Handicraft is a kind of craft in which decorative materials are made by using hands and simple tools.
Wood carving is a type of handicraft. In wood carving the wooden object is given a particular orientation using simple carving tools. A carving tool set comprises of a carving knife, gouge, chisel, V-tool, veiner. A carving knife is a specialized knife for pairing, cutting and smoothening wood. A gouge is used to make hollows. A chisel is used for lining up and making straight edges. A V-tool is used for parting and in some cases for emphasizing lines.
The selection of wood is also important. Hardwood is difficult to curve but has more lusture and lasts longer. Softwood is easier to carve but lacks durability. The selection of the type of wood has to be done by the artist.
Congratulations to the very creative Spanish ad company DoubleYou (link to a non-site), who have various nice projects,among them the ingenious DoupleYou Loop.
There is a dark corridor, with just one passage through some light coming from the half-open door to a production room. The corridor is not long, so before I know it, I'm in a black room. There is apparently no light, except for three large, very, very dimly lit images. Actually, they seem more like windows, as what we see on them are interiors - at first glance it is hard to tell whether those are three rooms, or the same one. The rooms have a sensual, soft light, and everything about them seems dream-like. That is a very comfortable place to be, delightfully melancholy, hidden in the middle, looking out into the private zone, the excessively private zone of what might have been a perfectly regular set of spaces, were they not so hypnotically absent. If there is something at once appealing and haunting in this triple view, I am reminded that there was a TV set in the entrance. I go back, and the curator Katarzyna Krysiak tells me that although the video is an hour-long loop, it will start again soon and is worth watching at least the first minutes. So I put myself comfortable. And the same room I saw on one (two?) of the pictures appears. And then, it starts melting. First, the back of the chair thins to nothing, and it falls apart. Then, progressively, the lamp gives way, the bookshelf (how could I have not noticed it before?), the table, the bed... The whole wax model (as it turns out) vanishes bit by bit. According to the curator, this is the artists reaction to a friend's depression. It is inspired by how a physical space changes in such circumstances. Johan Dahlberg is a master of disguise. But his masquerades are not about people. Rather, Dahlberg masks space. In his work (check out his site for several other interesting examples), illusion is the basis for questioning our relation with the space we see and feel. It comes as no surprise that among his favorite tools are models of rooms (their doppelgängers) and surveillance equipment. But contrary to many commentators, I have some doubts whether we can define Dahlberg's work through the prism of the "Big Brother" universe. There is so much more in his observing of our observing of an object! Be it with cameras and screens, be it through the nomenclature of surveillance and false spaces. But see, for example, this work from 2000, (Untitled) Billboard,presented in the Swedish town of Uddevalla:
The wonderful quality I find in these works is their capacity to confuse our sense of space, and question the order we assume as self-comprehensive. How mine is this space? Where am I in relation to it? And how sure can I be of it, of what it is?
The exhibition I visited at the Foksal Gallery (on until January 11) is part of an entire cycle called Quiet Home. What is the degree of irony in such a title? That depends on where you find yourself in relation to it, doesn't it?
The pictures from the exhibition courtesy of the Foksal Gallery. Photos of Untitled (Billboard): copyright Jonas Dahlberg.
Some of you scolded me for exaggerating. After all, would such a distinguished museum really purchase "unmitigated crap"? In the spirit of this holiday season, I thought I would post some of the offending artwork to see whether my more open hearted readers can point out the mitigating features I am missing. Here are some of the masterpieces currently enshrined in the collection of MOMA:
As I browsed through dozens of crummy drawings like these, I noticed that whenever I was tempted to give a drawing the benefit of a doubt I ended up deducting points for pretentiousness. For example, MOMA does not appear to own a single Disney drawing, yet it proudly features many lame drawings of Disney subjects by inferior artists:
Why should MOMA display such drawings while it turns up its nose at the Disney originals? Perhaps the answer can be found in a press release issued earlier this year, wherein MOMA praised "a psychological collage made by slicing and reconfiguring the pages of Walt Disney coloring books." The drawings in MOMA's collection are not lowbrow Disney entertainment, buster, they are psychological collages.
