a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by insomniasexx
insomniasexx  ·  3804 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Let's talk about art.

The first experience with art that I remember was when I was 9 years old and in Amsterdam with my family.

We went to a lot of museums and a lot of churches. That's about all I remember from the trip. The only painting I remember is a still life with a massive dead turkey in the middle. Full on turkey. Dead. My brother and I were looking at it and simultaneously thinking, "what the..."

So we turn on our little headsets that they had to hear what they had to say about the painting. It went like this:

"As you may notice, the most striking thing about this still life is the large, dead turkey in the center. It was painted by [artist] in [date]."

That's it. We listened to this about 100 times and found it more and more hilarious each time. Even our parents were laughing at the utter absurdity of it. I don't know who painted it or anything but I can still hear the nice museum voiceover saying the word "striking" in the weird museum accent.

--

I studied a lot of art after that. I took art history and film and photography. I was pretty consistently bored except by a few amazing films my high school teacher showed us. Then in photography class we were shown these photos by Larry Clark from his "Tulsa" photo book.

The book starts like this:

    I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in January 1943. When I was 16 I started shooting valo. Valo was a nasel inhaler you could buy at the drugstore for a dollar with a tremendous amount of amphetamine in it.

Here are some of my favorites:

There are a lot more and a lot of NSFW ones and contains a lot of really fucked up shit. Google image "Larry Clark Tulsa" or click here when you aren't at work. Each tells a little piece of a story about a group of crazy drug fueled kids and the naked drug fueled, gun loving life they were living.

He went on to do the movie Kids and a lot of other sick shock value shit after this that I don't like. But these I love.

I think I like these because in these you can tell he is part of this group. He isn't trying to shock anyone. He's your little artsy friend who always has the camera. Most are candid or semi-posed. The accidental shots are the best ones. You get this really inside look with these. The camera is barely there.





elizabeth  ·  3803 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Wow those photos are powerful. I've never heard of Tulsa, thanks for sharing :)