Less Is More: Ad Reinhardt’s 12 Rules for Pure Art →

Zhong Yao, Spirit Above All 1-93A, 2012, acrylic on denim.
©THE ARTIST. COURTESY PACE LONDON AND WHITECHAPEL GALLERY

“Twelve Rules for a New Academy”
By Ad Reinhardt

How a well-known abstract painter would “give certain rules to our art” in order to “render it pure”

Evil and error in art are art’s own “uses” and “actions.” The sins and sufferings of art are always its own improper involvements and mixtures, its own mindless realisms and expressionisms.

The humiliation and trivialization of art in America during the last three decades have been the easy exploitations and eager popularizations by the American artists themselves. Ashcan- and Armory-Expressionists mixed their art up with life-muck-raking and art-marketing. Social- and Surreal-Expressionists of the ‘thirties used art as an “action-on-the-public,” but succeeded mainly in expressing themselves, and Abstract-Expressionists of the ‘forties and ‘fifties using art initially as a “self-expression,” succeeded in acting upon the whole world. The business boom of the ‘twenties orphaned the alienated artist but the great depression of the ‘thirties witnessed the tender engagement of art to government. Ten years after that, the ardent marriage of art and business and war was celebrated with Pepsi-Cola in ceremonial contests called “Artists for Victory” at America’s greatest museum of art. By the ‘fifties, armies of art’s offsprings were off to school and Sunday school, crusading for art-education and religious decoration.

From “Artists for Ashcan and Dust-Bowl” to “Artists for America-First and Social Security” to “Artists for Victory” to “Artists for Action in Business, Religion and Education,” the portrait of the artist in America in the twentieth century shapes up into a figure resembling Al Capp’s “Available Jones,” who is always available to anyone, any time, for anything at all, at any price.

The conception of art as “fine,” “high,” “noble,” “free,” “liberal,” and “ideal” has always been academic. The argument of free or fine artists has never been between art and something else, but “between true art and art submitted to some other, quite different, values.” “There are not two arts, there is only one.” “No man can embrace true art till he has explored and cast out false art.” The academy of art, whether the Western or Eastern ideal, has always aimed at “the correction of the artist,” not “the enlightenment of the public.” The idea of the “academy” of art in seventeenth century, of “esthetics” in the eighteenth, of the “independence” of art in the nineteenth century, and of the “purity” of art in the twentieth, restate, in those centuries in Europe and America, the same “one point of view.” Fine art can only be defined as exclusive, negative, absolute and timeless. It is not practical, useful, related, applicable or subservient to anything else. Fine art has its own thought, its own history and tradition, its own reason, its own discipline. It has its own “integrity” and not someone else’s “integration” with something else.

Fine art is not “a means of making a living” or “a way of living a life.” Art that is a matter of life and death cannot be fine or free art. An artist who dedicates his life to art, burdens his art with his life and his life with his art. “Art is Art, and Life is Life.”

The “tradition” of art is art “out of time,” art made fine, art emptied and purified of all other-than-art meanings, and a museum of fine art should exclude everything but fine art. The art tradition stands as the antique-present model of what has been achieved and what does not need to be achieved again. Tradition shows the artist what not to do. “Reason” in art shows what art is not. “Higher Education for artist should be ‘liberal,’ ‘free’ and the ‘learning of greatness.'” “To teach and enlighten is the task of virtuous men.” “No great painter was ever self-taught.” “Artists must learn and learn to forget their learning.” “The way to know is to forget.”

The Guardian of the True Tradition in Art is the Academy of Fine Art: “to give certain rules to our art and render it pure.” The first rule and absolute standard of fine art, and painting, which is the highest and freest art, is the purity of it. The more uses, relations and “additions” a painting has, the less pure it is. The more stuff in it, the busier the work of art, the worse it is. “More is less.”

The less an artist thinks in non-artistic terms and the less he exploits the easy, common skills, the more of an artist he is. “The less an artist obtrudes himself in his painting, the purer and clearer his aims.” The less exposed a painting is to a chance public, the better. “Less is more.”

The Six Traditions to be studied are: (1) the pure icon, (2) pure perspective, pure line and pure brushwork, (3) the pure landscape, (4) the pure portrait, (5) the pure still-life, (6) pure form, pure color, and pure monochrome. “Study ten thousand paintings and walk ten thousand miles.” “Externally keep yourself away from all relationships, and internally, have no hankerings in your heart.” “The pure old men of old slept without dreams and waked without anxiety.”

