The Art of Noel Fielding

I have managed to find some images of work done by Noel Fielding but not much is available.

A couple of paintings...

...and a doodle.

The work is very reminiscent of the CoBrA movement...

Mod Wolves Song

The Mighty Boosh

Cult tv show starring Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt.



The imagery contained in the show, all the animated characters in the title sequence and many of the characters within the show are devised by the wonderful Noel Fielding out of his imagination. Brought to life from scribbles and doodles.

For example Mod Wolves:


Video posted above this.

Aboriginal Art

Ever since purchasing a rain maker covered in the trademark aboriginal style of painting using dots I've been intregued. the symbols used in Aboriginal artworks all have meanings for example:

I found a few images that I liked mostly depicting what I think are people which leads me to believe its not true aboriginal if a person is supposed to be symbolised as a half moon shape why in these images are they portrayed as thin, elongated bodies?

These remind me of dream like images, whimsical and unreal. A bit like my own doodlings.

The artwork of the Aboriginals reminds me of the "scribblings" of Mighty Boosh character Vince Noir (real name, Noel Fielding) he uses a similar style to create his pictures which can be seen hanging on the walls of the flat he shares with Howard Moon (Julian Barrett), Naboo (Micheal Fielding) and Bollo (Dave Brown) in Series 2 of the hit show.

Priscilla Hernandez

I found this woman, Prescilla Hernandez, who has some amazing photos that she has done with the theme of faeries.

Check her out at http://www.yidneth.com/ she is a gothic singer/songwriter and fantasy illustrator. Some truely amazing work.

Faeries

A fairy (fey or fae or faerie; collectively wee folk, good folk, people of peace, and other euphemisms) is the name given to alleged benevolent metaphysical spirit or supernatural being.

I became interested in faeries after being involved in a primary school version of A Midsummer Nights Dream by William Shakespeare. Titannia was my favourite, the Queen of the Faeries.

I decided to create some images depicting the existance of Faeries using Photoshop, heres what i came up with...







I thought these were quite nice images, blended quite well to give that supernatural feel to them, like the camera has only just managed to capture the elusive creatures.

New Year, New Project

I really should have gotten round to writing a post sooner than this. The new term started 6 weeks ago, i am over half way through my time for the first project.

I found myself lost on inspiration and really wasnt sure as to what to do for this year, so I decided i would do a little task i did way back in college and that was the 50 interests project, come up with 50 interests, look into some of the more prominent ones, ones that give me ideas and decide from there where to go, ideas with the most in common.

So my 50 interests:

• Japanese Culture
• Vaginas
• Fairytales
• Flowers
• Faeries
• Magic
• Fantasy
• Weaving
• Aboriginal art
• Feltmaking
• Papermaking
• Bookmaking
• Skin
• Tattoos
• Piercings
• Punk
• Voodoo
• Zen
• Dreams
• Debbie Harry
• Herbs for Healing
• Plastic Surgery
• Linoprinting
• Cubism
• Ballet
• Hand studies
• Photography
• Dolls
• Digital Manipulation
• Lips
• Animated drawings (doodly sketches)
• Forensic Science
• The Mighty Boosh
• Raves
• Collecting things
• Buddhism
• Vinyls
• Hats
• Poetry
• Nursery Rhymes
• Masks
• Carnival
• Comics
• Crosses
• Music
• Minis
• Casinos
• 80's Fashion
• Bondage

So i'm looking into each of these ideas and seeing where it leads me.

How have they engaged in the material I am also interested in?

The majority have actually included themselves in the work. Using themselves as the subject, become more involved with the theme they are trying to explore and convey. I need to perhaps explore this idea instead of standing quite so far away and merely documenting, I should be more involved and hands on.

Helmut Newton

This is Sie Kommen the image that inspired Jemima Stehli's Here They Come.

Brigitte Nielson posing for Vanity Fair, 1987

Jemima Stehli

I'm looking at specific works rather than the artist in general, as i think this is more relevant.

