Skinned Alive: Adrian Piper and Racial Identity

Adrian Piper 1991 exhibit Decide Who You Are-“Skinned Alive”

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Adrian Piper is a first-generation conceptual artist and analytic philosopher who was born in New York City and lived for many years on Cape Cod, Massachusetts before emigrating from the United States to Germany. She began exhibiting her artwork internationally at the age of twenty, graduating from the School of Visual Arts in 1969 with an A.A. in Fine Art and a concentration in painting and sculpture. While continuing to produce and exhibit her artwork, Piper received a B.A. Summa Cum Laude with Research Honors in Philosophy and a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Musicology from the City College of New York in 1974. For graduate school in philosophy she attended Harvard University, where she received an M.A. in 1977 and a Ph.D. in 1981 under the supervision of John Rawls.

self portrait

She also studied Kant and Hegel with Dieter Henrich at the University of Heidelberg in 1977-1978. Her formal education lasted a total of 27 years. Piper taught philosophy at Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, UCSD, and Wellesley College. Following in the steps of trailblazing pioneer Dr. Joyce Mitchell Cook, in 1987 she became the first tenured African American woman professor in the field of philosophy. But for her refusal to return to the United States while listed as a Suspicious Traveler on the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s Watch List, Wellesley forcibly terminated her tenured full professorship in philosophy in 2008. Since 2005, she has lived and worked in Berlin Germany, where she runs the APRA Foundation Berlin and edits The Berlin Journal of Philosophy.

Adrian Piper is also bi-racial. Much of the early focus of her artwork, became the interpersonal dynamics of racism and racial stereotyping, as seen here, in her video installation, “Cornered” (1988).

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Works that further explore racial themes include her pencil drawing “Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features” (1981); her collective performance and video “Funk Lessons” (1982-4); her unannounced “Calling Card” interactive performances (1986–1990); her mixed media installation “Close to Home” (1987); her video installation Cornered (1988); and Vanilla Nightmares (1986–1989), her series of racially and sexually transgressive charcoal drawings on pages of the New York Times. Her first retrospective in 1987 at the Alternative Museum in New York, reintroduced the art public and a new generation of viewers to the media, strategies and preoccupations of first-generation Conceptual art.

And yet Piper is also well-known for her principal philosophical publications in metaethics, Kant, and the history of ethics. Her scholarly two-volume study in Kantian metaethics, “Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception” and “Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception”, was accepted for publication by Cambridge University Press in 2008. “Rationality and the Structure of the Self” was the culmination of 34 years of work.

A multi-faceted woman and creative genius, Adrian Piper founded the Adrian Piper Research Archive (APRA) in 2002, after being diagnosed with a chronic, progressive, and incurable medical condition. Although the condition had vanished within two years after she emigrated to Germany in 2005, she continued to develop APRA as a personal and public resource for students, scholars, curators, collectors, writers, and members of the general public who have a constructive curiosity or scholarly or professional interest in her work and life.

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It is amazing for that one who’s talents and knowledge have been so demonstrated, that physical features such as skin color could ever play a negative role in her life.

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Salvador Dali on the Human Condition

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Gaultier in San Francisco

what captures our interest in fashion is not as much the clothes, as the mystique …

barbaraelka

from The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier:

“An innovative exhibition design by the Paris-based architectural and stage design company Projectiles, showcases the couturier’s designs, as well as prints and video clips, illustrating many of Gaultier’s artistic collaborations. Throughout the galleries, thirty unique mannequins wearing remarkable wigs and headdresses by Odile Gilbert, founder of the Atelier 68 in Paris, come ‘alive’ with interactive faces created by technologically ingenious audiovisual projections, surprising visitors with their lifelike presence. Poetic and playful, the production, design and staging of this dynamic audiovisual element has been produced by Denis Marleau and Stéphanie Jasmin of UBU/Compagnie de création. A dozen celebrities, including Gaultier himself, have lent their faces—projected on to the mannequins—and often their voices to this project.”

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk

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Nick Burcher | Banksy New Orleans Katrina tribute

“I looked out the window of the taxi on the drive into New Orelans and remarked, ‘There’s still so much devastation. I can’t believe they haven’t cleaned this mess up’ to which the driver stared at me and said ‘This part of the city wasn’t affected by the hurricane – its always looked like this.'” – Banksy

Friday, 29 August 2008
via Banksy New Orleans Katrina tributes published on the Banksy website.

