Admit It, GIFs Suck. So Why Won't They Die? It seems that there isn’t much on the Internet that can’t be summed up in a GIF. Miss something on TV? Don’t worry, we GIFed the best parts. Want to respond to a news story or a friend’s announcement on social media? Words are so passé--just GIF it, man. You can even make your own. GIFs are great, right? Wrong--sort of. “When you look at the history of the GIF and its emergence in the late '80s, one thing that's worth pointing out is that the GIF as a media format is still relatively new,” says David Hayes, head of Canvas, a creative think tank at Tumblr, which hosts millions, if not billions of GIFs.
Hayes says there are in fact two kinds of GIFs--GIF the medium and GIF the file format. “Media formats--just like ideas--tend to grow and thrive depending on the degree to which they can be manipulated and extended by the users,” says Hayes. 1Reaction Together with his partner, photographer Jamie Beck, Burg is one half of Ann Street Studio and co-creator of the Cinemagraph. Dan Witz | Startpage.
The Creative Act: Marcel Duchamp’s 1957 Classic, Read by the Artist Himself. 1972 Rothschild Illuminati Ball. In December of 1972, Marie-Hélène de Rothschild threw a “Surrealist Ball”at the Château de Ferrières, one of the large mansions owned by her family. The invitations were written backwards, forcing the guests to use the assistance of a mirror to read them. The attire required was “black tie, long dresses and surrealists heads.” Upon arrival, the facade of the chateau was lit in red with the effect of making it appear to be on fire.
Guests had to walk through black ribbons that were meant to mimic cobwebs and a labyrinth maze before entering the ballroom. The costumes and masks were elaborate and extraordinary and the guest list was just as impressive, which included the likes of Audrey Hepburn and Salvador Dali. The servants were dressed as cats and the table centerpieces were like something out of the strangest of dreams. Text written by Canbra Hodsdon. Computers Club. Salvador Dalí Illustrates the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac. By Maria Popova From Aries to Pisces, by way of a confused lobster. After my recent discovery of Salvador Dalí’s little-known and lovely 1947 illustrations for the essays of Montaigne — following in the heels of his 1946 illustrations for Alice in Wonderland — I chanced upon an even more perfectly surrealist series: Dalí’s lithographs of the twelve signs of the zodiac, created in 1967 as a limited-edition of 250, which can be found in the occasional rare, pricey original folio and which Wisconsin’s revered David Barnett Gallery has recently made available online as individual signed lithographs.
Gasp and dream — I certainly did. (And for a chuckle, consider the cancer — how amusing to reckon that Dalí, despite his culinary credentials, either didn’t know or chose to artistically disregard the difference between a crab and a lobster.) Aries Taurus Gemini Cancer Leo Virgo Libra Scorpio Sagittarius Capricorn Aquarius Pisces Complement with this omnibus of famous creators’ little-known art. Share on Tumblr. NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING: DADA, a ‘destructive agitation against everything’ When he was in exile in Zurich in 1916, the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin would visit the DADAist club Cabaret Voltaire. Lenin was writing his revolutionary plans for a future socialist Russia, and he was living in an apartment nearby the club. The Cabaret Voltaire had been founded by Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings, with the intention of making it a cabaret for radical artistic and political purposes. It was also a focal point for refugees and conscientious objectors, who had fled to Switzerland to avoid fighting in the First World War.
Lenin considered himself quite revolutionary, but when confronted with the nonsense poems, the shouting and verbal abuse, the noise poems, and the endless drumming, the future Russian leader was left confused, and wondered whether this was perhaps how real revolution began? Where these performers more revolutionary than Lenin himself? ”I don’t know how radical you are, or how radical I am. DADA was like Punk, but without the Rock. North Korean paintings of contemporary China as a socialist utopia. “CCTV Tower with Bountiful Harvest” In their exhibition “The Beautiful Future” at Beijing Design Week a few weeks ago, westerners Nick Bonner (Koryo Tours) and Dominic Johnson-Hill (Plastered8) pulled something of a Komar and Melamid when they commissioned paintings of contemporary China from North Korean artists.
