Pattern recognition

There's no shortage of LEGO art posts on OTN. But it is incredible to see how little information you need to recognize the paintings. These ones were rendered by Italian art director Marco Sodano using the new range of colours available in LEGO's press-and-play system.

Brick work

LEGO has always been a magnet for art lookalikes and more recently the company itself has headed back into architecture. It hasn’t always been plain sailing. The first LEGO architectural set was produced in the sixties but some factual errors (like attributing the Guggenheim to Mies van der Rohe) took off some of the shine. Even though it even had different coloured bricks to the standard kits the architectural line was later discontinued. Now the LEGO people are back with a different tack. This time the builders themselves do the designing with LEGO Architectural studio that contains 1,200 monochromatic white LEGO pieces. In their new set of white bricks you can make your own box-on-box modernist masterpiece. Don’t forget a lap pool.

Ceci n'est pas un video game

LEGO artists no longer have the monopoly on reproducing artworks in their games and entertainments. We've already posted on the art galleries on Second Life but how about these Super Mario / Magritte mash ups? Mix Koopa (the turtle) Troopa with René Magritte’s Unexpected answer 1933 or Mario nemesis Bullet Bill with  Magritte’s famous 1938 painting Time transfixed or even the artist's name Racoonda for Magritte’s signature work Golconda of 1953.
 
Regrettably these images haven’t made it into their own game yet and are simply stored on Tumblr but if they did, watch out for Super Mario's lawyers to step in.

Can't LEGO

Regular readers of OTN will know that no LEGO art goes unnoticed so when we were on a back street in Shanghai and saw this LEGO artist’s studio lit up in the darkness, we knew what to do. If that’s not enough for you, go here to see a 40,000 LEGO brick version of Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell from the Divine Comedy by Romanian Mihal Mihu.

Little brick out

LEGO art, LEGO and art, art made with LEGO. No escaping it.

Image: Anish Kapoor's mega sculpture Orbit made in LEGO by Warren Elsmore. More here.

We just can’t LEGO

Over the years OTN has developed a strong affection for LEGO and the efforts of LEGOists to recreate art and architecture. Admittedly this latest effort is kind of literal compared to some of the others we have featured but it had enough going for it to send us back into the archive to enjoy past posts. 

Here’s your chance to do the same:

LEGO pavement art

LEGO Falling Waters

LEGO Loving those Mieses to pieces

Inside LEGO man

LEGO jumps the shark

LEGO’s decisive moment

LEGO Brick work

LEGO Snowman

Drawn in

This Saturday two OTN interests collide on the streets of Sarasota in Florida, drawing and LEGO.

Other OTN LEGO stories: 
LEGO Farnsworth House
LEGO Serra
LEGO tattoo
LEGO Escher
LEGO inside story
LEGO Flat architecture LEGO Le Corbusier
LEGO Leonardo
LEGO Beuys
LEGO Hirst
LEGO photography

Australia’s next top modeller

Years ago we wandered into the Santa Monica Museum of Art and saw an extraordinary sight. In a cavernous gallery space stood a large-scale model of a modernist house. The blinds were down, the light spilled out and the sound of a good party came through loud and clear. It turned out to be by the Australian artist Callum Morton who regular readers will recognise as the maker of the giant rock in Christchurch that so weirdly anticipated the earthquakes there. 

Morton's modernist house was modelled on a one-room house in Plano, 96 kilometres south west of Chicago, that had been designed by Mies van der Rohe for Dr Edith Farnsworth. Things did not go well on the project and it ended badly with Dr Farnsworth suing VDR and famously calling him a “medieval peasant.”

There is at least one other model of the Farnsworth House and it was exhibited at MoMA in 1947 before the house itself was even built (a very serious form of curatorial confidence). 

Now you can buy the 546 six brick LEGO model of the Farnsworth House and make your own Callum Morton. Get started here and see a video of the LEGO version being built here.

