friends v1

The exhibition traces how Asian art, literature, and philosophy were transmitted and transformed within American cultural and intellectual currents, influencing the articulation of new visual and conceptual languages.

It explores how American art evolved through a process of appropriation and integration of Asian sources that developed from the 1860s through the 1980s, when globalization came to eclipse earlier, more deliberate modes of cultural transmission and reception.

Vanguard artists consistently looked toward “the East” to forge an independent artistic identity that would define the modern age—and the modern mind—through a new understanding of existence, nature, and
consciousness.

The Third Mind refers to a “cut-ups” work by Beat writers William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, whose cult of spontaneity in art and life drew inspiration from Asian attitudes.

This manuscript composed of random texts and images evokes the eclectic yet purposeful method by which American artists often appropriated material from Asia to create new forms, structures, and meanings in their work.

Grounded in documentary evidence of the artists’ encounters with Asia, this exhibition shows how artists working in America adapted Eastern ideas and art forms to create not only new styles of art, but more importantly, a new theoretical definition of the contemplative experience and self-transformative role of art itself.

via: guggenheim.org

After getting a B.F.A. from School of Visual Arts, New York in 1980, Kenny moved back to his birth state of California.

One very important and guiding principle to Kenny’s work is to reach out beyond the elitist boundaries of fine art and connect to popular culture. He believes that artists have a social responsibility to engage others in a thought process that ultimately brings the creative process into everyday life thereby enhancing the quality of the experience.

Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin are a Dutch fashion photographer duo, well known for their work for fashion magazines, advertising campaigns, and for their independent art work.

Matadin’s and van Lamsweerde’s work have been published in magazines like Vogue, GQ, and Arena Homme Plus.

They have produced photographs for the advertising campaigns of Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Chloé, Stella McCartney, Valentino, Gucci, Givenchy, Roberto Cavalli, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Gap, Narciso Rodriguez, and H&M. Check out some of their most recent work for GQ above. Enjoy!

Folkstreams.net has two goals. One is to build a national preserve of hard-to-find documentary films about American folk or roots cultures. The other is to give them renewed life by streaming them on the internet. The films were produced by independent filmmakers in a golden age that began in the 1960s and was made possible by the development first of portable cameras and then capacity for synch sound. Their films focus on the culture, struggles, and arts of unnoticed Americans from many different regions and communities.

The filmmakers were driven more by sheer engagement with the people and their traditions than by commercial hopes. Their films have unusual subjects, odd lengths, and talkers who do not speak “broadcast English.” Although they won prizes at film festivals, were used in college classes, and occasionally were shown on PBS, they found few outlets in venues like theaters, video shops or commercial television. But they have permanent value. They come from the same intellectual movement that gave rise to American studies, regional and ethnic studies, the “new history,” “performance theory,” and investigation of tenacious cultural styles in phenomena like song, dance, storytelling, visual designs, and ceremonies.They also respond to the intense political and social ferment of the period.

The filmmakers and the researchers they collaborated with explored performances situated in a community’s customary work, worship, and play. Beneath their colorful surfaces often lie serious issues of physical, psychic, and social survival under duress. For understanding what they saw the filmmakers relied more heavily on observant and knowledgeable community members than on outside “experts.” They conveyed understanding through action and symbol as often as by “talking heads.” See Selected Films.

Many of the films, however, are linked to significant published research. Folkstreams draws on this material to accompany and illuminate both the subjects and the filmmaking. And the films themselves add powerful dimensions to print scholarship. They offer a direct experience of unfamiliar worlds. Many of these are now receding into the historical past, but we hope the example of these films may stimulate alternative filmmaking with subjects and approaches still ignored by mainstream corporate media.

One of the most controversial and acclaimed novels ever written, The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie’s best-known and most galvanizing book. Set in a modern world filled with both mayhem and miracles, the story begins with a bang: the terrorist bombing of a London-bound jet in midflight. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil. This is just the initial act in a magnificent odyssey that seamlessly merges the actual with the imagined. A book whose importance is eclipsed only by its quality, The Satanic Verses is a key work of our times.

Author Salman Rushdie became a household name in 1989, when Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or Islamic edict, calling for Rushdie’s death. Khomeini believed Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, blasphemed Islam.

Rushdie went into hiding for the next nine years. After the Ayatollah died in 1998, the Iranian government rescinded the fatwa.

But just last month, Iran’s hard-line military group, the Revolutionary Guards, issued a statement saying the fatwa is still valid.

Listen to Salman Rushdie talk about going in hiding after the Iranian death edict. Buy this book.

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1955. He studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1976. Mr. Koons lives and works in New York City and York, Pennsylvania.

Mr. Koons’ work has been exhibited internationally and is in numerous public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY), Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY), The National Gallery (Washington, DC), Hirshhorn Museum (Washington, DC), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, CA), The Eli Broad Family Foundation (Santa Monica, CA), Tate Gallery (London, UK), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Museum Ludwig (Köln, Germany), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum (Tokyo, Japan).

Mr. Koons is also known for his public sculptures, such as the monumental floral sculptures Puppy, shown at Rockefeller Center and permanently installed at the Guggenheim Bilbao, and Split-Rocker, exhibited at the Papal Palace in Avignon, France. Most recently, in 2006, Balloon Flower (Red) was unveiled at 7 World Trade Center in New York City.

Mr. Koons has lectured at many universities and institutions, including Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), Yale University (New Haven, CT), Columbia University (New York, NY), New York University (New York, NY), the Royal Academy of Arts (London, UK), the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), and the Hirshhorn Museum (Washington, DC).

Born in Cape Town (1952), Wyeth studied graphic design at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, majoring in photography. He has exhibited mostly in Cape Town, notably on SA Photo Statements, at Iziko South African National Gallery (1988), and most recently on the Month of Photography, October 2008. Owner of Imago Visual, a graphic design and photography business, he is currently working towards his first solo photographic exhibition of recent works, scheduled for 2009. This portfolio of The Base/Jazz Den documents the establishment of the club and musicians/performers that appeared there over a period of two years in the late 1980s. Apart from sporadic appearances in newspapers at the time they were made, this body of work has not been shown before.

February 5 - 6 - 7, 2009
Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona

The fifth chapter of The Influencers project, a festival dedicated to exploring unconventional weapons of mass communication. Over the past few years Influencers has been defined as a gallery of unclassifiable projects, an investigation on guerrilla communication, a demonstration of present-day science fiction and even a talk show that can’t be seen on TV, but in the end, Influencers is simply a laboratory of ideas, a think-tank which for three intense days tries to interweave tales of subversion, manipulation and the transformation of live elements from contemporary culture.

Jennifer Steinkamp studied at CalArts and ArtCenter in Los Angeles, and has had solo exhibitions at The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, and Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington, among others. Her group shows include the 8th Annual Istanbul Biennial and participation in shows at the San Jose Museum of Art and the Seoul Museum of Art. Her work has been included in Visual Music at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Kemper Museum of Art. A retrospective of her work opens at the San Jose Museum of Contemporary Art in 2006 and will travel onto the Kemper Museum and the Albright-Knox Gallery.