some things that happen for the first time, Seem to be happening again....
Sunday 20 October 2013
Sunday 6 October 2013
A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.
[we are very attentive to structural engineering on Planet Lucre given scarce resources. So let it be said that even if Maestro Bonynge was ever wrong it's hard to believe that Bellini would have doubted his integrity. Checking the original score, Bellini never writes lento or piu espressivo, lamentoso, patetico even tenerezza in the opera's finale. He very simply does firstly ask for a lento, and then almost instantaneously, a tempo, then piu moderato with a calendo (an interpreted slowing), and at the very least a meno assai (less fast) but then again, an incalzando (hurrying) a crescendo.] In layman's terms: Bellini asks that Norma doesn't have a little sob and plead to her father. It isn't even a human rights issue. It is simply: being human.
Moreover, what Norma really feels is weeping buckets at the end of the opera but you can't sing bel canto and do that at the same time. Or can you?! No name dropping but a very famous and respected Broadway star once told me that in a certain play she had to do the lines over and over and over and over AND over again so she didn't weep and feel the pain. It's the audience who should feel the heartbreak. That's why Callas is so much more than even a legend.
One wishes that a full recording was released of Werner Schroeter's 2003 passionate Dusseldorf staging of Norma (there are tantalizing excerpts filmed by Alexander Kluge in his Schroeter doc). And 'they' weren't exactly beating down the doors to see a NYFF preview of the great Jean-Luc (Godard)'s Hail Mary (Je vous salue Marie) (1985) that 'arguably' has one of the most fascinating filmic uses of Mahler's 9th Symphony in the history of the planet! So go and enjoy with like-minds the sheer brilliant Godard artistry in the NYFF associated retrospective: Passion is well-worth seeing again on the big screen, Nôtre musique. Not showing is Godard's contributon to Don Boyd's Aria: Lully's Armide that Godard (unhappy with the result) entirely re-shot at his own expense.
Tuesday 1 October 2013
...___...
...___...,,,
Something that was real, something that they could see and touch. An aim not devoid of merit. ...when we have control:...[We] never had control! That's the illusion!
Something that was real, something that they could see and touch. An aim not devoid of merit. ...when we have control:...[We] never had control! That's the illusion!
Sunday 29 September 2013
but a wilderness of tigers
51st New York Film Festival
Many of the New York Film Fest films are also playing in this year’s London Film Festival. But there are also many, like The Square that aren’t. And seeing dozens of films in a short space of time really does sharpen your awareness of where one is on this planet. Maybe it’s true now of most cities in the world but take away someone’s mobile and internet for just 2 days and they go into withdrawal spasms. The Square is a perfect example of what the new tools of mobile and internet video are best at: disseminating crucial info that doesn’t always hit the mainstream press. As one commentator noted in The Square, one of the mainstream media termed Cairo’s protesters as “so-called revolutionaries”. If there’s a criticism to be made of The Square (and after all it was being edited up to the minute and post-Sundance screening with all the changes taking place in Egyptian rule) it is that more factual background would help i.e. why the military is so much more powerful there than in other countries. As the director noted in her Q&A (but not in the film) many young men see the military as the only place where they can rise through the ranks and succeed.
Another political subject, Agnieszka Holland’s mini-series Burning Bush begs the question would a documentary about the subject not be more interesting? Everything looks fantastic, great to see all those Czech actors in parts other than Hollywood terrorists or Eastern girlfriends and every music cue just that bit too ‘on cue’. ‘Godfather’ of documentary film Frederick Wiseman offered what was to many an overlong (4hours) mixed blessing in At Berkeley (he’s finishing up his latest on London’s National Gallery). In his usual style he just lets the camera roll, allowing his footage to speak for itself with no music or explanatory titles. Shot over 12 weeks, he confesses that his style is “novelistic rather than journalistic”. And it is interesting enough to not seem like a long haul, but again, many of my colleagues found that it lacked focus. One interesting element is the issue of middle-class students being caught ‘between a rock and a hard place’ when it came to rising tuition fees (the entire campus is down to one lawn-mower) and minority group grants- a girl literally bursting into tears about her parents’ predicament. Another (arguable) idea was floated was that “America gives you a shot [at success]. It doesn’t promise you everything.” And you do have to live in this country to understand the complexity of that idea. That success is really ameliorated by being constantly competitive (and therefore aggressive to your competition) and dare it be said that no-one ever makes significant money n America without ‘kissing arse’. The upshot is most thankfully that Berkeley is teaching students to think outside the box. Hopefully that includes the box of American ‘successes’.
