Vintage Mouse Porn (NSFW). Pre-1970 pornography, redrawn with cartoon mice. [more inside]
posted by kuujjuarapik on Nov 7, 2009 - 27 comments

"Efficient Mondrian is a tongue-in-cheek art installation which generates HTML table compositions in the style of Piet Mondrian's Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red from the text of The Principles of Scientific Management by FW Taylor. It does this every two minutes, posting the results to twitter." [via mefi projects]
posted by brundlefly on Nov 6, 2009 - 17 comments

Hey Oscar Wilde! It's Clobberin' Time!!! is a blog featuring gobs of drawings by comic book artists of their favorite literary authors or characters. [via] [more inside]
posted by marxchivist on Nov 6, 2009 - 26 comments

The Greatest Velvet Paintings of Science Fiction Icons [more inside]
posted by JoanArkham on Nov 5, 2009 - 20 comments

In March of 2007 Seattle artist Jack Daws (unrelated previously) went to a newsstand in LAX and bought a Hustler magazine, with cash. The cash included a counterfeit penny he had made from 18 Karat gold. Two and a half years later, 2,798 miles away, at the C-Town Supermarket on Manhattan Avenue, in Brooklyn, artist Jessica Reed found the penny.
posted by dirtdirt on Nov 5, 2009 - 50 comments

The 65-Year-Old Virgin: Robert Bergman’s photographs, finally revealed. "The last time Robert Bergman had a gallery show, it was 1964, and he was 20 years old. The college dropout and his best friend, Danny Seymour, took their earliest photographs, produced in a 'lint-filled darkroom'—a.k.a. his mother’s laundry room—to a 'rinky-dink bookstore' in Minneapolis’s run-down West Bank. 'Me and Danny just threw some pictures up on the wall,' he says. 'You couldn’t even call that a show.' Bergman is 65 now, and making a real debut in not one but three venues, at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center; Chelsea’s Yossi Milo Gallery; and, extraordinarily, the National Gallery of Art. (This is the National Gallery’s first artist’s debut show ever.)" An interview with Robert Bergman, and a slideshow of some of his work.
posted by ocherdraco on Nov 4, 2009 - 12 comments

Mad Men: Soviet Style. Beautiful advertising posters from the USSR.
posted by grumblebee on Nov 4, 2009 - 54 comments

The Happiness Hat. A project designed to put a smile on your face. From Lauren McCarthy.
posted by boo_radley on Nov 3, 2009 - 46 comments

Philip Bloom's: Venice's People; Dublin's People; San Francisco's People; Sofia's People. Vimeo vids.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy on Nov 3, 2009 - 17 comments

"Some People" is a comic about perspective, misunderstanding, and people. The artist writes a lot of interesting comics.
posted by Taft on Oct 31, 2009 - 22 comments

Enrich your Halloween experience with some seasonally appropriate art: the whimsical and charming SkeleCANS (flapjax recommends: slideshow viewing) from New Orleans' indefatigable Skeleton Krewe.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Oct 31, 2009 - 6 comments

Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) was a British painter. [more inside]
posted by fire&wings on Oct 30, 2009 - 12 comments

"In April 2009, we sent a personal, handwritten letter to each of the 467 households in the small Irish village of Cushendall." Now, Michael Crowe and Lenka Clayton (previously on MeFi) intend to send a letter to everyone on the planet.
posted by creeky on Oct 30, 2009 - 63 comments

Sculptor creates, copycat copies. We'll settle this in court! Bizarro world court that is... (via Consumerist) [more inside]
posted by Marky on Oct 29, 2009 - 29 comments

Luigi Russolo was a futurist painter, experimental composer, and instrument builder. In his 1913 manifesto "The Art of Noises" he declaimed the death of traditional Western music and foresaw the dawning of a new music based on the grinding, screeching, moaning, crackling and buzzing of mechanical instruments. He and his assistant Ugo Piatti built the Intonarumori to bring these new sounds - "the palpitation of valves, the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of a tram on its rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags" - to life. Listen to them, then and now.
posted by fire&wings on Oct 28, 2009 - 10 comments

Rabbit Tarot by Nakisha Elsje VanderHoeven. [more inside]
posted by cjorgensen on Oct 26, 2009 - 24 comments

Want to see Trajan's Column, Michelangelo’s David (with or without fig leaf), and Notre Dame all in one room? (Well, two rooms.) The Victoria and Albert’s “Cast Courts” are an amazing example of Victorian plaster casting, allowing those who couldn't afford the Grand Tour a chance to see great works of art and architecture.
posted by JoanArkham on Oct 26, 2009 - 22 comments

A Heart a Day — Freelance illustrator Thomas Fuchs manages to include a heart in his daily drawings.
posted by netbros on Oct 26, 2009 - 9 comments

