Free Store?! Groovy, baby

10th Street, Manhattan used to be home to a free store, above.

What do British communists, San Francisco hippies, and free stores have in common? The name 'diggers,' among other things.

In 1649, British communists called themselves diggers and tried to create Utopian, moneyless societies. Mainly small agrarian communities, these died out by 1651, in part because of efforts against them by the King's Privy Council.

A group of performance artists in San Francisco, founded by Emmett Grogan,took the name 'diggers' in the 1960s . Riding on a wave of hippieness, the movement grew as they too tried to create a moneyless society. They put on performances in the parks and streets, making San Francisco their stage. They spawned the first free stores in the United States, and have also been credited with the spread of whole wheat bread in America. Going back to the agrarian roots of the movement, these diggers baked bread in 2 pound coffee tins and gave it away. Recipe here.


This led to a free store on 10th Street in Manhattan, where according to a New Yorker Talk of the Town article from 1967, the shop was "crowded with Negro and Puerto Rican children, old women speaking Middle European dialects, barefoot runaways with glazed eyes, stumbling winos, and gaily ornamented hippie couples, all picking through boxes full of used shoes or fingering racks of soiled clothing or burrowing under piles of miscellaneous junk spread out on rough wooden tables, which line the walls."

Has the digger movement entirely died out since then? If you remember the New York Times article from last summer, not at all. Dumpster diving was exposed as part of a freegan community. The 'freegan' lifestyle was (dubiously) celebrated as "scavengers of the developed world, living off consumer waste in an effort to minimize their support of corporations and their impact on the planet, and to distance themselves from what they see as out-of-control consumerism."

Sounds like the 1960s diggers and 1650 agrarians have found their modern day equivalent. You'd think free would sell itself in the most practical way, yet these groups all developed a socially conscious ethos that supported their anti-establishment view of the good life.

Peace and Love.

Ravels in Review Friday (already!)

Has another week really passed? It seems so here in Art Ravel's land, which has been hopefully busy despite a recurrence of hangovers.

Reasons to be hopeful:

1) Spring has returned to Manhattan and gallery hopping can commence again, as I document here. Sure, in between then and now we had some freezing days, but a thaw is coming. *Could also be a reason to be hungover.

2) YouTube's content gets more fun by the minute. See Richard Serra shovel Vaseline under Mathew Barney's direction. Not to be missed.

3) A new play by Moises Kaufman shows us how to make time stand still, in addition to its other good qualities.

4) In another exorbitant claim, a man has discovered the secret of beauty. *Could also be a reason to be hungover.

5)I said goodbye to Culture Pundits, and hello to cool art magazines.

6) Asking questions about Kara Walker, rather than critique, in a further positive, hopeful effort.

And so what do I think sums up this week, its hopes, its hangovers?

Lobsters, obviously. Why? Ask the Surrealists, or read Signs of Spring.

The Secret of Beauty

Math.

That's right, math is the secret of beauty. Or a least of beautiful design as it relates to architecture, furniture and other decorative arts. Horace Brock claims to have discovered that the secret of beautiful design is "themes" (motifs such as a curve or line) and "transformations" (changes in the motif, such as size, rotations). People find only a middling amount of complexity beautiful, so if there are many themes, there should be few transformations, and vice-versa.

Brock claims his theory goes beyond Fibonacci, and other calssic models of beautiful form.

It sounds simplistic, to say the least, and even more like a vague description of how objects physically must appear. Brock, based on this Boston Globe article, seems to have an interesting personality, if only for calling aesthetic philosophers Kant, Schiller, and Hume "fuzzy wuzzy." He gets extra credit for saying about art's effect on him, "it's all a variation on an orgasm, isn't it?"

I'm not arguing that form, whether you classify it as themes or motifs, is unimportant. I would argue that it is not the secret of beauty, only a component. N'cest ce pas?

Kara Walker: Pony tricks or Variations?

Kara Walker's work is rarely compared to Cindy Sherman's, but they share a similarity I'm not sure I like. 'One trick pony' is a hackneyed enough phrase, but that is what I called Cindy Sherman's work in another post. Her images of herself in costume take on different guises, but ultimately they are all photos of Sherman as someone else. Kara Walker does not take photographs and does not use her own image, but instead takes the history of the South and gives it a modern, darker spin dealing with race and sexuality.

