Not in Fashion: Photography and Fashion in the 90s

MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt/Main is showing how fashion changes our view of the world. In the 1990s, the fashion scene fundamentally reinvented specifically the medium of photography. That decade gave rise to a new generation for whom personal identity, individualism and a self-defined style were of crucial importance. Back then, the joie de vivre of the generation of 20-30 year-old creative minds thrived on music, subculture, intimacy and fashion. A new notion of corporeality was being celebrated in the major capitals of the world, such as London, New York, Tokyo, Berlin and Paris. The protagonists of this era sought to distinguish themselves from the established art and fashion scenes, and develop an alternative, lived counter-culture. They felt that the overly artificial images of prêt-à-porter, haute couture and glossy fashion magazines needed to be overcome and replaced with “real life” pictures instead Youth-Culture. They thus collectively dismissed the notion of the beautiful, and tried to elide gender differences and other social conventions.  Catch the last few days of this show - more info here.

Ariel Pinks Loses Mind and Exclusive Photos of the Second and Final Night of the Rock n’ Roll Circus at Lincoln Center

Ariel Pink plays an incredible set as the headliner act of the second night of the Rock n' Roll Circus at Lincoln Center.  Despite seeming aloof and on the very brink of a complete emotional collapse, Ariel Pink keeps it all together with the hybrid patina of a late life French crooner and a divorced Japanese master of ceremonies at a turtle racing bar in some one horse town in middle America.  Wearing a sequined sweater that twinkled in the spotlights, Ariel Pink played only a few songs when someone made the poor decision to rush the stage to tell him the police were outside to shut down the show. Ariel Pink proceeded to nonchalantly walk off stage and out of the building; leaving the music of one his tracks still playing, while the confusion of the audience was suffocating. Albeit, the night was one to remember, we can hope that a cultural establishment such as Lincoln Center will have more events like this one. Click to see more photos after the jump...

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Photos and Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre

In the Tower: Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko

The second in a series of Tower exhibitions focusing on contemporary art and its roots offers a rare look at the black-on-black paintings that Rothko made in 1964 in connection with his work on a chapel for the Menil Collection in Houston. A recording of Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel (1971), the haunting music originally composed for that space, accompanies the exhibition in the spacious East Building Tower Gallery.  In the Tower: Mark Rothko closes on January 9th at the National Gallery of Art in Washinton.  www.nga.org

Mags of Yore: Escapade Magazine

Escapade Magazine

Escape magazine, featuring beautiful kitsch photography of voluptuous women, never reached the iconic status associated with Playboy, but in it's own right held an integral role in the annals of naughty magazines.  With articles and essays written by William S. Burroughs  and Jack Kerouac Escapade magazine is a good vintage publication to collect.  Find vintage copies of Escapade Magazine here.

Night Two: Rock n’ Roll Circus at Lincoln Center

Currently in New York for the Rock n' Roll Circus at Lincoln Center.  Monday was the first night of this spectacular two day event that includes music, food, ponies and tattoos.  It is quite a circus.  Tonight, the weirdness ensues, with these Pas Un Autre highlights to look forward to:   lo-fi wunderkind Ariel Pink headlines and the amazing Minka Sicklinger is tattooing a specific set of uniquely designed flash for $30.  Just like the good old days. www.rocknrollcircusparty.com

Elvis at 21

Alfred Wertheimer, "Elvis and Barbara Hearn."

"After having taken a shower, and still bare-chested, Elvis has his high school sweetheart, Barbara Hearn, listen on the phonograph to the acetate disc with cuts of his songs from the New York recording session."  Beautiful images of a young hopeful Elvis by photographer Alfred Wertheimer now on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London. "In 1956, 26-year old Alfred Wertheimer was asked to photograph a rising 21-year-old-star named Elvis Presley. When Presley walked on stage that year, he altered the beat of everyday life. The world changed. Wertheimer captured the singer’s transit to superstardom and the cultural transformation he helped launch. Elvis at 21 offers viewers an intimate look at the public and private life of one of the world’s most famous figures, and documents classic American life—from the diners to the train stops—in 1956." On view until January 23 2011. www.npg.si.edu

Coney Island in Blue

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.

Greetings From Lake Champlain

Ice forms on the banks of Lake Champlain in Northern Vermont.  A walk along the the old Island Line Causeway, an old abandoned railroad track that used to stretch from Colchester, Vermont to South Hero, Vermont. Trains crossed the causeway from 1901 ro 1961.  Ice forms in mysterious machinations over  marble and sleeping winter trees.  Photography by Oliver Maxwell Kupper © 2011

Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures

"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

Picasso the Snake

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