#2020 art review

[buboplague]

incredibly off year. struggled with art block, losing interest, demotivated, feeling aimless; my lowest output in a decade, and sad I'm starting off the new year in such a bad place. But the important thing is I didn't quit, I guess

[snowysaur]

2024 year in review/art summary. i realized i never made these for 2021-23 either so here's all of them. i think i haven't been drawing as much these past few years, oh well support me on: patreon | kofi | redbubble

[killyridols]

paris review by ed ruscha, 2021, hand-printed lithograph, 18 × 11.5 inches

[hairscare]

art year in review 2024 is here! cant believe ive been putting this together for a year already. i used a lot of purples

[w0w0zella]

Todays Doodles !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! smiles jump s around

[raspberryyyicedtea]

kineorama - it all makes sense, cats live 100 years (2020)

personal rating: ☆9.0/10 ☆

i actually really really loved this compilation album. it’s got a really calm and almost soothing atmosphere to it, with the vocals sounding like you’re being sung a lullaby. however, the album also carries a kind of strange feeling with it, like something is just a little bit wrong. this feeling really adds to the whole album. in songs like ‘aitsu no nogai’, the lyrics are really melancholic, and it feels when you’re waiting for the subway on a winter afternoon and you can see your breath. the whole album has lots of digital instrumentals, which contrasts really nicely with the soft feeling of the piano used in the songs, and with the melodic vocals. it all kind of feels like an empty building with the art still on the walls. it’s cute, it’s a little bit ominous, it’s charming, and most of all it’s just really really nice to listen to. it’s great! some of my favorite songs on this album are ‘pop song’ (probably my favorite song on the album), ‘correct way to fall down a deep hole’, and ‘anime song #5’, but honestly this album has no bad songs on it, and all of them are full of charm. they feel like ceramics and warm lighting. i love this album so much :-]

would i recommend it?: DEFINITELY!!!!!

[reckonslepoisson]

Galore, Oklou (2020) 

Oklou’s new age-daubed ambient pop stretches out her precious, exact melodies into a sound genuinely distinct in its gorgeousness. It is no wonder that Galore has grown quite the fanbase in the years since its release. 

Pick: ‘Unearth Me’

[squirrellyshorrorreviews]

Skinamarink (2022)

Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished.

Director/Writer: Kyle Edward Ball (Director/Writer)

Production House: BayView, ERO, IFC Midnight

Runtime: 1h 40m

Where to watch: Hulu, Shudder

Rating: 4/10

I wanted so badly to like this one.

HEAR ME OUT.

This is very much an Art House movie. It requires an amount of patience much, much higher than most other entries on this list. For me personally, it wasn't until the 30-45 minute mark that it started to grab me, and even then it couldn't really hold me. I think it might be better served by researching the movie and director prior, unlike other horror movies where going in blind is often best.

I can see what it's going for. I can see the metaphors for abuse and trauma sprinkled throughout. They establish creeping dread very well. The viewer becomes paranoid and waiting for a hammer that drops only on occasion.

They do some fun things with light and color, though I will say the grainy cam filter started to hurt my eyes after a bit. And watching without headphones meant that the sound mixing left a lot to be desired. This movie is... so, so quiet.

I would not recommend this movie for the casual horror enjoyer, or someone looking for a spooky movie. It's in the Marble Hornets vein of storytelling and you need to look for details, wait for payoffs, etc. It's a movie to watch if you're looking for something to mess with your brain a little. Make you feel dread and discomfort.

If you're looking for subtle horror, this is it.

[actionflickchick]

Fight of Fury (2020): All Right, All Right, All Right

Shuny Bee is Shuny Bee aka Brandon in FIGHT OF FURY Like The Room and Fateful Findings, Fight of Fury boasts a quadruple-threat creative force with writer/director/producer/star Shuny Bee, and this film is about as intentionally successful as The Room and Fateful Findings before it. All right! (more…) “”

[minimusics]

Caroline Polacheck - "Desire, I Want To Turn Into You"

I see the creativity here: the album is at times poppy, at times ethereal, at times beachy, at times industrial. It doesn't quite sound like anything else nowadays, but never wavers too far into the inaccessible while still being surprising. It's just maybe not something I have a lot of use for, but I see the hype (this album is likely to top lots of Best of 2023 lists).

