[Rob Instigator]

The founder and Curator of the Houston Art Car Museum was killed on Saturday night. Houston has the largest and oldest Art Car parade in the world. Completely grass roots, a fun and whimsical and great event. Friday there is a giant party, on saturday there is the official parade through downtown houston and allen parkway, and on saturday evening there is an informal parde of the art cars (over 200 now) through neighborhoods in Houston. (21st annual)
The man, Tom Jones was his name, had taken his art car back to the museum, and locked it up. he went outside (around 2:00AM) and sat on the curb with his friend, and just talked about what a great weekend it had been so far.
a 24 year old drunk driver at that moment was barreling down Heights Blvd., jumped the train tracks, slammed into a parked car, which then flew about 25 feet and crushed Tom Jones and his friend. OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE
he died of massive internal injuries later that Sunday. His friend is ok. the drunk fuck was not injured in any way and is out on bail .

this was his car

Swamp Mutha
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/245/4...881f94.jpg?v=0


this is the Art car museum in Houston

 

[MellySingsDoom]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

I have a small original Gilbert and George that's staying with my mum until one of them dies, and then I'm gonna be well sorted.

What if your original Gilbert and George turns out to be a BBC promotional photo-montage of Morecambe and Wise?

[atari 2600]

Man, that's some shit, Rob.

Here's an art car by Rauschenberg. Those of us google image searching have probably seen this already today, but...

 

 

Ingres' Venus on the door...

 

[Glice]

Originally Posted by MellySingsDoom

What if your original Gilbert and George turns out to be a BBC promotional photo-montage of Morecambe and Wise?

How the fuck could you tell the difference?

[MellySingsDoom]

^^^Eric and Ern would be doing their "Bring Me Sunshine" hoofing, whilst G & G would be perfecting their campily aloof gazes. Apart from that, no difference at all.

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by MellySingsDoom

What if your original Gilbert and George turns out to be a BBC promotional photo-montage of Morecambe and Wise?

I've written about this before (a few years back) too, but Vernon Thonsberry, at the time a friend of mine in Athens, bought a Salvador Dali print at a thrift store for four dollars once. I think it was four; I forget what he paid.

After hearing this, I went down there and got myself a somewhat large Karel Appel print that was pre-mounted on masonite for four bucks. He had missed that one.

Unfortunately, I lost it when I lost all of my artwork to a fire.

Okay, sorry for getting further off the track.

R.I.P. R.R.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Yeah, and so are a number of artists from the era, but I've never considered Johns to be Great in the same way that I think of Rauschenberg, Warhol, Francis Bacon and Barnett Newman, all of whom are now dead, and Richter who is still alive. These for me are the five major painters of the post-war era. Just an opinion of course. Certainly not something I could possibly prove.

EDIT: I might add Rothko to that list, but he's dead too, so the point still stands.

I'd agree with the above whole-heartedly. Johns is good, certainly. Enjoyable, even. But not arresting in the same way as Rauschenberg. Richter I probably wouldn't remember in anything other than an academic sense were it not for SY, and even so I'm not that bothered.

I'd personally disagree with Warhol/ agree more than entirely. I have a very love/ hate relationship with him - his aesthetico-politico import always seems entirely at odds/ entirely complicit in the fact that I feel absolutely nothing when I see a Warhol (and I don't mean Ikea reprints of Warhol).

Franky Bacon slays me even in rubbish bitmapped versions. I have a hare-brained theory about his art that I'll share when it's published [never].

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by Glice

How the fuck could you tell the difference?

Because it's a painting, not a film.

[atari 2600]

I'm yet another that has never cared for Johns the same way as I do for Rauschenberg.

[Rob Instigator]

jasper johns loves the number 5 though.
my fave number.

 

rauschenberg and johns are art of the artists that followed the abstract expressionists, they followed in the footsteps of kline, motherwell, rothko, pollock, etc.

they were a younger generation, a more irreverent generation.

[demonrail666]

I think Warhol's greatness is a largely academic one (similar to Duchamp). I too have never been moved by his work, but his contribution to post-war painting is almost impossible to underestimate. Personally, and I'm sure this would upset some here, I feel the same about a majority of Picasso's work, in so far as I never feel anything when I look at it, but would argue till I die that he's the greatest artist of the 20th Century.

Given trends in post-War art, it's difficult to judge much of it as an aesthetic experience in the way that we could easily do with someone like Monet or Van Gogh. The emerging era of conceptualism meant that artists were more likely valued for what they were saying 'about' art, than for the experience of the art work itself. The Abstract Expressionists in the '50s were perhaps the last group able to be judged solely on a pre-conceptual level (and even then, critics like Greenberg were doing their utmost to push the theory behind their work)

Which reminds me, I obviously should've included Pollock in my outrageously subjective list of post-war greats.

