Mein Kulturkampf: Andres Serrano Vs. The Jesus Freaks

Last Sunday French Christian fundamentalist vandals went on an all out attack on a photograph by artist Andres Serranoat the Je Crois Aux Miracles (I Believe in Miracles) exhibition at the Collection Lambert, a contemporary art museum in Avignon, France. The photograph, Piss Christ, an image of Jesus Christ on the cross submerged in the artist's own urine, was damaged "beyond repair."  Other photographs were damaged and museum guard's lives were threatened.  If this was the middle ages Andre Serrano would undoubtably be burned alive at the stake, or...crucified. Religion and culture has always been an oxymoronic, delicate, and oft times violent affair, but spite begets spite and the holy war against sacrilege in art will always wage, and with no real front lines, as well as mass confusion as to who is the real enemy is, will never be won nor lost.

Andres Serrano is undoubtably a "shock artist" and his images are bound to illicit a response; whether good or bad depends on the viewer. Serrano's photograph Blood and Semen III - the title speaks for itself - was used by Metallica for their 1996 album Load. Is it disgusting, beautiful or both?  Serrano, who was born in 1950 in New York City, is half Honduran, half Afro-Cuban, and interestingly was raised a strict Roman Catholic. Serrano did not start making art seriously until he was 28 years old and has since exhibited globally with multiple career retrospectives.  Serrano's art has had many close calls, but never as violent as last Sunday's attack.

If tens of thousands of years of human civilization haven't proved that we are a depraved species fighting back desperately our primordial urges, we have a long way to go.  In the 1990s Andres Serrano was a pivotal figure in the culture wars that waged between conservative America and the National Endowment of Arts as to whether tax payer money should be allocated to support artists like Serrano. But it begs the question: who are the real radicals and when does this brand of blatant censorship infringe on freedom of expression?

In Andres Serrano's case he can rest assure that as long as he keeps dipping figures of Jesus Christ in jars of  his own urine the mob will always be at his door with pitchforks. But, in the case of those that can appreciate the aesthetic and visceral significance of Serrano's art, amen to you.  After three days of forced closure, despite repeated death threats, Piss Christ is miraculously on view again, albeit severely damaged.

Je Crois Aux Miracles exhibition is on view at the Collection Lambert in Avignon, until May 8th - ww.collectionlambert.com

Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre

[BOOKS] PATRICK HOELCK'S POLAROID HOTEL

LOS ANGELES - OHWOW and Leadapron are to host a book release and book signing event for Patrick Hoelck's Polaroid Hotel.

Press, flash, picture. Simple. Then wait. And wait. And wait some more. The anticipation to see what you have captured is a thrill that has been lost with modern technology. In a world full of instant there have been unfortunate casualties. Polaroid instant film was almost one of them. It's not just the nostalgia that makes Polaroids alluring. It's the unpredictability. You never know if you're going to end up with a masterpiece or a disaster but it really doesn't matter, it's yours.

In Polaroid Hotel, Hoelck pays tribute to the art of Polaroid photography with a book of images that capture intimate moments of his life and career throughout 17 years, showing that just because Polaroid has aged it hasn't lost its appeal.

Patrick Hoelck is an American contemporary photographer and director. This is Hoelck's second publication following his first book Tar, that is now out of print and considered a classic. Hoelck has shot major editorial, fashion and advertising campaigns and recently made his feature film directorial debut with Mercy, winning Best Director and Best Film in the Savannah Film Festival amongst other honors.

The book release and signing will be on the evening of Thursday, April 21, 2011 at OHWOW Gallery. www.oh-wow.com

[UTTERLY TRANSPARENT] Manuela Dack Autumn/Winter 2011

Manuela Dack has released a her new Autumn/Winter collection - which was designed to be layered and seasonally transitional.  Moreover, the "layering of sheer fabrics and embellishment over leather, wool and raw silk stay true to the designers aesthetic of subtle modern chic, while showcasing the attention to detail."

Always focusing on luxury and quality Manuela Dack juxtaposes feminine fabrics such as chiffon with harder masculine materials that include leather and metal, creating beautifully constructed and experimental pieces. While at the same time pursuing and developing new technology and materials such as scented print (as featured in W magazine), which is due to feature in an exclusive line of hand printed basics unveiling later this spring.