MOMA also has many exquisite pieces. But someone at MOMA obviously believes that no matter how poorly a picture is drawn, it can be redeemed by an intellectual purpose. Regrettably, these drawings and their intellectual purpose both strike me as unmitigated crap. However, I am confident that my network of art lovers out there can explain what I am missing.
Usually I start my critical review by giving a brief gist of the plot, but in this case it would be useless, since the director himself has not been able to explain the plot. It involves an underworld Don, Uday Shetty(Nana Patekar), who wants to marry off his sister(Katrina Kaif) to a white collar person. He ropes in Rajeev(Akshay Kumar), but his uncle(Paresh Rawal) wants to stop the marriage at any cost. Majnoo bhai(Anil Kpoor) is the chief henchman of Uday Shetty, and ably supports him in his deciscions. Other characters like RDX(Firoz Khan) and Ishika(Mallika Sherawat) are introduced and they further complicate the plot.
The comedy is good, but in parts, in most cases cheap jokes and mindless composition dominates the film. The plot is acceptable in the first half but goes completely haywire in the second half. This shows that director lacks script sense. Talented actors like Nana Patekar, Akshay Kumar, Anil Kapoor have been wasted. Cinematography is good and the music above average. In totality, it seems like a film which has been very loosely made.
In terms of performances, Nana Patekar steals the show, and is ably supported by Anil Kapoor. Their chemistry is outstanding. Akshay Kumar and Paresh Rawal are efficient. Mallika Sheravat is average, while Katrina Kaif provides the required glamour. Firoz Khan is good and looks crisp in his usual style.
For a career spanning 3 decades, he has done very few films, but all of his performances have been masterpieces. Over-rated bollywood stars consider themselves great by giving masterpiece performance in 1 or 2 films, while this supreme genius has been giving "once in a life time performance" all his life.
Be it Bollywood, Hollywood or any other film industry on this planet, no actor has come even close to matching him. According to me, he is the greatest actor in the history of motion pictures and i really mean it!!! What a pity!!! We are having the most precious gem inspite of it we disregard the gem and crave for petty stones(over-rated stars who depend more on hype and media than their acting skills).!!!
Actors- Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan Director- Francis Lawrence
"I am Legend" is a science fiction story; a virus is formulated which has an 100% efficiency in curing cancer, but it mutates to have disastrous effect on human beings. The affected humans turn into blood thirsty monsters. The year is 2009, and nearly all of humanity is wiped out, only few normal humans remain. One such person is Dr. Robert Neville(Will Smith) who is the perhaps the only normal person left in New York city.
This film shows how he goes about in his daily routine. He attempts to cure the disease by various trial and error procedures. The final outcome of the film is a philosophical one.
This film is brilliantly made; the cinematography is good, background scores are excellent and the special effects (as expected out of any Hollywood film) is exquisite. In terms of performance, Will Smith is mind-blowing, his expressions of fear, his deep observant eye, and his helplessness with which he talks to the mannequins completely etch the character he is playing.
Entertainment is the heart of life; according to me the most lucky person is the one who has access to various sources of entertainment. Laughing, singing, dancing, watching films, watching plays are the most common sources of entertainment. Of course you can create your own source(ex.- running through half feet snow in the siberian lands); your innovation will lead to enjoyment.
We have chatted in the past about artists who delight in drawing subjects such as hair or folds or water, that allow them to take liberties with abstract design.
The great George Herriman rarely passed up an opportunity to draw smoke coming from a chimney. He seemed to place smoke in a picture the way a hat designer would place a feather in a lady's chapeau.
For art's sake, every fireplace in Coconino County must have been roaring all summer long.
Each example is different-- fluid, intuitive and beautiful.
