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Gorgeous Mosaic Portraits Made of Pushpins

By Tyler Coates on

Mosaics always offer a visual treat, and artist Eric Daigh adds a new spin by taking everyday office supplies — multicolored pushpins — to new heights with his collection of portraits. But while the images themselves are colorful and playful, the subjects depicted are not. “My subjects are imprisoned, diluted, marginalized,” Daigh says (via Faith is Torment).  ”Their escape, however, is imminent. Whether a symptom of corporate and social homogenization, or the four base pairs of DNA, we are products of just a small handful of variables. In five colors of plastic, you can be reproduced.” … Read More

Photography

Remarkable ’80s-Era Photos of Iconic NYC Artists

By Jason Bailey on

Jeannette Montgomery Barron’s new photo book SCENE is a must-have for aficionados of the ‘80s New York art scene — for which Barron was something of an unofficial “yearbook photographer,” capturing images of legends like Cindy Sherman, Kenny Scharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jenny Holzer, Francesco Clemente, David Salle, Robert Mapplethorpe, Eric Fischl, and Keith Haring during their starving-artist days. The book launches with an event tonight at BookMarc; the tie-in exhibit, NYC c. 1985, opens tomorrow at Chelsea’s ClampArt. But if you’re not in Gotham, Flavorwire’s got you covered — we were lucky enough to get our hands on several gorgeous images from SCENE. … Read More

Photography

Surreal Photos of Women Dressed in Books, Butterflies, and Paper Planes

By Chloe Pantazi on

These stunning photographs by the LA-based fine art photographer Brooke Shaden (spotted via Faith is Torment) depict moody landscapes, harking back to the Gothic romanticism of surreal paintings. In her words, Shaden is “creating new worlds through [her] photographs,” and indeed her photos suggest something otherworldly; they conjure a warped kind of down-the-rabbit-hole experience of the world. Perhaps most compelling in these photographs are the costumes Shaden’s subjects wear, made of unconventional materials — from paper planes and flowers to actual books (and, in one, flesh) — which are reminiscent of the fashion exhibited in the Met’s 2011 Alexander McQueen retrospective, Savage Beauty. Take a look through the strange, beautiful images below.

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Photography

‘Camera Obscura’: Incredible Photographs of Indoor Cityscapes

By Chloe Pantazi on

In his 1978 novel Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino wrote, “The city…does not tell its past but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the street, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.” In Abelardo Morell‘s photography series, Camera Obscura (via Faith is Torment), every crevice of the interior space is infused with the city. The artist created his series by photographing outdoor cityscapes from Times Square to the Brooklyn Bridge and then projecting these images, with a small lens or prism, onto the walls of rooms. Morell has observed that an “increased sense of reality” lends itself to the photos, though perhaps it’s more the unreality of these images, and how the interior, when interposed with the exterior, begins to take on new meanings. We might regard these rooms as invisible cities in themselves, containing everything and nothing.

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Photography

Amazing Still Life Photos of Plants Used for Witchcraft

By Tyler Coates on

Working in collaboration with floral sculptor Elizabeth Parks Kibbey, photographer Amelia Bauer’s Book of Shadows combines the floral still life popularized in the 17th century with the other pervading cultural threat of the time: the looming peril of witchcraft. Using plants historically known for their medicinal and spiritual power, Bauer’s work strips away the malignant connotations. In her own words (via BOOOOOOOM), the Book of Shadows photos “turn these spells towards the domestic, and present a less threatening, more palatable femininity.” … Read More

Photography

Compelling Photos of People Running from Unseen Dangers

By Alison Nastasi on

In case you’ve been wondering what former MTV news correspondent Tabitha Soren has been up to, she’s been taking beautiful, if not somewhat surreal, photos of people running from unseen dangers. We spotted the evocative, cinematic portraits on Faith is Torment. “I want to address the sensitivity of the human condition, causing us to think about our unease in the world,” Soren stated in an interview with the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art. “My static landscapes needed people on the verge of something. The most intense way I could think of visualizing that was to ask them to run. I started out shooting friends but eventually was able to also put myself in the uneasy position of shooting strangers.” The narrative photos have a striking air of panic and isolation, and feel especially poignant in the wake of the recent Boston tragedy. Take a closer look, below. … Read More

Art

A Brief Survey of Naughty Public Art

By Alison Nastasi on

Artist Paul McCarthy is at it again. We spotted his newest inflatable sculpture, a massive pile of feces, on Booooooom. You can see it after the jump, along with other public artworks that display a naughty, irreverent, and pervy side. It’s fascinating to observe the public’s reactions to subjects normally kept hush-hush in polite company. These installations, performances, and sculptures have nothing to hide, though. See how potty humor, private sex acts, and other naughty themes have entered the public sphere, framed by the fine art world. … Read More

Art

Nostalgic Drawings of Strangers’ Mixtapes

By Alison Nastasi on

The heyday of mixtape trading has passed, but Portland artist Kate Bingaman-Burt has revived the vintage format in her drawings that we spotted on Beautiful/Decay. Several of the referenced cassettes were found at thrift shops for mere cents, which is a little depressing considering that most people slaved over their conceptual compilations to create a deeply personal selection of songs. (At least they did if they were us.) Other tapes were sent to the artist at her request. The notebook-style drawings capture every detail that tapeheads miss about the format — including the miniature spools that threatened to snap and unwind from overplaying. Feel all the nostalgic feelings in our gallery. … Read More

Photography

From W.E.B Du Bois to Waris Ahluwalia: Portraits of History’s Most Fashionable Men

By Emily Temple on

Admirers of the well-dressed man, look no further. Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion, out this week from Yale University Press in conjunction with the RISD Museum of Art’s exhibition on the same subject, is chock-full of photographs of famed sartorial geniuses and flamboyant clotheshorses, not to mention essays on “notable dandies” like Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, and John Waters. It’s enough to inspire anyone to consider a wardrobe overhaul. After the jump, you’ll find just a small sampling of the book’s many great portraits — so if you’re in the Providence area, make sure to head on over to the exhibition for the full experience. … Read More

Photography

Fascinating Early-20th-Century Color Photos of Famous People

By Emily Temple on

There are some historical figures who we always think of in black and white. After all, the world trucked on in monochrome, Pleasantville-style, until the middle of the 20th century, right? Well, not exactly. In fact, color photography dates back to the mid-1800s — the first three-color process photo was taken in 1855, but it wasn’t until 1907 that the first commercially viable method of color photography, Lumière Autochrome, was invented — and perhaps unsurprisingly, photographers jumped to take snapshots of their famous friends. Below, some notable characters, from Mark Twain to Auguste Rodin, whom we usually see in black and white, showing their true colors. … Read More