How Francesca Woodman Turned Two Cultures into One Art

The duality is right there in her name: Francesca Woodman. Woodman, daughter of two successful artists and a promising photographer herself, cherished childhood memories of family trips to Tuscany and returned to Italy as a college student to study art. The exhibition Francesca Woodman, at the Guggenheim Museum, New York through June 13, 2012, gives the young artist, who committed suicide in 1981 at just 22 years of age, her biggest retrospective yet, with 120 photographs, artist books, and recently discovered short videos presenting the width and depth of her short but full life and career. At the same time, Isabella Pedicini’s Francesca Woodman: The Roman Years: Between Flesh and Film examines just how “Italian” the Italian-American photographer truly was and how Woodman took the two cultures embedded in her name and created a single, transcendent art. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Francesca Woodman Turned Two Cultures into One Art."

[Image: Francesca Woodman. Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976. Gelatin silver print, 14 x 14.1 cm. Courtesy George and Betty Woodman. © 2012 George and Betty Woodman.]

[Many thanks to the Guggenheim Museum, New York, for providing me with the image above and essays from the catalog to the exhibition Francesca Woodman, which runs through June 13, 2012. Many thanks also to Contrasto Books for providing me with a review copy of Francesca Woodman: The Roman Years: Between Flesh and Film by Isabella Pedicini (translated from the Italian by Margaret Spiegelman).]

Can QR Codes Be the Next Pop Art Meme?

Andy Warhol had his Campbell's Soup Cans and Roy Lichtenstein had his comic book panels, but what will be the Pop art meme of today? One possible candidate is the ubiquitous QR code, the “quick response” code of black and white symbols once reserved for industrial purposes but now found in advertising and packaging seemingly everywhere (probably unnecessary example shown above). As reported by An Xiao on Hyperallergic.com, QR code art has made its way into the galleries—the first step towards making its way into the marketplace and, perhaps someday, the museums. Is this two-dimensional barcode the future symbol of our era? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Can QR Codes Be the Next Pop Art Meme?"

Live Performance Art—Straight to Your Laptop

One of the main reasons why performance art struggles to find a wider audience is because, almost by nature, it cannot reach a wide audience. A performance artist works in time—once the performance is over, it’s over. More than for any other medium, you really have to be there. Those problems may finally have met their match through modern technology. Beginning today, Thursday, March 22^nd, BMW Tate Live: Performance Room will bring live online performances to an international audience simultaneously across world time zones, shattering the performance art barrier and, perhaps, introducing performance art to people who could or would never have attended a performance before. At 8 pm in the United Kingdom (3 pm on the east coast in the United States), a revolution in the history of performance art begins. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Live Performance Art—Straight to Your Laptop."

[Image: Jérôme Bel. The Show Must Go On, 2001. © Jérôme Bel. Photo: Mussacchio Laniello.]

[Many thanks to the Tate for providing me with the image above and other press materials related to BMW Tate Live: Performance Room.]