Marilyns Hand.

Grüezi Readers,

I have to confess, I was prejudiced. I went to the Centre Pompidou again, with visitors, and I dont know if I had a bad day or something, but I didn‘t really enjoy it. I know, I shouldn‘t or people in general shouldn‘t be snobby about art, but on this particular day I walked through the rooms and thought „this is art?“ „I could do that“ „why is this in here“ „this is a waste of space“.... You get the point.

And when I walked to this piece I thought it was a joke. Just random lines and squiggle-squaggles - and that was supposed to be art? I went to the description to find out who‘s responsible for this nonsense. 

And I was amazed!

It wasn‘t just random squigglings but someone, well not someone but Pierre Bismuth, actually had a pretty amazing idea! The artist and cameraman was born in France in 1963 and is also an awardwining screenwriter. This would explain the collaboration of painting and movies in his art.

The work is called „En suivant la main droite - de marilyn monroe dans 'some like it hot‘. And I guess you can imagine now what it is. Bismuth put a tracing paper on his tv-screen and followed for the length of the movie „some like it hot“ the right hand of the actress and icon Marilyn Monroe. What a funny idea.

So instead of calling out and idiot-wannabe-artist I got called out for being ignorant and snobby. Served me well, lesson learned.

That's quite Noble.

Hello Readers,

Once again, I would take some time and bring you closer to a rather contemporary artist I've grown fond of. His name is Paul Noble and I've come across his work, which is mainly drawing and sculpture back in Switzerland when I had a seminar about Hollands surrealist scene. Noble participated in an exhibition under a similar titel.

Noble is a british visual artist, born in 1963. He lives and works in London and allready had multiple shows all over the world. He's also represented in some galeries,  including the one here in Paris that I visited to see some of his works.

I was in particular interested in this piece, called "The Egg" for obvious reasons from 2004. It is huge and its pencil on jesmonite, a composite material used in fine arts.

It's covered with small sections which, at first sight appear quite cute, because it's mostly animal doing funny things, wearing funny clothes. Like these squares:

But then you look closer and see that the scenes are actually quite horrible. Like the one above the boxing moles, where a human gets shreddered in a mincer. With every look you see these cute animals doing horrible things to people. But only things, that people also do with/to animals. For example grind them up for meat and food or use them as guides, helpers, slaves... Like the fox using a man as, i guess, a seeing-eye-human. 

Noble touches ground with surrealism, is witty, portrays questions of everyday life and double standards in a funny way, that is also quite shocking if you bother to look twice. 

Come very close!

Oh hey there you are,

I just want to tell you about an artist I discovered for myself real quick. His name is Oscar Camilo de las Flores and he is a mexican artist born in 1974.

I saw his works in the Collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen which is on tour right now with their contemporary surrealistic drawings.

There were four independent works that made a series. They were drawn on paper with a regular pen and ink. The works range from 2008 to 2009.

So first of all here is how it looks from far away:

Then like this:

And now some details:

Obviously I took details of comics - because I love comics. But you can really see the skill and time the artist used to create these works. The detail, the finesse and the style is just incredible. You can really see the surrealistic tendencies since your automatic imagination gets triggered the moment you look at the drawings of de la Flores. The themes are linked to the history of his country, art history and modern societies problems. It's very dark and grottesque which fits perfectly to the trend of art right now whilst the works are in the surrealist tradition. Very interesting, this artist.