Star Wars/Thomas Kinkade

A delicious gallery from Deviant Art. A sample:

Awkward Jesus Paintings from American Jesus

Ah, "Business Jesus" is just one of the awkwardly bad Jesus paintings posted at American Jesus. Check out the rest THERE.

Classical Sculptures Dressed As Hipsters

More of them HERE.

Calvin Grown Up

by Craig Mahoney.

"Rap Quotes" Street Art Project by Jay Shells

"Rap Quotes" Street Art Project by Jay Shells from ANIMALNewYork.com on Vimeo.

Actress Tilda Swinton on Display at MOMA

As part of a performance art display at MOMA, actress Tilda Swinton is periodically appearing in a glass case, sleeping. Story HERE.

Banksy, Keeping It Real on a Monday Morning

Oldest Surviving Representative Sculpture?

This is a photo of the oldest known sculpture of a woman, created from mammoth ivory found at Dolní Věstonice, Moravia, Czech Republic. c.26,000 years old. Height 4.8 cm. Courtesy of the Moravian Museum, Anthropos Institute.

Girl Dancing in Front of Painting

Found this wonderful photo on The Mudflats Facebook page, which bore the caption: this is why we need art in our schools. Absolutely.

Día De los Muertos Border Display at Mexicali Border Wall 2012

Photoshopping (Downsizing) Venus

An interesting art exhibit that remakes Venus according to "modern" standards of beauty. You can browse it HERE.

Former North Korean Propaganda Artist Turns to Pop Art

CNN

After escape from North Korea, artist turns from propaganda to pop art
By Paul Ferguson, CNN
updated 12:26 AM EDT, Sun March 25, 2012

Atlanta (CNN) -- Song Byeok had every reason to be pleased with his success. A gift for drawing led to a prestigious career as a propaganda artist and full membership in North Korea's communist party.

Then the food shortages started.

Like tens of thousands of other North Koreans in the mid-1990s, Song made forays across the Tumen River to find food in China. Despite witnessing a better material life across the border, he says, he never doubted that North Korea was culturally superior. He never considered leaving his homeland for anything more than food.

"I was a believer. I saw North Koreans as pure," Song said. "And we needed the Great Leader to protect us from outsiders."

Today, Song paints in Seoul, South Korea, his art haunted by his former whole-hearted belief in the North Korean regime. Song's paintings chronicle a personal, often agonizing journey from child-like allegiance to the country's founder and "Great Leader," Kim Il Sung, and his son, "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, to Song's life today as a contemporary artist.

In his former life, he would paint boyish-looking soldiers with heroic features across an entire side of a factory to inspire workers with the same patriotism he believed in.

His current paintings explore themes of freedom while skewering his former devotion to North Korea's leaders. He paints children in military uniforms, their heads bowed and eyes closed. His trademark work shows Kim Jong Il's face atop Marilyn Monroe's famous film pose on a sidewalk grate, holding down her skirt as it billows around her hips.

The painting created a stir in South Korea, where American Greg Pence saw it and raised funds on Kickstarter to exhibit Song's work this winter in Washington and Atlanta.

Song is passionate and sometimes brooding when discussing North Korea but gracious and open about his deeply personal passage from propaganda artist to painter who anguishes over oppression in North Korea.

Song's journey to disbelief began the moment he watched, helpless, as his father was caught in a current during a river crossing to China and drowned. Song was halfway across when his father was swept away; he swam back but was unable to rescue him. Despondent, Song searched for his father's body along the riverbank but was captured by North Korean border guards.

Despite his rank as a party member, getting caught meant questioning and torture by North Korean guards to confirm that he was not working for the South Koreans or the foreign missionaries based in China who proselytize among defectors.

"There were no exceptions," he said. "All who are caught are investigated."

In North Korea, a brutal choice

The torment of not recovering his father's remains was much greater than the broken teeth and beatings, Song said. The beatings were so harsh, he said, he was close to death, and he believes that he was released so he would not die in custody.

More than bones, the guards' treatment broke Song's belief in the regime. He describes the moment he left jail as if a veil had been lifted: He saw the world with a new clarity. As he hobbled through the streets, wondering how he'd get home, he decided he wanted a different life. He decided to defect.

In a country of 25 million, only about 20,000 have defected and settled in South Korea, according to the South Korean government. There are no precise figures for how many defectors live in hiding in China; estimates from governments, researchers and non-governmental organizations vary from 25,000 to more than 400,000.

