The Desperate Man: Charlie Sheen, Performance Artist?

Like way too many Americans, I, too, have been captivated by the fast-moving human train-wreck slash slow-motion suicide phenomenon of Charlie Sheen. Not since Hot Shots! Part Deux have I watched as much footage of Martin Sheen’s youngest and most likely craziest son. Fueled by “Adonis DNA” and inspired by his “Goddess” muses, Charlie Sheen’s been playing the part of his and maybe our lifetime to what may be the last drop of his “Tiger blood.” Performance art usually receives condescending smirks in the United States as the last kid picked for the cultural game of kickball. With Charlie Sheen’s big adventure, however, maybe performance art has finally come to the colonies. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "The Desperate Man."

[Image: Gustave Courbet. The Desperate Man. 1843.]

A Legend in His Own Mind: Gauguin’s Myth Making

After spending some tumultuous time together at the infamous “Yellow House” in Arles, Vincent van Gogh, no stranger to psychiatric help, thought that fellow artist and former roommate Paul Gauguin could use a professional, too. Taking Vincent at his word, modern art’s original odd couple thus seem more alike than different in the fragmentation of their personalities. Gauguin: Maker of Myth, the catalog to the exhibition running at the Tate Modern in London, England, through January 16, 2011 before moving on to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, from February 27 through June 5, 2011, picks up the pieces of what seems to be Gauguin’s shattered psyche and reveals the method behind his madness. Both a deliberate and an accidental mythmaker, Gauguin first became a legend in his own mind before he could become a legend in his own time, or ours. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "A Legend in His Own Mind."

[Image: Paul Gauguin. Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ, 1889-1890.]

[Many thanks to Princeton University Press for providing me with a review copy of Gauguin: Maker of Myth, the catalog to the exhibition running at the Tate Modern in London, England, through January 16, 2011 before moving on to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, from February 27 through June 5, 2011.]

Rising Up: Leonard Baskin’s Portrait Gallery

When Daedalus crafted wings of feathers and wax for his son Icarus, he included the warning to not fly too close to the sun. As anyone who knows Greek mythology remembers, Icarus ignored the warning and plunged into the sea to his death. Artist Leonard Baskin never forgot the story of Icarus, which merged two of his greatest interests—men and birds—and created a woodcut of the fallen son in an egg-like oval, as if the tragic boy were truly born a bird. When Alfred Appel, Jr., a literary scholar as well as author on modern art and jazz, came across Baskin’s literary-tinged art in the 1960s, he fell, too—in love. Leonard Baskin: Art from the Gift of Alfred Appel, Jr., which runs at the Delaware Art Museum through January 9, 2011, tells the story of that collector’s love affair with Baskin’s art and Baskin’s love affair with the great artists in words and images that inspired his paintings and sculptures. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Rising Up."

[Image: Leonard Baskin (1922-2000). Icarus, 1967. Color woodcut on paper, 32 x 21 ¾ inches. Gift of Alfred Appel, Jr., 2009. © Estate of Leonard Baskin, Courtesy Galerie St. Etienne, New York.]

[Many thanks to the Delaware Art Museum for providing me with the image above and press materials for Leonard Baskin: Art from the Gift of Alfred Appel, Jr., which runs through January 9, 2011.]