Landscape photography by Philippe Sainte-Laudy.
Tracks
Daily Pic: A full wall of dots by Damien Hirst, from the spot-painting extravaganza that is now filling all the world’s Gagosian galleries. (And that the Daily Pic can’t seem to shake free of.) Of the project’s 331 spotted canvases, the only ones that fail, as art, are the ones that could count as “successful” abstract paintings. The whole glory of Hirst’s project, it seems to me, is that it blows-off stale, Old Masterish notions of fine-art connoisseurship. Hirst drowns the connoisseurial eye in a sea of spots whose colors have been chosen arbitrarily, and so can’t be any more significant, artistically speaking, than the random colors floating on an oil slick. When Hirst’s spot paintings look good, it’s an accident that needs to be ignored. By refusing to let us fall back on easy aesthetic judgments, picture by picture, Hirst forces us to work at what his flood of picture-making might mean, as a whole. Hirst’s dots don’t provide the quick read, as eye candy, that gets some critics to dismiss them. I’d say the project demands the kind of slow, attentive thought you give to the complexities of a great Cezanne or Picasso. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary, AFP / Getty Images)
We’re screening at Sundance 2012!
Throughout the next six weeks, we’re gonna have a bunch of collaborative projects to focus on. Here are three quick ways you can get involved:
- The ‘RE collaboration’ — musings and fusings on a specific theme
- You know we’ll be screening some new Tiny Films.
- Or, maybe 99% of you wanna join the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ collaboration?
More requests coming soon! And, get tickets to our screening here!
<3
(Source: hitrecord)
GUEST POST: Decorating for the Holidays
Christmas is a ridiculous time where the big, cheesy, goofy kid in all of us comes out. We’re normal people for the majority of the year, but when December rolls around, we all turn into that lady from QVC’s Quacker Factory.
Christmas lights! Tree-shaped sugar cookies! Santa! Hot Chocolate! Rudolph! We’re excited for it ALL.
But those goddamned hipsters just can’t get on board. I get it: it’s hard for them to express any sort of holiday cheer when they’re trying to appear sullen and joyless all of the time. While people across the globe are joining hands and singing “Joy to the World,” all they want to do is sit in front of their computer and take unsmiling sepia-toned photos of themselves.
It all seems pretty ridiculous—the idea that they can’t embrace the time of year when even the biggest assholes try to act sort of nice. But, let’s be fair: we’re looking at it from one side. Maybe there’s a point to all of this eye-rolling about Christmas that they’re doing. And so, I give you an internal monologue of a Hipster who refuses to decorate for the holidays:
Yes, I see you people. You and your rosy cheeks and scarves, carting home pointsettas and Christmas lights and bags of fake snow. Let me tell you this: I’m not giving in to your commercialism. I am not decorating for Christmas.
I’m well aware that my decision to not decorate for Christmas turns me into a caricature of the Grinch. Someone who can’t embrace things such as cookie baking, tree decorating, or wasting an entire Saturday afternoon assembling a snowman in my front yard.
I’m not trying to be an asshole, I have several reasons why I won’t decorate for Christmas:
1. I know you think that my tall, skinny frame and my weird, gangly arms would make me the best possible candidate for stringing Christmas lights, but I assure you that I can’t stand up for more than 10 minutes at a time. Why? Because all I ate today was a spoonful of hummus and 45 cups of black coffee.
2. While I can appreciate the irony of an “Ugly Holiday Sweater” party, you will never see me goofing around in a Santa hat. Santa Claus was created to instill greed in children as soon as they’re old enough to start articulating a wish list. I know this because I Wikipedia’d the history of “Saint Nicolas” on my iPad that my parents bought for me last Christmas.
3. People with big Christmas displays make me sad. I mean, why are you trying so hard? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO PROVE? There’s nothing more pathetic than trying at life. I’d rather sit here with my mulled cider and look out the window wistfully. I am so mad. SO MAD AT THE SNOW.4. I’m going home to my parents’ mansion in Connecticut and they decorate it really beautifully. I can’t wait to see it! Uh, I mean: I’M NOT GOING HOME. I’M AN ORPHAN. MY NAME IS OLIVER. OLIVER TWIZT. Hey, that would be a great DJ name. I don’t even care anymore. Whatever, bye.
Amanda Waas is a regular contributor to F’d in Park Slope. She is also the creator of the douchey gift blog You’re Welcome. Follow her on Twitter for more vaguely amusing commentary.
