The Queen Of Punk Has Died: Read Our In-Depth Exploration of The Incendiary Life and Times Of Edwige Belmore →

Edwige Belmore, “the queen of punk” has died at the age of 58 in Miami. A great many things can be said of Belmore and yet it seems that the complexity of her journey through life remains all too mysterious. What we do know is that she personally touched the lives of some of the greatest cultural influencers of the 20th century, from Helmut Newton to Andy Warhol. Her life was a beautiful rags-to-riches-to-rags tale of heartbreak and obscurity. From her early years estranged from family to being discovery by the world of high fashion and art, to the end of her life as the resident artist and landscaper at the Vagabond Hotel in Miami. Her LinkedIn account lists “landscaping hobo” and “palm tree studies” as her duties. There is certainly no way to encapsulate all of the moments of her life in a meager list of 10, but since we’ve attempted to all the same since everyone loves a listicle. Click here to read 10 things you need to know about Edwige Belmore. 

Musique Plastique at Agnès B

Now open at Agnès B's Howard Street gallery an exhibition entitled Musique Plastique, a group exhibit "exploring the ongoing interaction between the visual arts and music." Curated by Jean François Sanz, the show will feature music-themed pieces by the likes of Jean Tobias Bernstrup, Hisham Bharoocha, Etienne Charry, Brian DeGraw, Daniel Johnston, Jonas Mekas, Thurston Moore, David Shrigley, Alan Vega, Ben Vida and Liz Wendelbo. Musique Platique is on view until August 25 at 50 Howard Street, New York, and be sure to head to the Agnès B gallery website to download a compilation by the artists involved. 

This Side of Paradise

From the pages of Jonas Mekas diary: “Unpredictably, as most of my life’s key events have been, for a period of several years in the late 60s and early 70s, I had the fortune to spend some time, mostly during the summers, with Jackie Kennedy’s and her sister Lee Radziwill’s families and children. Cinema was an integral, inseparable, as a matter of fact, a key part of our friendship. The time was still very close to the untimely, tragic, death of John F. Kennedy. Jackie wanted to give something to her children to do, to help to ease the transition of life without a father. One of her thoughts was that movie camera would be fun for the children. Peter Beard, who was at that time tutoring John Jr. and Caroline in art history, suggested to Jackie that I was the man to introduce the children to cinema. Jackie said yes. And that’s how it all began. I bought them a very easily operable 16mm movie camera, and even wrote a “mini-textbook” suggesting some simple movie exercises…The images in the exposition, with a few exceptions, they all come from the summers Caroline and John Jr. spent in Montauk, with their cousins Anthony and Tina Radziwill, in an old house Lee rented from Andy Warhol, for a few summers. Andy himself spent many of his weekends there, in one of the cottages, as did Peter Beard, whom the children had adopted almost like their older brother or a father they missed. There were summers of happiness, joy and continuous celebrations of life and friendships. These are ‘Little Fragments of Paradise.’ " Tomorrow night marks the opening of “This Side of Paradise,” an exhibition of photo prints taken from original 16mm film from Jonas Mekas’ celebrated film “This Side of Paradise: Fragments of an Unfinished Biography” (1999). The exhibition will mark the first time these rare and personal images of the Kennedy and Radziwill families are on view in NYC in their entirety. Opens September 24 at the Agnès B Gallerie Boutique - 50 Howard Street New York, NY.