You can look at each of these little abstract designs as a miniature rorschach test:
For comparison, here is a drawing by famed artist Ellsworth Kelly from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York :
I think the smoke from Krazy Kat's chimney is far superior as abstract art.
I am writing my first post today, so let's see, what does the word "art" mean to me (an average 20 year old guy who has no artistic talent) ----> To me art has no definition, art can be anything : it is not the artist who creates art but the perception of the observer which creates "art". Who is the biggest artist? The answer is nature, if you have to compete with somebody compete with nature, you may not win but at least you will come close to perfection.
Well, he's not exactly an illustrator, but I simply can't let the great man's birthday go by without tipping my hat in respect.
The illustrator Robert Fawcett studied Beethoven's notebooks and found their thematic notations surprisingly similar to an artist's conceptual sketches: they are both "notations of plastic linear ideas."
Fawcett said that abstract drawing "is probably as close to music as drawing can come." Enjoy these handwritten manuscripts as abstract art.
Three pictures by Anoush Abrar. The first is in co-authroship with Aimée Hoving, and was a co-authorship, a Christmas Cover (!) for Das Magazin. The second comes from a series that answers the theme ""attractive and repulsive images". The second is from the Realdolls series portraying silicone dolls made in California.
Our human selves, as bodies, are shape, are skin, body hair... Manipulating the elements of the definition brings about strange creatures, disgusting and fascinating in their unworldliness. It isn't about the simulacrum, about the virtual dominion over our idea of reality. Rather, it is the exploration of our unrealness, the impossible shape that is human. What are we to do with it? How are we to deal with the body that is never quite what we feel it to be? So the question is not Who am I?, but What am I? How dare I include this and that, and for God's sake where is my perfection?! I deserve it. I deserve corresponding to what I believe in, to what I live as. But doesn't the language of merit (of deserving) hide our incapacity to cope with the neutrality of what is, or to differentiate between what is and what our concepts allow us to believe?
In a comment in the Portuguese daily newspaper Público, my colleague Tiago Bartolomeu Costa commented on a controversial artistic residency at the Gulbenkian Foundation, which ended in October with a presentation of the works. A number of young visual and performance artists were invited for a 2-month residency in the very space where the Foundation’s collection of contemporary Portuguese art is usually presented. The place was completely transformed into 30 large cubicles or divisions. Visitors to the museum could eavesdrop and discover how each artist develops his work, as the space opened for the general public during several hours in the afternoon. Theoretically, one could accompany the entire process day-by-day (I wonder if anyone tried). The entire (impressive and extensive) program which incorporated this daring initiative is called The State of the World, and this very title makes me feel somewhat uneasy. But first, let's hear Tiago:
Generally speaking, the protagonists of the arts of the body that were present [during the day of presentation] seem to have wasted an opportunity to reflect about what it means to create today. (...) the propositions (...) had in common what the artist Christian Boltanski called "the small memory" (...), but which to many of the creators became a runaway solution [in Portuguese: escape]: an apology of the idea that a selection of immediate and generational references can substitute, without any loss, History's evolutive processes.