Ignore Everybody: Reflections on living a creative life, via No Depression blogs.
posted by Miko on Oct 23, 2009 - 44 comments

Rachell Sumpter takes color and detail to the extreme in her art exhibits, reminiscent of Fantasia in a sense. Sumpter is developing quite the portfolio as demonstrated at the Richard Heller Gallery. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Oct 22, 2009 - 9 comments

Good Night and Tough Luck "Getting a good night’s sleep is actually a lot more complicated than one would think." An amusing look at the problems involved in getting a good night's sleep.
posted by nooneyouknow on Oct 22, 2009 - 62 comments

On Tender Hooks - New sculptures by Beth Cavener-Stichter on display at NYC's Claire Oliver Gallery. (NSFW: tastefully artistic goat boners.)
posted by hermitosis on Oct 22, 2009 - 58 comments

What Should Museums Throw Out? At a time when controversial moves by major art museums are making the public more aware than ever of how museums collect or discard objects, the University College of London's museum invites visitors to play curator in the exhibit Disposal, viewing some white-elephant objects and determining their fate. The museum also just wrapped up another innovative exhibit on objects and point of vew, Object Retrieval, in which one object was explored and responded to by a rolling team of contributors from varying displines, 24 hours a day, for one week.
posted by Miko on Oct 22, 2009 - 22 comments

Alastair Levy is a photographer.
posted by nthdegx on Oct 21, 2009 - 16 comments

Alasdair Gray is best known as a novelist but his illustrations of his own books have long fascinated and delighted. Here you can see hundreds of artworks by Alasdair Gray, including some book illustrations, from 1950 through 2009. Here are a few of his works that I like: unfinished Scottish Society of Playwrights poster, Nina Watching the Simpsons, Erics Watching Television, Ice Age and Babylonian Science, theatre poster for A Clockwork Orange and the Scots Hippo series. Also on the website there are a lot of articles about and by Alasdair Gray reposted from various publications. And finally, here's a podcast of a talk Alasdair Gray gave called The First Pictures I Enjoyed.
posted by Kattullus on Oct 20, 2009 - 18 comments

Anthony Falzone and the Fair Use Project have dropped Shepard Fairey's case after he admitted he lied and submitted false evidence in his suit against the Associated Press. (Previously).
posted by CheeseDigestsAll on Oct 17, 2009 - 50 comments

Wonderful documentary on the art inspired chain of Best retail stores designed by Site architectural firm in the '70s and early '80s. 1::2::3::4
posted by vronsky on Oct 12, 2009 - 17 comments

Juan Cabral, the commercial maker behind the Sony Bravia bouncing ball ad has completed a new piece: this time, he and collaborators, including Múm, Richard Fearless (of Death In Vegas) and the people behind Sigur Rós' live concerts, transformed the Icelandic town of Sey∂isfjör∂ur into an ambient sound installation, placing speakers throughout the town, playing music (from folk to electronica to ambient orchestral) and filming the reactions of the locals as they went about their lives. [more inside]
posted by acb on Oct 12, 2009 - 17 comments

the videos of datdatdat.org, Andreas Fischer, artist, designer and director from Berlin:
Palatine
Drone
The Tourist
The Omega Code

datdatdat is part of the We Are Chopchop collective.
posted by boo_radley on Oct 11, 2009 - 4 comments

The Images of Eyes Gallery exhibits images and paintings of eyes by international artists, featuring work from about 200 artists from Algeria to Zimbabwe. Gallery I contains figurative paintings, oil and watercolor paintings, portraits, charcoal and ink drawings, lithographs, sculpture, digital, and other fine art content. Gallery II exhibits nude paintings, so may be NSFW.
posted by netbros on Oct 11, 2009 - 10 comments

Maria Mochnacz, photographer mostly known for her work with PJ Harvey, now has a YouTube channel (Some pictures may be NSFW)
posted by Lanark on Oct 10, 2009 - 6 comments

The Automata Art of Steve Armstrong. Part I, Part II, Part III.
posted by twoleftfeet on Oct 10, 2009 - 9 comments

"The quest to undercut fashion’s standards of perfection, and to find beauty in the disdained, overlooked or overripe, runs throughout Mr. Penn’s career. In an otherwise pristine still life of food, he included a house fly, and in a 1959 close-up, he placed a beetle in a model’s ear." So long, Irving Penn.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Oct 7, 2009 - 20 comments

The Hay in Art Database lists 6,779 works of art related to hay, such as images of haystacks (Rembrandt, Monet, Lichtenstein) or hay workers (Van Gogh, Picasso). The accompanying blog has essays exploring various themes of hay in art, including hay on water, hay in winter, and rolls in the hay. There is even an introduction to the poetry of hay.
posted by twoleftfeet on Oct 7, 2009 - 19 comments