The remarkable canvases that resulted challenge one’s notions of irony or protest—they seem incredibly pointed but may have been meant sincerely. One suspects that the fantastic juxtapositions—Maoist uniforms and karaoke, or socialist flags and office cubicles—were at a bare minimum prompted as compelling subjects by Bonner and Johnson-Hill. It’s a little unclear. Several of the paintings feature notable architectural gems of the recent past, including the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei, the Beijing National Aquatics Center by PTW Architects, and the CCTV Headquarters by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. “Office Culture for Prosperity” Digital Dada Library - The International Dada Archive - The University of Iowa. The Digital Dada Library provides links to scanned images of original Dada-era publication in the International Dada Archive.
These books, pamphlets, and periodicals are housed in the Special Collections Department of The University of Iowa Libraries. Each original document has been scanned in its entirety. These are page-image files only, not searchable full-text files. The Digital Library is divided into two sections. The first section includes some of the major periodicals of the Dada movement from Zurich, Berlin, Paris, and elsewhere. The second section includes books by some of the participants in the Dada movement, as well as some of the more ephemeral Dada-era publications, such as exhibition catalogs and broadsides. These documents are provided for research purposes only. Enter the Digital Dada Library. Jeremy Enecio | Portfolio. Are we looking at a Madman's Doodles or Messages from another World? By the time he was out of primary school, Augustin Lesage was sent to work deep in the coal mines of France, which to be fair, would probably be enough to render anyone mad.
In 1911, when he was 35 years-old, Lesage claimed he heard a voice speak to him in the darkness of the mine and tell him, “One day you will be a painter”. The only contact he had ever at with the arts at that point was a visit to a museum once during his military service. The experience prompted him to explore communication with the spiritual world, and within a year of his first unexplained encounter, Augustin was hearing more voices, this time specifically telling him what to paint, what art supplies to buy and conveniently, where to find them.
Now, I’m the kind of person who always need to know the answer behind a magic trick and I’m not especially superstitious, but looking at these absolutely mind-boggling works by a guy who spent most of his life working down a dark hole, you have to wonder. Found in a Junk Shop: Secrets of an Undiscovered Visionary Artist. Impossible world: Contents. Charles Burchfield. Charles Burchfield (1893-1967) was an American painter who spent his life in Ohio and upstate New York, working for years as a wallpaper designer in Buffalo. He is the subject of a retrospective at the Whitney in New York, which Peter Schjeldahl reviewed in the July 5 New Yorker. He painted in two very different styles. In his middle years he worked in a darkly tinged realism much like Edward Hopper, as in the two paintings above,"Rainy Night" and "Early December Snow.
" And these, "Black Iron" and "Pyramid of Fire. " But in his youth and again in his old age he preferred a sort of luminescent, stylized impressionism, as in "Sultry Moon" and "Radiant Spring" (above) and "Orion in December" and "Dandelion Seed Heads" (below). Magazine. Frieze network Island Life Dan Fox asks six artists, writers and curators to reflect on the role of contemporary art in the Caribbean Read more » Video All videos Blog Postcard from the North East of England: AV Festival 2014 The North Sea coast is often full of cargo vessels loaded with oil.
Continue reading Current Issue State of the Art What’s the Use? Museums take on social practice by Sam Thorne Museums Share & Like The confusion around photography bans in museums by Ellen Mara De Wachter Cities Heritage Inc. Consumption, conflict and the Beijing cityscape by En Liang Khong Art Criticism A Larger World New approaches to exhibition-making in India by Shanay Jhaveri Postcard Opening Time? The visibility and invisibility of art in Cairo by Clare Davies Architecture Form Follows Folly Architecture, whimsy and the Gwangju Biennale by Joseph Grima Music Music Whatever happened to New Age travellers? Ideal Syllabus Ideal Syllabus: Linda Fregni Nagler Page 1 of 2 pages 1 2 > Film Histories of Violence Monograph Focus Flake.