Saturday, September 30, 2006
New apprentice Yoda seeks
This little guy’s name is YODA! He is a tiny Jedi Master looking for a new apprentice! Must be an experienced can-opener operator and feline fancier! By Elizabeth Mobley.
For the next few days I'll be featuring pictures of kittens needing homes from the Friends of Cats and Dogs Foundation which is based in Birmingham, Alabama. If you have cat friendly friends or relatives there who might be persuaded to take in another ball of fuzz - please pass on the link.
Finally a tip of the hat to Kim who has been kind enough to give Kitten Picture a mention on her blog. Chris (chief web kitten).
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Jasmine needs a home
Jasmine needs a new home! She is safe in a foster home, but would love a forever home! See more photos of her at Friends of Cats and Dogs Foundation which is based in Birmingham, Alabama.
Adopting from a rescue group makes more room for more kittens! By Elizabeth Mobley.
Elizabeth has sent a load of cute pictures of other kittens needing a home so I'll be featuring them over the next few days. If you run or are otherwise involved with a rescue home please feel free to email me at the address at the top of the page. Chris (chief web kitten).
The naked teacher: teaching performance art
CNN reports:
Mo Xiaoxin, a 56-year-old assistant professor at a university in Changzhou, in eastern Jiangsu province, shocked students by stripping during a lecture on "body art" to emphasize the "power" of the body and to "challenge taboos," the Beijing News said.
"There are no taboos in the field of research, but to do this directly in the course of teaching is obviously not appropriate," the paper quoted Tian Junting, a culture ministry official, as saying.
The lecture was part of a course within a newly established "human body art and culture" research institute -- China's first -- at Jiangsu Teachers University of Technology, the paper said.
Mo arranged for four other models, including a man and woman in their 70s or 80s, and a younger couple, to strip naked in front of the class while he lectured, the paper said.
Scandal? Or trivial event? Are we to see this through the eyes of an art critic for whom a naked body is just another element of artistic expression? Or should we rather interpret it from the students' point of view? Would it then be an indecent act, a very embarrassing one? Of course, the article says little about the context of the class. It was part of an experimental course on body art. But was it a practical course? Is a practical course in body art actually possible? I've heard of body art workshops where people were encouraged to self-mutilate. How exactly does that work? Does one train various techniques, until one gets them right? Is there a set of "exercises" one has to execute to pass?
If we accept that a significant part of contemporary art looks to go "out of the box", teaching it becomes a challenge. Trust me, I know. The whole idea is how to get someone to accept the excentric as central, i.e., how to see ("alternative") contemporary art as a basis, or a context for work. This is extremely difficult, much more difficult than just learning to appreciate it. On one hand, the students need to comprehend the strength of new works, the impact they potentially have; on the other, it's not enough to see it in a distance, in an attitude of all-encompassing tolerance. This - body art, performance, controversial or plain shocking installations - is to be, if not a foundation, at least a contemporary history. That means, it needs to be close enough to be useful, to be felt as something we might have done, but (often fortunately) don't need to do any more.
Does this mean the teacher was right? Only if he achieved his goal. Only if the people watching him not only got the point (their point, not necessarily his point), but also, will feel empowered through the experience.
But teaching it? Or: actually doing body art (if getting naked comes anywhere near as much as an introduction to body art) in front of the students? Two points irritate me here:
1) A teacher that instead of making the students discover things by doing them does them himself is at least suspicious. I'd rather have a scandal where the teacher convinced students to actually do body art. At least then, they are the performers, and not just forced spectators. The article states that the teacher tried making the students undress too. It seems it didn't work. Was there any room left on the stage?
2) On a more personal level, art that aims to "break taboos" rarely ever speaks to me. It's not too hard to watch. It's too easy. As one ex-body artist said, the performers are not the only ones sweating. The audience sweats too - of a specific embarrassment and more often than not, a deep desire to be somewhere else.
My doubts regarding Mo Xiaoxin are both as a teacher and a perfomer. But they have little to do with indecence.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Thinking digital differently
As any truly experimental project, it has its more and less successful bits - some works seem a little unfinished, as if not nurtured. Also, the navigation is absolutely complicated - but that makes it easier to wander aimlessly, appreciate whatever comes up, and not get the false impression that you're in control. The general feeling is of a rich, dense garden, whose sense still evades me. (Though not the senses).
hint for the desperate explorers: once at pixelnouveau, scroll to the right.
