Author: greg

Art Roundup

Spums Stream, 2003, Gabriel Orozco, image: mariangoodman.com

You should feel horrible for missing Gabriel Orozco’s latest show at Marian Goodman. His elegant, biomorphic sculptural shapes are recognizable at first as found objects: bones, husks, driftwood. In the rear gallery, though, less finished “sketches” of polyurethane foam extruding through fine wire mesh point to Orozco’s material process. Gradually, it dawns on you that the artist didn’t find the previous shapes; he created them by manipulating quick-drying foam on sheets of latex with a hard-to-fathom series of gestures and pauses. What looked so familiar becomes perplexing and unknown. At least it did until Saturday.
Start making it up by going to Sargent’s Women at Adelson Galleries. It’s a museum-quality exhibition of portraits, scenes, and studies by an artist whose paintings I like for their photographic influences, which I discovered at the giant National Gallery show in 1999 (which rocked). [via About Last Night]
Then, if you go to Feigen for the Joseph Cornell show, and then buy Robert Lehrman’s unprecedented, awesome-looking catalog/DVD-ROM tour of the boxes, you’ll be just fine.

Was Nathan Hale Here?

nathan_hale_was_here.jpg

This plaque is on the Banana Republic near my house. It’s the first bronze plaque I’ve seen with a URL. It was put up 110 years after a researcher at the NY Historical Society determined that Hale was hanged near this spot in September 1776. The British Army camp where he was executed sat in front of The Sign of The Dove, a tavern on the Old Post Road, at the five-mile marker. Or, as it’s known now, 3rd Avenue at 66th street.
Hale’s dying words, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” are part of the American Revolution’s historical fabric. But I’m sure not one Banana Republican in a thousand knows they’re shopping at the spot where Hale uttered them.
This comment in the Times reminded me of the plaque: “‘[A memorial at the WTC site is] trying to remember something on the very ground where it happened.'” It is faced with an “inescapable specificity…meaning that people died here.”
I fear–and the WTC memorial finalist designs make me even more certain–that a memorial centered on the twin towers’ footprints marks precisely the wrong thing: the buildings, not the people. I hope it won’t take 200 years for future historians to realize this error.

Factchecking Sofia Coppola

Francis Coppola and Akira Kurosawa on the set of Kagemusha, still from a Suntory whiskey ad in the WNET/NHK/BBC

While I was being protective of her, Sofia was opening up to me, revealing that her inspiration for the Suntory whiskey commercials in Lost in Translation was a photo of her father Francis and the emperor of Japanese cinema, Akira Kurosawa, who made Suntory commercials for years.
I reviewed a whole raft of these commercials, which are hidden on a Kurosawa documentary DVD. Coppola’s nowhere near them, I concluded. I made it sound like I watched the entire doc, not just the easter egg commercials. Weeelllll, I only got around to watching the actual show a couple of days ago. Turns out a huge chunk of the doc’s vintage AK footage comes, uncredited, from the ads, which is odd (frankly, the whole director-free NHK doc style feels like production lifestyle fantasy of a middle-aged civil servant/executive producer, i.e., Suntory’s target demographic. But I digress.) All of a sudden, there’s Francis Ford Coppola milling around the set of Kagemusha. I went back and updated the original entry with screengrabs and backstory.
I apologize for questioning Sofia’s story and hope this won’t upset the deep bond that developed in the 30 minutes we shared several months ago.

From The WTC Memorial Finalists: The Media Event

The piece I wish I’d written in immediate response to the eight WTC Memorial Finalists: Christopher Hawthorne’s article on Slate.
What I’m on the record saying in the mean time: from my debut appearance in USA Today. [FWIW, I actually said, “30, 50, or 100 years from now.” I’m more tweaked they didn’t give the URL. Damned editors…] [Elizabeth, is that what you mean by “kicker”?]

REUTERS photo by Mike Segar of Greg Allen taking photos of the WTC Memorial designs for his weblog, image: yahoo.com

A man in need of a haircut–or at least baseball cap with his URL on it–taking photos of the WTC Memorial finalists for his weblog. Styling credits: neoprene sweater (Samsonite by Neil Barrett), Tyvek jacket (Mandarina Duck), insane amount of sweat that generated (model’s own). Photo: Reuters/Mike Segar, Yahoo.com [update: my sister “congratulated” me with, “I saw the picture of you–on your website.”]
Here are some pictures I’m not in.