"When people are picked up in China and repatriated, they face prosecution back in North Korea if they are believed to have met with South Koreans or missionaries," said Marcus Noland, a North Korea specialist at the Peterson Institute.

China labels North Korean escapees "economic migrants" and forcibly returns them despite accounts of torture and execution. So those hoping to defect must make their way across China to a third country.

Of those North Koreans interviewed in China, only about one in 10 say they left because of a longing for freedom, according to W. Courtland Robinson, a public health expert at Johns Hopkins University who has studied the issue for more than a decade.

The vast majority who leave give the same explanation Song did for his pre-defector forays into China during the famine: the search for work or food.

"The (North Korean) system is so integral to who you are," Robinson said. "People generally don't say 'I am frustrated, and I want out.' "

Song's paintings explore that theme: a devotion to serving North Korea's leaders so strong that citizens view it as part of their identity.

"Flower Children" shows a gaggle of smiling, uniformed schoolgirls waving and holding North Korea's standard reading primers, "The Story of Kim Jong Il's Childhood" and "History of Kim Il Sung."

The girls exude childish charm, but some faces show a weariness that only comes with age, and their eyes are all closed. Their shoes have holes.

"They believe they are happy," Song said. "They believe they are so much better off than the rest of the world because of their two leaders, who are like two suns."

Read the full story and view images HERE.

Ralph McQuarrie

[click to enlarge illustrations]
Artist/visual designer Ralph McQuarrie recently passed away. He is best known as an artist who gave vision to George Lucas' Star Wars stories, though he also worked on design for other sci-fi productions as well. Check out this gallery of his Star Wars conceptual design work, which George Lucas has praised as critical to realizing his vision. It's interesting to see the differences between the original imagining and the final product. In the painting above, the jedi (Luke?) wearing a breathing apparatus above makes for a colder, less hospitable, more dangerous sense of place than the version realized in the film. I find many f McQuarrie's painting striking and evocative, much in the way great sci-fi fantasy artwork can totally captivate the imagination.

A brilliant thing about the original film was its design that made the world of Star Wars seem futuristic but also well worn. McQuarrie produced detailed, dramatic work that seemed to bridge the fantasy world of sci-fi Heavy Metal comics and cinematic dreams of Lucas.

"George Lucas said he was saddened by McQuarrie's passing, calling him a visionary artist and a humble man.

"Ralph McQuarrie was the first person I hired to help me envision Star Wars," Lucas said. "His genial contribution, in the form of unequaled production paintings, propelled and inspired all of the cast and crew of the original Star Wars trilogy.

"When words could not convey my ideas, I could always point to one of Ralph's fabulous illustrations and say, 'Do it like this.'"

From the Washington Post:

“Ralph McQuarrie was the first person I hired to help me envision ‘Star Wars,’ ” Lucas said in a statement posted online. “When words could not convey my ideas, I could always point to one of Ralph’s fabulous illustrations and say, ‘Do it like this.’ ”

Mr. McQuarrie, for instance, designed the Samurai-inspired helmet and black caped-outfit worn by arch nemesis Darth Vader. (It was Mr. McQuarrie’s idea to put a breathing apparatus on Vader’s mask, so that he could survive in the vacuum of space, which led to the villain’s raspy voice in the films.)

Mr. McQuarrie’s pens, pencils and brushes brought lush color, dramatic scenery and lifelike characters to stunning vibrancy in film classics such as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Cocoon,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “E.T.”

He was part of a team that won the 1985 Academy Award for best visual effects for his work on “Cocoon,” about aliens who can pass on the gift of immortality.

As an artist for all three episodes of the original “Star Wars” films, Mr. McQuarrie was widely credited with shaping Lucas’s far, far away galaxy.

Mr. McQuarrie had been fascinated with flight and outer space exploration since his days building model airplanes as a youngster.

As a technical artist for Boeing in the 1960s, he drew diagrams for a manual on constructing the 747 jumbo jet and later worked as an illustrator animating sequences of the Apollo space missions for NASA and CBS News.

Through two artist friends, Mr. McQuarrie was introduced to Lucas in the mid 1970s.

At the time, Lucas’ tale of a interplanetary civil war between a loose band of rebels and a Naziesque empire, had been rejected by United Artists and Universal.

Lucas enlisted Mr. McQuarrie’s help to show movie executives his story. Using Lucas’ script for inspiration, Mr. McQuarrie drew scenes of a space battle between laser-shooting fighter planes and lightsaber-wielding warriors.

