Art/Design

Congratulations! You’ve managed to get through the first 2.5 weekdays. To help you get through the second half of your week, Jewcy is happy to present you with Hump Day Art. Think of it as an opportunity to devote your attention to the more cultural things in life, or at the very least, to zone out at your desk for a few minutes while you look at some pretty pictures.

In a continuation of Jewcy's recent birthright blogging, today's Hump Day Art features some lovely photographs taken by one of the participants on the birthright trip I staffed this summer. Ian Aleksander Adams is a young, accomplished photographer who documented our trip. He managed to come away with some impressive photos, despite an unfortunate run-in with an airport security x-ray on his way home that damaged much of his film. Here are a few of his best from our excursion to the Negev desert.

All this talk about the desert compels me to include this video by Israeli sand artist Ilana Yahav.

Last week: Interview with Patrick Winfield

Congratulations! You’ve managed to get through the first 2.5 weekdays. To help you get through the second half of your week, Jewcy is happy to present you with Hump Day Art. Think of it as an opportunity to devote your attention to the more cultural things in life, or at the very least, to zone out at your desk for a few minutes while you look at some pretty pictures.

Can't get enough of Jewcy's most recent featured artist Patrick Winfield? Here's a few more works from his portfolio of mosaic-like Polariod composites and eerie "appropriations." Click on the images for a larger view.

Blue Marble, 2006

 

 

Powerhouse, 2006

 

 

Odalisque, 2007

 

 

For more on Winfield and his work, take a look at this recent interview, in which the artist talks about his technique, his love for Polaroids, and what he likes to stash in his fridge.

A few months ago I related how the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade were using Google Earth to target their rocket attacks on Israel. Well, I'm pleased to say that the Chosen People appear to be fighting back - kinda.

An Australian art collective called The Glue Society have been "using" Google Earth to create satellite images of notable episodes from the Bible, and the results are, I think, pretty cool. (Hover over the pictures if you need a clue.)

The set of four images, known collectively as God's Eye View, were commissioned by Eric Romano of NY's Pulse Art for their Miami art fair, and use real satellite imagery to achieve the slightly eerie effect. "Art has always depicted religious events," says the Glue Society's Jonathan Kneebone," and this is simply a new way to do it. We're playing with the whole idea that if you can capture something from a satellite it must exist."

Not that it's entirely Old Testament-based. Mel Gibson will be pleased to see that Google Earth's satellites also managed to capture the moment when you guys killed Christ:

The Glue Society plan to use the same technique in future to depict events from mythology and history. Some people might find it tacky: I think it rocks.

These babies have more than just good looksThe Smart Car hits the street of America this winter. World travelers out there will probably recognize the mini-vehicle from the streets of Europe, where they can be found navigating narrow alleyways and parking in small spaces. Minuscule cars are all well and good over there, but will they hold up in America against an onslaught of SUVs? Watch as Americans interact with the car in this short video from the New York Times.

Take a look at these photos from a recent public art installation in Beirut, along with some commentary on the project, courtesy of the Wooster Collective.

 

"In post conflictual countries like Lebanon, the public sphere was condemned to death by war.

The residents of our cities lost the freedom to move around.

The public spaces that act as catalysers of the urban realm are appropriated.

They were claimed as private in the male struggle for power by the lethal bullets of snipers.

The stairs of Gemmayzeh were one of those victims.

Now it was time to act and try to reclaim these spaces.

Open Air cinema, a tribute to Fairuz the famous Lebanese singer, was a spontaneous extracurricular intervention during a workshop on public spaces organized by studiobeirut, Archis and Partizan Publik.

The idea was to reclaim the stairs as public space by screening a documentary on Fairuz and the Lebanese war.

The art intervention came as a means to appropriate the staircase and declare the physical and the visual united.

The black and white image in the flyer was scaled up and printed as a 3mx3m poster. The printout was sliced into pieces then installed on the riser of the staircase.

The original image can be seen from a vantage point at a far distance and at close-up it turns into thousands of pixels.

The aim of the artwork is to attract the locals and to try to re-familiarize the public space in a therapeutic way."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life imitating art: Do you picture yourself here?Do you ever feel like everyone is watching you? You may not be as paranoid as you think, at least not if you're one of the 8,760 lucky folks selected to be a part of artist Antony Gormley's proposed plan for London's "Fourth Plinth" -- an empty pedestal in Trafalgar Square with a changing exhibition of statues and installations. If Gormley's plan is selected, volunteers from all walks of life will be chosen to grace the plinth for one hour each, over the course of 2009. Once on the pedestal, they're free to do whatever they like.