Continue reading “From The WTC Memorial Finalists: The Media Event”

Neil Labute, Amanda Filipacchi, and me

Hide your peasant bread, people. the half-assedly Atkinsing Neil Labute just landed in New York, and he’s loaded for bear claws. Yesterday in his Slate diary, Labute wrote about an eating a meeting for his next project, a screen adaptation of Vapor, the second novel from Amanda Filipacchi.
Amanda Filipacchi picked me up at the 10th Street Lounge many years ago, and we went on a date. We saw an HBO-sponsored movie at Bryant Park. It was pleasant, but there was no real connection. We parted in the park, and I went alone to meet friends for drinks at the Royalton. Some time later, she re-entered my life as the rather serious girlfriend of my now-wife’s physics post-doc colleague at Columbia.
Without going into details, I have a feeling she found the right writer to adapt her book. [3/23/05 update: Of course, I could be totally wrong. Amanda emailed recently and alluded to the collaboration in the past, not-happening tense.]

Spaces Made Sacred, my proposal for the WTC Memorial

Paths of people at the WTC, Plaza Level, concept drawing. image: greg.org

Tens of thousands of people pursuing lives, professions, dreams, duties, of their own choosing–following their own paths. Ordinary people in the course of a typical morning, going about their daily lives. Individual paths running parallel, for a time–familiar strangers with the same commute, travelers on an airplane, a close-knit rescue company. Paths converging on a common destination. 3,016 individuals whose paths were senselessly cut short by terrorist attacks. The space made sacred through tragic loss, space where they passed their last ordinary moments.
We who are left can retrace their paths–walk where they walked, go where they went, be where they were–and remember them.
Where did they come from? Where were they going? How did they get there? What was their purpose for coming? The paths people took reveal something of who they are.
They tell of exceptional circumstances, emergency response, unintended detours and daily routines. They point to lives and jobs and homes and families and friends.
Following these paths turns us all into pilgrims. The paths of those who died run right alongside the paths of those who survived; people who were there that morning will recognize their own experience in the paths of others. And people from everywhere will discover common bonds along these paths and come to recognize the ones who made them, keeping their memories alive.
Where paths intersect, intermingle, and converge, they reveal affiliations, associations, communities, commonalities. Where paths accumulate, they reveal the activity and flow of the city and the country. They reflect the experience of individuals in a city, in architecture, in places that no longer exist.
As the city regenerates, new places and new destinations will be created, new pathways will emerge. But the paths of those who died–the space made sacred–will continue forever.
Continue to: Memorial Elements–Paths, Portraits, Destinations

Memorial Elements: Paths, Portraits, Destinations

Plaza Paths, image: greg.org
Plaza Paths, image: greg.org

The Memorial will reconstitute the space made sacred, the actual and accurate paths taken by the 3,016 individuals killed on September 11, 2001 and February 26,1993. In Concept, it comprises three major elements: Paths, Portraits, and Destinations.
The Memorial’s Form will be determined by mapping each individual’s information–compiled from authoritative data sources, gleaned from family and survivor recollection–onto the plan and elevation schema of the original World Trade Center site. This Form will be transposed and integrated into all current and future uses of the site.
Portraits of the individuals killed at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania will be integrated into the Memorial.

Continue reading “Memorial Elements: Paths, Portraits, Destinations”

Is that a Smart Mob in your Sforzian Background, or are you just pissed to see me?

It’s a question Bush might ask, were he the inquisitive type.
According to the BBC Online (which often reads to me like USA UK Today) British protestors (redundant, I know) are putting down their papier mache puppets and picking up their moblogging tools, using SMS to chase Bush along his itinerary and disrupt the carefully crafted backgrounds of Bush’s stage-managed photos.
“”We have been described as a second generation smart mob,” says co-organiser [sic] Richard Wilder. But he doesn’t let that get him down. “We are trying to spoil the PR, so we are not doing anything directly, but encouraging people to turn their backs in press photos so they can’t be used.”
Wilder sweetly believes that the extras in the White House’s Sforzian Backgrounds were not handpicked and hand-placed. What island has he been living on for the last three years? The URL for these protestors, who have bush-league written all over them: Interwebnet.org. [thanks, BoingBoing]
[Update: At the gym this afternoon, I caught a few minutes of FoxNews, and they were eviscerating some crumpet-nibbling, protesting Brit (not Hume). My prediction: UK protests may be entertaining, but hopelessly outmatched into irrelevance. Yet again, the rest of the world relies on the resolve of the American people to save its ass from the imperialist hegemonic threat.]