Lucas, armed with the images, quickly won funding from 20th Century Fox and “Star Wars” was born, beginning with “Episode IV: A New Hope,” in 1977.

Artist Iain McCaig, who worked on the “Star Wars” prequels, Episodes I, II, and III, called Mr. McQuarrie a pioneer of film conceptual art. Before him, McCaig said, few directors called on artists to help visualize their projects.

“He didn’t just draw a picture of Darth standing in a neutral pose,” McCaig said in an interview, “he did a scene of Darth lashing out at Luke Skywalker. You could feel the power and the pathos going on in that moment. He did more than just design costumes. . . . He helped capture the the story-telling moments in really dazzling pictures.”

Doug Chiang, who worked with McCaig as an artist on Episode I, said that Mr. McQuarrie’s artwork was “cinematic.”

“He painted and designed with a camera’s point of view,” Chiang said in an interview. “Most science fiction art at the time were for posters and book covers. But his looked like images you could see on the big screen.”

He designed the porcelain armor of the Imperial storm troopers, the shiny gilt frame of the humanoid robot C-3PO and the droid R2D2, which resembled a motorized trashcan.

Anthony Daniels, the British actor who portrayed C-3PO, initially turned down the part, unimpressed by his proposed character’s lack of depth.

Then he saw an expressive drawing of the robot painted by Mr. McQuarrie.

“He had painted a face and a figure that had a very wistful, rather yearning, rather bereft quality, which I found very appealing,” Mr. Daniels said in 2010. He took the job.

Ralph Angus McQuarrie was born June 13, 1929, in Gary, Ind., and grew up on a farm outside Billings, Mont.

He saw combat with the Army during the Korean War and survived a bullet to the head. The round punctured his helmet, bloodying his skull. After the war he attended what is now known as the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

He worked as an illustrator for a dental business drawing teeth and dentist’s tools before his work in films. His art for “Star Wars” led director Steven Spielberg to tap Mr. McQuarrie to draw space ships for his movies “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977) and “E.T.” (1982). Survivors include his wife of 29 years, Joan, of Berkeley.

In “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back” (1980), Mr. McQuarrie makes a cameo appearance in a scene inside a hanger on the icy planet Hoth.

On the 30th anniversary of “Star Wars,” a collectible action figure was released of his character, rebel Gen. Pharl (a play on Ralph) McQuarrie, complete with blaster pistol.

Sunday in the Park with the UC Davis Riot Police

He's clearly surrounded.

And here are a bunch more along those lines:

Incredible Steampunk Desk

Check out multiple detail photos HERE at The Steampunk Workshop.

Vaguely Homoerotic Navy Recruitment Posters

An interesting blog post titled The Gayest Generation: Navy Recruiting Posters from World Wars I & II. Check it out HERE.

Formerly Imprisoned Artist Ai Weiwei: The City: Beijing

The City: Beijing
Ai Weiwei finds China’s capital is a prison where people go mad.
by Ai Weiwei | August 28, 2011 10:0 AM EDT

Beijing is two cities. One is of power and of money. People don’t care who their neighbors are; they don’t trust you. The other city is one of desperation. I see people on public buses, and I see their eyes, and I see they hold no hope. They can’t even imagine that they’ll be able to buy a house. They come from very poor villages where they’ve never seen electricity or toilet paper.

Every year millions come to Beijing to build its bridges, roads, and houses. Each year they build a Beijing equal to the size of the city in 1949. They are Beijing’s slaves. They squat in illegal structures, which Beijing destroys as it keeps expanding. Who owns houses? Those who belong to the government, the coal bosses, the heads of big enterprises. They come to Beijing to give gifts—and the restaurants and karaoke parlors and saunas are very rich as a result.

Beijing tells foreigners that they can understand the city, that we have the same sort of buildings: the Bird’s Nest, the CCTV tower. Officials who wear a suit and tie like you say we are the same and we can do business. But they deny us basic rights. You will see migrants’ schools closed. You will see hospitals where they give patients stitches—and when they find the patients don’t have any money, they pull the stitches out. It’s a city of violence.
Beijing China

For a man imprisoned and conditionally released, neither neighbors nor strangers nor Beijing’s officials nor courts can be trusted.

The worst thing about Beijing is that you can never trust the judicial system. Without trust, you cannot identify anything; it’s like a sandstorm. You don’t see yourself as part of the city—there are no places that you relate to, that you love to go. No corner, no area touched by a certain kind of light. You have no memory of any material, texture, shape. Everything is constantly changing, according to somebody else’s will, somebody else’s power.

