The Pictures Generation

The Pictures Generation

Essay by
Douglas Eklund
Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Young artists who came of age in the early 1970s were greeted by an America suffused with disillusionment from dashed hopes for political and social transformation to the continuation of the Vietnam War and the looming Watergate crisis. The utopian promise of the counterculture had devolved into a commercialized pastiche of rebellious stances prepackaged for consumption, and the national mood was one of catatonic shell-shock in response to wildly accelerated historical change, from the sexual revolution to race riots and assassinations. Similarly, the elder generation of artists seemed to have both dramatically expanded the field of what was possible in the field of art while staking out its every last claim, either by dematerializing the aesthetic object entirely into the realm of pure idea or linguistic proposition as in Conceptualism, or by rivaling the cataclysmic processes and sublime vistas of the natural world itself as did the so-called earthworks artists such as Robert Smithson, who died in 1973.

What these fledgling artists did have fully to themselves was the sea of images into which they were born—the media culture of movies and television, popular music, and magazines that to them constituted a sort of fifth element or a prevailing kind of weather. Their relationship to such material was productively schizophrenic: while they were first and foremost consumers, they also learned to adopt a cool, critical attitude toward the very same mechanisms of seduction and desire that played upon them from the highly influential writings of French philosophers and cultural critics such as Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Julia Kristeva that were just beginning to be made available in translation. Among these thinkers' central ideas was that identity was not organic and innate, but manufactured and learned through highly refined social constructions of gender, race, sexuality, and citizenship. These constructions were embedded within society's institutions and achieved their effects through the myriad expressions of the mass media. Barthes infamously extended this concept to question the very possibility of originality and authenticity in his 1967 manifesto "The Death of the Author," in which he stated that any text (or image), rather than emitting a fixed meaning from a singular voice, was but a tissue of quotations that were themselves references to yet other texts, and so on. 

Larry Clark

Via slamhype.com

Larry Clark DVD Box Set:


An absolute must have for art and culture fans. Larry Clark is the king of capturing youth culture and this DVD box set allows you to get a quick study on some of his best work. The box contains : Another Day In Paradise, Bully, and Wassup Rockers. American youth without compromises and concessions.


Available at colette.


Larry Clark DVD Box Set is a post from: SLAMXHYPE



Apple and Braun, a design story

from Design You Trust by Thomas Bouillot

Écrire un article sur l’inspiration d’Apple pour les produits Braun des années 60-70 me trottait depuis quelques jours dans la tête après être tombé sur un article de l’excellent Peter Gabor. Malheureusement le prématuré décès de Steve Jobs m’a convaincu de de franchir le pas sur la firme de Cupertino et sur je pense sa principale source d’inspiration concernant le design de produit : Dieter Rams.


Voici une série de photo qui retrace l’inspiration d’Apple dans les produits de Braun.


 


 


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Dieter Rams and Hans Gugelot


Il s’agit de l’un de mes produits préférés de Dieters Rams, difficilement trouvable de nos jours.


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4,000 Watts Of Pure Hi Fi Assault

Rebloggin's from: freshnessmag.com

Nik Nowak – “Panzer” Sound Tank | “4,000 Watts Of Pure Hi-Fi Assault”:

Nik Nowak   Panzer Sound Tank | 4,000 Watts Of Pure Hi Fi Assault


It was his dabble with electronic music which led Nik Nowak to his very first auditory installation. More recently, the Berlin-base artist embarked on something even more ambitious than just the usual gallery pieces. A mobile audio platform that he appropriately dubbed “Panzer” or “Tank”. It stated first from Internet bidding of an used Japanese miniature tracked dumper, then led to the installment of all the necessary audio contraptions, Nik Nowak’s sound tank housed a total of four tweeters, six 12-inch drivers, and three 18-inch subwoofers, with the ability to pump out 4,000 watts of pure sound. Faceted and angled for an even coverage, the custom speaker compartment can be raise hydraulically with a flick of the switch. The tank also offers power outlets as well as stations for drum machine, mixer, and synthesizer. Not only is it a show stopper, Nik Nowak’s sound tank will definitely have folks thinking twice when they want you to turn the volume down next time. via: DesignSpotter



Read the rest of: Nik Nowak – “Panzer” Sound Tank | “4,000 Watts Of Pure Hi-Fi Assault”




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Ruben Funkahuatl Guevara & Felicia Fe EvaOne Montes @ELAC


Thursday, September 29
Postscript 1
Starts at 7:00 p.m.
Small Gallery, 1st floor
Gallery Walkthrough with guest curator Vincent Ramos
Reading by Rubén Guevara
Performance by Felicia Montes

Free Event

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In All Our Decadence People Die

POSTED @COOLHUNTING.COM!

In All Our Decadence People Die: An NYC exhibit displays 3,000 works from English punk band Crass' seven-year reign
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Though London's famed punk venue The Roxy is now a decidedly sober Speedo Swimwear outlet, in the late '70s and early '80s, the U.K. was in the midst of a royal cultural battle between the Thatcherite establishment and a new breed of shock-and-awe artists and musicians. At the forefront of the movement, the English band Crass' two-chord rant Banned from The Roxy was somewhat of an anthem for the times.



