Emoji Art History: The Not So Serious Side Project (Part 1)

It began during finals week at the end of last semester while lying in bed unable to sleep. Deliriously I began recreating works of art with the Emoji app on my iPhone and posted 18 of the results on Instagram. I stopped for a month but kept thinking of new ones. Five weeks later with the new Postcard Collective Winter submission deadline looming, I revisited it. I settled on a form, deciding that I would simulate texting the artist at the top and include only the title of the artwork below. There are many limitations of Emoji - unfortunately there are not enough icons to create some of my favorite artworks (I am still wishing I could do more with Duchamp). Here are 28 in no particular order with a list of 15 others to attempt (coming soon).

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: David Hockney

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Walter De Maria

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Yves Klein (with a little help from a friend)

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Wayne Thiebaud

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Vincent van Gogh

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Sol LeWitt

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Sherrie Levine

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Roy Lichtenstein

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Robert Smithson

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Maurizio Cattelan

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Mark Di Suvero

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Marcel Duchamp

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: John Baldessari

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Jeff Koons

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Janine Antoni

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Henri Rousseau

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Grant Wood

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Georgia O'Keeffe

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Frida Kahlo

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Eleanor Antin

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Ed Ruscha

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Damien Hirst

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Christian Marclay (made while staring at Marclay during an artists' conversation at the Wexner Art Center last night)

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Andy Warhol

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Edvard Munch

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Maya Lin

Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Tom Friedman

One of my favorite parts was pretending for a few brief minutes that I did indeed have all these artists as contacts in my phone.

SFMOMA's Blue Bottle Cafe

In addition to the trip to Berkeley, I really wanted to visit SFMOMA and more specifically, the Blue Bottle Cafe. Fortunately, everyone was equally excited and midday desserts were ordered and extensively photographed.


Alexis selected the Thiebaud Layer Cake (butter cake, buttercream and citrus curd) from Wayne Thiebaud's Display Cakes, 1971.


Eventually it turned into the Leaning Tower of Thiebaud (probably my favorite dessert of the ones I tried).


I purchased the Mondrian Cake after Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930. It was a white, blue, red, and yellow velvet cake with chocolate ganache. Amelia ordered the Dijkstra Icebox Tower from the photograph De Panne, Belgium, August 7, 1992. It was a difficult to eat, black cocoa sable with whipped cream. Everyone wanted Amelia to get it so we could see what was on the coaster underneath.


Slight disappointment at not seeing a portrait but a souvenir nonetheless.

I was very tempted to get the portable "Build Your Own Barnett Newman" (chocolate sables with postcard and building instructions) and probably would have purchased it if it was the Richard Serra version instead. The Sculpture Garden Cookie plate was very pretty. Does one buy the dessert for the concept or for the taste? Oh difficult decisions!

Springfield, Ohio

One of my favorite James Luckett photographs on his bookshelf:



A blurry photo of James's typewriter:



Potatoes and a dead bird in James's AMAZING studio:



Francis (always within reach) & Marguerite (always just out of reach) with the Food issue of the New Yorker (the annual cover by Wayne Thiebaud):



Crabill Homestead:



View from the Crabill Homestead:

SFMOMA's Dessert Menu

In addition to Wayne Theibaud inspired cakes, SFMOMA's rooftop cafe's dessert menu features some real beauties (hello March visit!):


Michael Jackson and Bubbles Dessert (after this infamous sculpture)


Richard Serra Build It Yourself Dessert

See more art inspired dessert options here including an interview with the pastry chef, Caitlin Williams Freeman.

"To figure out what else I was going to make, I went and soaked in every piece of art that was on display and tried to figure out what to do. And it's fun because, with the exception of the Thiebaud cake, which we always have on the menu whether or not the painting is hanging, we really keep the desserts limited to reflecting what's actually on display in the museum. So when a new show comes up, we make a new dessert based on what will be showing."

Aside from exhibitions of Bay Area artists in March during the Society for Photographic Education conference, the museum will be showing the painter Richard Aldrich. Here's to wondering how to make a cake inspired by this.

With a couple more inches...

Here's to hoping this (as food coloring was nowhere to be found at Marsh last night and thanks to Natalie for the suggestion):



plus this (yes that's really the sunrise = operating on five hours sleep = ZZZZ):



will equal this (with practice and not that elaborate decoration):

Happy 90th Birthday Wayne Thiebaud!

Pie Counter, 1963

If I had to do it all over again...

I'd make the one with the pink top (switching it up with the yellow rose from the cake in the background) and float it in San Francisco or San Diego.

"Nine Fake Cakes & Nine Bodies of Water" Artist Statement

I photograph worn, dilapidated objects with a history that expresses loss and sadness. These forms are ultimately self-portraits, communicating to the viewer significant memories that I am unwilling to let go. Spring 2010 featured several personal and career related disappointments and for the first time in my artistic life, I was devoted to a project that’s main premise is beauty, escapism and desire. Complete immersion in finding inviting bodies of water to float Styrofoam and acrylic-tinted, caulk cakes was a coping mechanism to come to terms with loneliness and unhappiness with place. Cakes – both real and fake – appeared to make people happy and I wondered, most simply, if they could make me happy too.

