greg.org – Page 304 – the making of, by greg allen

You Are So (Colorful, Devalued, Looks Like Monopoly) Money

Vince Vaughn, US Marshall (Plan evangelist) image: ecalos.com
My dad is in town for a meeting, and he brought his free USA Today down Via IP: This USAT article about Americans abroad feeling burned by Bush’s wildly unpopular unilateralist “megalomania.” The punchline stars Vince Vaughn:

But one incident really stung.
“Man, it was bad,” says the Rat Pack-y star of Swingers. “These girls saw us and were kind of flirting, and they kept asking us if we were American. Finally we said, ‘Yes,’ and they just took off.
“One girl turns and says, ‘We were hoping you were Canadian.’ Canadian? Since when was it cooler to be Canadian?”

Welcome to the New World Order, baby.

At Least Some Americans Are Doing OK Abroad

A very good, long Guardian interview by with Julianne Moore and Todd Haynes at the National Film Theatre in London.

And I have to say, I look back on Lindsay Law, who was from American Playhouse and was our producer on Safe, and David Aukin, who worked at Channel 4; those guys are so rare, I realise in hindsight how much courage financing producers had to have to stand back and trust you. Now I would look at these dailies from Safe, where Julie was a speck on the screen and the whole film would be played out in a single shot. And he was like, “I don’t get it. I don’t get it.” But he would never talk to me and never say, “Oh, more coverage” or put in his two cents just to make himself feel more creatively esteemed. That’s so unusual, that kind of courage and I just now realise the extent to which that helped me. So we were really lucky and although we had just under a million dollars to make Safe, which isn’t amazing to think of, but it felt like it. It was tough. But I still had the freedom to do what I needed to do.

On Fashion On War

From Guy Trebay’s column in the NY Times:

My prediction: Canadian flags on YSL backpacks. “I am not a politician,” Mr [Tom] Ford said, “but at this point I’m embarrassed to be an American.”

Majed al-Sabah, who owns Villa Moda, the Barney’s of Kuwait: 1) gets all testy over the anti-war rainbow flags on display during the shows (“I thought that Milan had turned totally gay.”), 2) Comissioned Prada and other designers to make him some caftans (see them here), and 3) wears a diamond-and-ruby pin that says “I love Bush.” Verdict: Gay.

Who’da thought? Famous-for-poufs, Pucci designer Christian Lacroix turns out to be a philosopher statesman. Note to all other designers: Be quiet and let, um, Lacroix..lead the, um, crusade.

During the Second World War, Mr. Lacroix went on, his mother was a girl of 16 living in occupied Arles. To signal her own resistance, she incorporated a fragment of color from the forbidden French flag in her clothes every day. “A little bit of blue, red or white in each outfit,” Mr. Lacroix said, adding that if there was anything that decades in the design world had taught him, it was that symbols, however small, can sometimes surprise you with their weight.

Design Selected For Pentagon Memorial

model for Kaseman Beckman Pentagon Memorial design, image: defenselink.mil

And the winner is: A proposal by Keith Kaseman and Julie Beckman, two recent Columbia grads, to build 184 “memorial units” in a grove of maple trees. Interesting details: All benches are aligned with the flight path of AA77. Memorial units for those who died on the plane cantilever away from the building, while units for those who died in the Pentagon cantilever away toward it.
Read the Wash. Post article, including comments by the designers and jury chief/MoMA architecture curator Terence Riley. Read Post critic Benjamin Forgey’s generally positive review. Read my greg.org posts about my frustration with the hyper-individualization of memorials, follow competition links, and see my rash design response.

On Collecting Art, On Collecting Taxes

US Attorney/curator with posters of Rothko, Bacon, deKooning and either Twombly or Clemente,
purchased by Sam Waksal with an 8.25% discount, at least.
In the grand tradition of deposed CEO’s, but with downtown sensibility (and far better taste), Sam Waksal pleaded guilty to evading sales tax on $15 million in paintings he purchased through a major New York dealer. It was the old, “send it to my factory in NJ, nah, just fax the invoice there” ploy, which has been tripping up art world naifs since the 80’s, at least. (Clearly, it’s worth it to work it and get your 10% discount from the dealer instead.) Waksal’s lawyer tells the Washington Post that his client was “not the architect of the scheme.” Yow.
Since no report names all nine works involved, here it is, a greg.org exclusive:

Mark Rothko, Untitled – Plum and Brown – $3.5m. Didn’t reach $2-3m estimate at Sotheby’s last May. Pic above, or buy a painted copy of it online for $275 [!!?].

Francis Bacon, Study from the Human Body – $3m. Also unsold at Sotheby’s, against a $2.5-3.5m estimate. City Review has the war story of the failed sales.

Franz Kline, Mahoning II – $3m (via the Posts. Mahoning is in the Whitney.)

