Kitchen Suprematism • Blue Noses

Blue Noses (the Siberian duo Vyacheslav Mizin and Alexander Shaburov) are known for their satirical and provocative videos, photographs and performances which parody and critique Russia's past and its present day capitalist boom.
In the series Kitchen Suprematism, abstract compositions of iconic importance to Russian art historians are reduced to humble arrangements of cold meats, cheese and bread.
Blue Noses emerged from a loose association of artists active in Siberia in the 1990s. Shaburov's conviction that art should flow from the everyday was expressed in works such as My daily route from home to the bus-stop: photographs every 15 paces (1987); in his hosting of the TV show Guess The Melody, where he mouthed words silently and viewers had to guess the song (1993); and his receipt of a Soros Foundation grant to produce the project Tooth Repair, documenting a trip to the dentist (1996). On the eve of the new millennium (31 December 1999), in an attempt to avoid the promised year-zero computer apocalypse, Mizin, Shaburov and friends shut themselves in a bomb-shelter in Novosibirsk and made a series of videos in which they wore blue bottle-tops on their noses. The epithet Blue Noses was coined and stuck to Mizin and Shaburov; they finally gave up trying to shake off the brand in 2003, when they arrived at a hotel to find that they were booked in with the surname Blyunosez.

Blue Noses have represented Rusasia at the Venice Biennale.


More works by Blue Noses at Mathew Bown Gallery


update: (since nobody reads comments) Thomas points to the fact that the russian custom seized 11 pieces of art by Blue Noses, mainly from their "Mask Show" series.
snippet from a NYT-article:

MOSCOW, Oct. 21 — A group of men burst into a contemporary art gallery here Saturday, destroying work by an ethnic Georgian artist and beating up the owner, Marat Guelman. Mr. Guelman is well known both for his display of politically inspired and irreverent art and, most recently, his public attacks on neofascists for their dislike of non-Russians and of Western influence on Russian society.

Mr. Guelman said the attack was carried out by 10 men who looked like skinheads. The attack was the latest incident to raise troubling questions about xenophobia and freedom of expression in Russia.

On Friday, Russian officials seized 11 pieces of art that Mr. Guelman had exhibited. The art was on consignment to a London gallery owner, Matthew Bown, who was taking the pieces out of the country when he was detained at Sheremetyevo-2 airport on Friday.

The photo collages that were seized included one depicting President Vladimir Putin, President Bush and Osama bin Laden lounging in boxer shorts and another of a veiled suicide bomber with her skirt held up to reveal racy lingerie.

Mr. Bown was allowed to leave for London, but the artwork was not released.

It is unclear whether the seizure of the artwork on Friday and the attack on the gallery were related, coincidence or driven by news about the airport seizure on the radio and the Internet. Mr. Guelman has made a fair number of enemies this year because of his public criticism of neofascists and nationalists.

He is now on a list of “enemies of Russia” that is being circulated on the Internet by Russian neofascists:

full article here (may require registration)
also posted on artists unite

Art Angst seems to be a widespread phenomena these days

digged by indie

who´s afraid of an artist escort

ARTOUT is an experimental art service that allows those (with the financial means) to spend time with an artist. To get into their minds and hear first hand what they believe and how they represent it through their work. A novel idea, but not an insane one. Like it or not, we are in the thick of capitalism, which means that any and everything we as consumers can conjure up to ‘need’ have and will be addressed and cured.
...Artistic creativity results from the dialectical relation between the acceptance of the market as the underlying principle of social reality, and the need to escape its imperatives of obedience and consensus; its locus is the individuality of the artist. The artist plays the “messenger” and the “message”, the self-medium that finds its legitimacy through the charismatic negation of conventionality.

...Spending time in the company of the artist is a creative act; it reveals power relations within the existing artist-patron paradigm and leads to the mutual liberation of both artists and art-patrons from the condition of simple material production and accumulation to the next level of the direct creative exchange and immediate human solidarity.

ARTOUT is the first to create such an open forum of exchange between the art producer and the art consumer and help the artists to retake the economic territory that is rightfully their. This is the territory of the instant utopia and today we are here to claim it.

Olivia Wadsworth

ARTOUT artist escort services include spending time with the client, discussing art, culture, politics, personal and other issues, accompanying the client to the movies, theater plays, restaurants, art shows, museum and gallery openings, performances, attending birthday parties, weddings, bar mitzvah, funerals, academic conferences, fund-raising dinners and other public and private events.

Each client gets a special certificate, confirming participation in the project. Photo and video documentation is available upon request.

Now you may say why should I pay for an artist, they grow on trees, just enter the next pub and you get a dozen for free. But most likely you wouldn´t call this service an an illicit business. And this is where we come to another episode from the let there be brain section:

In September 2007 A. Kozlov, a well respected artist and writer, was accused by Parsons Paris management of associating the school's name with "an illicit" business, thus damaging the reputation of the school, and forced to leave his teaching position. The reason for such an accusation was his participation in the ARTOUT project. This accusation is groundless, ludicrous and unworthy of any self-respecting academic institution.
source


Parsons The New School for Design describes itself:
Parsons focuses on creating engaged citizens and outstanding artists, designers, scholars and business leaders through a design-based professional and liberal education.

art angst? Maybe they should rename themselve to Parson

You can support Anton Kozlov by signing a petition against this ridiculous behaving here

ridiculous

Several artworks by high school students were banned from the Young People's Art Exhibition in Colorado Springs for having "inappropriate" content.

Fountain Valley School senior Addie Green’s painting, “Dismantled Stereotype,” was not allowed in this year’s District 11-sponsored Young People’s Art Exhibition because it includes an image associated with gay pride.










This portrait of a homeless man, called “Falling Ash,” was banned from the student art show because the man is smoking a cigarette.

District 11 experienced its own "Guernica" last year, when Palmer High senior Courtney Alyn Eichengreen produced a series of nudes, based on photographs of a friend who had agreed to be her model. The artwork contained no frontal nudity and the model, by most accounts, was unrecognizable.
Eichengreen says she initially had full permission from her teachers to proceed with her project. Over time, things got "weirder and weirder." At varying points, she was told she could not work on the three oil paintings during school hours — she had to go to the school at night.
more
via
related: art angst

art angst


Diane Kosup, untitled, videostill, 2006

This work is (was) part of Plan B a graduate-student art show that opened last week in a city-owned building near the Brooklyn Bridge.
On Thursday May 4th MFA students at Brooklyn College were surprised to find their exhibition shut down the day after a successful and well attended opening. MFA Students were monitoring the exhibition at the Brooklyn War Memorial when around 3:00 p.m. a locksmith arrived to change the locks, later a building supervisor insisted the students leave immediately.
Warner Johnston, a spokesman for the Parks Department, said the decision was made by Julius Spiegel, the commissioner, who felt the work was not "appropriate for families."In addition to a penis sculpture, the works in the show included a video with sexual overtones in which women are dressed as nuns. It also featured, among other things, abstract paintings and watercolors, photographs, video works and installation-type work using air-duct pipes and spheres of unfired clay.

The locked exhibition has been renamed to "Plan C," with C as the first letter in "censored."
The students also set up a blog to spread the word about the closing.

Why should the land of the free care about art that demonstrated "a lack of proper respect for public morals or conduct or that includes material that is religious, political or sexual in nature." as long as there are true masters of american art?

ridiculous