Kafka On The Shore

Alyssa by David Knight

I went to check out this year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery (the one in London, that is). The first prize went to the swimmer, but, personally, I only had eyes for David Knight’s Alyssa. Must be the freckles.

Louis Vuitton “Superflat Monogram” video by Takashi Murakami

In my (failed) attempt to find on the web that Murakami video starring Kirsten Dunst, I stumbled upon this very interesting short animation film he did for Louis Vuitton. I really dig the music on this.
Sidenote: I think the little girl is having one hell of a trip.

I open wide my eyes but see no scenery. I fix my gaze upon my heart by Takashi Murakami.

I went to see Pop Life, an exhibit currently showing at the Tate Modern, and the last room was entirely dedicated to Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, otherwise known as the Warhol of Japan.

As far as I was concerned, Murakami’s room was the most interesting and the highlight of the exhibition. The cherry on the cake was a really cool music video by Murakami shot with the collaboration of McG and starring Kirsten Dunst as “Akihabara Majokko Princess”, a blue-haired manga-like cutie dancing and singing a cover of the Vapors’ “Turning Japanese” on the streets of Akihabara (Tokyo manga central). The video is full of cuteness, weirdness and real sleazy undertones. Not available online yet but worth checking out when/if it is.

Murakami’s both an artist and an entrepreneur (=> an artrepeneur?), having built a commercial empire through his company Kaikai Kiki LLC. I’m not quite sure I understand what his “Superflat” movement is really about, but I do like how he’s all over the poku (pop+otaku) culture and how well he distorts the cute in the anime and manga imagery to highlight the scary and the deviant.

Gregory Crewdson’s Dream House portfolio for the New York Times, 2002.

“The catalyst for these pictures was an empty ranch-style house in Rutland Vermont. The furniture, lamps, even the hand-towels in the bathrooms, were exactly as the owners had left them ten years earlier when they passed away. It was an eerie and beautiful place, painted with memories. Absence was one of the furnishings.”
— Kathy Ryan, photo editor of The New York Times Magazine.

“…I just brought two unrelated ideas to the table. One was that I had always wanted to photograph Tilda Swinton and the other was that I also wanted to make a series of photographs in a particular uninhabited ranch house in Vermont. […] We amassed an additional list of actors, who I felt could inhabit the world of my pictures. […] We had mapped out a concept: to spend the entire month of August, with a production crew, in the house, separately photographing these actors. My parameters were that I would have complete artistic control and that the actors must come alone, unaccompanied by assistants or entourage. What ensued was a magical adventure, strange, enchanting and totally unique magical adventure.
— Gregory Crewdson

From Taste the Art, ARoS, 2007, by and featuring art director and artist Ivan Hvam Hvam

Post inspired by Benjamin F

British Museum’s exhibit “Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur”

56 paintings spanning the 17th to the 19th centuries in India. The paintings were commissioned by the maharajas of Marwar-Jodhpur, a kingdom in Northwest India (Jodhpur is the capital), and come from the Mehrangarh Fort Museum, headed by the current Maharaja Gaj Singh II of Jodhpur.

Captions:
1. Chakras of the Subtle Body (detail), folio 2 from the Nath Charit. Attributed to Bulaki, 1823 
2. Jallandharnath and the Princess Padmini fly over King Padam’s palace (detail), folio 19 from the Suraj Prakash, Amardas Bhatti, 1830 / Complete picture here
3. Cosmic Oceans (detail), one of seven folios from the Nath Charit. Attributed to Bulaki, 1823
4. Cosmic Oceans (detail), one of seven folios from the Nath Charit. Attributed to Bulaki, 1823
5. Death of Vali; Rama and Lakshmana wait out of the monsoon (detail). Illustration from the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas (1532–1623) Jodhpur, c. 1775 / See complete picture here
6. Maharaja Bakhat Singh and Zenana women savour the moonlight evening (detail). Attributed here to ‘Artist 3’, Nagaur, c. 1748–50 / Complete picture here
7. The Emergence of Spirit and Matter (detail), folio 2 from the Shiva Purana. Attributed to Shivdas, c. 1828

BP Portrait Award 2009 at the National Portrait Gallery, London

Some of the painted portraits shortlisted this year are spookily realistic and could easily be mistaken for photographs.

Works by: Michael Gaskell, Ian Cumberland, Sue Rubira, Stephen Earl Rogers, Edward Sutcliffe, José Luis Corella, Hynek Martinec

Hockney’s Yorkshire through the changing seasons.

The excellent BBC art series, Imagine, had director Bruno Wollheim follow David Hockney on his journey of painting Yorkshire. Filmed over three years with unprecedented access, what makes this documentary particularly interesting is that, for the first time, Hockney was happy to be filmed at work. Almost all of his Yorkshire landscapes, he spotted from the car, and together, the pictures read like frames from a road movie. Hockney has the knack to choose spots that on the face of it look dull but I guess, that’s precisely what make artists different from the rest of us; they see beauty where the common eye sees nothing and they make something remarkable out of something that appears unremarkable.

Here are some of my favourite portraits from the current Elizabeth Peyton exhibit at the Whitechapel Gallery, a shortened version of last year’s Elizabeth Peyton retrospective at the New Museum.
Peyton’s famous for her intimate and tightly-cropped portraits of Rock stars, friends, and family in domestic settings (lots of them reading or reflecting). Her drawings on display didn’t really grab me and I find that her persistence to effeminate most of her male portraits a tad annoying but there are some portraits that I find mesmerizing and she definitely knows how to use colour.

As it usually goes with paintings, you really need to get up close and personal to fully appreciate the work. Take John Lydon’s portrait called “Dallas, TX”, for example; the texture  and colour details of the orange wall are completely lost on the screen capture…Bah! whatever.

Shirin Aliabadi’s Hybrid Girls

Damn, I’ve just missed Made in Iran, a group show exhibiting the work of young contemporary artists currently living and working in Iran.