There are several very important statements implied in this short fragment. 1) That there is a History. And not many histories, stories, lines. Indeed, in this perspective it is clear that the artists Tiago speaks of missed the point completely. However, "History" remains to be proven. And although History's end has been suspended, this still does not mean we have but the choice of either facing it or questioning it. But the very fact that the word appears here, in all its capital-letter majesty, is not benign. It has to do with the very opinion that artists should work on something called "The State of the World". What World? What State? What are we to do of the the legacy of the last 40 years of thought (and Boltanski is in the midst of it), with its “shift from history to discourse, from a third- to a second-person address” (Craig Owen, quoted from a famous essay called The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism )? 2) That there is an evolution, and that it can be ceased. This does make sense if we see any change as evolution. And makes a very interesting point: how do we feel evolution today? Beyond terrorism and cell phones, how does our (my) world pulsate? What leaks? What swallows? What itches? What feels good? I quite agree with Tiago that there is a tension that remains to be read, deciphered, discovered. However, 3) Shouldn't we accept this sort of intimate storytelling as an acceptance of one's own limits, an artistic modesty that is praiseworthy? It might go further than the postmodernist paradigm described through Craig Owens’ words. There is a telling slip of the tongue in the comment. If we read it literally, it suggests that the "selection of references" cannot "substitute History". This, however, implies that the artists put the generational references as an ontological substitute for History's processes. Which they don't (nobody declares or implies that the processes are susbsitututed). The problem might be precisely this: in the case of some of the young performers, the artistic discourse doesn't seem to come near the question of histories vs. History. The modesty seems almost unconscious, more like a limitation than a choice or perspective. So Tiago does raise an important issue: how can art deal with the world and its new type of globality? We are more conscious today of what the world is than ever before. Might that be why we are more reluctant to generalize, or even try and define its processes? But can we just turn away and ignore them? Of course we can. So why would we participate in an event called State of the World? On one hand, this "small talk" of the "small memory" could be saying a lot about the State of the World, seen from here and now. On the other, its difficulty with approaching these Capital-Lettered-Concepts could be a hint that maybe its time to start off without the caps.
Here is a poem by Wislawa Szymborska, the Polish Nobel-Prize-Winner:
No Title Required
It has come to this: I’m sitting under a tree beside a river on a sunny morning. It’s an insignificant event and won’t go down in history. It’s not battles and pacts, where motives are scrutinized, or noteworthy tyrannicides.
And yet I’m sitting by this river, that’s a fact. And since I’m here I must have come from somewhere, and before that I must have turned up in many other places, exactly like the conquerors of nations before setting sail.
Even a passing moment has its fertile past, its Friday before Saturday, its May before June. Its horizons are no less real than those that a marshal’s field glasses might scan.
This tree is a poplar that’s been rooted here for years. The river is the Raba; it didn’t spring up yesterday. The path leading through the bushes wasn’t beaten last week. The wind had to blow the clouds here before it could blow them away.
And though nothing much is going on nearby, the world is no poorer in details for that. It’s just as grounded, just as definite as when migrating races held it captive.
Conspiracies aren’t the only things shrouded in silence. Retinues of reasons don’t trail coronations alone. Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around, but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.
The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense. Ants stitching in the grass. The grass sewn into the ground. The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.
So it happens that I am and look. Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air on wings that are its alone, and a shadow skims through my hands that is none other than itself, no one else’s but its own.
When I see such things, I’m no longer sure that what’s important is more important than what’s not.
I know, Tiago - the big question remains: is this, can this small memory be enough? Can we spend time watching little branches and the butterflies' wings, and claim to any sort of authority in regards to the State of the World, or the states of the worlds, for that matter? It's a beautiful poem. One of the things I like most about it, though, is that Szymborska is not sure. There is a hesitation here. While us, poor contemporary creative bastards, often take it for granted. We just move on, as if this was it.
How many capital letters can we keep? How many should we? Is it a question of the times that are a-changin? The closest I ever came to a war was when the tanks appeared on the streets in Poland in 1981. I was 3. My memory of it is fairly clear. But do I need to have this memory to have my sense of what is important? Can’t we define the world as superficially as we feel allowed to? But shouldn’t a good artist be able to overcome the obstacle of taking all the caps off, and find a capital letter after all, say in the “l” that looks so much like a “1”? But then again, should she? Or is she better off in the small narratives? Does the “I” only stand for “1”?
= =
NB: Notice that Tiago is a performing arts critic. Would he write something of the sort if he were a fine arts critic? It seems unlikely. The modernist paradigm of an artistic soul that needs not the sullied, exterior world to create, is still quite omnipresent in the fine arts. The performing arts, particularly theater, have quite a different point of view, with a tendency to see the work through the prism of its engagement with the public, its dialog with “society”. I feel more affinity with the latter position. But doesn’t it sometimes limit our appreciation of the generous universe of art?
