POLLY MORGAN 'Burials'
....Polly Morgan is at the very forefront of modern taxidermy. She has contributed to a shift in public perception that has taken ‘the art of preparing, stuffing and mounting the skins of animals with lifelike effect’ to places never dreamed of by its original Victorian practitioners. The vitrines are still there but little else remains. Birds are taken out of their natural habitat and are reassembled, often in mass, creating sculptures of astonishing and often disquieting beauty. For ‘Psychopomps’ at Haunch of Venison last year, this theme of disintegration and recomposition was keenly explored. ‘Burials’ takes this idea to its logical end, interment and then potential rebirth elsewhere. ‘The coffin’ (Carrion Call), with its shrieking chicks, makes a welcome return, this time transported to the dimly-lit backroom of a Venetian palazzo; Count Dracula’s transportation of his own coffins from Transylvania to Carfax Abbey in London, performs an almost perfect reverse. A sense of imprisonment and the futility of escape dominates this exhibition, escape is actually, both metaphorically and physically, an unlikely possibility. Three new-style works adorn the walls, in the shapes of a spade, a coffin-lid and a headstone respectively. Other large-scale pieces that further celebrate the themes of rebirth and spring are also included in the form of an ancient (much twisted) maypole and a scorched flying machine held aloft by flame-orange finches and canaries. Polly Morgan 'Burials,' her first solo show in Italy, is on view until July 22 at the Workshop Arte Contemporanea in Venice - www.workshopvenice.com
[ART IN THE DESERT] Holographic Heart
Curated by Maximilla Lukacs the Red Arrow Gallery in Joshua Tree hosts Holographic Heart: Images of Ecstatic Tradition and Ritual from the HERE and NOW. On view will be photography by Eliot Lee Hazel, Logan White, Alison Scarpulla, Adarsha Benjamin, Yelena Yemchuk, Todd Weaver, Galen Pehrson, Jena Malone and more. July 9 at the Red Arrow Gallery from 7 to 9 p.m 61597 29 Palms Hwy Joshua Tree, CA.
Glamour of the Gods
Leo (John Gilbert) kisses Felicitas (Greta Garbo) in Flesh and the Devil (1926)
Glamour of the Gods is a celebration of Hollywood portraiture from the industry's 'Golden Age', the period 1920 to 1960. From Greta Garbo and Clark Gable to Audrey Hepburn, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, it is these portraits that transformed actors and actresses into international style icons. In many cases these are the career-defining images of Hollywood's greatest names and help to illustrate their enduring appeal. Featuring over 70 photographs, most of which are exquisite vintage prints displayed for the first time, the exhibition is drawn from the extraordinary archive of the John Kobal Foundation and demonstrate photography's decisive role in creating and marketing the stars central to the Hollywood mystique. Now on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London until October 23. www.npg.org.uk
[NOVELS] A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion
"Based on a real case whose lurid details scandalized Americans in 1927 and sold millions of newspapers, acclaimed novelist Ron Hansen's latest work is a tour de force of erotic tension and looming violence. Trapped in a loveless marriage, Ruth Snyder is a voluptuous, reckless, and altogether irresistible woman who wishes not only to escape her husband but that he die—and the sooner the better. No less miserable in his own tedious marriage is Judd Gray, a dapper corset-and-brassiere salesman who travels the Northeast peddling his wares. He meets Ruth in a Manhattan diner, and soon they are conducting a white-hot affair involving hotel rooms, secret letters, clandestine travels, and above all, Ruth's increasing insistence that Judd kill her husband. Could he do it? Would he? What follows is a thrilling exposition of a murder plan, a police investigation, the lovers' attempt to escape prosecution, and a final reckoning for both of them that lays bare the horror and sorrow of what they have done. Dazzlingly well-written and artfully constructed, this impossible-to-put-down story marks the return of an American master known for his elegant and vivid novels that cut cleanly to the essence of the human heart, always and at once mysterious and filled with desire." More...
Yan Morvan's Bikers
In Arles, at 5 rue des Arènes, Marc Bervillé from the Parisian gallery “Iconoclastes”, is featuring 25 photographs from an exceptional series by Yan Morvan on gang men and bikers in the 1970’s. More....
Helmut Newton: Sleepless Nights
Houston hosts the U.S. premiere of an exhibition featuring the entire contents from Helmut Newton´s first three groundbreaking books: White Women (1976), Sleepless Nights (1978), and Big Nudes (1981). The 205 photographs in these books established Newton´s reputation as the supreme recorder of female identity, and as a master craftsman of the photographic medium. A complete set of the prints in the exhibition has been acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
Ed Ruscha: On the Road
Ed Ruscha photographed by Dennis Hopper
In 1951, Kerouac wrote On the Road on his typewriter as a continuous 120 foot-long scroll, feverishly recording in twenty days his experiences during road trips in the U.S. and Mexico in the late 1940s. With its publication in 1957, Kerouac was acknowledged as the leading voice of the Beat Generation, a group of writers that included Alan Ginsberg and William Burroughs. Over the last few years Ed Ruscha has continued to explore his own fascination with the shifting emblems of American life by turning his keen aesthetic sensibility to Kerouac’s classic novel. Having created his own limited edition artist book version of On the Road in 2009 published by Gagosian Gallery and Steidl, and illustrated with photographs that he took, commissioned, or found, Ruscha has created an entirely new body of paintings and drawings that take their inspiration from passages in Kerouac’s novel. Opening today at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles an exhibition entitled Ed Ruscha: On the Road includes Ruscha’s edition of Kerouac’s legendary novel, six large paintings on canvas, and ten drawings on museum board, each taking its text from On the Road. www.hammer.ucla.edu
The Accursed Poets
Paul Verlaine
Nineteenth-century French poete maudits (accursed poets — poets who lived outside or rebelled against society), such as Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Comte de Lautreamont, have inspired numerous artists of various eras. An exhibition in Japan showcases etchings and prints of 20th-century artists, including Maurice Denis, Salvador Dali and Roberto Matta, who celebrated such French poetry. On view are around 180 works, including Matta's interpretation of Rimbaud's "Une Saison en Enfer" and a copy of de Lautreamont's "Les Chants de Maldoror," which inspired print works by Bernard Buffet as well as illustrations by Dali. On view until August 7 at the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, (042) 726-2771, 4-28-1 Haramachida, Machida-shi.