Her graduate collection from Middlesex University looked at ritualistic scarring and marking of the skin, referencing the designers fascination with different cultures interpretations of beauty. A collection from which signature details and pieces arose.

PICASSO AND MARIE-THÉRÈSE: Crazy Love

"You have an interesting face. I would like to do your portrait. I have a feeling we will do great things together." - Pablo Picasso

In 1927, on a street in Paris, Picasso encountered the unassuming girl, just shy of eighteen years old, who would become his lover and one of modern art’s most famous muses. “I am Picasso” he announced. The name meant nothing to Marie-Thérèse so he took her to a bookshop to show her a monograph of his paintings and asked if he could see her again. Flattered and curious, she agreed, and thus began a secret love affair that would establish Marie-Thérèse as the primary inspiration for Picasso’s most daring aesthetic experiments in the decade to come.

More than any other woman that Picasso desired and painted, Marie-Thérèse, with her statuesque body and strong, pure profile, fueled his imagination with a luminous dream of youth. Although her first appearances in his work were veiled references with her initials forming spare linear compositions, such as in the earliest work in the exhibition, Guitare à la main blanche (1927), the arrival of the blond goddess’s likeness in his art announced a new love in his life. In portrayals, Picasso would stretch her robust athletic form to new extremes, metamorphosing her in endlessly inventive ways. She became the catalyst for some of his most exceptional work, from groundbreaking paintings to an inspired return to sculpture in the 1930s, according her an almost mythic stature and earning her immortality as an art historical subject. Yet her true identity remained a secret from even Picasso’s closest friends. Even after Marie-Thérèse bore their daughter Maya in 1935, Picasso would continue to divide his time between his professional life as the most famous artist in the world, and his secret family life, spending Thursdays and weekends with her and Maya and amassing a trove of love letters and snapshots exchanged while they were apart.

Following the critical and popular success of Picasso: Mosqueteros in New York in 2009 and Picasso: The Mediterranean Years in London in 2010, Gagosian Gallery in New York is pleased to present the next chapter in an ongoing exploration of Picasso’s principal themes. Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L’amour Fou brings together the paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints inspired by one of Picasso’s most ideal models and enduring passions. The exhibition is curated by the eminent Picasso biographer, John Richardson, together with Marie-Thérèse’s granddaughter, art historian Diana Widmaier Picasso, who is currently preparing a catalogue raisonné of Picasso’s sculptures.

"....I have a feeling we will do

great things together."

The exhibition spans the years 1927 to 1940 and includes several works never before seen in the United States. The curators have assembled the group of more than eighty works to show a rarely articulated range of Marie-Thérèse’s influence within Picasso’s imagery, beyond recent headline-grabbing portraits. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with a new biographical essay by John Richardson, and Diana Widmaier Picasso’s revelatory essay exploring Picasso’s portraiture, which includes dozens of never before published photographs of Marie-Thérèse from the family archives. Elizabeth Cowling, Professor Emeritus of History of Art at Edinburgh University and co-curator of the historic exhibition “Matisse Picasso” (2002-03), has contributed an essay that examines the dissemination of images of Picasso’s sculptures through the art journals of the period.

To show Picasso’s work in a downtown contemporary art gallery creates a context that evokes the original challenges that his art presented in his own time while celebrating its enduring significance in our own. Under the direction of Valentina Castellani and installed in a dynamic transformation of the 21st Street gallery by architect Annabelle Selldorf, this unprecedented exhibition of the period will reveal Picasso’s secret muse and his l'amour fou Marie-Thérèse in a dramatic new light. www.gagosian.com

Last Full Measure: A Collection of Civil War Photographs

One hundred and fifty years ago yesterday America began a war with itself.  Over half a million would die. It was the bloodiest war in American history.  It was a war that defined our nation -  proof that goodness could triumph over oppression and evil - that common sense and justice would always prevail. We were a young, united union of proud, idealistic, and powerful Americans in the throes of a world wide industrial revolution. The first musket shots rang out on April 12th 1861.  Abraham Lincoln had just become president. All the Northern States had already abolished slavery. Lincoln planned to do the same and much more down South where slavery was still mostly legal. In response, the Southern cotton growing states succeeded and created The Confederacy, seeking independence from the United States.  The Civil War was not only a quagmire of differing political views - it was a fight for the protection of the old way and cheap labor - slavery. It was a fight born from stubbornness, refusal and also fear.  After fours years, famous battles were fought, entire cities were razed, states were won and lost, and in the end the North had won and the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, freeing all the slaves.  Now, one hundred fifty years later, we look back with intense curiosity at the thousands upon thousands of ambrotype and tintype photographs of the men who fought that fateful, hard-won battle.

The Last Full Measure: Civil War Photographs, now on view in Washington D.C., is a collection from the Liljenquist Family Collection.  It includes stunning Civil War-era ambrotype and tintype photographs, associating the "human faces, often startlingly young, with statistics on both sides in this wrenching conflict. This exhibition features portraits of enlisted men in uniform—both Union and Confederate—and serves as a memorial to those who lost their lives during the war by displaying images of 360 Union soldiers in uniform—one for every thousand who died—and 52 rare images of Confederate soldiers—one for every five thousand casualties."

Tom Liljenquist and his sons, life long inhabitants of Virginia, had become obsessed with the Civil War after finding bits of shells, artillery, and bullets around their home. In 2010 they donated what had become the Liljenquist Family Collection of ambrotype and tintypes to the Library Congress for posterity. This exhibition is on view until August 13, 2011 at the Library of Congress. www.myloc.gov

Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre Images Courtesy of the Library of Congress

NOBUYOSHI ARAKI, It Was Once a Paradise

It Was Once a Paradise, Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki’s new series of photographs, shown as 40 diptychs, is a bi-polar collision of the id and superego. In his new, as-yet-unseen series, which will be shown later this month at Reflex Art Gallery in Amsterdam,  Araki “addresses the complex relationship between loss and desire, which translates as despair and hope, separation and symbiosis, the internal and the other.” Nobuyoshi Araki, who is now 71 and has published over 400 books of photography, has had a life long fascination with sex & death in his work.

In his new series, Araki’s diptychs are a contrast of two independent, but mutual worlds. On one side are black and white photographs of close-ups of his Tokyo balcony, a place that was once his own private world shared with his late wife and cats - a sanctuary  now overrun with the despairing, assemblage of toy monsters and dinosaurs - symbolic of a certain infestation of deep melancholy and, seemingly, a realization of mortality. On the other side of the diptych is a color image of a beautiful, nude women, intricately tied up - adumbrative of the eternal, erotic, technicolor Oz of sexual desire.  In Japan, Kinbaku, or ’the beauty of tight binding’ is the intricate art of bondage of which Araki is somewhat of a master.  It can be concluded though, that a true elucidation of the meaning of Araki’s photographic oeuvre is not entirely attainable - which is a testament to their beauty and vast psychological complexity. Araki is, after all, an artist. Nobuyoshi Araki, It Was Once a Paradise will be on view from April 23 till July 16 2011 at the Alex Daniels - Reflex Gallery in Amsterdam. There will also be a book published in conjunction with the exhibit. www.reflexamsterdam.com

Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre

DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY: Form Forming Formation

Touched by the Hand of God

David Benjamin Sherry, whose solo show is opening at OHWOW gallery on April 30th in Los Angeles, is a photographer on the rise, and maybe acid. Sherry's brilliant photographic machinations include strikingly prismatic still lives, tableau vivants, all with electric colors, and as a testament to the electricity of his images, all are analog C-Prints - which means he uses film.

Spectral Red, Give Me Head Till I'm Dead

Making Sure White Sand Dunes Stain

Manorathadayaks

Self Portrait as the Born Feeling Begins

The upcoming exhibition, Form Forming Formation, is a solo presentation of David Benjamin Sherry’s photographic work that studies "concepts of geometry, science, color, materiality, and the course of change." David Benjamin Sherry: Form Forming Formation is on view April 30 - May 27, 2011 at OHWOW gallery in Los Angeles. www.oh-wow.com

The Lake and Stars S/S 2011

Named after a Victorian euphemism for a woman’s skill in the bedroom, The Lake and Stars intimates balance provocation and humor, intelligence and sensuality, for a new vision of feminine style.

