LSD Song

Thierry Mouillé – "LSD Song", "Brass Space, Pavillon 1", "Archisong", "Opus froissé" and "Le livre des peintures, Partitions" From a geometrical analogy between the LSD molecule and an electronic battery to digital prints of crumpled musical scores, or even a musical sculpture of architectural proportions, The works of Thierry Mouillé belong to the art of scheming and aim to trap ideas and perceptions.  On view at Espace culturel Louis Vuitton's current exhibition entitled Anicroches — Variations, choral and fugue on view until February 19, 60, rue de Bassano 101, avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris.

Paris, Portrait of a City

Photography by Helmut Newton

Paris, Portrait of a City is Taschen publishers new, vivid history of the capital of love and photography. A city built on two millennia of history, Paris is entering the third century of its love story with photography. It was on the banks of the Seine that Niépce and Daguerre officially gave birth to this new art that has flourished ever since, developing a distinctive language and becoming a vital tool of knowledge. Paris: Portrait of a Cityleads us through what Goethe described as a “universal city where every step upon a bridge or a square recalls a great past, where a fragment of history is unrolled at the corner of every street”. The history of Paris is recounted in photographs ranging from Daguerre’s early incunabula to the most recent images – an almost complete record of over a century and a half of transformations and a vast panorama spanning more than 600 pages and 500 photographs. This book brings together the past and the present, the monumental and the everyday, objects and people. Images captured by the most illustrious photographers – Daguerre, Marville, Atget, Lartigue, Brassaï, Kertész, Ronis, Doisneau, Cartier-Bresson and many more – but also by many unknown photographers, attempt to bottle just a little of that “Parisian air”, something of that particular poetry given out by the stones and inhabitants of a constantly changing city that has inspired untold numbers of writers and artists over the ages. Available March 1st here. 

Guillaume Apollinaire's Little Auto

Guillaume Apollinaire – whose writings ranged from plays to experimental poetry, from art criticism to erotica – was at the heart of literary and artistic life in early 20th-century Paris. Both his work and his flamboyant personality had a defining influence on the development of Surrealism, Dadaism and other artistic movements. In late 1914 Apollinaire swapped the high life of avant-garde Paris for the mud and desolation of war in the trenches. But his poems of this period are wholly different from those that for English readers have come to define the genre of war poetry: exploding shells are compared to champagne bottles, and juxtaposed with the orgy of destruction are nostalgia for antiquity, impatience for the future, melancholy and exuberance. Apollinaire died in 1918. The new translations in this bilingual edition, entitled The Little Auto comprise mostly poems written after 1914, but include ‘Zone’ (in the first English version since Samuel Beckett’s to match the original’s use of rhyme) and some other pre-war poems. A century later, they remain as daring and alive as when they were written. [purchase]

Never Mind The Pollocks

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James R. Ford

Suite Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand presents an evolving touring exhibition of male contemporary artists based in New Zealand, curated by James R Ford, Never Mind the Pollocks features artists who employ intellect, keen observation and a lightness of touch in their work. Their output suggests a number of current shifts: in scale and discipline, in the attitudes of and toward male artists, in the way artists now make and contextualize their work. The show is a response to these issues and, from curator James R Ford’s point of view, how he, as an artist now living in New Zealand, situates his own practice within these considerations. Never Mind The Pollocks will tour to venues in Gisborne and Auckland later in 2012/early 2013, with artists and works being added along the way. Never Mind The Pollocks will be on view at the Suite Gallery until February 6, 2012, 108 Oriental Parade, Wellington.

Lescop Dans la Forêt

Mathieu Lescop, known simply as Lescop, is making waves on the French pop scene.  John & Jehn, French lo-fi cult music duo based in London, released Lescop's first EP on vinyl back in November off their label Pop Noire and last Friday Kitsuné released his insanely catchy track La Foret on their Parisien II compilation. Lescop has stated that he writes his lyrics strictly in French in an attempt to reinvent French Pop music. La Foret, a song with lyrics that hover in the same air as the dark romanticism of Rimbaudian symbolism, is a perfect example: "I feel your breath brushes my neck / a loaded pistol strokes my cheek." Lescop will be playing at the Shacklewell Arms in London for the Pop Noire Party on January 24.

Billy Monk's Nightclub Photography

A new book is available of Billy Monk's nightclub photography. Billy Monk worked as a bouncer in the notorious Catacombs club in the dock area of Cape Town, South Africa, during the 1960s. He originally began taking pictures in the club with the intention of selling the photographs to the customers – the people he was photographing. His aim was not to make a social statement, but his money-making scheme quickly turned into something else as he increasingly captured the raw energy of the club, its decadence and tragedy, its humanity and joy. As someone who shared the experiences of those club-goers he was trusted by them and was able to convey their world and their experience with great energy and honesty. As photographer David Goldblatt has written in the forward: “These are photographs by an insider of insiders for insiders. If inhibitions were lowered by the seemingly vast quantities of brandy and Coke that were imbibed, trust, nevertheless, is powerfully evident. Not simply in the raucous tweaking of bared breasts, or the more guarded but evident ‘togetherness’ of two bearded men, as well as the open flouting of peculiarly South African sanctions such as prohibitions on interracial sex. It is also present in the quiet composure of many of the portraits. People seemed to welcome and even bask in Monk’s attentions.” Monk stopped photographing at the club in 1969. Ten years later his contact sheets and negatives were discovered and in 1982 the work was exhibited at the Market Gallery in Johannesburg. Monk could not make the opening and two weeks later, en route to seeing the show, he became involved in an argument. A fight broke out, Monk was fatally shot in the chest and never saw his work exhibited. The book, Billy Monk: Nightclub Photographs, is now available.

