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Food Reads
As insatiable eaters living in a gluttonous society, we enjoy planning our meals through visual aids. That’s precisely why food journalism relies so heavily on photography to elicit hunger pains and mental journeys through supermarket aisles. Recipe titles alone get my mouth watering, but the accompanying photos really drive it all home.
While the marriage of art and food is a retired concept by now, a new posse of photographers, food stylists and art directors is elevating food art to unconventional forms. I’m reminded of Irving Penn and the still life food photos he shot for Vogue. Every inanimate subject (raw fish, brie, fruit) is transformed into Cirque du Soleil acrobats. Here are some that are stretching the boundaries–or in this case, the waistbands.
Yummy Magazine
Already in its third installment, Yummy Magazine is quirky food coverage with thoughtfully-curated visuals. In the latest issue, fine art and fashion photographers Grégoire Alexandre and Jeff Vespa contributed, and graphic artist Parra illustrated four pages in his usual whimsical, pop-art style (think Soufflé du Fromage with shapely woman’s legs). Top all of it off with a detailed blueprint of Bankok’s food carts and it’s definitely coffee table appropriate. Read More
The Death of a King
I have to admit that it took Michael Jackson dying on Thursday for me to remember that he had still been alive. Still, one doesn’t need to have been a fan of Jackson to be affected by his passing or to relate to the various discussions surrounding his untimely (?) death. Those of us born around 1980 became aware of the wider world while Michael Jackson was at the peak of his celebrity. As many of the commentaries on his life and death have maintained, this was a new type of celebrity, quantitatively and also qualitatively different from those preceded it. Similarly, his death eclipses those of other global superstars like Elvis, John Lennon, Princess Diana or James Brown. The texts linked below – with varying degrees of personal sentiment and theoretical density – are all engagements with the life and death of Jackson. This is obviously a very partial list and suggestions for further reading would be appreciated.
Perhaps the best of the bunch, the always insightful K-punk: “… and when the groove is dead and gone…”
Steven Shaviro (author of The Cinematic Body and most recently, Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze and Aesthetics) on his blog The Pinocchio Theory.
Gary Younge in The Guardian: We span, shuffled and combed our hair up high – to be like the boy on Bandstand.
Luxury Cowboy
In light of this past season’s collaboration with Gerard Malanga, Adam Kimmel’s decision to hire Jim Krantz, who used to shoot for Marlboro (as in the cigarette), is hardly surprising. Kimmel sent Krantz down to the same Utah ranch he had used to photograph the Marlboro Man ads to shoot artist (and Kimmel regular) Dan Colen along with some local ranch-hands, in what will doubtless be seen, all intentions aside, as a nod to Richard Prince (whose Cowboys series was itself, at least superficially, composed of Marlboro ads without — that is, ‘cropped-off’ — the Marlboro name). The final product is a highly-stylized affair, to be sure, and in stark contrast to the typically raw and Beat-y and nearly personal look-books shot by Kimmel’s brother Alexei Hay; but I have to admit, with the above as evidence, that it works — quite well actually — and it’s a sure sign as any that Adam Kimmel will continue to be a designer whose collections (and respective lookbooks) are to be anxiously looked-forward to in the seasons that follow.
Jim Krantz’s photographs will be on display at Galerie Yvon Lambert in Paris (108 rue Vieille du Temple) alongside a video display by Meredith Danluck.
NYFA Fellowships Announced
A year ago, the mood in Chelsea was rather less glum. Local aficionados, examining their own epoch, might well describe the first eight years of the millennium as an Age of Optimism. Back then there appeared no limit to the curator’s good fortune: galleries thrived, crowds gathered, artists bought homes in East Hampton. Now, as the market continues to dip (at times precipitously), things in Chelsea have become quite a bit quieter. The din of gallery-goers, once a sign of the art world’s good cheer, has been replaced by the eerie sound of a thousand belts being tightened at once.
Depending on how you feel about the art of the last decade, this might strike you as good news. Perhaps it’s for the best, you think, that an unknown painter can no longer sell a soiled napkin for twenty-five grand. (When the art market gets over-stuffed, it tends to regurgitate.) Of course that’s not to say you wish ill on the young artists who came of age in recent years: it’s just that you (and I), perhaps betraying a nostalgic affection for certain honored traditions, prefer our starving artists to be slightly more starving. If the pudgier among them learn from these hard times that it takes more than a well-connected curator or an inflated market to feed yourself as an artist, then might this not mark a return to an Age of Reason?