"I'm sure we'll get a wide range of wackiness but I have this image of somebody coming from Pinner, clutching their handbag and standing in the breeze for an hour, not doing anything at all, and that being very valuable," says Gormley. Interested? See, you're not paranoid, just attention hungry.

The Wooster Collective is featuring photographs of street artist Sam3's warped shadows painted on the walls of Madrid. For an extended look at the artwork menacing the streets, go to Sam3's Flickr page.

Art team Otakulab likes to take strangely awesome photographs of unsuspecting people. In an interview in Shift, they warn their potential targets that they "look forward to spying on you through your window as you eat breakfast." The most important meal of the day just got a whole lot creepier.

The street art duo Os Gemeos, comprised of twin brothers from Brazil, has recently taken its cartoonish works to Lithuania. For more on Os Gemeos, including an extensive gallery, head to the Lost Art website.

This mesmerizing video from the Wooster Collective captures street artists at work as they create vibrant, showy murals in Miami. Artists featured include Lady Pink and Cycle.

Think your family is dysfunctional? Meet Uncle Monsterface, Redyellow Nose, and Captain Smarm of the sock puppet clan. Their creator, Marty, sells their adorable portraits online and at Union Square in Manhattan. The tiny portraits make a great gift for your own family. Maybe now they'll finally be nice to you.

 

 

Here's a heads up about what promises to be an amazing show from our friends at the ever-hip Wooster Collective. Curated by Michael DeFeo, tonight's opening at Ad Hoc Art in Brooklyn features 40 of the most recognized graffiti and street artists showcasing works they're not typically known for.

 

 

Miss Van's art incorporates femininity, attachment, and the power of hair. Check out this short film about her recent work, courtesy of the Wooster Collective.

The project "Seen in Behlehem" takes art to the walls and streets of the West Bank. More photos from this series can be found at the Wooster Collective website.

Village Voice art director and FOJ* Chris Sauve sent us this Louis Vuitton menorah, noting "Creepy!" But I'm not sure I agree. Religious artifacts are supposed to be fetish objects. We're used to opposing status symbols because of the empty, shallow things they stand for, but for a lot of people, a menorah stands for something deeply meaningful.  Making it beautiful -- OK, and also luxe -- is a way of demonstrating how important it is.

In any case, we're pretty sure the actual Louis Vuitton company had nothing to do with this design, and we can't find anywhere to buy it online, so it's probably more of a thought experiment than a high-end Hannukah present anyway.

 

*"Friend of Jewcy." I realize I'm sort of trying to make "fetch" happen here, but it's such a handy acronym!

 

Complex magazine has what might be my favorite of the Mailer tributes coming out this week: a post about his book The Faith of Graffiti. It turns out Mailer become obsessed with graffiti back in 1974, back when "wild style" referred to leopard-print sheets. Says the Complex blog:

[The book] was an oversized masterpiece with photos by Mervyn Kurlansky and Jon Naar detailing the mysterious emerging art form on NYC’s subway trains. The notoriously tough guy author intellectualized the graffiti movement in its early beginnings—’Faith’ was published in 1974—when hand styles were still being developed and most of the letters were very primitive. Mailer was fascinated by the art form, writing, “What a quintessential marriage of cool and style to write your name in giant separate living letters, large as animals, lythe as snakes, mysterious as Arabic and Chinese curls of alphabet.”

Think, 9 x 12 inches, Oil on panel, 2007 The painter Dana Frankfort is known in the art world for her word paintings, which manage to invoke color-field, graffiti, and graphic art in an exultant chorus that feels fresh, moving, and very, very alive.

“The words,” observed New York Times art critic Roberta Smith of Frankfort’s first solo show in 2005, “usually rendered in large, blocky letters that fill the canvases, glide in and out of view, a little like towering neon signs seen through fog. ‘Now’ emerges from a field of yellow, as ‘Hallelujah’ does from a horizontal blur of red-pink-orange, and ‘Yes’ from a small square of progressively greener greens. Other less distinctive works use exuberant but more notational writing to broadcast phone numbers, list the days of the week or exclaim, ‘For the Love of God.’”

