The Ophelia that was Icarus

Pieter Brueghel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (ca. 1554-55)

Julia Fullerton-Batten, Floating in the Harbor (2005)


Tadeusz Różewicz's Rights and Duties is a better review of the above work than I could try to make. So here it is, in my humble translation:

A time ago I know not when

a time ago I thought I had the right the duty

to shout at the ploughman

look look listen you piece of wood

Icarus is falling

Icarus is drowning the son of a dream

let go of the plough

let go of the earth

open your eyes

there Icarus

drowns

or the shepherd here

turning his back to the tragedy

the wings the sun the flight

the fall

I would say you blind men

But now when now I know not

I know that the ploughman should plow the earth

the shepherd should watch the flock

Icarus’s adventure is not their own

this has to end that way

And there is nothing shocking

in the ship moving on

to the port of destination

I can't resist finding an excuse to put some more Julia Fullerton-Batten images, so let me quote another Polish poet, Czesław Miłosz:

Song on The End of the World (transl. Anthony Miłosz)

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through fields under their umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet,
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world there will be,
No other end of the world there will be.

Michal Chelbin: the body's eye

Michal Chelbin's pictures are a constant game. The game between the norm and the exception is played out in a delicate dance of proportions that leads to harmony. But this harmony is not defined as a selection of perfect elements, but rather, by the very way things are: perfect on their own terms.

Do not be fooled by the apparent disproportion or outsiderism: those people belong right here.



Their attributes, often those of small-town perfomers, are incredibly rich: they give away their profession, status, personal/national culture... Yet this is no show-off. They look us straight in the eye, giving us a clear message: they know who they are.

They seem acutely aware of their freakishness, of their UFO-like qualities. And still, they are at the same time assuming their belonging, to this place, to this often rough and difficult place that is home.




Those are not happy people. Finding as much as a shadow of a smile is quite a task (the central boy with the swimming cap on one of the pictures above, I think). Yet they are far from desperate, or depressed. They are, above all, serious. This is a form of sharing that makes the encounter all the more meaningful: they might be stuck at this time and place, but their look (how very often the very same look comes back!) does not allow for condescending attitudes. This is my world. My name, my color, my friend or dog or car or parent. Now you have to deal with that. I've done my share.


Yet, in Michal Chelbin's work, there is an element we might skip at first glance.

Eroticism. Even in the most innocent-looking pictures, even in the strangest ones or "decent" ones, the body is exposed. It is not attractive, but problematic. Maybe, because it is appealing, noticeable, after all, before all. It exists, somehow too early, and too late. It plays with our senses, making us too touchable, too lookable, too objectifiable - and thus somehow always too bodily.

How beautifully the look competes with the body.

Technorati: erotic art, photography, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

How to video ART

See here.

Technorati: net art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Beautiful Women

Susanna Hesselberg, No title

Melanie Bonajo, Bears


Why hide the face? What is there in a face that demands to be hidden? Identity, or the appearance of identity, of course. However, there is more. Although the concept of the mask has been written about extensively, and the mask as an element reappears in all sort of constellations, here we have a mask that is a non-face. It is the erasing of any face-ness. Why is that? Why would we want to go as far as run away from the perfect reference?
For one, it - the face - remains. The face tends to appear as soon as we know it's there. But that is not enough. What is here is an escape from identity, or rather, from identification.
I would like to think it is not a coincidence that both artists whose work is above are women. And that it is no coincidence that their subjects are women also (uhmmm...in the first case it may be debatable). This feminist interpretation is "false", of course, but it would lend itself wonderfully as a weapon against the beauty of this:



And to end on a pretty, feminist and identity-less line,

I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
by Emily Dickinson

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know!

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one's name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Technorati: painting, photography, art history, feminism, feminist art, fine art, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Blue.

Untitled

Technorati: photography, fine art, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

A Few Good Poets

Not that there aren't plenty. But a few good ones can be found on this Favorite Poem Project site.
(As you will notice, the page is an absolute of absolutes of nec plus ultras of political correctness. Does that make the poems - and their readers - any more problematic?)

To all the bloggers, I dedicate the first verse of Block City, by Robert Louis Stevenson:

What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home.

Mind you, Stevenson was a great traveler, author of Treasure Island and many other adventure novels, inspired by his own voyages.

