I got alerted to this article by an artist friend about Artists taking paintings to the masses; it makes a lot of sense.  I wrote about this subject earlier on Webmetricsguru.com, inspired by a Seth Godin post titled ”Raveling“.

“This isn’t a post about blogging or myspace or even etsy. Instead, it should be proof to you that the whole thing is raveling (which means the same as unraveling, in case you were curious). That all the systems that kept all the processes in place and leveraged mature industries and experienced players are slowly (or quickly) filtering to the masses. Faster than you thought it would happen.”

Not saying you should just sell your work online – but being open to it, that makes sense and it does work for some artists.

I’m going to try to make it over to the Journal Gallery tonight for this show by Tim Barber and if I make it I’ll have something more to write about, later.

Went to see the Walker Evans opening at The UBS Art Gallery tonight.  Quoting from the online Press Release (below)

“Walker Evans: Carbon and Silver, on view from August 24 to November 17, 2006, will explore the legacy of documentary photography by focusing on a significant moment in American history and a definitive period in Evans’ career. Presented by the Yale University School of Art, where Walker Evans served on the faculty, the exhibition will honor Evans’ innovative work and lasting influence on the medium of photography.

A self-taught photographer, Walker Evans (1903-1975) developed a “lyric documentary” style. At the height of the Great Depression, the Farm Security Administration commissioned Evans to record the lives of rural families. He also worked with the writer James Agee on a project centered on Southern sharecroppers that evolved into the 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. The exhibition will feature approximately 88 photographs from 1935-1936 that exemplify Evans’ meticulously detailed and honest photojournalistic style. ”

 

Walker Evans
Roadside Stand near Birmingham, 1936

Walker Evans
Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer’s Wife, 1936

Here’s someone looking at one of Waker Evans Photos (below) at the show tonight.

The opening at the UBS Art Gallery, located in the ground floor of the UBS Building at 1285 Avenue of the Americas was packed; most of the lobby of the building was full of people looking at the photos and eating and drinking.  I had a glass of wine and had eaten dinner before I arrived.

Walker Evans photos took me back to another time – but maybe that time is not so different than ours – as the want that is in the faces of many of the subjects is similar to the pain and suffering poor familes face today.

Sometimes I look at photos with one eye only – I can see depth in the photos that is absent when looking at them with both eyes.  While I’m familar with Walker Evan’s as a name in American Art, I had not really looked at his photos in any depth before, or been that aware of them. 

This show of Walker Evans work will be on till November 9th, 2006.

Did you know that Blog Text can also be displayed as a flower?  Yep, there’s a online semantic analysis tool that does that and I wrote about it over at Webmetricsguru.com, my Web Analytics blog.

What about my interview with Marsha Wooley that I did last week, what would that interview look like as a Topic Flower (see below).

Marsha Wooley’s interview – which I put a lot of my soul into writing – is all about Art, and I can’t tell you if lavander in the background means there is also some Economy, Science and Technology in the text as well – perhaps there is.

What About Amy Chrehore’s Interview, how does it compare with Marsha Wooley’s as Topic Flower?

There are subtle differences, mostly in texture between the Amy Chrehore Topic Flower and the Marsha Wooley Topic Flower.   A Topic Flower of Amy’s recent post about Pierre Puvis De Chavannes looks much different – reflecting as much the writers style as the subject of the post (see below).

    

What about Olan’s Interview that I did a couple of weeks ago?

Spooky!  The Olan interview was actually as much about Society as it was about Art, according to the Semantic Analysis that the Topic Flower tool performed on the Interview Text.   These Topic Flowers remind me of the 7 Chakra system of energy centers in the human body – at least, they look that way.

By the way, here’s a short description of how to decode the colors and shapes of the Topic Flowers:

Rules for interpretation:

1. The same text will always generate the same flower.
2. More text will generate more layers of petals.
3. The primary topic will be shown using the associated colour on the outermost two layers of petals.
4. If there is a secondary topic it will be shown on the third layer of petals. This pattern repeats, two layers using the primary, then one with the secondary.
5. If there exists a tertiary topic its’ colour is used to accent the edges of some of the primary coloured petals.
6. The number of little ‘hairs’ on the flower is indicative of the number of personal pronouns used in the text.
7. Rounder petal shapes are suggestive of emotionally positive terms (love, yes, peace) , and more elongated terms indicate negative terms (death, murder, idiot).

Have fun, enjoy the Topic Flower Tool and please write me to share your thoughts.

Just heard about a online video contest that the Museum of Modern Art is running – anyone can contribute to it.

“The Residents are seeking video for a roughly 1:30 audio clip from Episode 1 of River of Crime. The audio clip is downloadable from this site.”

“…The idea is to make a video to go with the audio clip.  Anything that allows you to do that is acceptible.  Phone cameras, web cam, HD cameras, computer drawings, whatever.  It just has to be video and you have to be able to get it to us to see without mailing your laptop.  Esoteric formats discouraged.  If we can’t make it play, it is disqualified.

If your video is selected for inclusion in our screening, we will want a copy of the highest quality version you have.  However, you should submit a 320×240 version for our advance screening.  See below for how to submit.”

“…What happens if we like it:

First, the “we” refers to MoMA curator Barbara London and The Residents.  This “we” will pick our favorites and post them on October 1st on YouTube.com to see what the public thinks.

At that point the most favored videos will be scheduled to screen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of a retrospective of video work from The Residents  on October 19th.  Cryptic Corp guys, Hardy Fox and Homer Flynn will introduce the videos and explain the project.

On October 20th, MoMA will host those videos on the MoMA web site. The videos will also be hosted by Residents.com and YouTube.com.

The Residents will be watching for new talent for possible video projects for the future.

Sounds like a good project for an aspiring Online Video Artist (living in NYC would help some, but not much – but since the Video will be shown at MOMA, it’s about ArtinNewYorkCity …. dotcom.