I had planned to write a post about “what is art,” and relate an argument a sculptor boyfriend and I once got into about it, and so I went looking for the two pieces in question, “Piss Christ” from Andre Serrano, and a folk art painting of a jersey cow with a very small head. But that will be another post. What I found instead, was this.
At first glance at it in my google images page, I thought, “wow, some old tyme homosexual photos, interesting.” Then i realized IT’S DECAPITATED HEADS. so cool.I found the artist’s name is Joel-Peter Witkin. Do a google image search for him and you will find all kinds of creepy stuff (this is the NSFW part.) As I was looking though, things were looking a bit familiar. Remember the NIN video “Closer?” Yeah, Trent Reznor and Mark Romanek made CLOSER as a pretty complete homage of Joel-Peter Witkin works. Here’s a page where someone has handily compiled everything.
Due to the look of the photographs, i expected Mr. Witkin lived in the daguerreotype era, perhaps in the late 1900s. BUT the majority of the photos were done in the late 70s and early 80s. Apparently he had to assemble the bulk of his works in Mexico because he worked with a lot of dead bodies and body parts and Mexico is a bit…looser than the US. Take a look at a few of his images. Disturbing and lovely.
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