Oooooo-kla-ho, man! Is that Hugh Jackman??

Salon ad for PBS's Oklahoma! starring Hugh Jackman

I may have a new tagline for my As-Yet-Unannounced Animated Musical: it’s not Terminator meets West Side Story; it’s Swordfish meets Oklahoma!
But I’m already too late. Starting Saturday, PBS will broadcast the Royal National Theater’s 2002 revival of Oklahoma! starring hacker, mutant, and musical theater whore, Hugh Jackman.
Related Links:
Salon. For once, I didn’t make it past the ad
Oklahoma! on PBS, starring Hugh Jackman
Hugh Jackman starring as Peter Allen, Liza Minnelli’s gay husband (is there any other kind?) in The Boy from Oz (I’m leaving a whole HBO joke on the table there, you know.)
It turns out the National Theater revival was already the occasion for a post, but from an anthro/cult stud perspective.

A Variety of Weblogs, or Nick Denton rubs up against Hugh Hefner

It looks like Nick’s not the only one building a portfolio of weblogs.
Variety has launched bowed three entertainment-related weblogs so far, and is looking to launch more. [I swear, writing my videocam felony post in feeble Variety style was not intended as an audition. Golly, Mr. Bart, just give me another chance; I know I can sing.]
The roster so far [Fimoculous featured the first one]:

  • Outside the Box by Jim Hames is the Gizmodo of movie swag, rating the promotional flotsam that washes up on Variety’s shores.
  • Bags and Boards, written by Tom McLean and Jevon Phillips, follows the comic book business.
  • Wicked Little Town by Rob Kendt, in an ice-to-eskimos move, posts news of acting in Los Angeles.
    Where Nick’s weblogs aim for the g-spots of online subject matter, Variety’s weblogs are like some new playmates in the mansion. Either way, it makes for a great party. Meanwhile, my own little knot of weblogs are more a way to clean up my desk. Maybe I should steal some of the ideas Choire came up with as he was emptying his master’s litter box.

    • M Street, or DC Eye for the NY Guy

    EXT. SATURDAY NIGHT – WASHINGTON, DC

    A WEEKENDING NEW YORKER approaches the entrance to Agua Ardiente, an “upscale,” “hip tapas restaurant” on the “DC Latin circuit.” He is wearing a vintage suede jacket, black cashmere turtleneck, black Prada Sport loafers with that silly little red stripe that he neverthless insists be cleaned with glycerine every time he gets them shined, and, embarassingly, the slightly weathered pair of Banana Republic khakis with the little black label carefully picked off the back that he’d been househunting in all day.
    Two skinny DOORMEN, dressed all in black, brace themselves in advance of a confrontation.

    DOORMAN 1
    Good Evening.
    NEW YORKER
    Hi.
    DOORMAN 2
    Sir, I’m afraid we can’t let you in with sneakers.
    NEW YORKER
    No, it’s OK. These are loafers.
    DOORMAN 2
    I’m sorry, sir, the policy is no sneakers.
    NEW YORKER
    But they’re not– they’re loafers. Prada Loafers.
    I got them at Harvey Nichols.

    (An empty lie. But he’d rather get turned away for lying about Harvey Nick’s carrying Prada than for not abiding with some obtuse provincial dress code. Besides, the man figures, it already can’t get any worse than announcing your brands at the door.)


    DOORMAN 2
    I’m sorry, sir.
    DOORMAN 1
    You’re welcome to come back without rubber-soled shoes.
    NEW YORKER
    So the definition of “sneakers” is rubber-soled shoes?
    DOORMAN 1
    Yes, sir.
    NEW YORKER
    What about the khakis? Should I change those, too?
    DOORMAN 2
    The khakis are fine, sir.

    The man walks back to his car, contemplates the parties he’s missing in New York, and heads home to rewatch Gerry, now available for rent or purchase on DVD.