Is That Nat Geo Photo ... A Painting?

Frans Lanting/National Geographic

Tinted orange by the morning sun, a soaring dune is the backdrop for the hulks of camel thorn trees in Namib-Naukluft Park.

 

 

 

 

I can't quite put a finger on what this reminds me of — other than something someone would paint. But it is, in fact, a photo, taken in Namibia by Frans Lanting for a story in National Geographic's June issue.

Lanting explains how he did it in a Nat Geo Q&A:

    It was made at dawn when the warm light of the morning sun was illuminating a huge red sand dune dotted with white grasses while the white floor of the clay pan was still in shade. It looks blue because it reflects the color of the sky above. ... The perfect moment came when the sun reached all the way down to the bottom of the sand dune just before it reached the desert floor. I used a long telephoto lens and stopped it all the way down to compress the perspective.


Here's what the scene looks like from a wider vantage point.

Tape London at Design Museum
by Design Museum plus




Tape London









Timelapse from the Brit Insurance Design Awards ceremony on Tuesday 15 March 2011. Artists Christoph Katzler, Ante Krizmanic and Nikola Radeljkovic from Numen/For Use used 156 rolls of sticky tape to construct a one-day installation as a backdrop for the ceremony at the museum.

Film by Luke Hayes
lukehayes.com 

Tape Vienna

Hudson River School - Albert Bierstadt

Born in Germany, Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) was two years old when his family emigrated to America. Though he returned to his homeland to study painting and began establishing his reputation as a landscape painter with European scenes, Bierstadt became internationally renowned for his paintings of the unsettled American West.

A second generation member of The Hudson River School, Bierstadt initially made sketching trips to the White Mountains and Newport in New England, but beginning in 1859, he made three trips west, each time making oil sketches which he used as the basis for often large scaled panoramic views of Western scenery. Bierstadt created luminous, detailed but romanticized paintings that interpreted the American wilderness as a manifestation of the sublime. His works found their way into public and private collections at staggeringly high prices for his time, but as the nineteenth century drew to a close, interest in his work waned, eventually forcing him into bankruptcy. Time, however, has renewed interest in Bierstadt’s art, and he is now regarded as one of the greatest landscape artists in history.

Alexander McQueen

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art


Alexander McQueen (British, 1969–2010) was one of fashion’s most influential, imaginative, and inspiring designers at the turn of the millennium. In landmark collections presented over a prolific 19-year career, he challenged and expanded our understanding of clothing beyond utility to a conceptual expression of culture, politics, and identity. Trained in Savile Row, he produced iconic silhouettes—the crinoline, the pannier, the corset—while subverting traditional tailoring and dressmaking practices. His astonishing and extravagant runway presentations suggested avant-garde installation and performance art. Among his recurring themes and narrative concepts were Victorian England and the Byronic anti-hero as well as the dark undercurrents of nature. Whether they showcase skulls, tartan plaids, reptile skin, butterflies, or feathers, McQueen’s extraordinary creations celebrate his deep engagement with the sublime. Our Armadillo Shoe figurine was expressly made for the exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and adapts one of McQueen’s most avant-garde designs. 
 

Dress
VOSS, spring/summer 2001
Red and black ostrich feathers and glass medical slides painted red
Courtesy of Alexander McQueen 

 In Mc Queen's Words
"There's blood beneath every layer of skin" - The Observer Magazine, October 7, 2011

Andrew Bolton: This particular dress came from a collection called VOSS, which was all about beauty. And I think one of McQueen’s greatest legacies was how he would challenge normative conventions of beauty and challenge your expectations of beauty—what we mean by beauty. This particular one is made out of ostrich feathers dyed red. And the glass slides are actually microscope slides that have been painted red to give the idea of blood underneath. And there’s a wonderful quote in association with this dress, where he talks about how there’s blood beneath every layer of skin. And it’s an incredible, again, very powerful, powerful piece.

