—- mark ryden
(wikipedia) exhibitions:
Ryden’s solo debut show entitled "The Meat Show" was in Pasadena, California in 1998.[10] Meat is a reoccurring theme in his work. He observes the disconnect in our contemporary culture between meat we use for food and the living, breathing creature it comes from. "I suppose it is this contradiction that brings me to return to meat in my art." According to Ryden, meat is the physical substance that makes all of us alive and through which we exist in this reality. All of us are wearing our bodies, which are like a garment of meat
A midcareer retrospective, "Wondertoonel," which refers to a cabinet of curiosities or Wunderkammer ("wonder-room"),[8] was co-organized in 2004 by the Frye Museum in Seattle and the Pasadena Museum of California Art. It was the best attended exhibition since the Frye Art Museum opened in 1952,[10] and also broke attendance records in Pasadena.[12] Debra Byrne, curator at the Frye at the time of Ryden’s exhibition, placed Ryden’s work in the camp of the carnivalesque—a strain of visual culture rooted in such works as Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.[8] According to the Russian author and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), there are three forms of carnivalesque art — the ritualized spectacle, the comic composition and various genres of billingsgate (foul language) — all three of which are interwoven in Ryden's work.
The Snow Yak show
In 2009, Ryden's exhibition "The Snow Yak Show" was shown at the Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo.[15][16] In this exhibition his compositions were more serene and suggestive of solitude, peacefulness and introspection.
In 2010, "The Gay 90’s: Old Tyme Art Show" debuted at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York. The central theme of the show referenced the idealism and sentimentalism of the 1890s while addressing the role of kitsch and nostalgia in our current culture. Here Ryden explores the line between attraction and repulsion to kitsch. According to The New York Times, "Ryden’s pictures hint at the psychic stuff that pullulates beneath the sentimental, nostalgic and naïve surface of modern kitsch.
whipped cream ballet.
joan jonas… bill viola…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81nXq3CI4Bc interview, small show in japan
said in common with takashi murakami.. high and the low, collection, inspiration from cheap toys etc. collection, nostalgia, souvenir…
mentions neo rauch
(wikipedia) Neo Rauch is a German artist whose paintings mine the intersection of his personal history with the politics of industrial alienation. His work reflects the influence of socialist realism, and owes a debt to Surrealists Giorgio de Chirico and René Magritte, although Rauch hesitates to align himself with surrealism.
http://www.kohngallery.com/news/2014/5/2/mark-ryden-interview + video on 'memory lane'
RYDEN: Inspiration is the most valuable commodity for an artist; it is for me anyway. I can't move forward in any way if I don't feel a strong spark of excitement or creativity. Sometimes it is very difficult to get things flowing. It's important to be in a peaceful state of mind, and then I invite the spirits to come into the studio. I don't stare into a blank canvas or paper. I look through my various collections of books, toys, statues, photographs and other things, and something will trigger an idea. My studio is packed full of things that inspire me. For example, The Parlor painting was inspired by an old Victorian-era shoe advertisement.
RYDEN: This exhibition began as a continuation of the Gay '90s theme I did at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York in 2009. I felt I had many more images I wanted to make within this theme. The theme began with the desire to delve head-on into the realm of sentimentality, nostalgia, and kitsch, which are such taboo subjects in the art world. Many artists use sentimentality and kitsch, but they protect themselves by taking on a stance of irony. The world of the Gay '90s pushes my own boundaries of sentimentality. I like pushing against that boundary with sincerity.
GACHMAN: Did you draw inspiration from new sources?
RYDEN: I began to think more about how nostalgia and sentimentality relate to the whole idea of memory and how our consciousnesses exist in any particular place and time. I became very fascinated by an idea of Eckhart Tolle, who says nothing has happened in the past; it happened in the "now." Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the "now." The present moment is all we will ever have. Only the forms change. Someone living in the actual 1890s would have the same feelings of what's modern and what's old-fashioned that we do now and that people will have 100 years from now. The forms change but the feelings are the same. I liked how Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris explored this same idea.
GACHMAN: You love flea markets and finding great treasures in rummage sales. Are there any recent finds you're excited about? Or anything that specifically influenced these pieces?
RYDEN: In my exhibition I will be including a large collection of printed ephemera that I used as inspiration for this body of work. It will include postcards, photos, matchbooks, music sheets, magazines, and records. With a little bit of close observation, I think you can see the initial inspiration for many of my works.