The Six General Canons or the Six Noes to be memorized are: (1) No Realism or Existentialism. “When the vulgar and commonplace dominate, the spirit subsides.” (2) No Impressionism. “The artist should once and forever emancipate himself from the bondage of appearance.” “The eye is a menace to clear sight.” (3) No Expressionism or Surrealism. “The laying bare of oneself,” autobiographically or socially, “is obscene.” (4) No Fauvism, primitivism or brute art. “Art begins with the getting-rid of nature.” (5) No Constructivism, sculpture, plasticism, or graphic arts. No collage, paste, paper, sand or string. (6) No “trompe-l’oeil,” interior decoration or architecture. The ordinary qualities and common sensitivities of these activities lie outside free and intellectual art.

The Twelve Technical Rules (or How to Achieve the Twelve Things to Avoid) to be followed are:

1. No texture. Texture is naturalistic or mechanical and is a vulgar quality, especially pigment-texture or impasto. Palette-knifing, canvas-stabbing, paint-scumbling and other action-techniques are unintelligent and to be avoided. No accidents or automatism.

2. No brushwork or calligraphy. Hand-writing, hand-working and hand-jerking are personal and in poor taste. No signature or trade-marking. “Brushwork should be invisible.” “One should never let the influence of evil demons gain control of the brush.”

3. No sketching or drawing. Everything, where to begin and where to end, should be worked out in the mind beforehand. “In painting, the idea should exist in the mind before the brush is taken up.” No line or outline. “Madmen see outlines and therefore they draw them.” A line is a figure, a “square is a face.” No shading or streaking.

4. No forms. “The finest has no shape.” No figure or fore- or background. No volume or mass, no cylinder, sphere or cone, or cube or boogie-woogie. No push or pull. “No shape or substance.”

5. No design. “Design is everywhere.”

6. No colors. “Color blinds.” “Colors are an aspect of appearance and so only of the surface,” and are “a distracting embellishment.” Colors are barbaric, unstable, suggest life, “cannot be completely controlled” and “should be concealed.” No white. “White is a color, and all colors.” White is “antiseptic and not artistic, appropriate and pleasing for kitchen fixtures, and hardly the medium for expressing truth and beauty.” White on white is “a transition from pigment to light” and “a screen for the projection of light” and “moving” pictures.

7. No light. No bright or direct light in or over the painting. Dim, late afternoon, non-reflecting twilight is best outside. No chiaroscuro, “the maldorant reality of craftsmen, beggars, topers with rags and wrinkles.”

8. No space. Space should be empty, should not project, and should not be flat. “The painting should be behind the picture frame.” The frame should isolate and protect the painting from its surroundings. Space divisions within the painting should not be seen.

9. No time. “Clock-time or man’s time is inconsequential.” “There is no ancient or modern, no past or future in art. A work of art is always present.” The present is the future of the past, not the past of the future.

10. No size or scale. Breadth and depth of thought and feeling in art have no relation to physical size. Large sizes are aggressive, positivist, intemperate, venal and graceless.

11. No movement. “Everything is on the move. Art should be still.”

12. No object, no subject, no matter. No symbols, images or signs. Neither pleasure nor pain. No mindless working or mindless non-working. No chessplaying.

Supplementary regulations are: No easel or palette. Low, flat, sturdy benches work well. Brushes should be new, clean, flat, even, 1 inch wide and strong. “If the heart is upright, the brush is firm.” No noise. “The brush should pass over the surface lightly and smoothly” and quietly. No rubbing or scraping. Paint should be permanent, free of impurities, mixed and stored in jars. The scent should be of “pure spirits of turpentine, unadulterated and freshly distilled.” “The glue should be as clean as possible.” Canvas is better than silk or paper, linen better than cotton. There should be no shine in the finish. Gloss reflects and relates to the changing surroundings. “A picture is finished when all traces of the means used to bring about the end have disappeared.”

The fine art studio should have a “rain-tight roof” and be 25 feet wide and 30 feet long, with extra space for storage and sink. Paintings should be stored away and not continually looked at. The ceiling should be 12 feet high. The studio should be separate from the home and living, “away from the claims of concubinage and matrimony.” A fine art department should be separate from the rest of the school.

The fine artist should have a fine mind, “free of all passion, ill-will and delusion1.”

