Archive for May, 2010

Adieu LouBou

Monday, May 31st, 2010
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    Louise Bourgeois (25 December 1911 – 31 May 2010)
    (Update David Salle on Louis Bourgeois – 2017)

    Artdaily obit

    Artist Louise Bourgeois, whose sculptures exploring women’s deepest feelings on birth, sexuality and death were highly influential on younger artists, died Monday, her studio’s managing director said.
    Bourgeois had continued creating artwork — her latest pieces were finished just last week — before suffering a heart attack Saturday night, said the studio director, Wendy Williams.

    Great obit from Adrian Seale

    He salutes her dirty mind and tender heart …
    Her art was one of transformations, of ferocious vulnerability and tender violence.

    R.I.P Lou Bou

    died on Monday at the Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. She was 98.
    The death was reported by Wendy Williams, the managing director of the Louise Bourgeois Studio.

  • Life in pictures (Guggenheim)

  • Louis Bourgeois 2Louise Bourgeois

    Louise Bourgeois archive since 2004 here

    Love is Colder Than Death

    Monday, May 31st, 2010
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    Fassbinder fassbinder (Image via)

    We Still Miss Him – Rainer Werner Fassbinder would Have Been 65 on May 31,
    (Prodigy. Radical. Fatalist. Subversive. Visionary. Genius)

    Fassbinder described his childhood as lonely, and – to give his mother time to work – he frequented the movies, seeing as many as four pictures a day.

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    Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder worked together on 16 films

  • The Merchant of Four Seasons (Wim Wenders provides commentary for this DVD)

    Fassbinder’s famous career and infamous life both came to an end in 1982 when he was 37 years old. By then, his films were seen as clearly belonging to two distinct periods – before and after the year 1971, when he made The Merchant of Four Seasons. The crucial turning point came that year when he encountered a retrospective of Douglas Sirk films in Munich, an event that was to transform both Fassbinder’s thinking about cinema and the nature of his films.

    Th dance sequence by Francois Ozon – Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes is a youtube hit. (Water Drops on Burning Rocks is based on a play by Fassbinder)

  • Alida Valli was born on May 31 1921 – 24 years older than Fassbinder

  • Howard Hawks was born on May 30 1896, – straight unpretentious stuff, he told the stories wryly and drily.
    This is funny – women in Hawk’s films

    Hawks talks about Red River and Rio Bravo (English with French subtitle)

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    R.I.P Dennis Hopper

    Two poetry readings by Dennis Hopper
    Dennis Hopper reciting poem at Johnny Cash show

    Dennis Hopper reciting beatnik poem

  • Happy birthday Agnes Varda 30 May 1928, she is 82 years old.
    See her here at Cannes and congratulations for the lifetime achievement award.

    Marina Full of Grace

    Friday, May 28th, 2010


    Amir Baradaran – Behind Canvas Act II

    Amir Baradaran Dear Marina, do you accept this marriage?

    Amir Baradaran third act

    How Marina Abramovic’s Red-Velvet Rope at MoMA Works

    The line to sit opposite Marina Abramovic in the atrium at MoMA has become as much a part of her performance as the artist herself. A slew of celebrities, including James Franco, Rufus Wainwright, and Björk, have shown up, one guy has visited fourteen times, and waits as long as eight hours have been recorded. (As to how Abramovic pees, her assistant swears she holds it in.)

    Here is a mystery man in tears, a frequent visitor – 14 times in all.

    Women in Veil 33 min.

    List of celebrities from Flickr file..(looked for Christopher Walken but not found – he was rumored to be in Day 33)
    Alan Rickman 9 min.

    Isabelle Huppert 16 min.

    Christian Amapour 2 min

    Arthur Danto 10 min (He was wheeled out, Marina did not restore his legs)

    With Bjork having a telephathic conversation

    More list of celebrities here.

    The Artist as a Museum Piece by John Haber

    When performance art becomes a museum piece, is it still performance? Marina Abramovic aims for grandeur but has me wondering.

    Artist in green marinafamily08 uniform and little girls with weapons but no shoes.
    2008 Florence Biennale

    Viaggio in Italia

    Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

    Ingrid 1Italy Bergman

    Is this Contempt in black & white?
    Viaggio in Italis by Rossellini

    VOYAGE TO ITALY was critically savaged when it was first released in the US in an English version called STRANGERS, running nearly 20-minutes shorter than the original. It was attacked as being “dull,” “plodding,” “slow,” “hackneyed,” “meandering,” “poorly photographed,” “poorly written,” and “incompetently directed.” At the same time, the French “new wave” critics called it a masterpiece: Jacques Rivette wrote that on its appearance, “all other films suddenly aged 10 years,” and Jean-Luc Godard rhapsodically described it as being among “the most beautiful of films.”

