1) Truckload of Missing Art Found in Trailer Park, by Alan Feuer, NY Times.
2) A–
Actually, we have winner right there.
Marc Jacobs Kimono
Of course, it’s actually called a yukata, and it’s for wearing on summer evenings or hot days.
And of course, it’s actually Marc by Marc Jacobs, the bridge line, but still. It is the only authentic Marc Jacobs logo kimono on the market right now. Women’s sizes only, I’m afraid.
Marc Jacobs yukata, 48,300 yen [marcjacobs.jp via jeansnow]
5/15: Matt Stone & Trey Parker Masterclass at NFT [London, En-guh-land]
After you sit back and digest the delicious hilarity that Mr. Hankey’s creators will be appearing as “part of The Stanley Kubrick Masterclass series,” peruse the NFT description of the event:
In London for this ‘Skillset Masterclass’, Parker and Stone will explore the art of creating political satire, getting inspiration from Bruckheimer to Thunderbirds, the merits of puppet versus cell animation, the idea of absolute creative freedom and how far is too far.
Since they offered to talk about absolute creative freedom, ask them about working with constraints and in collaborative environments, since their flabbiest, least funny, least nailed down, most disappointing achievements–Team America World Police, Orgazmo, BASEketball–were the ones where they were given carte blanche?
Also, which one of them grew up Mormon?
The Skillset Masterclass with Matt Stone & Trey Parker [bfi-org.uk via kultureflash]
Metropolis Magazine Discovers Olafur Eliasson
Considering it’s an architecture magazine, I’m surprised there’s no mention of his architectural interventions, like turning rooms into cameras obscura [sp?] or cutting holes in the roof to make like a sundial.
Never mind Olafur’s proposal for a new music hall in Iceland. Still, it’s a good intro.
Optical Magic [metropolismag.com]
Ouroussoff, Koolhaas, and The Scalable Jane Jacobs
I still can’t tell if I was the only one kind of weirded out by the sudden and overwhelming outpouring of nostalgic loss and ruminating over the death of Jane Jacobs.
Archinect, Tropolism, Curbed, Kottke, even the Home of the Whopper of Superficiality, Gawker, had a paean to the urban theorist/activist within hours after she died.
Not to speak too ill of her or her vital, inspiring ideas and all, but I wonder if someone with a Nexis account can look up how many mentions Jacob had garnered in the weeks, months, even year or two before her death, just to get a little bit of perspective.
Of course, I’m always troubled when I end up agreeing with Witold Rybczynski, who pointed out what many New Yorkers already know as giant, extruded “luxury” condo towers fill up once-edgy, heterogeneous neighborhoods and a once-risky High Line is on track to become the High Lawn for a dozen-plus starchitected buildings: vibrant city fabric is now a luxury amenity.
But Kottke’s right and too nice to be righter when he says that Nicolai Ouroussoff‘s counter-examples to Jacob’s idealized dense cityscape–Lincoln Center and the WTC–are a joke. There needs to be some contrast and some alleviation of the pressure that a dense city creates, but as recently as like five minutes ago, Lincoln Center was a consensus failure set for a Diller+Scofidial jazzing up. You know, to pump up the energy level and get some more street-level activity going.
Meanwhile, mall developers are, oddly, the ones working the hardest to apply Jacobs’ multi-use, multi-constituency formulas to their newest urban destination retail experience centers [sic], which are essentially privately owned and managed downtowns.
Ouroussoff’s strongest refutation of Jacobism is, of course, LA, but what if that’s some kind of Jacobist diversity/vibrancy, just with a car’s extended range?
No one going to Manhattan anymore because it’s too crowded and expensive. From Williamsburg to The Slope and who-knows-where, Brooklyn is ascendant. I wonder if the Jacobs ideals still hold true, just on a larger scale than her little legs could imagine.
Koolhaas talked about the NY Grid and the city center’s march northward over 200 years, From within (the) Wall to Five Points to Allen to Bowery to Astor to Sixth to Fifth to Park to. Then once at Columbia, I watched him make the same argument, only about the Pearl River Delta, where the entirety of Hong Kong and Kowloon is the late 19th century Delancey Street of the late 21st century.
Now look what I’ve done. I started out only wanting to mention that in fact, according to the buzz, Lincoln Center is supposed to suck, [I don’t really think it happens to, but then, I don’t use it that much, except to enjoy all the unobstructed light it sends into the apartment.] but now I’ve wound around and ended up agreeing with that monkey who curated the dress show at his “Prada Epicenter” [sic sic sic]. It’s late. Let me sleep on this, and in the morning, after a nice big glass of Diet Coke, I’ll come back adn solve the Problems Facing Our Cities.
Hal Foster on Koolhaas on urban congestion, Delirious New York, and the Pearl River Delta. [lrb.co.uk]
Speaking Truthiness To Power
I don’t know what was more hilarious: Stephen Colbert’s speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, or the not-at-all-amused faces on some of the folks in the crowd at his unflinching criticism, which was delivered, of course, wrapped in Colbert’s dumbly sycophantic supporter character.