Le Royal Monceau Exhibits Melvin Sokolsky
Luxury hotel Le Royal Monceau – Raffles Paris exhibits Work by photographer Melvin Sokolsky starting Thursday, July 7th, 2011 "Rétrospective" will showcase American photograph Melvin Sokolsky, a major figure in the revival of fashion photography in the 1960s. Considered the golden age of photography, this was a period of major innovations and audacious images, a decade that formulated a new vocabulary that still inspires image-makers to this day. www.raffles.com
Picasso at Work
Cannes, 8 February 1956. The photojournalist David Douglas Duncan stops his car in front of Villa La Californie, residence of one of the most famous artists of all time: Pablo Picasso. In his hand is a ring especially made for Picasso, who appreciates the gesture and invites him into his home, his studio and his intense life. With Stephanie Ansari and Tatyana Franck as its curators, Picasso at Work. Through the Lens of David Douglas Duncan brings together in the Museo Picasso Málaga 115 photographs selected from among the thousands that Duncan took of the artist and his milieu in those years. www.museopicassomalago.com
Second Annual Solid Sound Festival at MASS MoCA
Photos feature Thurston Moore Playing with Pillow Wand, Here We Go Magic, Adarsha Benjamin's polaroids on display at MASS MoCA.
AN OBSCENE DIARY: THE VISUAL WORLD OF SAM STEWARD
aN_OBSCENE_DIARY_THE_VISUAL_WORLD_OF_SAM_STEWARD
"An Obscene Diary The Visual World of Sam Steward" chronicles the extraordinary visual world of a talented and largely unknown, writer, artist, photographer, and sexual outlaw. The edition, limited to 1,000 copies presents a diverse and powerful collection of drawings, paintings, sculptures, decorative objects, illustrations and photographs that are remarkably varied in style, and often quite contradictory in mood and tone. Bound and slipcased, the collection presents more than 750 images, many of which are reproduced in color. This edition complements the forthcoming biography by Justin Spring, entitled "Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade" and presents a wealth of previously unpublished material, including a quantity of highly erotic and sexually explicit polaroids taken in the early 1950s. www.antinouspress.com
Thurston Moore at the Solid Sound Festival
Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth at the Solid Sound Festival in North Adams Massuchessets. Look out for his new album Demolished Thoughts. Photography by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre.
James "Whitey" Bulger's Young Mugshot
James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger, Jr. (born September 3, 1929) is a former crime boss who led the Winter Hill Gang based in Somerville, Massachusetts, in the United States. After sixteen years on the lam and on the FBI's top most wanted list he was found living a quiet life in Southern California.
New Vivian Maier Photographs Curated by Patrick Sansone
A selection of new prints by the recently discovered street photographer Vivian Maier excellently curated by Patrick Sansone of the band Wilco for the Solid Sound Festival at the MoCA Massachusetts. www.mocamass.com
photography by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre
All Utopias Fell
Artist Michael Oatman's All Utopias Fell sits atop the rafters of the old transistor factory in North Adams, Massachusetts–now home to the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art. Constructed from an old airstream trailer and parachutes as if it just dropped in from outer space. "...1970s-era ‘satellite’ that has crash-landed at MASS MoCA. This beautifully reflective, repurposed Airstream trailer – with large parachutes and active solar panels – is inspired by an earlier era of pulp aeronauts like Buck Rogers, Tom Swift and Tom Corbett: Space Cadet, as well as the works of Giotto, Jules Verne, NASA, and Chris Marker’s 1962 film La Jetée. Visitors will be allowed to climb a staircase and enter into the craft where they will encounter The Library of the Sun. Hybridizing a domestic space, a laboratory and a library, it has the feel of a hermitage, where the occupant will ‘be right back’, only it is 30 years later. www.massmoca.com
Text and Photography by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre
Pop Meets Pop. Andy Warhol and the Beatles
Unique Warhol originals from the collection of the Warhol Museum meet Beatles artifacts–exploring the relationship between Andy Warhol and John Lennon now on view The Frankfurt Museum of Communication. www.mfk-frankfurt.de
Patti Smith: Camera Solo
Patti Smith, Paris 1969, LINDA SMITH BIANUCCI
This fall, Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartfort, CT will premiere Patti Smith: Camera Solo, the first large-scale presentation of her visual work in the United States in nearly ten years. It will include approximately sixty black and white photographs and two multi-media installations.
Falos y Vaginas
