Photo50 at London Art Fair

Found photograph by Julie Cockburn

London Art Fair presents Photo50, its  annual showcase of contemporary photography at the  Business Design Centre, Islington, from 18–22 January 2012. With the title The New Alchemists: contemporary  photographers transcending the print, curator Sue Steward  has selected 50 works by contemporary artists whose practice sees them adorn, transform, subvert or deface the  photographic print. They are: Veronica Bailey, David Birkin, Aliki Braine, Julie Cockburn, Melinda Gibson, Noemie Goudal, Joy Gregory, Walter Hugo, Lesley Parkinson, Jorma Puranen, Esther Teichmann and Michael Wolf.  This exhibition focuses on new techniques and approaches to re-presenting the photographic image and how artists are involving other media. Whether reclaiming traditional techniques, exploiting digital developments or employing other forms of craft and media, the work presented in Photo50 challenges our assumptions about what a photograph is, or can be. London Art Fair is on view at the Design Center in Islington, London, January 18 to January 22, 

McQueen Motorcycles to Vegas Auction

Steve McQueen motorcycles are up for auction at the 21st Annual Las Vegas Motorcycle Auction and Races at the South Point Hotel & Casino Jan. 12-14 in Las Vegas. Not only will two of McQueen's classic motorcycles (1938 Triumph Speed Twin and 1940 Indian Four Cylinder) and a personal Bell (1970) helmet be on the block for the MidAmerica Auctions, but his widow, Barbara McQueen, will be serving as the guest of honor.

Funeral Songs

What song do you want played at your funeral? Daniel Mudie Cunningham has been asking that question of artists and art workers since 2007. Hundreds of people answered it in all manner of ways that ranged from the profound to the playful. The idea for Funeral Songs is based in personal experience. Weeks before the artist’s brother unexpectedly died in 2001, he’d mentioned what song should be played at his funeral. Amid the grief, the song choice was forgotten. Now recalled several years on, the song features in the Cunningham’s jukebox archive of music you can live or die to. Funeral Songs will be on view at the MONA (Museum of Old New Art) in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia,from January 13 to February 13, 2011 – the exhibition will also be a part of the annual MONA FOMA event (curated by Brian Ritchie, bass player for the Violent Femmes) which includes performances, art, and the like.

[BOOKS] The Last Nude

A stunning story of love, sexual obsession, treachery, and tragedy, about an artist and her most famous muse in Paris between the world wars. Paris, 1927. In the heady years before the crash, financiers drape their mistresses in Chanel, while expatriates flock to the avant-garde bookshop Shakespeare and Company. One day in July, a young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a coolly dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka. Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist, a dispossessed Saint Petersburg aristocrat with a murky past. The two become lovers, and Rafaela inspires Tamara's most iconic Jazz Age images, among them her most accomplished-and coveted-works of art. A season as the painter's muse teaches Rafaela some hard lessons: Tamara is a cocktail of raw hunger and glittering artifice. And all the while, their romantic idyll is threatened by history's darkening tide. Inspired by real events in de Lempicka's history, The Last Nude is a tour de force of historical imagination. Ellis Avery gives the reader a tantalizing window into a lost Paris, an age already vanishing as the inexorable forces of history close in on two tangled lives. Spellbinding and provocative, this is a novel about genius and craft, love and desire, regret and, most of all, hope that can transcend time and circumstance. [Find it here.]

Jacque Katmor is Wishing You a Good Death

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Sex, eroticism and Judaism – Israeli artist Jacque Katmor, who is all but forgotten today, is the subject of a retrospective of sorts at the Nachum Gutman Museum of Art in Tel Aviv starting January 13. Katmor, who died in 2001, will undoubtably be an artist posthumously appreciated for his genius.  Somewhat of a Kenneth Anger of the Israeli unground cinema movement in the 1960s, Katmor was a leader of the artist collective Third Eye. Erotically charged, drug induced, and psychedelic, Katmor's art and films dealt with not only a rapidly changing zeitgeist, but also Jewish identity and Kabbalistic mysticism. "Jacque Katmor is Wishing You a Good Death" is on view at the Nachum Gutman Museum of Art from January 13 to May 19, Shimon Rokach st 21, Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv.

Marina Abramović: An Artist's Life Manifesto

On Saturday, November 12, renowned performance artist Marina Abramović brought her manifesto to Grand Avenue, as the artistic director of MOCA’s 2011 gala, An Artist’s Life Manifesto. Abramović arrived with 85 performers to serve as human centerpieces on dinner tables and enough white lab coats, her prescribed gala-tent attire, to outfit the 750 guests who attended.

CATHERINE OPIE

Stephen Friedman Gallery presents an exhibition of early and recent work by Catherine Opie. Opie is considered to be one of the most important American photographers of her generation. This is her fourth solo exhibition at the gallery and follows her highly acclaimed solo mid-career surveys at the Guggenheim, New York in 2008-2009 and at the ICA, Boston, earlier this year. Shown here for the very first time is an early group of portraits from the artist's black and white 'Girlfriends' series and a major new body of landscape photographs, taken at sea. On view until January 23, Stephen Friedman Gallery, 25-28 Old Burlington Street, London.

The Protest Box by Martin Parr

Martin Parr’s collection of photobooks is one of the finest to have ever been assembled and The Protest Box, published by Steidl, is a box set which brings together five books from that collection as facsimile reprints. Parr has selected diverse books which each deal with the subject of protest in quite different ways. From the documentation of various protest movements to the actual book being a form of protest, all these reprints are gems within the history of photographic publishing. A few are known but many are new, even to the connoisseur of photography books. All these books are virtually impossible to locate, so these reprints will make a substantial contribution to our understanding of this sub-genre of the photobook. The box set is accompanied by a booklet which includes an introduction by Martin Parr, an essay discussing the wider context of these books by Gerry Badger, and English translations of all the texts in the books.

The Syphilis of Sisyphus

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Fredericks & Freiser gallery in New York presents The Syphilis of Sisyphus,  a new short film by Mary Reid Kelley with artist Patrick Kelley. The exhibition includes a wall-sized projection with costumes and drawings used in the film’s creation. Reid Kelley’s second solo exhibition at Fredericks & Freiser encompasses a heightened level of visual complexity as it continues her exploration of language, history, anomie and sexual politics. On view until January 7.

Comics Stripped

Comics Stripped, an ongoing exhibition at the museum of sex in New York, examines the history and cultural significance of the illustrators, icons and images that have entertained and educated (as well as equally misinformed) the basics of sex. From the coquettish to the most explicit “dirty drawings,” the exhibit presents the ultimate homage to sexual fantasy uninhibited by the constraints of reality. From simple titillation to hardcore representations, comics have a long history of incorporating humor, scandal, fantasy and fun with sex. Originally used as a form of amusement and satire intended for adults, the societal perception of comics as wholesome entertainment geared toward children has made the inclusion of sexual content particularly jarring. Comics Stripped is on view at the Museum Of Sex until January 8, 2012, 233 5th Avenue, New York

Illustration at the Erotica Auction

An anonymous French illustration from 1900 available for sale at the enormous Erotica auction held by EVE (Estimations & Ventes aux Enchères) today Sunday, December 18 and tomorrow Monday December 19.  A bulk of the collection comes from a Swiss collector who has spent 35 years gathering his holdings. Drouot Richelieu - Salle 11 - 9 rue Drouot, 75009 Paris