Let them starve, you say, but don’t let them perish. In response, the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), like a vociferous light at the end of a tunnel, announced last week that it will be distributing $917,000 in fellowships to 134 artists living and working in New York State. Each artist will receive $7,000, which may be spent on anything from rent to supplies; a modest sum, to be sure, but presumably enough to encourage continued creativity. And there’s little doubt that the artists on the list will be glad to have it. Read More
Will the Cat Above the Precipice Fall Down?
Here is another text on the situation in Iran. This one is by the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, now the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London. It is copyright free and distribution/reposting is encouraged.
When an authoritarian regime approaches its final crisis, its dissolution as a rule follows two steps. Before its actual collapse, a mysterious rupture takes place: all of a sudden people know that the game is over, they are simply no longer afraid. It is not only that the regime loses its legitimacy, its exercise of power itself is perceived as an impotent panic reaction. We all know the classic scene from cartoons: the cat reaches a precipice, but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under its feet; it starts to fall only when it looks down and notices the abyss. When it loses its authority, the regime is like a cat above the precipice: in order to fall, it only has to be reminded to look down…
In Shah of Shahs, a classic account of the Khomeini revolution, Ryszard Kapuscinski located the precise moment of this rupture: at a Tehran crossroad, a single demonstrator refused to budge when a policeman shouted at him to move, and the embarrassed policeman simply withdrew; in a couple of hours, all Tehran knew about this incident, and although there were street fights going on for weeks, everyone somehow knew the game is over. Is something similar going on now? Read More
Bellwether (In Memoriam)
If bygone galleries were given funereal services, Bellwether would deserve a sweeping procession down Tenth Avenue. For over ten years, the gallery has been a hallmark of the city’s art scene; as others have come and gone, Bellwether has endured trends and trepidations, from the artists’ rise in Williamsburg to the galleries’ exodus to Chelsea. Now, as the art market undergoes yet another shift, this one constrictive rather than migratory, the gallery is closing its doors for the foreseeable future. Cineres cineribus, pulverem pulveri.
Becky Smith, the gallery’s stalwart owner, promises that Bellwether’s shuttering need not mark the end. In a recent email to patrons, Becky remarks: “I will continue to represent the gallery’s artists privately and I am working on several shows with them in a Bellwether-at-large capacity. Details to follow in the fall.” In the meantime, make sure to catch the gallery’s final exhibition, “A Song for Those In Search of What They Came With,” a group show including work by Michele Abeles, Tony Cox, Raina Hamner, Marc Hundley, James Richards, and Amy Yao. What a nice note to go out on…
The World is Flat
As a part of X-Initiative’s No Soul For Sale opening on the 23rd of June, Rhizome will present an exhibition entitled The World is Flat, a series taking the ‘flatness’ of culture characteristic of a web-centered information economy as its orientation. Artists and collectives including B’L'ing, Anna Lundh, Oliver Laric, Lizzie Fitch, Alexandre Singh and David Horvitz approach this centerpoint discursively, offering everything from found-footage and sculptures to zines and Mariah Carey remixes — and, perhaps mostly excitingly, teaching, as Anna Lundh, on June 27th from 2-3 PM, walks visitors through a short history of hexaflexagons as well as offers a walk-through of their construction.
The exhibition will be on display from June 24 until June 28, and is free to the public.
Get your aesthletics on..
The Institute for Aesthetics is a combination of sports and performance art that has spawned such sports as Straightjacket Softball (not a joke) and Wifflehurling. Anyone who shows up can play, don a sombrero and run around trying to follow the rules which are made up as you go along. I went to one event in Washington Square Park where there were four teams, three basketball hoops, ten balls and everyone was wearing a jersey with the same number. Something called Megasoccer is starting this month (in the winter they have re-created Hieronymus Bosch on ice-skates and done X-mas tree javelin toss.) Sign up on the email list and go to the next game. If you’re like me and you won’t even participate in funny, disorganized sports, we can sit together and watch from the sidelines and go to the bar after. Beats softball anyday.