Willem deKooning Untitled V – $2.4m (via NYNewsday and AP/ABC).

Roy Lichtenstein, Landscape with Seated Figure – $900k. (via AP/ABC)

Cy Twombly, Untitled (Rome) and Solar Barge of Sesostris – $1.3m and $800k. (via Boston Globe. The first was exhibited at Knoedler in 2000, and the second was shown in 2001 by the Dealer.

Francesco Clemente, Lovers – $60k. (via The Post.) Eh. For a Clemente, you risk jail? A definite Koslowski moment.
That adds up to $14,960,000. Any guess what the last, $40,000 work could be? According to the Times, it’s Richard Serra. His sculptures can go for more than $1m, but $40k for a painting is doable. What’s more, these last three artists show with the Dealer. Waksal can brag about the sweet deal he got on them, all while paying the Dealer super-retail for what amounts to personal shopping.
[Update: The NYPost pegs Waksal’s total at $15.31 million, which means the Serra was $350,000. That sounds like Sam didn’t even get a discount on the in-house stuff. No wonder he’s fingering The Dealer. Update #2: Turns out the Serra was titled, The American flag is not an object of worship. Don’t let FoxNews get wind of that sale.]

On Relieving Payne, On Power And Behind-The-Scenes

from r: Jane, David, Nancy, Swoosie
First, the good. Star photographer-to-the-stars Patrick McMullan has posted Billy Farrell’s party pics from the Alexander Payne event last week.
Then, the lame. In a bit they call House of Payne, the Daily News pretends that Alexander Payne was a pain in the ass and that “he should get over himself,” slamming him for his “snippiness” toward good friend and interviewer, UA chief (and legendary indie film producer/distributor) Bingham Ray. But it’s totally not true. Here’s the deal: Rush & Molloy are too afraid of upsetting a studio head by saying he talked too much or sometimes inadvertently cut Alexander off; instead, they’ll take lame shots at an extremely friendly, self-conscious director.
Ray and Payne had gone off earlier in the day to discuss what themes and ideas they’d talk about on stage. During the rehearsal, their back-and-forth conversation was both animated and fascinating. Both are behind-the-camera guys; performing for a crowd doesn’t come naturally to either of them. When the lights went down, Alexander was much more self-conscious, and Bingham was much more talkative.
Many people told me they found the whole conversation very interesting. Some found it interesting, but thought Ray talked too much, at least for an event about Payne. And a couple of people wondered, who was that guy? If that’s you, you’re not in the film industry. But if you know Bingham Ray, you want to work with him, and so you’re probably not going to tell him he talked too much. It’s the paradox of power.
My take: Ray said several times that night he’d never spoken in a one-on-one format like that, and he’d be mortified to think he messed up Payne’s evening in some way. So if he talked over Alexander’s answer, or told some story of his own, it was with the best of intentions. But hold a position of power and be sought out for your vision, for a long time, and you can become accustomed to being listened to. Bill Clinton was the same way. And Payne was a combination of polite, nervous and self-effacing; he’s not gonna call a friend on something in front of a crowd, and his own reluctance to analyze his work beat out any fleeting desire to spoon-feed the crowd.
As these two brilliant behind-the-camera guys gamely put on their best show, the producer sitting next to me had quickly figured it out. She leaned over to me at one point and whispered, “I want to hear the DVD commentary track for this.”

Chelsea Gallery Shortlist

Untitled (Republican Years), Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 1992
currently in “Stacked” at D’Amelio Terras
If you are boycotting the French right now, you’re a loser. They’re putting on some of the best shows in town. Additions to an incomplete list:

“Back Grounds,” at Andrew Kreps [Dude, get a website!] a show of intricately made B&W photographs by Liz Deschenes, James Welling, and Adolphe Humbert de Molard. Curated by Olivier Renaud-Clement.

“Stacked,” a group show of, well, stacked works at D’Amelio Terras.

“Architecture and Furniture by Jean Prouv� at Sonnabend,” with Galerie Patrick Seguin, including remarkable 1950 pieces from the Air France office in Brazzaville, Congo.

“The Extravagant Vein,” at Marianne Boesky. Drawings, video projection and oil painting by Donald Moffett.

Photographs by gallery artists at Andrea Rosen, including Craig Kalpakjian‘s proposal for creating an earthwork on the moon (which would, by definition, not be an earthwork).

Douglas Gordon at Gagosian. What’s the big deal? Or, more precisely, what’s the big deal with “big?”

