The Body and Blood of Art... really.

The spectrum of artistic creativity has an extremely long and winding plane that seems to be warping in and out of consciousness every minute. Does that even make sense?
An artist by the name of Gunther von Hagen has created a controversial form of art that has ruffled a lot of the tight wads feathers. His art is a display of partially dissected corpses in varying poses, mostly sporting positions. Von Hagen’s exhibit will be arriving in my city, Calgary, in May 2010 at the Science Center.

I am utterly fascinated by such a brilliant way to expose the bleak reality of the human body’s inevitable demise. Not only is von Hagen unearthing the complex beauty of our biological inner workings, his art reflects a notion that the conventional world seems to cast as arrogant: Our bodies do not hold any type of significant substance, our physical selves are ultimately flesh and bone which will whittle away into the nothingness of our world. He is elevating the concept of self identity by illustrating the misappropriation of value that is placed onto our physical bodies.

Am I going out on a far out limb here? Is von Hagen taking his anatomist background and simply experimenting with art? Maybe… all I know is the radical fusion he is creating sure made my mind go to a tea party with Charles Darwin and Jean-Paul Sartre.

The Origin of Art in Paris

While reviewing the prints and patterns for spring 2010 I realized how much fashion reflects every era our earth has experienced; I am not talking just about the 20th century either. The faded colors of ancient etchings and paintings on stone, and the images themselves, are used constantly as inspiration for a unique fabric.
SO, in the midst of this revelation I discovered an interesting cave I wanted to share.

The Paleolithic cave paintings in Lascaux are beautifully crafted works of art that are said to be over 16,000 years old. In the southwest of France there is a complex of caves that consist primarily of realistic images of animals, humans and abstract signs that total over 2000 images.
Discovered in 1940 the cave has been open then closed, then open, then closed again due to damages by the public, air conditioning systems and high powered lights that were installed in the caves for tourists. In 2008 the cave had been closed for at least 3 months for scientific research and preservation.
The images are truly remarkable and varying in size and brilliant colors. The paintings origin are unclear, however, there have been theories ranging from the pictures being constructed from astrological mapping to visions experienced during ritualistic trance-dancing.