devidsketchbook:

Andres Bedoya   “Ultra Madre”   [Video]

In 2009 Andres Bedoya organized a haunting performance installation “Ultra Madre,” in which 57 women lay still on the scaffolding of the main arch of the Museo Nacional de Arte in La Paz, Bolivia. For one hour the women did not move, their long, black hair cascading down the 15-foot structure. The jarring image of the soft hair against the rigid architecture stirred a quiet but lasting sense of unease.

Installation and Performance - mixed media, approx. 8’ w x 15’ h x 5’ d, National Museum of Art, La Paz, Bolivia, 2009.

(via toomuchart)

ryandonato:

Astrid Binar, One Thousand Means of Escape.

(via toomuchart)

HBICs of history » S i m o n e t t a   V e s p u c c i

Simonetta (1453-1476) was an Italian renaissance noblewoman from Genoa and the wife of Marco Vespucci of Florence. She was renowned for being the greatest beauty of her age - certainly of the city of Florence - hence her nickname la bella Simonetta.

At the age of fifteen or sixteen she married Marco Vespucci who was a distant cousin of the Florentine explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci. Marco was accepted by Simonetta’s father, and he was very much in love with her, so the marriage was logical. Her parents also knew the marriage would be advantageous because Marco’s family was well connected in Florence, especially to the Medici family.

Simonetta was instantly popular at the Florentine court. The Medici brothers, Lorenzo and Giuliano took an instant liking towards her. Lorenzo permitted the Vespucci wedding to be held at the palazzo in Via Larga, and held the wedding reception at their lavish Villa di Careggi. Through the Vespucci family Simonetta was discovered by Sandro Botticelli and other prominent painters upon arriving in Florence. Before long every nobleman in the city was besotted with her, even the brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano of the ruling Medici family. Lorenzo was occupied with affairs of state, but his younger brother was free to pursue her.

At La Giostra (a jousting tournament) in 1475, held at the Piazza Santa Croce, Giuliano entered the lists bearing a banner on which was a picture of Simonetta as a helmeted Pallas Athene painted by Botticelli himself, beneath which was the French inscription La Sans Pareille, meaning “The unparalleled one”. It is unknown, however, if they actually became lovers. 

Simonetta died just one year later, on the night of 26–27 April 1476, probably from tuberculosis. She was only 22 at the time of her death. The entire city was reported to mourn her death and thousands followed her coffin to its burial. It is suggested that Botticelli was in love with her since he requested to be buried at her feet - his wish was in fact carried out when he died some 34 years later, in 1510.

(via toomuchart)

hyperallergic:

Spanish artist Isaac Cordal sculpted faces onto metal cooking strainers, which cast beautiful shadows. via Neatorama

artlistpro:

Jenny Holzer. (1950)

“When I was in graduate school I had done some public things, but they were unsuccessful. They didn’t mean anything, they were abstract. I started writing on my paintings, but that didn’t work either. So when I came to New York the painting fell away and the writing became dominant. I then figured out how to take this writing public - I thought posters would be appropriate. It made sense as a public project.”

“I came to language because I wanted to be explicit about things, but didn’t want to be a social realist painter. I had been an abstract painter and that was the painting that I loved, and that I could do. It’s not that I thought that one was better than the other, but for some reason I couldn’t become a figurative painter. I wanted to be explicit about things, and it became clear that the only other way for me to do it was to use language. People can understand you when you say or write something.”

“I sometimes am criticized for not being a great writer, which I think is legitimate. My writing can use improvement, and if the criticism is sincere, it’s helpful to me. But what is not useful is when there’s some silly competitiveness from people who write for a living and find it inappropriate or unseemly that I write. They do what they do and I do what I do.”

via tairmanaroze:

supersonicelectronic:

Broken glass installation by Baptiste Debombourg.