Sorry I’ve been away for so long dearies…life and school and blah blah blah excuses. Fuck that, let’s get to the good stuff shall we? I want to bring to you today my lovelies a rare feature here in ManDuhLand – a film review, complete with spoilers.
So let’s get straight to the point. Nudity. Nakedness. Nekkid. However you want to say it, people get strange when the clothes come off. I was reading an issue of The Artist’s Magazine a couple years ago (a pretty terrible magazine by the way, I wouldn’t recommend wasting your money on it…explanation to follow in an article some time in the near future), and someone had written into the magazine that they thought nudity had no place in art and that she (I think it was a she) would do with the previous issue what she did with all the other issues in her collection that had artwork featuring nude models…paint clothing over the freaking models! So she could pass her collection down to her grandchildren someday.
Well. Allow me to get into how many different kinds of wrong that is.
As you know, I’m a knitter. What you may not know is that I’m an addict. I hit the dollar store for cheap yarn like a crack head hits the dealer after robbing a gas station. I can never have enough. But once it’s been a few days since I’ve seen the kids after they tried to climb the mountain of yarn and no one can shower because I had to start piling balls up in the tub, the question arises – What am I going to do with all of this?
I can’t be alone in this question or my addiction, as evidenced by the advent of knit or crocheted graffiti, also known as yarn bombing. For today’s Artist You Should Know I had the chance to talk to Ontario yarn bomber Nicole from Knit, Nicole, Knit.
Holy hell, an article! Yes, I’ve been very bad about writing. Bad ManDuh, bad.
Hera; Francis Picabia 1929
But today isn’t about my shortcomings, today is all about Dada. Dada is a little-known movement that occurred just before and heavily influenced Surrealism. In fact many well known Surrealists were also Dadaists and the influence can be seen in their surreal work.
I was watching The News Hour with Jim Lehrer tonight (oh, could I write article upon article about the many pros and few cons of PBS), and one story in particular really caught my eye. It was about an organization called BeadforLife.
In a nutshell, Ugandan women make beads out of recycled paper, use them and some glass beads to make jewelry. The jewelry is sold online and at Bead Parties, and the money is used to buy food, schooling, and – I found this part most interesting – homes with land for impoverished families.
Sorry, a small family emergency prevented me from getting this up earlier. But trust me, it is WELL worth the wait.
Linger; 2008
With all the new-fangled drawing programs and tablets for computers these days, it can be tricky to find an artist that works solely in a traditional medium. It can be even harder to find an artist that works solely in a traditional medium that’s not painting. Ceramic sculpture, the various drawing mediums all seem to be a rarity these days. But rarer than them by far is the printmaker. So I’m as pleased as wife-beating, baby-killing Punch to present Megan Frau.
Random update concerning the site itself: As you may have noticed from my inconsistent updates over the last couple of weeks, I’m having difficulty maintaining a Monday through Friday update schedule while juggling everything else. I was thinking about this, and I realized it’ll only get worse once I throw school into the mix as well. Part of this is my own lack or organization and regimented schedule, part is my thoroughly crazy life. So while I try to get better at making more time for writing, I’m going to knock updates back to Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays only (an idea blatantly stolen from one of my favorite webcomics, XKCD). My goal is to be back to updating five days a week by January.
But now on to the fun stuff. Today I want to spread joy. Joy in the form of a pencil.
Oh, but not just any pencil. I’m talking specifically about a woodless graphite pencil. I bought a couple on impulse about a year ago while I was shopping for other art supplies, and for finished graphite drawings, they’re pretty much the only pencil I used now. I may occasionally use a harder lead for layouts, but in most instances the woodless is all I use.
Yeah, I know, I was a total slug about writing last week. Out of necessity, I’d gone off of caffeine, and let me tell you. It wasn’t pretty. I’m definitely felt the deep void in my life a Vanilla Coke fills. And for my negligence, I get to write while my back feels as though I’ve been stabbed with a rather large knife. It’s good though – it fuels my rage!
Because today is all about outrage. My apologies, but this isn’t art related outrage. This is gender and state fair outrage.
For those of you that don’t know, I live near Syracuse, NY, USA. It’s a city best known for once having salt, having one of the most polluted lakes in the country (and up there on the world’s list if I’m not mistaken), the 2003 NCCA college basketball championship, Charles Dickens falling into the Erie Canal (which according to local legend, fueled his hatred for the city), and “The Great New York State Fair”.
It’s this last one that has got my panties in a bunch. See, normally I hate the fair because it’s crowded, hot, overpriced, and they make up ludicrous rules every year that are usually repealed by the next. But this year I hate the fair for a whole new reason.
All pictures this article are screenshots of Destino taken from my computer.
Shout out to Mulysa Mayhem of Abysmal Accessories for the inspiration for today’s article!
Female main character
It was Mulysa that yesterday brought to my attention Destino – a six minute cartoon that was a planned collaboration between Salvador Dali and (are you ready for this?) Walt Disney. Dali once referred to Disney as one of “the three great American surrealists.”* As the opening of Destino tell us, the two began the collaboration in 1946. But Disney’s financial problems led to the project being shelved and locked away in Disney’s infamous vaults, and it wasn’t approached again before either Disney’s death in 1966 or Dali’s in 1989.*
Ahhh, that was a nice mini vacation of sorts.
So let’s talk Salvador Dali. I’m sure pretty much everyone knows of his Surreal work. After all, it’s essentially the poster art of Surrealism. But his body of work is actually much more widespread and, like many artists, he went through many phases and styles. For example, would you believe this is a Dali?
Bathers of the Costa Brava; 1923
Bathers is from the end of Dali’s time in the School of Fine Arts in Madrid, about 6 years before his first visit with a Surrealist.
But for now I’d like to focus on his work after Surrealism. True though, that Surrealism left its marks on Dali. All his work following his Surreal period displays the influence of the movement openly and without shame.
Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory; 1952
Here, for example, is a reworking of sorts of arguably his most famous Surrealist piece (indeed, quite likely his most famous piece of all his works). The Surrealist influence is clearly there where the original imagery is kept, but note the block shapes that become pointed on one end the farther back in space you go. One is likely tempted to refer to them as missile-shaped, and would be correct to do so. Dali and his wife Gala were living in America when the nuclear missiles were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the atomic age made its mark on Dali.
Raphaelesque Head Exploding; 1951
Christ of St. John of the Cross; 1951
At the same time Dali’s work was going nuclear, it was going religious too. He “discovered” Christianity and dove in head first.
Madonna of Port Lligat; 1950
As a result, his religious imagery seems almost harder and definitely more man-made than the religious images of the Renaissance. Edges are sharper, lines are crisper. The colors also seem a bit gloomier. But as always, there’s the Surreal influence.
Obviously Surrealism left a profound impact on Dali, one he never shook. But one can never forget his abilities demonstrated before Surrealism and his images afterwards.