Art Meets Rock

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RICHARD KERN, Nirvana, Courtney Love
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left: WILLIAM ENGLISH, Vivienne Westwood in Sex, 1975, courtesy of Maggs Brothers, London right: URS LÜTHI, Un'isola dell'aria, 1975, particolare, 28 fotografie, cm60x50 cad, Collezione Fabio e Virginia Gori
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IAIN FORSYTH & JANE POLLARD, A Rock'N'Roll Suicide, 1998, Live performance, Photo: David Cowlard courtesy Kate MacGarry, London

Museo Pecci di Prato in Florence, Italy presents an exhibition entiled LIVE! Art Meets Rock. The exhibition, curated by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini, adopts a suggestive perspective to show how the history of contemporary art and of rock music have followed parallel paths to contribute to the construction of the cultural universe of the last forty years. Music and the visual arts have crossed and overlapped, over time, engendering a unified and consistent landscape; what draws them together is the performative dimension, articulated according to the specific occasion within an exhibition or a concert. LIVE!offers a parallel and original reading of historic events by exhibiting paintings, sculptures, installations, video clips, artworks, LPs, graphic works, photographs, magazines and films. Artists include Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, William English, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, David LaChapelle and more. The exhibition will be accompanied by Live!, a book published by Rizzoli with contributions by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini. LIVE! Art Meets Rock view at the Museo Pecci di Prato until September 16.  

1000 Kisses

On view now at The MAMBO (museum of modern art in Bogotá) – works by Colombian artist Ruven Afanador. The exhibition has been awaited for more than twenty years and features his greatest works. The exhibition, entitled “I’ll be your mirror, Ruven Afanador: 80 Portraits”, features pictures from the artist’s books: Torero (2001), Shadow (2004) and Thousand kisses (2009). In his last book, Thousand Kisses, the photographer drew his attention to various flamenco dancers. The artist is fascinated by staging the body, so he did not choose any old dance at random. Ruven Afanador was born in Columbia in the sixteenth century city fo Bucaramanga, La Ciudad de los Parques high in the scenic plateau above Rio de Oro. Afanador's photography is a celebration of the poetry of bodies motion. Exhibition is on view until October 9.

Causes and Spirits: William Carter

“Watch any mother kneeling beside her toddler, pointing and explaining what they are looking at. Our urge to see, and to connect, starts there.” William Carter.  This book is both an autobiography of William Carter and a study of people. Carter’s photographs, beginning in 1960, take the viewer on his travels throughout the world, from home to New York and Kurdistan, from Dublin to Gaza. Whether working as a photojournalist or purely for himself, Carter focuses on the gestures and expressions of people (sometimes charming, sometimes unsettling), and on streets and landscapes that often long for human presence. The subtitle “Photographs from Five Decades” might seem misleading as it implies a “typical” photobook where the sequence of images is primary. For Carter, however, it is the interplay between his photographs and writings that allows him to see into himself and his subjects: indeed he calls himself a “photographer-writer”. In Carter’s words, his work aims to capture the “hidden implications, eye-blink compositions, odd ironies and happy accidents” of the world. – Steidl

Room Editions

Los Angeles based photographer Patrick Hoelck's solo exhibition entitled “Room Editions” will open in Los Angeles this Thursday. “Room Editions” will showcase limited edition prints that have been hand picked from Hoelck's self-published book "Polaroid Hotel". The exhibition is curated by Daniel Salin and hosted by Stephen Webster. The opening will take place on August 25th between 7pm and 10pm at 202 N Rodeo Dr. Beverly Hills, CA 90210. The show will run through September 18th at Stephen Webster's private gallery in Beverly Hills.

[PHOTO DIARY] Postcard from Padova

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"Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?" -- E.H.

We have finished filming and now holiday has officially begun ... I've been laying by the pool revisiting The Old Man and the Sea, as the drum of essential relaxation kicks, cloaked in reverberation.  In two daisies we will drive south to the heal, where the land smells of mafioso. Photo and text by Dustin Lynn who is in Italy shooting another short fashion film for Corto Moltedo. 

Carlo Mollino: Un Messaggio dalla Camera Oscura

Born into a Turin architect and civil engineer’s family, Carlo Mollino studied art history and architecture and made a name for himself as a skier, racecar driver and aerobatic pilot, as an author and photo artist. Yet his international renown is primarily based on his work as a designer of furniture and exclusive interiors in the spirit of the gesamtkunstwerk – the German philosophy of total art. His organic language of forms was not least inspired by the form of the female body – as particularly evidenced by the part of his photographic work he always kept private: over 1,000 Polaroids portraying beauties of Turin’s night life in the nude in mise-en-scène settings. The pictures were part of the preparation of his “House for the warrior’s rest” (today: Casa Mollino), a villa in Turin on the Po River. An exhibition, opening at this month at the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, will juxtapose furnishings of the villa with a selection of these Polaroids for the first time. It explores the boundaries and bridges between this universal artist’s male erotic imagination and his intellectual and artistic attitude. On view at the Kunsthalle Wien from August 31 to September 25.

No Thoughts Zine

Thanks to Portland, Oregon's MICHAEL DEMEO & ALYSSA NOCHES for sending over their current issue of the NO THOUGHTS ZINE which I received in the mail.  With a clean, 'fuck-you-do-it-yourself' attitude, their sixth issue of No Thoughts actually gives me lots of thoughts – none of them pure.  Limited to 250 copies, Demeo and Noches curates a "series on sensuality and nudity, presenting an elegant yet unpretentious collection that celebrates the human form" with photographers all over the globe. www.nothoughtszine.com

[ON VIEW] The photography of CORNEL LUCAS

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One of the pioneers of film portraiture Lucas began his career in the late 1930s with the help of his first sitter Marlene Dietrich. After a nervous start to the photo-shoot it ended well when Marlene famously said to him 'Join the club Mr Lucas.' He was not sure what she meant at the time but soon after the commissions started flooding in and Lucas became the photographer of choice for the British Film Industry. In the early 1950s he went on to set up the Pool Studio at Pinewood Studios in London England's equivalent of Hollywood's well run establishment at MGM studios. During his sixty-year career Lucas has photographed some of our greatest film stars both at the Pool Studio and on film locations all over the world. Marlene Dietrich was just the first of many famous faces he photographed. Brigitte Bardot, Joan Collins, Katharine Hepburn, Jean Simmons, Claudia Cardinale, David Niven, Dirk Bogarde, Alec Guinness and Diana Dors were all captured in his lens along with a long list of others. Stylish, glamorous and perfectly composed the photographs are a testament to both the photographer and the sitter. Lucas was quick to learn that his photographs were a key part to the actor's success, as Marlene Dietrich once told him: 'Mr Lucas I'm telling you now that a photograph to me is more important than film.' He was the master of the 12 x 10 large format plate camera, but also of light and shade. It is prevalent throughout his work, creating stunning, rich portraits, which are full of life and luminosity. As Lucas once said 'Light and shade made the image in its beauty.' Lucas has held numerous international and national exhibitions and was the first stills photographer ever to receive a Bafta in honour of his services to the film industry. Chris Beetles Fine Photographs in London is currently presenting a retrospective retrospective of Cornel Lucas' photography - on view until August 27.