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New York City’s Museum of Sex is set to debut The Sex Lives of Animals - a celebration of the diversity of animal sexual behavior. Direct from Stanford University, this emergent research has resulted in new interpretations, delving into the possible evolutionary benefits of non-reproductive sex, for both individuals and social groups.

Set to debut in this exhibition are life-sized animal sculptures custom-made by Rune Olsen. Composed of the “social materials” of newspaper and tape, these pieces explore the physical world with the immediacy and expressiveness of hand drawing. Through the incorporation of human-like glass eyes, the distance between human and animal vanishes, seducing the viewer into a direct interaction with the gaze of the animal.

In this “new natural history” the Museum of Sex is presenting an uncensored story of the natural world, moving animal sexuality beyond the confines of reproduction and mating, towards discussions of orientation and cognition. By exploring the most intimate part of life, where it is often said we are most animal like, we can appreciate the significance of research on animal sexuality and, perhaps, extrapolate these concepts to larger issues regarding sexuality in general.

THe exhibit begins July 24, 2008 and continues into Spring, 2009. To know more about the exhibit, visit the Museum of Sex. 

Wall art by Blu

Move over Banksy… Blu has created a jaw-dropping animation where street art comes alive. This short film, called MUTO, was made in Buenos Aires and southwest Germany.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

(source)

From 365Gay.com:

Robert Rauschenberg, whose use of odd and everyday articles earned him a reputation as a pioneer in pop art but whose talents spanned the worlds of painting, sculpture and dance, has died, his gallery representative said Tuesday. He was 82.

Rauschenberg, who first gained fame in the 1950s, didn’t copy popular culture wholesale as Andy Warhol did with Campbell’s soup cans and Roy Lichtenstein did with comic books. Instead, his “combines,” incongruous combinations of three-dimensional objects and paint, shared pop’s blurring of art and objects from modern life.

He also responded to his pop colleagues and began incorporating up-to-the-minute photographed images in his works in the 1960s, including, memorably, pictures of John F. Kennedy.

Among Rauschenberg’s most famous works was “Bed,” created after he woke up in the mood to paint but had no money for a canvas. His solution was to take the quilt off his bed and use paint, toothpaste and fingernail polish. Not to be limited by paint, Rauschenberg was a sculptor and choreographer and even won a 1984 Grammy Award for best album package for the Talking Heads album “Speaking in Tongues.”

Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes, in his book “American Visions,” called Rauschenberg “a protean genius who showed America that all of life could be open to art. … Rauschenberg didn’t give a fig for consistency, or curating his reputation; his taste was always facile, omnivorous, and hit-or-miss, yet he had a bigness of soul and a richness of temperament that recalled Walt Whitman.”

He met Jasper Johns in 1954. He and the younger artist, both destined to become world famous, became lovers and influenced each other’s work. According to the book “Lives of the Great 20th Century Artists,” Rauschenberg told biographer Calvin Tomkins that “Jasper and I literally traded ideas. He would say, `I’ve got a terrific idea for you,’ and then I’d have to find one for him.”

Click on the image below to see full gallery

Russian nesting dolls (a.k.a. Matryoshka dolls) date back to 1890 and are traditionally associated with a fat russian woman. Well not anymore… check out these russian nesting dolls which offer a modern take on a traditional art form…

Click on image below to view gallery (6 images)

by artist Trish Grantham (source)

Click on photo above to see the gallery of her work (14 photos)

A day after Miley Cyrus publicly apologized for her Vanity Fair shots, well known photographer Annie Leibovitz is weighing in on her controversial Vanity Fair photograph of singer.

“I’m sorry that my portrait of Miley has been misinterpreted,” says Leibovitz in a statement issued Monday. “Miley and I looked at fashion photographs together and we discussed the picture in that context before we shot it. The photograph is a simple, classic portrait, shot with very little makeup, and I think it is very beautiful.”

Thoughts from blurbberry:

I never imagined I’d be discussing Miley Cyrus. I must admit I only recently realized that Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana were the same person after hearing about someone wanting to hijack an airplane and fly it into a Hannah Montana concert. But I digress. I do feel the need to weigh in on this “controversy”.

Hannah Montana is product of Disney. Miley Cyrus is 15 going 16. People have a problem differentiated these two facts. So when Hannah Montana exhibits sexuality, people feel like their brand loyalty has been compromised. When Miley Cyrus exhibits her sexuality a nation’s anxiety about teenage sexuality is exposed. 

This brings back memories of Britney Spears’ vow of virginity because she (or her creators) knew it would ruin her image. Next thing you know she’s marrying every man she has sex with, exposing her crotch, shaving her head, being put in a mental institution, and having her children taken away from her. I’m not suggesting one equals the other, but when people don’t let someone grow up, they don’t. 

Let Miley Cyrus grow up. 

Source: CNN, PEOPLE, Wiki

Speaking of balloons, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is featuring Pop Artist Jeff Koons at the Cantor Roof Garden. Opening Tuesday, the Museum is showing three of his wonderful, greatly enlarged, glossily lacquered, stainless-steel representation of something small: a toy dog made of twisted-together balloons; a chocolate valentine heart wrapped in red foil, standing en pointe; and a silhouette of Piglet from a “Winnie the Pooh” coloring book, randomly colored as if by a small child.

From the New York TImes: “They are mischievously meaningful works. With its pneumatic, sausagelike parts, “Balloon Dog (Yellow)” is a sly Trojan Horse: it seems innocent but is loaded with aesthetic and erotic perversity. “Sacred Heart (Red/Gold)” acidly comments on the commercial debasement of emotional and religious experience. “Coloring Book” reflects the youth-obsessed infantilism of modern culture and society.

“But placed on the architecturally nondescript patio, where there are also shaded areas for patrons of the Roof Garden Cafe, the sculptures too easily turn into benign, decorative accessories. The biggest problem is scale. Seen in an indoor gallery, the elephantine, shiny metallic “Balloon Dog (Yellow),” which rises to 10 feet at its highest point, would have a weirdly imposing, slightly menacing presence. On the roof it appears dwarfed by the vast sky and by the open expanses of space to the south and west of the museum.

“The intimacy of Mr. Koons’s sculpture is also diminished. Perfectionist attention to detail is one of his work’s most compelling aspects: note the exactingly formed knot that serves as the balloon dog’s nose, or the folds, pleats and stretch marks in the heart’s wrapper. The distracting outdoor environment, though, discourages careful, contemplative looking. Because it is both the biggest and the simplest, the 18 ½-foot-tall “Coloring Book” is the least undermined by its environment. But it is also the least interesting formally, being little more than a flat, irregularly contoured slab whose colors are thin and watery. Their setting aside, Mr. Koons’s sculptures remain intellectually and sensuously exciting objects — “Balloon Dog” is a masterpiece — and they are worth visiting under any circumstances.”

Check out this fantastic rendition of Harvey Milk using powdered Milk from Suspect and Fugitive