An advertising gem

I always wonder if these really clever, subtle ads ever work, or if they are created to get the creators some publicity. If they do work, how come there aren't more of those?
(via)

Technorati: publicity, advertising, art, contemporary art, vvoi

One last explosion

Part of the final sequence of Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (music by Pink Floyd). Here is an enthusiastic reading of the film, and here is a description of how it was actually received (quite lengthy text, with an accent on the soundtrack which shows Antonioni's way of dealing with other artists).

Public art

Leon Reid IV in São Paulo.

Idea: the beauty of art in public is that art cannot be public. Art is necessarily private, intimate, as any experience (yes, also the so-called "group experience"). So art that is out there, when it's good, makes contact also because it creates a special, intimate zone where the public regains its human dimensions.
And yes, to answer your question, I am tempted to think this applies to any public art, of any size and in any context.

(Leon Reid IV via)

Technorati: art installation, street art, visual art, installation, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Experiencing Bergman

I was full of doubts. I had never been to the cinema to see a Bergman. Tried watching Persona on TV, and I don't recall where and when exactly I was severely disappointed by the Seventh Seal.
Saraband was to be my first real Bergman experience. The film was publicized as extremely slow and extremely beautiful and true - "yet another Bergman classic". I am allergic to film classics. I went to see it on the same principle as I read Hegel and Heidegger - to make sure I know why I don't like it.
I went with a couple of my friends, we were having a great time all day.
The film has a horrible poster of an elderly couple embracing. He has an old sweater, looks filthy, they are both as serious as any Nordic film couple should be. I figured this was one of Bergman's last films.
The experience was stunning. It certainly isn't a classic - thank God. It has a total simplicity about it which only apparently puts it in the bourgeois linage of Strindbergs and other Ibsens. Actually, it's much more delicate, sensitive, it does not play out any scandal (which I am very tired of), only shows how relations between people evolve.
There isn't much more, really. Yet it is the proportions, the subtle movements of the plot, that won me over. I found myself with a sort of enthusiastic empathy for the characters that I didn't know I could have. Yes, it's the artistic containment. But it is also the not-overdoing-it. The getting to what makes up a person.
What impressed me most was that I didn't find any of the annoying symbolism of Persona. There is no need for metaphysics if you look carefully enough into what is in front of you.
Saraband was Bergman's last film.

I have heard an anecdote about Bergman's severe approach to moviemaking: during one of the shootings, his cinematographer's mother fell very ill and was said to be dying. The cinematographer wanted to go. Bergman looked at his long-time, faithful collaborator and said: "If you leave now, you son of a bitch, you can never come back!".
I don't know which film they were supposed to be shooting. But it simply couldn't have been Saraband.

Technorati: movies, Ingmar Bergman, Bergman, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Doing the right thing for art

Fragments of Richard Jackson's installations.

Parantheses from Barthes' Camera Lucida (1&2)

1.
(1852)
(this is how life is made up of small solitudes)
2.
(one needs to classify, to group, if one wants to constitute a corpus)
(Professional/Amateur)
(Landscapes/Objects/Portraits/Nudes)
(Realism/Pictoralism)
(if it exists)
(a certain photo and not the Photo)
(spoken out)
(from what it represents)
(which happens in the case of any other image, charged since the beginning and by principle with the mode in which the object is simulated)
(professionals can)
(out of commodity it is necessary to accept this universal which, at the moment, only sends us towards the tireless repetition of contingency)
(I believe the sharks, according to Michelet)
(I didn't know yet that out of this stuborness of the referent in being always present would appear the essence of what I was looking for)
(there is no photography without something or someone)
(to take pictures of)
(the voice of science)


all the parantheses from chapters 1 & 2 of Camera Lucidaby Roland Barthes (my translation)

Technorati: digital art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Vik Muniz : how much cool is too much?

This is pretty.
Aesthetic experience, yes. Or maybe just a hint of a possible one? How is one to distinguish?



