Friday, June 8, 2012

Ugly Renaissance Babies-the kids Aren't AlRight

Ugly Renaissance Babies is a blog dedicated to the ugliness of kids' representation in renaissance paintings.

Peter Paul Rubens, Juno and Argus (detail)

DAT ASS.

Joos van Cleve, Virgin and Child

Sip sip sippin’ on gin and juice

(submitted by the mechanical infanta)

Every picture is followed by a 'comment'

The Christ Child and the Infant John the Baptist with a Lamb

Oh… Oh god. They’re fucking that lamb, aren’t they? THAT’S GROSS, JESUS.

"Oh… Oh god. They’re fucking that lamb, aren’t they? THAT’S GROSS, JESUS."

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Imperfection

Bernd Stiegler started a blog on 'Photographic Realism' and he devoted one of his posts to the 'Imperfection'.

"In looking at both contemporary exhibitions as well as photographs as they are used in everyday aesthetic applications, one notices that imperfection plays a key role. Far removed from the ideals of the Group f/64, New Objectivity, or even the Bechers and their school, to name a few positions, photographs that consciously employ technical errors have become common sense in photography. There are photographers who use deficient cameras;..."
"Imperfection is the new ideal of contemporary photography, even if celebrated, staged, and represented in a kind of perfection. My thesis is that imperfection serves as the contemporary modus of the real in photography. For this very reason photography has become enamored of and committed to inaccuracy, because it enables a form of representation that aims to conceptualize reality in a unique aesthetic manner."

Read the rest of the post here and don't miss to read the huge correspondence in the comments

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Labyrinth of Living Exhibits

In May last year, Art Catalysts co-organised an event with the disability arts group Shape at the Hunterian Museum, titled ‘Labyrinth of Living Exhibits.
"The event addressed the issue of human specimens in such collections. There are thousands of specimens on display, the remains of the once vast collection made by Hunter. Many still carry his classification as either ‘morbid’ or ‘normal’. The unsettling collection contains many human parts, including whole skeletons and human foetuses. The focus of Hunter’s collecting was clearly biased towards ‘the different’ – extreme cases of growth, “abnormality” and disease. In the Labyrinth of Living Exhibits, artist Aaron Williamson curated four simultaneous, specially commissioned, site-specific performances, which infiltrated and responded to the collection, performed simultaneously by disabled artists Aaron Williamson, SinĂ©ad O’Donnell, Brian Catling and Katherine Araniello.



A lively panel discussion followed the performances. Aaron Williamson opened the discussion by explaining his curation of the performances, explaining his interest in the responses of artists who are “set apart from the norm” through illness or medical prognosis.

You can watch video recordings of the full panel discussion here.
Video recording of the panel discussion "Exploring the Autistic Mind" can watch here.
Read full article here.