A Spork in the Drawer

A Bit Of Michael Donner

Times Beings, 2009


More here.

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A Bit Of James Ensor

King Pest, c. 1885


Review

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A Bit Of Rankin

The Queen, 2009


Yes, this is really a snapshot.

I find much of Rankin's work to be banal but I enjoy this pic of the old German woman.

Rankin explains.

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A Bit Of Stanley Kubrick

Club, Chicago, 1949


Yes, that Stanley Kubrick.

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A Bit Of Robert Demachy

Female Nude, ca. 1900-1910


Robbert Demachy at Wikipedia
Pictorialism
How to make a bromoil print

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Jackass Of The Day

Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones:

You won't often hear me call a photographer a genius. I think there's too much homage paid to an art that's basically just holding up a piece of machinery and pushing a button.

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A Bit Of Pentti Sammallahti

Odessa, Ukraine, 2004


More at photo-eye.

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Pictures! (Not Mine)

The Torygraph Telegraph is running some sort of photo contest.

Most are bleh but these two stand out:

On Your Bike, Andy Linden, 2009



Grandmother, Anna Bodnar, 2009.


Just passing it along.

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A Bit Of Cristina Kahlo

From Rituales, 2008


(Trivia: Grandniece of Frida.)

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A Brief Banksy Break

Banksy at the Bristol City Museum:



(Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

More at the link.

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A Bit Of Rita Bernstein

Joanna, Age 16, 2003


More at photo-eye.

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A Bit Of Bill Owens

From Suburbia, 1973


Bill Owens Photography

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I Can't Imagine Why

No sale:

An oil painting depicting Madonna in the nude with her ex-husband Guy Ritchie has failed to sell at an auction in Glasgow.

Click the link to see this fine example of painting.

Personally, I think the expected price was high by ₤21,999 & 99p.

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A Bit Of John Wood

Blackbirds Some Have Hunger, 1986 (Collage, cyanotype, and graphite)


More at NYU's Grey Art Gallery and the International Center for Photography. Karen Rosenberg's NYT review of those shows here.

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A Bit Of Nick Brandt

Elephant With Exploding Dust, Amboseli, 2004


More at photo-eye.

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An Excuse...

...to post some Richard Avedon.

Avedon rejected the idea that fashion photography should consist of pretty mannequins posing and brought in a documentary sensibility:

Suzy Parker and Robin Tattersall, 1956


And one of the most iconic of iconic fashion images:



Dovima and the Elephants, 1955


Most famous are Avedon's portraits before a white background. He even photographed Republican war criminals:



George Bush, Director, CIA, Langley, Virginia, March 2, 1976


All of this not withstanding, my jaw dropped open when I leafed through my copy of the 6 November, 1995 issue of the The New Yorker and saw his portfolio, In Memory of Mr. and Mrs. Comfort:











Definitely atypical (it was done in collaboration with Doon Arbus, daughter of Diane.)

Anyway, if you're a New Yorker or intend to visit New York City before 6 September be sure to visit the International Center for Photography.

Roberta Smith's NYT review here.

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Have A Nice Day!

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A Bit Of Susan Meiselas

Debbie and Renee, Rockland, Maine, 1972


Meiselas @ Magnum

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Startled Plastic Cow

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A Bit Of Josef Sudek

Still Life (Glass Labyrinths series), 1969

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A Bit Of Dennis Hopper

Fractured Girl (Billboard Factory), 1988

Yes, that Dennis Hopper.

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A Bit Of Aaron H. Gorson

Steel-Making Nocturne (Pittsburgh), 1920

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A Bit Of Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon)

Pierrot the Photographer, 1854-55

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Who Calls The Shots?

Wall Street, of course:

It will be the first animated feature ever to open the Cannes film festival this year, and is produced by a company whose last two films won the best animation Oscar. Yet Pixar's next project, Up, is now the target of Wall Street analysts and toy manufacturers alike, for not being commercial enough.

[...]

Doug Creutz of Wall Street firm Cowen and Company told the paper there was widespread concern that Pixar was on a downward spiral in commercial terms. "The worries keep coming despite Pixar's track record, because each film it delivers seems to be less commercial than the last," he said. Industry watcher Richard Greenfield of Pali Research, who advised clients to sell Disney shares last month, said: "We doubt younger boys will be that excited by the main character."

Toymakers are also crying into their Chinese-made plastic crap but to his credit Disney CEO Robert Iger said:

[T]he company was focused on delivering "great films", rather than adopting a blind adherence to commercial pressures. "If a great film gives birth to a franchise, we are the first company to leverage such success," he said. "A check-the-boxes approach to creativity is more likely to result in blandness and failure."

While Iger is being somewhat disingenuous - is there a company more devoted to commercialization than Disney? - at least he's standing up for one of the more creative groups in the movie business, Pixar.