How to Varnish an Oil Painting (Video) →

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Kehinde Wiley to Receive the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts →

Kehinde Wiley. KWAKU ALSTON/COURTESY ROBERTS & TILTON

New York-based portraitist Kehinde Wiley will be awarded the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts. Known for his flashy paintings that depict black men and women in the style of Old Master portraiture, Wiley is being honored for using his art to promote cultural diplomacy. He will receive his medal from Secretary of State John Kerry on January 21. Past medal honorees include Cai Guo-Qiang, Jeff Koons, Shahzia Sikander, Kiki Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems. First awarded in 2012, the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts is given to artists for their commitment to Art in Embassies, a diplomatic program that encourages U.S. artists to go abroad and work with other artists. For AIE’s latest project, set to happen in 2017, Jenny Holzer will make a collaborative sculpture at the U.S. Embassy in London. The announcement precedes another landmark in the artist’s career—”Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,” the painter’s first museum survey, which will open at the Brooklyn Museum in February. Roberts & Tilton, one of the galleries that represents Wiley, confirmed the news.

Art forever changed by World War I →

A scene from “All Quiet on the Western Front” from 1930. (Universal Pictures, Universal Pictures)

Along with millions of idealistic young men who were cut to pieces by machine guns and obliterated by artillery shells, there was another major casualty of World War I: traditional ideas about Western art.

The Great War of 1914-18 tilted culture on its axis, particularly in Europe and the United States. Nearly 100 years later, that legacy is being wrestled with in film, visual art, music, television shows like the gauzily nostalgic PBS soaper "Downton Abbey" and plays including the Tony Award-winning"War Horse," concluding its run at the Ahmanson Theatre.

"It created an epoch in art," said Leo Braudy, a USC professor of English and author of "From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity." "The question is, what was on one side and what was on the other?"

The simple answer as to what lay on the near side of World War I is Modernism, that slippery but indispensable term denoting a wide range of new sensibilities and aesthetic responses to the industrial age. Modernism took shape decades before World War I, but its clamorous arrival was vastly accelerated by the greatest collective trauma in history to that point.

From the fiction of Hemingway, Virginia Woolf and John Dos Passos to the savagely critical paintings and etchings of George Grosz and Otto Dix, World War I reshaped the notion of what art is, just as it forever altered the perception of what war is. Although World War II racked up more catastrophic losses in blood and treasure, World War I remains the paradigmatic conflict of the modern age, not only politically but also culturally.

"Of all the wars, that is the one that seems to explain us best," said Michael Morpurgo, the English author of the novel "War Horse," about a Devonshire farm boy's death-defying bond with his noble steed Joey, on which the National Theatre of GreatBritain'sproduction is based.

Particularly in his country, he said, World War I resonates louder than the even greater cataclysm that followed it 20 years later. "The First World War for British people is very much a part of who we are," Morpurgo said during a visit to Los Angeles. "It's so deep in us; the poetry, the stories, the loss, the suffering is there in every village churchyard."

During and after World War I, flowery Victorian language was blown apart and replaced by more sinewy and R-rated prose styles. In visual art, Surrealists and Expressionists devised wobbly, chopped-up perspectives and nightmarish visions of fractured human bodies and splintered societies slouching toward moral chaos.

"The whole landscape of the Western Front became surrealistic before the term surrealism was invented by the soldier-poet Guillaume Apollinaire," Modris Eksteins wrote in "Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age."

Throughout Western art, the grim realities of industrial warfare led to a backlash against the propaganda and grandiose nationalism that had sparked the conflagration. Cynicism toward the ruling classes and disgust with war planners and profiteers led to demands for art forms that were honest and direct, less embroidered with rhetoric and euphemism.

"Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene besides the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates," Ernest Hemingway wrote in "A Farewell to Arms," his 1929 novel based on his experiences in the Italian campaign.

Other artists clung to the shards of classical culture as a buffer against nihilistic disillusionment. "These fragments I have shored against my ruins," T.S. Eliot wrote in "The Waste Land" (1922).

In "The Great War and Modern Memory," Paul Fussell argued that the rise of irony as a dominant mode of modern understanding "originates largely in the application of mind and memory to the events of the Great War."

Irony and dissonant humor permeated the music of classical composers such as Alban Berg and Benjamin Britten, a pacifist who parodied marching-band pomposity in his Piano Concert in D. In his 1989 film "War Requiem," based on Britten's non-liturgical Mass, British director Derek Jarman suggested a parallel between the indifferent slaughter of World War I and the neglect of AIDS-infected young men in the 1980s.

