Masks are Fierce

Big thanks to California State Senator Scott Wiener for being such an A+ great supporter of the arts and for putting together this timely drag queen mask competition.

Although not glitzy with feathers and bling, here is my fun fab Covid version that has Groucho Marx and good humor in mind. It may seem rather unlikely that an older woman 69+ year would don a Marx mask for her drag enactment but these days we all need a good laugh. The iconic nose and glasses with bushy eyebrows and mustache are easily recognizable (almost a cliche) as the universal symbol for humor. And, at least for me, they instantly evoke laughter and hopefully, the judges will experience the same.

Let’s be reminded of Nietzsche’s famous pronouncement that, “Perhaps even if nothing today has any future, our laughter may yet have a future."

Stay safe.

Stay true.

and the winners were:

Vanitas

After Pieter Claesz

The shock waves of Covid -19 and the resultant staggering number of deaths has sparked my interest in Vanitas, representations of the fleeting nature of life and the unexpected suddenness of death. I have had a long-standing fascination with skulls and have a treasured collection of animal skulls— gophers, birds, deer.

For years I have used time itself as a material presence in a my art practice.

Time will go by and it has….

After Albrecht Dürer

ALAS

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? (Hamlet, V.i)

They

So excited to learn about Merriam-Webster's word of the year — THEY as in they, them, theirs.

Only recently became aware of the adding of gender pronouns to ones email signature when our studio assistant, a savvy young college student identified as she, her, hers which led us in to a discussion about how language can confuse and be the cause of mis-gendering. Tuning-in to how language shapes our perceptions, there is a story from Argentina about gendering in the Spanish language. Listen up : here is a short podcast from the Washington Post. 

HA! HA! This year there was plenty of who-ha about Maurizio Cattelan's "Comedian" a slippery slope trope of humor — a banana duct-taped to a wall that sold for $120,000 at Art Basel Miami Beach. So we do not lose sight of that banana, here is a selection of memes.

AND!!! Greta Thunberg has just been declared TIME magazine's person of the year!!! That important news is no joke.

Baroness Elsa

This week, my long held beliefs about Marcel Duchamp were shattered. For years I have been fascinated by his alter-ego female persona Rrose Sélavy. That was the first to go… and then that pesky R. Mutt toilet — discussion of which has graced several of our History of posts (here and here and here). That urinal was not a Duchampian instigation but was first identified as “found” by the Baroness Elsa Freytag-Loringhoven. And Baroness Elsa had been merging gender identities for years before Duchamp put on that feathered chapeau.

Freytag-Loringhoven admired Duchamp both artistically and perhaps romantically. One of her early performances consisted of her rubbing a newspaper article about the artist’s famous painting Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) over her naked body and then reciting a poem that ended, “Marcel, Marcel, I love you like Hell, Marcel.” While Duchamp did not return her romantic advances, he did return the admiration for her as an artist, saying, “She’s not a futurist. She is the future.” Some historians suggest that the Baroness’s persona and physical appearance inspired Duchamp to adopt his female alter-ego Rrose Selavy. Openly bisexual in the 1920s, Freytag-Loringhoven’s unapologetic sexuality and promiscuity caused much scandal, even among her avant-garde confrères, and sometimes overshadowed the art she created. — from the biography Baroness Elsa by Irene Gammel.

It’s fraught story of love and intrigue that begs for a revision of art history. What happens when that toilet descends the staircase?

For more scoop read The Mama of Dada published in 2002.

Elsa cut a wide swath as she sashayed through Greenwich Village in her sensational  (and oft times gender-bending) outfits made from everyday objects — spoons for earrings, tomato tin cans for a brassiere and vegetables to garnish her hat. 

Playing dress up or playing for real isn’t just for fun. Trying on different garments, different costumes gives free reign to the imagination. There is no limit to who, where, what we can be. Elsa was living proof.

Snap Chat

Although I thought it was already pretty smart to predict that the camera capacity on our phones was truly the future. That was before Thursday, October 17, when I discovered TikTok and then Saturday October 19, when I discovered Snapchat and learned that the future is now.

https://futureof.art.blog/2019/09/13/chekhovs-gun/

https://futureof.art.blog/lesson-plan-lesson-twelve/

Photo manipulation apps are all the rage —no wonder people are addicted to their phones.

One can instantly transform oneself into an animal, vegetable, mineral and in a swipe of the screen can modify gender.

Who doesn’t want try on someone else?

Who doesn’t want to proclaim:

I’m an eggplant.

I’m a peach.

One good turn...

Once again Desnos nails it perfectly with his apt aphorism:

One good turn sometimes turns out well for somebody...

But, in the case yesterday at the Achenbach, every turn of the page turned out well for all of us. Thanks to Steve Woodall for curating such a remarkable experience with the fine focus on the Desnos/Miro extravaganza. 

A Google search took me to Surrealism and the Book by Renee Riese Hubert that describes the collaboration between Joan Miró & Robert Desnos which resulted in Les Pénalités de l'Enfer ou les Nouvelles Hébrides, Maeght Editeur, Paris, 1974

 Click on each page to enlarge.