Sundance Special Jury Prize doc winner American Promise was 14 years in the making as middle-class parents Joe and Michele pointed a camera on their son Idris and his best mate Seun. If you ever thought that the ‘race’ issue had been solved post-Obama then think again (as was clearly debated too by students in At Berkeley). These kids are at the prestigious private school of Dalton (Manhattan). And they are the token non-white kids. As one teacher notes quite aptly, ‘no one ever thinks if putting white kids in a black school’. Is this doc too long too? Well maybe. And yet the subject is still so interesting that it almost demands Wiseman’s long form approach to impart even more information. The ADHD question of Idris is also an interesting one and how Afro-Americans are ‘wrongly’ more often misdiagnosed due to non accounting for cultural differences.
Claude Lanzmann’s documentary The Last of the Unjust is in a league of its own. If one were to suggest to one’s ‘date’ seeing this documentary on a Friday night it may seem like a laughable line from a Woody Allen movie. But at over just under 4 hours it is truly a riveting masterpiece. All the more because the questions it asks painfully resonate far beyond the subject of the Holocaust. As its subject Benjamin Murmelstein quotes the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer: “All Jews were martyrs but not all Jews were saints”. Murmelstein likens the Jewish ghetto of Theresienstadt and it’s cremation furnace to the paradox of Rome’s Coliseum- that without the Jewish deaths there would be no need for a camp nor its occupants. A Catch-22 if ever there was one.
A more ‘entertaining’ shall we say doc of the Fest is The Dog- the ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ story of John Wojtowicz on whose bank robbery escapade the Al Pacino film Dog Day Afternoon was based. And there is an unflappable logic to one point he makes when speaking of being criticized for trying to make money out of his crime e.g. standing outside the bank after his release signing autographs and photos. ‘How much did Warner Brothers make out of my crime’? That begs a whole bigger question…
When it comes to ‘real life’ it is great to see a mini-retrospective (2 films plus her latest, Exhibition) in Emerging Artists (Fernando Eimbcke’s Club Sandwich is also well worth catching) of now stalwart London Film Festival fave Joanna Hogg. Her films really do hold their own in a very tough crowded Festival field. And what’s more with a totally individual voice. Her camera lingers on the mundane of human interaction culminating in a solitary mediation of where one is on this planet. And of course in a quirky British bent. It’s a world away from Indy American cinema but it is the same world.
More to come…
Many of the New York Film Fest films are also playing in this year’s London Film Festival. But there are also many, like The Square that aren’t. And seeing dozens of films in a short space of time really does sharpen your awareness of where one is on this planet. Maybe it’s true now of most cities in the world but take away someone’s mobile and internet for just 2 days and they go into withdrawal spasms. The Square is a perfect example of what the new tools of mobile and internet video are best at: disseminating crucial info that doesn’t always hit the mainstream press. As one commentator noted in The Square, one of the mainstream media termed Cairo’s protesters as “so-called revolutionaries”. If there’s a criticism to be made of The Square (and after all it was being edited up to the minute and post-Sundance screening with all the changes taking place in Egyptian rule) it is that more factual background would help i.e. why the military is so much more powerful there than in other countries. As the director noted in her Q&A (but not in the film) many young men see the military as the only place where they can rise through the ranks and succeed.
Another political subject, Agnieszka Holland’s mini-series Burning Bush begs the question would a documentary about the subject not be more interesting? Everything looks fantastic, great to see all those Czech actors in parts other than Hollywood terrorists or Eastern girlfriends and every music cue just that bit too ‘on cue’. ‘Godfather’ of documentary film Frederick Wiseman offered what was to many an overlong (4hours) mixed blessing in At Berkeley (he’s finishing up his latest on London’s National Gallery). In his usual style he just lets the camera roll, allowing his footage to speak for itself with no music or explanatory titles. Shot over 12 weeks, he confesses that his style is “novelistic rather than journalistic”. And it is interesting enough to not seem like a long haul, but again, many of my colleagues found that it lacked focus. One interesting element is the issue of middle-class students being caught ‘between a rock and a hard place’ when it came to rising tuition fees (the entire campus is down to one lawn-mower) and minority group grants- a girl literally bursting into tears about her parents’ predicament. Another (arguable) idea was floated was that “America gives you a shot [at success]. It doesn’t promise you everything.” And you do have to live in this country to understand the complexity of that idea. That success is really ameliorated by being constantly competitive (and therefore aggressive to your competition) and dare it be said that no-one ever makes significant money n America without ‘kissing arse’. The upshot is most thankfully that Berkeley is teaching students to think outside the box. Hopefully that includes the box of American ‘successes’.
