The Nightmare Before Thanksgiving

This November, MoMA will be exhibiting a massive collection of director Tim Burton’s artwork.

The stunning collection encompasses Burton’s drawings, photograph, storyboards, and other artwork dating back to his earliest childhood creations. I absolutely cannot wait to see this. If you’re not jealous yet, MoMA admission is free to New School students. You can see some a few of the pieces through the links above. His pen and ink drawings are grotesque and beautiful, and I’ll be interested to see more of his photography, like the piece above, “Blue Girl with Skull.”

A Thousand Words

Artist Su Blackwell makes sculptures from books. Hard to visualize? Here’s some help:

Her pieces seem as if they are growing right out of the book, like plants rooted in the soil of the text. Blackwell says that the book’s title or something intrinsic to the book itself (handwritten dedication, notations in the margins) are what give her the initial spark of inspiration and shape her choice of book.

Fly Baby

PETA is irate with artist Damien Hirst over his latest piece of art: this bicycle covered with hundreds of butterfly wings. Hirst created the bike for Lance Armstrong, who will ride it during the last leg of the Tour de France. Some of the butterflies used for the piece may have been endangered.

Personally, I’m a fan of his work, particularly ones like Our Father Who Art in Heaven and Hail Mary Full of Grace, in which skinned sheep suspended in formaldehyde kneel, holding rosaries and bibles. Pieces like this draw attention to the base, almost beastly aspects of our cultural and spiritual lives or lack thereof. I think the bike is incredible. And I don’t think Hirst went around ghoulishly ripping the wings from living butterflies. I’m sure he has a bit more sense and compassion than that.

I wrote a poem about his piece, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, which I’ve included after the jump.

Heil Travelocity

German artist Ottmar Hoerl is on trial for a series of artwork that he says highlights “the danger of political opportunism and right-wing ideology.” The artworks in question are a series of small, gold garden gnomes who are giving the Nazi salute.

The only way that Hoerl will see his charges dropped is if the courts find that these pieces fall under the same category as posters displaying swastika’s that have been crossed out

Quote of the Day

Young artists often mistake proximity to the art world for the act of creation itself. Nowhere is this error more common than in New York City, where being able to paint and make rent is a question of finding “the right imbalance” between art and paying work.

–from SAMANTHA PEALE’s novel, The American Painter Emma Dial

The Pure Products of America Go Crazy

The Pure Products of America Go Crazy.

Former Silver Jews front man and poet David Berman’s 1999 collection, Actual Air, is one of my favorite books of contemporary poetry. A book of his drawings, entitled The Portable February, has recently been released, and you can view a slideshow of some of his work through the link.