GACHMAN: The nostalgic aspect of your work has been discussed often, and you can see it in "The Gay 90s: West." Some people seem to think nostalgia is a bad thing—too sentimental, as you said—but I think there's something very comforting in it. One hundred years from now, what artifacts or pieces of clothing or objects do you think people will hold up as a signifier of our time? What objects would you paint a century from now?
RYDEN: I often look around me and think about this specific place in time, and what things will endure and become objects of nostalgia for the future. Pokémon? Urban Vinyl figures? Superheroes? Vampires? iPhones? It will be the things that resonate with the collective consciousness of this current time.
http://www.kohngallery.com/ryden-exhibitions/2014/4/23/mark-ryden-the-gay-90s-west
Ryden presents the viewer with an unreal and very oddly camp version of American history. His is an exploration of what becomes cliché, what becomes kitsch and what becomes forgotten. Yet through it all Ryden makes some of the most richly rendered, beautifully glazed, idealized yet disturbing works of contemporary art.
'PERSONAL' NOSTALGIA???
http://www.kohngallery.com/ryden-exhibitions/2014/2/26/mark-ryden-the-tree-show
Ryden brings together a style influenced by children’s book illustrations of the 1940s, underground comics of the 1960s and 70s, arcane symbols from antiquity, and personages from popular culture. And equally important as the roots of the imagery is the painting technique. Ryden has taken his visual clues from Renaissance old masters for composition and decorative richness (Bellini, Cranach, Bosch, Bruegel, Spanish and Italian religious painting), and appropriated the idealized textures of skin and fabric from 19th century Neo-Classical paintings like Ingres, David, and Bouguereau.
https://www.plastikmagazine.com/interviews/mark-ryden
“I don’t use meat as reminder of our eminent death, but as a reminder that we are made of meat now while we are alive. ”— MARK RYDEN
It seems you are a fan of Alice in Wonderland. Is that correct? And if so, what do you like so much about little Alice and her adventures?
The story of Alice in Wonderland was perhaps my first entry into surrealism as a child. The way the story messes with logic certainly appealed to me as a child and still does. There is something incredibly special about going through a portal into a world of fantasy, imagination. It is a descent into the unconscious. The visions and themes resonate with generation after generation of children. They are very powerful.
What would you cite as (other) major sources of inspiration?
I’ve often said that it is the diversity of my inspirations that most defines my art. I look at many things for inspiration! I collect and hoard lots of things and lots of junk. My studio and house is overflowing with stuff. I collect old children’s books, interesting product packages, toys, photographs, medical models and religious statues. I also have an extensive collection of books on art. I love the old masters more that contemporary art, so most of my books are on artist like Ingers, David, Bronzino, and Carpacio with just a few contemporaries like Neo Rauch and Loretta Lux.
The big rounded eyes you use for some of the animals (snow yak for example) remind me of Japanese manga art. Is that something you are interested in or admire?
Japanese Manga art is one of my many visual interests. I love the films of Hayao Miyazaki, both for it’s content and it’s aesthetics.
You are widely credited with having invented “Pop-Surrealism.” Now, I have looked up the term in the dictionary, but could you briefly define the term in your own words. Or have you grown tired of man’s constant urge to label and categorize things?
Pop Surrealism has been a difficult art movement to define. There are some many artists who’s work is very diverse that seem to be put under the label. I would say something the artists share is an approach from outside the usual channels of the art world, a weariness towards the old, stale ways of thinking about art, a desire to return to figuration, and a dissatisfaction with the sterile intellectual elitism which modernism created, and finally, not only a use of the imagery of kitsch and pop culture, but a genuine affection for it.
Can we talk a bit about your process at the beginning of a project? How do you conceive of it? How do you build it in your mind before you start?
I look at things. Many things. I have a studio overflowing with objects that inspire me, and books on shelves up to the ceiling. I see things that trigger ideas and I make sketches until I feel like something is worth painting.
What’s the best advice anyone gave you?
What’s the best advice anyone gave you?
If you enchant yourself with your art, others will be too.
Do you suffer for your art?
Do you suffer for your art?
Most definitely. Every new piece is a painful birth; often a very painful birth. I feel challenged by every single piece I do. I push hard to imbue my work with something intangible. I strive for a perfection that may be impossible to achieve, but yet I try to achieve it. Additional suffering comes with my tedious time consuming technical process. But with all this suffering can come great rewards that can never be achieved without that price.