Sundance Special Jury Prize doc winner American Promise was 14 years in the making as middle-class parents Joe and Michele pointed a camera on their son Idris and his best mate Seun. If you ever thought that the ‘race’ issue had been solved post-Obama then think again (as was clearly debated too by students in At Berkeley). These kids are at the prestigious private school of Dalton (Manhattan). And they are the token non-white kids. As one teacher notes quite aptly, ‘no one ever thinks if putting white kids in a black school’. Is this doc too long too? Well maybe. And yet the subject is still so interesting that it almost demands Wiseman’s long form approach to impart even more information. The ADHD question of Idris is also an interesting one and how Afro-Americans are ‘wrongly’ more often misdiagnosed due to non accounting for cultural differences.
Claude Lanzmann’s documentary The Last of the Unjust is in a league of its own. If one were to suggest to one’s ‘date’ seeing this documentary on a Friday night it may seem like a laughable line from a Woody Allen movie. But at over just under 4 hours it is truly a riveting masterpiece. All the more because the questions it asks painfully resonate far beyond the subject of the Holocaust. As its subject Benjamin Murmelstein quotes the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer: “All Jews were martyrs but not all Jews were saints”. Murmelstein likens the Jewish ghetto of Theresienstadt and it’s cremation furnace to the paradox of Rome’s Coliseum- that without the Jewish deaths there would be no need for a camp nor its occupants. A Catch-22 if ever there was one.
A more ‘entertaining’ shall we say doc of the Fest is The Dog- the ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ story of John Wojtowicz on whose bank robbery escapade the Al Pacino film Dog Day Afternoon was based. And there is an unflappable logic to one point he makes when speaking of being criticized for trying to make money out of his crime e.g. standing outside the bank after his release signing autographs and photos. ‘How much did Warner Brothers make out of my crime’? That begs a whole bigger question…
When it comes to ‘real life’ it is great to see a mini-retrospective (2 films plus her latest, Exhibition) in Emerging Artists (Fernando Eimbcke’s Club Sandwich is also well worth catching) of now stalwart London Film Festival fave Joanna Hogg. Her films really do hold their own in a very tough crowded Festival field. And what’s more with a totally individual voice. Her camera lingers on the mundane of human interaction culminating in a solitary mediation of where one is on this planet. And of course in a quirky British bent. It’s a world away from Indy American cinema but it is the same world.
More to come…
Tuesday 17 September 2013
a foggy day in London town, picks me up/New York in June, where the he---ll were you?
is New York more exciting than London? Is it seasonal or is it...? Londoners (who've crossed the seas) would say (after only a week) and rather reluctantly: well yes. Whereas NYorkers would race to the defense of London (probably even if they'd never been there). The jury really is out on that one. We ponder only on that question twofold because a) a very London transport experience was to be had traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan on the subway this morning- the first day of 2013 New York Film Festival screenings and the subway is f***ed so we arrive 30 minutes late. Though some would say no great loss to Frederick Wiseman's 4hour documentary At Berkeley. And b) the MTA New York subway is heaven compared to London Underground's ...ah...well..umm: where does that devil in devil cake live? Or to put it more wisely: one needs to know what hell is like compared to take-away heaven!
The same criticism seems leveled at Wiseman's doco At Berkeley. Not enough, too little, too much. While writing continues on this and many other ummm delights please pay close attention to your stewardess video on survival:
William Kentridge: Second-hand Reading- VIDEO HERE
The same criticism seems leveled at Wiseman's doco At Berkeley. Not enough, too little, too much. While writing continues on this and many other ummm delights please pay close attention to your stewardess video on survival:
William Kentridge: Second-hand Reading- VIDEO HERE
Wednesday 11 September 2013
of course what happens in New York ...stayles New York or is that Jersey...
of course, the plot of Allan Dwan's Silver Lode is a world, if not planet, neh solar system away from present day New York. Such honorable men, women and mutants. What say you Jennifer Lawrence....Of course sir Robert de Niro would say Everybody's Fine. I've been hearing about this old German film The Wave- is that some Japanese pic in which Virginia Woolf is now portrayed anime as a rock battered on the coastline? Or is she playing Sisyphus? Thought there was now a cure for that....How r u mr Harvey...love social media donst thou? What's a blog if one can't blig?