There were, of course, obligatory “defending the American way of staging elaborate photo-ops” jokes.
I know what wasn’t funny, though: the interminable audition tape bit, which dragged on ten times too long and was lamer than the ending of a hundred SNL sketches rolled together.
I made a Fatal Attraction spoof in college that was supposed to be funny-suspenseful, too, and even some of our 100x-too-long scenes were shorter than this Helen Thomas bit.
Anyway, here’s the YouTube, in three parts. Do you get my point that you really only need to watch two?
Sforza Is Clearly NOT In The House
The House of Representatives, that is. Here is a long lens snap of Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert climbing out of the hydrogen-powered minivan he’d just appeared in at a “we feel your gas prices pain” photo-op–and into his official SUV in order to, as the AP caption puts it on Yahoo, “drive the few blocks back to the U.S. Capitol.”
Sweet. Hats off to AP snapper Pablo Martinez Monsivais for the get, and thanks to the morning news for the tip.
Clearly, What’s Super Is His Publicity Machine
The American Way, indeed. Ouch.
Superman is a dick. [via themorningnews]
Kids These Days
You’d never know it from the market today, but according to the Guardian’s Jonathan Jones, art and money do NOT go well together.
That’s his explanation for why Damien Hirst sucks so bad these days–because he has 100 million pounds–and he’s sticking with it. Same thing happened to Dali and Warhol, the chumps. Got all caught up in the money and the fame and the trappings and neglected the art.
OK… never mind that alongside his sellout portrait factory, Warhol did make interesting and even important work throughout his career. And never mind that Dali was the diametric opposite, a fraud who exploited his early influence and flooded his own market with counterfeits and crap. Who IS Jones’ idea of an artist who doesn’t let making a ton of money bring his art down?
The most brilliant concealer of wealth was Picasso. From his 30s onwards, the modern master could afford the best studios and houses. But when we look at his painting of his studio on his Cannes estate we don’t think of him as rich in the same vulgar way as Dali. This is because Picasso lived for work…
Uh-huh. Because with only 10,000,000 ceramics and that Frankie Goes To Hollywood album cover, the Cannes Estate Period produced some of Picasso’s most important works.
Do rich artists make bad art? [guardian]
Hu-haha: The Politics Of Camera Angles
When I heard the NPR report of all the pomp and ceremony and symbolism on display during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to the White House yesterday, I expected the news service photos to show a classic Sforzian set, with all the carefully calibrated money shots: statesman-like profiles while the two men review the troops; dual podiums with a Sforzian Background of artfully fluffed flags. You know, like the kind of thing White House Prod. did when they went to China. And Mongolia.
Given the amount of preproduction for these events–which are designed to exist as and generate media, not as live experiences, remember–I was immediately suspicious when I heard a Falun Gong protestor turned up. And that she wasn’t hustled off for several minutes. And that she was a print reporter on the TV camera platform.
[After all, if there’s one thing Bush Republicans have demonstrated their competence in, it’s their ability to pack a crowd and the ruthless efficiency with which they dispatch any off-message disruptors.]
But in fact, the Hu Jintao slideshow on Yahoo News [my usual source for Sforza’s work, and the source of these images] totally shocked me. There were a couple of very tight portraits, but there was absolutely none of Sforza’s signature preset money shots. None.
The event was certainly large and stagey, with throngs of supporters and colonial marching bands and flags everywhere, but Sforza’s strength in imagecraft is in designing camera positions and backdrops and foregrounds that give photographers and cameramen gorgeous, easily read shots that are so easy to take, journalists don’t mind leaving the editorial decisions to the White House. There was absolutely none of that in the Hu-Bush images.
If anything, they showed the exact opposite. The images are tight and indistinct, shot from too close or too low. And the backgrounds are almost random.
Even without knowing the Falun Gong protestor was frogmarched out in front of everybody, it was obvious that WHP intended for this event to look different and to be read differently. [They knew it was being carried live in China.] Every other aspect of production seemed to be in place; so I can’t imagine Sforza falling asleep on the shot composition. The only other explanation is that every wire service sent an intern to shoot the event. And you’d have to be a pretty big conspiracy nut to believe that.
George Bush giving a tug to Chinese President Hu Jintao, Apr 20, 2006, image: Jim Bourg/Reuters via NYT
Add to that the announcer calling China the “Republic of China,” and the images of Bush tugging at Hu’s sleeve to stop him from going down the wrong stairs, an atypical gesture he had to know would set the shutters clicking, and there is no doubt in my mind that the event produced exactly the images the White House expected it would.
The White House went through all the diplomatic motions of producing a showy event, then they fed reporters stories of the Chinese penchant for showy events and symbolism, including their request for a state dinner, which was rejected. And then they sabotaged the whole thing in a few crucial but plausibly deniable ways to send a message that may or may not have ended up on Chinese TV.
And to remind China who’s still the boss around here.