Bargue Plate I, 23 - Man's arm, bent Timelapse Video →

Did You Know? →

Sir Isaac Newton developed the first circular diagram of colors in 1666.

Our modern understanding of light and color begins with Isaac Newton (1642-1726) and a series of experiments that he publishes in 1672. He is the first to understand the rainbow he refracts white light with a prism, resolving it into its component colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet.

This circular diagram became the model for many color systems of the 18th and 19th centuries. Claude Boutet’s painter’s circle of 1708 was probably the first to be based on Newton’s circle.

Introduction to Cityscape →

Within the context of art, a cityscape is a work that showcases aspects of cities. It is often known as the urban equivalent of a landscape. Cityscapes are reflected by such mediums as paintings, etchings, drawings, or even photographs. Cityscapes are differentiated by town or village scenes that are less urban in nature. Cityscapes reflect various aspects of cities including (but not limited to) buildings, urban parks, city skylines, and city streets. 

The city in art has a long history. Some early works date to ancient Rome, for example.  The Baths of Trajan, for instance, depict a bird's-eye view of the city. Cityscapes were also created during the Middle Ages; however, these works often served as backgrounds for views of portraits. By the seventeenth century, cityscapes became a celebrated genre of art, particularly in the Netherlands. A famed work from this era is the View of Delft painted by Johannes Vermeer between 1660 and 1661. Dutch cities like Amsterdam and Haarlem were also featured during this period. 

During the eighteenth century, cityscapes became popular in many other European nations, especially in the Italian city of Venice. Some of the most celebrated cityscapes date to eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, groups like the Impressionists experimented with new techniques to showcase views of the city. The common thread between the various artistic genres in cityscape works is the representation of the city's physical aspects. 

The cityscape as a popular genre declined considerably during the nineteenth century as more abstract and works of modernity took center stage. Even so, some modern artists continued to reflect the city in their works. A few celebrated painters like Edward Hopper continued to incorporate cityscape elements into their works. Some contemporary artists focus on the city as the subject matter of their art today. For instance, Stephen Wiltshire is known for his panoramic city views. The artist Yvonne Jacquette is celebrated for her aerial cityscapes. 

The cityscape genre has been favored by many historic painters during their era such as Alfred Sisley, James McNeill Whistler, Childe Hassam, Giovanni Canaletto, and John Atkinson Grimshaw. While there is a plethora of world-renowned cityscape works collected by museums today, some particularly celebrated works include City by the Sea (c.1335 A.D.) by Ambrogio Lorenzetti; Paris Street, Rainy Day (1877) by Gustave Caillbotte; and Moscow (1911) by Mikhail Belyaevsky. Although cityscape paintings have declined in popularity during the past century, photographic cityscapes have become a popular genre of the art form.

The World's Best Museums are Coming to Your Smartphone →

A screen shot taken from Google's new Cultural Institute App
Photo: Google via Tech Crunch

Stuck at home this holiday season while your friends travel the world's museums? Despair not. The Google Cultural Institute has announced plans to develop an app, allowing users to explore some of the world's best museums right from their smartphones.

Thus far, 11 museums and cultural institutions have partnered with Google to showcase their collections, including the Museum of Arts et Métiers, MAO, GAM, Palazzo Madama, Musee Curie, Museum of Le Havre, Monnaie de Paris, MAGA, and the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.

The new mobile app utilizes Google's indoor street view technology to offer users 360-degree tours, so they can virtually view the museum's exhibitions from anywhere in the world.

The app also features extensive information for museum visitors such as descriptions, photos, and audio tours. The information is also available offline for travelers abroad without internet.

In a video, Google Cultural Institute's Product Manager, Robert Tansley explained “The Google Cultural Institute works with museums and cultural institutions around the world to find new ways to reach people with cultural content."

He added, “I hope that this app will allow more and more museums to tell more and more amazing stories and reach more people than ever."

50 Paintings Stolen from Madrid Gallery →

The theft took place in the early hours, right next to the Puerta de Alcalá, a landmark right in the center of Madrid
Photo via: Madrid Guide

Three men broke into an art gallery in the affluent center of Madrid, near the Museo del Prado, and walked away with 50 paintings worth an estimated €400,000.