Size matters?
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, Cupid's Span
Size matters? How exactly?
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Kant's distinction between aesthetic experience and sublime experience could mean that, for instance, when visiting a pyramid I am so overwhelmed by it, the experience ceases to be aesthetic and becomes sublime. If we hold on to this distinction, we could risk saying that the experience of art may be similar if it belongs to the same category: in this example, the Louvre pyramid can have a strong aesthetic effect, but it lacks the size that could overwhelm. Does our sensibility really work the way the kantian categories would like it to? I'm not sure. Today, size, even when we're talking about really large-scale sculptures, seems just another element of our overall artistic judgement (notice how we're backing up from the idea of aesthetic experience, though...).
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Take a few works: Jeff Koons' Puppy, Douglas Gordon's 24-Hour-Psycho, and Chris Bors's answer to it, 24-Second-Psycho. Or even the Colossus of Rhodes a few years before.
Why, then, does playing with size/scale often feel like cheating? Is Kant the answer? Do we basically enter other categories here and become overwhelmed? If so, shouldn't the issue of the scale be ignored?
Jeff Koons
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Then again, scale is balance. Looking for balance is also looking for the right size. The right ontology, the right way of being, as if we were looking for some sort of homeostasis, balance or harmony, a balance which has as much to do with the object itself as with the context. But is Michelangelo's David any worse for standing in the Accademia Gallery?
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When Cattelan makes a praying Hitler, the strike of genius is making him small, like an innocent being. Because size plays a role. That means size has a character, smaller is cuter, larger is more impressive, etc.
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But then how do we cope with pictures of things? Why would our imagination compensate so well in a model representation, but have so much difficulty in regards to the original?
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Going back to Kant, we could say that playing with the size factor is an expression of frustration with other qualities. Take Oldenburg, for example. Here is a fragment of a beautiful text he wrote in 1961:
I am for an art that (...) does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.So, in the case of Oldenburg, where is all this art gone? What is it that makes one move from the majestic art of dog-turds to huge post-ready-mades? Could size-ism be a form of escapism?
I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a staring point of zero.
I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap & still comes out on top.
I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.
I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.
(...) I am for the art that a kid licks, after peeling away the wrapper.
I am for an art that joggles like everyones knees, when the bus traverses an excavation.
I am for art that is smoked, like a cigarette, smells, like a pair of shoes.
I am for art that flaps like a flag or helps blow noses, like a handkerchief.
I am for art that is put on and taken off, like pants, which develops holes, like socks, which is eaten, like a piece of pie, or abandoned with great contempt, like a piece of shit.
I am for art covered with bandages, I am for art that limps and rolls and runs and jumps. (...)
I am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs. I am for the art of ice-cream cones dropped on concrete. I am for the majestic art of dog-turds, rising like cathedrals.
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For the lover of big-scale things: how to create large projections on buildings.
For the lover of small-scale things: very small objects. And also, a site full of small bits and pieces of small-scale video art by Alex Pearl, a reader of this blog.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Monday, September 25, 2006
Vintage Knitting
Often these old booklets have hand-written notes and recipes tucked in them. The front of this one says, "Mildred, I have another like this so keep." Apparently the knitted turban pattern was quite popular in 1962.
This 1961 issue of McCall's Needlework and Crafts shows a living room scene. Do you think many people in 1961 had gravel and ponds in their living rooms?
I love the photo styling for these patterns, don't you?
Check out the wild knitted cottage tea cozy. To the bottom left of the photo is a brown knitted bull. It doesn't really look like a bull but I'm glad I have a pattern for one anyway.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Let me know if that works out - otherwise I can email anyone the .PDF files if they're having problems. Also, I wanted to let everyone know that
Stranded Color Knitting has now sold over 600 copies. I remember when I wrote it thinking that selling 300 copies would surpass my wildest dreams. Thanks to everyone for purchasing it and helping rabbit rescue!
