Conversations with David Hockney

Sparky, illuminating and entertaining – a decade’s worth of conversations between David Hockney and art critic Martin Gayford that explore via anecdote, reflection, passion and humour the very nature of creativity.David Hockney is possibly the world’s most popular living painter, but he is also something else: an incisive and original thinker on art. Here are the fruits of his lifelong meditations on the problems and paradoxes of representing a three-dimensional world on a flat surface. How does drawing make one ‘see things clearer, and clearer, and clearer still’, as Hockney suggests? What significance do different media – from a Lascaux cave wall to an iPad – have for the way we see? What is the relationship between the images we make and the reality around us? How have changes in technology affected the way artists depict the world? A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney is out now on Thames & Hudson.

Raymond Pettibon: Desire in Pursuyt of the Whole

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Regen Projects in Los Angeles presents an exhibition of new works by Los Angeles artist Raymond Pettibon. Entitled Desire in Pursuyt of the Whole, this is the artist's ninth solo exhibition at the gallery. The show's title refers to Baron Corvo's complex novel of three interlocking plots where the author is thinly disguised as the protagonist. Pettibon's work often combines his own writing with quotes lifted from a myriad of sources ranging from quotidian to classical literature. His upcoming exhibition will feature new works in which the subject matter is a continuation of the artist's oeuvre: the landscape of war, politics, popular culture, art, literature, sports, religion, and sexuality. Pettibon will also exhibit his signature depictions of heroic surfers dropping into epic waves. Working in both large-scale color works and collage, the layering of images and text produces a multiplicity of elements that shift constantly in style, tense, and structure. On view until December 22. 

Here

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Richard Misrach

Pier 24 Photography presents the exhibition, HERE. This exhibition presents a selection of works produced by Bay Area photographers as well as a range of images of San Francisco, with an emphasis on the late-twentieth century. HERE. highlights the vibrancy of San Francisco and the surrounding areas through the work of 34 photographers and over 700 images. On view until December 16 –By appointment only Pier 24 The Embarcadero San Francisco CA, 94105. Exhibition photo by Austin McManus.

CAPUT

ART BASEL, MIAMI – Mondrian Sessions and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, organized by creative director Adarsha Benjamin, present a special screening of CAPUT, a film by Harmony Korine starring James Franco. A selection of photography by Adarsha Benjamin and Harmony Korine, that includes film stills and images from behind the scenes of CAPUT, will also be on view. CAPUT will be presented in Rebel, a project by James Franco in collaboration with Douglas Gordon, Harmony Korine, Damon McCarthy, Paul McCarthy, Ed Ruscha and Aaron Young at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Spring 2012. Musical guest include IO Echo and DJ sets by Henry Hopper and IAMSOUND. Thursday, December 1st 9pm-2am Sunset Lounge at Mondrian South Beach 1100 West Avenue Miami Beach.  Photo: Harmony Korine.

Lover

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This band is going to be enormous. The Echo Vamper is a duo formed by real life couple Iza Mortag Freund, from Denmark, and James Brook, from England, who just released their first EP in October, entitled It's The Echo Vamper, and are already making enormous waves with their unbelievably explosive sound. Above is a video for their track Lover, a single off their current EP. See music video after the jump.

[MIAMI BASEL] Fountain Art Fair

Fountain Art Fair will return to Art Basel Miami Beach, taking over the 25th St / North Miami warehouse for its 6th consecutive year. Opening Thursday, December 1st for a VIP & Press Preview, Fountain will set itself apart from other internationally applauded fairs with its vivacious, rogue attitude and selection of the most cutting-edge alternative galleries and independent artists. Fountain is thrilled to announce that the always audacious Grace Exhibition Space will curate an on-site, weekend-long program of evocative contemporary visual performance by artists Gim Gwang Cheol (Korea), Myk Henry (Ireland/NYC), Erik Hokanson (NYC), Quinn Dukes (NYC), Jill McDermid (Outer Space), Paul White (UK), and Hannah Dean (UK). Also joining the roster for Miami is original Fountain exhibitor Front Room, along with Tinca Art, We-are-Familia, and Untitled ArtProjects. This year Fountain Miami’s signature on-site street art installation is curated by Samson Contompasis, director of Albany’s The Marketplace, and will feature over 150 feet of work by fifteen of the most in-demand street artists including Sharktoof, Chris Stain, Olek, Hugh Leeman, Chor Boogie, OverUnder, White Cocoa, Army of One, Clown Soldier, Joe Iurato, CAKE, Tip-Toe, Elle, Ian Ross, and Know Hope.

DANS L'INTIMITÉ DES PEINTRES

Paris Match opens its archives reveals exceptional and rare moments in the heart of the mystery of creation: artists at work, in the privacy of their studios and their secret gardens, surrounded by their families. Unique perspective on the ceiling of the Opera by Chagall, Dali's daydreams, the suns of Miro, the studies of Francis Bacon: beyond the works, Paris Match by the discovery of these men of genius in a new book entitled Dans l'intimité des peintres.

Pain in Heart

Ska pop phenom from Norway, Razika releases a music video for their track Vondt i Hjertet from their acclaimed album Program 91. Razika recently made their debut in the United States with their first show in New York City where the quartet filmed four music videos. Vondt i Hjertet is the video first to be released, directed by Mona Lerche and stars actor Brady Cobert (13, Melancholia) and Stephanie Ellis (Burning Blue, Art Machine) as lovers in embrace tucked away in a car and the band themselves, playing live at Pete's Candy Store in Brooklyn.

Laurel Nakadate: Say You Love Me

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Laurel Nakadate: Say You Love Me at the Sert Gallery, at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass, will feature a selection of videos by the artist, filmmaker, and photographer Laurel Nakadate, whose work pushes the boundaries of voyeurism, exhibitionism, and vulnerability. In videos such as Happy Birthday, she performs a Lolita-like role in a series of sometimes unsettling fictional vignettes with mostly white, middle-aged men she meets through chance encounters. In others, including Good Morning Sunshine, she continues to exploit the unsavory yet titillating nature of interactions between older men and girls by voicing the role of a predator. Nakadate is always in control, whether in front of or behind the camera; yet her intention is not to make fun of her collaborators. Her videos are complicated but ultimately empathetic meditations on loneliness and longing.  Laurel Nakadate: Say You Love Me is on view from November 18 to December 22 at Sert Gallery, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

[BOOKS] Alive Inside the Wreck

From his name to his college transcript to his literary style, Nathanael West was self-invented. Born Nathan Weinstein, the author of the classics Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and The Day of the Locust (1939) was an uncompromising artist obsessed with writing the perfect novel. He pursued his passion from New York to California, flirting dangerously with the bleak, faux-glamour of Hollywood as the country suffered through the grim realities of the Great Depression. At the center of a circle of vigorous young literary writers that included Malcolm Cowley, William Carlos Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, S. J. Perelman, and Dashiell Hammett, West rose to become one of the most original literary talents of the twentieth century—an accomplished yet regrettably underappreciated master of the short lyric novel. West was finally starting to enjoy financial stability as a Hollywood screenwriter when he died in the California desert. A notoriously bad driver, he was racing back from a vacation in Mexico with his young bride of eight months when he crashed at full speed into another car. He was dead at the age of 37. Out now on OR Books by Joe Woodward, a biography of Nathanael West entitled Alive Inside The Wreck. You can also purchase the biography here. 

[AUTRE TV] Beats Take the School

Beatniks take over a school in this collaboration by James Franco & Adarsha Benjamin. Shot in NYC.