Retrofit: Ferragamo Creations

The house of Salvatore Ferragamo, famous for their shoes, is bringing back some of their amazing past creations, including the above rainbow and gold sandals, designed for Judy Garland in 1938. “Ferragamo’s Creations” is an exclusive collection of limited, numbered pieces from the Ferragamo Museum’s historic shoes and the brand’s iconic bags. You can buy the above shoe here.

Collective Unconscious: Surrealism Exhibit in Moscow

Giorgio de Chirico - Cavalli_in_riva_al_mare_1928

Giorgio de Chirico - Cavalli in riva al mare, 1928

InArtis project in collaboration with Moscow's State Historical Museum and with support of a concierge club presents the exhibition "The Collective Unconscious: Graphical Surrealism from De Chirico to Magritte". The exhibition starts on the 1st of May.

ANDRÉ KERTÉSZ Retrospective

Underwater Swimmer Esztergom,1917, André Kertész

"After I was wounded [in WWI] I was in the hospital for almost nine months. We went swimming in the pool every day, and I realized the distortions in the water. When I photographed them my comrades said, ‘You are crazy. Why did you photograph this?’ I answered: ‘Why only girl friends? This also exists.’ So I photographed my first distortion in 1917 – others followed later, especially the nudes in 1933." -André Kertész, Kertész on Kertész

With around 250 photographs and countless magazine contributions, a retrospective of photographer André Kertész is on display at the Fotomuseum Winterthur on view until May 15, 2011.  www.fotomuseum.ch

 

I've Got a Bad Bad Love...for Alexander Ebert

Alexander Ebert photographed by Adarsha Benjamin © 2010

Alexander Ebert can't stop reinventing himself.  This time Ebert has reinvented himself....as himself. Thank god.  Ebert's new album has some incredible songs. I've always loved Ebert's songwriting and musical delivery; akin to the virtuosity of  David Byrne, with the work ethic of Arthur Russel. After a stint as the lead singer and founder of the hippie-big-band-orchestra Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes, who enjoyed a seemingly flash point meteoric rise, Alexander Ebert has gotten back together with himself.  His album, titled Alexander, is more self exploratory, somewhat somber, and purely honest.

Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre

Alexander Ebert - Bad Bad Love

[audio:http://www.pasunautre.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/alexanderbadbadlove.mp3|titles=alexanderbadbadlove]

Alexander Ebert - Glimpses

[audio:http://www.solidgoldrags.com/music/09-Glimpses.mp3|titles=alexanderglimpses]

Modigliani: A Life

Amedeo (“Beloved of God”) Modigliani was considered to be the quintessential bohemian artist, his legend almost as infamous as Van Gogh’s. In Modigliani’s time, his work was seen as an oddity: contemporary with the Cubists but not part of their movement. His work was a link between such portraitists as Whistler, Sargent, and Toulouse-Lautrec and that of the Art Deco painters of the 1920s as well as the nerandw approaches of Gauguin, Cézanne, and Picasso. Jean Cocteau called Modigliani “our aristocrat” and said, “There was something like a curse on this very noble boy. He was beautiful. Alcohol and misfortune took their toll on him.” In [a] major new biography, Meryle Secrest...gives us a fully realized portrait of one of the twentieth century’s master painters and sculptors: his upbringing, a Sephardic Jew from an impoverished but genteel Italian family; his going to Paris to make his fortune; his striking good looks (“How beautiful he was, my god how beautiful,” said one of his models) . . . his training as an artist . . .and his influences, including the Italian Renaissance, particularly the art of Botticelli; Nietzsche’s theories of the artist as Übermensch, divinely endowed, divinely inspired; the monochromatic backgrounds of Van Gogh and Cézanne; the work of the Romanian sculptor Brancusi; and the primitive sculptures of Africa and Oceania with their simplified, masklike triangular faces, elongated silhouettes, puckered lips, low foreheads, and heads on exaggeratedly long necks. We see the ways in which Modigliani’s long-kept-secret illness from tuberculosis (it almost killed him as a young man) affected his work and his attitude toward life ; how consumption caused him to embrace fatalism and idealism, creativity and death; and how he used alcohol and opium with laudanum as an antispasmodic to hide the symptoms of the disease and how, because of it, he came to be seen as a dissolute alcoholic.  Modigliani: A Life comes out today, March 1, on Knopf.  www.randomhouse.com

 

Luxury: Year of the Rabbit Tee

"Nestled in San Francisco's historic Jackson Square neighborhood, Carrots occupies the storied former space of Ernie's restaurant, a San Francisco landmark featured in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which closed its doors in 1999. The 4,000 square foot luxury emporium is home to a carefully-curated selection of women's ready-to-wear, shoes and accesories....The stores name, 'Carrots,' is a wink and a nod to Grimmway Farms, the Grimm family business, which is the worlds largest grower...and shipper of carrots." Now in their third year, officially the Year of the Rabbit, Carrots' presents this  kitschy-cool exclusive t-shirt designed by Oliver Maxwell Kupper.  Only 15 tees are available.  www.sfcarrots.com