Lines, 57 x 96 inches, Oil on linen on panel, 2007 Frankfort’s latest show, DF, ran at Bellwether Gallery in Chelsea from late September through early October. In it, she moved further into her word work but also introduced a (controversial) new subject: Stars of David. Jews have expressed indifference to, contempt for, and revulsion at these new paintings, which attempt to bring the much-maligned (but not oft-painted!) symbols into high-art context.

I first met Frankfort at the least likely bastion of artistic genius imaginable: Camp Ramah in California. 

***

How did you come to the use of words in your paintings?

I’ve always been interested in color field painting. In grad school I was painting abstract, large, geometric fields of color. I came to realize that my decisions were arbitrary. There was no reason why I was putting red next to yellow -- it was based on what I liked, and that wasn’t enough. I needed something to back up my decision.

I was freaking out and I stopped painting. I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing. I was lost. Mel Bochner -- a teacher of mine -- told me to just paint what I know. That simplified everything. It was months before I made a painting again, but then I started painting my name. Because I knew my name. I was going through a personal crisis - getting divorced - and things were falling apart. Then I started painting my address. And my studio number. Things I knew. Facts I could rely on. Old prayers I had to memorize in Day School. I was positive that these things existed. It was a way of working myself through an existential crisis. I could rely on these things. A yellow circle and a pink circle were meaningless but I knew my name.

Cute and Useless, 24 x 36 inches, Oil on panel, 2006And how did this early work evolve?

I was interested in born again religion/spirituality. I was taking a class on Hasidic Judaism in grad school. Looking at the art like revival. This minister Howard Finster -- he painted signs to get people to believe in Jesus. And having grown up in Texas I’m used to seeing Jesus shit everywhere. I just really liked the idea of a billboard that would speak to me personally -- so I was sort of painting my own billboards. What I wanted my billboards to say. I also like Marsden Hartley.

So you started to think more about color in that context?

Yeah.

How do you pick words now? Bananas, 72 x 72 inches, Oil on panel, 2007

It’s still the paint what you know thing. If you look at paintings from my most recent show, “Possibly Permanent” refers to the painting itself, to words, to me, to you... It’s coming out of an existential place. “Lines” refers to the formal aspect of a painting -- lines can come together to form a word or a star or just come apart to be abstract.

People (including me; see above) often invoke graffiti art in describing your work. What's the connection as you see it between graffiti and your word paintings?

Whatever.

Disaster, 60 x 60 inches, Oil on panel, 2007You’ve begun to explore the Star of David as a recurring symbol. What led you there?

I was interested in the idea that a word is made up of lines and becomes a symbol in itself. But there’s never an original, and same with a star. I like the idea that a star can’t be original. It’s a symbol that anyone can draw and have. There are finite ways of arranging lines into a star.

What are the challenges and rewards of trying to address such an iconic symbol? What are some pitfalls you'd like to avoid, and what's the ideal aim? How might people begin to see the star anew?

There’s a huge history of Christian art, but a relatively small history of Jewish art. And associations with the Star of David are pretty much lame and tired – like the Holocaust. I had a personal goal -- could I make a Star of David not look lame in a painting? Jewish art doesn’t have the same history as Christian art because you’re not allowed to render the image of a figure -- it’s sacrilege.

The Star of David -- no one knows where it comes from, what its origins are, for sure. Its earliest association with Judaism is believed to have been on King David’s shield -- the bolster/support behind his shield were these interlocking triangles.

What's the reaction been to the star paintings?Star of David, 72 x 72 inches, Oil on panel, 2007

Artists have been very excited about them. Dealers, too. People wanted to show them before they were done. This gallery in Belgium where I’m having a show in February -- in a city where there’s been a lot of religious tension -- are really excited about showing the stars. The harshest response has come from collectors. The stars have been slow to sell. One collector told my gallery that, though she thought the star paintings were beautiful, she was “too much of a self-hating Jew” to buy one.

 

Star of David, 72 x 60 inches, Oil on panel, 2007

My favorite of the stars are the orange and purple -- in the orange the star is really not immediately apparent; it’s revealed through brush strokes rather than color. And the purple is partially painted over. So it’s almost like you’re avoiding the most overt representation (the Israeli-flag-type of star, wham). Is that a commentary on “self-hatred”?