.

genre: art pop, alt pop, new-age year: 2023

personal rating: 7 (out of 10)

.

why this album? This album has been named as one of the best albums of 2023 so far by multiple publications.

[kjdaveyyyy]

Barbie (2023) 🎬 Greta Gerwig

[mywifeleftme]

242: Lonnie Holley // Oh Me Oh My

Oh Me Oh My Lonnie Holley 2023, Jagjaguwar (Bandcamp)

I’ll open with the caveat that I’m only passingly familiar with Lonnie Holley’s biography and past sculptural and musical work (though friend of the blog Jack C. says Holley’s debut LP Just Before Music has moved him to tears), so I’m missing some context that might help make what is obviously a deeply-felt project stick with me more than it has to date. But I can’t escape the sensation that Oh Me Oh My will not age well.

The septuagenarian Holley alternates between an untrained but powerful gospel wail and talk-singing, which gives the music an outsider-tinged extemporaneous quality. His lyrics deal with heavy subject matter, from his destitute and abusive upbringing in Jim Crow-era Alabama to the loss of friends and family with age. Despite this, he evinces an intense commitment to living, and at its best Oh Me Oh My glimmers with the same strange joy I find in the work of a Howard Finster or an Alfred Wallis. Producer and principal instrumentalist Jackknife Lee has made his bones making the least interesting records by legacy bands (R.E.M., U2) and bands that sound like the least interesting records by those legacy bands (Snow Patrol, Editors). In what is clearly a passion project, here he turns in some perfectly cromulent beats in that chamber jazz/trip hop vein that has become the go-to mode for musical elder statesmen who want to try something a bit daring.

So, what’s the issue? I think where Oh Me Oh My loses me is that these productions ultimately feel a little bit too “tasteful” for the type of guttural sorrow and rawboned uplift Holley traffics in. Whatever your opinions of gospel, soul, or folk music, they have built-in melodic conventions and decades of emotional resonance that could provide Holley’s vocals with more than these dense but somehow anodyne exercises do. I can’t help but think Jamie xx’s album-length Gil Scott-Heron remix We’re New Here was a conceptual touchstone, but xx had the wit to see how the verve and swagger of Scott-Heron’s poetry could swing with his own colourful but introverted club music. Few of the big-name guests add much either: Moor Mother’s rote spoken word poetry on “Earth Will Be There” gave me acid flashbacks of sitting through collegiate slams (where grandma’s hands come in bouquets), and Justin Vernon’s voice might as well be Chris Martin’s to me at this point.

I’m not upset to have given Holley (or his very chill label Jagjaguwar) money by buying a copy of the record, but it remains to be seen if this one grows on me at all. I think once the initial enthusiasm for this one has dissipated, it will be seen as a respectable but dated entry in his woolly artistic oeuvre.

242/365

[musicalthought]

♡ album review of fetch the bolt cutters; fiona apple; 8.5/10 ♡

apple's 2020 album is overwhelming experimental. From bullying to sexual assault, all 13 tracks deliver a specific type of punch. "Fetch the fucking bolt cutters and get yourself out of the situation you're in."

[venusinmyrrh]

You said you love a good fashion doc- do you have any more to recommend?

Designers and tastemakers

Very Ralph (2019). The preeminent American designer of our time, one of the very few who can stand toe to toe with the titans of Paris and Milan. To call Ralph Lauren's work "sportswear" is to call the Sistine Chapel "kind of a big painting".

Halston (2019). Speaking of going head to head with Paris, Halston did it first. Skip Ultrasuede-- this is a much better doc about the king of American 70s disco glam.

McQueen (2018). When people talk about fashion as an art form, chances are they're thinking of Alexander McQueen. Worth watching for the pulse-pounding runway shows alone.

Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist (2018). Obviously you already know about this one, but it's gotta go on any comprehensive list. Without Vivienne Westwood, punk would have been nothing but a handful of noisy assholes.

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (2011). My icon, my north star, my personal hero. The empress of taste and high priestess of personal style. Watch this doc whenever you need encouragement to do and wear whatever the hell you want.

The Gospel According to André (2017). Diana Vreeland's protegé and a godfather of style in his own right. If it happened in fashion in the last fifty years, André Leon Talley was there for it.

Lagerfeld Confidential (2007). I have a high tolerance for difficult and unpleasant people as long as I like their work. Your mileage may vary, but Karl Lagerfeld's immaculate, relentless taste cannot be denied.

Institutions and events

The First Monday in May (2016). Witness all the hustle, bustle, savvy, and stress that goes into planning the Met gala!

The September Issue (2009). Same as the above, but for the famous September issue of Vogue. Watch this to learn who Grace Coddington is.

Dior and I (2014). How do haute couture collections get made? In 8 weeks from start to finish, I guess, if you're Raf Simons during his first season at the House of Dior. A documentary and a thriller.

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's (2013). No matter what other retailers might want you to think, Bergdorf Goodman is the last great department store. A portrait, already halfway to a time capsule, of what luxury shopping used to be.

Peripheral, but may be of interest

Nose (2021). The passionate, delicate art of perfume creation for the House of Dior. The French landscapes where they source their materials will make you swoon.

Larger Than Life: The Kevyn Aucoin Story (2017). As the makeup artist to pretty much every single icon of the 80s and 90s, Kevyn Aucoin invented the image of that era as much as any designer.

Fabergé: A Life of Its Own (2014). Come for the dazzling jewels and sumptuous objets d'art; stay to find out how this illustrious name ended up on hair care products in the 70s.

Crazy About Tiffany's (2016). Another luxury jeweler whose name alone is the stuff dreams are made on.

Bill Cunningham New York (2010). The original street style photographer, since before "street style" was even a thing. A love letter to curiosity, and a testament to the power of taking an interest in the world around us.

Still on my watchlist

Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams (2020). Directed by Luca Guadagnino, which is enough to put this Ferragamo doc at the top of my list.

Advanced Style (2014). Portraits of seven women aged 62-95 with truly fab personal style. Top Letterboxd review is seething about how out of touch they are with the real world, which means I am probably gonna love it.

Suited (2016). A study of gender through clothing in modern culture.

Dries (2017). A year-- and four collections-- in the life of Dries Van Noten, who, interestingly, doesn't see the point of clothes that people can't buy to wear, and so does not do couture.

Yellow is Forbidden (2018). This doc about Guo Pei appears to use her career as a framework to understand the gatekeeping of global culture by the West. Dope as hell, if it can pull it off.

American Style (2019). The political, social, and economic history of America through its fashion. Another one that could be really awesome if done with insight and panache.

Quant (2021). She may share the credit for inventing the miniskirt with two other people, but it cannot be argued that Mary Quant invented 1960s Swinging London. And for that we say thank you Dame Mary.

[ms-demeanor]

My MiL gave me cash for my birthday so I ordered one of those criss-cross chairs with it because my office chair has been nearing retirement age and so far my review is:

Essentially no cushion; this is not a problem for me, both because I own cushions and because of my generous ass, but could be a problem for some.

I am going to sit in this like a goblin until my hips dislocate and I am so fucking happy about it.

Pairs well with a footrest and a bluetooth keyboard that allows me to keep my hands in an incredibly comfortable neutral position in my lap while typing.

IS actually big enough for me to sit with my legs crossed and I am *not* a small person.

Tiny Bastard approved because of increased lap-sitting space.

My legs do not properly fit under my desk when crossed, which may become an issue if I'm doing things like art that require me to be closer to the monitor than normal.

Both this and my other desk chair that i've been using since 2020 were about sixty bucks on amazon and are about the quality you'd expect for that price but that means that I'm expecting about 3-4 years of life out of this chair and 20 bucks a year isn't that bad honestly.

I feel like this would be very fatiguing for a lot of people to sit in but if you've got weird back stuff going on and accessories that will allow you to have a less traditional desk setup it seems pretty cool.

[critter-of-habit]

It's "art year in review" time again ☺️ I was SO productive in '24, especially the past 3 months!

Thank you all for the love and support 🥰🙏

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