On hiatus until Sunday, February 3, for AWP conference.

Danish artist Lise Harlev:

Oliver Vernon earned his BFA at Parsons School of Design:

Promised Land
(2007)

Wanderer II
(2003)

Wink
(2007)

Thanks to my brother for sending me this sweet Vampire Weekend video, via the fabulous venue La Blogothèque. As a reminder, their album comes out on Tuesday and it is glorious:

Bohemian/Czech artist Markus Lüpertz:

Judith
(2004)

Merkur Entwurfsmodell 7
(2005)

German artist Norbert Bisky:

Sputum
(2007)

Sündenbock
(2005)

Today I give you a full lecture by Manuel De Landa about the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. This comes from the European Graduate School, 2007. Here, in a very accessible and enjoyable way, De Landa discusses Deleuze's fascinating work on expressivity and morphogenesis. It is about an hour long, but I can assure you it will be one of the most interesting hours you will ever spend:

Part One




Part Two




Part Three




Part Four




Part Five

L.A. artist Dave Kinsey:

Untitled
(2006)

Warborne Blvd.
(2007)

Untitled
(2006)

New work from Scottish artist David Shrigley:

Before I get to the "official" post for the day, I wanted to share two things:

1) For the first time in -- I can't remember how long -- the Lakers are actually in first place in the western conference!!!

2) If you aren't familiar with the philosopher Manuel De Landa, you should check him out. I'm about to embark on what sounds to be a wild ride, his book A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, published in 2000.

Here is a quote from an interview with De Landa, read the full interview here:

"To be blunt, any idea for social intervention based on Marxism will be a failure."

True that, De Landa. True that.

Now then...

Today I give you a short avant-garde film from 1924 called Ballet Mécanique. The music was composed by George Antheil. It was directed by Dudley Murphy and Fernand Léger, with cinematography by Man Ray:

Part One




Part Two

Erik Wayne Patterson earned his MFA at Parsons School of Design:

To Understand, and Communicate
(2004)

Nazi Cat Cloverleaf
(2007)

Cowboy Rabbit Used Car Lot
(2007)

Portuguese artist Paula Rego:

Sit
(1994)

O Sonho de Amelia (Amelia's Dream)
(1998)

War
(2003)

Because I'm currently studying the history of avant-garde film, I'll likely be posting some representative examples for your enjoyment and edification. The first is this short film by Joseph Cornell called Rose Hobart.

This film consists of snippets from a Hollywood film called East of Borneo combined with shots from a documentary of an eclipse. Cornell replaced the original motion picture soundtrack with two songs from Nestor Amaral's album called Holiday in Brazil, which he had found at a junk shop.

When he screened the film for the first (and only) time in 1936, at Julian Levy's NYC gallery, he projected it through a piece of blue glass and slowed the speed of projection to that of a silent film. Salvador Dalí was in the audience and as legend has it flipped out and smashed the projector halfway through the screening, shouting, "He has stolen this idea from my subconscious!" Cornell was so embarrassed and hurt that he never again screened his films for the public.

Unfortunately, I just realized that the proprietor of the film has disallowed embedding. Therefore, I will give you a chopped version (below) to whet your whistle, and the links for part one & part two, should you wish to watch the whole thing from start to finish.

Photographer Ann Ploeger earned her BA in film studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln:

Toussaint

Dave & Tiffany

Rachel

Sean & John

Canadian artist John Hartman:

The Williamsburg Bridge
(2007)

Boston from Above Copley Square
(2007)

Chicago
(2007)

British artist Dale Atkinson:

Untitled
(2004)

Head of a Man
(2003)

Maggots Bite
(1997)

British artist Axel Antas:

Cloud Formation Suspended
(2006)

White Portrait
(2002)

Structure For Birds (Field)
(2007)

Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond directs human performances of video games. Here is his version of TETRIS:

French artist Arnaud Loumeau claims Vatican City as his home:

Californian artist Brandi Milne:

One Of The Guests

Let's Eat Cake