Tomorrow I'm going to have some wild and wacky vintage knitting patterns to show you.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Hide and seek kitten picture
Friday, September 22, 2006
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Banksy exhibition...gallery-style
See this great text by Valerie Palmer about a recent Banksy exhibition. The elephant was apparently a fitting centerpiece and stole the show from the political ideas we're used to seeing from the British sweet-painting rebel. Bottom line:
The power of his work lies in the way it interacts with its environment and that obviously gets lost when you put it in any kind of gallery setting.I guess my wish came true.
Question: Is there any way for revolution to go mainstream?
My answer: No.
Question: What about Cattelan?
My answer: Come on, that's softball compared to Banksy. Cattelan's subversion is a Viennese Waltz compared to Banksy's creative punk attitude.
Question: So how can a guy like Banksy gain recognition?
My answer: He's got it already.
Question: More recognition?
My answer: What's the point? To "promote his values"? Let's face it: the value of critique is that it criticizes. Once it becomes part of the game, it smells of hypocrisy.
Question: What about subversion? Isn't that an option?
My answer: Possibly.
My answer after having though about it for a minute: But there's something cynical about it, isn't there? While in the case of Banksy, there hasn't been so far.
Question: Well, how is he supposed to make a decent living?
My answer: I don't know - find a sponsor? Hell, if I knew, I would be doing it already.
My alternative answer: Just as the jester's role used to be an intelligent critique, also of the ruler, and he made a living off it, so there might be room for an official jester... In the best of possible worlds, that is.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
I know the room will be white. I plan to hang a lot of my knitted items and designs on the walls so this will be the only white room. I also know there will not be carpet - if we have to we'll install Pergo or even a fun color of linoleum. I need bookcases and storage for spools of sewing thread and a cutting table and a sewing desk and a file cabinet and a spot for my spinning wheel.
And of course I need a place for all my yarn. I'll probably continue using the neat cubes storage system I already use but I really need to neaten it all up.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Style. Beyond the individual
Exactitudes (= exact attitudes), by photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek, is an exercise in style (or rather was, from 1994 to 2002 - it is now present online, in a traveling exhibition and in the form of a book). Style is what makes the person unique, but also, quite paradoxically, what makes her so easily categorized. Some say the search for identity isn't at all a search for authenticity (which is a controversial concept), but rather, a search for style. Identity, here, would mean a sort of a definition that allows one to make a drawing. So here we have it, those young boys are making the drawing of themselves - they are getting themselves defined, they are become unique, and totally anonymous at the same time.
It is quite an exciting balance/game/tension, between the self-as-unique and the self-as-participating. Exactitudes shows it clearly. Maybe a little too clearly. It might be because the work is somehow dated, and that, beyond the fact that styles have evolved quite a bit (another proof that identity might be more about style than we think). The pictures, their esthetic qualities, but also the way it was made: the styling, the forcing into categories. Is it necessary? The argument, found in the "about" part of the page, that everything is stylized anyway, simply doesn't seem enough. That's why the groups that speak most to me are ones where the difference, and the similitude, are there, impossible to hide, like in the Tattoo Babes series, or the Dreads one. The others often seem forced, as if the similarity sometimes wasn't enough and needed to be underscored - and it really needn't! Maybe in these two cases, the presence of the naked body seems like something more honest, less manipulated? Then again, come and think of it, the tattoos could be fake.
Christmas tree cat
Christmas tree cat picture by collinj. A tad early I know but Christmas is coming - and I know that because my local shops have been tentatively putting up some of their decorations. And er.. still trying to sell last year's holiday season stock.
Personally I'm still trying to pretend it's summer. Normal kitten picturage appropriate to the season will resume tomorrow.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Cup of Chai
Chai is super shy but loves fun. She acts like a kitten though she's already a fully-grown 3-year old. She often comes up to me and speaks in a song-like long meaw while looking directly into my eyes. Sometimes it is obvious she is asking for food, but a lot of times I have no clue. I wish I could understand what she is trying to say..... By Chika
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Ultimate Kitten Picture?
Chris Dolley sent this in with the bold claim that it is the "ultimate kitten picture". I'll leave that to you to decide but his caption:
Kai the drenched kitten looks up in horror as the alien death ray device (aka the hair drier) looms in from above. Xena can't look - she has to hide her head in her paws.
