In The Mod: Color Analytics

Gary Baseman: Re-tardy

The Drama
in the fall 2006 edition of The Drama Magazine – which is a great magazine that focuses on contemporary art with high quality binding and paper that just makes your fingers happy to touch it – there’s an article on an upcoming show of Gary Baseman entitled For the Love of Toby. here’s an excerpt from the article:

‘The exhibition featured Toby and his all-knowing eye in a number of mediums, including wood panel paintings, vintage photographs, ephermera, and most intriguingly, as a plus pleather toy and a vinyl figure. For the Love of Toby pushes Baseman’s talents further into the realm of fine art while still embracing what Baseman calls pervasive art. According to Baseman, pervasive artists use every outlet at their means – art galleries, print, TV, film, lecture halls and even commerce – to infuse their vision deeper into the fabric of contemporary life. The strength of art is not based on where the art is seen, but based on the esthetic and message.’

for this reason, i have changed the style description of baseman’s work in the database for In The Mod.

Here’s a little more information on The Drama:
/The Drama magazine is published four times a year and strives to provide an honest and considerate perspective on the ever-evolving world of contemporary art, but in a way that is pushing the boundaries of what a magazine is traditionally thought of. In every issue you will find an international survey of artists working on the cutting edge in a wide variety of fields, including illustration, design, comics, photography, and more. Each issue is unique in and of itself, revolving around an overall theme that is then reflected in the content and layout. Contributions are always unique and most often commissioned works created specifically to fit the theme of the issue. The Drama really cares about what it is doing, and all aspects of the magazine are well-thought out and meant to complement each other, creating something much more meaningful for the reader.

The Drama was founded by Joel Speasmaker in early 2000 as an artists collective, showcasing its members artwork online and in gallery shows throughout the East Coast. The magazine began soon after as an extension of these outlets, focusing solely on the members and their work, but quickly evolved into examining a larger scope of artists as its network of contributors and collaborators increased. The magazine serves as the most visible part of the tri-fold entity that is The Drama, but equally important are the two other aspects, The Drama Store, featuring limited edition, handmade, and hard to find products and The Drama Presents, nation-wide gallery exhibitions featuring artists in the network. These three aspects work closely together to form an international assembly of creatives that is ever-expanding and evolving.’ - The Drama

Juxtapoz Magazine/Site

Lowbrow Art
several years back when i was living in santa monica, i was in search of some artwork by shag and came across this great gallery in hollywood, la luz de jesus. it was either at la luz or at ducky waddles in leucadia (north of san diego) that i was introduced to the term Lowbrow Art.

in the current issue of juxtapoz, #61, the founder of the magazine, robert williams, describes how he originally came up with the term Lowbrow Art. here is an excerpt from his editorial entitled supra-orbital torus art:

‘A month or so ago, in LA Weekly, LA’s largest liberal giveaway newspaper, there was a fine set of articles on the emerging specialty art dealing with progressive realism and, in particular, ‘Lowbrow Art.’ It seems that two LA Weekly writers, Holly Myers and Doug Harvey, have to some extent broken ranks with the usual editorial art program and come to the defense of the outlaw arts.

But one issue that appears to be a bone of contention with practitioners of this sub-bona fide art is the name “Lowbrow Art.” And I for one certainly share this resentment.

About every three or four years I feel compelled to explain my position to the readers of Juxtapoz regarding the name, so let me again take this opportunity to shed some more light on this Lowbrow stigma.

During the mid-1960s in the United States, there were basically two quasi-surreal-fantasy painters who dared to confront the sterile, non-objective abstract art world presiding over culture at that time. In New York, that banner was carried by the very talented painter Mati Klarwein. And in Los Angeles, the battle standard was held aloft by (with all humble respect) myself. After a few years, Mati Klarwein caved in to the modernist pressures of the New York art scene and went into self-imposed exile on the island of Majorca. That left my insignificant artistic self to carry the torch for cartoon-tainted abstract surrealism.

At the time, I was still doing Zap Comix strips with Gilbert Shelton, the creator of The Furry Freak Bros. He also partially owned an underground publishing company called Rip-Off Press. In 1979 Gilbert offered to do an art book of all my paintings. No other publishing company anywhere would dare to undertake such an unorthodox project. It was decided at that time, since no authorized art institutions would recognize this form of art, to call my book The Lowbrow Art of Robt. Williams.

There was never any intention to make the title of my book the name of a fledging art movement but, over time, that seems to be what has transpired. The original connotation was to suggest that this self-deprecating name would, over a matter of time, rise from the lowest cultural phylum of art to ironically (and much to the consternation of the art world) climb to the top–but this wasn’t a serious conjecture.

The term “Lowbrow” was always unsettling to me because it made like of how seriously I took my art.’ - Robt Williams.

it’s an enlightening article and a wonderful magazine. here’s more info on Juxtapoz. as a result, i am changing the description of the style in our database from Low-brow Art to Progessive Realism Art. this includes the work of Jeff Soto, Eric Joyner, Scott Musgrove, Tim Biskup, Gary Taxali, and Nicholas Deakin.