To properly design Beijing, you’d have to let the city have space for different interests, so that people can coexist, so that there is a full body to society. A city is a place that can offer maximum freedom. Otherwise it’s incomplete.

I feel sorry to say I have no favorite place in Beijing. I have no intention of going anywhere in the city. The places are so simple. You don’t want to look at a person walking past because you know exactly what’s on his mind. No curiosity. And no one will even argue with you.

None of my art represents Beijing. The Bird’s Nest—I never think about it. After the Olympics, the common folks don’t talk about it because the Olympics did not bring joy to the people.

There are positives to Beijing. People still give birth to babies. There are a few nice parks. Last week I walked in one, and a few people came up to me and gave me a thumbs up or patted me on the shoulder. Why do they have to do that in such a secretive way? No one is willing to speak out. What are they waiting for? They always tell me, “Weiwei, leave the nation, please.” Or “Live longer and watch them die.” Either leave, or be patient and watch how they die. I really don’t know what I’m going to do.

My ordeal made me understand that on this fabric, there are many hidden spots where they put people without identity. With no name, just a number. They don’t care where you go, what crime you committed. They see you or they don’t see you, it doesn’t make the slightest difference. There are thousands of spots like that. Only your family is crying out that you’re missing. But you can’t get answers from the street communities or officials, or even at the highest levels, the court or the police or the head of the nation. My wife has been writing these kinds of petitions every day, making phone calls to the police station every day. Where is my husband? Just tell me where my husband is. There is no paper, no information.

The strongest character of those spaces is that they’re completely cut off from your memory or anything you’re familiar with. You’re in total isolation. And you don’t know how long you’re going to be there, but you truly believe they can do anything to you. There’s no way to even question it. You’re not protected by anything. Why am I here? Your mind is very uncertain of time. You become like mad. It’s very hard for anyone. Even for people who have strong beliefs.

This city is not about other people or buildings or streets but about your mental structure. If we remember what Kafka writes about his Castle, we get a sense of it. Cities really are mental conditions. Beijing is a nightmare. A constant nightmare.

August 28, 2011 10:0am

Surfing Madonna (art) Appears in Encinitas CA

SD U-T
Surfing Madonna appears in Encinitas

By Jonathan Horn

Monday, April 25, 2011 at 6:24 p.m.
ENCINITAS — Where else but in Encinitas would you get a surfing Madonna?

The city famous for its catchable waves and funky public art now has a new piece apparently installed by a brazen crew of bogus construction workers.

On an afternoon shortly before Earth Day and a few days prior to Easter, a group of men in hard hats installed a 10-foot square stained-glass mosaic of a surfing Our Lady of Guadalupe, complete with booties. “Save the Ocean” runs along the side of the mural. On the nose of her surfboard is the face of Saint Juan Diego who, according to legend, saw the Virgin Mary near Mexico City in 1531.

On Monday, the identity of the artists was a closely-held secret among a select few in Encinitas.

Read the story HERE.

Historical Star Wars Art

A great collection of sci-fi art and the original references is located HERE.

Often-abused Cardiff surfer statue attacked by great white shark

SD UT

Often-abused Cardiff surfer statue attacked by great white shark

By Terry Rodgers, Special to the Union-Tribune

Originally published July 24, 2010 at 2:24 p.m., updated July 24, 2010 at 3:09 p.m.
An often-abused statue of a surfer on Coast Highway 101 in Encinitas was turned into a Jaws-dropping artwork early Saturday morning by a group of unknown pranksters.

Crowds of gawkers and picture takers nearly created a traffic hazard, as they gathered around the bronze statue, which, sometime in the early morning hours, was entombed inside a 15-foot tall papier-mâché version of a great white shark’s massive snout.

A San Diego County sheriff’s deputy briefly stopped by to pluck two 2.5-foot tall papier-mâché fins that had been placed in the traffic median. The deputy declined repeated pleas from camera-laden onlookers to pose with the Jaws-like tableau.

Nearby campers at San Elijo State Beach said they heard a ruckus near the statue about 4 a.m., but didn’t see or hear how the pranksters were able to put the giant shark around the surfer.

They said the shark’s didn’t appear without warning. Large sharklike fins had been placed on the other side of the highway, along San Elijo Road, earlier this week then, over the course of the past two days, the fins were moved closer to the statue, as if the shark was circling in on its prey.

Read the story HERE.

For an earlier prank on the statue, see HERE.

For the original controversy regarding the statue, see HERE.
and here is the original: