Art Spread!
(the great taste of butter with half the calories)

Rather than show off one amazing Etsy artist,
we’re going to celebrate Barack Obama’s Presidential victory
by showing off some great Obama stuff you can find on Etsy

Barack Obama Portrait
by Wood Jungle

Victory History Obama
pinback button by Mind’s Eye Cards

( ^– I just ordered one of these! –^ )

Yes We Did
Obama button by Graffiti2

Brown & Pink HOPE Shirt
by Outside Of The Box

President Obama Button
by Mind’s Eye Cards

Our 44th President:
Barack Obama
pendant & earrings
by Shoestring Gallery

Congratulations Mr. President!!
We’re behind you all the way!

Hey! I Told Ya To Stay Away From My Magic Frame!

“Ever wish songs just sang what was happening in the music video? Well now they do.” says Dustin McLean, aka DustoMcNeato, one of the foremost talents in the current “literal video” trend that’s taking the metaverse by storm & cracking my ass up in the process. Dustin & his crew have now created “literal video” interpretations of several pop music videos including a-ha’s “Take On Me“, “Head Over Heels” by Tears For Fears, and most recently “Under The Bridge” by The Red Hot Chili Peppers.

These “literal videos” are riotious spoofs that are especially brilliant for making fun of the obvious absurdities in music videos. I had trouble breathing I was laughing so hard watching their version of “Take On Me” for the first time, and I still find myself humming strange lines from the literal version of “Head Over Heels” on a daily basis. Dustin & company are by no means the only ones getting in on the action - there are several other great literal video retakes surfacing out there, more and more every day! KeithFK was inspired by what he saw & has created a couple of his own, including a great literal video version of “No Surprises” by Radiohead.

Rick Roll - Literal Version
(Rick Astley “Never Gonna Give You Up”)

Not enough musical spoofiness to satisfy you? Me neither! So check this madness out

Sleeveface is an internet phenomenon wherein one or more persons obscure or augment body parts with record sleeve(s), causing an illusion. The precise origin of the concept is unknown. A collection of photographs was posted online at Waxidermy.com in early 2006, but a 2008 BBC article claims the idea was created by a group of people in Cardiff, Wales. Cardiff’s Carl Morris is compiling a book on the subject. One case of a “sleeveface” before the internet phenomenon and website, was the album cover by DJ J Rocc, whose own sleeve (front and back) was done in the group sleeveface style.

“I hate putting titles to my images, but when i do they usually mean little to nothing at all. My images are meant to be whatever you think they are, not what i tell you. Sort of like choose your own adventure books, only it’s choose your own backstory instead. And so i prefer to present them to you at face value and nothing more, that way you can react in whatever way you will, without my influencing you with an explanation of why [or how] i’ve done what i did and what it all ‘means’.” - Caryn Drexl

To see more, visit:
http://lightleaks.etsy.com
&
http://www.caryndrexl.com

Say A Little Prayer For Me
by Caryn Drexl

Duchamp’s “Fountain” is considered by many
to be THE most influential piece of modern art in existence.

Watch this video on Duchamp’s Fountain

Fountain is a 1917 work by Marcel Duchamp. It is one of the pieces which he called readymades (also known as found art), because he made use of an already existing object - in this case a urinal, which he titled Fountain and signed “R. Mutt”. It was submitted to an art show as an act of provocation, but was lost shortly after this. According to Duchamp’s biographer Calvin Tomkins, the best guess is that it was thrown out as rubbish by Stieglitz, a common fate of Duchamp’s early readymades.

Duchamp was a board member of the Society of Independent Artists and submitted the piece under the name R. Mutt, presumably to hide his involvement with the piece, to their 1917 exhibition, which, it had been proclaimed, would exhibit all work submitted. After much debate by the board members (most of whom did not know Duchamp had submitted it) about whether the piece was or was not art, Fountain was hidden from view during the show. Duchamp and Arensberg resigned from the board after the exhibition.

The New York Dadaists stirred controversy about Fountain and its being hidden from view in the second issue of The Blind Man which included a photo of the piece and a letter by Alfred Stieglitz, and writings by Beatrice Wood and Arensberg. The text accompanying the photograph made a claim crucial to much later modern art:

“Whether Mr. Mutt made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.”

In defense of the work being art, Wood also wrote: “The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.” Duchamp described his purpose with the piece as shifting the focus of art from physical craft to intellectual interpretation.

The first reproduction was authorized by Duchamp in 1950 for an exhibition in New York; two more individual pieces followed in 1953 and 1963, and then an Artist’s multiple was manufactured in an edition of 8 in 1964. These editions have ended up in a number of important public collections; Indiana University Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Tate Modern. The edition of 8 was manufactured from glazed earthenware painted to resemble the original porcelain, with a signature reproduced in black paint.

In spring 2000, Yuan Chai and Jian Jun Xi, two performance artists, who in 1999 had jumped on Tracey Emin’s installation-sculpture My Bed in the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain, went to the newly opened Tate Modern and urinated on the Fountain on display there. However, they were prevented from soiling the sculpture directly by its Perspex case. The Tate, which denied that the duo had succeeded in urinating into the sculpture itself, banned them from the premises, stating that they were threatening “works of art and our staff”. When asked why they felt they had to “add” to Duchamp’s work, Chai said: “The urinal is there – it’s an invitation. As Duchamp said himself, it’s the artist’s choice. He chooses what is art. We just added to it.“

On January 4, 2006, while on display in the Dada show in the Pompidou Centre in Paris, Fountain was attacked by Pierre Pinoncelli, a then 76 year old French performance artist, with a hammer causing a slight chip. Pinoncelli, who was arrested, said the attack was a work of performance art that Marcel Duchamp himself would have appreciated. Previously in 1993 Pinoncelli urinated into the piece while it was on display in Nimes, in southern France. Both of Pinoncelli’s performances derive from neo-Dadaists’ and Viennese Actionists’ intervention or manoeuvre.

Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet Of Wonder:
Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology

In the non-Aristotelian, non-Euclidean, non-Newtonian space between the walls of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles exist bats that can fly through lead barriers, spore-ingesting pronged ants, elaborate theories of memory, and a host of other off-kilter scientific oddities that challenge the traditional notions of truth and fiction. Lawrence Weschler’s book, expanded from an article for Harper’s, is, at turns, a tour of the museum, a profile of its founder and curator, David Wilson, and a meditation on the role of imagination and authority in all museums, in science and in life. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder is an exquisite piece of “magic realist nonfiction” that will prove utterly captivating.

Read Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet Of Wonder!

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(¸.•´ (¸.•`¤~♥

“Octavio Ocampo finds in painting a source of intellectual as well as plastic pleasure. Behind that deep green gaze of his, he does not hesitate to assert that his main concern is to be generous to the spectator of his metamorphic figures, intending by all means to make them forget their ennui. From his academic beginnings, Ocampo has evolved toward a style of his own, free of deep crises and governed by his naturally playful penchant for mysterious atmospheres & optical illusions. He has been fascinated by these from an early age, when he realised that gestaltic forms are unstable, capricious. Therefore, he has worked as a scenographer and as a muralist, enthralled by the deceit, the visual game.” - María Helena Noval, critic

See more, visit:
Octavio Ocampo

Bird On Wheels
by Tere Ryder