Tag Archives: 1960s

Fashion

How to Remove Popcorn Ceilings? A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

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Popcorn ceilings are a well-known finish that resembles a bubble-like textured surface. They were trendy from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s. This is why homeowners who have had difficulty removing carpet and green tiles in the kitchen now want stucco removal.

Steps to Remove Popcorn Ceilings

The most effective way to remove a textured popcorn ceiling is to use a large paint scraper. However, if you do not follow the correct procedure and do not know the nuances, you can end up with a huge mess.

Here are some practical tips that you can use to remove popcorn ceilings from your home:

  1. Determine if your popcorn ceiling contains asbestos. If you built your home before 1980, there is a chance that your popcorn ceiling contains asbestos. This is a dangerous material that can cause serious health problems. To do this, buy a special test kit or hire a professional.
  2. Gather the right tools. To remove a popcorn ceiling, you will need a scraper, an aerosol can, a ladder, and safety equipment (goggles, gloves, and a respirator).
  3. Clear the space. Make sure the room is empty before removing a textured ceiling. Cover large items that you cannot take out with a heavy-duty tarp.
  4. Disconnect ceiling lights. This will reduce the risk of accidental damage. Secure electrical wires with special wire nuts to prevent electric shock while working.
  5. Protect electrical outlets and light fixtures. Cover them with plastic wrap and masking tape. This blockage will prevent water from entering the outlet and reduce the risk of short circuits.
  6. Protect floors, doors, and windows. Cover all surfaces with a heavy tarpaulin mat and secure it with masking tape.
  7. Wet the ceiling. Fill a spray bottle with warm water and a few drops of detergent and spray the ceiling.
  8. Scrape off the popcorn texture. You can use a wide putty knife for this. Use smooth, even movements to remove the material effectively. You can add more water to make the process easier. Wait 24 hours for the ceiling to dry before moving on to the next step.
  9. Apply a sanding coat and sand. This will help you fill in any gaps and provide a smooth surface. Let the mixture dry, and then sand again to remove uneven areas.

After this, you can prime and paint the ceiling as desired.

Finally, you can remove the mat, put the lamps and fans back, remove the socket covers, and arrange the furniture.

Removing the popcorn ceiling is quite problematic. This process requires special tools and skills. The main problem with removing popcorn texture is the colossal mess it creates. Only professionals can remove popcorn ceilings without dust and dirt. If you’re intimidated by cleaning or need more time, hiring professionals is a great way to solve the problem.

How to simplify the process of removing popcorn ceilings?

If you want to simplify removing popcorn ceiling as much as possible, use the services of professionals from Renovated-Home. Experienced craftsmen will help transform your home into the place of your dreams. Renovated-Home craftsmen use leading technologies to remove textured ceilings. The surface is removed without dust and mess.

The Renovated-Home team works in Toronto and provides the highest professional services. Сraftsmens have extensive experience leveling ceilings, so you will not have to wait long. They will perfectly level the surface and clean up everything after themselves, leaving a clean space in your home.

If you have questions about the cost, request a consultation. Managers will contact you and calculate the cost of work individually, considering the area, ceiling height, and the presence of furniture. Get a free consultation right now. For the Silo, Kristina Rigina.

Art

Nanni Balestrini Political Art Retrospective Exhibition Includes Early Computer Works

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CENTER FOR ITALIAN ART ANNOUNCES NEW EXHIBITION: 
NANNI BALESTRINI: ART AS POLITICAL ACTION ONE THOUSAND AND ONE VOICES ON VIEW NOW UNTIL- JUNE 22, 2024
Nanni Balestrini, Cavallo, 1963. Collage on paper. Private collection, courtesy Frittelli arte contemporanea, Florence
(New York, February/March, 2024) – The Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) has launched its new exhibition, NANNI BALESTRINI: ART AS POLITICAL ACTION. ONE THOUSAND AND ONE VOICES, curated by Marco Scotini. This is the first retrospective exhibition in the United States of Nanni Balestrini (1935-2019), an Italian experimental visual artist, poet, and novelist known for his revolutionary artistic practice and passionate involvement in the social-political movements of the 1960s and 1970s. 
Born in Milan in 1935, Balestrini was a key protagonist of post-WW2 Italian literary and social avant-garde movements: he approached experimental poetry with a visual sensibility stemming from the artistic use of collage, and with a compositional practice that gave importance to the editing and recombining of existing texts (especially newspapers, magazines, and political slogans) in search for the expression of a collective enunciation.

