[first look] CHARLOTTE TAYLOR S/S 2012 fashion film

LONDON – Charlotte Taylor's extraordinary and eccentric use of fabrics with silhouettes of penguins, bees, and fishermen, and her ability to utilize them to create such refined, chic and wearable pieces make her truly an artist of a designer. With the fourth collection of her eponymous label, and to start off London Fashion week, she commissioned UK creative agency HarrimanSteel to create a short fashion film that captures the spirit of her Spring/Summer 2012 collection – which draws inspiration from "Japanese art and culture, bee-keeping and fishing."  

Larry Clark: Tulsa

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Presentation House Gallery in Vancouver presents an exhibition of vintage gelatin silver prints by photographer Larry Clark. The series of photographs on display graphically documents Clark’s exploration of the underworld of drug use, sex and violence in his hometown, Tulsa, Oklahoma from 1963 to 1971. Clark first gained notoriety when these images were compiled as a photo essay in his independently published 1971 book Tulsa. Now regarded as a classic photography project, Tulsa has been acclaimed as a powerful and highly personal social documentary, still emulated by art and fashion photographers alike—a reputation due in no small part to its enduring capacity to shock. The sleazy and poignant aspects of the lives portrayed draws the viewer into a prurient and compassionate relationship with the images. On view until October 30.

Love Jim, James Deans Love Letters For Sale

Three intimate love letters from James Dean to his first 'serious' love Barbara Glenn will be sold at an auction this Novemeber in Christie's popular culture category.  The letters, which were found in a drawer by Glenn's son, reveal a smitten James Dean prior to his magnesium flash into celluloid iconography.  The auction will be held November 23.

Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo Retrospective

Veruschka, Wrap by Giorgio di Sant'Angelo - photograph by Richard Avedon

Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo (1933-1989) rose to prominence during the late 1960s with his exuberant and colorful accessories and collections. With an eye for fantasy, Sant’ Angelo created expressive collections that merged his own Latin upbringing with gypsy, Aztec, American Indian and Asian influences among others. Eclectic mixes of vibrant fabrics with rich ornamentation were combined in free-body designs to reflect his ideas of modern sensuality. By reversing the role of stretch fabrics from innerwear to outerwear, he revealed the shape of the natural body as a modern fashion fundamental. “Silhouette as we’ve known it, as something imposed by fashion is finished. The only silhouette for 1971 is the body,” he proclaimed. An exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum presents the first ever Museum retrospective to highlight the extraordinary ingenuity of American designer Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo. Opening September 17 and closing February 12, 2012. 

RICHARD HAMILTON 1922 - 2011

British artist Richard Hamilton died yesterday London. His most well know artwork, a collage entitled Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, is considered one of the earliest examples of pop art. The above work, entitled Swingeing London 67, was a response after his his art dealer Robert Fraser was arrested and imprisoned for the possession of heroin. On 12 February 1967 the police raided a party at the Sussex farmhouse of Keith Richards where they found evidence of the consumption of various drugs. On 27 June 1967, Fraser and Mick Jagger were found guilty of the possession of illegal drugs. The following day the two men were handcuffed to each other and driven to court in a police van, where they were sentenced to six months and three months respectively. After the defence lawyer’s appeal, Jagger’s sentence was reduced to a fine but Fraser’s appeal was rejected and he spent four months in jail. The painting is derived from a press clipping.  Richard Hamilton was preparing for a major traveling retrospective before he died.

[fashion film] BELLA FREUD 'SUBMISSION'

Designer Bella Freud (daughter of the late painter Lucien Freud) collaborated with director Martina Amati to create of short fashion film for her 2011 Fall collection.  Starring  models Susie Bick and Abbey Lee Kershaw, and actresses Antonia Campbell Hughes, Phyllis Wang and Olympia Campbell, Submission takes place in the world of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu "where you learn to use your opponent's strength to vanquish them. The unlikely winner engages us in her internal dialogue, remembering the moment in her childhood when she discovered how she wanted clothes to serve her as a protective armor" Bella Freud premiered her short film last week in London, and if the film is a testament to a talent in filmmaking, the creative direction and sartorial aptitude of Bella Freud proves genius might just be hereditary.