Monday 9 September 2013
The LGBT Film Festival (NewFest) 2013
The LGBT Film Festival (NewFest) celebrates
its 25th anniversary, and with the U.S. Supreme Court gay marriage ruling what a
celebration to be had. So often with ‘themed issue’ festivals one approaches screenings with more than a little trepidation of ‘will this be agit-prop’?
Based on only seeing 3 films there’s not a scent of agit prop anywhere! Those
who can’t make tonight’s screening of Who’s Afraidof Vagina Wolf? (Mon Sept 9)- director Anna Margarita Albelo
attends for a Q & A- are strongly urged to find a copy. It may be sort of a
gay anthem Hollywood ending, but then, some things in life do happily end ever
after. Did we also say it was very, very funny and quite sad? The Festival’s closing night film (Sept 11) Chris Mason Johnson’s Test also ends if not happily then melancholic rather than maudlin. If you were
around circa 1985 the brilliantly remembered details in this film certainly
draw a smile e.g. not getting that phone call because the telephone cord is
tangled, and the remote yet strangely intimate answa-machine message that plays
like an old LP record - something that mobile phone messaging/mail just can’t
seem to beat. The acting is great, the music and for once superb dancing and
choreography. And actors who can dance!- they are all in close-up and there are
no doubles listed in the credits. Brian de Palma’s Passion was seen at last
year’s New York Film Festival and is what it is. And as with all de Palma
brilliantly is: exquisitely choreographed with some Jerome Robbins' ballet Afternoon
of a Faun thrown in for very good measure.
Thursday 29 August 2013
Tuesday 20 August 2013
Thomas Hirschhorn's GRAMSCI MONUMENT- New York 2013
PHOTOS HERE for Thomas Hirschhorn's GRAMSCI MONUMENT- New York 2013
(...my apologies for those wanting to access these photos and who have been unable to. SMUGMUG has the complaints.)
(...my apologies for those wanting to access these photos and who have been unable to. SMUGMUG has the complaints.)
Sunday 7 July 2013
blue smoke of brittle leaves
Go HERE for video of James Turrell's press conference at the Guggenheim Museum, New York (June 20, 2013)
Tuesday 19 March 2013
Cockles and mussles
This year’s Oscars seem a world away now. But one comment
stuck in the brain for further thought. That of First Lady Michelle Obama when
Jack Nicholson handed her the flame via video link to light up this year’s Best
Film winner. She suggested that these films and filmmakers may allow and
encourage people to “dream a bigger dream”. Which begged the question of American society
and whether dreaming that dream was always such a good idea. The sky may be the
limit as the adage goes but worryingly they are few and far between who warn
one not to fly too close to that sun. Not that the First Lady in any way
encouraged false hope. Far from it. The trouble with Britain as an economic
player has always been so often that it just wouldn’t dream that dream thereby
forfeiting and allowing foreign companies to profit from a lack of vision. So
often, you were better off remaining an ‘under dog’ than parading one’s talents
in that country. In fact one of Argo’s producers Graham King (a Brit made good in
Hollywood) is on record as saying that Britain needs to make films that people everywhere
want to go and see while not sacrificing quality for quantity or being lumbered
with national identity traits. He certainly succeeded (though not for Britain) with Argo. And though many
Brit critics like to ‘pooh pooh’ the trad quality of Downton Abbey, it’s one of
Britain’s greatest cultural export success s in living memory.
Without placing words into the First Lady’s mouth, surely
what she meant was that Americans always
need to be made aware that there is another reality to the one willfully and
worryingly casually thrust upon them by themselves. Not that success or an alternative
life is necessarily bad just that one needs find that success on one’s own terms
and not on the prevailing winds of one’s neighborhood, friends, family, or ‘heaven
for fend’ American TV.
Every year in New York, MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln
Center team up for New Directors/New Films – this year’s Oscar for Best Live
Action Short (Curfew) and Best Documentary (How to Survive a Plague)
both screened at last year’s festival. And the journey of some of this year’s
shorts is too worth watching,
Probably the most unforgettable film of this year’s 25 films
and 3 shorts slot fest (described as more a “documentary of the
imagination”) is Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (executive produced
by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog). Participants of the Communist purge after Indonesia’s
1965 military coup are asked to re-enact their crimes. The idea was sparked by
how readily and casually people posed smiling for photos in front of their horrific
acts. And the film is certainly equal to any of the video art out there these
days. The idea of these men dressing up (sometimes as their female victims in make
up with Bollywood style dance routines) stems directly from the milieu they
originated from- that of the black marketeers of movie tickets. Even to the
extent of extolling the virtues of the gangster in the word’s original meaning of
‘free man’. “It’s not about fear it’s about image,” says one, “I know a good
torture scene [location]” with some of the noirish scenes easily straight out of
a Jean-Pierre Melville film. “War crimes are determined by the winners [so what
makes us different from any other victorious nation]”. The film is prefaced by
Voltaire’s dictum: "It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers
are punished unless they kill in large
numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
UK released by Dogwoof June 28.
