An Ode to Love (& Mozart)

The rain would not stop and the air was thick with winter's mercurial chill. Last Friday evening I made my way to Davies Hall for the San Francisco Symphony. I took my seat. A breath of orchestra air filled my lungs; only then was I able to relax. The music began. Wicked and wild, the mellifluous sound filled the room with a contagious sense of nostalgia. I wanted to hold something in my arms and my eyes wanted to close and dream of waves crashing with each chaotic whirl of strings. This....was Mozart.  I imagined: what if I locked myself in a room with absolutely no distractions?  I could write wickedly erotic, rampageous odes of love on instruments that I would make with my own two hands simply out of the sheer survival of my immaculate creativity - and nothing else! Mozart had the keys and Mozart had visions. Visions that led him to write perfectly well rounded, prodigious compositions. Two of the pieces performed, Piano Concertos Nos. 5 and 8, were written by Mozart when he was only between the age of 18 and 20 years old.  Mozart's Symphony No. 25 opened the program and commenced with Symphony No. 33. To fully perform these pieces, let alone understand them, one must have a mind that borders on both insanity and genius, and at the same time desperately longs for both romance and solitude. David Geilsammer, who took center stage at the grand piano for the solo performance of Piano Concerto Nos. 5 and 8, embodies this longing perfectly. The moment Geilsammer walked onto the stage it was as if the air around him changed colors - behind him was left a trail of golden dust, the kind that intoxicates. Probably not something anyone else was seeing in the Symphony Hall, but surely something everyone felt. Geilsammer was like a delicate fawn who's fingers violently but ever so gracefully played each note as if his life depended on it.  Because this, of course....is Mozart.

Catch Friday and Saturday night's performance at The San Francisco Symphony:  Mozart's famed, apocalyptic Requiem; conducted by the illustrious Michael Tilson Thomas www.sfsymphony.org

Text by Adarsha Benjamin

Openings: JAMES FRANCO / GUS VAN SANT "Unfinished"

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"Unfinished" features two films, Endless Idaho and My Own Private River, which are collaborations between Gus Van Sant and James Franco. After casting Franco in the award-winning film Milk (2008), Van Sant showed him the dailies and other footage that he had shot many years before for My Own Private Idaho (1991), which starred River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves as street hustlers in Portland, Oregon. Much of this material did not make it into the final cut, and so Franco decided to fashion it into two new films, riffing off the original title. The opening is February 26th at the Gagosian in Beverly Hills and runs till April 9. www.gagosian.com

Daddy's Girl: The Erotica of Anaïs Nin

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Anaïs Nin by Carl Van Vechten 1949

February 21 marked the 108th birthday of Anaïs Nin, a controversial figure perhaps best known for her romantic dalliances with prominent figures such as Henry Miller, Otto Rank, Lawrence Durrell, Antonin Artaud and Gore Vidal. She worked as a psychoanalyst, wrote fiction, trained as a dancer, appeared in films by Maya Daren and Kenneth Anger, had an affair with her father, pianist and composer Joaquin Nin, and eventually married Rupert Pole sixteen years her junior when she was forty-four (she was already married to banker and experimental filmmaker Hugh Guiler at the time.) All of this and more she documents in her diaries, which span more than sixty years. It is, perhaps, not surprising then that Nin also dabbled in erotica; collections of her stories, Little Birds and Delta of Venus, are now considered some of the finest erotica ever written.

The books were not published until the late 70s, after Nin succumbed to a three-year battle with cancer. The stories themselves were written much earlier, in the 1940s when Henry Miller and Nin were both living in Paris. Miller, after publishing Tropic of Cancer, was approached by a third party to write pornographic stories for an anonymous collector at the rate of $1 per page. Soon, many of his artist and writer friends, including Caresse Crosby, Robert Duncan, and Nin were churning out what the latter termed “an abundance of perverse felicities,” encouraged by Miller to take advantage of this unforeseen source of income.

Anaïs Nin’s Little Birds and Delta of Venus, born out of what was part joke, part moneymaking venture, are erotica in the truest sense of the word. The stories are rich, vivid, beautifully written and populated by character types who embody the multi-hued spectrum of human desire. They deftly and, at times, humorously explore the various ways in which sexual hunger is felt, expressed, and consummated and the reader is often as surprised by the events that unfold as the characters are themselves. The settings, scenarios, and figures in Nin’s stories are largely informed by her own life and enriched and transformed by her considerable powers of invention and unique poetic voice.

Little Birds and Delta of Venus can both be purchased at Amazon.com.

Text by Anna Wittel

The SIP Interviews Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Adarsha Benjamin + Shot by Oliver Maxwell KupperPhotography by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

A wonderfully fascinating institute, The SIP "a research institute that aspires to facilitate, promote, initiate research, open debate and creative work in the field of photography and related media," conducted an interview with Oliver Maxwell Kupper, publisher of Pas Un Autre. View interview here.