Walker's body of work is more varied than Sherman's. In her graphic depictions of gender and racial inequalities,Walker is recognized by her Victorian-style silhouettes but she has also used watercolors, video, painting, and shadow puppets. Her works range from letter sized to room sized. While often working in stark black on white, she also uses color.


In the autumn of 2007, Walker's work not only opened in galleries in Manhattan, but she had a solo show at the Whitney and a self-curated show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Seeing all her work was a treat. All the more reason why I regret drawing this comparison, but she and Sherman are both one trick ponies.


Her transgressive images of black stereotypes tell a part of Southern history that deserves to be told, but by now I think she has exhausted that combination of style and subject. By the time I had seen all of her work in its many forms and shows, I felt they were variations on a theme.

Variations on a theme are certainly a way of exploring a topic, but I'm not sure that Walker is saying something new. As I honestly enjoy her work ( and Sherman's for that matter), maybe I'm being too harsh a judge. I just learned the value of such variations at a new play recently. On the other hand, even Beethoven stopped at 33. Perhaps a truly great artist knows when a theme has been exhausted?

Oh, For the Love of Art!

Artforum, when I picked it up in a bookstore the other day, immediately reminded me of a heavy Vogue issue. Both were thick with ads, and thankfully intelligent ones at that. Just as Vogue contains cutting edge photographs of high-end labels, exactly what people buy the magazine for, Artforum is full of attractive glossy spreads of gallery openings and artist's work. Both blend the edge between content and advertising, and add a depth to the zines (at least in inches).

Artforum, ARTnews, and Art in America dominate the shelves, but in between them, even in chain bookstores (at least in New York city), you see the smaller volumes that exude individuality. The lesser-known art magazines are often the efforts of small groups of people who don't have the same responsibility to cover the big stories. They can choose their content. Appearing sporadically and with varying production levels, often disappearing after a dozen issues, these are the art lover's magazines, if only because they are clearly a labor of love by those that produce them.

The publishers who are able to sell a few copies express their individuality and ideology down to the typeface, and the design of the magazines is where the fun begins. They may not have Gagosian ads, but they do have vertical type and matte collages that beg to be ripped out and put on your wall. Their innovative design and unpredictable content are an adventure compared to the heavyweights. Truthfully, I'm envious! What a project--it tempts me to design an Art Ravels magazine, if only so I could lay out the pages.

Yet as much as I love browsing through the more off-beat art magazines when I see them, I always deliberate over whether they're really worth the $10. On the other hand, I don't buy ARTnews either. But were I to throw my $10 in the art publishing ring, I know which one I'd choose.

Farewell Culture Pundits

And if forever, fare thee well!

Perhaps you noticed a lack of attractive advertising above this post, like the one that led me to artist Tara Giannini. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. Culture Pundits, that nice ad network, and I are no more. It's not Culture Pundits, it's me, there just wasn't enough clicking...no doubt you've heard this before. You know, the conversation that started with, 'We need to talk...'


Or perhaps you haven't! Don't get your feathers ruffled. There's no reason anyone would ever say that to you, erm, I mean, your blog. It's not personal. Remember, the sun'll come out tomorrow. You've still got me, babe.


And I-iii-i will always lo-ove yo-ooooooooooooooooouuuuu!

33 Variations: A Race with Beethoven Against Time

Director and playwright Moises Kaufman, of The Laramie Project fame, came on stage at the beginning of 33 Variations, his latest show now in previews on Broadway, last Thursday to explain that he had added some last minute changes. Surprisingly so, since, although the play is new to New York, it has come third-hand via Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. The third time around for Kaufman, his direction and scenery haven't changed, and despite his warning, and a few line flubs, it was a polished and elegant production of an engaging play.

There seems to be little to fool with, as this well-constructed play tells a fascinating set of stories. Musicologist and ALS patient Katherine Brandt (Jane Fonda) determinedly studies Beethoven's Diabelli Variations to figure out why he would write so many variations on a mediocre waltz. Meanwhile, her daughter Clara (Samantha Mathis) tries to get close to her emotionally distant mother, who has less than a year to live, while Clara is also falling in love with a young nurse in the light romantic comedy subplot of this tightly-woven play.

We also watch Beethoven himself (Zach Grenier) work under an obsessive impulse to finish the variations while going deaf and becoming ill. Katherine, Clara, and Beethoven are all in a race against time, and as Katherine comes to feel, Beethoven's 33 variations are a way of exploring all the possibilities and complexities existing in one moment in time.

Death is always the end, but in this case it does not denude the play of drama. The crux of the story becomes the conflict between mother and daughter, and Katherine's need to finish her work. The interludes where Beethoven rages or Clara's boyfriend tries to romance her are the delight of the play, lightening the sense of pathos that is always present yet which, I suspect, never fully plays out. On one hand we are saved from melodrama, and Kaufman's language is delightfully restrained and natural. However, despite the competent acting of the players, some of the characters (the music publisher and the German librarian for example) stray into caricature, and Katherine would be more emotionally compelling if she broke down once.

The production of this piece is the well-honed result of its many stagings. The set was wonderfully handled to accommodate the switch between eras, and its versatile sparseness was modern, light, and effective, with sliding panes of music notes surrounded by shelves alternately accommodating 21st century Bonn and 18th century Vienna. A pianist accompanies the play with parts of the variations. Just as characters talk through time, the music and the characters interact as well. In addition to the drama of the piece, I enjoyed learning about Beethoven's life and works, but also how to listen to him.

33 Variations boasts something for everyone. With its meditation on death, its historical and musical aspects, its touches of light romance, and the gorgeous intermingling of people and ideas across time, the play begs a full house. Combined with the fame of Moises Kaufman and Jane Fonda, it will be interesting to see if that is enough to reel in an audience during these hard economic times.

33 Variations continues at the Eugene O'Neil theater through May 24.

Originally published in Blogcritics Magazine on February 21.

Vaseline, Serra, and Barney

Hello Sunday morning...and hello hangover. Looking for a fun distraction to keep you from thought of work tomorrow? Hey, me too.

That's how I came across this clip of Matthew Barney filming his best known work, the Cremaster cycle. In it, we see Richard Serra, who is one of the actors in this piece, shoveling Vaseline and hear Barney talk about earlier artists' work and physicality.



This video is one of many interesting clips on art21's YouTube channel. Art21, a part of PBS, is a non-profit that presents artists at work and in their own words. They have hundreds of great clips to check out, featuring artists from Kara Walker to Bruce Nauman to Sally Man. Even if a gore-smeared Barney directing is too much, you won't be thinking about Monday morning.

Signs of Spring: LES Galleries

A thing of beauty may be a joy forever, but that's not enough to drag me out after work in 20 degree weather to explore the nether regions of Chelsea. Gallery hopping is not so pleasant when you get frostbite.

The first sign of Spring emerged Wednesday night, when I, like a rabbit poking its twitching nose out of its hole, decided to stop by a gallery opening. I confess, it was only a subway stop away from home. On Stellar Ray's opening This-Has-Been was mentioned both in Artcards and MyOpenBar, and certainly some event was necessary to mark the passage of bunny-eared TVs. See how bunny similes keep popping up--another sign of Spring.

At On Stellar Ray's opening devoted to the end of analog broadcasting, which had a full, rather French crowd, was a TV repurposed as a stove, some videos installations, a large blue wall painted on newspaper (which had little to do with TVs) and a lobster (which I'm certain was the Surrealist key to the whole show). Unfortunately, I never got Surrealism and the great mystery of how the lobster marks the switch from analog is lost on me. What can I say? I'm hopeless.

On my way from On Stellar Rays to my dinner date, imagine my surprise at running across two more galleries. One was forgettable, bu the other, Bridge, had an installation called Swarm that drew me in from across the street. Suspended from the ceiling were black or white geometric mobiles that formed a nebulous cloud slinking down toward a video installation at the end of the gallery. The artist Peter Macapia, who has a PhD in math, created the complex, angular designs of these small mobiles based on geometry and algorithms so that no two are alike. The effect of the installation over all was entrancing.

Then yesterday Heist Gallery on Essex had a new photography show by Andrea Tese up called Boats Against the Current, and on East Broadway I finally popped into LaViola Banks gallery. Signs of Spring on the Lower East Side--hopefully signs of things to come.

Ravels in Review Friday

Maybe it was the confluence of Friday the 13th and Valentine's Day, but posts this week veered from sweetly feminine to strongly feminist. Or maybe it was the full moon and hormones. You be the judge.

We went from (egads!) love poems, to an art salon, which, by the way, proved to be quite enjoyable, to a mini-bio of portrait painter Louise-Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun, who success at the turn of the 19th c. was unprecedented. From Le Brun's Rococo paintings of women in big hats, we skipped forward in time to a fashion week rif, in which some new designs looked rather like Le Brun's paintings, and all this led to the feminist 'fabrics' of painter Nancy Friedmann.

In a gender-neutral moment, I wrote yesterday about BECA's program for emerging artists and how they are supporting it with this amazing $5 raffle. It's a great prize for a good cause, so check it out.

What's next on the agenda? Possibly some L.E.S. gallery reporting and a theater review. Stay tuned.

$5 Art (that's not on a poster)? OK!

Red Deer - Bibliotheque German Parliament – Berlin by artists Maslen & Mehra, limited edition number 3 of 5, Durst Lambda print on aluminum and silicon mounted acrylic.

Enough said--here's my credit card.

The above print (valued at $3,600) is being raffled off by BECA (Bridge for Emerging Contemporary Art) gallery. BECA's program for emerging artists has come under financial strain, as have many in the current market. One of it's supporters has donated Red Deer by Maslen and Mehra, and the gallery is raffling it off to raise money. For $5 dollars, this is an art lovers lottery! Not to mention that by buying a ticket you support emerging artists. Click here to buy tickets and learn more about BECA. Click here to learn more about Maslen and Mehra's strongly formulated work, which deals with the modern relationship to our environment.

Now if only Sotheby's would get the same idea.

Feminist Fabric

Byzantine Grid, 2005

Fabric is feminine. Despite the male tapestry makers of the 17th c. or the male weavers of the 19th c., fabric is associated with the feminine and the decorative (i.e. lesser) arts. Long overlooked, textiles, such as quilts and embroidery, have only recently come to prominence as an art form spurred by the acceptance of crafts as artwork and the nudge of the feminist movement.

Detail of Byzantine Grid

Byzantine Grid is a traditional brocade, except that instead of being woven, it has been painted with thousands of tiny strokes to imitate an aged piece of cloth. At 90 inches high by 180 inches wide, it's larger than the wall of my bedroom. While it's detail and delicacy cuaght my eye, I also like how the artist deconstructs a 'feminine' art and remakes it as a fine art piece.

It makes a statement as it hangs in the gallery, one about women remaking patriarchal tradition in their own, modern way to create an object that demands to be placed next to the Jackson Pollacks of the world. Friedmann deconstructs traditionally feminine crafts of lace making and fabric, even while playing into traditional ideas of the feminine. These images of Friedmann's work are from 2003, but she has more recent work based on fabrics on her website. Check out the small works from 2005.

She Muttered, 2003

According to the artist, "I manipulate symbols that deal with ideas about femininity and the role of women in art history. I draw and paint and present these issues in an over the top gorgeous way. Among some of my interests are Spanish colonial art and Minimalism. I paint some of the things that women have been historically associated with, like flowers lace and embroidery. I monumentalize them and give them a heroic place and scale that can remind one of high macho modern art."

Friedmann is hardly the only feminist who has reclaimed textiles as part of the fine arts. Along with many of the decorative arts, textiles have come to the forefront as ignored crafts with a visual language that has been ignored up until recently. The new Museum of Art and Design at Columbus Circle would hardly have been possible without this emergence. My posts have a bit of a feminist slant lately, but only because you see these things everywhere once you start looking. And by things, I mean beautiful and interesting objects and people.

Detail of She Muttered, 2003

Fashion Saves Economy

Christian Dior, couture 2009. Similar to images in recent posts, this dress is not recession-friendly.

This is a classic example of a patently untrue headline written to get attention, and lure the reader into the rest of the article. Fashion, despite the importance it gives itself, not to mention our necessity for clothes, could not save the economy alone, and the tents going up in Bryant Park and across the city for New York Fashion Week are certainly not going to do so. But don't tell that to the designers or newspapers.

Reading fashion week coverage, the recession is on everyone's (including Diane Von Furstenberg's) lips. While saying times are tough, designers are also saying that they are necessary to a vibrant economy, that they create jobs, that it is always important for a woman to look and feel beautiful. Sorry designers, this may be a recession without breadlines, but that doesn't mean people are buying couture.

Von Furstenberg's vision of recession

The thing is, I believe them on a certain level. A recession influences style, both larger trends and what an individual can afford to wear, but it also doesn't take away a person's interest in looking good. The need for beauty hasn't dimished.

From the other side of the tracks, art has been claiming style as it's own as a result of the recession. The confluence of fine art and fashion, much like art and advertising, is not new. But only recently have I heard someone say that,

“I think I represent the future of contemporary art and the synthesis of so many worlds that include contemporary art, like fashion. We can try taking it into the wider reaches of our culture in general, making it more accessible"

as the young Nicola Vassell does in a recent New York Times article. I have mixed feelings about the synthesis of fashion and fine art. Fine art has never been married to practical concerns of life and daily wear and tear, and a beautiful dress has never moved me like a beautiful painting.

Marc Jacob's recession chic

On the other hand, the intersection of life and art is fascinating, and fashion is an excellent example of that. The New York shows have a lot to deliver if they plan on saving the economy, beautifying women, and retaining the art to their fashion on a budget. For coverage of the shows, click here and the excellent commentary of Suzy Menkes click here. Let me know what you think about fashion as art.

Resistance and Success: Career Portraitist Le Brun

Self-portrait, Paris, 1782 (27 years old)

Resistance and success came in tandem to Le Brun as a female painter in French fin de siecle society. The daughter of a portraitist, Louise-Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun (1755- 1842) was painting portraits professionally in her early teens from her parent's home. As this was illegal without a license, Le Brun had to publicly apply for license and the French Academy (unwillingly) had to display her works as part of the process. This was in 1774, when Le Brun was 19 and a year before she married a painter and art dealer who would help her rise. Soon Le Brun found more success than resistance, as Marie Antoinette invited her to court to paint her portrait. The Queen's invitation laid the foundation for Le Brun's great success as the portrait painter of her day.

Self-Portrait with Daughter, Paris, 1789 (34 years old)

Le Brun's skilled, Rococo style and personal warmth pleased the Queen so much that Le Brun was commissioned to paint many at the royal court. In 1783, Le Brun and another woman were both admitted as members of the French Academy (although only through the political pressures of the Queen).

Self-Portrait, Russia, 1800 (45 years old)

The French revolution upset all social order, and Le Brun fled the country. She spent years painting the heads of state of Italy, Russia, and Austria. Then, Napoleon welcomed her back to France, and Le Brun remained an active painter well into her older years, painted over 800 paintings and wrote memoirs that provide a glimpse into how artist's were trained. She lived to be 87 years old, and is as remarkable for steady production of work as well as her rise and fall with the tides of national fortune. All the more remarkable for doing it as a woman.

Self-Portrait, 1808, Paris, 56 years old

Salonnieres in New York?

Oh, how antiquated! Those intellectuals gathered around a book, in this 1728 painting Reading from Moliere by Jean Francois de Troy, are so period in their gowns and 'avant garde' literary tastes. It's charming to witness the interchange of ideas between cultured people, even in oils, and the history of the Parisian salon is even more charming.

Salons were free and easy gatherings where social status was less important than conversation and intellect. Dominated by the women that hosted them, salons were a chance for cultured women to meet men as their equals. In some fashion, salons have been hosted in urban centers such as Paris, London, and Rome since the 1600s and produced no end on stimulating conversation and interesting ideas. Charming, but hardly in touch with this modern age of speed and technology, where people need never meet in person, no?

In fact, no. This afternoon I am attending, of all things, a salon hosted by the lovely Helene Forbes devoted to the discussion of the arts. Who comes? Artists, writers, enthusiasts and all sorts who like discussing recent exhibitions, galleries, gossip and a general love of the arts.

What a delightful afternoon! I'll have to channel Gertrude Stein, whose brilliant conversation attracted the Cubist and experimental artist and writers, among them Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Juan Gris, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway to her salon, which was probably the last one of note in Paris. Here's to a New York revival of the salon tradition.

Love Poems (It is Valentine's Day after all)

I never knew until this morning
That Manhattan could be pink and blue
Or how much I love you, asleep
Deep in those closed eyes
Is your dream of pink treetops, Chagall visions?
Are we floating through the sky with a goat?
Is it as silent and white and pure
As I feel in my waking dream of you?
I wonder if Eve, on the first morning of creation,
Had an inkling of the way she could rip
the fabric of dreams.


Green is my love
Green like the blades of grass in Spring
Warlike wounds to the soles of my feet
Pricks to the red red exterior of my beating
Is green love so warlike, so prickly?
I know a childhood rhyme about a zebra.
What’s green and red all over, lover?

A love trembling, a quaking soul,
Heart's red drips on new grass
A lover who finds Spring comes early.