Artists and spies know there are two ways to convey a message:
The first is to write your message in secret code. This is called cryptography.
The second is to plant your message within a larger, non-secret communication. This is called steganography: hiding a message within an image, right out in the open.
Illustration is essentially a steganographic art. Rather than using the words of a writer, illustrators convey a message by folding it into an image. They use a variety of symbols, brush strokes, colors, facial expressions, body language and other techniques to communicate meaning that writers convey verbally.
Here are some dandy examples by Kyle Baker:
This picture has a text which you can certainly read, but the marvelous frowns on the young "orphans" add a whole non-verbal layer of humor and intelligence to the message.
In the next picture, Baker cleverly distorts the figure to heighten the text he is illustrating:
Try conveying this level of frustration with mere words!
Next is a joke which only works because Baker knows how to draw shadows and weak chins and thinks visually, so he understands that this person's pajama pants should be too short;
Finally, here is a neat example of the illustrator's art of staging and body language. The stooped posture of the interviewer, the wild gesticulations of Cowboy Wally, the arc of beer tracking the movement of his gesture; this all requires thought and planning.
These pictures by Baker are beautifully designed but they are also highly intelligent in a non-verbal way. This is different from the writer's form of intelligence, but it is just as rare and deserves just as much respect.
In recent postings about words and pictures, I have commented on the current rash of artistic geniuses who can't draw (or who, in the words of one commenter, are simply "writers who draw.") These artists don't communicate with steganography, they use cryptography. Their message may be concealed in the metaphor or allegory or symbolism of their written text, but it is rarely found ingrained in their drawings.
Whenever I write on this subject, I receive fatwahs and death threats from fans of Maus, Persepolis, Jimmy Corrigan, Fun Home and other fashionable works. They would like to dismiss skill or talent in art as merely "slick," but the roots of quality in art are too ancient to be so easily dismissed. Perhaps such critics sell pictures short because they can't read the steganography in art.
1. Time-based art has one crucial characteristic: it is time-based. Bare with me. Whether it's Matthew Barney's latest motion picture or a Dan Graham's classic tableau of the spectator, in this universe, the appearance of something is defined by its appearing. Well, as obvious as it might seem, this idea is often forgotten and disrespected by both artists and curators... A visit to the Museu do Chiado, where a temporary exhibition of the classics of Centro Pompidou is shown until January, makes it pretty clear. But what makes appearing a problem?
2. First, let’s clear some semantic issues. What is this thing that is sometimes called “video art”, at other times, “video installation”? For one, let’s distinguish "sculptural installations that include video" (and call them video installations) from "films shown as a work of visual art, either on a TV screen or a projection or the like" (and call themsimply video art). Also, video art can be closed-circuit (with a live - or near-live - image from a camera) or pre-recorded: this last case is basically a film, whether it’s abstract spots, the film of a tree growing or a narrative fiction (and whether it's single- or multi-channel). It’s the film I’m interested here in.
