[Editor's note: This is part of our 6-part series describing the alternative surfaces artists use to display their artwork. Read the first two parts about art on water and egg cartons!]
Airplane “Nose” Art: This decorative painting is a long tradition in U.S. aviation. Pilots and maintenance crews during the World Wars would show off their creativity and pride (and some repressed sexuality) by putting art on their flying machines .
Crews would decorate their aircraft with all types of images and slogans. Often they depicted popular cartoon characters in their paintings and designs, or they adapted a graffiti style, which was the earliest style of nose art (sometimes nice, sometimes naughty).
But the most popular subject for these men were women: film stars, mother figures, girlfriends back home, wartime heroines–even Betty Boop.
Curator Carlo McCormick concluded an exhibition last Sunday called Nose Job at Eric Firestone Gallery in East Hampton, featuring the noses of abandoned Air Force aircraft.
Firestone and McCormick collected a wide range of nose cones from airplanes in various shapes and sizes. The two invited a collection of contemporary artists to take these artifacts and turn them into pieces of fantastic art. This is quite a creative act of aesthetic recycling!
Kenny Scharf's 'Coney" (2011) made with spray paint on aircraft nose cone.
Richard Prince's "Destroyer" (2011) made with a collage and acrylic on aircraft nose cone
Swoon's "Untitled" (2011) of mixed media on aircraft nose cone
If nose art isn’t for you, look through The Bare Square Store for artwork created by the world’s finest emerging artists starting at $20.
- Kulsoom
