#art is...

[know-it-all-freak]

Some GIFs with Paul wearing glasses.

❤️Happy McGann Monday!❤️

(credits to the creators of these GIFs)

(#8 is from Katy J Pearson's Alligator video, in which Paul made a cameo as Marwood, 2 years ago)

[brooklynmuseum]

Lorraine O’Grady’s work revolves around a consistent set of themes: Black female subjectivity and Black feminism; hybridity and diaspora; the unspoken aftermath of slavery in the Western Hemisphere; the contradictions and complications of her upbringing in Boston as the daughter of Jamaican immigrants; and the impossibility of separating the personal from the political, or the self from history. 

This Juneteenth as we commemorate Black American history with events on the Museum plaza, stop by Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And to reflect on the vibrancy and power of the Black community portrayed throughout the artist’s four-decade career, especially in her influential performance, Art is...

Lorraine O'Grady (American, born 1934). Art Is. . . (Girl Pointing) ⇨ (Man with Baby) ⇨ (Man with Baby) ⇨ (Woman and Umbrella) ⇨ (Woman in Stripes) 1983/2009. C-print in 40 parts. Edition of 8 + 1 AP. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York © Lorraine O’Grady/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

[principleofplenitude]

"I had several days when I woke up and said to myself, Nobody here is ever gonna know who I am, and I have to find a way to say who I am, ” she said. So she quit her job. Her marriage had recently ended. Then her sister, Devonia, died, at the age of 38. It was the early ’60s, and O’Grady was in a moment of deep personal crisis. She left her young son with his father — a decision she still struggles with today, although they have since worked on their relationship and become closer — cashed in her retirement savings, and went to Europe, looking for a way to say who she was. She wouldn’t find the right way to do it for years. By the late ’70s, she’d started (then abandoned) a novel, started (but not finished) studies at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, married (and then separated from) a filmmaker she met at Iowa, took over a successful translation business in Chicago, and moved to New York, where she kept writing, this time rock criticism for The Village Voice and Rolling Stone. Then she got a job as an adjunct instructor at the School of Visual Arts. The art world, she realized, was one she didn’t know anything about. She went looking for books to learn more. She picked up one by the critic Lucy Lippard about conceptual art. “I had read art books before, but they hadn’t hit me,” she said. This one she read cover to cover. “I knew at the end of reading it that this was something I could do and be good at.” Not long after that, she had a breast-cancer scare; when her biopsy came back negative, she decided to make a newspaper collage as a present for her doctor, on whom she had a crush (taking inspiration from the Surrealist André Breton, whose work she taught at SVA). She began looking through the Sunday New York Times and found herself cutting out phrases for a poem instead. When she completed it, she thought it was too good to part with. For nearly six months thereafter, she created a work every Sunday, calling the project “Cutting Out the New York Times.” By the time she was done, she had become an artist. “The problem I always had was that no matter who I was with or what I did, I got bored pretty quickly,” said O’Grady. “This was something I knew I would never get bored with, because how can I get bored? I would always be learning, and I would never, ever master it. That was part of the appeal.”

“Just Watch Me” from Vulture

[prydon]

Paul McGann in Every Role (that I can find a DVD/Download of) --> Paul Walters in Art Is... (2013)

What is funny, of course, is that if- as has been suggested- after I die I achieve that modicum of fame that has alluded me throughout my career, then it wouldn’t be unreasonable to ask the question: What is the point? As I should be in no condition to enjoy it, or even be aware of it. And yet it is that very promise that keeps you going. You know, in the proverbial early hours, when you can’t sleep, or that cold frosty morning when you have to force yourself out of bed. It’s that somehow there’s been a reason, a point, that a legacy has been left. An epitaph posted. That you won’t be forgotten. That a little part of you will survive the final moments. 

[iammyss]

Art is my soul when it is with yours. Unabashedly naked, wounded and scared, and glistening in the glow of your love.

[know-it-all-freak]

This Monday is dedicated to Paul McGann's perfect profile.

Happy McGann Monday!!!

Part 1: (Part 2 follows in the post below)

[artis3dots]

Palace of Culture in Warsaw: Pictures