The stairs, his life's work, were declared city patrimony in 2005, when Selaron was made an honorary carioca, as Rio residents are called. The steps have been featured in Snoop Dogg's "Beautiful" and U2's "Walk On" music videos, as well as part of the video that Brazil made for their 2016 Olympic bid.Here's the Snoop Dogg video. Here's the U2.
January 11, 2013
"Artist found burned to death on top of his masterpiece."
"Artist Jorge Selaron may have taken his own life by setting himself on fire on the very steps of his masterpiece, a brilliantly colored public staircase that became a symbol of Rio de Janeiro..."
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9 comments:
So it's still very much up in the air.
Ghastly.
Stairway to heaven?
Stairway to heaven?
Ray Johnson, a New York collage and performance artist, almost certainly drowned himself in 1995 as an art act. He was 67.
There is a fascinating documentary on Johnson, "How to Draw a Bunny," which is available from NetFlix. It's one of the oddest, interesting films I've seen.
I will never understand to this day the latin american fascination with brightly colored, gaudy, shitty tiles and assembling them in the shittiest combinations possible to uglify the entire thing ad nausem. They do it to their public spaces, they do it to their homes, they do it everywhere. ugh!!!
All over Portugal there are tiled stairs, tiled doorways, tiled fountains, tiled arcades, all the work of craftsmen who may have been proud of their work but never confused it with art. Unbelievable, the indiscriminate hubris of our age.
I wouldn't think that kind of heat would be very good for the tiles.
I will never understand to this day the latin american fascination with brightly colored, gaudy, shitty tiles and assembling them in the shittiest combinations possible to uglify the entire thing ad nausem. They do it to their public spaces, they do it to their homes, they do it everywhere. ugh!!!
I feel the same way about shitty vinyl siding in America.
Nice stairs.
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