Blog About Photography

I was just perus­ing the Louvre’s list of dig­i­tal col­lec­tions. They’ve very thought­fully put together a data­base of all British art held in French muse­ums. And it’s only avail­able in French.

I was just in the Bay Area vis­it­ing some fam­ily there. My Uncle Bob is an amaz­ing painter, out­stand­ing father fig­ure and model cit­i­zen. I made him a web­site, which included pho­tograph­ing all the work he wanted included. Check it out and then send him fan mail.

Some­thing that’s going to bum my mother out when she gets the New York Times tomor­row: Robert Rauschen­berg died on Mon­day, and for some rea­son we’re just find­ing out about it now… a whole two days later. 

I don’t have a whole lot of insight to add on this other than to say the most inter­est­ing thing I learned about Rauschen­berg recently was that he and Jasper Johns were lovers on and off for the bet­ter part of for­ever, which, you know, makes a whole lot of sense. 

Also, he said once, “The artist’s job is to be a wit­ness to his time in his­tory,” which is pretty spot-​​on. Not sure he’s the first to have ever said that, though. I was.

Also worth noth­ing: doing a google search Rauschen­berg pic­tures evently leads you to this guy’s myspace pro­file.

Here’s a whole slew of obit­u­ar­ies to read.

Robert Rauschen­berg, Amer­i­can Artist, Dies at 82
Robert Rauschen­berg, 82; influ­en­tial artist mixed paint­ing, sculp­ture and cast-​​off items
Obit­u­ary: Robert Rauschenberg

The New Yorker came on Tues­day, and the first thing I opened to was this elab­o­rate Mas­ter­card ad, which I have since taken the time to remove, scan and post here. The first page reads “ARE YOU SEARCHING FOR THE PRICELESS THINGS IN LIFE?” and some­thing to effect of “maybe it’s on the next page.” It then opens to a spread of this Julian Schn­abel paint­ing (self por­trait?). The back of that has an enve­lope pasted to it, which is a chance to win a com­mis­sioned Schn­abel paint­ing of you­self, which opens to reveal that, alas, you did not win but should check out the Mas­ter­card website.

Sch­a­bel, I think, is the kind of post­mod­ern painter who started paint­ing in order to make mil­lions of dol­lars any­way, so why the fuck this ridicu­lous credit card ad and pro­mo­tion? Good for him. I can’t imag­ine how many other mag­a­zines they could pos­si­bly run this thing in that would reach peo­ple that would actu­ally give a shit about it though. Art­fo­rum aaand that’s pretty much it.

Also, when I first wrote this post before the whole thing got lost when my browser crashed, I said some kind of insight­ful stuff about the art mar­ket, but now I’m just going to say that that it’s a good thing Schnabel’s tight­ened up his game since ’96 when he made Basquiat because that movie totally fuck­ing sucked.

UPDATE: Fixed the link. Sorry for being an idiot.

This is a story from the New York Times today that’s worth tak­ing a look at. It’s writ­ten by an Iraqi sculp­tor and, not sur­pris­ingly, pro­vides a new view of how ter­ri­fy­ingly dark and impos­si­bly fucked up it is there.

So every time I pick up my pen and try to sketch, I find myself draw­ing scenes of death, and when I try to think of it as a way to let off steam a lit­tle, I start to feel pity for the per­son who is going to see it.

See?