The thieves entered the Puerta de Alcalá gallery in the early morning hours of Thursday, December 4. They first broke into the adjacent premises, a former bar that has been closed for over a year, and then punched a hole through the wall that led to the gallery. They managed to deactivate the gallery's alarm system and proceeded to take the artworks.

According to reports, the heist was anything but subtle. The thieves spent almost three hours moving the paintings from the gallery to a van parked in the street.

In fact, a security guard from a construction site nearby spotted the men and asked them what they were up to. The men replied that they worked for the gallery and were transporting the large group of artworks to an exhibition. Satisfied with the answer, the security guard walked away.

A week later, there are still no leads as to the whereabouts of the paintings. “We think they might have been taken outside of Spain," Lola Moreno, from Puerta de Alcalá gallery, told artnet News. “The security guard said two of the three men had Eastern European accents, so the paintings might have been trafficked. The thieves also took our invoice books, so we fear they might try to pass any sales as legit," she continued. Initial reports claimed that 70 paintings were stolen. However, the gallery has subsequently lowered that figure to 50.

The gallery specializes in 20th century realist and impressionist painters from Spain. Among the stolen works are 14 paintings by the Sevillian artist Pablo Segarra Chías, which were meant to be shown as part of a solo exhibition. The exhibition opened last night despite the theft. Works by the Valencian painter Eustaquio Segrelles and Juan González Alacreu were also taken by the thieves.

“This has destroyed us," Pedro Márquez, who owned the gallery for decades before passing the baton to his son, told the Guardian. “It's left us in a really tough situation. Forty years of work and they just walked out with it."

Famous Artists: Anthony Van Dyck →

Self-Portrait 

The Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck was born in 1599 and was famous for his Baroque works of art. His influence on English portrait painting would dominate style for well more than a century. As a court painter for King Charles I of England and Scotland, van Dyck excelled in portraiture, but was also famed for his work with watercolour and etching as well as his various genre paintings. 

Born in Antwerp to a well-off family, van Dyck displayed artistic promise early on and was sent to study with the painter Hendrick van Balen by the year 1609. Within a few years he became an independent artist and set up a studio with his friend, the painter Jan Brueghel the Younger. In 1618 van Dyck was accepted as a member of the Painters’ Guild of St. Luke. He then became an assistant to Peter Paul Rubens and was revered as the master’s best student.  

In 1620 van Dyck traveled to England to work for both King James I and James VI. At this point van Dyck demonstrated the influence of Rubens, but he also showed his influence from Titian. After a return to Flanders, van Dyck next journeyed to Italy where he studied the masters. He also became a popular portrait artist at this time. His most glorious success came, however, upon his return to England where King Charles and his wife sat for him nearly exclusively during his lifetime. He was paid handsomely and received many commissions due to his ease among the aristocracy as well as his talent. He became immensely famous for his paintings that showcased his cavalier garments and style. 

In 1638 van Dyck married one of the queen’s ladies in waiting, the daughter of a peer. They would have one daughter. The artist also had a daughter by his mistress. He died in 1641 in England after returning ill from Paris. England’s Royal Collection contains the most famous collection of van Dyck paintings. However, the artist’s works are collected by the world’s most illustrious museums. Some of van Dyck’s most famous paintings include the Triple Portrait of King Charles I (1635-1636), Self Portrait with a Sunflower (c.1633), King Charles I (c.1635), Samson and Delilah (c. 1630), Elena Grimaldi (1623), Amor and Psyche (1638), Marie –Louise de Tassis (1630). His paintings, while famed for his cavalier style, were also influential for their subtlety of technique which profoundly influenced the subsequent century of English portrait art. 
 

Miami Artist Asif Farooq Kicks Heroin Habit, Makes Cardboard Weapons →

Asif Farooq stooped over a metal sink in a Jackson, Mississippi Huddle House restaurant. Feverishly scrubbing away at the mountain of pots and dishes in front of him, he tried to wash away his doubts about whether he'd finally found a way to kill his 20-year heroin addiction.

"I constantly fell asleep, and threw up on a girl in my math class."

It was 2010, and Farooq was in the final stages of a seven-month stint at the nearby Caduceus Out-Patient Addiction Center (or COPAC), a rural 23-acre facility for hard-core addicts. Farooq had been in similar spots before, and every time, his addiction had returned. But this time, the thought of a relapse made him angry.

"The patients at COPAC all believed I was the first one who was going to start using. It angered me. I thought the most rebellious thing I could do was not get high," the 34 year-old artist says today.