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    Ingrid & Sanders
    “Oh it’s nice in the sun” (clip from film on youtube)

  • Related link –

    Roberto and Ingrid on the set of Stromboli.

    “Ingrid and Roberto felt like the whole world was against them,” Parks explains, “but Ingrid was sane enough to realize that they had to have a professional down there to take photos of them making the picture. She had seen a story of mine in LIFE, so she asked me to come to the island. Perhaps she thought I would do the story with more discretion.”

    Gordon Parks.

    Gordon Parks took photographs of Ingrid Bergman at Stromboli..

    R.I.P Shusaku Arakawa

    Thursday, May 20th, 2010

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    WE HAVE DECIDED NOT TO DIE from Reversible Destiny

    Arakawa arakawa July 6, 1936 – May 18, 2010
    The news of Arakawa’s passing came from Mario Ambrosius on Facebook.

    Arakawa, Whose Art Tried to Halt Aging, Dies at 73 by FRED A. BERNSTEIN (Nytimes)

    Arakawa, a Japanese-born conceptual artist and designer, who with his wife, Madeline Gins, explored ideas about mortality by creating buildings meant to stop aging and preclude death, died Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 73.

    Arthur Danto, the art critic and philosopher, who had known Arakawa for nearly 40 years, said, “He really felt they were doing the most important kind of work, to overcome death.” But, Mr. Danto said, “How that was going to happen was never clear, to anyone outside Madeline and him.”

    Arakawa and Gins were reportedly victims of Bernard Madoff, losing several million dollars when Madoff’s Ponzi scheme collapsed (wiki)

    Ralph & T. E Lawrence

    Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

    Ralph Fiennes 1aaTeRalf

    Ralph Fiennes as Dangerous man..
    (Ralph earlier played T.E. Lawrence.)

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    Must see this, Ralph Fiennes visits T.E. Lawrence home, Clouds Hill in Dorset UK (A real youtube treasure from One Foot from the Past BBC program).

    T.E. Lawrence R.I.P 19 May 1935

    The grave of T.E. Lawrence

  • On completing his degree in 1910, Lawrence commenced postgraduate research in medieval pottery with a Senior Demy at Magdalen College, Oxford, which he abandoned after he was offered the opportunity to become a practising archaeologist in the Middle East. In December 1910 he sailed for Beirut, and on arrival went to Jbail (Byblos), where he studied Arabic. He was in fact a polyglot who could speak English, French, German, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Turkish and Syriac.(via wiki)

    T.E. Lawrence lauwernce_of_arabia
    The dedication to his book Seven Pillars is a poem entitled “To S.A.” which opens as follows:

    I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
    and wrote my will across the sky in stars
    To earn you Freedom, the seven pillared worthy house
    that your eyes might be shining for me
    When we came.

    Lawrence was never specific about the identity of “S.A.” There are many theories which argue in favour of candidates including individual men, women, and the Arab nation.[25] The most popular is that S.A. represents (at least in part) Dahoum, who apparently died of typhus in 1918.

    The First Guerilla – Lawrence Teaches Petraeus – Setting the Desert on Fire; T.E. Lawrence and Britain’s Secret War in Arabia 1916-1918, James Barr, 2008 (Agog book report)

  • Deleted Scenes from English Patient
    (And thanks to Joseph Beuys plane crash Michael Ondaatje got an idea of this novel.)

  • Unrelated links:
    What did Jesus do ? by Adam Gopnik + Mr. Blank and Jesus

    Leonard da Vinci resume
    (He needed a job)

    May 19 – birthday of Malcolm X, Ho Chi Min, Pol Pot and Yuri Kochiyama
    Swimming to Cambodia – Spaulding Gray : Khmer Rouge history primer

    The Canal + Carlson & Company

    Monday, May 17th, 2010

    The Canal Canal_FINAL Lee Rourke

    It is published in the UK on 15th July 2010 and in the US 15th June 2010 by Melville House.

    Readysteady review of Everyday

    Lee Rourke is the author of Everyday, a collection of short stories published by Social Disease. He is also Reviews Editor for 3AM Magazine and edits (with the help of the inimitable Matthew Coleman) his own literary litzine Scarecrow.

    Dogmatika

    Since 2004, as editor of the on-line literary site Scarecrow, Lee Rourke has made it his business to “bang the drum for the unheard, the unconventional, the eccentric, the revolutionary and the radical”, turning his back on “the mainstream bookish blatherskites” and championing “misunderstood, ignored and abandoned underground and independent literary fiction and culture.” There’s something to be said for sticking to your guns:

    I have been reading a lot of Heidegger (boredom/mood), Ballard (technology/violence), Beckett (ennui/repetition), Pessoa (emptiness/the ordinary) recently and, in particular, an amazing book called Montano’s Malady by Enrique Vila-Matas (literary suffocation). The Canal could not have been written without the guidance of the above. It’s hard not to be influenced by such writing.