3. When entering a room with video art, I have a much better chance of appearing at the middle of the film than at the beginning. But is there a beginning? And does it matter? After all, in most cases of showing a finished, pre-recorded video, and not a closed-circuit video where we are seeing live or nearly-live footage, the artist himself suggested or accepted the idea that his work would be shown in a loop. What does it matter that a time-based work starts anywhere? A valid argument is that this approach can have substantial causes. The starting point can be irrelevant or of little importance (e.g., in the footage of Gordon Matta-Clark's Day's End), or in Douglas Gordon's Foot and Hand:
It can also be an essential element of the work. After all, the loop might just be the closest we can get to eternity. Yet this is not always the case. Not in regards to the works I've seen at the Museu do Chiado. Most of them not only acknowledge the existence of a chronological dynamic, but clearly use it in their very structure. (The curious thing here is that many of the works at the Museu do Chiado focus on the concept of time. There is talk of empty spaces in time, of the slowing down of time, of the feel of time. And yet, the point (of time) when the spectator enters seems to matter little!) It shouldn’t be surprising that film may well have a dramaturgy that develops over time! We may need to see the work from the beginning to the end to feel it. The only problem is - by the time we've seen it all, we've probably seen the end already and it just doesn't feel the same - sort of like having seen a spoiler in a trailer. You can still enjoy the feature film afterwards, but you wish you didn't know so much. The other argument is a pragmatic one: how are we to show a film from beginning to end to every single visitor? It seems impossible. But only at first glance. If you look carefully, you see how technology has changed - and the audience, too. Today, we are out of the videotape era, and we can easily go beyond the loop. We can have a PLAY button on every TV set that shows a work, we can have DVD menus, and even (cheap!) infrared sensors that play the video when a new visitor enters. And if anyone is worried about the overflow of spectators who make it impossible to keep starting at the beginning - unless you are at the Pompidou or at some other big-shot museum, it really isn't a problem. The museums and galleries still have a tendency to remain empty, there is more than enough time, and if there isn't, hardly anyone will mind waiting a minute longer to see the next work. It will only make her stop a few minutes longer by the previous one. Which wouldn’t be that worrying, now, would it?
4. Another issue comes to mind: What sort of aesthetic experience do we have while loopvision is still the spectators default universe? How do I, as a spectator, deal with seeing something “as if” I didn’t know the end/goal/development? It is not quite as if watching something I’ve seen (in its entirety) before. Could I say I am experiencing something, but acting as if I weren’t experiencing it just yet, fooling myself into a “genuine” experience? But is it not an ever more distant one, a bracketed one? The brackets... of knowledge? The issue of a well-informed spectator. A too-well-informed spectator. Let’s not over-simplify it into the old discussion of an intelligent reading of a work vs. an emotional living of it. There is more to our experience of a work of art, and it seems a fertile ground for further discussion. There is a sense of an incredibly fertile ground in the multiple and complex layers of what is and could be lived through by the spectator. The on-looker. The in-looker.
PS: Here is a video I would love to see looped and looped and looped- Gilbert and George's Ten Commandments For Gilbert and George. Notice the modesty in the title. The commandments are for them. They do not feel any need to preach them to the world, beyond proclaiming that this is what they choose for themselves.
Once lines have been hardened into the shapes of letters of the alphabet, their only function is to form words and sentences. They march in straight rows, following the commands of their master, punctuation.
But ah, before that stage, when a line is still free and retains all of its original primordial wildness, it can do a thousand things and communicate in a thousand ways.
Excerpt from a drawing by Saul Steinberg
The designer Milton Glaser emphasized the potential of a simple pencil line:
There is no instrument more direct than a pencil and paper for the expression of ideas. Everything else that interferes with that direct relationship with the eyes, the mind, the arm and the hand causes a loss of fidelity.... I like the idea that this ultimate reductive simplicity is the way to elicit the most extraordinary functions of the brain.
The domain of the created line began with the first bubbling urschleim, before your words had consonants...
Prehistoric cave art from Queensland, Australia
... and extends to the most exalted and sublime heights where the air is too rareified for mere words.
Detail from the great astronomical ceiling of the ancient Egyptian tomb of Senenmut, c. 1500 BC. Note the parade of gods at the bottom, with sun disks on their heads beneath the four lunar cycles.
The domain of the line still extends just as far today-- unregulated by civilization, unfettered by geographic borders or language limitations, and potentially infinitesimal in its granularity.
Rembrandt, Three Women Looking Out a Door
Lines that have been civilized into letters and words can never return to the pagan state. Language is rule defined, so it becomes unintelligible as it approaches chaos. But the lovely, wild line of art is still at home in chaos. And as Nietzsche said, "One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."
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