Tuesday, August 28, 2007

I'm in Love

...with Cai Guo-Qiang.
it's for real.

I've been watching this series on 21st century art by PBS, art: 21.
It's contemporary artists mostly in their own words. It's very empowering as you can see the range of what "artist" means and how the people who do it feel about doing it, and it fractures the myth that artists do only one kind of thing. The definition is broadened to general curiosity. It's all about observation and asking questions rather than a definitive synthesis of meaning. It's rather like a junior high school science project where each person makes their own rules for the scientific method.

Here is a short list of contemporary visual artists that interest me:
cai guo-qiang so dreamy
kara walker
sally mann
tom friedman
barnaby beese whitfield
oh and arthur ganson
{in making that list, it was hard to keep to living people and folks who primarily do gallery work. I think that's why it's so short. rules.}

5 comments:

Barnaby said...

SO DREEEAAAAMMMY! thank you for this post! I have yet to see this. I wonder if I can get a DVD..

Dude! that's my name! stop!

seriously thanks for this post. Do they re-air episodes? I shall research...tomorrow..unfortunately I have to sleep...

you da best.

Anonymous said...

I'm renting it in dvd from video underground, so it's available on disc.

Barnaby said...

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh hehehhehe...

perfect.

Anonymous said...

Can I just say, homeboy draws with explosives (um yow) and talks about how the creative process is like making love and how you are focused on your goal and you may want the end to come sooner but it might not be time, you might need to spend more time at it and then after you are either very pleased or disappointed at the outcome.

fucking forget about it. Sign me up.

Anonymous said...

sounds like amazing stuff.

i'll have to see if my bro (sculptor in dtroit) is familiar with this series.

hmmm... i have ambivalent feelings about the creative process being like making love. i've always felt that way, but maybe that just means i'm not doing one of them right.

le sigh.