Here is Brasilian artist Vik Muniz presenting his work to an American, non-artistic audience. Notice how technically sophisticated the presentation is. And how the classic dynamic of informal intro - funny bits - thoughtful part - witty ending is well executed. You can clearly see he worked in advertising - he knows how to sell his product. Also, notice what impresses the audience: the technique, the means. The sugar drawings. You did this with sugar?
What's wrong with that picture? What makes it sound like a trick and not like something "creative", in the sense of our dear old contemporary art? Maybe because what is appreciated, in the case of this audience, is mainly 1) skill, and 2) wit. So why is that not enough? Maybe because we tend to dismiss it as having more to do with craftsmanship than with art. But is it really so? The sugar drawings are of kids who work on sugar cane plantations. Still not enough. Something too easy about it, too directly linking two worlds, not letting us travel far enough?
Entertainment. That's what disturbs the artsy eye. He aims to please. He makes his own art look like a fun adventure, not a serious, deep labor. From time to time, he sends a message to the more attentive viewer, but mainly it's just, well, cool.
But an attentive viewer will see there is a lot in there. There are delicious (sorry, I couldn't resist myself) approaches to contemporary art, and some pretty effective dialog undertaken (the dust reproductions, but see also the pigment ones). Effective. Effect. Material. Fluffy little clouds of cotton. Happy. Too happy? Is too happy not contemporary enough? Or is it that sugar is, well, simple, limited? And chocolate, too... Unless, of course, you are Bobby Baker. But maybe, as in Bobby Baker's case, this is to be taken to another level? (The people at PS1 certainly think so)

My favorite part, as you might guess, is at the end, when he speaks about theater and about illusion: "It's not really about impressing, or making people fall for a really perfect illusion, as much as it is...about giving somebody a measure of their own belief, how much they want to be fooled".


You may also want to see Muniz's erotica (made of Silly Putty), although I don't find it particularly attractive.

Technorati: art installation, painting, performance, fine art, visual art, photography, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Art > > framing

photo by Jindrich Marco (via)

I get a sense (...) that somehow I trade majorly in comical irrelevance and apparent digression. Narrators/voices that are never really getting to the point, or who are straying from the point very often and as far as possible. Also the totally irrelevant fact from the background pulled out as preposterous foreground. Makes me think (on a tangent) of that description of movie extras (or is it scenery painters?) - as 'background artists'. Manipulation of background. As if foreground were (is in fact) only ever an excuse for what you are *really* doing, elsewhere.

Tim Etchells, on his excellent (and bloggaly self-centered) blog

Technorati: photography, art, contemporary art, vvoi

The White Desk

by Benoit Lemoine & Cecile Boche

Technorati: animation, movies, design, graphic design, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Two absolutely unassociated quotes hereby given a common ground

One suggestive bracket for the project and very close ot the idea of the interview which guided Żmijewski in the realisation of this cycle, is Truth Serum. Althamer is asked a series of question while under sodium pentothal. Żmijewski begins with the usual prosaic issues: Where do you live? How many children do you have? (...) And at the end, a question about art: 'What is the significance of the fact that you make sculpture, dolls, films?' 'It gives me joy,' replies Althamer. 'I like when people laugh.'

- in: Artur Żmijewski. If it happened only once it's as if it never happened. (my bold)

Lisbon and Berlin are, currently, comparable places of creation and experimentation: there, artists seem more free to explore the limits of their undertakings [plus libres d'aller jusqu'au bout de leur propos].

- Léa Lescure, in: Mouvement, #44, July-Sept. 2007

And if you really need a connection, here is a quote and a song (uhmmm... press play):

“A new born child has no teeth.”—“A goose has no teeth.”—“A rose has no teeth.”—This last at any rate—one would like to say—is obviously true! It is even surer than that a goose has none.—And yet it is none so clear. For where should a rose’s teeth have been? The goose has none in its jaw. And neither, of course, has it any in its wings; but no one means that when he says it has no teeth.—Why, suppose one were to say: the cow chews its food and then dungs the rose with it, so the rose has teeth in the mouth of a beast. This would not be absurd, because one has no notion in advance where to look for teeth in a rose. ((connexion with ‘pain in someone else’s body’.))