All That is Unseen

Matthew Stone, boy wonder art star of London's underground, is one of the founders of the !WOWOW! art collective.  Stone is a photographer, sculptor, performance artist, curator, writer, optimist and cultural provocateur. One of Stone's performances at the Tate Britain in 2008 attracted over 4000 visitors. According to his website, Stone "is an artist and shaman." And there happens to be a sort of orgiastic, ritualistic shamanism in his photographs, what with the allusions to ceremonial dance, plumes of  thick white smoke and naked abandon.  In fact, Stone is most well known for his nude photographs - the three images above are part of a series called Ritual.  Matthew Stone will be participating in a group show entitled All That Is Unseen at the Nederpelt Gallery in Brooklyn - on view until March 14.  www.alannederpelt.com or visit the artist's website www.matthewstone.co.uk

Warhol's Lovers and More at the Los Angeles Modern Auction

Andy Warhol 'Love,' 1983, Artist Proof 8 of 17

An incredible collection of modern art from the estate of Max Pelevsky, an art collector and venture capitalist who died last year, will be on the auction block at the Los Angeles Modern Auctions. On display will be artists from Picasso to Andy Warhol to Ed Ruscha. Auction:  March 6. Preview Open Now www.lamodern.com

Deneuve

BAMcinématek Deneuve

Stunningly beautiful, mysterious, ageless, and possessed by a peerless elegance, Catherine Deneuve is one of the most legendary actresses in all of cinema. Over the course of her 40 year career—from early work with film giants like Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut, Roman Polanski, Agnès Varda, and Jacques Demy to later films with celebrated contemporary cineastes like François Ozon, Arnaud Desplechin, Raoul Ruiz, and more—Deneuve has played muse for Europe’s greatest filmmakers, channeling her remarkable beauty and compelling eroticism to create some of cinema’s most iconic roles. Presented in collaboration with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and Institut Francais, a 25-film tribute to the actress being held at the Brooklyn Academy represents only a sliver of the over 100 films she has appeared in during her career. Deneuve runs from March 4 to March 31.  www.bam.org

I Don't Want to Live This Life Anymore

She was junkie, a groupie, a legend, and she wound up in a body bag at the tender age of 20. Nancy Spungen, who would have been 53 today, was famous for being the blond waistoid girlfriend of waistoid punk Sid Vicious. Vicious, as if living up to his name, was accused of killing Spungen with a single knife wound to her abdomen on a barbiturate induced night at the Chelsea Hotel in 1978. No body knows who killed her and Vicious died of an overdose before trial. Happy birthday Nancy Spungen.

Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre

Odd Future Wants to Kill You

Nobody can really tell you if this is some kind of brilliant performance art or just plain wholesome American Satan worship. Tyler the Creator is the 19 year old co-founder of "hip-hop collective" OFWGKTA, which stands for Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, or for short, Odd Future, based in Los Angeles. Tyler's sound is surprisingly and refreshingly unique despite the intense gravel in his voice, and his performance is a revolutionary visceral experience not witnessed in hip-hop since the early 90s. It seems as though Tyler and Odd Future have pumped the murder, violence, and degradation back into the medium - which made it so appealing in the beginning - if not for the sake of being shocking, but for the sake of the art form as catharsis. Odd Future will perform at this April's Cochella Music Festival and release a full length album, Goblin, in same month.

www.oddfuture.com

Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre

The Art of Norman Lindsay

The Australian artist Norman Lindsay (22 February 1879 – 21 November 1969) was a prolific illustrator, sculptor, writer, editorial cartoonist, scale modeler, and boxer. In his epic lifelong battle with the 'wowsers,' or moral elite, Lindsay kept drawing naughty pictures. At one point his work was even burned after being deemed blasphemous. If you're in Australia you can visit the Norman Lindsay Museum/Gallery in Faulconbridge 7 days a week.

I Was a Teenage Paparazzo

1975: I wanted to take David Bowie's photo in the worst way. I had called his publicist asking for a photo pass, but I was turned down. No one knew me at the time and Bowie had a couple of photographers who did most of his coverage, but this was not going to stop me. I had a tip that he was having a late night recording session at Cherokee Recording Studios on Fairfax Blvd in Hollywood. The tip came from a very reliable source; so, I cut school, got there really early in the morning, and waited for Bowie to emerge. 6am Bowie walked out and the early morning light was magic. All he said to me was “Good Morning.” Since no one was really doing paparazzi-style photography back then both Bowie and his producer, Paul Buckmaster, thought my approach was incredibly hysterical. Word got out to all of the publicists in town that I was bold enough to perform this sort of ambush, but since I was a teenage kid, they all found it amusing. Creem ran the photograph as a full page in their "Stars And Their Cars" section.

Text and photo by Brad Elterman