The first episode of the second season of PBS Arts web-original series Off Book is
Animated GIFs: The Birth of a Medium (mini-documentary, ~7 min). "OFF BOOK explores cutting edge arts and the artists that make it. Breaking the mold of the definition of art, OFF BOOK explores the avant-garde, the experimental and the underground artforms that are supported by online communities."
[more inside]
posted by flex
on Mar 8, 2012 -
10 comments
An internet search, even in these days of abundant information, yields only that the pamphlets can be found in various library collections, and that they continued to be produced into the '70s. And that Edmund Wilson once sent one, "Mr. P. Squiggle's Reward," to Nabokov, calling it "one of the oddest of many odd things that are sent me by unknown people." He also got the title wrong, dubbing it "Mr. P. Squiggle's Revenge," which is probably significant. But that’s it: nothing about Volk or McCalib.
Epitomes was a series of pamphlets published by Elwin Volk and Dennis McCalib. Few traces of Volk's life are to be found, but he seems to have been a lawyer, and wrote at least a
couple of
pamphlets about law, which he self-published in Pasadena. McCalib is equally elusive. A man by that name contributed to
an issue of One: The Homosexual Viewpoint in 1964. A Dennis McCalib also used the pseudonym
Lord Fuzzy. The aforementioned "Mr. P. Squiggle's Reward" got a
curt, two half-sentence dismissal in Poetry Magazine, otherwise these pamphlets seem not to have troubled the literary world. Someone donated
their manuscripts to UCLA where they rest undigitized in
fourteen boxes. But Library of Congress has scanned a total of
twenty-six pages in
high resolution.
posted by Kattullus
on Jan 27, 2012 -
9 comments
After the highly publicized Bruce Lee monument was erected in Mostar, a city and municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2005, a series of similar ventures were initiated in rural Serbia. Some sociologists describe the glorification of nonpolitical celebrity figures as the result of an identity crisis caused by the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, a period when a once functioning multi-ethnic unity collapsed.
—
Turbo Sculpture is an essay by Aleksandra Domanović about sculptures of pop culture heroes, e.g. Bruce Lee, Rocky Balboa and Bob Marley, which have been placed or proposed in the nation-states that once comprised Yugoslavia. You can also watch a
photo-illustrated reading of the essay voiced by a dead-pan British man.
[via We Find Wildness]
posted by Kattullus
on Jan 18, 2012 -
5 comments
Don Van Vliet is self-taught. He neither expects allowances for the amateur’s lack of dexterity nor permits any technical deficiency on his own part to limit his scope. Nobody's understanding or forbearance sets limits to what he does - any more than does the fear of going wrong. The lacerations, transgressions, and awkward moments that he introduces are unpredictable, as is their duration; when he takes the figures that confront him and tugs them out of shape, he simultaneously tugs himself out of shape - and out of his own limitations. - Roberto Ohrt
posted by Trurl
on Dec 14, 2011 -
14 comments
The Temple Gallery in London has more than 200 items of Eastern Orthodox religious art, principally icons, on its website, both from the
current exhibit as well as
older pieces. Icons have been a part of Orthodox Christianity for centuries and they are loaded with meaning. The theology is elaborated upon in
this essay on the history, principles and function of icons by iconographer Dr. George Kordis. One of the subjects of the essay is the
Byzantine iconoclasm, a central event of which was the Seventh Ecumenical Council,
depicted here in an icon. Here are some other icons I like:
The Forty Martyrs of Sebasteia,
St. Alypius the Stylite,
Synaxis of the Archangels,
Dormition of the Virgin and
Presentation of Christ in the Temple.
[Click on any image for a larger view]
posted by Kattullus
on May 10, 2009 -
9 comments
Seattle-based German artist Trimpin makes sculptural musical instruments. He was
profiled in a mini-documentary by Washington public TV station KBTC a couple of years ago. Here are videos of some other works of art he's created,
Fire Organ,
Liquid Percussion,
Cello, Sensors and Record Players,
Contraption at Seattle-Tacoma Airport,
MIDI-controlled Player Piano and
Sheng High.
Kyle Gann wrote
an essay by that placed Trimpin in the tradition of John Cage, Harry Partch and other avant-garde American musical inventors. The audio of a nearly hour and a half long 1990 interview with Trimpin by Charles Amirkhanian can be
downloaded from the Internet Archive. Another,
more light-hearted interview in connection to his show at this year's SXSW, where a documentary about him premiered (
trailer).
posted by Kattullus
on May 4, 2009 -
5 comments
The Essence of Line is a collection of over 900 drawings by French artists "from Ingres to Degas" by the Baltimore Museum of Art. I'd link to some highlights but the site
did such a stellar job of it that I'll just direct you there. They also have some
sketchbooks. Note that some of the drawings have short essays about them. As a related link, here is the famous
Demonographia, with drawings of demons by Louis Breton and descriptions by Collin de Plancy.
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 1, 2009 -
7 comments
