Stairs down to the flooded level deep inside a mine.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Floating Piers, Lake Iseo, Italy
Now on view!
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My aesthetic is white walls and dark oak trim and maps of everything and lots and lots of plants
“Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is a 1991 piece by Felix Gonzalez-Torres in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s a spilled pile of candy.
“Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) represents a specific body, that of Ross Laycock, Gonzalez-Torres’ partner who died of AIDS in 1991. This piece of art serves as an “allegorical portrait,” of Laycock’s life.
The pile of candy consists of commercially available, shiny wrapped confections. The physical form of the work changes depending on the way it is installed. The work ideally weighs 175 pounds (79 kg) at installation, which is the weight of Ross Laycock when healthy.
Visitors are invited to take a piece of candy from the work. Gonzalez-Torres grew up Roman Catholic and taking a candy is a symbolic act of communion, but instead of taking a piece of Christ, the participant partakes of the “sweetness” of Ross. As the patrons take candy, they are participants in the art. Each piece of candy consumed is like the illness that ate away at Ross’s body.
Multiple art museums around the world have installed this piece.
Per Gonzalez-Torres’ parameters, it is up to the museum how often the pile is restocked, or whether it is restocked at all. Whether, instead, it is permitted to deplete to nothing. If the pile is replenished, it is metaphorically granting perpetual life to Ross.
In 1991, public funding of the arts and public funding for AIDS research were both hot issues. HIV-positive male artists were being targeted for censorship. Part of the logic of “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is you can’t censor free candy without looking ridiculous, and the ease of replicability of the piece in other museums makes it virtually indestructible.
As of late September 2022, the Art Institute of Chicago has changed their exhibit label on this piece to remove any mention of AIDS, Ross Laycock, death, or his relationship with Gonzalez-Torres (via willscullin on Twitter).
Left: old wall text. Right: new wall text as of 9/28/22.
The language they’ve changed to use, talking about “the average body weight of an adult male” is the kind of careful language that art museums might use when we don’t know for sure what something is about – but in this case we do know exactly what the Gonzalez-Torres intended this to be about. (Take it from the Smithsonian if you don’t want it from me!) The museum hasn’t attempted to offer any explanation why, although I cannot think of any unless they wanted to give in object lesson that erasure doesn’t stop even in death.
hey guys can you help me find that old portrait of a girl holding a little painting of a naked dude and cracking up about it?? I want to say it’s by Rembrandt but that’s probably not right
It’s “Smiling Girl, a Courtesan, Holding an Obscene Image” by Gerard van Honthorst!!
It’s the best painting that exists
idk this self-portrait Michael Sweerts did is a pretty high contender
that is a good and valid point. thank you
The Concept of Non-Photography:
Non-photography, theorized by François Laruelle, is about devorcing all context from a photgraph. There is no concept of a subject, photographer, composition, pretext, or context. It exsists in a void as a sort of non-thing, as if there was no sentient being able to percive and analize it. It exsist’s merely as an aeasthetic, but not even really as an aesthetic because that is a philosophy in itself.
He states that the photograph is not a picture of reality or even a copy or abstraction. It is a fiction that is “wholly real but in its own mode”- the fictional realm. The photograph is unique unto itself, an unlimited opening into the world occasioned by lights and shadows in time, but is in no way constrained by either the experiential universe or the theoretical and art historical preconditions set up for it.”
I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on matte paintings used in films. If you are unfamiliar of what a matte painting is, it is a painted landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that is not real or at present filming location. While many famous matte paintings come from Star Wars, here are some from Star Trek. I encourage to click on these and look at the wonderful detail.
Voyager, Ocompa
Ds9, Cardassia Prime
Ds9, Ferenginar
TNG, Klingon First City
TNG, Ventax
TNG, Romulan Capital
Takanori Aiba
Hailing from Yokohama, Japan, Takanori Aiba creates “dimensional” works of art combining his knowledge and past experience in maze illustration and architectural work. Aiba incorporates the traditional technique and aesthetic approach that is similarly found in the art of Bonsai grooming.
Source: bonsaiempire and emptykingdom
“Kimiko Nishimoto learned how to use a camera for the first time at the age of 71 and even furthered her skills by taking courses on digital editing to manipulate her images. While she mostly focuses on still life and nature photography, she has a series of hilarious self-portraits involving random costumes and staged falls.” (x)
a serious inspiration
Later in life goals
Adam Ferriss is a photographer and digital media artist based in Los Angeles, CA. In addition to his artistic practice, Adam runs the photography labs at Otis College of Art and Design. His most recent projects involve creating tri-chromatic color separation photographs and algorithmically restructuring pixel array data.
holy shit