"This may truly be the most important new painting of the twenty first century." The McNaughton Fine Art Company presents "One Nation Under God" [cache], an... interesting take on American history in a nifty zoom interface. Artist John McNaughton, who calls himself "the only living artist in the world today" to practice the Barbizon School of French Impressionism, has an extensive body of less opinionated work for you to admire. Interview. Character list.
posted by Rhaomi on Oct 6, 2009 - 305 comments

An article in an art-related blog recently mentioned a new installation by a Columbus, Ohio conceptual artist named Richard Whitehurst: an exhibit reachable only by a tunnel, growing progressively narrower, with the artist waiting to rape anybody who attempted to pass. [more inside]
posted by acb on Oct 1, 2009 - 41 comments

Cut & Paste - International exhibition of contemporary collage and assemblage is showing in Stockholm, Sweden (and also, on the interwebs). See it in person now through October 10.
posted by grapefruitmoon on Sep 29, 2009 - 2 comments

Uno Moralez, aka Indi, produces some very disturbing pixel art (much of it definitely NSFW). [more inside]
posted by le morte de bea arthur on Sep 29, 2009 - 21 comments

Are figures in a Florentine altar panel attributed to Italian artist Andrea del Verrocchio actually by Leonardo da Vinci? "The Baptistery figures, if accepted as Leonardo's, would be the only extant sculptures made in the artist's lifetime..." Related ARTNews article, additional Smithsonian Magazine article, National Gallery of Art writeup related to the additional Smithsonian Magazine article, and the High Museum's upcoming Leonardo exhibit.
posted by cog_nate on Sep 28, 2009 - 21 comments

Ai Weiwei, one of the leading Chinese artists of his generation, has undergone emergency brain surgery after being beaten by police. [more inside]
posted by WPW on Sep 28, 2009 - 13 comments

UGO. The latest project by MIND and Jeff K-ray.
posted by Matthias Rascher on Sep 28, 2009 - 6 comments

The art of the Roomba: Long term exposures of the vacuum cleaning robot at work.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Sep 26, 2009 - 31 comments

Horrifically bad software demo becomes performance art
posted by kliuless on Sep 26, 2009 - 28 comments

Korsakovia is a Half Life 2 mod from research driven developer The Chinese Room. It melds the abstract driven story of their previous mod, Dear Esther (previously), with more traditional gameplay. The end result is an equally distinctive horror FPS with minimal narrative cues. [more inside]
posted by The Devil Tesla on Sep 25, 2009 - 16 comments

Oak twig carved from dissolved recording of the heartbeat of an unborn child and the last heartbeats of a loved one, bone dust from every bone in the body, ring finger bones coated in bullet lead from various American wars, glass eyes for wounded soldiers coated with trinitite produced during the first atomic explosion, WWI cavalry boots made from a melted record of Skeeter Davis' "The End Of The World".

San Antonio-based artist (he prefers "marterialist poet") Dario Robleto crafts exquisite objects using a physical lexicon that includes bone dust, analog audio recordings, war objects and remnants of extinction. By recontextualizing these items he hopes to reverse "historical amnesia" and to reengage the past by "seeking out and sympathizing with another era's hopes and losses through its people's stories and materials." Highly influenced by music, he considers his work sampling. As he says: "you don't have to make up anything; the world is magical on its own."
posted by nathancaswell on Sep 25, 2009 - 32 comments

COMBO - a collaborative animation by Blu and David Ellis. Made at Fame Festival 2009.
posted by Matthias Rascher on Sep 24, 2009 - 4 comments

70 years of controversial magazine covers.
posted by Matthias Rascher on Sep 23, 2009 - 70 comments

"All of which is a long way of saying that, to construct a new church of anatomical horror and to do so out of stone, as Al-Mehdari seems to be suggesting, is a fascinating idea. " - Body Baroque
posted by Artw on Sep 23, 2009 - 24 comments

Parle De Son Art "Jean Renoir Interviewed by French New Wave director - Jaques Rivette - about the technical progress in art. The dangers of realism and perfectionism related to the the technical advances in cinema." In this short interview (15mins.) Renoir considers such questions as "What if our tendency to imitate nature is simply a tendency towards ugliness?" and "Why is it that when technique is primitive everything is beautiful, and when technique is perfected almost everything is ugly?" In French with subtitles.
posted by vronsky on Sep 22, 2009 - 12 comments

Mountain Light is the latest beautiful time-lapse video from Tom at Timescapes. A little behind the scenes showing his dolly and camera setup in action. Check out his other videos, or follow him on Twitter.
posted by knave on Sep 22, 2009 - 18 comments