This story seems to be grabbing the attention of the art world on a number of levels. Here’s an artist who was asked in 2005 to paint wall murals in Facebookâs offices, and the offer for compensation was either several thousand dollars cash, or the stock equivalent. Even though he was quoted as having the opinion that Facebook was “ridiculous and pointless,” he made the decision to take the stock. 7 years later, as Facebook is preparing their public offering of stock, Choe’s initial small-four-figure stock package could be worth as much as $200 million!
It’s not exactly a rags-to-riches story, however: over the years, Choe has been exhibiting his art in galleries in Barcelona, Beijing, Tokyo, London, Los Angeles, and New York, among other places, so he has achieved significant success in advance of this stock windfall. Below are a few examples of his work.
In anticipation of this weekend’s Super Bowl, we happened upon these pictures online of Super Bowl sandwich stadiums … can you believe it? That’s pretty creative … it almost looks like the “grass” field in the stadium on the right is guacamole!
We’ve had a fall and winter season where the “Occupy” movement is dominating the news, and the term “The 99%” is part of the public dialogue as we note the economic differences between the wealthy and the rest of the population. Well, it seems that Damien Hirst and the Gagosian Gallery want to make sure the 1% have something exciting and fun to do to take their minds off of the negative focus being sent their way, and it’s called “The Complete Spot Challenge.”
As we noted in our earlier Damien Hirst post, he’s having a worldwide exhibition of his Spot Paintings at all eleven Gagosian Galleries, with locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong. “The Complete Spot Challenge” requests that one register with the Gagosian Gallery, and then must proceed to visit all 11 galleries and get your visit validated in order to receive a signed Spot print “dedicated personally to you.”
Let’s think about the logistics of this: the show runs from January 12 to February 18, so you have 5 weeks to travel to 8 different cities in 7 different countries. Think about the cost of airfare to do that, hotel accommodations, dining, and above all else, having no work obligations so that you can take the necessary time to go all of these places. Here’s the most-amazing fact, though: according to the NY Times, as of last Sunday, over 700 people had registered to do this! If you’re one of the lucky who is up for this challenge, you too can register here on Gagosian’s website. If you scroll down on that same webpage, you’ll see that they already have some registered people who have completed the challenge in only these past 2 1/2 weeks!
On a side note, if you can’t do it yourself but would like to sponsor Artsology to do this in the remaining time, let us know. We could chronicle the whole adventure here on Artsology and give you a dedicated spot as the sponsor of our Spot Challenge.
I happened upon this video last night, by saxophonist Colin Stetson. As a former saxophonist myself, the first thing I noticed was that he never pauses to take a breath, and the song runs for almost 5 minutes. How does he do this? Stetson uses a technique called “circular breathing,” where he is able to inhale through his nose while at the same time he’s breathing out into the sax through his mouth. I’ve heard of this concept before, but can’t imagine how hard it must be, and have certainly never seen it done to this extent.
The other thing that’s quite fascinating about this song is the range of sounds that are all coming from one man and one horn. The way he does this (other than having an incredible level of skill) is that he positions microphones at different places on the horn, so what may sound like percussion is actually the sound of the key pads hitting the surface, and the low bass is due to the fact that this is a bass saxophone. But what about the wailing, singing-like sounds that rise above it all? It’s actually his voice, as he’s vocalizing (in a humming sort of way) through the horn as he blows.
I’d call this music more-experimental than straight-forward jazz, and maybe it won’t appeal to those (like Mrs. Artsologist) who haven’t played a woodwind instrument before, but I thought it was amazing and went ahead and bought his solo album: New History Warfare, Vol. 1. For more information, check out the Colin Stetson website.
I saw this peeling paint on the surface of a shed door in a park in Montclair, and it made me think of a map … do you agree that there’s some resemblance, or am I stretching it a bit here?
Maybe it’s not as crazy as the color scheme on this garage, but I saw this garage door in Bloomfield, NJ yesterday and appreciated the geometic art approach that the owner has taken. Another interesting thing is that the pattern of the colors is random: only the top row has 3 non-white colors, and then 2 rows have red-orange and 1 row of green-orange … it’s kind of funky, and I like it.
While out in the neighborhood yesterday, I noticed two different generations of “Slow Children At Play” signs. Below left, we see an older version, near my street, with a quaint depiction of a kid with a wisp of curly hair, long sleeve shirt, belt and shorts, who is running at full speed. It has the feel or look of an image of a kid from the 1950’s. I think this “vintage” feel is what appeals to me.
Then we have the more-standard issue in the middle, which is just a generic stick-figure-like person with no tell-tale characteristics – I suppose this is more-politically-correct, since the generic figure could be a girl or a boy. But I have one word for it: boring. Plus, how much do you see kids running around these days anyway? They’re either on scooters or skateboards, or jumping on trampolines … maybe we need a new version, like the one I’ve created at the lower right … what do you think?
There’s a fun advertising campaign for the College for Creative Studies in Detroit which makes a playful comparison of parents concerned about their kids and art in the same way that parents express concern about kids and drugs. Here’s a few of the ads:
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