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Preserved for posterity are 3,000 fanzines, flyers, posters, manuscripts and original works of art sent to the band between 1977 and 1984. These punk artifacts have been collected and cataloged by visual artist Gee Vaucher, who collaborated with the band and still resides at Dial House, a collective in the Essex countryside.



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These works have crossed the Atlantic for a special viewing from 30 September-20 October 2011 at Boo-Hooray in NYC. The gallery has also published a limited edition (250 copies) catalog along with 500 pressings of a 7-inch vinyl recording featuring Crass' Penny Rimbaud, with cover art by Vaucher.



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An opening reception will be held from 6-9pm Friday, 30 September 2011. RSVP online at Boo-Horray. See images in the gallery.







ASCO Firsthand

-Via lacma.wordpress.com -

ASCO Firsthand:

Recently, we talked to members of Asco, subject of the current exhibition at LACMA. Harry Gamboa Jr., Patssi Valdez, Willie Herrón and Gronk all stopped by during the installation of the show to share memories of the early years of the conceptual art group from East Los Angeles.


One of the events we talked about was the performance captured in the photograph below. Pattsi, Herb Sandoval, Willie, and Gronk appear in the midst of an impromptu meal, captured on film by Harry.


Harry Gamboa Jr., First Supper After a Major Riot, 1974, printed 2011. Courtesy of Harry Gamboa Jr.


The riot referenced in the title occurred nearby in 1971, when the Chicano Moratorium held a peaceful demonstration that degenerated into police brutality.


Harry Gamboa Jr.: LA County sheriffs open fired on innocent students and protestors, and wounded and killed many people who were protesting against the war in Vietnam, and were also protesting against police violence, which was followed by a two to three and a half year crackdown on young people gathering on the streets of East Los Angeles.


At the time that we shot [First Supper After a Major Riot], we felt that it had been long enough. It was time for it to be extinguished. And so, we declared it to be a celebration.


Willie Herrón: At the time of the Moratorium, I was in high school. I remember the procession originating at Belvedere Park, protesting the Vietnam War and all the Chicanos that lost their lives.  The police brutality was incredible. It affected me quite a bit and I think it affected all of us. So that’s why Whittier Boulevard became such an important street, and a place for us to conduct our performances and connect them to our community and the way society viewed us at the time.


Gronk: We decided that it was time that we would take action and actually use the streets once again. We would take over a street or a neighborhood and activate it in some way.


Pattsi Valdez: These performances usually happened really quickly. An idea would be sparked and then we’d gather all our stuff and Harry would pick us all up, and we’d put everything in the car, and then we’d zoom off into the city and find the location.


I think it was a combination of performance art and protest. For me, it was very important to try to get noticed because I had things to say. I felt like I had to do it in a big way, so that the viewer would pay attention. The look, the make-up: I needed for you to pay attention, because I had a message.


Harry: I’m behind the camera. I’m kind of pointing and telling people where to go, and actually, I was holding a handful of people at bay from entering into the frame. Because people wanted to join them.


Pattsi: Gronk brought that painting, it was rolled up. And when Gronk unrolled, unfurled that painting and hung it there, I was really amazed by the beauty of that and power of that painting.


Gronk: It is an image called The Truth of the Terror in Chile. That was one of my first paintings. Allende’s government had just fallen and artists in Chile were being taken into the stadium and hands chopped off or tortured. I was reacting to that.


During the performance, people either honked their horns or cheered us on. But also in the back of our minds…at the time a phone call was ten cents, so we all had ten cents in our pocket just in case we had to make that phone call from jail.


We’ll have audio from the interviews here soon.


Amy Heibel





In the summer of 1950...

Take from http://blog.drawn.ca -


In the summer of 1950, Hans Namuth approached Jackson Pollock...:


In the summer of 1950, Hans Namuth approached Jackson Pollock and asked the abstract expressionist painter if he could photograph him in his studio, working with his “drip” technique of painting. When Namuth arrived, he found:



A dripping wet canvas covered the entire floor. Blinding shafts of sunlight hit the wet canvas, making its surface hard to see. There was complete silence…. Pollock looked at the painting. Then unexpectedly, he picked up can and paintbrush and started to move around the canvas. It was as if he suddenly realized the painting was not finished. His movements, slow at first, gradually became faster and more dancelike as he flung black, white and rust-colored paint onto the canvas.



The images from this shoot “helped transform Pollock from a talented, cranky loner into the first media-driven superstar of American contemporary art, the jeans-clad, chain-smoking poster boy of abstract expressionism,” one critic later wrote in The Washington Post. But Namuth wasn’t satisfied that he had really captured the essence of Pollock’s work. He wanted to capture Pollock in motion and color, to focus on the painter and painting alike.


Above, you can watch the result of Namuth’s second effort. The ten-minute film, simply called Jackson Pollock 51 (the 51 being short for 1951), lets you see Pollock painting from a unique angle — through glass. The film achieved Namuth’s aesthetic goals, but it came at a price. Apparently the filming taxed Pollock emotionally, and by the evening, the painter decided to pour himself some bourbon, his first drink in two years. A blowout argument followed; Pollock never stopped drinking again; and it was downhill from there…



(via Jackson Pollock: Lights, Camera, Paint! (1951) | Open Culture)



Banksyesque Piggies

VIA hammertoff.de
VIA Design You Trust by Mircow



new zealand police 4 Become a cop

New Zealand Police recruitment campaign by M&C Saatchi.



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