But the larger point is that we live in a world which is uncomfortable with, even downright hostile to, anything that can't be fixed with a precise value and then bought and sold like so many standardized widgets.

Would it be churlish of me to point out that this is the philosophy that helped lead us into the Great Recession?

Perhaps.

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A Bit Of Helen Levitt

Street photographer, 8.31.1913 - 3.29.2009

New York, c. 1940

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A Bit Of Paul Outerbridge

Unitled (Beach Equipment), 1936

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First We Take Manhattan

Old picture:

One of the earliest photographs in existence is expected to fetch as much as $70,000 when it is auctioned off later this month at Sotheby's auction house in New York.

A half-plate daguerreotype dating from 1848 shows a country estate in Manhattan on what was then known as old Bloomingdale Road and referred to as "a continuation of Broadway."

In the foreground of the 5.5-by-4-inch, black and white daguerreotype, a dirt road leads to an entry gate that surrounds the grounds.

Daguerreotype FAQ at The Daguerreian Society (located in Pittsburgh - and, yes, I'm a member).

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A Bit Of Romare Bearden

Bluer Than Blue, 1981

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A Bit Of Amedeo Modigliani

Caryatid, c. 1913-14

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The First Photographer?

As early as 1602:

[Caravaggio] has long been suspected of turning his studio into a giant camera obscura, punching a hole in the ceiling to help project images on to his canvas. But new research claims that Caravaggio also used chemicals to turn his canvases into primitive photographic film, "burning" images he then sketched on to for works such as St Matthew and the Angel.

"We were already sure Caravaggio projected images of his sitters, but we have now found mercury salt in his canvases, which is light-sensitive and used in film," said Roberta Lapucci, conservation chief at Florence's SACI institute.

[...]

The image burned into the primer would last about 30 minutes and only be visible in the gloom. "Therefore he used a white lead paint to sketch, mixed with barium sulphate which was luminous, and which we have found traces of. That way he could see where he was sketching."

Lapucci developed her hypothesis after working with the artist David Hockney, who wrote a book putting forward the idea that Caravaggio and other Old Masters used cameras obscura to at least in part create their works. Hockney's theory is not without controversy.

Caravaggio, St. Matthew and the Angel, 1602

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Shakespeare Unmasked

Maybe:

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A Bit Of Bruce Gilden

New York City, 1986


Bruce Gilden at Magnum

Bruce Gilden's "best shot."

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A Bit Of Edward Burtynsky

Manufacturing #17, Deda Chicken Processing Plant, Dehui City, Jilin Province, 2005


edwardburtysnky.com

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A Bit Of Ben Shahn

Supermarket, 1957

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A Bit Of Elliott Erwitt

Paris, 1989

EliottErwitt.com
Erwitt at Magnum

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Not So Much "Ironic" As "Corrupt and Criminal"

Another way to destroy the New Deal:

Hundreds of buildings commissioned by the Works Progress Administration and Roosevelt’s other “alphabet” agencies are being demolished or threatened with destruction, mourned or fought over by small groups of citizens in a new national movement to save the architecture of the New Deal. In July, at the Santa Fe Indian School in New Mexico, a dozen buildings built in the Spanish Revival style in the 1930s, including murals with Native American themes, were bulldozed. In Chicago, architectural historians have joined with residents of Lathrop Homes — riverfront rows of historic brick public housing — to try to persuade the Chicago Housing Authority not to raze the complex. In Cotton County, Okla., a ruined gymnasium has only holes where windows used to be. Across the country, schools, auditoriums and community centers of the era are headed for the wrecking ball.

“It’s ironic to be tearing them down just when America is going through tough times again,” said the biographer Robert A. Caro, who wrote about the W.P.A. in “The Power Broker,” his book about the builder Robert Moses. “We should be preserving them and honoring them. They serve as monuments to the fact that it is possible to combine infrastructure with beauty.”

Even putting aside the irreplaceable Deco art some of them contain, it should go without saying that these buildings - constructed to last and designed with care for aesthetics and livability - are being torn town in the name of "growth":

In Ocala, Fla., where there is a move to tear down the Deco City Auditorium, an angry official cut off preservationists at a recent public hearing, saying he was not interested “in what prom somebody went to” but only in “how to make this city grow.”

Of course, these monuments are being destroyed just so they can be replaced with unaffordable claustrophobic cookie-cutter domiciles which will begin to disintegrate within years if not months:

Where the demolished apartments stood, there are now several vacant lots and nine new single-family houses, priced at more than $200,000; many of these are still for sale. Jane A. Berry, the municipal manager, bought one but conceded the new houses were built too close to each other. “We’re trying to attract families,” she said, “and there’s not even room for a swing set.”