UK released by Dogwoof June 28.
This is surely the most inventive, provocative,
mesmerizing and unbelievable film about war crimes you are ever likely to see -
included in that judgement is the documentary The Gatekeepers (UK released by Metrodome April 12).
And you kinda need a paragraph devoted just to fresh air as
a break before discussing anything else in the festival.
Other films from ND/NF that stayed in the mind of this
website were:
A Hijacking
(UK released May 10 by Arrow Films)
The Shine of Day - with one of Germany’s most respected theatre actors Philipp Hochmair
Anton’s Right Here - familiar territory but no less poignant through its subject Anton realizing that the documentary camera can be a liberating friend and not an invader.
the beautifully photographed Küf
Viola-
combining theatrical conceit with filmic inventiveness and invasiveness – directed by Matías Piñeiro
And though this year’s festival wasn’t quite as full of fascinating gems as last year several films still stay in the mind:
and Jacques Doillon’s perhaps over-long You, Me and Us whose inherent emotional theatricality bears similarities to Viola in ND/NF- you might say Racine as compared to Pirandello.
New York’s The Armory Show celebrated its 100th anniversary this year coinciding with the celebration of Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 Bride Stripped Bare of her Bachelors.
Viola-
combining theatrical conceit with filmic inventiveness and invasiveness – directed by Matías Piñeiro
and noteworthy if perhaps a touch self-conscious -
Towheads- directed
(and starring) Shannon Plumb with indy film director stalwart Derek Cianfrance
as her husband whose face we barely ever see and with his 2 real life kids on
screen who we unregrettably see loads of.
Tower - directed
by Kazik Radwanski
Upstream Color - directed by Shane
Carruth
The Fest’s closing night film:
Our Nixon collates the Super 8 film of Nixon’s aides- much of which has simply sat in an
FBI vault for decades. Is it revelatory? Well, yes and no. Nixon has always been
an easy scapegoat and guy to hate. But just as Oliver Stone’s Nixon film tried to show he was a far more complex and
interesting guy if reprehensible. And so
much of the footage and audio here is just priceless as historical documentation.
So, see for yourself.
Former film critic Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds (Som
ao redor) from
last year’s ND/NF is UK released on March 22 by Artificial Eye (Cinema Guild released
in the States)
And from this year’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema Fest, arrives Ozon’s In theHouse (UK released by Momentum)
And though this year’s festival wasn’t quite as full of fascinating gems as last year several films still stay in the mind:
The Girl from Nowhere – great performances and an interesting
idea that just misses going somewhere.
Augustine
Three Worlds – when the big dream collides into reality
and Jacques Doillon’s perhaps over-long You, Me and Us whose inherent emotional theatricality bears similarities to Viola in ND/NF- you might say Racine as compared to Pirandello.
Note that Eureka DVD has some great French releases in its Masters of Cinema series:
The ever relevant and still blackly funny Poison (1951)
Chabrol’s feature debut Le Beau Serge (1958) and Les
Cousins
and the great Italian Fellini’s City of Women (1980)
Eureka’s (like Criterion’s in the States) are all about
championing innovation in cinema. But is anything shocking anymore? Can it be?
Eureka brought us The Human Centipede that outdoes ND/NF’s Upstream Color
by miles. You’d wished that the latter
had gone more in its Manchurian Candidate direction: the prevalence of mind, body,
environment manipulation in America. But it wasn’t the film the director wished
to make. His call. CNN revealed the shocking (but hardly surprising) facts of
soldiers’ testimonials a few months ago and how the U.S. military used them as
guinea pigs (The Narcotics Farm doco covered similar ground).
New York’s The Armory Show celebrated its 100th anniversary this year coinciding with the celebration of Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 Bride Stripped Bare of her Bachelors.
Dancing around Duchamp at London's Barbican.
We quote from our betters..
The Guardian’s: Adrian Searle: “Rauschenberg famously declared that
he wanted to work in the gap between art and life. Cage announced that he
wanted to eradicate the difference. Duchamp said he wanted to turn his life
into art, and that he believed in the artist, but wasn't so sure about art.
