Folk art, Outsider art, Art Brut — no matter what you call it, the work of self-taught artists has been fascinating doctors, curators, and other artists for the past hundred years. Inspired by a vision, these artists are often driven by obsession to realize their ideas on found materials using makeshift methods that might seem illogical but end up leading to profound works of art. From the former slave Bill Traylor and orphaned Adolf Wölfli to the gifted savant George Widener and Baptist reverend Howard Finster, we’ve assembled the best of the bunch. Click through our gallery of images and let us know if there is anyone you would add to the mix.
The legendary Elvis Presley, who died on this day back in 1977, has been celebrated in art for some 50 years by such creative talents as Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, and Keith Haring. Meanwhile, his fans have remembered him through lovingly lowbrow works of art. We’ve gathered some of our favorite examples — from a wacky nude of “Elvis the Pelvis” seated on a throne and an explosive matchstick bust of the phenomenal blues man to an eerie vision of the groundbreaking performer in a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich and a striking portrait compiled from illustrated stereo equipment. And of course, no schlock portfolio of Elvis pictures would be complete without “The Hillbilly Cat” captured on a kitschy black velvet canvas in DayGlo paint. Click through our gallery of images and let us know if there are any classic odes that we missed.
When the summer season hits, we become a little beach-obsessed here at Flavorpill. As a result, we recently combed the Internet to discover literary greats in old fashioned bathing outfits and rock stars in skimpy swim suits — which has led us to consider, what do artists do (and more importantly, wear) at the beach? From Pablo Picasso playing servant to his baby mama on the French Riviera and Salvador Dali using a washed-up starfish as a monocle on the Spanish coast to Tracey Emin promoting donkey rides on the English shore and Terence Koh flaunting his wedding dress in the East Hampton surf, we’ve found that most artists look fabulous on the beach — even if hours in the studio have left them a little pasty. Click through our gallery of beached artists below.
The largest funding platform for creative projects in the world, Kickstarter is the DIY artist’s dream-come-true. With a great idea, a fabulous video presentation, and some tempting swag, almost any project — regardless of how fanciful it may seem — can get off the ground. We dug deep into the site to pick the 10 best art projects, including some that are still open to contributions. From Spencer Tunick’s round up of nudes at the Dead Sea and Molly Crabapple’s five-day confinement making wall drawings to Swoon’s musical architecture in New Orleans and Eric Schwabel’s human light suit on the playa of Burning Man, Kickstarter helps make these imaginative projects a reality. Watch the highly entertaining video presentations that funded the projects and let us know if you’ve contributed to any Kickstarter dreams.
With the news of Walmart heiress Alice Walton preparing to open her massive Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas in November and California’s billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad set to build The Broad, a stunning Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed museum that will open in Los Angeles in 2013, we thought it was time to take a look a how wealthy art collectors are promoting their prizes. From the edgy Rubell Family Collection, housed in a former Drug Enforcement Agency storage site in Miami and Francois Pinault’s coveted contemporary art on view in historic buildings in Venice to a Sheikh’s rich collection of Arab art exhibited in a converted school in Qatar and Korean national treasures shown at Samsung’s masterfully designed Leeum in Seoul, here’s a glimpse at some of our favorite private museums around the world. If there are others that you think we should know about, please share.
While visiting Art Chicago this spring, we jumped at a chance for a private tour the Playboy Collection to see some of its coveted works by Andy Warhol, Leroy Neiman, and Alberto Vargas — along with any other seductive bits of the archive that might be on view. Much to our surprise, we were treated to It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World, a 1960s flavored exhibition that celebrates the Playboy lifestyle of that era. The stylish show, which was organized by Playboy art curator Aaron Baker, features photographs, illustrations, and paintings that he assembled while doing research about the early Playboy Clubs for both the producers of Mad Men and The Playboy Club, a new NBC drama that premieres this fall.
Long before and since his death on June 25, 2009, Michael Jackson, the self-styled “King of Pop,” was a muse to a wide group of contemporary artists — ranging from Andy Warhol, who was dubbed the “Pope of Pop Art,” and his neo-pop art protégés, Jeff Koons and David LaChapelle, to the hip-hop championing Kehinde Wiley and celebrated street artist KAWS. Now, nearly two years after his untimely death at age 50, Flavorpill pays tribute to the award winning singer/songwriters life through the works of art he inspired.
Memorial Day weekend kicks off the summer travel season, and while some of us may prefer to travel by car, others are currently printing out boarding passes and heading to the airport for a exciting journey to an exotic place. Since summer invites the discovery of cultural capitals and exploration of distant sites, we’ve assembled a lively mix of art about airplanes — ranging from Andy Warhol’s painting of a newspaper headline of a plane crash in France and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s expressionistic canvas of a plane flying over a city skyline to Hiraki Sawa’s video still of miniature jets flying around his apartment and Tom Sachs’ DIY reconstruction of a complete airplane lavatory — to help you overcome any possible fears of flying and to get you planning where the next walk through airport security will take you. Enjoy!
A provocative photographer and filmmaker, Laurel Nakadate is widely known for her disturbing encounters with older men on film; she taunts while her awkward new friends just stumble around her stupidly. In her latest series of photographs, 365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears, the Yale-trained artist may be feeling some regret, but we doubt it. The tearful series, which is on view in totality at New York’s Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects through June 25, captures Nakadate “taking part in sadness each day.” She weeps on planes and trains, in the bed and on the pot, half-dressed and fully naked. Made in response to the diaristic nature of present-day picture taking, the artist states her photos are inspired, somewhat contrarily, by the “happy self-portraits people make day after day with their cell phone cameras and post on Facebook.”
Cinco de Mayo (the fifth of May) is a minor holiday in Mexico, but a big reason for Mexicans to celebrate their heritage and cultural pride in the United States. In recognition of the holiday, which commemorates the Mexican army’s defeat of invading French forces in the 1860s, we’ve assembled an exciting mix of contemporary Mexican artists who are becoming world renowned. Rooted in folklore, social issues, and popular culture, these artists — ranging from Gabriel Orozco, who’s been canonized at MoMA, and Damián Ortega, a standout at London’s White Cube, to Julieta Aranda, a rising star who has tricked out the Guggenheim — turn the local into the conceptual for international appetites.
