Beautiful work by Jeff Simpson
via thisisnthappiness

This past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine had a an incredible profile on artist Theo Jansen.
Jansen creates kinetic sculptures—he calls them beests—that literally walk themselves across the coast:

The calibrations and recalibrations took years, across generation after generation of new beest types and fresh experiments at the shore. ”People talk about how beautiful my strandbeests are as they parade down the beach,” he said. ”But you have to understand: I was never interested in beauty as such. I was interested in survival, so everything was based on a consideration of function, how to make the things function better. The fascinating thing, though, was that — here again, as with nature — the better the functioning, often, the more beautiful the result.
You have to see his beests in action to understand how awesome they are:

Yeah, daddio! From World’s Finest #224.

Awesome Kickstarter project, Beastie Bak:

I am looking to finally print some rare and unpublished photos that I took of the Beastie Boys in the 80’s. I have been looking through the pictures that I took from 1983-87 around the time I did a shoot for their album, “Licensed to Ill” and all the tour photos that I shot at that time and before. I would now like to share these images with all the Beastie Boys and 70’s fans out there but need to scan and print them.

There’s new digital prints up at The Combustion Chamber.
I have an addiction to old, kitschy illustrations I find on matchbooks and in tiny ads in the backs of old magazines from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Making these prints is part of my therapy.

These are awesome.

I’m digging the work of Someguy, aka Brian Singer.

—from Battle Angel Alita, by Yukito Kishiro

Given the surge of multimillion-dollar auction records boasted by Christie’s and Sotheby’s on an almost monthly basis, how do the auction houses justify lobbying against a bill that might pay artists for their works? When Art F City asked a Christie’s spokeswoman, she insinuated that successful artists simply don’t need more money: “European studies have shown that resale royalty schemes provide support to less than 5% of working artists, and the artists receiving royalties tend to be those commanding the highest prices on the primary market.”

Sure, for most artists, large secondary markets are a best case scenario. But only a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry would force us to re-examine a kindergartener’s understanding of ethics. Whether artists are successful or unsuccessful, making millions or pennies, they deserve to share in the money their work generates. “The A.R.T. Act won’t benefit every artist, unfortunately, but this is not an anti-poverty program,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), sponsor of the failed 2011 Equity for Visual Artists Act, told me over the phone. “This is a fairness and equity program. Just because we can’t bring in everybody doesn’t mean we should bring in nobody.”
—Whitney Kimball, Shouldn’t Artists Benefit When Their Paintings Auction for Millions?

I had no idea about this:

You might be surprised to know that Facebook has an active and ongoing Artist in Residence Program. Not only that, but it’s also among the most innovative corporate art and artist programs anywhere. Now in its second year, artists have become a regular fixture around the Facebook campus. According to the program’s founder and curator, Drew Bennett, artists are active within the Facebook community during the periods of their residencies and besides making art for exhibition, display and dissemination around the campus, they also have ongoing opportunities to observe, mingle and interact with the people who work there.
Making art is a much better way to spend your time than to fuck around on Facebook.com.

What a gem.

Found in Batman #230, which has a great cover, too.

via Colossal

Just remembering how insanely great Ellsworth Kelly’s drawings are.