bremser:

Robert Adams, Nehalem Spit, Tillamook County, Oregon, from the series “Sea Stories, This Day,” 1999-2009

Listen to this: this week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features a rare interview with Robert Adams.

A few moments which caught my attention on first listen:
-Adams’ anecdote of the “gift photograph” in surburia that changed his life.
-The discussion of landscapes of environmental destruction versus war landscapes.
-Does picture-making change anything?

This quote:

My father and I used to run rivers, before that became common. So, O’Sullivan’s pictures in canyons are among my favorites in all of Western photography.

Click through for the interview and images discussed in the podcast.

immaramblinman:

You Know Ansel, But Who Is Robert Adams (And Why Should You Care)? from NPR

harmoniesoflight:

#6 Julie Mehretu (b. 1970 -)

I think of my abstract mark-making as a type of sign lexicon, signifier, or language for characters that hold identity and have social agency. The characters in my maps plotted, journeyed, evolved, and built civilisations. I charted, analyzed, and mapped their experience and development: their cities, their suburbs, their conflicts, and their wars. The paintings occurred in an intangible no-place: a blank terrain, an abstracted map space. As I continued to work I needed a context for the marks, the characters. By combining many types of architectural plans and drawings I tried to create a metaphoric, tectonic view of structural history. I wanted to bring my drawing into time and place

These words of the artist herself are perhaps the best description one can make of Mehretu’s works. An abstract analysis of globalization and the expanding structures of capitalism. Despite this, she is politically neutral, even going so far as to be commissioned by Goldman Sachs in 2007 to paint a mural for their building. Her opinion of the corporation; “I don’t see it as an evil institution, but as part of the larger system that we all participate in. We’re all a part of it.” And perhaps this is a part of the logic of her art. Clearly fascinated with the abstract landscape of global civilization, she envisions a certain democratic highway of mass interaction.

In her paintings, everything is ordered by a certain chaotic interconnectedness. Like the charts of collisions of subatomic particles, Mehretu maps out a macroscopic vision of the microscopic interactions that make up the mass of interactions called civilization. Perhaps it may be ironic to quote Marx in regards to such a politically-neutral artist, but not only are Mehretu’s paintings one of the highest expressions of Late capitalism and postmodern signification, they testify to Marx’s declaration that “Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.”

Her masterpiece to date, and one of the greatest paintings of the last decade is Congress, shown above.

river-lily:

Picasso’s studio. 

Ahhhhmazing!

wiblog:

Graphic designer Sophine in the field (pun!) testing her Field Conditions wall text designs/spontaneously color-blocking.

Our new architecture + design exhibition, Field Conditions, opens in about 2 weeks! Love the exhibition description’s intro: Can there be architecture without buildings? What if a wall or a floor went on forever? What happens when people move through a room?

In a rare treat, we have Tyler Green’s recent interview with renowned photographer Robert Adams featured on our blog today. Check out the post and listen to their exchange about trees here.

Excerpt: 

Adams, 75, is one of America’s greatest living photographers. In the 1960s and 1970s he brought a new sensibility to photographing the most classic subject of American art, the land. By emphasizing man’s impact on Colorado and its suburbs in series such as “The New West” and “What We Bought,” Adams helped pioneer art that addressed our impact on the landscape and the Earth.

Pictured: Robert Adams, Sitka Spruce, Cape Blanco State Park, Curry County, Oregon, 1993-2003. Gift of Randi and Bob Fisher. © Robert Adams

To celebrate our current Cindy Sherman retrospective, the SF Bay Guardian asked four of San Francisco’s premier drag performance artists to re-enact four of Sherman’s iconic portraits.

Pictured: Lady Bear’s version of Untitled #354:

See all of the remakes here!

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre will be screened at SFMOMA tomorrow night, 7pm. Come see one of the most influential horror films ever on the big screen!

Watch the film’s trailer here.

Image: Tobe Hooper, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” 1974

Bus Riders by Cindy Sherman via Lomography:

While shot in 1976, it was only in 2000 that Bus Riders was printed and exhibited. The series features various characters that, as the title suggests, represent bus passengers as observed, portrayed, and photographed by Sherman herself. In true Sherman fashion, she transformed herself into these characters using make-up, wigs, and elaborate costumes. While each character was set against a plain and obviously staged setting, we can see in the series the earliest manifestations of Sherman’s flair for disguises and self-portraiture