How would you define yourself as an artist?
How would you define yourself as an artist?
I suppose I leave that for others to define.
What inspires you to work? As I mentioned above, I surround myself with things that inspire me. I collect everything from old children’s books, interesting product packages, toys, photographs, medical models and skeletons, shells and minerals, and religious statues. I also have an extensive collection of books, post cards, and other paper ephemera.
You seem to use a lot of symbols in your work. Do your works tell stories or are they simply decorative elements of the project?
What inspires you to work? As I mentioned above, I surround myself with things that inspire me. I collect everything from old children’s books, interesting product packages, toys, photographs, medical models and skeletons, shells and minerals, and religious statues. I also have an extensive collection of books, post cards, and other paper ephemera.
You seem to use a lot of symbols in your work. Do your works tell stories or are they simply decorative elements of the project?
There are many symbolic meanings in my art, some I may not necessarily be conscious of myself. The most powerful meanings in art come from another source outside an artist’s own literal consciousness. To me, tapping into this world is the key to the making the most interesting art. My paintings do arouse many questions, and it pleases me when the questions are asked, because I think it is important for art to raise questions. Answering these questions is another issue. To “explain” certain things about a painting would, to me, take something very important away from that painting. People have the idea that an image must “stand for” something else, that the “real” meaning needs to be described with words. Instead it is the image itself that is the meaning. I think it is more important for an image to maintain some mystery. I choose to work with figures that carry iconic power, but I like to leave the mystery undisturbed. I leave it to the viewer to interpret the images how they will.
What famous artists have influenced you, and how?
What famous artists have influenced you, and how?
The list would be long. I admire and have been influenced by countless artists. Most are from long ago such as Carpaccio and Bronzino from the early Italian Renaissance, Northern Dutch artists like Van Eyck and the later French academic painters David, Gérôme and Ingres. But I also like contemporary artists like John Currin. One of my favorite painters right now is Neo Rauch. They all influence me in many different ways. I like the way Bouguereau exquisitely paints flesh while I like the mystical characters of Leonora Carrington.
What other interests do you have outside of art? I have hobbies that I suppose still fall into the category of art. I like taking pictures and videos and making movies in Final Cut Pro. They range from elaborate “home movies” to experimental short videos. I also enjoy a bit of wood working when I can find the time.
You seem to be very aware of the history of works. Where do you see films, photo exhibitions, art performances today?
What other interests do you have outside of art? I have hobbies that I suppose still fall into the category of art. I like taking pictures and videos and making movies in Final Cut Pro. They range from elaborate “home movies” to experimental short videos. I also enjoy a bit of wood working when I can find the time.
You seem to be very aware of the history of works. Where do you see films, photo exhibitions, art performances today?
I think we have reached a time where there is a vast diverse range of things going on simultaneously. Attend a current art fair and you can see everything from abstraction, minimalism, conceptual, to (thankfully) representational art. There is so much going on at the same time.
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/fiona-rae-ra
Rae rapidly moved through the playbook of abstraction in the 1990s, devouring and re-presenting the tropes and fixations of modernism through the lens of movie and televisual culture, quick to grasp the rapid changes in contemporary visual culture, and insert her painting practice into the present.
In 2000 Rae’s paintings began to reference a world keyed to the computer screen, echoing in painterly analogues many of the new visual conventions familiar to a post-Photoshop generation. Fonts, signs and symbols drawn from contemporary design and typography appeared, whilst more familiar abstract marks and spontaneous gestures worried the autonomy, legibility and function of these graphic shapes, debating a new synthesis of painterly languages. In 2004, her lexicon further broadened to include small figures or cartoons whose status was left intriguingly ambiguous.
'Maybe you can live on the moon in the next century' 2009
reminds me of gary baseman
and alicia paz
and nigel cooke
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/art-now-nigel-cooke
...Their corners are scarred with menacing graffiti and the ground cluttered with Hallowe’en pumpkins, bones, severed heads and other paraphernalia derived from the classic and kitsch iconography of popular horror movies. The associations are universally unwholesome and sinister – decrepit, decaying and heavily clichéd – allowing Cooke to devise a kind of tragic-comic melodrama within each work.
