Swoon in the Streets

When I was living in NYC in the early 1980s, I loved to walk everywhere, because every block of city was permeable to the random affronts of graffiti artists. Along with miles of stylized, spray-painted script, I might come across something by Keith Haring or Jean Michel Basquiat. Neither had quite yet made it huge in the art world, and both were still alive. The Lower East Side is still awash with amazing images steeped in the process of decay, either by passersby or demolition or the weather. But they are made by what we now call "street artists," and my favorite is Swoon.

Over the next few days we'll explore her work.

Signmaker's Sketchbook

Like Francesco (well, not exactly) I, too, was a sign painter. The above example from my sketchbook is the concept for a work that now hangs over the nutritional bars and supplements at the Trader Joe's store in Crystal Cove, California.

Francesco Clemente is Dreamy

I do not know from whence this image came. I collected it to my desktop a while ago, without attribution and absent of specs. I'm posting it anyway because unless I do, I will keep craving it, like a frosted cinnamon bun in the bakery window at the Looney Bean. It is a work on paper of Francesco Clemente's mind. I know for a time, the Italian artist worked with sign painters in India, and has said his imagery is the stuff of dreams and symbols, life and death, sex and self-portraiture.

Chakaia Booker: The Rubber Queen

Open Chat, 2009, Acrylic and acid free paper on wood, 24" x 12" x 3"

Never Mind, 2006, Rubber tire, wood, steel, 67 x 46 x 48 inches

Chakaia Booker appropriates rubber tires in her work, which makes her a recycling role model for the rest of us. She has reinterpreted tons of Goodyear and Firestone products in a socio-anthropological statement about our place in the environment. But I really love her works on paper for their simple beauty, though I imagine they are fraught with references to rubber. The Newark, New Jersey native is, not surprisingly, a past recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award.

Stephen Talasnik's Panoramas

Surveyor, 2009
Collage and acrylic on prepared wood panel, 72 x 24 inches

Stephen Talasnik makes fantastical images inspired by futuristic architectural forms, transportation systems and urban landscapes. Many of his graphite-on-paper works force an imagined cross between Paul Klee and Frank Lloyd Wright (at least for me).

Precarious Prediction, 2008
graphite on paper
12 x 60 inches

I <3 Brendan Monroe

.

Wednesday was a shitty day, so to cheer myself up I am dedicating Thursday's post to Brendan Monroe. His images make me very happy. If you have not yet discovered his work, here is what his Etsy profile says: "Brendan Monroe is an artist who digs through science to find loose references for his paintings and sculptures. He highlights large blob-like figures, interconnected red cellular shapes and tiny imaginary organisms. Brendan lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden."

MoMA Attempts to Define 'Drawing'

"Last month, Christian Rattemeyer, the Harvey S. Shipley Miller Associate Curator of Drawings and organizer of the sprawling Compass in Hand exhibition at MoMA in NYC, convened an evening symposium on the role of drawing in contemporary art. That this subject remains a popular discussion topic was evidenced by hundreds of artists, scholars, curators, and patrons who assembled to listen to panelists Isabelle Dervaux, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at The Morgan Library & Museum, Carter Foster, Curator of Drawings at The Whitney Museum of American Art, and artists Gareth James and Charline von Heyl, lend their scholarly and technical expertise on the matter.

     After ruminating on the intellectual and philosophical implications of drawing as artistic practice in their respective presentations, one audience member raised what was perhaps the most salient point of the evening: Why the need to define drawing? And to what end?

The struggle to ascertain the significance of the drawn mark in order to arrive at a fundamental definition of drawing – one that is more inclusive than a mere set of material and technical procedures – has fueled intellectual debate for decades. In fact, one of The Drawing Center’s founding tenets was to challenge the conceptual and material boundaries of drawing in order to up end conventional notions about the discipline.

     While the MoMA symposium did not produce a clear definition of drawing that is specific to the present generation of artists, scholars, and curators, it did reveal a certain anxiety among artists and scholars to delineate what drawing means now."

-Stephanie Schumann, Editor 12.18.09 (original post)