Streamlined lingerie and swimwear find a place among more traditional lingerie essentials, for creative pairings that revive the classic and redefine the seductive. Designed to stand alone or in complement to other clothes, the pieces themselves embody a broader view of lingerie as fashion expression, rather than costume. Their clean lines and assertive detailing describe unique stylistic characters all their own, making them as personal as they are diverse, and as accessible as they are luxurious. They are intimates meant to be seen—reflecting, as a fashion statement, on the open and sophisticated tastes of their wearer.
lingerie

For Spring 2011, designers Nikki Dekker and Maayan Zilberman took last season’s idea of “fetish” and explored it as a means of “ritual”. Inspired by the ‘80s New Age approach to spirituality and well-being, and today’s resurgence of communal living and cult practices, the team created their own “family” environment to stage various rituals. Playing with the notion that lingerie can be a key player in the ritual of romance, the new slideshow album, photographed by Tom Hines, offers tongue-in cheek advice on how to stay grounded and how not to take it all too seriously.

BVLGARI: THE ART OF JEWELLRY MAKING

Snake bracelet in gold and polychrome enamel, diamond eyes, ca. 1965

Slightly more demure and underrated, glimmering in the shadows of Cartier, the house of Bulgari – the 127 year old jewelry company – is taking new approaches and readapting vintage styles that have made them adored by so many of the glitterati: from hollywood to the royal palaces of Europe. By far their most elegant pieces are from the famous Serpenti collection.
bulgari_blue_serpentine

Snake watch-bracelet in gold and polychrome enamel, sapphire eyes, ca. 1965

Snake watch-bracelet in gold and polychrome enamel, sapphire eyes, ca. 1965

Snake belt in gold and white enamel, sapphire eyes, ca. 1970

Vist the Bulgari to see an small online retrospective of Bulgari jewellry - there will also be an exhibit at this summer's Art Basel in Switzerland. en.bulgari.com

Henry Leutwyler's Sacred Artifacts of Pop

Gold Beretta Elvis

Elvis Presley's Gold Beretta Henry Leutwyler's Artifacts series instantly turns this photographer into a brilliant archeologist of pop culture; carefully, methodically recording the contents for posterity.   There's Elvis' gold Beretta, Bob Dylans's harmonica, the pistol that took John Lennon's life and most famously Michael Jackson's glove. Neverland Lost, a portrait of Michael Jackson, an exhibit at Foley Gallery in New York explores a series of photographs Leutwyler captured at Jackson's Neverland Ranch a year before the singer died.

Elvis Presley's Wallet Bob Dylan's Harmonica Andy Warhols's Paintbrush The gun that killed John Lennon

Bruce Davidson's Rebellious Teenagers

Bruce Davidson 1959, New York City, Coney Island, 1959.

Bruce Davidson, unlike other photographers before him, embedded himself in the world of his subjects for extended periods he even joined a circus in 1958 in order to get the right pictures the results of which formed themselves into series of powerful photo-essays. Brooklyn Gang' and East 100th Street' are perhaps his two most famous, and are the results of months and months living with both a gang of youths on Coney Island, and the inhabitants of a run-down tenement block in Harlem, New York. Through a combination of familiarity and his own visual poetry, Davidson brought these, and other subjects, to life in the many books and exhibitions that resulted from these projects.  Opening in May 2011, an exhibition in London will focus on several of these key photo-essays, namely, The Circus, Brooklyn Gang, Civil Rights Movement, East 100th Street, England/Scotland/Wales - 1960, and Central Park. www.chrisbeetlesfinephotographs.com

Bruce Davidson, Kiss, 1959.

Bruce Davidson 1959, New York City, Coney Island, 1959.

Bruce Davidson 1959, New York City, Coney Island, 1959.

Bruce Davidson 1959, New York City, Coney Island, 1959.

Bruce Davidson 1959, New York City, Coney Island, 1959.

bruce_davidson_photography_new_york_brooklyn_gang

Bruce Davidson 1959, New York City, Coney Island, 1959.

Kevin Hayes: The Dirtiest Rainbow

Kevin Hayes' photography is a bloody car wreck on a hot summer highway - hard to take your eyes away from. Hayes seems to have the rare opportunity of complete access to the pig pen of diseased swine - the keys to the dark kingdom of humanities other side; and quite naturally I might add.  It begs the question: what is on the other side of the dirtiest rainbow?

Visit the Dirtiest Rainbow here.