Johns, or rather his painting, said "No". Over his long career,
Johns's art has both veiled and detailed the private – whether it was his
everyday life in the studio or a map of the house he grew up in, while always
maintaining a poker-faced refusal to explain. Perhaps that's what he meant by
that NO.”
Eric Shiner (director of The Andy Warhol Museum
since July 2011) postured at one of this year’s Armory Show Open Forums (Sun 3pm): “What
is shocking? Or has contemporary art come to a point where nothing is shocking?”
There was little if ANYTHING that
transgressed let alone shocked. Except for the temperature differential of Pier
94 and that between front and back of Pier 92- a sort
of unintentional Miami-New York comment. In comparison to most work on show (for the first
time you could see almost everything (98%) on ArtSy) John Latham’s 1991 God is Great (LissonGallery) looked as if it had been written yesterday. There was even an artificial snowman in one of the
passageways. But it was hard not to believe that the London effort of this website wasn’t a tad more interesting.
Artist Alec Soth on the panel noted: “encountering reality at this point is transgressive…the ambition of transgression is almost always going to be bought” Another speaker pointed out the irony that in MFA’s students are “taught the business of art when [now] there really is no business”. And writer/journalist John Bowe felt just being polite was transgressive enough these days and noted “the smallness of the conversation” in the art world and that “newspapers are going the same way”. Also on the panel was Participant Inc’s founder Lia Gangitano –and all the conversation made her last show celebrating Andy Kaufman sound the equal of Duchamp!
Peter Conrad’s Observer review of
George Bellows’ Royal Academy show:
“The
muscular tension and fraught distortion of the figures in Stag at Sharkey's
gives them an unexpected modernity. The painting dates from 1909, four years
before the Armory Show brought cubism and post-impressionism to bewildered,
scandalised New York and caused Theodore Roosevelt – a president as well as an
art critic, whose gospel of "the strenuous life" Bellows often seems
to be illustrating – to rail at the lunacy of "European extremists".
Roosevelt particularly scorned Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase,
and wondered if the painter belonged to the school of
"Parallelopipedonists, or Knights of the Isosceles Triangle".” Echoes
of our beloved Richard M. Nixon there.
Artist Alec Soth on the panel noted: “encountering reality at this point is transgressive…the ambition of transgression is almost always going to be bought” Another speaker pointed out the irony that in MFA’s students are “taught the business of art when [now] there really is no business”. And writer/journalist John Bowe felt just being polite was transgressive enough these days and noted “the smallness of the conversation” in the art world and that “newspapers are going the same way”. Also on the panel was Participant Inc’s founder Lia Gangitano –and all the conversation made her last show celebrating Andy Kaufman sound the equal of Duchamp!
To, perhaps, the chagrin of many and the glee of others,
artist Liz Magic Laser was commissioned this year to design all the merchandising and invites for The Armory Show. Somewhat turning a mirror on the fair itself and treating
the commission as an advertising campaign with very pertinent results – the
creative process on show in the Focus USA section (curated by Shiner) -
and Liz’s work was arguably the most radical there. Gagosian had enough wooden
floor space to mount a dance event. But didn’t. We hope greater things from Shiner's Genesis P-Orridge show this summer.
One heartening fact gleaned at the show was that International Corporate Art was successfully introducing contemporary art on a fairly massive scale to its guests on Celebrity Cruises.
Poem Copyright 2013 Andrew Lucre
One heartening fact gleaned at the show was that International Corporate Art was successfully introducing contemporary art on a fairly massive scale to its guests on Celebrity Cruises.
One pale mermaid
tankers and cruise ships are caught
between motion and understanding
or the very least questioning
She seems so small
not even worthy of a capital f- polite
or no
yet she straddles the safe harbour of
that
and the allowance of nature's black,
blue utterance in that small benign blue strip beyond
Her color no longer needs interpretation
And as if her plinth were there for sole
human industrial scale
grandeur beyond the grayest means.
New Jersey sputters.
New York complains. as always
as Her canvas itself wasnt enough.
she maintains a presence of being not
defiance
ready as if at will
prepared to jump over the wobbly pale
line of reason into adventure.
her Wordsworth farewell of "how
arrogant is she when HER parents and neighbours heart is heard no more."
the Dutch made you and defeated you
did she ever realise how arrogant was
build against her forbears' beautiful line of reason
and then was the darkness
And she stood alone.
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