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Friday Five with Bill Indursky of Vintage and Modern

10.02.09 | By
Friday Five with Bill Indursky of Vintage and Modern

bill-vandm

Bill Indursky is the co-founder of www.VandM.com (Vintage And Modern), an online marketplace for home décor, art, textiles, and jewelry open to design trade and savvy public. The site represents over 130 vintage and antique dealers from around the world and is available in 34 languages with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Argentina, and Brazil. Bill is currently living in New York running VandM.com and is a designer, architect, artist, art dealer and occasionally sleeps. Ah, a man after my own heart. And he looks all business, too, doesn’t he?

Today, Bill’s rounding up his five favorite pieces from celebrities who are also brooding artists.

There is no question that our post-Clinton society has been completely celebrity obsessed. But, who knew behind those glossy photos and shocking paparazzi frozen moments beats the heart of some brooding fine artists?

marilyn-manson-poe

1.  Rocker/Performance Artist Marilyn Manson’s Edgar Allen Poe, 2004.  [24 x 33 in.]

Marilyn and I share the same birth day and year, the same art gallery representing us, and perhaps a shared sense of nostalgia and melancholy. This acrylic/mixed media gem combines post-pop sensibilities and the punk attitude of the 80’s.  Our moment is obsessed with the 1980’s and Manson’s work would be the perfect choice.

Robert Fontaine, of Art Modern Gallery who represents Manson’s art describes it as “contemporary painting which does not seek to glorify the painted subject as something it’s not, but instead to visually speak of the subjects painted with a new rawness and blood-wrenching honesty. With vibrant colors dripping, muddy tones and splattered abstractions Manson owns his own voice as a powerful visual artist…He has landed where few artists dare to tread, near an embankment where unmistakable political and psychological themes run colorfully mad.”

I think it is a haunting piece that both satisfies psychologically and visually.

mellencamp-art

2.  Rocker/Activist John [Cougar] Mellencamp’s Birth of A Nation, c.2006-2009.

My love of folk art, pop-art, and homegrown activism make John Mellencamp my next choice. He is Indiana’s version of Michel Basquiat. You can sense from his work how deeply he feels but, Birth of A Nation is particularly good. It tries to express everything — all at one time — which gives it its power. My admiration for the man who has helped America’s small farmers (and ultimately protect our healthy food supply) is sincere and deep.  I hope this Rock and Roll Hall of Famer keeps expressing himself in paint.

Mellencamp’s philosophy of life and art in his own words, “I’m not an artist. I’m just a guy with a lot of tenacity. I have the ability to not quit. Most people quit on everything too soon. Most people simply don’t have the ability to get things done, and that’s the difference between me and most people. I don’t quit.” Here, here, John!

dennis-hopper-art

3. Actor/Director/Photographer Dennis Hopper’s Biker Couple.

I think actors think most about what it is like to be another person. Because of this, they watch mannerisms and gestures of others, all in an effort to mimic and rebroadcast true human feeling and emotions. Dennis Hopper is an observant student of humanity. He started his career painting alongside his friends Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney. After a fire destroyed 300+ of his paintings, he chose to pick up the camera and put down the brush.

Biker Couple, is a study in male and female dynamics. The man is proving his primal animal nature, fur covered and bare-chested, gold metal adorned, while the woman is wearing a heavy make-up mask, burying her emotion in drink and substituting satisfaction with cigarettes.

david-bowie-art

4. Singer/Artist David Bowie’s Part Victim, 1994.  [38 x 45.7 cm]

Part Victim layers paint thickly on the canvas encasing and trapping the subject within. Bowie’s work feels influenced by Lucian Freud, a fellow Brit. Freud’s work develops multiple views from life of a person in paint which are painted over each other until a final composite shows a true picture of the subject.

clive-barker-art

5. Horror Writer/Artist Clive Barker’s Kiss Me, 2005. [20 x 20 in.]

My own private art collection has a large amount of Vanitas. Vanitas started in the 1600’s by the Dutch during the black plagues. Artists would set up still life of riches or abundance and a human skull.  Human skulls were plentiful after burning the infected corpses. They represented the fleeting nature of life and the lack of importance of wealth.  For me they are the perfect symbol of our modern life. So I chose Barker’s Kiss Me, 2005 another ironic look at the less important things in life, like plastic surgery and jewels.

According to Barker’s own art site his “…artwork expresses an unseen world of fantasy, co-existing with our own reality. His characters, while often physically misshapen and outrageous, portray very human emotions. Perhaps it is for this reason that many people find a deeper meaning within Clive’s artwork in a genre too often prone superficiality.”

Jaime Derringer, Founder + Executive Editor of Design Milk, is a Jersey girl living in SoCal. She dreams about funky, artistic jewelry + having enough free time to enjoy some of her favorite things—running, reading, making music, and drawing.