Amoeblog

Big Night for Andy Warhol!

200 One Dollar Bills sells for 43.8 million One Dollar Bills

Well somebody out there has money to burn ... shit, crisis what financial crisis? The pathetic and mostly lifeless contemporary art market was suddenly re-animated on Wednesday at Sotheby's New York when a silk-screen painting by Andy Warhol, produced in 1962, sold for a $43.8 million, the second highest price ever for a Warhol piece. (In 2007 his painting, Green car Crash (Green Burning Car 1), sold for a mind blowing $71.7 million.) The amazing thing about all this is that the pre-auction estimate of for the silk-screen was expected to pull in only about $8 - $12 million.
 
Sotheby's contemporary art auction as a whole sold $222.8 million worth of art, more than doubling the auction house's high estimate of about $98 million in sales.  
 
The bidding for the piece 200 One Dollar Bills opened at $6 million, but instantly doubled with the very first bid from the floor – those in the biz called it “an unusually aggressive move;” I call it just weird, ego driven conspicuous consumption. Five more bidders joined in the battle before an anonymous buyer won the painting via telephone bid.
 
Described as a "hugely important work for American art history," its one of Warhol’s earliest silk-screens. The 80¼ x 92¼ inches canvas comprises of 200 $1 bills reproduced in black and gray with a blue treasury seal. The painting's anonymous seller bought the piece back in 1986 for $385,000. Nice profit!

Posted by Whitmore on November 12, 2009 at 10:07pm | Comments (2)

FACE PAINT ILLUSIONIST JAMES KUHN ON HALLOWEEN, ART, & GOD.

Interview with the artist, face paint illusionist, drag queen, performance artist and full-time Christian

Forget MySpace and check out MyFace, or, rather, the art that gifted face paint artist/illusionist James Kuhn does, displayed on both his Flickr page and his Face Paint In Motion YouTube channel. The self-described James Kuhn"Artist, Face paint illusionist, Drag Queen, Performance Artist, and full time Christian" has been uploading videos of his face paint art, such as the Rocky Horror "Sweet Transvestite" themed clip above which he posted two days ago, or the brilliant Golden Girls clip (below) that he produced and uploaded six months ago.

Ever the perfectionist, Kuhn said of the Golden Girls piece at the time, "I planned on painting Sophia on my forehead! but ran out of room... I need a bigger head! I am not too happy with this one, I should have searched for better pics to use as my models. The ones I pulled up were too small and Bea was in black and white. I should not try such a big project on a weeknight! Better for Saturdays when I can play all day long and am usually more rested. I gotta get some new glasses too."

On the Three Oaks, Michigan artist's YouTube channel, which is subtitled BibleArtWork, Kuhn has an impressive 234 different videos of various face paint illusions uploaded, usually with a cool accompanying soundtrack, ranging from Bettie Page Pin Up Girl to Miss Piggy & Kermit to Dracula and many, many more.

Continue reading
Posted by Billyjam on October 31, 2009 at 09:00am | Post a Comment

UKRAINIAN SAND ANIMATOR'S ART MOVES PEOPLE TO TEARS


Ukrainian sand animation artist Ksenya Simonova, who came to fame in her country via an American Idol styled TV show, has been taking her country by storm -- even moving people to tears -- with her unique handmade sand art, which she creates live as a kind of requiem to those who died during the Great Patriotic War. As in the video clip above, her real time public performances of sand animation are typically made up of Simonova swiftly hand crafting various war images, quickly morphing from one tragic image to the next, all to the accompaniment of a somber soundtrack of classical & traditional music plus soundbites of wartime news footage.

Working with a mixture of regular sea sand and volcanic sand, all spread out on a glass pane as canvas, Simonova uses her hands to craft her engaging moving stories. At the end of each dramatic live art performance consisting of tales of death and destruction she blows out a votive candle. Usually at this point audience members are seen tearing up. Surprisingly, Simonova, who is also a part time model, only took up the unusual art form (she is only one of a handful of such artists -- the others are from an older generation) just one year ago after becoming a victim of the credit crunch. Reportedly her next project will be a Michael Jackson themed live art installation piece.
Posted by Billyjam on October 5, 2009 at 04:04am | Comments (1)

Photographic Memory, Part 1

"Say Cheesey"
job o brother
"Please conjure sheets of paper to come floating out of the laundry basket below"
The author, circa 1996

I have recently come into possession of my adolescent photo collection. There was, for a period of about five years, a time when I owned a fetching Ricoh camera which had been given to me by a rad woman whom I lived with on a mountaintop commune on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico. She used to regale me with stories from her years as a hot-shot publicist, and explained to me which lines from David Bowie’s “Drive-in Saturday” had been written about her by the Thin White Duke.


Were these claims true? Who knows. But it did distract me from the profound and crippling nervous breakdown I was experiencing at the time, fuelled in part by excessive use of ecstasy as a means of spiritual enlightenment and by living with my then step-father who made such helpful suggestions as, “Maybe you have alien implants in your brain.”

“Oh, yes. Well thank you for that.”

I thought it might be fun to dip into the box and see what musical and/or cinematic associations they bring. Kind of reconsider my colorful past in terms of stuff you could purchase at Amoeba Music. For I am a salesman, ladies and gentlemen.

Posted by Job O Brother on September 7, 2009 at 01:17pm | Comments (4)

Etch A Sketch tribute to Michael Jackson

The Incredible Art of George Vlosich III

It’s been awhile since I last wrote about George Vlosich III, one of the most unique artists working today. The medium he works in, more often than not is the Etch A Sketch. And yes, it's the same plastic, red-framed Etch A Sketch kids everywhere play with for a while before cracking it open to see how the hell it works.
 
Since ten years of age, Vlosich has been Etching. At eighteen he was commissioned by the Topps Trading Card Company to produce a series of Etch-A-Sketch drawings for their 1998 baseball card collection. Since then he has been commissioned to Etch many an athlete, musician and celebrity. 
 
I still can’t get my head around the technique or the amount of patience someone has to have to complete one drawing. And all of it is worked out to such perfection; unfathomable to an Etch A Sketch hack like myself. Most of Vlosich’s original work takes between 70-80 hours to create. Some, like George’s newest masterpiece, Michael Jackson, took 150 hours! That’s a full time job for a month! The details are insane. The images are spot on. And remember, an Etch A Sketch drawing must be done in one long line ... one continual unflinching, unforgiving friggin’ line! Legendary artist Paul Klee once described his own work as simply taking a line for a walk; yeah, but it ain’t nothing like George Vlosich’s trek. Once finished, the piece is then preserved to stand the test of time -- I hope! -- every drawing is unique and cannot be duplicated.  
 
George is hoping to use this Michael Jackson piece for charity, possibly blowing it up to extra large size and then having the performers at the September 26th Michael Jackson Tribute Concert in Vienna autograph it. The concert, which was announced a few days ago, will feature some of the world's top entertainers performing MJ's greatest hits on a crown-shaped stage being constructed outside the 17th-century Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna. The tribute will be broadcast live and is expected to draw an audience of one billion.
 
Check out George and his brother Greg’s website.

Posted by Whitmore on September 3, 2009 at 11:10pm | Comments (1)
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