 

Banksy is painting New Orleans, with various pieces around the city appearing in time for the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Banksy has published his New Orleans work on his own website at www.banksy.co.uk and the New Orleans graffiti has been picked up by media organisations and bloggers alike. All the images are available on the Banksy website and Banksy has also included notes on some of the photos. Here is a selection of my favourites from Banky’s New Orleans pictures:

via Banksy New Orleans Katrina tributes published on the Banksy website.

Banksy New Orleans – Gray Ghost Revenge! “In addition to its other problems the streets of New Orleans are patrolled by a vigilante called The Gray Ghost, a man who’s been systematically oliterating every piece of graffiti across the city with the same shade of gray paint since 1997!” – Banksy

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Hallidd's Weblog

Last Rites

Maybe you could tell me. The steps coming down the stairs. Your shoulders shaking. Too many pills. Chasing you down the boulevaard. Maybe it was something I ate for Christmas.

Listening to each other. The last syllable hangs in the air. Help you on with your jacket. You ask. Did you tip the waiter. I return to the booth. For my teeth. They’re still talking.

Maybe you could die. And I could start over. I’d divorce the first woman I married. And go through the bitter redress of my complaints. You get the children. You get the house. You get whatever is in our accounts. I get the last breath. From your lungs.

Why does life leave you. Feeling used. And worn out. I can hear the feet going down the stairs. Its Christmas morning. And the kids are laughing.

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Paintings of Mati Klarwein

SANTANA: ABRAXAS – Full Album Remastered

Mati Klarwein

I came about learning of Mati Klarwein through the backdoor, you might say.  His famous paintings decorate several album covers, Santana’s Abraxas among them, as well as his first album Axis, and Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew.  I was listening to the album first, then became fascinated enough by the art depicted to do a little research. This is how I discovered Abdul Mati Klarwein

Born in Hamburg, Germany, he studied art in Paris at the Academie Julian. Under the tutelage of Fernand Leger, he was influenced by the surrealist art of Salvador Dali and Bunuel. He also studied with Ernst Fuchs, a Viennese realist who taught techniques of the old world Flaemish masters such as Van Eyck.

Having been born in relative priviledge, to a Jewish architect father of Polish origins and a German opera singer mother, Klarwein was forced by circumstances to travel much in his life. First, his family escaped Nazi Germany by moving to  Palestine, then Jerusalem Israel. It is because of his time in contact with Muslims, that Mati adopted the preface “Abdul” in front of his name. Mati’s father was an architect involved in the design of Israel’s Parliament building, the Knesset. The family vacationed in Saint Tropez, and lived in Deia, Majorca for a while. There, Mati was friends with the poet Robert Graves, and other artists in the small community.

Having been to art school in Paris, Mati moved to New York in 1965, there to be influenced by artists involved in the psychedelic movement, and personally knew  Timothy Leary. But as Leary said, “Mati didn’t need psychedelics!” He’d been inspired by his travels through various countries of different cultures and non-Western deities and symbolism. His piece de’ resistance was a large scale project called The Aleph Sanctuary. This so-called temple of all religions, featured 68 paintings illustrating symbolism and scenes from multiple spiritual universes, including reflections on Biblical passages. Some of these, such as “Anunciation”, “The Tree of Life”, and “Grain of Sand” are seen here. Some of these paintings are those he’s most known for.

Mati in later life settled in Deia on Majorca, and painted celebrity portraits as well as landscapes. He died in March 2002.

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Sabina Nore | the art of surrealism

I’d like to share this website of fantastic art by Sabina Nore in Vienna, Austria. Her psychologically fascinating pieces are surrealistic in style, colorful and delicate, visually poetic and symbolic. Her technique is sophisticated, spell-binding, evocative, emotional. Please take a look and enjoy the art of Sabina Nore!

Sabina Nore | Paintings and Art.

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Water Muses

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This is a watercolor sketch of a figure in an oil painting I did.
I hope to expand on the series soon.

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ART:21

Got to look into this. ART:21

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Illustrator’s Directory

Came across this directory listing for illustrators: Directory of Illustration.com .

One of the featured artists in the Illustrator’s Guide: Matthew Hollings. I love the freehand stylization and splashed color which expands the boundaries of the art on the page. In my comparison of graphic and fine art earlier, this does have elements of fine art. The portraits are hand drawn, and emotionally edited to reveal character. They are fine art graphics.

As an example of someone who is less a fine artist but excellent illustrator of narrative, Lynne Avril , who has won several awards for work with children’s stories. Which shows the differing skill levels at which artists may produce and maintain functional careers in art.

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