Neo Conquistador: Assad Mounser

Amanda Assad Mounser is a New York-based jewelry designer with a penchant for the prickly and ecclesiastical.  Her label Assad Mounser makes a bold statement. Assad Mounser's inspiration is "predominantly influenced by the gods of the Glam Rock Movement."  Aptly so.  Her Spring Summer 2011 collection "...focuses on a futuristic journey, one that many a rock star drenched in glitter might sing about. The collection, coined Neo Conquistador, follows a phoenix rising from the ashes of a catastrophic wave of destruction to a path of redemption and rebirth, creating a new world from the rubble. Groups within the collection follow these themes quite literally. Many pieces take on an appearance of an explosion, with shooting rods of metal juxtaposed against cracked rocks and glittering gems, meant to represent glass fragments. www.assadmounser.com

Paul McCartney to Re-Release Two Eponymous Solo Albums

Paul McCartney is planning to reissue his solo debut, 1970’s McCartney, as well as 1980’s McCartney II in remastered, deluxe editions with extra tracks. McCartney is the first solo album by Paul McCartney. The album was performed the entirely by Paul McCartney himself, except for some backing vocals from his first wife, Linda McCartney. McCartney stated that he played "bass, drums, acoustic guitar, lead guitar, piano, Mellotron, organ, toy xylophone, and bow and arrow on the album. McCartney is quite possibly an one of his most underrated masterpieces. McCartney II is considered one of the earliest examples of electronic music and is a complete departure for Paul McCartney who by this time had broken up with two bands, The Beatles and Wings. The albums will be available starting June 13 and were remastered at Abbey Road Studios by the same team that worked on 2009’s Beatles reissues.

[Documentary] L'Amour Fou: The Legacy of Yves Saint Laurent

Yves Saint Laurent left a fashion legacy. He also left behind an extraordinary collection of art. In L'amour fou, Saint Laurent's partner in business and life, Pierre Bergé, made the choice to auction off the collection after Saint Laurent's death in 2008. It was considered "the auction of the century." Bergé talks about their relationship in both respects—from meeting Saint Laurent after his dismissal from Dior to starting up their fashion house and, of course, the art that they amassed. The collection started in the 1950s and included works ranging from Picasso and Matisse to Egyptian sculptures.

The art collection is impressive, but it represents more than just two collectors—they're the puzzle pieces that form a picture of a unique, half-century partnership. Carefully crafting a loving and well-deserved tribute, director Pierre Thoretton stunningly blends Bergé's interviews, rare archival footage, and incredible access to their homes to make what amounts to more than a biography. He captures a love story—a so-called crazy love—of art, fashion, and the two men who loved both and one another.

L'Amour Fou is currently being premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. www.tribecafilm.com

Text by  David Kwok

Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle

Chagall - Midsummer Nights Dream

As a symbol of culture, freedom, and modernity, the city of Paris held a magnetic attraction for artists from around the globe during the early decades of the twentieth century. Most painters and sculptors, as well as poets and writers, settled in a vibrant area of Paris known as Montparnasse, which was sprinkled with art galleries, artists’ residences, and cafés. It was here that Alexander Archipenko, Marc Chagall, Moïse Kisling, Moïse Kogan, Jacques Lipchitz, Louis Marcoussis, Amedeo Modigliani, Chana Orloff, Jules Pascin, Chaim Soutine, and Ossip Zadkine established studios and discovered each other’s work.

Chaim Soutine, Girl in Green

An exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art includes more than 70 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by these émigré artists and their French colleagues, all of which were created in a unique atmosphere of mutual encouragement and support in Paris during the early decades of the twentieth century. Interwoven throughout is the story of Chagall’s formative years in the French capital during the 1910s, his return to Russia during World War I and the rise of the Russian Revolution, and the artist’s triumphant return to Paris in the 1920s as a leading figure of the city’s thriving avant-garde.

Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle is on view until July 10. www.philamuseum.org

Check out Dev Hynes's New Musical Endeavor, "Blood Orange"

Dev Hynes is an international man of mystery as well as the busiest musician on the planet. As if his extensive work as Lightspeed Champion and with Test Icicles or co-writing with Theophilus London and Solange Knowles or a note-for-note cover of Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star album weren't enough, Hynes is launching a new project: Blood Orange. To begin, Blood Orange is releasing a brand new 7" single, "Dinner" b/w "Bad Girls" on April 26th. Both tracks were recorded with and co-produced by Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear for release on his Terrible Records label. Blood Orange finds Hynes delving deeper into the fringes of '80s American musical culture, crossing elements of melancholy synthetic pop balladry with a twangy noir, composing songs exploring the harsh realities of romantic pursuits: longing, suspicion, jealousy, self-doubt and loneliness, to name but a few. This release will be followed by a full-length album which was recorded in Los Angeles with producer Ariel Reichstaid (Cass McCombs/Glasser) and will be released in the late summer on Domino.