No, it’s about color field painting and form and the idea of lines coming together to make meaning and then falling apart into elements. And about the star as a symbol without there being one original. But I guess a person could psychoanalyze that.

 

 

Star of David, 4 x 7 inches (oval), Oil on canvas, 2007

You’ve been influenced by the color field painters, right?

I want to name my first son Morris after Morris Lewis.

So -- Rothko, Lewis, Reinhart, Franz Kleinz: Jews. Do you think it’s interesting -- out of this religion that frowns on representational images of the figure of man (whatever that may be) comes a group of painters who paint abstract blocks of color?

Morris Lewis was a genius. Underrated. A lot of stuff has been written about Rothko and Jewish philosophy. And I do think it’s interesting: the spirituality represented by those paintings. But there were a lot of non-Jews making abstract paintings too. Sort of like how there are a lot of Jewish writers, but writing isn’t a uniquely Jewish thing...

Of your first solo show, “What’s So Funny” (at Brooklyn Fire Proof gallery in Williamsburg, 2005), New York Times art critic Roberta Smith said: “She has gained enough access to her medium to make one curious about what will come next.”

Now, Smith has weighed in a second time: “Some shows have ‘back to the drawing board’ written all over them, and Dana Frankfort’s Chelsea debut is one... Ms. Frankfort has put down stakes where painting and language meet, but a greater effort is needed.”

Seems like she was invested in your career and is being extra harsh now. How do reviews affect you, if at all?

Reviews are very important, career-wise. And also, it’s nice to be a part of the dialogue. But I’m gonna keep painting either way, so they don’t matter in terms of whether I’m going to be a painter, you know? I’m not making paintings for anyone else. But in the art world people care about that shit.

These days I feel a lot more comfortable tossing out what is written. It’s artists opinions that matter to me; other painters. Those are truly whose opinions matter. Old professors, grad school colleagues. A small, tight group. First thing I do when I’m having trouble with a painting is call those people into my studio. The critics have their own agenda.

***

Got a spare twenty grand lying around? Buy a Frankfort! Contact Bellwether Gallery for details.

She's NOT biting the apple ... see? Eve got nothin' on me, bitch!I didn't mean to write pages 170-172 of Wendy Shalit's new book, Girls Gone Mild. It was an accident.

I have never been "mild" in my life. I get paid to tell dirty jokes. I have worked as a professional body double. I won't even eat mild cheddar. Or mild salsa. It's "medium" or bust with me.

Wendy and I are unlikely friends. Although we are close in age and both attended liberal Northeastern universities, Wendy is now Orthodox, married, the mother of a toddler, and, well, way more successful than I am. As a profile in the Toronto Star explains:

Shalit is the author of two thoroughly researched books about "young women reclaiming their self-respect" and rejecting promiscuity and the hypersexuality of popular culture and fashion.

Girls Gone Mild has just arrived on bookshelves. Her previous book, A Return to Modesty, was praised by Salon, The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, which called her "a prodigy at cracking the codes of culture." Playboy, on the other hand, put it under the heading, A Man's Worst Nightmare.

Wendy Shalit - She's So Modest, This is Virtually the Only Photo of Her on the Entire InternetHere's what happened. About a year and a half ago, I emailed Wendy; we struck up an online friendship, and met once in a West Village diner when she came to New York to visit with her publisher. I started reading the blog Wendy writes in collboration with some twenty other modesty-minded women.

I was sometimes sympathetic (it is hard to find a nice one-piece swimsuit these days), and sometimes turned off by the bloggers' self-righteous attitudes (oh, those grapes are sour!) towards female celebrities including Britney, Paris, and the proudly-hot-at-40 Cindy Margolis.

The bloggers are all, as far as I can tell, Christian or Jewish -- and, of course, obsessed with modesty. I would always laugh -- in my high-school-debater, "gotcha" kind of way -- when they commented on the dress of Muslim women. Comments like "Well, that's just TOO modest." In one discussion of an "interfaith hospital gown" (clearly a paper burqua), one commenter writes "Oh- for heaven's sake--Why not just wrap up in a couple of sheets?"

That, of course, is precisely the remark I would make towards the modesty bloggers' own skirted swimsuits and up-to-the-collarbone wedding gowns.