On A Big Art Thursday

Last night at a friend’s house, Jeremy Blake showed us some recent work and talked about it.

and by “house,” I mean a sprawling, gorgeous Fifth Avenue apartment filled with pictures of supermodels (not kissing ones, but just hanging out ones)

and by “some,” I mean two of his DVD-based pieces, including Blossoms and Blood, a beautiful, expressive short film he made with Paul Thomas Anderson and Jon Brion for the Punch-Drunk Love cast and friends. It’s a closely interwoven mix of scenes from the movie, Jeremy’s paintings, and Brion’s music.

and by “recent,” I mean the DVD was still warm. 1906 is the just-finished second part of a trilogy about the Winchester Mansion, which combines 8mm film, paintings, and an organ/symphony/film projector-interlaced soundtrack. It’s eerie, moody, historically rich and beautiful.

and by “talked,” I mean blew people away with passion, articulate discussion of his work and his process, and intelligence regarding the context it inhabits. One thing that surprised me: Even after “air-dropping from the farthest margins into the center of the film world,” and working with one of the most famously creatively empowered directors, Jeremy finds that artists actually have it pretty good, in terms of freedom to “pursue subjectivity” with their work.
The New Museum previewed a strong group show, “Living Inside the Grid,” where Dan Cameron exercises his international muscles in advance of the Istanbul Biennial. There are some obvious (and thus, intentional) omissions, but many nice pieces, including a creepy-sleek prison door by Elmgreen & Dragset.
And finally, while I didn’t make the opening, the after-party came to us at dinner: The Whitney opens a show about Diller + Scofidio, architects who have PR-muscled their way to the front of the technology/media stage. Eager to make amends for the dustup caused by his baldly partisan, king-making articles about the WTC redesign, the NYTimes‘ Herbert Muschamp returns to clear-eyed, of-the-people objectivity in his review. Here’s the first paragraph:

The search for intelligent life in architecture is artfully rewarded at the Whitney Museum’s retrospective of the work of Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, New York’s brainiest architectural team. But intelligent visitors will have to pick their way through a few unwelcome booby traps: curatorial winks and nods designed to dumb things down for the chimerical unsophisticates to whom far too many museum shows today are needlessly pitched.

Mr Rogers Was A Person In My Neighborhood

I was too young to get worked up about moving from New York to Indianapolis, but I remember being very nervous about moving from Indianapolis to Raleigh. One day, my 1st-grade teacher took me to Dairy Queen after school to talk about it.
“Well, I don’t know anyone,” I complained, “and there aren’t any famous people from North Carolina.” (New York already had its hooks into me, it turns out.)
“Like who?” Mrs Hershenson asked.
“Like Cowboy Bob.”
Although, at the time I didn’t realize the golden era of locally produced kids’ shows was ending, I had a point.
Deftly skirting a potentially ugly Cowboy Bob-Andy Griffith shootout, Mrs Hershenson asked, “Is that important to you?”
Proto-New Yorker answer: “um, yeah.”
“Well, what about Mister Rogers?”
“But he’s not from Indianapolis.”
“No, you’re right. He’s from Pittsburgh. But his show is on a network, which means it’ll be on in North Carolina, just like it is here. So when you get to Raleigh, you’ll already know someone. And then you’ll make a lot of other friends, too, in no time.”
Thus, in addition to explaining the differences between affiliate and network programming, Mister Rogers (and Mrs Hershenson) helped me to see that my neighborhood extended far beyond my street, and they guided me into to a lifetime of seeking out the friendship of famous people.
Mister Rogers passed away today, after a recent diagnosis of cancer. View a timeline of Fred Rogers’ achievements, including a behind the scenes clip from the first show, and his 1969 Senate testimony where he passionately argued for the creation of PBS, at pbskids.org.

Architectural Survivor 3: See Who Gets Voted Off The Island

It’s architectural reality TV, with so many last-minute campaigns, twists and turns, you’d think Fox was running it, not the Port Authority. The final two bachelors, er architect groups in the design “competition” for the WTC site have been workin’ it hard, according to design reporter Julie Iovine’s NYTimes article, even turning up on Oprah. Herbert Muschamp weighs in, too, slightly chastened. Meanwhile, Edward Wyatt’s report of a LMDC committee’s surprise recommendation of THINK over (the Pataki/Bloomberg-favored) Libeskind sounds like a promo for the finale of Joe Millionaire. And just as “surprising,” or “real,” for that matter. Whether angling to arrive at a lecture with a victim family member or throwing shade on each other’s designs, these architects ingenuously perform for the camera.

