one piece

Texting

Sprüeth Magers Gallery in London presents a retrospective of Barbara Kruger’s early works, now on display through January 23rd.  In this rare opportunity to see this portion of her collection, one will note the raw and less yielded approach in these pieces than in her later more refined works.

Kruger’s haunting and exposed imagery is juxtaposed with blaring statements of text relative to the political injustice of the world. All wording shows her simplistically fantastic use of Futura type. They note her distaste for consumerism and mass media with such phrases as “Our Prices are Insane!” and “Who is Beyond the Law?” speaking to us in clichés but saying much more.

Another central theme to her works is the question of power and the identity of those who dictate justice. As seen in “Untitled (You Are a Very Special Person)” the bejeweled crown symbolizes authority while the words speak of subordinate mockery. To quote Kruger, “I’m an artist who works with pictures and words. Sometimes that stuff ends up in different kinds of sites and contexts which determine what it means and looks like.” 

link: Art Observed

 

Vincent Van Gogh: The Complete Letters

 Van Gogh's letters are the best written by any artist. Engrossing, moving, energetic and compelling, they dramatise individual genius while illuminating the creative process in general. No wonder readers have long since taken them to heart. No wonder, either, that singers have used them in their songs ("Starry Night"), and film-makers as the basis of their movies (Lust for Life). Their mixture of humble detail and heroic aspiration is quite simply life-affirming.

Received wisdom has it that the letters show Van Gogh as a tortured genius. Yet anyone who has actually read them (rather than watched the movie) will feel uncomfortable about this. There are, of course, harrowing stretches in which he frets about insanity, about poverty and about how others perceive him. But the great majority of them are impressive – even lovable – because, no matter how distressing their surrounding circumstances, they show an extraordinarily calm-sounding good sense and a beautiful directness in their account of complicated emotional states. This sense of balance, which frankly amounts to nobility, has been evident in all editions of his letters, ever since the first was published by his sister-in-law, Jo Bonger, in 1914. In this new edition it is even more vividly manifest.

via: guardian.co.uk

 

Lookout

In "The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York," illustrator  Matteo Pericoli asks well-known New Yorkers to describe what they see from their windows. This is the view of David Byrne, the musician and artist. "I think of my view as pretty typical for a New Yorker. We look out our windows at other windows. That, in a way, mirrors our lives here -- we are constantly looking at each other, millions of us, on the streets and elsewhere."

link: "Window Watchers in a City of Strangers"

"Big Fan"

Films without end have been made about the heroes of sport, but who speaks for the fans, the fervent admirers and supporters no team can exist without? Who especially speaks not for the weekend dabbler but for the hard-core fanatic, the zealot who devotes an entire life to a team with the single-minded intensity of a monk meditating in a cave? "Big Fan" does, and it does it exceptionally well.

Written and directed by Robert Siegel and starring an ideally cast Patton Oswalt in the title role, "Big Fan" is a poignant, dead-on character study, an examination of a crisis in the life of the most die-hard of die-hard New York Giants football fans. Its situations can be outrageous, its dialogue is often scabrous, but its sense of the core reality it describes is impeccable.

Read more here

Digging Deeper

 Permanence is not Urs Fischer’s game. 

In recent years, the Swiss-born artist has built a full-scale chalet from crumbling loaves of crusty bread, placed a collapsing brick wall on a pile of rotting vegetables and produced life-size female nudes as burning candles. Gaping holes loom just as large.

 In 2007, for example, he jackhammered a yawning, dirt-filled crater into the floor of his Manhattan gallery (above). For his first solo American museum show, opening Oct. 28 at the New Museum, Fischer has constructed a hallucinatory labyrinth of mirrored boxes based on a Manhattan streetscape, imprinting them with hundreds of images of familiar sights. 

With the addition of massive cast-aluminum sculptures that suggest human torsos, the building-wide ‘‘introspective,’’ says the curator Massimiliano Gioni, ‘‘is like taking a walk through Fischer’s mind.’’ Or perhaps like seeing in the dark. 

Linda Yablonsky - T Magazine - The New York Times

Luchino Visconti's "Senso"

"If Stendhal had a camera, it would be like Senso," says Martin Scorsese of Visconti's elaborate melodrama. 

Scorsese's deconstruction of Senso is of vital importance for it seemingly explains how Visconti's communist-tainted aristocratic upbringing informed the director's Marxist approach to filmmaking. Scorsese draws our attention toward Senso's colorful cinematography and how it monochromatically crumbles by film's end. 

via: Slant

"Fascist Fascination"

"Fashion at the Time of Fascism," out later this month from Damiani, struck me right away. Its pages are a collage of women framed in soft focus, elegantly attired and wistfully posed, all cigarettes and silhouettes. The refined furs and extravagant draperies are enough to make the glancing reader nostalgic for the reign of Mussolini. 

via: "The Book Bench" The New Yorker Magazine

Classic Scorsese

In 1995's CASINO, Scorsese brought together much of the stylistic and theoretical content of his earlier works.

The engaging world and controlling power structure of the Mafia (a source repeatedly tread by Scorsese) is brought to life in the loud and visually stunning world of the casino.

 In tone, style, and content, Scorsese is constantly pushing the boarders of the film, seeing how much we can come to feel about the most foreign and familiar characters. For many, Martin Scorsese is the most important living American filmmaker—one whose relentless search for the furthest emotional reaches of his genre have led him to the center of the American psyche.

"Dress Codes" at ICP

 

The Third Triennial will mark the closing cycle of ICP's 2009 Year of Fashion,

A series of projects that critically examine fashion and its relationship to art and other cultural and social phenomena.

The theme of fashion encompasses a diverse range of practices and ideas, including explorations of identity and affiliation; the production, distribution, and consumption of images and goods; contemporaneity; age; gender; and global industry. 

The themes of the Triennial express the exuberance, wit, and astute social observation taking place within contemporary image-making. These artists variously explore fashion—whether in everyday dress, haute couture, street fashion, or uniforms—as a celebration of individuality, personal identity, and self-expression, and as cultural, religious, social, and political statements.

Audio slideshow: Art and politics in China

As China marks the 60th anniversary of Communist rule, Katie Hill, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Art at the University of Westminster in London, looks at how art has moved from the realm of propaganda to the international marketplace.

via: BBC