Oy! Imagine the Tan Lines From THESE Modest Swimsuits!So here's the story. One day, a "modblogger" posted a cry for help: "I've offered to put on a Modest Dressing Fashion Show at my church this spring, and I have no idea (yet) how to run it!"

I imagined a bunch of girls in department-store frills and bows, and clunky, secretarial two-inch pumps, marching through a church basement while awful Christian "praise music" blasted from a boom box and everyone stood around uncomfortably, and then nodded and applauded, saying to one another "See, modesty can be fashionable," all while wondering, each in his or her own head, how that spectacle was just so embarassing, and what is it those secular models have that our girls don't have? I was embarrassed just thinking about it.

So I wrote up a reply. Just a long blog comment, explaining things like "...work out ahead of time who walks, in what order, wearing what, and post the list on a wall right in the place that the models see before they walk down the "runway" ...Arrange things so that the hardest outfits to get into come early in the show, so that a model's switch from first to second outfit can be done very quickly."

Wendy's ModestyZone has featured the Gali Girls, which are like Bratz, minus the makeup, T&A, and implications of casual sexWendy asked if she could excerpt it in her book. I said "sure." She offered me an opportunity to edit the piece, but I was going through a divorce at the time (oh, the irony! score one for Wendy) and never got back to her. Next thing I hear, the book is out, and a signed copy is in the mail to me.

Thus, I have written pages 170-172 of Girls Gone Mild. I have also written fifteen posts for Jewcy over the last five days, and this is me, signing off as your Guest Editor.

You can see more of Wendy here. You can see more of me at Jenisfamous.com, or in Brooklyn at Pete's Candy Store. I've also conducted an interview with Wendy -- an extension of this post -- which you can look forward to on Jewcy in the next few days. And finally, I'll be contributing a post here and there as an erstwhile guest contributor.

As for now -- I never did get around to telling you about that time I spent Passover at my high school boyfriend's family's beach house in Nags Head. It was my first Passover; after three days of sunbathing and chopped liver, I had never been so hungry for bread.

This is the most Jewish I've felt since then.

Thanks, Jewcy.

Sincerely,
Jennifer Dziura
Comedian and Retiring Guest Editor

Claudia CoganIn his notorious Vanity Fair piece, Why Women Aren't Funny, Christopher Hitchens says that, of the few good female comics, most are "hefty or dykey, or Jewish, or some combo of the three."

I figured I'd use my last day on the blogging job to bring you more comedy coverage. Here is a hi-larious interview with Claudia Cogan. I'm not sure if Hitchens has Claudia's number ... but she definitely ain't hefty.

Jen: Claudia, I remember a joke from your performance at Pete's Candy Store about people thinking you're Jewish when you're not. Can you run that by me again?

Claudia: I ran into an old friend of mine. It had been a while and she asked, "How was your Passover?" And I answered truthfully: "Well, it sucked because I'm not Jewish."

Everyone thinks I'm Jewish. I got a Hannukah card from a man I've known my entire life so I called him up. "Dad, you know I'm not Jewish."

Continue reading...

When it comes to New York monuments, we are all gynophiles. The Parisian bod lurking under Lady Liberty's toe-length frock has long been the source of febrile speculation and intrigue. Fortunately, an eccentric Russian has gifted the world's largest vagina to Jersey City, as if to fill in the blanks of our imagination.

For those coming in from the Atlantic, through the Narrows, the Russian gift now heaves into view well before Lady Liberty. That is intentional, according to Zurab Tsereteli, the Moscow-based sculptor who created the monument. “To the Struggle Against World Terrorism” stands at the end of a long, man-made peninsula in Bayonne, New Jersey, and it looks from a distance like a giant tea biscuit. As you get closer, however, you will begin to make out an immense, stainless-steel teardrop—the Tear of Grief—hanging in a jagged crack that runs down the middle of the main slab. That’s when you’ll know that you’re not looking at some ordinary bronze-sheathed, hundred-and-seventy-five-ton afternoon snack.

Ignore!

Aleks Sennwald is this week's featured artist. Check out this cool video she made about compact fluorescent (energy saving) light bulbs. It's like that Smashing Pumpkins video for "Tonight, Tonight", only with light bulbs instead of the aeroplane and a volcano instead of D'Arcy. Plus, it's illustrated!