GEORGE CONDO: Mental States

Since his arrival on New York’s East Village art scene in the early 1980s, George Condo has developed a unique and provocative style of painting. But, for all its outlandish humour and outrageousness, his work is deeply engaged withthe memory of European and American traditions of painting. His ‘imaginary portraits’ conjure varied mental states with a mixture of comic absurdity and heart-rending pathos, and his larger abstract paintings re-imagine the work of modern Masters. On view now at the Southbank Center in London, a major retrospective, entitled George Condo: Mental States,  offers a comprehensive survey of three decades of Condo’s art.

Elisha Smith-Leverock's film "I Want Muscle"

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Winner of the 4th ASVOFF (A Shade View On Fashion Film) MK2 Grand Prix, 'I Want Muscle,' directed by Elisha Smith-Leverock, is a film that plays with taboo and gender stereotypes. It aims to explore a different kind of female beauty, providing a glimpse into the world of Kizzy Vaines, a female bodybuilder. She is the only British competitor for the Olympia Fitness title in Las Vegas.

Haute Culture

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General Idea was founded in Toronto in 1969 by Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson. The collective interrogated media image culture through now legendary projects like File magazine, as well as paintings, installations, sculptures, mail art, photographs, videos, ephemera, TV programs and even a beauty pageant. The group’s transgressive concepts and provocative imagery challenged social power structures and traditional modes of artistic creation in ever-shifting ways, until Partz and Zontal’s untimely deaths from AIDS-related causes in 1994. Curated by Paris-based independent curator Frédéric Bonnet, Haute Culture: General Ideais the first comprehensive retrospective devoted to the collective. The exhibition is organized around five themes, each central to the trio’s production: “the artist, glamour and the creative process”; “mass culture”; “architects/archaeologists”; “sex and reality”; and “AIDS." Haute Culture: General Idea is on view until January 1 at the Art Gallery of Ontario. 

River of Dust....

Aoi Kotsuhiroi has released another exciting chapter, entitled River of Dust, to the ongoing saga of the Erotic Regrets collection.  This time her signature human hair, wood, beads and other fascinating ingredients make up full blown knuckle dusters – in what she calls hand objects – and the same goes for her feet objects, with beautiful knotted, twisted leather and hair that wrap up the ankle, look like they could have been dug up from the paleolithic era.

The Kiss At Turner

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Auguste Rodin’s life-size marble sculpture The Kiss (1901-04) will be installed at the Sunley Gallery at Turner Contemporary. On loan from the Tate collection and one of the most iconic images of sexual love, The Kiss was voted the nation’s favorite work of art in a 2003 poll. The embracing couple come from a true thirteenth century story of forbidden love, which was immortalized in Dante’s Inferno and by many artists since. The couple are the adulterous lovers Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, who were slain by Francesca’s outraged husband. They appear in Dante’s Inferno, which describes how their passion grew as they read the story of Lancelot and Guinevere together. At the time, the perceived eroticism of Rodin’s sculpture was controversial leading to instances where the work was removed from public view.

Baptise Viry for Yellow Velvet

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Yellow Velvet is a unique, niche purveyor of cushions, throw pillows, and home décor curated by Carole Dugelay –  who previously created textiles for the fashion houses of Christian Lacroix and Kenzo. Each quarter Yellow Velvet commissions a designer for a new capsule collection. This time around Yellow Velvet has teamed up with 28 year old, Parisian designer Baptise Viry for a collection, entitled Absolutely Fabulous, inspired by, "hidden vices, misappropriation, [and] losing one’s point of reference."

[BOOKS] Journey Into The Abyss

Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880-1918, a collection of fascinating, never-before-published early diaries of Count Harry Kessler—patron, museum director, publisher, cultural critic, soldier, secret agent, and diplomat—present a sweeping panorama of the arts and politics of Belle Époque Europe, a glittering world poised to be changed irrevocably by the Great War. Kessler’s immersion in the new art and literature of Paris, London, and Berlin unfolds in the first part of the diaries. This refined world gives way to vivid descriptions of the horrific fighting on the Eastern and Western fronts of World War I, the intriguing private discussions among the German political and military elite about the progress of the war, as well as Kessler’s account of his role as a diplomat with a secret mission in Switzerland. The diaries present brilliant, sharply etched, and often richly comical descriptions of his encounters, conversations, and creative collaborations with some of the most celebrated people of his time: Otto von Bismarck, Paul von Hindenburg, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Diaghilev, Vaslav Nijinsky, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Sarah Bernhardt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Marie Rilke, Paul Verlaine, Gordon Craig, George Bernard Shaw, Harley Granville-Barker, Max Klinger, Arnold Böcklin, Max Beckmann, Aristide Maillol, Auguste Rodin, Edgar Degas, Éduard Vuillard, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Ida Rubinstein, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Pierre Bonnard, and Walther Rathenau, among others. Remarkably insightful, poignant, and cinematic in their scope, Kessler’s diaries are an invaluable record of one of the most volatile and seminal moments in modern Western history. You can purchase the book here. 

Bardot by Andy Warhol

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Brigitte Bardot was one of the first women to be really modern and treat men like love objects, buying them and discarding them. I like that. --Andy Warhol

Gagosian Gallery London presents an exhibition of Andy Warhol's portraits of Brigitte Bardot. Warhol first met Bardot at the Cannes Film Festival in 1967 when she actively supported his attempt to show Chelsea Girls there after the original planned screening had been cancelled. In 1973, at the height of her fame, she announced her retirement from making films. That same year Warhol received the commission to make her portrait. At the time that he was shifting his focus from filmmaking back to painting and perhaps viewed her coincidental screen exit as the perfect opportunity to commemorate and idolize her in art. On view at the Gagosian Gallery in London until November 12. 

[BOOKS] Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone

A new book, to be released at the end of this month, collects of many of Hunter S. Thompson's articles published in RollIng Stone magazine.  "Buy the ticket, take the ride," was a favorite slogan of Hunter S. Thompson, and it pretty much defined both his work and his life. Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone showcases the roller-coaster of a career at the magazine that was his literary home. Jann S. Wenner, the outlaw journalist's friend and editor for nearly thirty-five years, has assembled articles that begin with Thompson's infamous run for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Party ticket in 1970 and end with his final piece on the Bush-Kerry showdown of 2004. In between is Thompson's remarkable coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign—a miracle of journalism under pressure—and plenty of attention paid to Richard Nixon, his bÊte noire; encounters with Muhammad Ali, Bill Clinton, and the Super Bowl; and a lengthy excerpt from his acknowledged masterpiece, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Woven throughout is selected correspondence between Wenner and Thompson, most of it never before published. It traces the evolution of a personal and professional relationship that helped redefine modern American journalism, and also presents Thompson through a new prism as he pursued his lifelong obsession: The life and death of the American Dream. Purchase the book here.