L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (for a simple analysis followed by a ridiculously complicated statement, see here, and for a note on Bruce Nauman's work inspired by this quote see here)

Technorati: photography, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Krijn Van Noordwijk - saying more

Is there anything else you wanted to tell me?
Really, there seems to be something you left aside. As if something could explain your silence, your persistent silence.
I am watching, but I am not sure if what I see is what you want me to see. How am I to interpret it? Shouldn't there be some clearer way of knowing where it's you, and where I'm just daydreaming?
After all, I can see you and I can tell, you are this person, from here to here, you have physical limits and those limits constitute you.
Why is it, then, that your look escapes me, that your words seem shallow, as if only touching on the surface of what you are saying? Is there a code? Some sort of password I need to get somewhere?

Come on, be honest. There is nothing. What You See Is... Then why do I see so much, and get so little? Why do I feel we share something we can't admit? Should I shut up? Let it go? How dare I?
All the pictures taken from Krin Van Noordwijk's site, which deserves a close look (although it's not very comfortable to look through).

(via)

Technorati: photography, erotic art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Re-blogging

(here)
Happy Famous Artists on the Wittgenstein Forum. Here, this is a triple inside joke. And it makes me smile.


(here)
Machine That Tries to Tie a Shoe
by Adriana Salazar

(here)

Placed outside of the White Cube Gallery Masons yard at 3.30 am on Sunday night in response to the Damien Hirst's "For The Love of God" diamond skull exhibition.The "For the Love of God" prank was created using 6522 Swarovski crystals
and took Laura, the artist, a month to create.

Technorati: art installation, performance art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

The Power of Re-blogging

Some art bloggers seem to consider re-blogging, or the idea of having the same image, review or "discovery" appear on many sites, a proof of a lack of originality and frankly a waste of the reader's time. After all, we want to see new things, discover new territories, etc. It is one thing to have a group of political blogs re-post the same silly picture of the opponent, but quite another, to have the same artistic event presented in the very same way on different art blogs. This idea clearly implies that art blogging is "supposed to be" about uniqueness. The art blogger is somewhere between a curator, a critic and yes, an artist.
Re-blogging, in my view, is a wonderful way of discovering what we have in common, of creating trends and actually promoting artists and events. Copying someone else's text might lack in originality, but isn't that one of the things which gives, say, the sciences so much credibility? Doesn't it empower those who speak? A quote is a powerful thing. And if at first I frowned upon seeing the very same news appear in several art blogs, I now find it thrilling. So what if I've already read some comment - right besides it there are three others I've never stumbled upon. It's strange to see how the "artistic milieu" has a tough time dealing with the idea of a wave, a tide. Some blogs of course go for it, even all the way. But it's as if it were wrong, or worse, poorer. If you really need it, you can just consider that the different contexts in which the news appear shows the broadening scope of a work, it's range of impact. But actually, I find the "art milieu" so far behind in respect to self-promotion, PR and the like, I wouldn't mind seeing ten times as many re-posts. Ah, a world filled with art...

Technorati: internet art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Gravel, Mayes, Sondin-Klausner and the art ripple

Oh boy, oh boy... When life mixes with art, it's exciting. But when politics becomes conceptual, that's really something!
First, here you have it: a video of former US senator Mike Gravel, who is now a candidate for US President.



I need not say this is brilliant. And funny. And this and that.
Now what you need to know is that, contrary to what many news-desperate journalists claimed, this is not part of his campaign.
It is actually the work of two young artists and art teachers, Matt Mayes and Guston Sondin-Klausner. You have all the background explanation in this lengthy interview:



The funniest comment on this event appeared in the LA Times. My favorite part is:

Gravel's works confront us with our own existences and our deaths, the brute thereness of truth, the skull beneath the $400 haircut, the cellulite under the pants suit. His is neo-existentialist, post-apocalyptic, post-post modern art, a silence that screams and cajoles.
(...)
I suggest to you that a Gravel presidency would lead to an entirely new America, doing to us what cubism did to post-impressionism: dragging us moaning in glorious epiphanic pain into a new world.

