Technoccult interviews Alex CF, cryptozoological pseudoscientific artist
AlexCF: Hello, my name is Alex. I call my work “cryptozoological pseudoscientific art”, which is a longwinded way of describing what i do, but it is pretty specific. I make items, artifacts and specimens from a past that never happened – the remains of extinct species, scientific discoveries, nefarious characters from ancient continents, relics of mysterious cultures – the things you wish you could find in your grandparents attic, or a secret room in an abandoned house. I have created a fictitious history in which certain rich collectors have spent their lives exploring and discovering, and it is my job to present these items to the public. Each piece has a story, and in time all will connect, and I will release a collected monograph of these items and the tale of their discovery. I take influence from maddening horror, Victorian aesthetic, sci-fi pulp and Darwinian biology.
Artist Rian Hughes is putting together a show at Orbital Comics to criticize pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and celebrate his original sources:
“Pop artist Roy Lichtensein currently has a show on at the Tate. While the public is intimately familiar with his work, what they may be unaware of is how closely many of his images were “appropriated” from comic artists like Irv Novick, Russ Heath, Jack Kirby, John Romita and Joe Kubert, who received no fee or credit.
Is this an act of brilliant recontexturalisation? The elevation of commercial “low” art to “high” art? Art world snobbery? Artistic licence? Cultural annexation? Gallery shortsightedness? Or something else?
This show is a chance for real comic-book artists (and other “commercial artists” – illustrators, designers etc) to ask these kinds of questions and share their views, via their work.Every interested comic artist (or illustrator, graphic designer or other “commercial artist”) should “re-reappropriate” one of the comic images Lichtenstein used, and rework it, using some of their ‘commercial art’ drawing skills, to warp and twist it into something interesting and original, and in the process to comment on this type of appropriation.
The IMPORTANT thing to stress is that you’d be going back to the source material and re-reappropriating (sic) Coletta, Novick, Kirby et al – NOT copying Lichtenstein, as we don’t want copyright issues from the Lichtenstein estate …see this as a celebratory, positive show which aims to get the point across that the original artists deserve credit and respect …As suggested by Dave Gibbons, money raised from selling prints or originals will be donated to the Hero Initiative, which helps down-on-their-luck comics veterans: http://www.heroinitiative.org/ Again, a nice way to Give Back the Art.”
The show is accepting submissions.
Full Story (and many more images): Robot 6: Comic artists razz Lichtenstein with the Image Duplicator show
Ad Reinhardt, How to Look at Art, Arts & Architecture, January 1947
(via stoppingoffplace)
YOU, SIR, ARE A SPACE, TOO
How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.
-Alan Watts
“Zos Kia Cultus”Austin Osman Spare (30 December 1886 – 15 May 1956) was an English artist and occultist who worked as both a draughtsman and a painter. Influenced by symbolism and the artistic decadence of art nouveau, his art was known for its clear use of line, and its depiction of monstrous and sexual imagery. In an occult capacity, he developed idiosyncratic magical techniques includingautomatic writing, automatic drawing and sigilization based on his theories of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious self.FONTE: WIKIPEDIA“It wasn’t that Spare had offended the world with the Anathema, or deliberately rejected West End success, but that art had changed gear. Modernism and more formalist art values had come in, whereas Edwardian-style occultism, personal eccentricity, Symbolism, ‘literary’ art and academic drawing were none of them in great demand.”
Spare biographer Phil Baker, 2011.AOS super post.
