Takashi Murakami was born in Tokyo in 1962. He’s a contemporary Japanese artist. About the Mushrooms:

For me they seem both erotic and cute while evoking – especially for the Western imagination – the fantastic world of fairy tale. I thought that, by uniting the eroticism and the magic side of mushrooms, I could use them as motifs in my work. (read more)

Some of Murakami’s work is being exhibited in the palace of Versailles and it’s creating something of a controversy: see “Takashi Murakami takes on critics with provocative Versailles exhibition” (by Lizzy Davies, The Guardian, September 10th, 2010) and “Murakami’s Creations Invade Versailles” (by Rooksana Hossenally, The New York Times, September 13th, 2010. Visit the Chateau de Versailles official website for more info on the exhibition.

Previsously on Skandalon

About Marc Séguin:

Originally from Ottawa, Marc Séguin lives and works between Montreal and New York. Since his first solo exhibition in 1996, his work has been presented in Madrid, Barcelona, Venice, Berlin, Cologne, Brussels, New York, Chicago and Florida while participating in international art fairs such as the Miami Basel. He is currently represented by several galleries including Corkin Gallery in Toronto as well as Envoy Gallery in New York. (Bio)

Art takes time. It takes time to create, and it takes time to experiment as well. If the artist creates himself while he paints, I guess the spectator creates himself while he takes some time to examine a piece of art. Or maybe it’s the other way around. One doesn’t take the time to watch a film or read a book : rather, one gives some of his time to experiment with a piece of art (DeLillo plays with this idea when he writes about Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hours Psycho). Maybe art has something to do with a dance between sacrifice and gift : one sacrifices a part of his life and, in return, is given the gift of himself through artistic journeys.

Here’s an example. Just quickly surfing the web, browsing through hundreds of pictures, one would missed the fact that the above painting was created with tar, real feathers and real butterflies (all glued to the canvas). The painting is huge : the crow hanging from the Pope’s necklace is real.

Here’s an excerpt from a 2008 interview with Marc Séguin:

In addition to the road kill series you have the pope series. Is there a correlation between the two of them besides the material that you use?

Maybe. I’m really too close to all these series to reflect on it, or it’s for people like you to find a link. I’m sure it makes sense somewhere, with the use of the use of the symbol of the crow, with the idea of infallibility of the pope in the Roman Catholic Church. There’s questions there, because in that way it addresses serious issues.

Serious issues being what?

Infallibility, or the fact that we’re living in this era where we can’t question what the Roman Catholic church does, but we can question what the Quran says or what the Muslim people do, or the Buddhists or what the Chinese do, but we never question ourselves. Dogma is a very dangerous thing. They’re supposed to stand for modesty, poverty, and whatever, and here they are—posing like peacocks. They’re blown up as these big statues, presenting themselves as bigger than life, or more important than their subjects.

And here they’re tarred and feathered.

They’re tarred and feathered because it was a way, back in the old days, to tell when somebody was wrong. They’d turn them out of the city and they could be recognized for months or years, because they were tarred and feathered. (NY Art Beat: “Death Becomes Him: The Art of Marc Seguin” by Amanda Scigaj, Oct. 29th, 2008)

See more of his work at the Simon Blais Gallery (Montreal) and Charest-Weinberg Gallery (Miami). The Canadian Art website has a slideshow about recent paintings by Marc Séguin.

Sweet irony. This table presents postmodernism as a movement pretending to avoid (or to be critical of) form, hierarchy, centering etc. Yet, it defines this very same postmodernism using binary oppositions.

In 1983, when asked about the postmodern movement, here’s what Michel Foucault answered:

“I must say that I have trouble answering this. First, because I’ve never clearly understood what was meant in France by the word “modernity”. In the case of Baudelaire, yes, but thereafter I think the sense begins to get lost. I do not know what Germans mean by modernity. The Americans were planning a kind of seminar with Habermas and myself. Habermas had suggested the theme of “modernity” for the seminar. I feel trouble here because I do not grasp clearly what that might mean, though the word itself is unimportant; we can always use any arbitrary label. But neither do I grasp the kind of problems intended by this term ― or how they would be common to people thought of as being “post-modern.” While I see clearly that behind what was known as structuralism, there was a certain problem ― broadly speaking, that of the subject and the recasting of the subject ― I do not understand what kind of problem is common to the people we call post-modern or post-structuralist.”

(“Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: An Interview with Michel Foucault”, interview by Gérard Raulet, translated by Jeremy Harding, Telos, vol. 55, Spring 1983, pp. 195-211; reproduced in Politics, philosophy, culture: interviews and other writings, 1977-1984 edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman and Alan Sheridan, London: Routledge, [1988]1990, p. 34; Amazon, Google Books)

Kevin Cyr: “Bushwick”, 16 x 24, oil on plywood.