Two of the most desirous objects in 20th century art are Wayne Thiebaud’s thickly textured paintings of desserts and Ed Ruscha’s photographs of azure swimming pools. They were my biggest inspirations as I sought ways of combining them, creating a mixed media spectacle of performance art, sculpture, and photography. Ed Ruscha is a frequent reference in my artwork and the number nine was chosen in homage to his famous series Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass but I expanded the locations to include not just artificial pools of water but natural springs, the ocean, freshwater lakes, and rivers.

I didn’t stray too far from the concept of object as self-portrait. The “Slice” depicts the part of me I left home in the Pacific Northwest (as photographed in the Canadian Southwest) when I moved to Indiana. The “Desert Sun” captures one of the happiest times in my life in one of my favorite places (Tucson, Arizona) while the “3-tier” photographed at Niagara Falls acknowledges one of the saddest. The cake deemed “Little Great Lakes”, the smallest of them all, shows an underlying determinism and hope as it bravely faces the incoming waves, only to be toppled over time and time again.

The sheer amount of help I received from friends and strangers, the bending of the rules to take many of the photographs, the postcards sent between each location, and the performances that ensued during the flotations are nearly as important as the images themselves. For merely nine prints, this is the most extensively documented project I have ever conceived. The cakes, many displaying the ruins of their initial floats (cracks, bleeding acrylic paint, missing decor), will be displayed on glass plates accompanying the photographs. An artists’ book will soon be published documenting all aspects of the process.

Despite its beauty, Nine Fake Cakes and Nine Bodies of Water comes from a dark place – one that was momentarily forgotten as I traveled across the country searching for pristine water. I returned with a product that commented on the illusion of what is fake and what is real, what is happy and what is sad, and what is desirous but unattainable.

Fake Cakes Part 1: Wayne Thiebaud

Last June, I wrote about my infatuation with fake cakes and my love for the "California aesthetic" of Wayne Thiebaud meets Ed Ruscha. This summer, I do not have a big trip planned but I am in the process of saving up money and writing grants to do something BIG next year. I have had an idea that I cannot shake and this week I have started the research and will begin constructing the parts. Wayne Thiebaud plays a very large role.

I have known about Wayne Thiebaud long before I knew of Ed Ruscha. He was a big influence on my father as they both hailed from Southern California. One of my first encounters with Thiebaud was in my Drawing 1 class at Boise State University when my professor (Dad) had us draw Candy Ball Machine in pastels. I still have that drawing somewhere in Astoria, Oregon and haven't seen it in years.



In 2000, I saw the Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective exhibition at the Fort Worth Modern and was introduced to the classics like Five Hot Dogs but also new images that I hadn't seen before like Girl with Ice Cream Cone, a portrait of Thiebaud's second wife Betty Jean.





In addition, I was enthralled with his hand painted boxes like Ice Cream Cone from 1966 (as I am with most artists who use found wooden boxes in their work).



I was also amazed that a painting like Reservoir could resemble cake glaze to such a degree.



Indirectly, I can see that the above painting certainly was an inspiration in creating my favorite photograph of the entire "Earthworks Road Trip American West" last year.



I don't necessarily love doughnuts; i love their aesthetic. They were perfect for that afternoon at the Thunderbird Hotel in Marfa, Texas (above left).



When I was researching fake cakes last year, I was generally appalled at how unlike Wayne Thiebaud's they were. I could buy a styrofoam cake dummy if I wanted but all the other cakes looked like an Albertson's concoction overly decorated with too many flowers. These were not the fake cakes I was initially inspired by! About that time, one of my favorite blogs linked to this image below of the Blue Bottle Coffee Bar in SFMOMA's Rooftop Garden. Real cakes that resembled Thiebaud's paintings!



Of course you can't beat Sharon Core's photographs of real Thiebaud cakes either (here is Various Cakes from 2004):



So I started formulating plans to make them... Here are my inspirations:













This month and next I am going to construct nine fake cakes (of course I still have to have an ode to Ed Ruscha in this series). The bases will be foam with thickly coated acrylic frosting resembling the simplicity of shape in some of the desserts above as well as replicating the colors. As usual, this will entail a little help from my friends beginning with Dr. Natalie Phillips, Contemporary Art History professor extraordinaire, who also shares my love for fake desserts by creating fake cake jewelry in her spare time. This is the lovely wedding cake ring she gave me last year.



This summer I plan on floating these creations in nine bodies of water. I am not relegating myself to only swimming pools (I have a need to expand) but there will be some featured. Incidentally, the first body of water is indeed a swimming pool. The main rule is that the water must still be enticing and it must be CLEAR (after all, I don't touch brown water if at all possible = seriously so that pretty much eliminates rivers in this part of the country). I have a wide variety of resources at my disposal: lakes and oceans mainly and I am going to take some cues from Nancy involving swimming pool trespassing. Each one will be posted on this blog. First stop below (well I can't reveal the exact location since I will be trespassing but you better believe that it sure the hell isn't located in Indiana):