- and the rest of Chris's blog entry for First Contact Negotiations Go Horribly Wrong made me laugh out loud so he gets a special tip of the hat. If you've got a funny, touching or downright cute kitten story (remember we need pictures too!) then drop me a line at kitten.pictures@googlemail.com.
PS. Bit quiet on the comments front recently. Please feel free to say hi.
Al Magnus: taking children seriously
How surprizing is that? Of course, these are images of fairly tales. Some actually ring a bell. Most are rather fairy tales in themselves. But to start off, remember they were not meant for us, but for the little ones. Hopefully, that can be a good enough excuse to enjoy, as we usually enjoy the things that weren't meant for us.
Then, of course, there is more. The above image, called Paisagiste II (Landscape Designer II) has two versions. The first one is in color. This one, however, is quite different. By taking away the color, the general atmosphere becomes heavier. But there is another change. The boy pulling on the rope all but disappears. (Yes, there is a boy pulling on the rope). Suddenly, we discover the designer is not quite the one we thought it were. Maybe, because in the tales we know, we can only think of one designer.
But isn't the designer someone with the power to reinvent? To construct, but also, to make a Very Silly Thing (La Grosse Betise)?
Maybe, the power of attraction of children's tales is not that they're far-fetched, incredible, fantastic, but that they design things in such a way that we feel this world-changing design on every step? This is a big difference, since we rarely associate children's stories with the creation of order. Come to think of it, it is an order that they have in common with some, maybe not all, art. And so, the trivial idea that artists are the adults that remained (or went back to being) children can be understood in a whole different way. Artists treat designing seriously.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
We got lots of good stuff in our CSA box this week including roasted green chiles and more excellent strawberries. I have to admit I'm not that fond of purple potatoes even though purple is my favorite color. I'm going to make baba ghanoush for the first time with the eggplants.
I have to choose a photo of Peaches for the Colorado House Rabbit Society's calendar photo contest. I'll show the finalists here tomorrow.
For V.
Both are from the Genetologic Research series. The second one seems to only really gain power when seen in the physical space, but we get the point.
Remixing stuffed birds
Pour les dents d'un blanc éclatant e saines (meaning: for teeth that are shining white and healthy) is an installation by Jeroen Diepenmaat. In it, stuffed birds play records by putting their bill into the groove. One of the impressive things about it is that it's not one of those suggestive works that actually only work as a symbol. It works! On his site you can listen to the sound this and other installations make, or you can choose to chill out to some collaborative re-mixing he's been making. All his works seem to be evolving around vinyl and old cars, and often include interesting ways of callaborating with others (artist, students, groups of unsuspecting passers-by...). Speaking of vinyl, it's impressive how old-style vinyl lovers keep reinventing themselves. Is there anything better for creativity than apparently disqalifying limits? Could this be a difference between the amateur and the professional? The amateur doesn't need limits to his areas of investigation...
(via)
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
In these dark days
More here.
He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or else he sleeps. - Hamlet
(via)
Monday, September 11, 2006
Sunday, September 10, 2006
September 11
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I found the second of these two works by Peter Coffin as an illustration to this article by art critic Jerry Saltz. Two other discoveries Saltz provides are the Strange Powers exhibition at the Creative Time gallery (unfortunately judging from the participating artists, and not a visit...) and a quote by Erik Fishl:
Imagine calling two pets, one a dog, the other a cat. Asking a dog to do something is an amazing experience. You say, "Come here, Fido," and Fido looks up, pads over, puts his head in your lap, and wags his tail. You've had a direct communication with another species; you and Fido are sharing a common, fairly literal language. Now imagine saying, "Come here, Snowflake" to the cat. Snowflake might glance over, walk to a nearby table, rub it, lie down, and look at you. There's nothing direct about this. Yet something gigantic and very much like art has happened.
A few questions: If the dog stands for entertainment (as I believe it could), doesn't it value entertainment? I mean, in this example, why would the cat always be the better of the two? Don't you ever get the feeling the cat simply doesn't get it? And what about cat cynicism? Where does that leave art amateurs, huh?
Found thanks to the nonist