Archive for the 'Art' Category

What’s Gary Larson up to these days?

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006

Coffee Mug - Far Side Nervous Dogs.jpg

USA Today is running a “where are they now?” kind of story on someone I actually wondered “where is he now?”

The Far Side’s Gary Larson, still in the top five of greatest comic strips ever made, has been keeping himself busy in his retirement days playing jazz guitar and giving oodles of time and cash to wildlife conservation. You also get to know how much money a superstar cartoonist gets to make annually off his old material. What more can you ask for?

A Thanksgiving Prayer from William Burroughs

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006

It’s that time of year in the United States, and not to put a gloom on anyone’s parade, here is a video recording of William Burroughs giving his own Thanksgiving prayer back in 1986.

If I’m sharing this with you all, it’s not as a knock on the US. If anything, by listening to what Burroughs is challenging, it’s a testament to how little things have changed in 20 years.


The Karl of KthuRove

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006

With the American Midterm Election underway, I just thought all those coming back to the polls or waiting to go could do with a good old fasion’d sci-fi/horror story. I apologize for any grammatical errors or typos, but I do not edit, and that is why I am not a professional paid writer… yet.

The Karl of Khrovtho: Plan W From Outerspace

Of such great powers or plans there is unthinkably one plan… a plan from such a vastly distant era before such… animalistic and orgiastic tendencies were lost, perhaps, in shapes and forms so far removed in our barbaric past by our evolving state of humanity and culture… plans of which the poetry of the insane and the legends of the politicians alone have slapped together such a wild wet dream and called them architects, heroes, and geniuses of all sorts and kinds…

- Brundleby Slapsauce

I. AN APPROACH TO… ELLIPSIS

Never in my the deepest corner of my wildest imaginations would I ever think what I have seen could be seen in this lifetime. I have seen beyond the shadowy veil of that blankets the dinner-theater stage of insanity. I have seen up into the deepest rafters were the sandbags of madness hold aloft it’s velvety texture of psychosis. I listened to the freakish dialogue from grim gaping maws of the phantasmal actors during their demonic performance of Death of a Salesman. I have tasted the chicken ala king of horror. In short, I have seen the truth.

Danish artist paints over famous art

Friday, October 6th, 2006

evaristti.jpgChilean-born Danish artist Marco Evaristti is causing quite a stir in Denmark’s artistic community by adding his own personal touches to 14 original paintings from members of the mid-20th century COBRA collective.

Evaristti purchased the paintings himself, for a total of 2.8 million crowns (the equivalent of $600,000 CDN) and painted his own motifs and additions atop works of the likes of Asger Jorn and Pierre Alichensky. While the COBRA movement’s raison-d’être was to create “semiabstract paintings with brilliant color, violent brushwork, and distorted human figures inspired by primitive and folk art,” Evaristti feels their paintings have lost their relevance in our modern times:

“The COBRA paintings today are trivial and deathly banal, acquired by snobbery. They are just canvases which no longer hold content of value and upon which I have simply painted on to give them life once again.”

If the name of Evaristti rings a bell, this is the same artist who, a few years ago, placed goldfish into working and easily accessible blenders, thus challenging art lovers into deciding the fate of the aquatic animals, hoping to raise questions about life and morality.

Personally, the idea of challenging art and its modern relevance are ideas which make perfect sense to me, thus putting me in a “fence straddling” position.  On one hand, the pure boldness of Evaristti’s move is a call to challenge what has been done and what needs to be done, a thought which can be applied both artistically and socially.  However, one can also argue that while certain works undoutebly remain “period pieces,” they are hallmarks of a period’s relevance and serve to demonstrate the evolution of art.  I wonder what some of you Gluemeaties have to say about it.

Dali and Disney’s Destino

Sunday, September 17th, 2006

In the 1940s, Walt Disney and Salvador Dali collaborated on a cartoon short together. Using Armando Dominguez’s ballad Destino as the backdrop, a six minute Fantasia-esque moment was conceived. But 22 paintings and 135 story sketches later, the project was abandoned due to financial reasons.

The result, concluded through the dedication of Walt’s nephew, Roy Disney, was completed 57 years later in a breathtaking array of imagery and animation heights. It’s almost tragic to think that this magnificent dreamscape almost never saw the light of day.




Walt Disney was once said: “Like the Night On Bald Mountain sequence Kay Nielson designed for Fantasia, I want to give more big artists such opportunities. We need them. We have to keep breaking new trails.”

Boy, times sure have changed.

Via Lukira.

Banksy hits Disneyland

Thursday, September 14th, 2006

This one is already a couple of days old, and I don’t know how I missed it, but here it is nonetheless, out of the sheer awsomeness of the event.

Hot off his Paris Hilton CD swap, artist Banksy placed a mannequin garbed as a Guantanamo Bay detainee inside the Rocky Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland in Anaheim California.

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More pictures here.

The dummy stayed there for about nintey minutes before Mouse security came to pick it up. Betcha ten bucks he tried to get into Disneyworld but recoiled at the finger scanning machinery.

Via Dateline: Bristol.