The Kendall native found one way to make that rehab stint different. To cope with the tedium of group therapy sessions, the stifling hours alone, and the homesickness, he'd begun making eerily realistic revolvers and pistols out of cardboard. He had to fight the center's bosses to get the materials he needed.

"Like any good junkie, I had a list of demands that included being allowed to use razor blades or the X-Acto knives and glue I use to make my guns," he says. "Luckily, they accepted and allowed me to work on my art in my free time."

He gave the guns as gifts to fellow patients, but when he returned to Miami in December 2011, the pieces opened new doors for him in the fine art world. Miami's Primary Projects caught onto the AK-47s and AR-style assault rifles carefully sculpted from used Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal boxes and other trash and gave him a breakout show during Art Basel 2012.

Now, as 2014 begins, Farooq is one of Miami's most inspiring art tales — a talent with a unique vision that promises to make bigger waves this year with everything from a full-scale fighter jet made from cardboard to plans to transform Primary's full space into a twisted turn-of-the-century hunting milieu.

"People have no idea how talented Asif is," says Primary Projects' cofounder and artist Typoe, who, along with his partner BooksIIII Bischof, is planning exhibits with Farooq. "He is unlike any other artist I have ever known. His mastery of his craft — everything from glass blowing to welding and engineering — obsession with precision, and enthusiasm for his work are mind-blowing."

Farooq was born at Baptist Hospital and grew up in a quiet Kendall suburb in a middle-class home with his mother and father, who migrated here from Pakistan and Afghanistan. His father, Dr. Humayoun Farooq, was a civil engineer who worked for Miami-Dade County before starting his own business in the late '70s. Farzana, his mother, was a homemaker who later took over the family engineering firm when Farooq's father died of cancer five years ago.

Farooq says his parents placed a high value on education. "My father used to sit with me after school for several hours working on math and science problems after I finished my regular homework."

Farooq's siblings all went on to become professionals, but the insatiably curious Asif always felt like an outsider. "I was that skinny brown kid with the bifocals that teachers lumped with the three Korean girls," he says.

In fourth grade at South Dade's Gateway Baptist Elementary, Farooq found the artistic streak that would become his calling. "Instead of doing my assignment, I was drawing a picture of a Lamborghini Countach when the girls next to me and even some boys who never paid me attention started huddling to see my picture."

Not long after that transformative moment, the drug problems that would torment Farooq throughout his artistic career surfaced. He was kicked out of Glades Middle School for alleged drug abuse. Farooq denies he was using then but says he soon began taking drugs to spite the authorities who'd expelled him. By the time he was a freshman at South Miami Senior High, drugs were a regular part of his life.

"I constantly fell asleep, and threw up on a girl in my math class," he recalls. "Once I got into the powders — cocaine and heroin — that's when I dropped out of school and things became different."

Even as his school life was falling apart, Farooq's talent was still evident. At 15, he showed up at the Metal Man Scrap Yard near the Miami River to try his hand at sculpture. "It was run by a former Army staff sergeant... who encouraged me to weld bits of metal together as long as I took it all apart when I finished," Farooq recalls.

Farooq, who'd earned a GED after leaving high school, enrolled at Miami Dade College and later attended the Art Institute of Chicago. But he was booted from the school for forging an ID. "I never asked why it happened, and they never told me, and that was that," Farooq says. "I was into a lot of bad shit back then."

Back home in Miami in his early 20s, unemployed and with few prospects, Farooq spent close to a decade struggling with addiction, bouncing in and out of jail and rehab programs and building and repairing synthesizer keyboards for local musicians.

In the spring of 2009, he found himself at South Miami Hospital with a heart infection caused by a dirty needle. Laid up with a potentially fatal condition, Farooq began keeping a diary in which he scribbled plans for building an airplane. After he was released from the hospital, he moved to Mississippi to enroll in the rehab program and soon began making the cardboard weapons that would become his trademark.

When he returned from Mississippi, he contacted Miami artist Typoe, one of the founders of Primary Projects, who was bowled over by Farooq's sculptures and got him into a group show called "Champion." At the exhibit, Farooq displayed a full-scale hand-crafted cardboard rendition of a 1930s DShK Soviet heavy machine gun. Farooq titled the imposing work Countach to honor what he recalls his genesis moment.

