Adarsha Benjamin 'Electric Tickle Machine in Cony Island' © 2010
Today is the first day of the Rock n' Roll Circus at Lincoln Center. Exhibiting in the VIP lounge are new polaroid photographs by Adarsha Benjamin, who is also organizing the event which includes two full days of music. See previous post for more info.
"Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures focuses on the artist's cinematic portraits and non-narrative, silent, and black-and-white films from the mid-1960s. Warhol's Screen Tests reveal his lifelong fascination with the cult of celebrity, comprising a visual almanac of the 1960s downtown avant-garde scene. Included in the exhibition are such Warhol "Superstars" as Edie Sedgwick, Nico, and Baby Jane Holzer; poet Allen Ginsberg; musician Lou Reed; actor Dennis Hopper; author Susan Sontag; and collector Ethel Scull, among others. Other early films included in the exhibition are Eat (1963) and Kiss (1963–64). Twelve Screen Tests in this exhibition are projected on the gallery walls at large scale and within frames, some measuring seven feet high and nearly nine feet wide, while Kiss is shown at the rear of the gallery in a 50-seat movie theater created for the exhibition. Warhol's film Empire (1964) will be shown in this theater every other Friday starting January 7, for the duration of the exhibition. Sleep (1963), in its entirety, will be shown in this theater on Wednesday, February 2, and Wednesday, March 2." www.moma.org
I'm sitting at JFK airport waiting for a puddle jumper to Burlington, Vermont. Its new year's day. The great year of the Rabbit has begun. In the Vietnamese zodiac, the cat takes the place of the rabbit. I find it incredibly fascinating the transmutation of animal spirits to interpret our human personalities and the age in which we live. Its as if we live vicariously through their mystery, whilst captivated by their obliviousness to their own power and magic. As we enter the year of the Rabbit I think of one the greatest personalities of the 20th century: Pablo Picasso; and his painting entitled Cat Devouring a Bird and a photograph of him holding his pet owl. Pablo Picasso was born in the year of the Snake. That says a lot. Or does it? I believe that the mystical powers of animals to represent cycles, years, epochs and their cosmic associations is more real than we imagine. If in the Chinese Zodiac the Rabbit is interpreted as agile, versatile, abundant, artistic, and compassionate than why can't we hope that in fact our lives in the the new year will be the same. The motto for the year of the Rabbit is "I Retreat." Hard to do in an airport with thousands of frantic, confused, wanderlust travelers. In the Chinese Zodiac each animal has a ruling hour of the day. The rabbit's ruling hours are between 5 and 7 a.m. Sunrise. Its currently half past 6 in the morning Eastern time. Today we are all Rabbits in one strange momentary paroxysm, in the inexorable gravity, the great miasma, always being pulled closer and farther away.
Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre