“A la belle étoile” is a huge and impressive audio/visual projection installation by Swiss conceptual artist Pipilotti Rist. In contrast to many other conceptual artists, her colourful and musical works transmit a sense of happiness and simplicity.
“A la belle étoile” was screened in 2007 on the slight slope of the Piazza in front of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Currently it is part of the exhibition titled: elles@centrepompidou, in which the selection of the “the Centre Pompidou’s collections is focused on female artists from the 20Th century to the present day.” The exhibition will run until February 2011.
The below video gives an impression of Pipilotti Rist’s “A la belle etoile”.
Pipilotti Rist | Photos: Georges Meguerditchian | Video: reel aesthete Vimeo channel | Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Quote about fashion by English fashion and portrait photographer and Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre: Cecil Beaton.
On Kawara, a Japanese conceptual artist living in New York City, made since 1966 a long series of “date paintings” (the Today series), which consist entirely of the date on which the painting was executed in white lettering set against a solid background. Other series of works include the “I Went and I Met” series of postcards sent to his friends detailing aspects of his life. A second series of postcards, I Got Up At, rubber-stamped with the time he got up that morning, and a series of telegrams sent to various people bearing the message “I am still alive”.
In 1971 he started with his work called ‘A Million Years’. This ten volume piece was produced concurrently with a series which would later be seen as his defining work. ‘A Million Years’ was, just as its title states, a series of numbers counting back the last million years from 1969. It was later accompanied by ‘One Million Years (future)’ which counts forwards from 1980. In 1993 Kawara transformed One Million Years (Future) from a written to recorded state. The impetus for this metamorphosis was an exhibition for Dia Center for the Arts that ran from January 1, 1993, to December 31 of the same year. The below video made by New York art tours gives an impression of ‘One Million Years”
The exhibition was comprised of three parts, a selection of one thousand Today paintings, the ten volumes of One Million Years (Past) and the recording of One million Years (Future), in which a male and female voice continuously, year after year, count into the future. A segment of this recording was transformed into a CD. With the exhibition the viewer plays a more passive role, entering into the space where the recording plays continuously, whereas with the CD the amount of time is limited, 74 minutes, and contains a set number of years (1994 AD to 2613 AD), thus transforming the infinite time of the exhibition into the finite time of the CD. With the CD the viewer is able to manipulate the duration and chronology of the CD, thus entering into a far more active relation to the work. You can listen to a part of the work in the below Ubuweb podcast.
Photos: On Kawara | David Zwirner Gallery | Sources: Ubuweb, Wikipedia | Video: New York Art Tours Youtube channel
A Shaded View on Fashion Film is a very interesting fashion film festival founded, curated and organised by international fashion icon and celebrated blogger Diane Pernet in cooperation with her co-producers David Herman and Antoine Asseraf. The festival was born in 2008 and back then launched at the Jeu de Paume during the last three days of the Avedon exhibition.
In this travelling festival she combines two of her big passions: film and fashion.
Diane Pernet on the subject:
“I would love fashion films to replace fashion shows but in reality I think a major change like that will take quite some time. Certain designers create spectacular fashion shows like Galliano or McQueen, but for the most part watching male and female models walk up and down the catwalk feels a bit last century to me. I think a fashion film is a new way to express a collection. What interests me is the intersection between fashion and film. For the near future fashion film is an additional way of experiencing fashion.”
A shaded view on fashion film festival 2009 trailer
ASVOFF is a festival including a film selection & competition, documentaries, features and installations. The common thread that binds this diverse program is the use of fashion, beauty and/or style as the principal subject, theme or cinematic aesthetic. The festival is a study in the drama, power and personification that fashion evokes and commands on screen. It tries to shake up the old rules of fashion by putting the focus on the moving image, in an industry long dominated by the “still” photographic medium.
Upcoming Festival tour dates and locations:
New York March 5th 2010 as part of F Scope art fair
Moscow, April 3rd 2010 as part of Russia Fashion Week
Hyères fashion festival, April 30th to May 30th 2010 Villa Noailles, Hyères
I will not make any more boring Art is an early piece of conceptual text art by John Baldessari but it still has not lost its impact nowadays. It demonstrate his thinking at the time and his developing interest in Conceptual art.
In 1971, Baldessari was commissioned by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Canada to create an original, on-site work. Unable to make the journey himself, he suggested that the students voluntarily write the phrase “I will not make any more boring art” on the gallery walls. Baldessari committed his own version of the piece on videotape. Like an errant schoolboy, he dutifully writes, “I will not make any more boring art” over and over again in a notebook for the duration of the tape. In an ironic disjunction of form and content, Baldessari’s methodical, repetitive exercise deliberately contradicts the point of the lesson to refrain from creating boring art.
I will not make any more boring Art is typical of Baldessari’s work, for not only does it contain humor, but it is also a strategy, a set of conditions, a directive, a paradoxical statement, and a commentary on the art world with which it is involved. Like all his work to date, it addresses, on many complex levels, issues about art, language, games and the world at large.
Photos and video John Baldessari | Sources: Electronic Arts Intermix | MoMA collection | Ubuweb