Images: Top, Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House. Middle, Callum Morton’s International Style (time lapse sequence), 1999. Bottom, LEGO’s version

Angel mine

One of the side effects of making a high visibility, much loved public sculpture (a rarity if there ever was one) is that you get copy-catted in LEGO. This example of Anthony Gormley’s Angel of the North is in LEGO Land in the UK

Little brick out

Earlier in the year we posted on Richard Serra’s sculpture Triphammer a hugely heavy sheet of metal balanced on top of another. That work was in the Tate but there are others in Museums all over the world including MoMA which is a long-winded segue to this LEGO version done of Sera’s sculpture One ton prop (deck of cards) by the staff of MoMA and put up on their blog. Unlike Serra they didn’t have the nerve to have the support stand upright on its own accord, that of course is part of Serra’s genius. You can see versions of their other MoMALEGOs here.

The Impressionist

You put art, LEGO and tattooing together and what do you get, a tattoo on your thumb of LEGO impressions. At least that’s what LEGO artist Nathan Sawaya got anyway.

Brick work

Since we featured them back in March 2007, the Escher LEGO team have been hard at work. You can see how they create their LEGO lookalikes by following the links below. Click on the image to get an enhanced brick-by-brick viewing.

Images: From top, Ascending, Relativity, Belvedere, Waterfall and Balcony

Crank

Over the years we have noted images that have been served up in different versions in homage or satire or simple good humour. Here it’s a photograph by Lewis Hine and it’s not just LEGOmaniacs and Charlie who have joined in the game. Hines himself produced a number of versions of his famous 1920 photograph The Man with a Wrench drawing on different poses and even different men. You can see more LEGO set-ups inspired by the greats of photography here and a run down on Lewis Hine’s own variants here.

Images: Left, two versions by Lewis Hines. Right top Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times and bottom via LEGO (Thanks P)

The inside story

From the same guy who took us inside the skeletal infrastructure of Koons’ Balloon Dog, the innards of another OTN favourite, the LEGO person. You can buy a poster here for $US59 and get to read all the captions.

OTHER OTN POSTS ON LEGO
Frank Lloyd Wright, brick guy
Beuys in bricks
LEGO snow job
Escher: build one yourself

Being Frank with LEGO

A few of you sent in this story about Falling Waters in LEGO and we’ve just seen it on One Moment Caller so belatedly, here is where to place your orders for LEGO architectural masterpieces. LEGO Architecture is the first ever LEGO partnership with one of its fans (or as LEGO Central calls them ‘members of the LEGO Community’) in this case Adam Reed Tucker of Brickstructures Inc. Adam has kicked the door wide open for you LEGO art fiends out there. LEGO 7000 Oaks, LEGO Étant Donnés, LEGO The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living and LEGO Earth Room are all up for grabs and marketing (well, maybe not LEGO Étant Donnés).

Hat trick

Yesterday we received the excellent programme for the visual arts being shown during the Auckland Festival beginning 5 March. For OTN readers there are some familiar faces, Terry Urbahn and the stag from New Plymouth’s White Hart hotel and OTN LEGO favourites The Little Artists. Oh and there’s a Foyer Art project too. Nice.

LEGO art is where you find it

In this case a 16 foot Pharaoh moving down the Thames to its home in LEGOland.

Brick Collage

LEGO, New York, architecture and art museums. It’s like an OTN tag festival. Christoph Niemann of the New York Times and his very funny LEGO portrait of New York City. You can see the whole thing here and more of Christoph Niemann here.

Block heads

No, hang on… this is serious. As Nathan Sawaya says, “What would be better than another you made completely out of LEGO bricks?” Order one here at Neiman Marcus.
Each life-sized replica costs $US60,000 and is not endorsed by the LEGO Group.

House rules

How can we resist? The house we would most like to visit, and the little plastic bricks that spread so much joy to the children of the world.
Image: Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye built in Lego