Nicholas Deakin-Singe

Introducing Nicholas Deakin’s art to In The Mod:

• Mentor’s Health
• Change of Ideas
• Clown
• Dawn Chorus
• Grief And The Unbridled Optimism
• Modern Life
• Singe
• Softee

Find out more info on Nicholas at NicholasDeakin.com.

C.E.B. Reas-microimage (p_0)

…and now introducing the wonderful Casey Reas’ (who doesn’t give me a hard time when i accidentally call him all of the time) art to In The Mod:

• image phase
• microimage (a_1)
• microimage (p_0)
• process 4 (form-data)
• process 6 (image 3, 4)
• seoul a

For more info on Casey, check out his inspirational stuff at Reas.com and at Processing.org.

Ben Fry-Valence

I have added several of the incredible Ben Fry’s art to In The Mod:

• Anemone
• Chromosome 21
• Valence
• Isometricblocks
• Mariosoup
• Zipdecode
• genome valence

For more info on Ben, check out his inspirational stuff at BenFry.com and at Processing.org.

MoCo Ambient

Moco Ambient’s thoughts on In The Mod
In the Mod is a website that takes a selection of well-known artworks and breaks them down according to the hundred of thousands of colours used. These are then distilled into a more manageable palette for designers and developers today. These colour analytics take into consideration the frequency of colours used and allow one to create variations by using linear algebra.

About MoCo Ambient
Not that long ago, if you were a designer or decorator, ‘ambient’ meant ambient lighting; the use of light to evoke a mood or emotion. It still does. But now there’s ambient music that evokes a mood, and ambient objects that do likewise and ambient video that merges art and sound to… evoke a mood. We’re quite fond of ambient in all its forms, so when ambient DVD producer Colorcalm approached us to do an ambient video blog to help them promote their international design contest, we said, aha! MoCo Ambient. It’s our newest category, and like the others, we’ll be posting regularly. If you have suggestions for MoCo Ambient, please send them to editor@mocoloco.com. If you’ve made some ambient video, enter it in the contest here. Coming up; “Merely an existence on the TV screen, in a hotel room anywhere, I don’t want it to attract my attention. I don’t want to watch it. I just like the idea of it being there.” (more tomorrow).

About MoCo Loco
MoCoLoco is a web magazine dedicated to everything related to modern contemporary design and architecture, including; residential architecture, interior design, furniture, accessories, lighting, floorcoverings, wallcoverings, books, websites, audio-video, online & retail stores and more. Our design-savvy audience stops by frequently to check out the latest news, reviews and recommendations for products and services.

Check out MoCo Ambient.

Mark Rothko-Untitled (Rothko 1)

1) Several months back I read an interesting story about the evolution of Mark Rothko’s color palettes over time. I need to dig that article up again, but if I am not mistaken, it mentioned a relationship between his emotional state and the saturation of his palette. Could it be that as he experienced darker emotions, the more desaturated his color palette became? Again, I need to verify this, but the basic concept that chronological events that surround an artists life might influence the color palette of the paintings they create during that period is worthy of greater exploration.

In the image above, Untitled (Rothko 1) by Mark Rothko, the black lines connect the Weighted Mean of each Rothko painting in our database – from the earliest to the latest – based on the year it was painted.

John’s thoughts on In The Mod
AE + Flash ‘In The Mod’
‘Drew Trujillo (aka Dr. Woohoo) has been experimenting with ways to use color, Flash, and After Effects together. His In the Mod color analytics app assesses artwork, then generates XML files for Flash and Processing as well as HSL arrays for AE. Use the “Choose a Palette” button in the upper-left to select a painter & work, then check out the results.

Drew’s brushes.paints.stencils. project uses AE & the Sound Keys plug-in to analyze audio data & generate keyframes which are then fed to Flash as XML. He then exports the audio from AE as a Flash FLV file, using that to synch up with animation based on the XML. It’s more fun to see than to read about, so check out examples like Radiohead & the kaleidoscopic collaboration with Mario Klingemann.’

About the incredible John Nack
John is the Senior Product Manager for Photoshop and I am honored to say, a friend of mine. If you want to stay on top of what’s happening at Adobe, tap into John’s blog here.

Beautiful/Decay

About Beautiful/Decay
‘Founded on the theory that ” if you can’t find it, You make it”, Beautiful/Decay was created to bridge the gap between art and graffiti, underground and mainstream, design and fine art, Punk rock and hip hop, illustration and design, and most importantly high and low art. With a focus on cutting edge work in all the aforementioned genres, B/D strives to showcase new and emerging artwork Whether it be Interior or exterior.’

post about In The Mod
‘It’s crazy what you can do on the internet these days. Just look at In The Mod and Brushes.Paints.Stencils.‘.

I highly recommend checking out Beautiful/Decay if you’re into progressive (aka LowBrow) art.

Edgar Degas-Aria after the Ballet

I have added several of Edgar Degas’ art to In The Mod:

• Aria after the Ballet
• Group of Dancers
• Landscape
• The Bathers
• Portrait of a Woman