Joseph Sterling: 30 Years of Photographs

Portland, OR—Charles A. Hartman Fine Art presents Joseph Sterling: 30 Years of Photographs. This exhibition of more than 25 images reveals the artist's range and embraces both the famed series, The Age Of Adolescence - a documentary masterwork exposing the life and milieu of the pre-Vietnam War era American teenager - and a variety of other imagery, including important photographs from the Pictus Twistus and Bird’s Eye View series. Joseph Sterling: 30 Years of Photographs will be on view at the Charles A Hartman gallery from January 18 to February 25, 134 NW 8th Ave Portland, OR.

Anja Czioska 8mm Film Retrospective

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On view this month at the MMK Museum in Frankfurt, the short Super 8 films of Anja Czioska in a retrospective of the filmmaker's twenty-year career. "I will show bathing and shower filmportraits of me and my friends, experimental film visions on single-frame, performances, happening, portraits, me and my camera, scenes of daily art like filmed during my travellings to Amsterdam, Berlin, New York, San Francisco, Paris, London and home base diaries of a Frankfurt artist's life," says Czioska. On view January 25 at the MMK in Frankfurt Lecture Hall.

Palm Springs Modernism Week

Today is the second day of the 2012 Modernism Week in Palm Springs, a 10-day festival that celebrates mid-century modern design, architecture and culture, and features over 80 events including home tours, films, lectures, fashion, and swank receptions at locations rarely-seen by the public. Modernism Week will commence on February 26.

The Map and the Territory

The most celebrated and controversial French novelist of our time, Michel Houellebecq, now delivers his magnum opus—about art and money, love and friendship and death, fathers and sons. The Map and the Territory is the story of an artist, Jed Martin, and his family and lovers and friends, the arc of his entire history rendered with sharp humor and powerful compassion. His earliest photographs, of countless industrial objects, were followed by a surprisingly successful series featuring Michelin road maps, which also happened to bring him the love of his life, Olga, a beautiful Russian working—for a time—in Paris. But global fame and fortune arrive when he turns to painting and produces a host of portraits that capture a wide range of professions, from the commonplace (the owner of a local bar) to the autobiographical (his father, an accomplished architect) and from the celebrated (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology) to the literary (a writer named Houellebecq, with whom he develops an unusually close relationship). Then, while his aging father (his only living relative) flirts with oblivion, a police inspector seeks Martin’s help in solving an unspeakably gruesome crime—events that prove profoundly unsettling. Even so, now growing old himself, Jed Martin somehow discovers serenity and manages to add another startling chapter to his artistic legacy, a deeply moving conclusion to this saga of hopes and losses and dreams. [purchase]

Gusmano Cesaretti

Roberts & Tilton gallery in Los Angeles presents an exhibition presenting new and vintage photographs by Gusmano Cesaretti, curated by Aaron Rose. The main gallery will feature work from the early period of Cesaretti’s career (1970s) in which he immersed himself in the East Los Angeles culture. His photographs of this era celebrated a sub-culture that had rarely been captured before. The exhibition will include twenty-four vintage, unique prints that have recently been discovered and will be shown for the first time in Los Angeles. An Italian immigrant who moved to Los Angeles in the 1970s, Cesaretti quickly became fascinated by East Los Angeles. Inspired by the colors, people and graffiti that populated the East Side, he began to capture the vulnerability and uncensored quality of this area. Always honest when shooting his subjects, Cesaretti presents them as they are: violent, loving, confident, scared, full of life. It is this energy and conflict inherent in those who occupy the edges of society that drives his photographic investigations. On view until February 18, Roberts and Tilton, 5801 Washington Blvd, Culver City, CA 

Banks Violette at Blum & Poe

Blum & Poe gallery in Los Angeles presents an exhibition of new work by Banks Violette, his first one-person exhibition in Los Angeles. Simultaneously rooted in Minimalist form and contemporary in its use of industrial materials, Violette’s artistic practice freely employs diverse media, such as neon tubing, powder-coated steel, glass, salt, resin, and aluminum. Violette draws inspiration from a variety of subcultural communities, including hardcore punk and drone metal bands like Sunn O))), political conspiracy theorists, both left and right-wing religious fanatics, and most recently NASCAR and the iconography which populates the sport’s predominantly southern fan base. As if arrested in time, Violette’s sculptural objects and installations function as elegant reminders of darker moments past and present. On view until February 11, Blum and Poe, 2727 S. La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

Marble Sculpture from 350 B.C. to Last Week

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Sperone Westwater gallery in New York presents an exhibition of white marble sculptures dating from 350 B.C. to the present day. This survey includes Greek and Roman antiquities, Neoclassical sculptures, and works by modern and contemporary European and American artists. The exhibition, entitled Marble Sculpture from 350 B.C. to Last Week, is on view until February 25, Sperone Westwater,257 Bowery, New York, NY.

Oliviero Toscani Launches New Calender

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Italian shock photographer Oliviero Toscani has released a new calendar at an unveiling in Florence, Italy -- a calendar featuring 12 penis close-ups in an ad for a group of companies that make naturally-tanned leather. The flamboyant photographer launched the calendar at an event in Florence also attended by famously well-endowed Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi, who said that people should "de-dramatise" sex and put an end to "bigotry". Toscani last year focused on women's genitalia for a calendar for the same Vera Pelle consortium, which brought censure from Italy's advertising watchdog.  Toscani is best known for his controversial ad campaigns for the Italian clothes maker Benetton, which itself courted controversy last year with a series of photo montages of rival world leaders kissing each other.