when food attacks

I enjoyed these macabre but lovely images. Spot the Death of Marat and Whistler's Mother ones (but are they hommage or parody? I'd say they were hommage, because they are both like and unlike the originals, and are saying something different.)

In these images, strangely attractive young ladies are menaced, sometimes actually killed, by food, usually the sort of food that one is likely to binge on. Yet the images are not gross; they have the high colour-depth of 1950s advertising, but instead of smiling winsomely, the protagoniste is prone; yet graceful even in death. The most tragic image is probably Death by Slimfast. My favourite is Death by Oreos. There are film references too: Death by Bananas references Hitchcock's The Birds; and I wonder if there's any connection between Death by Lifesavers and The Virgin Suicides?

Hat-tip to Balador.

Alas and alack

John Coulthart's excellent blog and website have disappeared - temporarily I hope. Oddly though, the RSS feed still seems to be working. I hope this is not a case of ISPs getting prissy and prudish. All URLs under the www.johncoulthart.com domain currently redirect to http://esc01.midphase.com/suspended.page/

Bring it back, bring it back
Don't take it away from me
Because you don't know
What it means to me...

mermen

John Coulthart asks, where have all the mermen gone?

Apparently all mermen are Asian. Either that or they look like Clark Kent underwater.

This one is quite sweet in a faintly Pauline Baynes kind of way but he seems to have a bit of a problem finding his assets.

There’s a faintly Victorian one here, but it’s by David Delamare, 2001.

I guess there’s no Victorian ones because neither Simeon Solomon nor the women Pre-Raphaelites and Symbolists turned their hands to the subject.

There are some depictions of mermen in Wikimedia Commons. There's also a weird cryptozoological specimen (warning: disturbing photo of dead merman) but it looks as if it's made of papier-mâché to me, or perhaps photoshopped.

sculpture on show

If you're down in Devon in September, don't miss Devon Open Studios, 10.30 am - 4.30 pm, 6th, 7th and 8th September 2008.

Peter Randall-Page is participating. I wish I could be in Devon in September, as I would love to see some of his sculptures 'in the flesh' so to speak. He is part of the West Devon trail (trail 2), guides to which can be downloaded from the Devon Artist Network (pdf).

I've been aware of his work since the late eighties, when I had a postcard of one of his sculptures on my wall.

His more recent work is even more exciting - it's so organic. It reminds me of some of Andy Goldsworthy's stuff, or Chris Hill's. I really like work that seems to reveal the hidden secrets of nature, like fractals, spirals, and the shape of rocks. Anyway, go and check out his website and admire it for yourself.

some art that I appreciate

• Ursula K. Le Guin, because her science fiction is philosophical, utopian, human(e) and poetic
• A. S. Byatt, whose writing is nuanced, intelligent and luminous
• Robertson Davies' dark glittering writing of depth, wit and perspicacity
• Patricia Duncker's wonderful novel Hallucinating Foucault
• Jeanette Winterson's early work, which is earthy and speaks to my condition
• Michèle Roberts' novels, especially The Wild Girl, In the Red Kitchen and Daughters of the House
• Salman Rushdie - especially Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Midnight's Children
  
• Iris Murdoch - again, her early work, especially Under the Net and The Bell
• Patrick Leigh-Fermor - the most beautiful travel writing ever
• Lawrence Durrell - especially the Alexandria Quartet, which is beautifully written and introduced me to Cavafy
• Many fine blogs (see Blogs I Read and the spiritual blogroll on dance of the elements), but especially The Expvlsion of the Blatant Beast, Quaker Pagan Reflections and Théâtre Phantasmagorique
• Lots of books
• The poetry of Sylvia Plath, U A Fanthorpe, and Hilary Llewellyn Williams
• The films of Jeunet and Caro, especially Delicatessen
• The art of Pierre et Gilles
• The Pre-Raphaelites, especially Burne-Jones and Evelyn de Morgan
  
• Marc Chagall and Cecil Collins
• Gustav Klimt
  
• Hokusai and Hiroshige
• the haiku of Bashō
• the films of Hayao Miyazaki
• the clear and elegant writing of Ronald Hutton
  
• Music: klezmer, cajun, medieval, renaissance, baroque, Dead Can Dance, Mediaeval Baebes, Dragonsfly, Kate Bush, Sequentia
  

Monsieur Tête de Pomme de Terre

A new toy has appeared on teh interwebs: Mr Picassohead. It's basically Mr Potatohead for the art appreciation fraternity. You can use it to produce Picasso-esque drawings. Here's mine.

Have a browse through the gallery, too - there are some amazing pictures in there.

Via {feuilleton}

Olafur Eliasson

The New York Times has some photos of Olafur Eliasson's work, in particular this one of his 2003 installation at the Tate Modern, which was awesome. The best thing about it was the mirrored ceiling, which meant that people could become part of the artwork by lying on the floor in strange formations, waving their arms and making star shapes with their friends. It was like some bizarre ritual, and very meditative. The best bit was that people didn't seem to mind doing all this in front of complete strangers, which just goes to show that the English are perhaps not as reserved as has been claimed.

You can see people making funny shapes in the photo on the right.

{feuilleton} has details of Eliasson's latest work, New York City Waterfalls (worth a look).

do you know what it is yet?

According to a poll conducted in 2003:

Nearly half of those surveyed could not identify Leonardo Da Vinci as the painter of the Mona Lisa.

And 7% thought Australian TV presenter and artist [Rolf] Harris had painted Monet's Water Lillies.

The survey, conducted by Encyclopaedia Britannica among 500 people, found 85% could not name Edvard Munch as the creator of The Scream.

British art also caused problems for many, with more than half could not being able to identify the Hay Wain as by John Constable, while one in 10 thought Botticelli had painted David Hockney's A Bigger Splash.

The survey also discovered that 43% of those questioned had never visited an art gallery in their lives, despite 68% of people citing art as important factor in society.

My knowledge of art is pretty good, so I thought I would see how well I did in various quizzes. I got all of the items on the BBC quiz right. I got 6 out of 10 on this slightly more specialised quiz on twentieth-century art; 12 out of 20 on this quiz about the Impressionists; 7 out of 9 on Art Schools 1860 - 1900. Not bad, as the questions were quite abit harder than just identifying who painted The Scream or the Mona Lisa. But even if Brits know nuffink abaht art, I hope (probably naively) that they'd do better than this on questions about current affairs.

surreal art

I just got a phonecall from Philip Bouchard, whose Surreal Spaces exhibition I went to last year in the Victoria Art Gallery, to inform me that his new website is up and running - he says it's not quite finished but I like the design anyway, and besides the paintings are the most important bit - and that he will have some prints on sale at the Atrium Gallery in the Podium Centre in Bath in November.

Do take a look at his pictures, they are really wonderful. This one looks a bit like a baroque Tardis; I also love the way he puts real buildings in surreal landscapes. The tone and colour of some of the works puts me in mind of Claude Lorrain, especially this one of St Pancras Station in a classical landscape - ah, apparently it is inspired by Lorrain, though I spotted that without reading the caption. I really like the way he plays with space, and the hyperreality of his style, which he uses to create illusory worlds.