Cooke prefers a shallow picture plane: there is little, if any, depth to the paintings. Each composition is usually anchored by a narrow horizontal base line. It is along this lower band that most of the detritus is gathered: the wrecked cars, the tree stumps, the cigarette butts, the rubble.
‘PERSONAL’ nostalgia..
collective nostalgia like pop culture references,,
using personal nostalgia to create the ‘now’ new meaning… like ellis?
that nostalgia.. coming from personal history / photographs and personal influences like cartoons and collections (souvenir)
small souvenirs piecing together something, collective whole
why are we so obsessed with the past, is all we have? peter doig, memory / canoe lake, cinematic reference.
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/peter-doig/peter-doig-explore-exhibition-room-1/peter-doig-3
what is it about films that we are so drawn to, because it resonates with you? echoes within you?
"Think about the line between cuteness, kitsch and the grotesque – have a look at Lisa Yuskovage for example, also Fiona Rae." (unit 7 feedback)
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/fiona-rae-ra
Rae rapidly moved through the playbook of abstraction in the 1990s, devouring and re-presenting the tropes and fixations of modernism through the lens of movie and televisual culture, quick to grasp the rapid changes in contemporary visual culture, and insert her painting practice into the present.
In 2000 Rae’s paintings began to reference a world keyed to the computer screen, echoing in painterly analogues many of the new visual conventions familiar to a post-Photoshop generation. Fonts, signs and symbols drawn from contemporary design and typography appeared, whilst more familiar abstract marks and spontaneous gestures worried the autonomy, legibility and function of these graphic shapes, debating a new synthesis of painterly languages. In 2004, her lexicon further broadened to include small figures or cartoons whose status was left intriguingly ambiguous.
reminds me of gary baseman
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/art-now-nigel-cooke
...Their corners are scarred with menacing graffiti and the ground cluttered with Hallowe’en pumpkins, bones, severed heads and other paraphernalia derived from the classic and kitsch iconography of popular horror movies. The associations are universally unwholesome and sinister – decrepit, decaying and heavily clichéd – allowing Cooke to devise a kind of tragic-comic melodrama within each work.
Cooke prefers a shallow picture plane: there is little, if any, depth to the paintings. Each composition is usually anchored by a narrow horizontal base line. It is along this lower band that most of the detritus is gathered: the wrecked cars, the tree stumps, the cigarette butts, the rubble.
and all the other artists that was suggested to me in the past tutorial...
jules de balincourt
daniel richter
hernan bas
leonara carrington
paula rego
looking at 'cinematic'..? + personal and collective, nostalgia?? line between cuteness kitsch and grotesque? pop/surrealism?
collage / media references in painting (like cartoons, film)
(‘PERSONAL’ nostalgia..
collective nostalgia like pop culture references,,
using personal nostalgia to create the ‘now’ new meaning… like ellis?
that nostalgia.. coming from personal history / photographs and personal influences like cartoons and collections (souvenir)
small souvenirs piecing together something, collective whole
why are we so obsessed with the past, is all we have? peter doig, memory / canoe lake, cinematic reference)
TUTORIAL WITH JOEY:
look at examples for each idea / overlaps / thinking through examples e.g. example on a cute painting, another on grotesque cute, another on kitsch cute... etc.
making mind maps (multiple?) and finding the most interesting links that you want to write about
can free write, not academically at first.
simon reynolads, retromania, musical nostalgia
re-enactment art, s mark gubb (ICA funded)
(re-enacting collective trauma)
kinda like the london dungeon but less fantastical
asked me if I am interested in space/installation and I said video art/performative/animal masks.
how trauma can be so disasociated
not too hung up on what it is that you want to write
chip away at it, 5 mins a day or an hr a week etc.
spent years wanting to know everything about something, you just cant
be firm on what you want and not want to write about
asking library about how to search more specifically on electric database, the uni spends so much money for each database so it is what you're paying for.
don't panic about it, they know that it is difficult for a specific proposal now sometimes even impossible.
be careful on what to put on bibliography on proposal what kind of books, e.g. if I were putting books down on nostalgia from a psychoanalytic perspective i might get assigned to a tutor who thinks I want to write from that perspective, so maybe focus more on getting more visual texts or performative or ....
can have a specific stance that recognises the broadness e.g. notsalgia can encompass a b and c and im going to be talking about c
be cynical when reading, reading the introduction get the gist, and go through picking a quote or two that you could use and note it down.