There are no trees in my garden.
Grass has been cut, hedges pruned.
Attacked by love, I lack strength.
I fall to green grass and look up,
Up to the stars and sky,
But I can't see—branches hang over
And shadows shelter the ground.
A tree has grown in my garden.

It grew unmolested and unmolesting,
Until faintly, I fell.

Ravels in Review Friday

You! No—It’s too late now. I’ve seen you, and now you have a chance to see the workings on a highly critical (or is it high and critical?) mind at work. Read on, for my ravels in review of this week.

There was an artist toeing the line between beautiful and ugly that I discovered through an add, Club Guggenheim did not rock, insight into where to get your art gossip, Reena Spualings confirmed not a fake by said art gossip, and yoga invaded MoMA. Whew--what a busy week!

But most particularly, read my post on painter Marlene Dumas’s retrospective now at MoMA here in New York. This artist is generating reactions that range from rave (LA Times) to snide (he at New York Magazine who shall remain nameless ) to "warm" (New York Times) to tentative (mine). What do you think of her work? Why does she create such ambivalence?

Review: Marlene Dumas at MoMA

MoMA Monday Nights gave me the opportunity to pop in after work and spend some time at their retrospective of South African painter Marlene Dumas, entitled Measuring Your Own Grave. Reviews can be good or bad, or sometimes scathing. Although Dumas's works left a strong impression on me, I find it difficult to articulate my thoughts, good or bad. Why is her work so difficult to talk about?

Her figurative paintings focus on bodies in space: women, children, corpses, groups. In blueish hues, she suggests, sometimes quite beautifully, a face as strongly as if you had seen it in a dream. Yet the quality is contradicted by the eyes on canvas meeting yours. They are unreadable and unhappy. From explicit sexual poses to prone corpses, the subjects attempt a gritty realism that wars with the dreamlike style, especially in the her water-based works on paper. The subject challenges it’s own subject-hood through its gaze; the subject matter challenges the style and medium. Is it any wonder I find her work challenging to discuss?

Her works, which are so strong and accomplished, struggle with meaning. Except for her more political/sexual works, which are too literal and graceless for my taste, Dumas paints people whose gendered identity or ethnicity comes forward more than their individuality. As a South African, Dumas's work offers a perspective on apartheid. As a woman painting traditionally feminine subjects of women and children, the artist provides yet another source of conflict by presenting her subjects through a traditionally male lens, both historically and sexually. The manner in which she paints forestalls her making a statement, and these people become ghost or dream people instead of portraits or symbols of social ideas.

Dumas’s people reminded me of Chagall’s, in that they are not grounded to any reality, take on shimmering skin colors, and in their simplified contours seem representative of humanity. Puzzling out both artists' works is more imaginative than logical.

Full of verve without joy, her thinly painted, fragmented style and hallucinatory colors, Dumas’s figures toe a borderline of real and imagined that won’t quite let the viewer make comfortable assumptions, and this disquieting quality illuminates her work with a chill beauty. On view at MoMA through February 16, this accomplished exhibition then moves to The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, from March 26 to June 21.

Serendipitous Ads and artist Tara Giannini

Good advertising brings your attention to things you want to know. One day I looked up at the top of my blog, and saw an 'ad' I immediately liked. It was a detail of the work above. You see, I belong to Culture Pundits, a network of art blogs and artists who display ads related to the arts (and for some reason Tekserve). Serendipity! I can't think of the last time an ad showed me anything of interest, much less introduced me to a new artist.

Idiotically, I did not click on the ad. So I had to do some sleuthing to find artist Tara Giannini's website and more of her intricate, layered panels. I can't decide if they would fit better in a Regency mansion or creepy junkshop. Apparently, the artist had something similar in mind, stating that she tries to find the line between ugliness and beauty.

Based in Brooklyn, Giannini describes her work as exploring "the implications, limitations and individual perceptions of taste, beauty and excess in both art and culture, while simultaneously exploring my interests in overindulgence, visual complexity and ornamentation. It is a romantic and celebratory exploration into personal ideals of the beautiful, and the play that exists between the natural and the artificial."
I love the thickness of the paint and lushness of the materials. While these works don't quite have that creepy air of Victorian dolls, Giannini takes the same neo-Baroque, over the top aesthetic and pushes it until it's on the cusp of breaking down. It's interesting and sensual in an unpleasant way.

This kind of detailed, 3D works is better appreciated in person, especially for grasping scale, but sometimes you just know you like something, right?