Off to see this installation at the Barbican tomorrow (27/2/2010). Please, please take a look at the video below. Made me laugh out aloud and my heart burst out of my chest.
Tim Barber over at Tiny Vices continues to support some fantastic visual artists. I know that whenever I pop into his site I’ll find some nice work and it looks like he’s now teamed up with Aperture to produce some books. One of which is Amelia's World, by Robin Schwartz, which I think this photo belongs too. Love the feeling of these blue tones. It feels quietly nostalgic.
At the last Frieze Art Fair I picked up a nice looking paper from Image Movement. The paper features a list of artists’ all time favourite movies and it looks like they do some nice projects. I dip into this whenever I am having a blank moment when ordering movies from LoveFilm. I picked a film favoured by Richard Prince, The Honeymoon Killers. Not normally one for the blk and whites I put it off for a few days, but Oh My it took my breath away. It’s a scary tale of two damaged people finding each other. Shirley Stoler, who plays our female protagonist is haunting as a lumpy nurse with a vicious and emotional demeanor and a lack of attachment to anyone. However, her comfort eating and hysterics, those brief moments of passion and hope tied to early dreams of love and meaning make you empathise with her. This is a tale of fantasies gone bad and a very beautiful one at that.
From Tits to Mushrooms, not such a big jump. Remember Disney's Fantasia? My favourite of all the Disney films. This particular scene with the dancing Chinese Mushrooms I just loved, and what I way to get a kid onto classical music! Disney has had it removed from YouTube. Boo. Silly Disney.
The guy who runs Purple Fashion, Olivier Zahm, has his first show at New York’s Half Gallery until 2 Jan 2010. I came across Purple in the ’90s and loved it straight away. Back then it was A5 and came as Purple Sex, Purple Fashion and Purple Prose – and whose primary benefactor was Comme des Garcon. I quickly started collecting them and found so much inspiration. Purple Fashion is now something so much more glamorous. I like it, but it’s like having a friend who’s rich, more beautiful, got nicer tits and leads a much more exciting life than you do, i.e. it can make you feel a bit insecure and excluded, and if I am honest a bit sick. But that’s my problem not his. Purple Fashion makes the best fashion iconography, say along with, Italian Vogue and he’s a great photographer. I often visits the Purple Diary, but don’t do that on a day that you’ve eaten too much or are feeling a bit mousy. You have been warned!
I had a studio visit with Barry Sykes last night, a Deptford based artist. I liked a lot of what I saw, but this work in particular really resonated with me. They’re two near-identical framed drawings from the original animation of Fred Flintstone. I can’t tell you why I love them so much, I think it’s something about Fred walking away from you and the way in which Barry has chosen to mount them on mirror. I’d really like them at home, they’re just the sort of art one wants to live with, untroubled and quiet (unfortunately for me I think Barry’s rather attached to them too). Just by spending time with them they seem to give off a tranquility. And they make you aware of the very power of art, that is, in its ability to give you a great deal of pleasure just through the freedom of looking and letting your eyes rest on a form. See more of Barry’s work here.
‘The face more than any other body part is for the other. It is the most articulate sector of the body, but is mute without the other’s reading.’ Mary Anne Doane. Kate’s face is shared with us through the fashion media and no one can resist a beautiful face. Every time I move into a close up with her, especially one as successful as this, I enter into a dialogue with her image, which is fathomless. Beauty should always be celebrated, even if it’s under the guise of capitalism.
This is one of my all time favourite films. The aesthetics are extreme and sublime. Kubric’s genius, i think, is in part to his use of colour and symmetry. Each frame is so considered they’re like paintings from the old masters. And I’ve always appreciated Wendy’s winter wardrobe: the smock dress with red boots, the felt yellow jacket, scarf and jeans and boots, tres chic! She just looks super seventies cool.
When I published Film as a Subversive Art some years ago, one image in particular stayed with me which was a still from the above film. I tried in vain to get hold of it but couldn’t find it anywhere on the net. Brilliant that YouTube now has it and for the first time I get to watch it. The still I’ve posted shows men looking through holes to view a woman who is set on a spit and turned relentlessly by a man on the outside. She’s seen a piece of meat there for the joy of men. You have to watch it (below), come to your own conclusions. Also worth seeing is AI, Love (below), where a woman chases a man across town shouting ‘love’ at him. At times she catches him, sometimes he passes through her, but mostly he tries to escape. The Room (below) is pretty mental too.
Aos, By Yoji Kuri, 1964
Love, 1960 (?)
The Room, (1960)
“What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.”