Hello readers and welcome to 2013! This week kicked off with a bang, featuring everything from a color matching quiz to an analysis of the art market bubble. Let's talk art...
Photographer Yossi Loloi must have taken a hint from Lucian Freud and Peter Paul Rubens when he took photos challenging the traditional image of the nude muse.
Loloi's project, entitled Full Beauty, features nude photographs of women 420 pounds and larger. With a deep respect for his subjects and a challenging eye toward both pop culture and art history, Loloi shows that the history of the female nude is a dangerously limited one. While it is a rarity to show curvy bodies in advertising, entertainment or even contemporary art, obese women are virtually never acknowledged in these realms, despite the growing number of Americans who are overweight.
Are you color blind or a color master? If you have the desire to find out, and a couple minutes to spare, may we recommend this utterly challenging and addictive Color Test.
The quiz, which we first saw on Design Taxi, tests your ability to match up colors by hue, saturation and more. It brought back a flood of beautiful memories of our previous favorite color challenge, though this one may be a bit harder. Just place your cursor over the color wheel and try to match up the background with the foreground. When you think you've found your match, click and move on to the next round. Take the quiz here.
New Year's resolutions mostly dissolve by the end of spring, but we found one young filmmaker who stuck to his goal the entire year, and the result is both impressive and inspiring. In 2012, Jonathan Britnell wanted to add a dose of creativity to his daily routine, even if just for a moment. He shot one second of footage a day for an entire year, combining them to create the short film titled, "2012. 366 days. 366 seconds."
Britnell explained his method in a phone conversation with the Huffington Post:
"I wanted to force myself to be creative every day, even if it was something little."
Calling all collectors, connoisseurs, patrons, economists, starving artists, tastemakers and enraged bystanders. The New York Times wants you to engage in a conversation about the art market. In a recent letter to the editor entitled "Invitation to a Dialogue: An Art Market Bubble?" William Cole writes rather dramatically about what most of us already know: the art market is not fair. He writes:
"Financiers know the value of hype. They understand that if artworks sell at exorbitant prices, those works — and the artists who created them — become newsworthy, regardless of whether they’re actually any good. And the media play right along..."
The thought-provoking piece finishes with gusto: "Have the masters of the universe created the unpoppable bubble? Or will the child’s voice somehow manage to rise above the buzz and proclaim that the emperor is, as many have suspected all along, buck naked?" Even though we agree with this sentiment, we hope we never see the current art emperor Damien Hirst viewed in the buff.
A parent who was "All Shook Up" about Elvis Presley songs in a high-school drama prompted educators to cancel the musical, deeming it too sexual. But the decision was reversed Thursday by administrators at the high school south of Salt Lake City.
The administrators at Herriman High School received permission from the copyright owners of "All Shook Up" to edit some of Presley's songs and make scene changes in the American jukebox musical that borrows from William Shakespeare.
"The show will go on," said Sandy Riesgraf, a spokeswoman for the Jordan School District. "Our biggest concern early on, we wanted to make some changes to keep the play within community values. It's a win-win for all of us."
Well, that's what we have for you this week. Welcome back to reality and we wish you a happy, art filled new year!