The Mystery & Ambiguity of Christer Strömholm

left + right: Foire de Pigalle, Paris, 1955*

Originally published in 1967, Poste Restante has become one of the most collectible photography books from the mid-twentieth century, ranking alongside the better known publications of Robert Frank and Ed van der Elsken. Strömholm’s photographic autobiography details his extensive travels across the globe in a book constructed as an Existentialist diary. Juxtaposing the urbane and the macabre, combining portraiture and street scenes with abstract photographic fragments, the book uses metaphor and visual pun in an unrelenting stream of consciousness. In its sequence and design it is a book which pre-figures much of contemporary photographic publishing and art practice.

left: Jacky with dog, Paris, circa 1950 right: Cobra, Paris, circa 1960**

left: Stockholm, 1976 right: Merciful sisters, 1976***

left: Ingalill, Paris, 1979 right: The Kiss, Paris, 1962****

Poste Restante by Christer Strömholm will be available this April by Steidl books. www.steidlville.com

* Pigalle - The show occupies an essential place in the work of Christer Strömholm who photographs cinema and theater posters and produces a series on the Pigalle square. He likes fixing his attention on the spectators who introduce new points of view and invites us to imagine scenes beyond the picture.
** Place Blanche, 1956-1962 - The series Place Blanche, created between 1956 and 1962, is dedicated to the transvestites and the transsexuals of this Parisian district. Strömholm does not pose his models in the nude. Never a Peeping Tom, he knows how to protect mystery and ambiguity.
*** Polaroïds , 1976 - About twenty Polaroids created by Strömholm in 1976 present the assemblies of images and objects and constitute so many visual plays on words that reveal the profound influence of surrealism on Strömholm.
**** Paris - It is by the end of the 40’s, at the college of Beaux-Arts in Paris, that Christer Strömholm dedicates himself completely to photography. Far from the humanism of Doisneau or decisive moment of Cartier-Bresson, he develops a subjective and eclectic photography that refuses any anecdote and any hierarchy among the subjects. In addition to portraits stolen from the street, he multiplies the photos of objects. Strange and ghastly rubbish, these last ones return to the surrealist found object and evoke the recovery of the new realists to whom Strömholm was close.

The Face in the Lens: Anonymous Photographs

Anonymous photography has a magic all its own. The intriguing images assembled here by collector and curator Robert Flynn Johnson are all mysterious, but their appeal is various. By turns poignant, humorous, erotic, and disturbing, their subject is the human condition.

In ten stunning chapters every aspect of human experience—both public and private—is explored. Richly reproduced and with subtle tonalities marking their age, over 220 photographs showcase the work of photographers whose identities have been lost in time. The images are never anything less than mesmerizing and include previously unseen portraits of such stars as Cary Grant, Richard Burton, and Marlene Dietrich.

France, circa 1910

 

Introduced by Alexander McCall Smith, this follow-up to Johnson's widely acclaimed Anonymous touches on birth, marriage, death, disease, hope, glory, and despair and a plethora of additional emotions, events, and human states, and will capture the imagination of any reader. The Face in the Lens: Anonymous Photographs by Robert Flynn Johnson will be available in the United States and Canada this coming April by University of California Press. www.ucpress.edu

Wim Delvoye's Sexrays

Wim Delvoye, born 1965, is a Belgian neo-conceptual artist known for his inventive and often shocking projects. Much of his work is focused on the body. He repeatedly links the attractive with the repulsive, creating work that holds within it inherent contradictions- one does not know whether to stare, be seduced, or to look away. Wim Delvoye has an eclectic oeuvre, exposing his interest in a range of themes, from bodily function, to the Catholic Church, and numerous subjects in between. He lives and works in Belgium, but recently moved to China after a court of law judged his pig tattoo art projects illegal. Delvoye is additionally well known for his “gothic” style work. In 2001, Delvoye, with the help of a radiologist, had several of his friends paint themselves with small amounts of barium, and perform explicit sexual acts in medical X-ray clinics. Wim Delvoye then used the X-ray scans to fill gothic window frames instead of classic stained glass.

Delvoye suggests that radiography reduces the body to a machine. When he was not an active participant, Delvoye observed from a computer screen in another room, allowing the subjects enough distance to perform normally, although Delvoye has described the whole operation as "very medical, very antiseptic." Delvoye also creates oversized laser-cut steel sculptures of objects typically found in construction, customized in seventeenth century Flemish Baroque style. These structures juxtapose "medieval craftsmanship with Gothic filigree." Delvoye brings together the heavy, brute force of contemporary machinery and the delicate craftsmanship associated with Gothic architecture. www.wimdelvoye.be