Artaholic

absurdlakefront:

Lake reveals prior Inhabitation.

 Potosi, Venezuela

beth cavener stichter, A Rush of Blood to the Head, Stoneware, 2009

“There are primitive animal instincts lurking in our own depths, waiting for the chance to slide past a conscious moment. The sculptures I create focus on human psychology, stripped of context and rationalization, and articulated through animal and human forms. On the surface, these figures are simply feral and domestic individuals suspended in a moment of tension. Beneath the surface they embody the impacts of aggression, territorial desires, isolation, and pack mentality. 

Both human and animal interactions show patterns of intricate, subliminal gestures that betray intent and motivation. The things we leave unsaid are far more important than the words we speak out-loud to one another. I have learned to read meaning in the subtler signs; a look, the way one holds one’s hands, the tightening of muscles in the shoulders, the incline of the head, the rhythm of a walk, and the slightest unconscious gestures. I rely on animal body language in my work as a metaphor for these underlying patterns, transforming the animal subjects into human psychological portraits.

I want to pry at those uncomfortable, awkward edges between animal and human. The figures are feral and uneasy, expressing frustration for the human tendency towards cruelty and lack of understanding. Entangled in their own internal and external struggles, the figures are engaged with the subjects of fear, apathy, violence and powerlessness.

Something conscious and knowing is captured in their gestures and expressions. An invitation and a rebuke. - Beth Cavener Stichter, March 2003

Garden, Katie Koti, 30” x 40”, archival inkjet print

From the Asunder series, 2008-current

(via iheartmyart)

So Help Me Hannah: Portrait of the Artist with Her Mother, Hannah Wilke, 1978–1981

(via sympathyfortheartgallery)

The Fagus Factory designed by the architect Eduard Werner, with facades designed by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer. It was constructed between 1911 and 1913, with additions and interiors completed in 1925.

For the first time a complete facade is conceived in glassflat roof has also changed. Only in the buildings by Adolf Loos which was done one year before the Fagus Factory, have we seen the same feeling for the pure cube. Another exceedingly important quality of Gropius’s building is that, thanks to the large expanses of clear glass, the usual hard separation of exterior and interior is annihilated.

Nikolaus Pevsner

(Source: thecabinet)

Erased de Kooning Drawing, Robert Rauschenberg, 1953

From A Genteel Iconoclasm: Vincent Katz on Robert Rauschenberg:

The genesis of the project is well-documented: Rauschenberg went over to the master’s studio and said he’d like to erase one of his drawings as an act of art. De Kooning, apparently intrigued, had three groups of drawings. The first comprised those with which he was not satisfied - that wouldn’t work. The next was of drawings he liked, but which were all in pencil - too easy to erase. If de Kooning was going to participate in this neo-Dada performance, he would play his part. He looked in his third group and found a multi-media work on paper that would be quite difficult to eradicate (the media of Erased de Kooning Drawing are “traces of ink and crayon on paper”). It apparently took Rauschenberg one month to get the sheet relatively clear of marks. No photograph exists of the work he erased.

Erased de Kooning Drawing is iconic because it stands for an era when something seemingly negative could, in fact, turn out to have positive repercussions. It is revolutionary in a philosophical, though not in an aesthetic, sense. 

(via juliegemini)

Jeremy Geddes

(Source: supersonicelectronic)

As I Opened Fire, Roy Lichtenstein, 1964

(Source: cavetocanvas)

Drowning Girl, Roy Lichtenstein, 1963 

(Source: cavetocanvas)

Hopeless, Roy Lichtenstein, 1968

(Source: cavetocanvas)