Boo-hoo. You should have checked the plans before you approved the destruction/construction, Ms. Municipal Manager (and by any chance did you get a "discount" on that house?).

Since Senate "moderates" are poised to reinflate the real estate bubble we can expect more of this - to our increased financial and aesthetic impoverishment.

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A Bit Of Maria Luisa Morando

White V, 2008

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Arts Notes

Interesting:

The giant, fierce figure of The Colossus as he rises above a fleeing crowd of people, carts and animals is one of Spanish artist Francisco de Goya's most dramatic and famous pictures – at least it was until yesterday, when Madrid's Prado museum declared he had not painted it.

The museum has said the giant - whose clenched fist is seen as a symbol of Spanish resistance to Napoleon's army during the Peninsular wars - would continue to hang in its place but confirmed that a plaque attributing the painting to Goya would be changed.

Experts at the museum now believe The Colossus was painted by one of Goya's assistants, whose initials may appear in a corner of the canvass.

The initials, "AJ", are thought to stand for Asensio Juliá, one of Goya's later assistants.

The painting in question:

Now for the distressing:

Faced with a decline in their operating budget and a shrinking endowment, the trustees of Brandeis University voted unanimously on Monday to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its collection to help shore up the university’s finances.

The museum, founded in 1961, holds more than 8,000 pieces. It is best known for its collection of modern art, including works by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein.

Most of the collection will disappear into the vaults of private collectors is my guess.

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A Bit Of Adriaen Coorte

Still life with two peaches and a butterfly, 1693-1695

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A Bit Of Andrew Wyeth

1917-2009

From the Helga series, 1971-85


Controversies surrounding Wyeth discussed here and here.

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Incoming

The New York Time Magazine today presents a gallery of incoming members of the Obama administration and prominent Congressional Democrats. photographed by Nadav Kander. Included in the Flash presentation audio of Kander and the Magazines director of photography, Kathy Ryan discussing the shoot.

To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about the pics; I'll have to think on it some more.

Anyway, worth a look and listen.

More of Kander's work can be seen at his website.

Domestic Policy Council Director Melody C. Barnes

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A Bit Of Luke Swank

Making Steel, 1930-32

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A Bit Of Georgia O'Keefe

Radiator Building - Night, New York, 1927

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A Bit Of Michael L. Goswell*

Pentre Ifan, Wales, 1992
*That's me!

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A Bit Of Sophie Calle

Les Dormeurs, 1979


Sophie Calle at Wikipedia.

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What's The Point?

Given that Polaroid had previously announced the end of instant film production filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy seems redundant. But you do have to love the proximate reason:

The bankruptcy filing was necessary because of an investigation of its parent company, Petters Group Worldwide, which has owned Polaroid since 2005, the Polaroid statement said. The group's founder and other employees are under investigation for fraud. Polaroid said the investigation does not involve its leadership team.

Yet another (corrupt!) private investment group that takes over a business of which it knows nothing (think Cerberus and Chrysler) although, admittedly, digital cameras have reduced the market for instant film to just serious photographers and other artists. Not much of a base, really.

The sad thing is every other obsolete photographic method (such as daguerreotype or wet collodion, just to name two) can be reproduced (and I've done so) but very nature of Polaroid makes this impossible without someone willing to invest millions in licensing and manufacturing.

Ain't gonna happen.

However futile an effort, Save Polaroid.

Graflex Speed Graphic with Polaroid 545 film holder. (© All Rights Reserved)

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A Bit Of Michael P. Smith

Hercule's Funeral "Toasting the Casket", 1979


1937-2008

Michael P. Smith Photography

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A Bit Of Sarah Moon

Two Girls, 2001


More here.

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A Bit Of Alfredo Jaar

The Eyes of Gutete Emerita (detail), 1996

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Renaissance Woman

When not poisoning people for sport and banging her father and brothers* it appears that Lucrezia Borgia might have had time to sit for a portrait:

A mysterious Renaissance portrait that has hung in an Australian art gallery for 43 years - its artist and subject unknown - has been identified as potentially the world's only painting of the infamous femme fatale Lucrezia Borgia.

"What was previously a portrait of an unknown sitter by an unidentified artist now seems likely to be one of the most significant portraits surviving from the Renaissance, by one of the great northern Italian painters, Dosso Dossi," said Gerard Vaughan, director of the National Gallery of Victoria.

[...]

"If you had told me two years ago that this painting would be the only known portrait of the most famous and notorious woman in Renaissance history I probably would have shown you the door," he said. "It seemed so preposterous at first that I was almost too embarrassed to suggest it."

However:

The gallery, which will display the portrait today, expects its conclusion to be heavily scrutinised. A year ago, it was embarrassed by the revelation that its only Van Gogh work was a fake.

Caveat emptor, as the kids say.

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*Unproven allegations.

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