    Roubard interviewed at Sponge

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    Knife Slicing the wall by Claes Oldenburg and his proposed drawing.

    Carlson & Company

    The company, based in San Fernando, California, was founded in 1971. It became one of the best-known resources for artists seeking to produce complicated, large-scale and frequently costly artworks.
    “Many artists trying to make work that involves high-tech and precise execution would go to Carlson and they could often figure things out that no one else could,” said New York art adviser Allan Schwartzman.
    The firm fabricated some of the most technically challenging artworks created during the six-year rise of contemporary art prices which began in 2002.

    Koon’s fabricator Carlson Shuts at recession hits Big Art

    Besides Koons, Carlson was the producer of choice for dozens of top contemporary artists, including Doug Aiken, John McCracken and Charles Ray.

    See artworks and the list of artists here.

    I Dwell in Possibilty

    Monday, May 10th, 2010


    (direct link to youtube)

    Bill Murray read poetry to Manhattan Construction Workers

    Meanwhile here are some photos from Arizona labor camp.

    Inside <> constructionhammer the house
    Outside constructionorange

    constructionplay2constructionplay
    <> <> <> <> <> constructionplay3 we make our daily trip to home depot.. witnessing the arrest of illegals there.

    Emily Dickinson, “I dwell in possibility” (#657)

    I dwell in Possibility–
    A fairer House than Prose–
    More numerous of Windows–
    Superior–for Doors–

    Of Chambers as the Cedars–
    Impregnable of Eye–
    And for an Everlasting Roof
    The Gambrels of the Sky–

    Of Visitors–the fairest–
    For Occupation–This–
    The spreading wide my narrow Hands
    To gather Paradise–

  • The house that Wittgenstein built in Vienna (is now the Bulgarian embassy)

    Thank You Mother!

    Sunday, May 9th, 2010

    Thank you mother!

    Scenes from Mr And Mrs Bridge and happy belated birthday to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala who scripted many of Merchant-Ivory films.

  • Misako 1misako Miwa Yanagi

    Happy Mother’s day mothersday10-us-hp

    Previous post: Japanese Grandmothers

    Sushi, Green Tea & Alan Ebnother

    Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

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    Alan Ebnother in front of his studio in Stanley, New Mexico.

    Alan Ebonether a painter living in New Mexico came through Phoenix to pick up Jutta who is flying into Phoenix. He came a bit early. We took him to a Sushi restaurant and we had fun chatting about everything.

    They will drive to L.A and then continue to SF where Alan is showing his works at the gallery.
    We’ve been FB friends and this is the first time we met.

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    Mobile phone photos by Alan Ebnother.

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    Alan attacked the sushi systematically one by one and created this monolithic tower of emptied plates. We ate tuna, tamago, shrimp, squid, conch, California rolls, dragon rolls, tempura sushi, hamachi, salmon and eel. We drank many cups of green tea and ate ginger to detox. The best part was our conversation and this is the first time I ate sushi without paying much attention to the food.

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    No this is not a Wasabi painting nor did he grind green tea to make this color.

    Opening is May 6 at George Lawson Gallery
    Alan Ebnother page at the gallery here.

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    Mobil phone photo by Alan Ebnother
    Alan and Jutta loved the Joshua Trees.

    Time Lapse.. previous post (See Alan with John Cage and other great artists).

  • Oil, Giant Problem

    Monday, May 3rd, 2010



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    See great photos by Edward Burtynsky here.
    Edward Burtynsky: Oil – A Ballardian Interpretation

    His photographs of quarries, factories, mining pits, and railcuts are extraordinary for their depiction of mankind’s organization of the land for resource-extraction and profit.

    Crude: The Story of Oil, Sonia Shah 2004

    This 175 page book is a condensed look at oil, its history and future. It is packed with fact and detail and doesn’t miss much.
    Unholy Trinity (Big Oil Big Auto Big Tire), the Presidents, and the American Consumer
    Oil, Auto, and Tire have for more than a century marketed ever larger, more expensive, gas guzzling, unsafe, products to a willing American public. In 1930 they banded together to take over and eliminate electric streetcars from American cities. Once in control, they removed the rails to be sure streetcars would never return. In 1947 GM, Standard, and Firestone were convicted of collusion to remove streetcars and fined $10,000 collectively.

    Crude Oil (previous post)