In her Strip series, 1999, Stehli invited prominent figures from the London art world -critics, curators and dealers - to watch her strip naked whilst they kept hold of the camera’s release cable and chose their moment to take the pictures. The resulting photographs show the artist from behind in varying states of undress, with her collaborators sat facing the camera and Stehli, full frontal, with varying expressions of embarrassment, interest or gleefulness.

Stehli often appropriates iconic imagery from works by artists of previous generations and from existing, often cliched, stylistic genres (fashion photography, S&M imagery). Whilst building on a tradition of female artists appropriating a masculine aesthetic.

In After Helmut Newton’s ‘Here They Come’, 1999, Stehli has recreated Helmut Newton’s iconic image Sie Kommen, with herself as the stiletto-ed, naked Amazon striding towards the camera. Newton’s original is so accurately and minutely reproduced, Stehli’s hair and stance resemble almost exactly that of the original model, that on the surface Stehli is as objectified as Newton’s original.

Lynda Benglis

I found these wire pieces quite interesting as I thought they resembled two bodies intertwined in passionate embrace.

The bodies idea probably has nothing to do this it at all but its what I though of when I saw the pieces.

Bodies of Desire

I found an exhibition of works by Williem de Kooning and Chloe Piene called Bodies of Desire: works on paper. read the brochure...

http://www.locksgallery.com/exhibit/2007/bodiesOfDesire/bodiesOfDesire.pdf

Female Sensibility by Lynda Benglis

This actually looks like a horrible kiss. Is it two women??

Elke Krystufek

make yourself happy, a video of Elke Krystufek.

Elke Krystufek

Hers is an unclassifiable work that defies the political and critical establishment (between feminism and subversion), and produces a wide-open and prolix imagery on her own positions as an artist and a woman. A multiplicity of self-portraits oil paintings, charcoal drawings, intimate videos and collages ; she uses her body and face as a medium and mirror.

Replicant Hitler, 2000

Themes include power, availability, communication, body designs and borderline
experiences. Her work deals with social discrimination, sex and violence, but beauty, leisure
time and pop culture are also part of her conceptual set-up.

Silent Scream, 2002

Elke Krystufek provokes a form of sexual gratification by making her body a projection area for pornography, female sexuality and masculine fantasies.

Vito Acconci

Not really much relevant stuff I don't think, I found a picture its hard to make out...

Why don't you come up and see mine sometime? or sex for sale, 1977

Jeff Koons

In 1992, an adamant Koons designated the photographs in his notorious "Made in Heaven" series as "paintings." Consisting of images of Koons and his porn-star wife, Ilona Stahler (aka La Cicciolina), engaged in uninhibited sex, the works were printed with oil ink on canvas, each in an edition of three.

Jeff in the Position of Adam, 1990

The photographs haven't lost their power to shock. There was a frisson even among the predominantly young, laidback Serpentine audience when the painting "Ilona's Asshole" flashed up on multiple video monitors.

Silver Shoes, 1991

Made in Heaven was inspired by Masaccio's The Expulsion - "the guilt and shame on Adam and Eve's faces in the painting. I wanted to make work that showed what it was like to be tranquil and not feel shame about the body. Whatever anybody's history is, it's perfect. It can't be any different. I would tie this to nature."

The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Masaccio, 1426-27

Valie Export

Genital panic, 1969

She started to experiment with photography and what she called "expanded cinema" Her expanded cinema pieces started to include live performance of Export herself. The body then became her most important tool. Export used her body to question people's physical and mental identity. One of her important goals in performance was to separate the female body from eroticism. Export said "I felt it was important to use the female body to create art. I knew that if I did it naked, I would really change how the (mostly male) audience would look at me. There would be no pornographic or erotic/ sexual desire involved--so there would be a contradiction."