(Some people actually didn't see the irony.)
It is amazing to see how even after they acknowledge that the video is not a political ad, commentators still analyze it as such. This brings about a few issues:
- The power of presence. No matter how many times you explain the context of your action, if you are facing a camera/the viewer, you are identified as yourself, and are thus, yes, creating a ripple.
- It's impressive how people find it difficult to accept that this is no stunt, no ad, no campaign. It might be pointing towards one, but, as Gravel says himself, he didn't even get the chance to buy the two artists a cup of coffee. Apparently, though, the (American?) viewers find it hard to disassociate a politician with his political life.
- There is room for art in politics. Also thanks to the net and YouTube and the like. You just have to be witty.
- If someone had an idea for promoting his product and decided to take a fairly known politician to do it, it could be difficult to execute. Especially if the idea was odd and came from an unknown individual who had a (seemingly) low social impact. But, and this is my thesis, because it is art, it was accepted. Meaning art at last has managed to become a political lobby! Or, to put it more calmly, there seems to be a space opening up for artistic/social games that extend towards politics.
- Mike Gravel himself has clearly underestimated the power of what he participated in. But he seems to be a courageous guy, fighting vehemently for many issues other politicians avoid. So this is not a random choice on the part of the artists, it is a deliberate participation in a political debate. Which brings me to another question:
- Couldn't we see this sort of activity as a narrowing of artistic perspectives? Yes, I mean by using them to a concrete political goal, making a very specific statement, letting go of so many other issues we could have... If you drop by here from time to time, you know my view: art is not just some golden puppy. Sure, it can be. But there is nothing wrong with opening up to a "broader audience". And letting in some fresh (political! social!) air.
The link between artists and the rest of mortals is a delicate issue, mined with all sorts of surprises and turn-arounds. Many works that at one point seem completely isolated from society (think Duchamp's Fountain, but also many films, actions, etc.) some time after are cherished as a wonderful expression of what "society feels" (heheh). But also, and this is the part many of us forget, many initiatives that are made with the goal and conviction of bonding with the world (think the Living Theater), when seem from a perspective look a little (or very) ridiculous, and certainly not attaining the utopic communion with the onlooker. So it is great to see a work that in a very simple way manages to convince people to stop a second and watch the ripples in the water. And, because of the particular context, help them make some sense of it.

Mayes and Sondin-Klauser also made another video with Gravel, Fire, which I find somehow less appealing, probably because the editing with a several-minute-long close-up of fire was to me, hummm, boring. And also, as often in minimalist works that never end, I find it slightly arrogant to have me there staring and waiting what will happen, just so I get the idea that this will last. I get it. No need to push the issue.


(found here)

Technorati: politics, Mike Gravel, Gravel, 2008 presidential campaign, video, video art, political art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

What a computer virus really looks like

Too much virtual art research can be hazardous to your, well, being.
(See here and here)

Technorati: installation, art installation, design, digital art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Dance

This one is for Tiago.
(via)

Technorati: movies, performance, dance, ballet, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Plug yourself

Vilcus, the Plug Dactyloadapter, by Art Lebedev (see also here), who have brought some other truly wonderful ideas so far - and have been working on more (like this great keyboard where you can actually program the keys according to your current needs - QWERTY, AZERTY, or Photoshop, or anything else, for that mater).

(via)

Within

Martin Bureau, Surviving in Ambiguity

Light Drawings

by Ben Claassen III & Kimberly Dorn
(via)

Technorati: movies, installation, photography, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Using Yorick's laughter

I'm sure you know Damien Hirst's recent work, For the Love of God. Created as the most expensive contemporary art work in the world, it is valued at about 75 million euros. Hirst underlines the value of the diamonds (about 30 million), and plays on the incapacity of judging the "value" of a work by giving it huge value since the beginning.
This business move, not uncommon among the creme de la creme of contemporary artists, is brilliant, of course. You either get it, or you don't. If you go for the bluff, it automatically ceases to be a bluff. Therefore, if you criticize it for being just a silly idea, or a great idea but with a silly number of zeros next to it, or for being a shallow philosophy for the nouveau-riches, then you just don't get it. Of course. Which makes it seem critique-proof.
So far, so good.
But it gets better.

