Month: February 2007

Art e-Facts 17

 

German artist Rebecca Horn’s practice involves Installations, performance art, body extensions/ sculpture, kinetic / mechanised sculpture, poetry, books and film.

Her work draws parallels between the body as object and human emotion as non-linear narrative, which stems from working whilst bedridden with severe ill health in her early 20’s. Her work repeatedly asks the question “ who gets to make the truth within our culture?’ and are markers or mythological metaphors of “human truths”.

The Installations are often conceptually, aesthetically and emotionally site – specific, often being informed from her own experiences as an invalid, female artist and young German growing up in the wake of WWII for example “ Concert for Buchenwald”.

Horn utilises an extensive range of media including, feathers, masks, strapping and restraints, musical instruments and coloured pencils, She literally draws with her head!

The Video below shows Horn cutting her hair.

Courtesy: N. Manning

Art e-Facts 16

Marc Quinn‘s ‘Alison Lapper Pregnant’ was unveiled in September 2005 in Trafalgar Square.

The sculpture was one of two works selected from an original shortlist of six other artists in March 2004 and endorsed by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.

The sculpture, constructed in white marble, takes a unique approach to the fourth plinth. ‘Alison Lapper Pregnant’ celebrates the human spirit on a very large scale.

“The work considers questions of idealism, heroism, femininity, prejudice and identity,” Greg Hilty, director of visual arts and literature at Arts Council England, London.

“I regard it as a modern tribute to femininity, disability and motherhood. It is so rare to see disability in everyday life – let alone naked, pregnant and proud,” Alison Lapper, with whom Quinn collaborated on the piece.

The second work, Thomas Schütte’s Hotel for the Birds will be installed in April.

The Fourth Plinth had remained empty for most of its 164-year history.

http://www.fourthplinth.co.uk

http://www.alisonlapper.com

Art e-Facts 15

 

The German artist Joseph Beuys was a member of the Luftwaffe during WWII, and was involved in a plane crash in Crimea in 1944. The pilot died, but Beuys survived and subsequently claimed that he was found critically injured by Tartar tribesman who smothered his freezing body with animal fat and felt in order to keep him alive. The artist had several reoccurring motifs in his works two of which were felt and fat, in direct relation to his account of his encounter with the Tartar tribe.

Courtesy: J. Temple & C. Walker

Art e-Facts 14

 

Although best known as the director behind Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks David Lynch is also a prolific artist producing paintings, drawings, photography and video works.

Lynch enrolled in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1966 for one year before leaving for Europe with the plan to study with Austrian expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka. Though he had planned to stay for three years, Lynch returned to the US after 15 days.

A major retrospective of Lynch’s work opened last week in Paris.

http://www.thecityofabsurdity.com/