Nanni Balestrini born July 1935 died May 2019

Nanni Balestrini, 65000 Ètudiants, 1972. Mixed media on panel. Collezione Emilio Mazzoli, Modena
Nanni Balestrini, Cronogramma, 1960s. Collage on paper. Private collection.
He worked side by side with contemporary composers interested in the creative potential of stochastic music and the relationship between computer technology and art. Much of his radical artistic and literary research also developed in dialogue with his participation in the student and workerist movements of the late 1960s and 1970s, and their explosive political charge. Much emphasis has been placed on the exclusively typographical character of writing in Balestrini’s artistic works. This exhibition will instead draw attention to the double acoustic and visual level of Balestrini’s word or, better yet, to what Paolo Fabbri described as its “phonic-optic indiscernibility.”

NANNI BALESTRINI: ART AS POLITICAL ACTION. ONE THOUSAND AND ONE VOICES, curated by Marco Scotini, focuses on two crucial decades in the career of Balestrini, the 1960s and the 1970s. It includes over 70 works by the artist, along with a range of documentary material. The works from the 1960s illustrate a creative phase when Balestrini shared research interests with Luigi Nono, one of the most important 20th-century experimental composers, and when the neo-avant garde literary movement Gruppo 63 was also founded. The creative relationship between Balestrini and Nono lasted an entire decade, and the exhibition sheds light on the search for the disalienation of the word pursued by both, as well as on their use of technology as a way to seize and subvert the means of industrial production and explore their artistic potential.

The final works in the exhibition date back to the late 1970s; some of them were conceived in connection with a poem dedicated to the New York City electricity blackout of 1977. Planned as an “action for voice” to be performed by Greek-Italian lyricist and vocal experimenter Demetrio Stratos in May 1979, the work was never performed due to the premature death of Stratos and Balestrini’s indictment surrounding the political movement Autonomia Operaia.

The exhibition also includes a reconstruction of Balestrini’s Tape Mark I (1961), one of the earliest examples of computer-generated art. A combinatory poem produced by an algorithm written in the Unix programming language on a massive IBM mainframe computer, Tape Mark I anticipates many of the contemporary questions surrounding Artificial Intelligence, and was featured in the 1962 edition of the Bompiani Literary Almanac, which was dedicated to “the application of computers to ethics and literature”, a theme of utmost relevance today. 

To provide context to Balestrini’s work, the show features a selection of early words-in-freedom works by Futurist artist Carlo Carrà, a form of avantgarde visual poetry that liberated words and letters from the conventions of grammar and syntax, making them part of visual and performative compositions. This technique was co-opted by the Italian Neoavanguardia in the 1960s, due to the revolutionary potential of the early Futurist movement.
NANNI BALESTRINI: ART AS POLITICAL ACTION. ONE THOUSAND AND ONE VOICES is on view at CIMA (421 Broome Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10013) from February 22nd – June 22nd, 2024. See visiting hours below. 

Python reconstruction of 1961 electronic poem “TAPE MARK 1”

Nanni Balestrini, Giornale di bordo (La partita a carte), 1964. Collage on paper. Private collection, Mirano (Venezia)
CIMA OPEN HOURS: • Friday and Saturday: 11am to 6pm with guided tours at 11am and 2pm (last entry at 5pm)• Members-only hours: Monday-Thursday by appointment• General admission: $15usd for guided tours; $10usd for open hours• Members & students: free
ABOUT CIMA:Founded in 2013, CIMA is a public non-profit dedicated to presenting modern and contemporary Italian art to international audiences. Through critically acclaimed exhibitions—many of them bringing work to U.S. audiences for the first time—along with a wide variety of public programs and substantial support for new scholarship awarded through its international fellowship program, CIMA situates Italian modern art in an expansive historic and cultural context, illuminating its continuing relevance to contemporary culture and serving as an incubator of curatorial ideas for larger cultural institutions. CIMA works to add new voices to scholarship on modern Italian art with annual fellowships that open fresh perspectives and new avenues of research. A visit begins with a complimentary espresso, followed by an informal exhibition tour with one of the resident fellows. Visitors are welcome to linger for additional viewing and conversation.