[Rob Instigator]

picasso always astounds me, I feel everything when I look at his work. a sublime master, maybe the greatest artist of the last 100 years.
I ahve seen so much of it in person, it never fails to astonish me. having seen countless reproductions in countless books, to see the original is just mindblowing.

I think, getting back to rauschenberg, that there is still a very direct thread connecting many contemporary artists with rauschenberg and what he brought to the artistic language.

[Rob Instigator]

I include myself in on this obviously.

[atari 2600]

Picasso is the greatest artist that ever lived, in my opinion. True, he exhibits a wide a wide range of influences, very notably the primitivists of Africa and Oceania, but I'm sticking to the statement.
-
I consider it ridiculous that Dali made more money and achieved similar (if not greater) fame as a twentieth century master.
--
And, I like them both, but I agree with demonrail's sentiment about Duchamp and Warhol.
---
And I too am an ardent admirer of most of the works produced by the artists of the Abstract Expressionist New York School.
Aside from later glimmers here and there (Rauschenberg, etc. and then Basquiat) there hasn't been painting of that caliber in far too long.

[Rob Instigator]

the entire art world, it seems, is entirely focused on what it means to BE an "artist" instead of what it means to MAKE GOOD ART

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

Picasso is the greatest artist that ever lived in any century, in my opinion.

Wow, as bold a claim as that is, I can't honestly think of an argument against it. Saying that, while an infinitely lesser artist, I've always preferred the experience of looking at a Braque, than a Picasso. Picasso though may well be, as Atari says, the single greatest painter in the history of the medium. And of the 20th Century I don't think there could even be a debate about it.

... Thinking about it ... nope ... no debate at all. The greatest painter of the twentieth century, at least.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

the entire art world, it seems, is entirely focused on what it means to BE an "artist" instead of what it means to MAKE GOOD ART

And a lot of that is down to the enormous shadow cast by Picasso over the medium, surely.

[m1rr0r dash]

he'll be missed....

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

And a lot of that is down to the enormous shadow cast by Picasso over the medium, surely.

In a sense, yes. You've probably heard about how Warhol seemed preoccupied with knowing whether or not Picasso had heard of him and what he thought of his art. Unlike Dali, Picasso never showed up at the Factory or happenings.
Later, Rauschenberg maintained a large studio and assistants as well, but he seemed to be (well, mostly anyway) always evolving. And he had his worldwide art foundation and so forth.

To consider further along this tack is that the artist-as-outsider goes back to (mostly) Van Gogh, but I think the "bad art" to which Rob is perhaps primarily referring is produced by postmodern conceptual artists and the like whose essential validity delineates from Duchamp and Warhol. Aesthetically, most of it is wretched. And then there are the more painterly ones too, to be fair. But those invariably exhibit tendencies to become strictly singular "style" painters who essentially concentrate on creating an art product. As Rob opined, personal image is part of the product these days. A lot of it goes back to the sheer outrageousness of Duchamp, yes, but much of the artist-as-persona owes to the peculiar affectations in the personalities of two of art's major 20th c. players, Warhol and Dali. And they are two of art's more tireless self-promoters and the two that kinda first made modern art-as-business, you know, the model. Well, with Dali a lot of it was Gala, and with Andy a lot of it was the people around him as well. Dali had his "living tableaux" of hangers-on (although Gala was always in control or so it is said) and Warhol his investors and also the Factory people. As some may know, Ultra Violet had her time in both camps. Perhaps it's also worth noting that both artists have major museums devoted to their art and that works have even been lent out by each for special posthumous co-exhibitions.

--
From what I saw of his current art in an Iconoclasts episode on Sundance I viewed a few weeks ago, Jeff Koons doesn't know what good work is anymore (he always has been iffy to an extent owing to his sales background). Perhaps he's just too mega-rich now. On the program he betrays contrivances, instead considering them homages. Hey, in words and conceptually and in general it may be an homage, but visually and aesthetically, it's contrivance. There's a world of difference. Every single work doesn't have to be genius, far from it, since modern art is about process, but I don't think it's too much to expect for at least some of them to be considerably good. You know, since, like I already mentioned, Koons has become obscenely wealthy during his tenure of playing the art game. But still, there's no denying his status now as important; his work is exemplary enough to warrant the big bucks in the art market at least. The trickster maker of the sterling silver Rabbit out of a mold from an inflatible children's toy truly is, in many ways, an artist for our fucked-up world detached from meaning and our largely corporatized, and thus homogenized, computer age.

[uhler]

damn!

he was one of my favorite artists too. i just got into his work about two years ago after i checked out his bio from my school's library.