Artist: Chris Crites

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Chris Crites paints delirious iconography of sin on paper bags - which only adds to the general back alley decadence of his work. When you think of paper bags you think of porn, malt liquor, and your old baloney stained school lunch. Add the hospital in-patient expressions of Christ Crites and you have art. Chris Crites is having a show with artist Richard Basset entitled Cold Comfort at the Jack Fischer Gallery in SF. www.jackfischergallery.com

Looking Forward: Rainbow Arabia "Without You" 2011

"Without You" is a single from Los Angeles duo Rainbow Arabia's forthcoming full length album "Boys and Diamonds" to be released on February 28th - "Without You" single with an incredible b-side will be released on February 21, 2011. www.kompakt.fm

Hareng Saur: Ensor and Contemporary Art

James Ensor (Oostende, 1860-1949), Skeletons Fighting over a Smoked Herring, 1891, Oil on panel,

The S.M.A.K. and the Museum of Fine Arts are holding a joint exhibition that examines the relationship between James Ensor (1860-1949) and the work of contemporary artists. James Ensor can without any doubt be considered as one on of the ground-breaking artists of the 20th century. The recent retrospective exhibitions of his work in New York (Museum of Modern Art) and Paris (Quai d'Orsay) demonstrate clearly that he is internationally acclaimed as a pioneering artist. His importance in the development of modern art (e.g. Expressionism) is demonstrated by the many visits made by artists (Kandinsky, Nolde, Pechstein et al.) to his home in Ostend during his lifetime....The exhibition Hareng Saur | Ensor and Contemporary Art focuses on the manifold links and associations which can be made between the work of this master and the artistic practices of a wide range of contemporary artists. James Ensor's subjects and attitude are of particular interest at the beginning of the 21st century. Themes such as the mask, the grotesque, social criticism, the self-portrait (and the identification with Christ) and death are all subjects dealt with by many outstanding international contemporary artists. The exhibition reveals some of the connections between different kinds of works and approaches Ensor as a contemporary artist amongst his colleagues and peers. Hareng Saur: Ensor and Contemporary Art is on view until Feb. 27, in Belgium at Gent www.kunstaspekte.de

Bebe Buell And Stiv Bators At Fiorucci's 1978

This photo was taken at an incredible party at Fiorucci's store in Beverly Hills. I think KISS, tons of stars and beautiful girls were present. Fiorucci's was known for its outrageous fashions and fun parties, as well as the punks who worked there. Bebe had been living with Todd Rundgren and was at many happening parties. Think of Elvis Costello's "This Year's Model," written when he was dating her. Stiv Bators was the lead singer of the Dead Boys. Interesting how celebrities attract. FYI Bebe is the mother of Liv Tyler. Stiv was hit by a car in Paris, refused to go to the hospital, and died in his sleep.

Photo and Text: Brad Elterman

The Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch

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Paul Gauguin, Manao tupapau (The Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch), 1892, oil on burlap mounted on canvas

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Paul Gaugin, La Perte du Pucelage (The Loss of Virginity) 1890-91

Washington, DC—Paul Gauguin's (1848–1903) sumptuous, colorful images of Brittany and the islands of the South Seas, some of the most beloved in modern art, are among 100 works by the artist in the first major exhibition of his career in the United States in some 20 years. On view from February 27 through June 5, 2011, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington—the sole U.S. venue—the exhibition Gauguin: Maker of Myth, along with its accompanying catalogue, examines the role that myth-making played in Gauguin's art, shedding new light on his life and career.

Guns For Hire: The Art of James Georgopoulos

“Enforcer” Unique silver gelatin print w/ acrylic polymer and resin on aluminum and wood panel 2010 48 x 84 x 2 inches

“The Manchurian Canidate” Unique silver gelatin print w/acrylic polymer & resin on aluminum & wood panel 2010 48 x 84 X 2 inches

He has worked with NASA, Oliver Stone, and Al Gore - which makes him immediately cool, and next to his resin coated, original photographs of iconic guns used in films, that are subsequently slathered with multiple coats of shiny resin, Los Angeles based artist James Georgopolous is a total badass.  Most of James' photographs have notes that illustrate the history of each firearm.  The gun in the bottom photograph: "[a] .Walther P38 used by Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey in the 1962 film, The Manchurian Candidate" and the top photograph: "The weapon pictured here is the actual screen-used gun used by Inspector Harry Callahan's (Clint Eastwood)  ".44 Magnum", Smith & Wesson Model 29 n 6 1/2" barrel." Fucking awesome. James will be exhibiting at the Red Dot Art Fair in New York City this coming March. www.jamesgeorgopoulos.org

Ré Soupault: Artist at the Center of the Avant-Garde

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The Kunsthalle Mannheim is the first museum in the world to be honoring the oeuvre of one of the key female figures in the European avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s with the extensive retrospective Ré Soupault—Künstlerin im Zentrum der Avantgarde (Ré Soupault—Artist at the Center of the Avant-Garde) from February 13 to May 8, 2011. “While in the late 1980s Ré Soupault’s rediscovery as a photographer was considered a sensation, we are now happy to be presenting the entire spectrum of her oeuvre for the first time,” writes Dr. Inge Herold, who is curating the exhibition in collaboration with Manfred Metzner, the trustee of Ré Soupault’s estate. Ré Soupault (1901–1996) was a photographer, fashion designer, journalist, filmmaker, author, and translator at the heart of the most modern art trends in Germany and France. www.kunsthalle-mannheim.eu