UPDATED: Ai Weiwei’s Zodiac Unveiled, Mayor Bloomberg Applauds Artist’s Courage 

by Kyle Chayka on May 4, 2011 

Today’s rain may have put a damper on the unveiling of Ai Weiwei‘s “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads” (2009) at the Pulitzer Fountain, located at Central Park South and Fifth Avenue, but what certainly cast a pall over the event was the artist’s own absence. After over a month since his arrest by the Chinese government, we still haven’t heard from the dissident artist. The opening of “Zodiac Heads” was met with widespread support for Ai’s plight and for his politically contentious work, both from Mayor Bloomberg and the city’s influential arts community.

This is the first time that public art has been installed at the Pulitzer Fountain outside the Plaza Hotel, and Ai’s work is particularly well-suited to the space. The Zodiac heads range around the wide fountain pool in a single curved line; from the front, a confrontational group, up close, masterpieces of expressive sculpture. Each head belongs to a different animal in the Chinese Zodiac, and each is imbued with its own distinctive personality. What is most imposing about these sculptures is their massive quality; each weighs up to half a ton. But it’s the animals’ expressions that really drive the heavy, surreal feeling of the works home. Blank eyes stare out at viewers, mouths and snouts twist into manic grins.
After a slight delay spent standing outside in the rain, the unveiling began in earnest with the arrival of Mayor Bloomberg. In an introductory speech that was appreciative of both the Zodiac heads and the artist who created them, Bloomberg spoke out against Ai’s continued detention and the restriction of free speech in China:

Artists risk everything to create. They risk failure. They risk rejection. They risk public criticism. But artists like Ai Weiwei, who come from places that do not value and protect free speech, risk even more than that … His willingness to take those risks, and face the consequences, speaks not only to his courage, but also to the indomitable desire for freedom that is inside every human being.

As Ai spent over a decade living in New York and has been a constant visitor ever since, Bloomberg went to lengths to claim Ai as one of the city’s own. After a speech from Larry Warsh, the founder of AW Asia, who helped produce the exhibition, Bloomberg introduced a group of 12 significant New York City cultural figures, including track-suited artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel, Iranian artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat (and her ever-present eye shadow), choreographer Bill T. Jones and Agnes Gund, the Museum of Modern Art’s president emerita.

Ai Weiwei's Artwork Travels, Despite Detainment
 by Laura Sydell

Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei was awarded the Chinese 

Contemporary Art Award for Lifetime Contribution in 2008. He was taken 

into custody by Chinese authorities nearly a month ago.

  Twelve large sculptures by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei will be unveiled Monday in New York, but the whereabouts of their creator remain unknown.     Ai was taken into custody by Chinese authorities nearly a month ago and, according to his family, the government still has not told them where he is or why he was taken.

   Ai has always been outspoken in both his art and his life, but recent events in China and the Middle East have brought greater government scrutiny to one of the country's best-known artists.

A Visit With Ai Weiwei
   Two years ago, just before the Beijing Summer Olympics, I visited Ai at his sprawling studio complex in Beijing.
    At the time, the artist-activist was embroiled in yet another controversy: He had just quit the team in charge of designing Beijing's Olympic stadium — known as the Bird's Nest — calling China's attitude toward the Olympics a "pretend smile."  

   Ai told me that he saw the moment as an opportunity to use the Chinese government's methods against it, and poke a hole in its public relations campaign.

    We spoke in a studio filled with assistants and freely roaming cats. I held a microphone in front of Ai as he snapped pictures of me for his blog.

   Before being taken into custody, Ai was a prolific blogger who wrote as many as five posts a day and put up hundreds of photos at that same pace. He told me that blogging was his creative response to being under constant government surveillance.

Enlarge Jeff Kelley
 
In 2008, NPR's Laura Sydell sat down with artist Ai Weiwei at his studio in Beijing, where he kept his camera at arm's reach.

Jeff Kelley

  

  In 2008, NPR's Laura Sydell sat down with artist Ai Weiwei at his studio in Beijing, where he kept his camera at arm's reach.

   "Instead of [letting] somebody monitor me, I put everything on my blog," he said. "They can just read my blog."

   Since 2005, Ai had been blogging at the invitation of Sina, one of China's major Internet portals. But instead of the celebrity blog the site had initially hoped for, Ai gave them a stream of government criticism. Sina eventually asked him to tone it down, but Ai refused.

   He told them, "'I believe in freedom of expression and you can always close [it] down because it's your company. But I will never do self-censorship. Either you close it up or I will continue putting those things up.'"

   Sina ultimately let Ai keep his blog, after moving it off the home page.

Playing With The Public, The Sacred And The Ordinary

   According to independent art curator and critic Jeff Kelley, Ai is just as bold and confrontational in his visual art as he is in his activism.

   "He has taken the radical position of feeling as though it's his birthright to say whatever he wants to say," Kelley says.

    Still, Kelley says the message may be less direct in Ai's visual art, and therefore less threatening to Chinese authorities. Take, for example, the complex structure of the Olympic stadium, which could actually be read as a statement about democracy.

   "There's hundreds and hundreds of joints, none of them repeat themselves," Kelley says. "So in a certain way, it's a metaphor for the very idea of some cacophonous public speaking and it's a very democratic space."

       But Ai's works also play with what is sacred. In 1995, he created a series of photos that show him holding a valuable Han Dynasty vase, dropping it and letting it break into pieces.

Melissa Chiu, director of the Museum at the Asia Society in New York, says the vase photos commented on what China was doing to its cultural heritage.

"Great examples of architectural heritage were actually being destroyed to make way for new buildings," Chiu says. "And it was also a time when, within China, antiquities were not greatly valued. So he was kind of making a comment on this very particular moment."

Chiu says Ai has also made something sacred out of the ordinary.

Painting 100 Million Sunflower Seeds: A Futile Art Endeavor?

    For Sunflower Seeds, Ai commissioned a factory in China to make 100 million porcelain representations of the common Chinese snack. He then spread them across a floor at the Tate Modern in London.

    "So he's making something from every day into something very precious," Chiu says. "And if you've come across anybody who's been in London in the past few months, they've all got their handful of Ai Weiwei sunflower seeds."

Remembering China's Imperial Past

   On Monday, 12 800-pound animal heads designed by Ai to represent the Chinese zodiac will be unveiled in New York at Central Park's Pulitzer Fountain.

Ding Musa/AW Asia
   Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads makes its outdoor debut in New York on May 2.

Larry Warsh, founder of the AW Asia art organization, is responsible for bringing the work to New York. He says the piece Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads alludes to a recent incident in which two Qing Dynasty bronze sculptures of zodiac heads were put up for auction in Paris over the objection of the Chinese government.

     The sculptures were believed to be part of the famed 18^th century fountain-clock at the imperial Chinese retreat at Yuanming Yuan. The heads disappeared in 1860 when the retreat was pillaged by French and British troops.

   "It does bring questions [about] looting and who owns what," Warsh says.

Ai was scheduled to be in New York for the May 2 unveiling of Circle of Animals, but he's been in the custody of Chinese Authorities since April 3.

'He's Doing Activism As An Artist'

Many western observers say Ai is being detained because of what he had written on his blog.

Right after the 2008 earthquake that devastated China, for example, Ai began collecting the names of students who had died when poorly constructed schools collapsed. When the government refused to release the names of the dead, he posted them on his blog and built a wall for them.

   Critic Kelley remembers Ai showing him the work: "At that moment, something buckled in me and I said to myself, 'OK, is this art?' And then immediately I said, 'It doesn't matter. What matters is that he's doing it as an artist. He's doing activism as an artist.'"

   Ai collected more than 5,000 names and it was only after he released them that the government came forward with its own list.

  

One Voice For Many

   For a long time, it seemed like Ai's international fame gave him more leeway to be critical of the government. But the Asia Society's Chiu says that after the social media-spurred revolutions broke out in the Middle East, the climate in China shifted.

   "Now we have a situation where it's not just him, but scores of others that have also been detained," she says.

   Back in 2008, I asked Ai to weigh in the idea that his fame had given him more freedom to be critical of the government.

   "If that's true, that means I really have to work harder to make them more conscious about my existence," Ai said. "Because there [are] so many people who cannot have a voice."

Ai paused, then asked, "How can you predict what's in a dictator's mind? You know if you really think about them, you are already a victim of them."

npr.com