Night Of A Thousand Film Geeks

clockwise from top R: UA’s Bingham Ray and honoree Alexander Payne
David O. Russell, last year’s honoree, still in a euphoric daze
“special friend”/screenwriter Jim Taylor, freezing on way to afterparty
John Waters and sycophantic fan, photo: David Russell
crowd shot, which captured the supposedly elusive cracked-me-up international man of mystery
Last night at MoMA, Alexander Payne and Bingham Ray talked about Payne’s career and films (including Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt). The Museum’s Film & Media Department gave Payne its Work In Progress Award, to honor filmmakers as they transition from “promising” to “proven.” Ray, who’s an independent film legend himself, and who heads United Artists (which picked up Pieces of April at Sundance), studio headed the conversation.
In my secret socialite life, I co-chaired the benefit. I’m working up my notes from Alexander’s discussion (and will try to score some audio clips, too) and will post a page of pictures soon. In the mean time, here is a composite pic, and the highlights of my speech:

“Thanks to the creative family at Vanity Fair and W Hotels (the sponsors). They don’t give traditional gift bags; they make them. Graydon Carter was up late writing poems for each of us.”

“Smile! It’s for my weblog.”

I decided to cut the bit about the after-party being potluck (“Manhattan brings the entree; Brooklyn, a salad; Westchester, the mixers; LA, the herb…” Like last year, LA was the only one who brought what they were assigned.)

Movie Idea, v. 1million

It takes the village paper, the Guardian, to report this story from Urbana, IL:
“The mother who convinced everyone her child had leukemia”

Terri [Mom] fed Hannah [seven-year old daughter] sleeping pills, then took her on long, aimless drives among the strip-malls and cornfields of Ohio until she fell asleep. Afterwards, she would tell her they had been to the hospital, and that she had slept through her treatment again…
Within weeks, [the head of the Mother’s Club at Hannah’s school] had the pupils holding cookie sales and donating the aluminium ring-pulls from fizzy drink cans, which they sold for recycling. “They even had a Hannah Hat Day,” the Urbana Daily Citizen newspaper noted in a report last June, under the headline Community Reaches Out To Little Girl. “Everyone wore a hat, because Milbrandt must wear a hat since she had the chemotherapy and lost her hair.”

Canadian Flag On Backback — The Cremaster Version

Cremaster 2 Patch, click to order at the Gugg store
Now there’s a Canadian flag patch for all your globehopping needs. Use the Maple Leaf to show your Can-x street cred, or to avoid taking the heat for shameful US administrations.
Or kick it old-school with the until-1965 version, the Red Ensign. With this Cremaster patch (1 of 5, each sold separately) on your, um, backpack, the velvet ropes at biennial VIP lounges will part for you; you’ll waltz right in to Matisse Picasso, no waiting; and suddenly-fawning art dealers will give you an extra 10% off. [thanks to the eagle-eyed Fimoculous]
[Face facts: the backpack’s a dealbreaker, dude, especially in Venice. Put it on a sash, maybe with a pink kilt.]
[Sadly, the “I Survived Cremaster 3” T-shirts, which were a hit in Basel, aren’t available. Get a cap instead.]
update: the patches are no longer at the Guggenheim online store, but Well Wisher has images of them on flickr

On Loving Their Work

Josh Newman and Colin Spoelman, the budding moguls at Cyan Pictures should be celebrating, if they weren’t working so much. Their short film, Coming Down the Mountain, has just played at a couple of film festivals.
And, shooting recently wrapped on their first feature, actor Adam Goldberg’s directorial debut, I Love Your Work. Naturally, there is a behind-the-scenes weblog.
With just six days worth of posts from the twenty-plus day shoot, the weblog’s kind of slight, but it makes for good readin.’ Figuring (rightly) that posting in real-time and producing would suck, Josh brought in Helen Jane, a blogger pro, so to speak. HJ knows refreshingly/annoyingly little about filmmaking, giving the weblog an amusingly wide-eyed, “I can’t believe I’m getting paid for hanging out with Franke Potente!” tone. No news here, but I’d rather see a weblog from the POV of a principal player (producer, director, actor) rather than a friendly groupie. Of course, that’s why I’m here.
[Update from the “Going out in a blaze of glory” department: writing about the ILYW weblog may be the new way to cease publication, if Shift and Salon are any indication. If I’m not around next week, you’ll know why…]

More On Punch-Drunk Love and Jeremy Blake

Been making arrangements for a private preview of a new work by Jeremy Blake, who I’ve been friendly with for many years, since his first NY show. While putting together an email of links and background for people, I went back to the official site for Paul Anderson’s film, Punch-Drunk Love [DVD, someday]. Under “movies”, there is a collection of 14 haiku-like clips, which use liberal doses of Jeremy’s abstracted work and Jon Brion’s film music, often without any dialogue, or even ambient sound. They’re really great, like a bowl of film candy.
A search of the web for any discussion of them turned up nothing, but ptanderson.com, the blow-away best “unofficial” filmmaker fansite around, comes to the rescue, sort of. In addition to a section on Jeremy and his work (including a what/where inventory of his work in PDL), there’s a list of deleted scenes which maps pretty closely onto the website movies. PDL is the most overlooked movie of the award season. And not just acting/directing/writing, but the whole gamut of editing, production design, sound, lighting, music, I mean, come on.