Tina Turner- A Fool in Love
Music icon Tina Turner sadly passed away on Wednesday. Luckily for the world she left behind a lot of incredible music. Her live performances were always energetic and full of life as well, as seen in the clip above and many others.
Rest in Peace.
Storefront Church- “Us Against Us”
This song is from Storefront Church’s 2021 album, As We Pass. Storefront Church is LA musician Lukas Frank’s current project.
Recently Storefront Church covered band Low’s Words with Phoebe Bridgers as a tribute to Mimi Parker, Low’s drummer and vocalist, who passed away last year in November.
Storefront Church is playing at Zebulon in Los Angeles on Saturday 3/4/23.
De La Soul- Eye Know
De La Soul’s David Jolicoeur, aka Trugoy the Dove, passed away yesterday at the age of 54.
This song is from the band’s groundbreaking debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising. The album, as well as the rest of the group’s catalogue, will finally be available to stream on March 3rd, after years of legal disputes over sample clearances.
Rest in Peace.
Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, 1999, part of The ARIA Fine Art collection in Las Vegas
Artist Claes Oldenburg passed away this week at the age of 93. He was most famous for his large scale sculptures of everyday objects, many of which were produced with his wife Coosje van Bruggen, who passed away in 2009.
While primarily working in sculpture, early in his career in the 1960s he also created “happenings”- theatrical art related performances and collaborations with other artists in his circle. In 1985 he returned to performance and along with van Bruggen, architect Frank Gehry, and writer Germano Celant presented Il Corso del Coltello (The Course of the Knife) in Venice, Italy. In 2021, Pace Gallery in NYC, as part of the two gallery exhibition Claus & Coosje, showed work from this performance, pictured below.
From Pace’s website about the performance-
This ambitious event involved the creation and embarkation of a sea-worthy sculpture in the shape of a giant Swiss army knife. With oars protruding from its red-enameled hull as if from a Viking longship, the image of Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s Knife Ship sailing the Grand Canal has become iconic, while the massive kinetic sculpture was later shown in the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and finally at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
With so much of Oldenburg’s work, the examination of the ordinary object engages the viewer with what they might previously taken for granted and gives them a chance to look again with new eyes. There is also something lighthearted and fun, as well as investigative, about his body of work.
(image via Whitney Museum’s website)
The Whitney Museum has a video showing the process of assembling his soft sculpture Giant BLT (Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwich) 1963, which involves putting the sandwich together piece by piece.
For more on Oldenburg, MoMA has a tribute that includes the words of people who knew him as well as his own. His 1961 artist statement is wonderful and worth reading in its entirety, here is the opening section-
I AM FOR
I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a starting point of zero.
I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap and still comes out on top.
I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.
I am for all art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.
I am for an artist who vanishes, turning up in a white cap painting signs or hallways.
The Guardian’s obituary is also worth a read for more information on the artist’s history.
Giant Fagends, 1967, one of Claes Oldenburg‘s soft sculptures, is currently on view at the Whitney Museum.
Crystal and Counter Light, 1994 at The Ringling
The Mississippi “Shake Rag”, 2020 at Pace
The Mississippi “Shake Rag”, 2020 (detail)
Abstract artist Sam Gilliam passed away last weekend at the age of 88. The innovative artist had an extensive body of work that encapsulated numerous styles and techniques. I was lucky enough to see his work at Pace gallery in NYC in 2020 and at The Ringling in Sarasota, Florida, in 2021.
The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. is currently showing his final solo exhibition, Sam Gilliam: Full Circle, until 9/21/22.
ARTNews has a good profile on Gilliam, as does The Washington Post, and under this Smithsonian tribute are numerous examples of his work from their collection.
Biz Markie- Nobody Beats The Biz
Legendary hip hop artist, Marcel Theo Hall, aka Biz Markie, passed away on July 16th, from complications from Type 2 diabetes.
He is best known for his most successful single, Just A Friend (which reached number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1990), but it was his use of comedy and humor in his music that made him such an influential figure in hip hop.
RIP.
Blackalicious- Make You Feel That Way
This has been such a terrible year for Gen X rappers. Rest in Peace Gift of Gab of the Sacramento duo Blackalicious, who passed away today at 50 years old of natural causes.
Make You Feel That Way is from Blackalicious’ 2002 studio album Blazing Arrow, and has been a long time feel good favorite of mine.
This work by Barry Graves, located in a parking structure in Gainesville, Florida, and part of a larger group of murals organized by Urban Revitalization Project.
Sadly, Graves passed away last year in March 2020. His legacy lives on though, through BG Art Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. It’s stated mission is to “support addiction recovery with funding for in-patient treatment and by promoting awareness and offering resources for healing”.
Numerous prints of Ruth Bader Ginsberg by David Barthold are popping up around Brooklyn after her passing on September 18th, 2020.