Edward Sharpe in NYC
Alexander Ebert & The Family Band playing at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC last night. Photography by Adarsha Benjamin.
Koudlam to Release New Album
"Koudlam was born in 1979 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. As a kid, he loved to walk in the bush imagining he was doing such courageous acts as saving young girls. He read a great deal. His heroes were a diverse group, including the great mountain climber Reinhold Messner, the poet Charles Baudelaire and Jim Morrison." This June 1 sees the release of Koudlam's new EP "Alcoholic's Hymns." Launch party tonight in Paris. More info here.
Lina Scheynius Releases Book of Photographs
"My absolute favourite subject is my own life and the people in it. I shoot it and show it like a diary." Swedish photographer, and former model, Lina Scheynius has released her third book of photographs shot between 1991 and 2007. Β www.linascheynius.com
[REISSUES] Chet Baker in New York
Chet Baker: In New YorkβRecorded in September 1958 for Riverside, Chet Baker's In New York features saxophonist Johnny Griffin, pianist Al Haig, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones. In addition to the half-dozen tracks from the original album, the reissue includes a bonus seventh track β "Soft Winds," a blues composition written by Benny Goodman and Fletcher Henderson. Chet Baker: In New York will be reissued June 7, 2011 by Concord Music Group along with multiple other releases from the halcyon days of jazz.
Last Pictures of Marilyn Monroe
On June 1, 2011, the day Marilyn Monroe would have turned 85, the Andrew Weiss Gallery, the world's largest dealer of Marilyn Monroe photography, will launch a major exhibition of rare and never- before- seen original photographs of the legendary star. Titled "Happy Birthday Marilyn", this exhibition will include photographs from the personal collection of George Barris, the last photographer to take pictures of Marilyn before she died. Also featured are photographs by Bill Carroll, who captured the very first photographs of Norma Jeane, and works by the major photographers of her era including Laszlo Willinger, Tom Kelley, Milton Greene, Bert Stern and many others.
[FIRST LOOK] LINDSAY LOHAN - A RICHARD PHILLIPS FILM
Gagosian Gallery announces Lindsay Lohan, Richard Phillips' first short film. In his 90-second motion portrait of Lindsay Lohan, Phillips draws on the conventions of his painting that explore the legacies of classical portraiture in relation to the mediated representations of contemporary popular culture. Richard Phillips' Lindsay Lohan will be included in "Commercial Break," presented by the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Venice, Italy, June 1 - 5, 2011, concurrent with the 54th international exhibition of the Venice Biennale.
Kurt Cobain Well FUCKING Hung
"Kurt was a leader, he was strong, in fact he was well fucking hung, if you really want to know."βCourtney Love, singer, Hole; widow of Kurt Cobain remarked in an, ahem, oral history of the band Nirvana. The Experience Music Project in Seattle is holding a massive exhibition celebrating the music and history of Nirvana, whose lead signer Kurt Cobain killed himself in 1994. Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses runs until April 22, 2013. www.empmuseum.org
[LISTEN] PURE X Release Gem From Forthcoming Album
Pure X (formerly Pure Ecstasy) is the latest incarnation of a long-standing collaboration between Austin, Texas musicians and long-term friends Nate Grace, Jesse Jenkins and Austin Youngblood. AcΓ©phale is to release their debut album, Pleasure, out July 5th in the US and worldwide August 22nd. Β Looseness wasΒ a key concept forΒ Pure X in recordingΒ Pleasure, and all songs were recorded liveΒ without overdubbing.Β Β The aspiration was to capture songs in their purest form, mistakes and all, as they were being written.Β Β Chasing a vibe in the studio allowed the songs to form themselves; structure and formula lost their rigidity as the songwriting process became more about meditative evolution than meticulous intent. www.acephalerecords.com LISTEN: PURE X - TWISTED MIRROR
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[FILM] They Shoot Movies, Don't They?
βPatti Astorβ Photo by and courtesy of Maripol from Blank City
Blank City tells the long-overdue tale of a disparate crew of renegade filmmakers who emerged from an economically bankrupt and dangerous moment in New York history. From the late 1970's through the mid 80's, when the city was still a wasteland of cheap rent and cheap drugs, these directors crafted daring works that would go on to profoundly influence the development of independent film as we know it today. Film is out now. www.blankcityfilm.com
Tania Shcheglova & Roman Noven are Synchrodogs
Ukrainian photography duo Tania Shcheglova & Roman Noven, otherwise know as Syncrodogs, are part lo-fi revelers and bored kin of Eastern Europe's "nothing to fucking do but take photos" ethos and by turns protegΓ¨s of Jurgen Teller's point and shoot philosophyβgraceful saviors of analog's unpredictable thrills and bygone days of grainy erotica. Check them out here.