"It's a Piedmontese Italian slang expression that roughly translates to 'oh shit,'" the artist says. "As the story goes, workers at the Milan auto show uttered this expression upon first seeing the Lamborghini that would eventually go by that name. It's the same car I drew up in... class that day, and it's what I named the DShK sculpture all those years later because everyone would say 'oh shit' when they saw it."

The show landed Farooq a spot during Art Basel 2012 with Primary Projects, where his exhibit "Asif's Guns" was a pop-up store in Wynwood featuring 300 firearms, ranging from revolvers to rifles, crafted with uncanny precision. The display took 7,000 hours of labor, with Farooq's friends and family chipping in while he toiled away in his mother's garage. His fake guns flew off the shelves, with revolvers commanding $300 and rifles $2,000, each priced the same as the real McCoy, as 40,000 visitors elbowed through the doors.

Today, Farooq is working on several large-scale projects for Primary, including "War Room." Due to be finished this summer, the exhibit will turn the gallery into a Napoleonic-era country gentleman's estate, replete with musket rifles, dueling pistols, and other weapons of the age.

In his modest Kendall studio, Farooq is pursuing his biggest dream. He's quietly building a full-scale Polish MiG-21 fighter jet employing 200,000 parts, including a cockpit that spectators can climb into and retractable landing gear. He expects his supersonic opus to debut in early 2015.

"Anything worth having is worth working hard for," Farooq says. "One thing I learned at COPAC and in the years after is restraint. [In 2013] I could have made more money with my art than I have ever earned, but I'm glad my gallery directors are intelligent enough to allow me to develop and have been so supportive of the work."

Farooq has been inundated with invitations to show his work outside Miami and was asked to lecture on art at the University of Arkansas next spring. All it takes are the memories of Mississippi to remind him that his biggest goal is one that begins every morning, though.

"Right now my main focus is building my airplane," the artist says. "But you can say my real dream is to die clean."

10 Tips for Choosing Artwork for Your Home →

1.  Buy Art that You Love.  Whether or not it has the potential to rise in value, it should be something you will enjoy having in your home every day.  Remember, the art is for you.

2.  Be Open to Different Mediums.  Why always pick a painting? Find the type of art that will work best for your space.  Paintings will add a broader swathe of color.  Sculptures will add depth to the room, and mixed media pieces add texture or a mixture of visual elements.  Which medium will have the greatest impact on enhancing your room’s decor?

3.  See What’s Out There.  Get out and see the art being exhibited in your area.  Great local and original art is displayed everywhere from coffee shops and colleges to galleries and restaurants.  If you can’t find a piece thats the right size or with matching colors from a local source, a quick search online should direct you to affordable art that matches what you need. 

4.  Pick the Right Size.  Measure your wall’s dimensions and bring pictures of the room with you. That way, when you are out looking at art, you will have a better idea of what space you have to work with and can imagine how the art will look in your home.

5.  What’s the Focal Point? A room can have more than one area that draws your attention. Are you looking for a single point that will define the room, or some decor pieces to complement your overall color scheme? Make sure all the room’s design elements have some breathing space to avoid a cluttered look.

6.  Color is key.  Pick artwork that contains some of your room design’s more attention grabbing colors.  A piece with similar or complementary colors can work great as well. Take into account your wall color, furnishings, pillows, throws and curtains to create a palette of colors to look for in your artwork.

7.  Content Matters.  What does the artwork depict? Do the waving lines in the painting mirror your curved coffee table? Does the tropical pattern of your upholstery reflect the theme of the painting? Depending on the mood and shapes in the work, select imagery that will harmonize best with the room's contents.

8.  Or Does It?  A traditional interior does not always require traditional artwork.  A showstopping contemporary piece can make an impressive statement above a mantle in a traditionally styled living room.  Sometimes a contradiction is exciting and new. Think outside of the box.

9.  Hang it right.  Make sure the artwork is hung at the correct height.  It should be approximately eye level.  Try following the art gallery standard, which means the center of the painting should be about 60 inches from the floor.

10.  Light it Up.  The importance of lighting your artwork can not be overemphasized.  Dimly lit artwork will lose impact and look dull and muted.  Great lighting will make your artwork pop and contribute to the mood of the room.

