Mitchell Funk

Joy, Happiness, Pleasure, Euphoria, Bliss, Ecstasy is a Jump

2018

Well-muscled male cat with full mane. He's King of the Jungle even if he's in stone and against a pink background. The contrast of gritty the stone texture against the smooth flat sky is unexpected and somehow makes the image special. Signed, dating and numbered 2/15 recto, unframed, another size available, printed later, Printed on Hahnemühle Fine Art paper Robert Funk is a pioneer of toy photography, doll photography...

Inkjet Archival Print. The Shot was done on a Life Magazine assignment on "Glass Artists" 1981. The three essential elements are presented in a bold fr...

An artist who puts his life on the line for his art. Chris Burden was at the forefront of the conceptual art movement in the early 1970s. Prelude to 220, or 110 is one of his most important works where the artist puts his life on the line for his art. Burden voluntarily lays on his back. His neck and wists are have copper bands that bolt him to the floor. To his immediate left and right are two buckets of water with a 110-volt line inside. If the buckets were compromised in any way by a passerby or an unexpected event - Burden would have been electrocuted in a literal shocking performance. Art history is replete with artists who put themselves in harm's way to accomplish their art. Michelangelo risked a misstep to a certain death as he elevated himself over 60 feet to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Francisco Goya's "The Disasters of War" may have put him at odds with a governing orthodoxy. Picasso walked a very narrow line with during the Nazi occupation. Gutzon Borglum dangled himself off the face of Mount Rushmore and War Photographer Robert Capa, landed on Omaha Beach during D-Day. But it was Chris Burden whose art spotlighted...

In 1969, Bethesda Fountain on weekends was a gathering place for the radical and hip people of the time. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were regulars...

Circa 1890 Hand-tinted albumen print, 10 1/2 x 8 inches (266 x 203 mm), small handwritten number '285' in negative, lower left. Unmounted; housed in an archival mat with clear mounting corners. [Nagasaki University Library, Catalog Number : 1889] A woman wearing a towel over her head Anesama kaburi style picks up shells. The background is the sea. There are boats with sails on the beach. It is probably a dramatized photo. Ogawa Katsumasa (1860 – 1936) was a pivotal figure in early Japanese photography. He adapted cutting-edge Western technology in photo-printing processes to produce numerous half-tone and collotype publications which transformed the market which had previously concentrated on the more expensive souvenir albums. Ogawa's publications were also instrumental in introducing Japanese art and culture to a mass international audience. He built one of the most successful photographic businesses in late-Meiji Japan. He opened his first portrait studio in Tomioka, Gumma Prefecture, in 1877. [Bennett, Terry. Old Japanese Photographs...

Original Photograph / Photographer unattributed Yokohama, Japan: c 1885. Hand-tinted albumen print, 7 3/4 x 10 1/4 inches (197 x 260 mm), numbered B 86 and captioned caption on lowe...

Yokohama, Japan: 1890s. Hand-tinted albumen print, 7 7/8 x 10 1/4 inches (200 x 260 mm), captioned in negative at lower right. Unmounted; housed in an archival mat with clear mounti...

Original Photograph / Photographer unattributed Yokohama, Japan: c 1890. Hand-tinted albumen print, 8 x 10 1/2 (204 x 266 mm), uncaptioned, some cockling at top corners; pencil ins...