Mind Pathology 101

Originally uploaded by joeyhavlock

“The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created - created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making the, changes both the maker and the destination.” - John Schaar

Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man - Salvador Dali

Originally uploaded by oddsock

The Poetry of America and Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man - Salvador Dali - 1943
oil on canvas 45.5 x 50 cm
on loan to the Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida
~~One of my favorite Dali paintings of all time…

Damien Hirst’s diamond-studded skull.Originally uploaded by Secretly IronicPhoto of Damien Hirst’s incredible skull. Well, not his skull. He got an 18th-Century human skull and covered it with (non-conflict) diamonds.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=459204&in_page_id=1770

Hirst was born June 7th, 1965 in Bristol. He grew up in Leeds, and apparently gained a disappointing ‘D’ in his A-Level art exam, but went on to train at Goldsmith’s College in London, a breeding ground for ground-breaking British art. Between 1988 and 1990 he curated a series of exhibitions of work by his contemporaries including the highly acclaimed group shows ‘Freeze’, ‘Modern Medicine’ and ‘Gambler’.

He is known as the ‘bad-boy’ of Brit-Art, but actually little is known of the personality behind the thought-provoking works. Hirst has also opened a restaurant in Notting Hill, London, called the Pharmacy, which had walls lined with medicine cabinets and drinks with medicinal names.

In his work Hirst has continually challenged the boundaries between art, science, the media and popular culture. A 12-foot tiger shark, a cow and her calf sawn in two, pharmaceutical bottles, house paint flung onto spinning canvases, spot paintings, cigarette butts, medicine cabinets, office furniture, medical instruments, butterflies and tropical fish are just some of the means Hirst employs to communicate his unflinching view of the ambiguity at the heart of human experience. Hirst has said ‘I am going to die and I want to live forever. I can’t escape the fact, and I can’t let go of the desire.’

Whilst best known for the ‘Natural History’ works that present animals suspended in formaldehyde, Hirst has also presented works that attest to the transience of biological existence. An early work ‘In and Out of Love’ (1991) focuses on a butterfly’s brief life-span from hatching to decay, whilst ‘A Thousand Years’ (1990) consists of a rotting cow’s head, sugar solution, fly eggs and a fly zapper.

In many of the sculptures of the 1990s such as ‘The Acquired Inability to Escape’ (1991) and ‘The Asthmatic Escaped’ (1992) a human presence was implied through the inclusion of ‘relic’ like objects in the works; clothes, cigarettes, ashtrays, tables, chairs, a Ventolin inhaler.

That implied presence has become explicit in works such as ‘Ways of Seeing’ (2000), a vitrine sculpture that presents the figure of a laboratory technician seated at a desk heightening the sense of being trapped and of being reduced to a single function: an eye looking through a microscope.

The more celebratory work ‘Hymn’ (2000), a bronze sculpture, reveals the anatomical musculature and internal organs of the human body on a monumental scale.

Hirst has had exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the world. He received the DAAD fellowship in Berlin in 1994 and the Turner Prize in 1995. 

the weirdest mannequin display i’ve ever seen

Originally uploaded by Pattay

so, ahem, the mannequin boy screaming in the middle appears to be handless (or rather, one-handed–see next photo for the missing hand appropriately–rrrggghww???– placed on the floor a few feet away from the naked boys. yikes. the mannequin boy looking at the screaming/laughing/amused one-handed/handless boy seems to be shocked at the missing limb, while the others show a wide array of emotions. wow. and then there’s the headless mannequin, which somehow doesn’t seem nearly as strange when compared to the lone hand placed neatly on the floor beside the boy enterage, if you will.
so what i wanna know: did the window dressers have a sense of humor? did they overlook the missing hand? did they want to persuade people into looking at the window for long periods of time–seconds, minutes, even hours–trying to figure out this riddle, this unsettling, and perplexing display of emotions over missing body parts? since, they’re all naked, we can perhaps assume that the display itself is the “selling point” and not the clothes hung up behind and around them (normal, right?)

Ode to Magritte,
originally uploaded by McNeney.
What a great picture I found on Flicker…

Ode to Magritte
I don’t know much about art, but when I come across someone whose work really speaks to me, I tend to get excited. Lately it’s Rene Magritte who’s been exciting me and… well, y’know. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - and a great way to learn.

One of the things I’ve learned about Magritte is that his mother died when he was young. She drowned herself, and he was there when they pulled her body from the river. She’d been wearing only a nightgown. As her body was recovered, the water pushed it up over her head. And that’s how Magritte saw her - face covered, body exposed. And that… not surprisingly… influenced his work.

One of my favourite pieces of his is The Rape, in which a woman’s breasts, navel and vagina take the place of her eyes, nose and mouth. Another of my faves of his (I don’t know its name) is a woman with a mirror… not unlike my photo here… but reflected in her mirror is her naked body… from the back.

So this is kind of a combination of those two ideas.

It’s been brewing for a long time. Feels good to get it out.

Uploaded by McNeney on 25 Apr 07, 9.27PM PST.

Here are 4 geometric works of mine…