Her views on the female body carried on to other works such as her performance at an art street fair in 1968. She performed "Touch Cinema" which involved strapping on a box which enclosed her naked breasts. The box had holes in the front so that spectators could stick their hands through. She told the spectators "This box is the cinema hall. My body is the screen. But this cinema is not for looking--it is for touching." (Juna & Vale, 1985). Again, Export tried to create a contradiction, by taking a very erotic part of the body and offering it the way she wanted to people. The box and her blatant offering defused the situation from any eroticism.

Photography

Its funny actually being asked to look into these artists, and Cosey Fanni Tutti being the first because she used herself as the subject and was photographed pornographically etc.. i am actually in talks with a photographer about doing a portfolio of images with me as the subject.

Cosey Fanni Tutti

Cosey used to be a stripper for a long period of time and in the fields of pornographic films and magazines, stemming from a desire to incorporate her own image into collages she produced in this period.

Cosey investigated self-image within the context of sex magazines and sex films, glamour modelling and striptease acts. Her experiences within these industries during the period 1973 - 1984 were brought into her art work as she explored the many aspects of sex as it is perceived and transacted as commercial product. She placed conventional beauty in a situation where it was subjected to simulated mutilation before a live audience. This provided a visual contrast highlighting and questioning the notion of what is presentable as 'beauty'.

She utilised the pornography industry as an apparatus to convey multiple identities. Modelling in the sex industry was one aspect of a wider art project.

Cosey was a part of an exhibiton called "PROSTITUTION"

COUM Transmissions was a performance art group interested in pushing boundaries, influenced by Dada and the Merry Pranksters.
CT was a whimsical, eccentric as well as confrontational band and performance art group – a collective the constants of which were Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genisis P-Orridge.

The 'PROSTITUTION' exhibition at the ICA was a retrospective show of the work of Coum including the 'girlie' magazines Cosey had appeared in as well as 'objects used in Coum performances.
The show as a whole was a representation of how Coum, Genesis and Cosey had been perceived by various forms of the media, from the tabloids to fine art analysis and interpretation of Coum's work. Ironic when the press response proved so great that it became part of the exhibition day by day, echoing the sentiments on all levels, of the work already on show. Daily press cuttings about press cuttings. The irony and humour of this was never even realised by the press in their frenzy for gossip to fill their front pages. Questions were asked in the Houses of Parliament, Arts Council grants came under scrutiny because Coum had been funded for shows abroad, to represent Britain in major exhibitions. Indeed Coum were to perform in the U.S.A. and Canada immediately after the ICA exhibition, but were refused entry to Canada on the grounds that they were considered 'undesirable'. All this press coverage instigated by Coum, turned to the exploits of Throbbing Gristle. A wonderful promotional ploy could never have been planned to work so well.
The opening night of the 'PROSTITUTION' show was to be least like an 'art' opening as possible. The band L.S.D. played live they later became known as Generation X. Cherry, a stripper was booked to perform after TG had appeared. which she duly did, writhing in the fake blood left on the floor after TG's show. Throbbing Gristle performed their first official gig to a mixed audience of art critics, punks, politicians, musicians and artists. That evening like many TG gigs was marred by violence. All the press attention acquired unwittingly by TG was a bonus for the launch for their project. During this explosive time, Punk arrived on the scene via the marketing skills of two clothes shops down the Kings Road, owned by associates of members of TG. BOY boutique was fronted by 'Generation X' and SEDITIONARIES fronted by 'The Sex Pistols'. Punk and Industrial music initially ran parallel to one another, often becoming confused until definitions became clearer.

READ THE INDEPENDANTS ARTICLE ABOUT THE SHOW AT: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2614594.ece

Summer

For over the summer I have seen set to research into: Cosey Fanni Tutti
Valie Export
Jeff Koons
Vito Acconci
Elke Krystufek
Linda Benglis, and
Jemima Stehli

And to question how they engage with the material that I am also interested in.

New Media

This was my homework for my new media course! to open a blog so here it is enjoy!!!!