Artist: Banksy

If there were one thing I would want to be clever enough to do it would be street art. Not political cartoons, because you have to be both clever and more than a little mean to do that. Not modern sculpture and abstract stuff, because to me that seems to be more about technical cleverness. Street art, graffiti art, can be both simple and powerful, tongue in cheek, political, mean, smart, base, whatever and it's awesome because people HAVE to see it out on the streets. I mean, you can't just walk by a big ass painting on the sidewalk and NOT see it. Some is cute, some is not, but it always blows my mind and makes me go: gee I wish I could do that!

Here's one guy, Banksy. Some of his stuff creeps me out and makes me feel a little disturbed inside but mostly it just kicks ass.





Banksy

Art Movement: Young British Artists

I remember learning about this during my survey of contemporary art but I felt the need to refresh my memory a bit. This movement, which dominated the 9o's, seemed to spring out of the lack of public funding for art the artist's need and desire to shock audiences. Most of the artists of the movement graduated from Goldsmith's college in London and although uniform technique wasn't really a prerequisite, an openness of mind seemed most necessary in that any kind of material could be used and a satisfactory shock factor produced. I guess the movement is criticized as gimmicky by some although I doubt anyone could say that the works produced aren't incredibly interesting and visually stimulating, even if they do make use of shock value to earn merit. the biggest proponent of the movement was Charles Saatachi who bought up pieces for his own collection which he began showing. The movement culminated in the show "sensations," which was put on by the Royal Academy but was really Charles Saatachi's on personal collection. Of course, nothing solidifies an artist's importance like controversy and there was tons around this exhibit, even more when the show moved to New York.

The most famous piece of the movement:

"The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living."
Damien Hirst

Artist: Xenia Hausner

I am the ultimate sucker for paintings of people, especially when they are filled with vibrant color and emotion and a kind of deep feeling which makes you feel like you're looking into someone rather than at them. Xenia Hausner's work, I think, falls under this category. Born in Vienna, she spent the early part of her career designing theater, film, and opera productions. After she moved to Berlin she began to focus on painting and produced acrylic paintings that were vibrantly colored and aggressive in technique. Her work is described as "combines the energetic and unsettling style of such German artists as Otto Dix and Max Beckman with the warmth and subjective immediacy of figurative art". Hausner herself seems to be interested in telling the stories of the women she portrays and I can't help but sense strong personalities behind every painting she has. Her recent works combine photography with painting and other media and have a new depth about them which place the subjects in more contextual situations than her older paintings. Writing on some of her newer works, Hausner says "Their life histories are to be told in new ways – a fact that leads to novels that follow another course. People are still at the center of focus, their entanglements get stranger. Threads of the plot that used to run linearly get tangled in mysterious objects." Maybe the mixed media helps represent this entanglement and all that jazz. Whatever the case, I can't resist her work.

Info 1
Info 2
Info 3
Info 4
Info 5
Info 6

Link out: "Trash" and Art

This is a pretty awesome little article on seven artists who use trash to create...not a bad idea considering how expensive the alternative is...

WOAH!