black background, creating visual vibration and shock, it is contained through the centered, focal figurative image...in the tradition of religious paintings of Byzantium...each mark and symbol has a significance...the context is more broken down and simplified, to get to the heart of the concept quickly...a need for immediacy and clarity...like an advertisement on the street, but with a greater level of sensitivity...there is something so unique and at the same time familiar about Harings work...these are masterpieces in a common language...

Shadow, wall, shape & line

The missing color means nothing to the viewer in this piece by Louise Nevelson...however, the lack of color means everything in the development of this three-dimensional piece...What do we see when we confront minimal hues? It visually tightens the focus and forces us to deal with the cut out shapes on their own merit...the contrast of long vertical strips against the circular and organic edges of the round shapes...variation is scale and shape help build the work to a crescendo...

The space between the shapes, the wall and the negative space become part of the piece...we see through the picture plane, breaking the opposition between the canvas and wall. The all black piece uses light and shadow to enhance the image, all interior and exterior parts of the form are utilized in the sculpture to convey the message...

What do you enjoy/fear?

Strange narrative...an unsettling place, a inside view of a cartoon version of our "pop" world...a set where paparazzi document all that is good...but is good still heartfelt? This commercial image by James Jean takes what we know about holidays and turns it into something darker...who is the victim and who is the aggressor? Lines are blurred and worlds collide...

From a visual language perspective the overall cool color scheme sets the mood...the red is the warm POP that adds the contrast required to keep us interested...the peach, heads tie in with the red and we follow those heads all around the picture plane...We also follow around the dark areas in the the top of the trees as well as the cameras in the lower left had corner and in the cage holding the photographers...the image makers and the image takers...How are we suppose to digest this image, reconcile the unsettling juxtaposition of what we enjoy and what we fear...

Stripping away all but the conceptual necessary...Boy she certainly has a hot body! At least according to this amendment to the Leonardo Da Vinci painting by Marcel Duchamp...the legitimizing of high-brow graffiti...changing the original context of the work, removing it from the museum and placing it in the public...this copy, makes the piece available, another copy can be distributed, again and again...accessible and for everyone...

This conceptual piece utilizes the Mona Lisa as a vehicle to convey a base emotion...a comment on the physicality of a beautiful woman...LHROQ...ironically, recently it has been determined she is probably pregnant...how would Duchamp feel about this new insight and its impact on his conceptual piece? Would he be pleased? Disappointed?