Art Nouveau Movement →

Image via Deviant Art

Art Nouveau was a movement that swept through the decorative arts and architecture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Generating enthusiasts throughout Europe and beyond, the movement issued in a wide variety of styles, and, consequently, it is known by various names, such as the Glasgow Style, or, in the German-speaking world, Jugendstil. Art Nouveau was aimed at modernizing design, seeking to escape the eclectic historical styles that had previously been popular. Artists drew inspiration from both organic and geometric forms, evolving elegant designs that united flowing, natural forms with more angular contours. The movement was committed to abolishing the traditional hierarchy of the arts, which viewed so-called liberal arts, such as painting and sculpture, as superior to craft-based decorative arts, and ultimately it had far more influence on the latter. The style went out of fashion after it gave way to Art Deco in the 1920s, but it experienced a popular revival in the 1960s, and it is now seen as an important predecessor of modernism.

• The desire to abandon the historical styles of the 19th century was an important impetus behind Art Nouveau and one that establishes the movement's modernism. Industrial production was, at that point, widespread, and yet the decorative arts were increasingly dominated by poorly made objects imitating earlier periods. The practitioners of Art Nouveau sought to revive good workmanship, raise the status of craft, and produce genuinely modern design.
   
• The academic system, which dominated art education from the 17th to the 19th century, underpinned the widespread belief that media such as painting and sculpture were superior to crafts such as furniture design and silver-smithing. The consequence, many believed, was the neglect of good craftsmanship. Art Nouveau artists sought to overturn that belief, aspiring instead to "total works of the arts," the infamous Gesamtkunstwerk, that inspired buildings and interiors in which every element partook of the same visual vocabulary.
   
• Many Art Nouveau designers felt that 19th century design had been excessively ornamental, and in wishing to avoid what they perceived as frivolous decoration, they evolved a belief that the function of an object should dictate its form. This theory had its roots in contemporary revivals of the gothic style, and in practice it was a somewhat flexible ethos, yet it would be an important part of the style's legacy to later movements such as modernism and the Bauhaus.

Art Nouveau (the "new art") was a widely influential but relatively short-lived movement that emerged in the final decade of the 19th century and was already beginning to decline a decade later. This movement - less a collective one than a disparate group of visual artists, designers and architects spread throughout Europe was aimed at creating styles of design more appropriate to the modern age, and it was characterized by organic, flowing lines- forms resembling the stems and blossoms of plants - as well as geometric forms such as squares and rectangles.

The advent of Art Nouveau can be traced to two distinct influences: the first was the introduction, around 1880, of the Arts and Crafts movement, led by the English designer William Morris. This movement, much like Art Nouveau, was a reaction against the cluttered designs and compositions of Victorian-era decorative art. The second was the current vogue for Japanese art, particularly wood-block prints, that swept up many European artists in the 1880s and 90s, including the likes of Gustav Klimt, Emile Galleand James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Japanese wood-block prints contained floral and bulbous forms, and "whiplash" curves, all key elements of what would eventually become Art Nouveau.

It is difficult to pinpoint the first work(s) of art that officially launched Art Nouveau. Some argue that the patterned, flowing lines and floral backgrounds found in the paintings of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin represent Art Nouveau's birth, or perhaps even the decorative lithographs of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, such as La Goule at the Moulin Rouge (1891). But most point to the origins in the decorative arts, and in particular to a book jacket by English architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo for the 1883 volume Wren's City Churches. The design depicts serpentine stalks of flowers coalescing into one large, whiplashed stalk at the bottom of the page, clearly reminiscent of Japanese-style wood-block prints.

Public Art Installation at NorthPark Brought To You By San Francisco Artist Jim Campbell →

Jim Campbell's “Scattered Light" installation, originally commissioned for Madison Square Park in NYC in 2010, is coming to the outdoor garden at NorthPark Center in Dallas.

NorthPark's manicured CenterPark Garden will play host, starting November 25, to this very popular outdoor installation, which most recently appeared in Hong Kong. It's made up of 1,500 suspended LED lights that look like old-school incandescent bulbs, which are staggered and programmed to blink in such a way as to animate a moving image of human shadows walking across and through the light field. Here's a link to a short video to better illustrate what I mean. It's pretty cool.

By photos posted online of its previous installations, it looks as though viewers are also invited to walk and sit among the lights.

The installation will go up in time for the holiday season but stay at NorthPark through the spring. NorthPark, known for its architecture and art displayed throughout, was built by the Nasher family and showcases work from the Nasher collection (and visiting public work) with a program independent of the Nasher Sculpture Center.

This post originally appeared on Glasstire, on Thursday, November 13, 2014.