Recent Cool Art I’ve Seen
I’ve seen a couple pieces of very interesting art recently, and I thought I’d share some of it.
This first piece was at Destination 1111. It’s by Jim Gebben: you can see his Flickr photos Jim Gebben Flickr. I would really recommend checking Gebben’s Flickr gallery out, actually: it’s got much higher-quality photos than the one I took, as well as a lot more variety. My grandparents had a set of the exact same wooden toy people that Gebben takes photos of. I would play with them when I was little on holidays when I would see them. Anyway, I love the colors. The prints at Destination 1111 were quite reasonably priced - ~$200 each, I think. If only they would match our apartment - and if only we could afford to spend money on art that we didn’t find at a garage sale. :-(
This second piece I saw just this weekend, at the Detroit Institute of Arts. It’s a massive painting - 10’ x 12’, I’d guess - and is called “Officer of the Hussars”. It was made by Kehinde Wiley. I’ll quote from the informational plaque next to the painting in the DIA:
“This painting is inspired by a long history of European paintings showing military heroes on horseback. It draws attention because of its size, colors, and decorative details, but also because powerful, heroic images of black men are rare in Western art history.”
This is one of my favorite paintings I’ve seen recently, for several reasons. First: powerful, heroic images of black men are rare in Western art history. Yep. Secondly: the guy’s wearing Timberlands. (If you click on the image, it’ll pop up a larger version so you can see the detail better.) The image is pitch-perfect.
Posted on Oct 13, 2008 - 02:33 PM