Speaking in Tongues

Wallace Berman (1926-1976) was born in Staten Island, NY and came to Los Angeles with his parents when he was four years old. In 1955 he founded the small but influential mail art publication Semina – a brilliant, loose-leaf compilation of the most advanced artists and poets of his time, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jess (Collins) to name a few. Today, Berman is best known for his Verifax collages, softly sepia-colored works created with a forerunner of the photocopy machine. Influenced by surrealism, assemblage, and contemporary artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Andy Warhol, Berman produced multi-layered works that combined the picture of a hand-held transistor radio with images culled from newspapers and popular magazines. An exhibition at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, California, entitled Speaking in Tongues: Wallace Berman and Robert Heinecken, brings two seminal yet under-studied Los Angeles artists into close conversation with one another for the first time. This exhibition is concurrent with the Pacific Standard Time showing across Los Angeles in an en masse celebration of the Los Angeles art scene. Speaking in Tongues will on view October 2 to January 22, 2012. 

Plugged In

Daniele Buetti is a Swiss artist working in photography, video, sound, drawing, light box, sculpture, and digitally assisted work. Buetti makes use of advertising tools to expose the frailty of popular culture, explore our perceptions of beauty, and reveal the omnipotence of the media in our society. In Buetti’s works, beautiful colors and figures merge with light reveal unspoken feelings of ambivalence and despair, asking what function the role of media plays in the formationof identity, and questioning whether society can form identity without the media’s influence. Buetti uses light to attract the viewer in the same seductive way that the media uses beauty, forcing us to realize the inherent manipulation.Jenkins Johnson Gallery is presents Plugged In, a group exhibition of forward-thinking artists working with the electronic arts. All of the artists, including Buetti, Jeremy Bert,  and Andrew Bovasso, take contemporary approaches to their conceptual missions and use non-traditional media. Plugged in opens September 15 and runs through October 29.

Jack Smith: A Feast for Open Eyes

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The ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) presents a fortnight of films, events and symposia dedicated to the legendary American artist, filmmaker and actor, Jack Smith (1932-1989). Working in New York from the 1950s until his death in 1989, Smith unequivocally resisted and upturned the world of accepted conventions, whether artistic, moral or legal. Irreverent in tone and delirious in effect, Smith’s films, such as the notorious Flaming Creatures (1961), are at once wildly camp and subtly polemic. Although best known for his contributions to underground cinema, Smith’s influence also extends across the realm of performance art, photography and experimental theatre. Jack Smith: A Feast for Open Eyes is on view until September 18.

Icons of the Invisible

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As part of the Pacific Standard time art exhibitions in Los Angeles, the Fowler Museum at UCLA presents Icons of the Invisible: Oscar Castillo. Since the late 1960s, Oscar Castillo has documented the Chicano community in Los Angeles, from major political events to cultural practices to the work of muralists and painters. This exhibition will present rarely seen photographs from 1969-1980 exploring major themes (social movement, cultural heritage, urban environment, and everyday barrio life) and approaches (photojournalism, portraiture, art photography) that have guided Castillo’s work. Complementing the concurrent exhibition on Chicano art groups, Mapping Another L.A., the exhibition will provide another level of contextualization of L.A. history during this pivotal period. Icons of the Invisible will be on view from September 25 to February 26, 2012.

Thaweesak Srithongdee: Bruised

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Thaweesak Srithongdee "War"
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Thaweesak Srithongdee: left "Sex" right "Love"

Thaweesak Srithongdee, or Lolay as he is commonly known, is a thirty year old artist from Thailand.  His style echoes the influence of Surrealism and Pop Art. Lolay is a keen observer of people, their physical and mental characteristics. Having previously engineered a spurious race of Adonic, pectoral defined, super-beings that played with perceptions of body image Lolay expands his fascination with the human condition to question our existence and ultimate survival. Bruises and scars bear the physical trace of individual fallibility, but they also provoke assumptions as to the history and determiners behind such inflictions. A selection of Lolay's work will be on view at an exhibition, entitled Bruised, the Thavibu Gallery in Bangkok, Thailand from September 17 to October 15.

GUY BOURDIN, An Introduction

Sadist, genius, artist, monster – call him what you will – Guy Bourdin's titillating images changed fashion photography forever. A new book by Phaidon makes a small, but generous introduction to the work of Guy Bourdin with an introductory essay by Alison Gingeras that provides a fresh perspective on Bourdin’s life and work, including his considerable influence on the world of commercial and fine art photography.