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A commercial for the iPhone aired during the Oscars last night. Rick Silva noticed that it was a lot like artist Christian Marclay’s 1995 piece Telephones (the relevant clip starts at 3:40) and, to a lesser extent, Matthias Mueller’s film, Home Stories. Nice detective work!
Update: Here’s a list of all the actors in the iPhone commercial (except one).
Update: The missing “French Woman” is Audrey Tautou from Amelie. (thx to several folks who wrote in)
A friend of mine who works at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln emailed to let me know that they’ve posted both audio and video of a talk that Chris Ware gave at the school last week. If you’re short on time, the real meat of the video starts around 18:30 when Ware starts a slideshow that delves into his process. In addition to his series of Thanksgiving-themed New Yorker covers from last year, he also talks about some of his other work, including Rusty Brown and the strip he did for the NY Times Magazine.
Laser Tag is a new project from Graffiti Research Lab. The idea is that you use a high-powered laser pointer to trace a pattern on the side of a building, a camera captures that pattern, some software processes the capture, and a projector displays the graffiti-ized pattern back onto the side of the building, more or less in real-time. The effect is pretty cool. The process and source code are available here.
Rosemarie Fiore’s awesome time-lapse photos of video games. Reminds me of Averaging Gradius. See also Jason Salavon’s work.
“Until a few decades ago, Gustav Klimt was relatively ignored by the art establishment. Now his paintings are among the most expensive ever sold. How did the Viennese painter’s prices rise so high so fast?”
Video of the World Freehand Circle Drawing Champion. I read somewhere recently that everyone seems to have a talent like this, something a little odd that they can do better than most people. I can spit watermelon seeds a great distance (I’ve won two contests!). What can you do?
Which of the following works would you choose to be lost, if only three could be saved: Michelangelo’s Pieta, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, or Einstein’s 1905 paper on relativity? Not so sure I agree with the conclusion here…surely Einstein’s paper stands as a work unto itself, apart from the discovery it contains. Plus, maybe someone else (or a group of someone elses) wouldn’t have given us relativity as elegantly and usefully as Einstein did. (via 3qd)
An appreciation of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon 100 years after it was painted. “It’s not just 100 years in the life of a painting, but 100 years of modernism. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is the rift, the break that divides past and future. Culturally, the 20th century began in 1907.”
Time-lapse video of Picasso making a painting, from start to finish. Tinselman has more info on the video.
The DrawerGeeks are a collection of artists and illustrators that all draw a fictional character every couple of weeks. The Harry Potter page is a good introduction to the work. (via snarkmarket)
Fun recursive graphic on the front of the Weekend Arts section of the NY Times today.
Update: Here’s an article about the artist of the recursive piece, Serkan Ozkaya, which includes a video about how he made it. And here’s a PDF of the page. (thx, david)
Upscale retailer Barney’s is selling cans of Campbell’s Tomato Soup with Andy Warhol labels. 4 cans for $48.
Just the other day I was thinking, “gosh it would be neat if they made a painting game for the Wii”. But a Bob Ross painting game for the Wii? Holy crap!
50 works of art you should see before you die, a list compiled by Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones and his readers. (via eyeteeth)
Hmm, perhaps Richard Taylor’s fractal analysis of Jackson Pollock paintings isn’t that useful after all.
The Whine Colored Sea issues a challenge: which directors, musicians, artists, authors, etc. followed a masterpiece with a bomb. Spielberg’s Schindler’s List followed by Jurassic Park 2 is a good example.
The Shapes Project by Allen McCollum. “I’ve designed a new system to produce unique two-dimensional ‘shapes.’ This system allows me to make enough unique shapes for every person on the planet to have one of their own. It also allows me to keep track of the shapes, so as to insure that no two will ever be alike.” Part of McCollum’s project is on display at the Friedrich Petzel Gallery in NYC. (thx, scott)
Penguin is releasing a series of books with blank covers with the idea being that the reader fills them in. The first books in the series include Crime and Punishment and Emma. Penguin has a gallery of reader submissions…send in your best shot.
Paddy Johnson wrote a nice feature on Teri Horton’s $5 thrift store Jackson Pollock and the movie about her struggle to authenticate and sell the painting. Johnson also published part of her interview with Horton on Art Fag City.
Artist Bob Dob has some nice video game-related oil paintings, including mugshots of Mario & Luigi and Mario & Donkey Kong hanging out, having a beer. (thx, chris)
Is this mess of a painting bought at a thrift shop for $5 a Jackson Pollock worth $50 million? I wonder if Richard Taylor has been contacted to examine the painting.
Greg Allen gives us the scoop on how big art auctions work. “People come to me and want to bid with a signal that they don’t want anyone else to see. He may hold his pencil in his mouth, or say, ‘I’m bidding as long as I have my legs crossed.’ And I’ve got their number, and they never show a paddle. That’s the way it’s done.”
Genealogy of Influence: “a graph of biographical entries at Wikipedia with connections denoting creative influence between philosophers, social scientists, writers, artists, scientists, mathematicians”. Reminds me peripherally of Simon Patterson’s The Great Bear (a print of which is hanging behind me right now).
Video of artist Stephen Wiltshire drawing a huge panorama of Rome entirely from memory. (via nickbaum)
Update: Video of Withshire drawing Tokyo from memory. (thx, eric)
Extreme trees planted and shaped by arborsculptor Richard Reames.
A list of 20 works of art you need to see before you die. They want to make a list of 50…suggest your favorites in the comments.
Interview with Cory Arcangel about his new show at Team Gallery. “I made the conscious decision that the viewer shouldn’t have to understand it; it should stand on its own and be beautiful. Anyone can have an art moment with my work, regardless of their technical knowledge.”
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