It has become a commonplace to observe that the Covid-19 pandemic exposes some of the weaknesses inherent in the way we organize ourselves as social beings. For example, through the mechanisms of the capitalist labour market, we have collectively agreed that certain modes of work are not terribly important. We know this because we don’t…
Tag: Art
On Color, by David Scott Kastan with Stephen Farthing
On Color is organized into 10 chapters—one chapter for each colour of the rainbow (arbitrarily set at seven by Sir Isaac Newton) plus a chapter each for black, white, and grey. Each chapter engages us in a wide-ranging, often erudite, and largely aleatory meditation. It is the work of a mind at play.
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
I like John Cage’s approach to music and think it’s equally applicable to other media. During a performance, Cage would open a concert hall and allow all the ambient noise—honking horns and jack hammers—to impinge on the scored music. He saw no necessary distinction between the “official” music listed on a program and the other sounds we encounter in our daily lives. In the same spirit, I see no necessary distinction between the curated works of art that appear in a gallery and the visual gifts that appear in my camera’s lens.
Random Acts Of Creativity
I eat my lunch at noon and my supper at six. I go to bed at eleven so I can have a good night’s sleep. I like the regularity. It never occurs to me that I could disrupt this well laid pattern by snipping up a novel and pasting bits of it onto carefully selected surfaces. It might make me late for lunch.
Toronto Nuit Blanche 2015
This post should have a tag line: Art Event, Or Excuse To Get Wasted?
Artists At Work
I think it’s natural for photographers to have a fascination with artists who work in other media. It’s like bumping into a long lost cousin: “You look like me, but there are things about you that are unquestionably different.” Some people might chalk it up to envy. After all, aren’t photographers merely failed sketch artists and painters?
Conundrum
Mixed media artist, David Hynes, has a conundrum. Maybe you’ve seen it. I saw it in the Distillery District as part of Panamania. It’s a canoe with raw hide wrapped taut across the gunwales to form a giant drum.
Wheels, and Wheels and Heels
In Toronto, on the corner of Avenue Road and Davenport, there is a billboard advertising the Galerie de Bellefeuille in Montreal. It’s positioned so that people driving their Maseratis north from Yorkville will stop at the lights and stare at work by the gallery’s latest darling. Currently, it’s photographer David Drebin whose work you cannot find by following the URL on the billboard because somebody fucked it up.
Nuit Blanche 2014
Nuit Blanche is Toronto’s way of saying yee-haw to the arts — a festival running from sundown to sunup where people wander the streets from exhibit to exhibit.
Investing in Cultural Infrastructure
I feel like a Ferengi from Star Trek: The Next Generation, you know, one of those aliens who can only measure value in terms of profit.
Chatting With Torse, effet de Soleil
Thirteen is a horrible age to be a boy. Your testicles are developed enough to make demands on you. But the rest of you is sufficiently immature that you can’t do much about it. Thirteen year old girls are already young women—with airs and wiles and the beginnings of sexual instincts. They have no interest in thirteen year old testicles.
Everyone’s A Synaesthete
While I listened to the chorus, I found myself distracted by two women sitting ahead of me and to the left. Their heads bobbed up and down but not in time to the music. I wondered if they were playing a game. I leaned forward and strained to see what they were doing. They were resting sketch pads on their knees and drawing their impressions of the concert.
Happy Piss Christ Easter
The Piss Christ scandal reminds me of the chocolate Jesus scandal, only this scandal has gone one better … or two … or three. In the case of the chocolate Jesus, the scandal was the work itself.
Cage Match – Cosimo Cavallaro vs. Catholic League
Thanks to pressure from the Catholic League, Manhattan’s Lab Gallery has removed the 90 Kg chocolate sculpture titled “My Sweet Lord” by artist Cosimo Cavallaro.
Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition 2006
A friend of ours, David Hynes, was showing his mixed media works (i.e. collages) in this year’s iteration of the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition down at Nathan Phillips Square. The show itself was a mixed bag, trying (a little bit unsuccessfully) to walk that narrow path between popular appeal and artistic integrity.