Riding the Hoods With Maripol
Maripol moved to New York from France in 1976, where she became a part of the New York club and music scene, styling Madonna and working on films such as Downtown 81 (starring Jean-Michel Basquiat and Deborah Harry). In the mid-1980s, she opened her own boutique, Maripolitan, in the NoHo area of New York. Maripol has also been art director on music videos for Cher, D'Angelo and Elton John, among others. Riding the Hoods With Maripol, a collection of her photographs, are on view at the Clic gallery in New York until June 19. www.clicgallery.com
Ghost Town by Stephan WΓΌrth
Ghost Town, a book by photographer Stephan WΓΌrth will be available this Fall, published by Damiani Editore, www.stephenwurth.com
We Used To
New photography by Abbey Meaker
Vivienne Westwood Shoes at the Sursock Palace in Beirut
Vivienne Westwood's collections of shoes since the seventies have been on whats shaping out the be a world wide tour after the success of a show in London last year. You could also contribute the success to the rash of designer retrospectives. Right now the exhibition is on view at the Sursock Palace in Beirut. Vivienne Westwood Shoes, An Exhibition 1973 β 2011, which has opened in Beirut, will be followed by a stop in the north of England then on to Hong Kong, China and Japan. www.viviennewestwood.co.uk
RICHARD PRINCE, first solo exhibition in Asia
Since the late 1970s, Prince has been mining images from mass media, advertising, and entertainment. Working in the tear-sheet department at TIME/LIFE in New York, he took magazine ads for jewelry, furniture, fashion, and cigarettes, and gave them new potency by cropping, removing ad copy from the images, reshooting black and white images on color film, and configuring them in generic groups. With these βrephotographsβ, he redefined the artistic act and its related concepts of authorship, ownership, and the aura of the image. Applying his understanding of the complex transactions of representation to the making of art, he has crafted a unique signature filled with echoes of other signatures but that is unquestionably his own.
An exhibition, that opened yesterday at the Gagosian gallery in Hong Kong, explores the role and representation of women in the male imaginary and in American culture, a principal theme in Princeβs oeuvre since the outset of his career and one that is charged with ambiguity and provocation. By locating, appropriating, and manipulating popular depictions of feminine types β from the aloof fashion model and the glamorous celebrity to the fetishistic nurse and the bold biker girlfriend - Prince explores how visual definitions of gender form in popular culture through repetition and reiteration. Gleaned from a variety of highbrow, lowbrow, and subcultural sources, Princeβs women abound with a diversity of stereotyped erotic appeal.
On view until July 16, 2011 www.gagosian.com
Resurrecting PECK
Frames by Oliver Peoples designed in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the release of the literary novel written by Harper Lee in 1960βinspired by the signature optical frame worn by Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in the classic film To Kill A Mockingbird. www.oliverpeoples.com
The Erotic World of Harri Peccinotti
Harri Peccinotti, who is nearly eighty years old and looks almost exactly like a wizard, is most well known for his erotic images of womenβoften cropped and close up focusing in on the delicious details, instead of giving away the whole picture. Peccinotti also has the distinction of shooting the Pirelli calendar two years in a row and is oft credited with upping its raunch factor to the level it stands today. This June 14 marks the opening of an exhibit at the Tethys gallery in Florence, Italyβthe exhibition will run until July 4 2011. www.tethysgallery.com
Bob Dylan on Kicking Heroin
"I kicked a heroin habit in New York City.Β I got very, veryΒ strung out for a while,Β I meanΒ really very strung out and IΒ kicked this habit."
[Blood Bath] The Art of Hermann Nitsch
In the Denver-MCA Β through the end of May are the βrelictsβ (relics) of one of Nitschβs abreactive performances, enacted to liberate the repressive drives in himself and participants in his βaktions.β Instead of film, however, these are Schuttbilder paintings (poured) composed of animal blood and pigment, capturing the gestures and off-body splatters of the original performance.

Part Artaudβs idea of psychoanalytical cure through certain abject formations of theatre, part Golden Bough-type worship and slaughtering of Dionysius, Nitschβs work is about the trace of an event, not the finished painting. Drips, clots, spatters and smears all attest to a βrelicβ of a non-repeatable memory or aktion. But the frenzy of the performance is always dictated by the frame: the Nietzschean reintegration of primal and social. This is repeated again in the museumβs display: in the center are a number of Catholic vestments perfectly pressed and placed upon vestibules. But on the walls is the bloodwork, surrounding the repressed pagaentry of transubstantiation, recalling the pagan roots of Christianity, when the blood was never reduced to wine.
Bloodlines: Paintings by Hermann Nitsch is on view at the MCA in Denver until May 29.Β www.mcadenver.org
Text by Dreux Moreland for Pas Un Autre