The Agency For Unrealised Projects [With An ‘S’]
Just came across the transom from e-flux:
Serpentine Gallery and e-flux announce Agency for Unrealised Projects (AUP)
For every planned project that is carried out, hundreds of other proposals by artists, architects, designers, scientists and other practitioners around the world stay unrealised and invisible to the public. Agency for Unrealised Projects (AUP) seeks to document and display these works through publications, a developing archive and a physical office, in this way charting the terrain of a contingent future.
Unlike unrealised architectural models and projects submitted for competitions, which are frequently published and discussed, public endeavours in the visual arts that are planned but not carried out ordinarily remain unnoticed or little known. The aim of the Agency for Unrealised Projects (AUP), starting from an archive amassed by Hans Ulrich Obrist over the last 10 years and continuing to invite submissions by artists, is to give life to these as yet unachievable plans, by making them available to the public to be disseminated, discussed and most importantly, to be realised.
This is the first in a series of new projects and programmes for the Serpentine Gallery devised by Julia Peyton-Jones, Director, Serpentine Gallery and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director, Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects.
The Agency for Unrealised Projects (AUP) will also be the first in a programme of research and collaborations with e-flux, under the name Institute for New Social Research, initiated by Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle.
I suddenly feel the need for a more institutional-sounding name.
Forthwith please direct all correspondence to Greg Allen, Managing Director, General Research & Entertainment Group.
Previously: I wrote about HUO’s Unrealized Projects [with a ‘Z’] research last year for the NYT.
Letters! We Get Letters!
Dear Representatives of,
I visited you site as was interested in film “Black Book’s riotous Inside the Actor Love/Hate Studio session…” by Screenwriter Paul Thomas Anderson. I was very surprised and disillusioned to find out the link to the cigarettes web-store ptanderson.com on the page as I’m a non-smoker.
This whole situation is disappointing because the subject of this film is against smoking.
That’s why I kindly ask you to remove this link from your site! With
hope for your cooperation and understanding to this matter!
Best regards,
Sure enough, the URL for what I once called “the blow-away best ‘unofficial’ filmmaker fansite around”, Cigarettes & Coffee, [after his first short], has been taken over by a cigarette retailer.
Perhaps there was a trademark dispute with Mr Anderson, or perhaps the bigtime studio lawyers behind Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee & Cigarettes muscled them into changing it. You know what a Hollywood monkey Jarmusch is.
In any case, the fansite is now called Cigarettes & Red Vines, and can be found at cigarettesandredvines.com. Can’t imagine any trademark problems with that one.
PTAnderson.com is now Cigarettesandredvines.com. Please adjust your links accordingly. Thank you.
Wonder Showzen Guys Give Onion Interviewer Grief
Nice. If this guy worked for anyplace but The Onion AV Club, he’d have left this interview shaking like a leaf wondering how he’s gonna get his story done.
JL: My favorite moments are when you see someone lash out at the puppet, and then we have the guts, after he hits us, to move closer. There’s so many times that someone hits us and we just run away like babies. There’s a guy who pulled a knife on us, and we kept going toward him.
VC: We ran away, and then from a distance, we said, “Okay, now let’s learn to love each other. What will it take? We’ll take baby steps.”
JL: And he’s holding the knife out.
VC: And then we took little steps closer, and within five steps, he started to go for us, and we took off.
JL: That guy was saying to himself, “I just don’t want to go back to jail.” And that was our protective bubble.
Wonder Showzen season 2 is on these days. [avclub.com via waxy]
Coming Soon To A Coffee Table Near Me: Cartoon Modern
Cartoon Modern is Amid Amidi’s blog which accompanies his forthcoming book of the same name, Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation.
Good stuff. Here, for example, he talks about how inexperience and an inability to collaborate with other animators undercut art director Evyind Earle’s contributions on Sleeping Beauty.
There’s a lot more, and I expect the book will be gorgeous.
Cartoon Modern, via Amidi’s all-animation blog, Cartoon Brew.
The Manchester Passion, Unplugged
BBC3 produced and aired “Manchester Passion” Friday night, a live retelling of the Passion of Christ, that was set on the streets of Manchester and which featured music from local bands made good like Joy Division and Oasis.
The hype was definitely set: the Guardian published a lengthy article from the rehearsals. But I’ve heard precious little about how it actually turned out. Never mind finding any videos or torrents of the actual broadcast.
YouTube, is there anything you can’t do? So far, there are clips of Jesus singing “Love will tear us apart” at the Last Supper, and a Smiths/Morissey fest, Jesus singing “You’re Gonna Need Someone On Your Side”” and Judas singing “Heaven knows I’m miserable now.”
The production looks pretty raw and unplugged, a theater-on-the-fly mix of live event/procession and stage/set pieces. I cannot imagine in a million years that an American company would ever produce something like this. Instead, we get Mel Gibson.
Day that Jesus came to the Arndale Centre [guardian.co.uk]
Manchester Passion website at BBC3 [bbc.co.uk]
“Manchester Passion” on YouTube [youtube.com]