Anton Corbijn - Inwards & Onwards

anthony kiedis west palm beach 2003 c anton corbijn

Anthony Kiedis, West Palm Beach, 2003

Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn has been a pivotal force in the visual landscape of music for the last three decades. Corbijn is the creative director for Depeche Mode, has taken some of the earliest photographs of the band Joy Division, as well as directed numerous music videos, including one for Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box.  Foam, Amsterdam, presents Anton Corbijn's most recent photographic project, in which he photographs of a few of his favourite artists, including Gerhard Richter, Alexander McQueen, Richard Prince, Iggy Pop, Anselm Kiefer, Damien Hirst, Tom Waits, Peter Doig, Bruce Springsteen, Lucian Freud and Karel Appel.

alexander mcqueen londen 2007 c anton corbijn

Alexander McQueen, London, 2007

"Anton Corbijn is interested in how artists struggle with the creative process: the pain and the drama of the act of creation. His monumental black-and-white portraits blend austerity and aesthetics and attract attention because of the deliberate and exacting way they capture the character of the person being portrayed. The work shows Corbijn's concentrated gaze, his feeling for wonder and his ability to empathise with another. "

On view from June 23 to September 1 - www.foam.org

Ecce Homo: The Jewelry of Chris Habana

spring/summer 2011

If Jesus Christ were to be crucified today, Pontius Pilate would get his crown of thorns from jewelry maker Christ Habana. Custom made crown of thorns - he'd probably make a concession for the lord and savior. With a small, creeping trend in religious iconography popping up Chris Habana's eponymous label stays clear of the eternal flaw of most gothic inspired jewelry lines: taking it all way too seriously.

spring/summer 2011

There is a definitive, down to earth sensibility in all of Habana's creations. Spending his life in the Philippines and New York City, the 34 year old designer had a childhood "...rooted in fantasy and sci-fi...." and later "reveled in the 90s gay counter-culture..." - thusly merging the two worlds when Habana debuted his line in 2004. Habana's autumn/winter collection, entitled "Weird N' Kinky," is, well, weird and kinky.

www.chrishabana.com

Mick Jagger: Young in the 60s

Mick Jagger, 1966. Photograph by Gered Mankowitz

Portraits of Mick Jagger taken in the 1960s will be on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London from 3 May until 27 November 2011. Documenting the singer’s early rise to become one of the most influential singer-songwriters of the era, the display will coincide with the publication of Mick Jagger: The Photobook by Thames & Hudson.  www.mickjagger.com

I Love You When You Smile

Continuing with the great tradition of photographer duos, Rita Sousa and Ivano Salonia, who are "partners both in [their] professional and private life," started a website called I Love You When You Smile, a collection of their work created together. The images they capture are real and honest, almost like a lifestyle diary, mixing both fashion editorial and portraiture. I Love You When You Smile is based in Amsterdam. www.iloveyouwhenyousmile.com

Deconstructing Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up

Blow Up

Want to see a naked, nubile Jane Birkin in a threesome? Antonioni's film 1966 film Blow Up captured the zeitgeist of 1960s London with a bear trap. Its famous cover, with the lead character, a fashion photographer played by the venerable David Hemmings, lurching over the rail thin, German model Veruschka, is emblematic of an entire decade of cinema.  Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Blow Up, inspired by a book written by the Argentinian novelist Julio Cortázar, as well as the real life of iconic fashion photographer David Bailey, tells the the story of a fashion photographer who inadvertently stumbles into a murder.

jane_birkin_david_hemmings_antonioni_blow_up

The film, which stars David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, and Sarah Miles, is a real-time paced glimpse into an otherwise drab London at the apex of the Swinging Sixties.  It was time when photographers were considered rock stars; groupies and all, doing whatever it takes to get their picture taken.  Using film stills and actual photographs in the film, a new book has come out this month on Steidl that re-examines Blow Up in a retrospective, socio-cultural context. Antonioni's Blow-Up, as the book is called, by Philippe Garner and David Alan, promises a "fresh and stimulating study of Antonioni’s masterpiece."

veruschka_david_hemmings_antonioni_blow_up

You can find the book on Colette's e-shop. www.colette.fr

My Blue Love: Edith Piaf's Love Letters to Louis Gérardin

piaf_love_letters

"My blue love, our first separation ... darling, I think I can say that never has a man taken me as much, and I believe I'm making love for the first time." Edith Piaf's "blue love" was a 13-time French speed racing champion bicyclist named Louis Gérardin. The letters were written in 1951 and 1952 during a feaverish, little known, love affair – shortly after her true love, the boxer Marcel Cerdan, died tragically in a plane crash. The letters are intimate, full of sexual ravings and pleas for Gérardin to leave his wife. Before Gérardin could leave his wife Piaf had already married another man. In 2009, 54 of the letters were sold at Christies in Paris for 59,000 euros.  The letters will now will be published in the book entitled My Blue Love – out on April 30 in France.

Le Surréalisme, c’est moi!

Even today, Salvador Dalí’s creative output as an artist, his experimental films, and his unmistakable style of painting exert an inspiring fascination on artists up to the present day. By the early 1930s, Dalí had found his medium and his distinctive painting style. The world of the unconscious and of dreams, melting watches and endless, expansive landscapes, bathed in a cool sunshine, are his recognisable motifs.

Salvador Dalí, Flores surrealistas, 1938

Dalí’s virtuoso technique allowed him to paint his pictures in a style reminiscent, at the same time, of the old masters and the photo-realism of today. A new exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien presents Salvador Dalí together with works by Louise Bourgeois, Glenn Brown, Markus Schinwald and Francesco Vezzoli.

www.kunsthallewien.com