"We must buy the diamond skull for Britain" - this proclamation was made to his countrymen by Jonathan Jones, a journalist of the Guardian to keep the"most amazing artefacts ever made in this country". Jones thus encourages the British to purchase this "work of art", made by"the treasure of Great Britain" Damien Hirst, which is currently on the market for 50 million pounds. Our British friends, we are coming to rescue you! Like the cheap Polish labour well known to you, Polish artist Peter Fuss wishes to relieve the British nation from such a great expense. "For the laugh of God" by Peter Fuss will be available in the Polish car on ART CAR BOOT FAIR at a competitive price of 1000 pounds. In addition, you may also buy a limited (1000 copies) edition of signed and numbered graphics for only 1 pound each. You will not have to wait for tickets anymore to seea skull set with diamonds, and the time of watching Fuss's skull willcertainly not be limited to 5 minutes! To make his work, Peter Fuss used about 9870 pieces of glass polished and cut to look like diamonds, worth 250 pounds and spent 18 hours to complete the piece. Income from sale of Fuss's skull and its accompanying graphics is supposed to amount to 2000 pounds - this is eight times as much as the invested amount! Before the skull goes to the trade fairs to London, it can be seen inPoland, during the Modelator event in Modelarnia, which will take place on28 June.

This is great. Answering another artist is really a delicate matter (and trust me, I know how it can fail). But here, the perfect match is created. It not only lives off the other work, and lives well, gives it a wonderful ironic twist, but also manages to play on the idea of production and even on the stereotype of cheap Polish labor!
One of the best aspects of this project is that it does not stop at an idea. It is not a conceptual work. Someone actually goes and does this, speaking on the very same level as the original statement. And with a terrific sense of humor.
Peter Fuss has been making some interesting work, most of it apparently attracted to controversy. I have been watching him from afar. Some of his previous work (see, for example, his Three Billboards About Love) is poignant and intense while remaining elegant, if not "beautiful". What I like about them, and what makes me uncomfortable as well, is the state of tension between the will of changing something and the need for a distanced, often ironic look, that tends towards a critical fatalism - if I can use that term (a situation where the work does nothing in the sense of working towards an alternative to whatever it criticizes, and appears to be presenting it as a horrible but unavoidable reality).
"For the Laugh of God" has the wonderful quality of being at the same time a critique and a development, a variation on a theme. Irony does not finish its scope. But then, of course it speaks a very different language. The lightness and double-meaning (after all, it is a skull) resemble Yorick's. There is a game between kitsch, luxury and rottenness that, to me, outplays master Hirst.
I would love to buy this. Unfortunately, not only am I completely broke, but I consider this is an opportunity that has to be understood, appreciated and used by the British. So maybe a print?


More on Damien Hirst's work here, on Peter Fuss's art here, and on other Polish related artists here.

Technorati: fine art, art installation, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Defining place

I am here:

For a synchronic look, you go here (wonderful!). For a diachronic one, you go here. (and explore the rest of the blog as well).

Technorati: photography, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Changing Identities

1.Redesigning flags according to clients' wishes.

2.Redesigning your identity in Second Life.
Notice the guy's t-shirt : "World without strangers".

Telling stories. Andy Huang times two

There are two Andy Hunag's living in the US and making great animation.

1. Andy Huang, a student of arts and animation at the University of Southern California, brings us Doll Face, a fairy-tale about... to be honest, I was so pleased with the visual aspect of the video, at first I completely missed the story. Let me give you this opportunity, too.

So, the story is, well, simple. But the doll is charming, the melancholy lightness of it, the delicate texture. Should we always ask for more?

2. Andy Huang, a graduate of communications design from Pratt University, introduces us to a world where design meets animation meets a baroque sense of humor. His is a polyphonic world, one that flies in all directions, cares not about narrative but about a certain shape, balance, impact.

Both Andys have some things in common. Their work is slick, clean, well-focused, it is not afraid of pop, of a certain type of flashiness.
On the other hand, they represent two different choices. One tends towards clean narrativity, a beginning a middle an end, (and in this order...), the other seems much closer to visual arts, chaos is welcome, Flash animation, clean powerpointy cuts, the new digital collage...
This is really a very serious issue: the consequences of each of these options are impressive. Of course, they can be combined, interpolated, tried out and thrown out at will... But there is such a thing as a body of work, career progress, or artistic development. And there is a need for storyline, for things happening that cause other things happening. Causality. And yet, from the perspective of contemporary art this seems so petty, so ridiculous, when you have all these broken, mashed up, re-redone languages... As if it weren't an issue. New playwriting? Experimental cinema? Installations? Maybe. And yet, while participating in all these experiments, while promoting them and enjoying them, I somehow still feel the deep thirst for story.