ABOUT CURATOR MARCO SCOTINI: Marco Scotini is an art critic and curator. He currently is artistic director of FM Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea in Milan, a center specializing in the preservation and enhancement of private collections, artists’ archives and the promotion of contemporary art. Since 2004, he has been director of the Department of Visual Arts at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti of Milan and Rome. He is scientific director of the Gianni Colombo Archive, the Bert Theis Archive, the Clemen Parrocchetti Archive and the Nanni Balestrini Archive. Since 2014, he has been responsible for the exhibition program of PAV- Parco Arte Vivente in Turin. He was artistic director of the 2nd Yinchuan Biennale in 2018 and was a member of the Italian Council from 2019 to 2021. He has curated exhibitions for leading national and international art institutions, including the Albanian pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2015), three editions of the Prague Biennale (2003, 2005, 2007), Anren Biennale (2017), 2nd Yinchuan Biennale (2018) and was advisor for Bangkok Biennale (2020 and 2022). He took part in the 17th Istanbul Biennale (2022) and the BETA Timișoara Biennale (2022). He has been part of the project TV Politics at documenta 14 (2017). Scotini’s project Disobedience Archive is part of the 60th Mostra Internazionale d’Arte della Biennale di Venezia (2024), curated by Adriano Pedrosa.
Art

Icons Masked In League Of Wrestling Paintings

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The League of Wrestling Mask Portraits is a growing body of work, undertaken in 2023, by realist painter, Richard Delaney. The work is a satirical, Pop Art-style, examination of the famous and controversial people of our time, such as Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, Elon Musk, and Greta Thunberg. Delaney paints their approximately, life-size portraits, in an unconventional manner. Politicians and celebrities are depicted wearing personalized wrestling masks (as in professional wrestling, aka Lucha Libra, often referred to as Mexican wrestling masks). They wear their masks as if ready to battle/wrestle in the social and political ring.  

Each mask is customized for the individual wearer with clues to their identity imbedded in the design.

The symbolic clues help the viewer identify the person when the facial features alone are not enough. For example, the design of Greta Thunberg’s mask reflects her climate activism. Yellow flame-patterned, patches, around her eyes, nose, and mouth, rise up to symbolically melt what appears to be an ice cap on the top of her head, causing melt-water to flow into the blue, ocean-like area of the mask, covering her face. The dominant colours, light blue and yellow, reference Thunberg’s country, Sweden, and its flag.     

Delaney’s paintings in oil and acrylic are garish, bombastic, and humorous. They are fresh and contemporary while being reminiscent of 1960’s Pop Art. The visual aesthetic is like a combination of cartoon, realistic painting, and or photo collage. The mask component has a hint of vintage, comic book art, and pulp art illustration. In contrast, the facial features of the subjects are rendered in a somewhat, photorealistic style.

Conceptually, the League of Wrestling Mask Portraits, is very much Pop Art, and may have roots in the work of Warhol.

Both artists use mass media as a reservoir of ideas. They each present the concept of fame and celebrity in a uniquely identifiable style. There is no doubt that the ‘mask’ in Delaney’s work is simultaneously a visual brand, and a concept to be pondered.  

    

Delaney has coined the terms “maskified” and “maskification,” to describe his portraits. The maskified portraits cannot be viewed without some consideration for the basic idea and purpose of a mask, that is, to conceal true identity, and or to project a persona. The maskification of Donald Trump, for example, in a red mask with gold trim and crown, draws a comparison to classic comic book superheroes or villains, depending on one’s political stance. The connection with Mascaras de Lucha Libra is of course, intentional, and it is this simple juxtaposition that makes the work visually and intellectually, compelling.        

Delaney plans to produce a large collection of portraits by the end of 2024.

Ultimately, he imagines them displayed and for sale in a contemporary art gallery. For the time being, they are available to view on social media in the form of humorous reels and videos. There are many potential subjects that Delaney would like to paint, including, for example, Dylan Mulvaney, Joe Rogan, Kamala Harris, King Charles, Pierre Poilievre, and Jordan Peterson. Who do you think should be maskified? You can make suggestions by following Delaney on social media where he will be frequently unveiling new paintings for his League of Wrestling Mask Portraits.