Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Gedney at Duke
I've just started reading Geoff Dyer's newish essay/review collection Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, and Dyer has already led me to an amazing find - the online William Gedney archive at Duke University. Dyer co-edited a book of Gedney's photographs and writings (most of which apparently went unpublished during his lifetime), and the photos of India seem to have been a major influence on Dyer's excellent Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi. The book, What Was True, seems to be out of print and selling for four to five times its original $35 list price online, but the Duke website will do nicely until I can get my hands on a copy. Besides the Benares/Varanasi photos and the photos of Kentucky, Haight-Ashbury, and Brooklyn (Gedney was a longtime resident and chronicler of Myrtle Ave - his notebooks on the subject are like the Brooklyn Arcades Project) that Dyer mentions in his essay, my favorite find so far in the archive is a mockup of a planned book on contemporary composers, with great photos of just about all the big names of Gedney's time - Partch, Feldman, Wolpe, and the big Bs and Cs: Babbitt, Barber and Bernstein, Cage, Carter and Copland.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Chicago Notes, Part One: Midwestern Mystics
The Selected Ballads has been away for a while, partly due to a trip to Chicago. Some notes from the Great Metropolis on the Prairie:
For the first time in several years, I revisited Millennium Park and the adjacent Art Institute. Last time I was there, the Cloud Gate was being buffed to remove the seams between the individual mirror squares that make up the surface of the "bean". Now, there's not a seam in sight, and one could almost believe the whole thing had been poured into a mold. Looking again at Frank Gehry's Pritzker Pavilion, I was thinking what a thrill it would be to stand in front of a big audience and unleash a highly amplified open E chord into that space. Has anyone ever asked Jeff Tweedy or Steve Malkmus about that?
If it does nothing else, Renzo Piano's addition to the Art Institute, the Modern Wing, provides a much-needed connection between the museum and Millennium Park, both at ground level and via a bridge that rises from park level to the 2nd floor of the new wing. Fortunately, it's also a pretty nice piece of architecture - well-detailed, restrained in its use of a limited palette of colors and materials, and in harmony with both the park to the north and the main Institute building to the south (apparently, there are some problems, though). A lot of care was taken to make the new wing energy-efficient, including the admittance of quite a bit of natural light, which actually made me realize that I prefer to feel a little less connected to the outdoors when looking at art in a museum. Maybe it was the beautiful day I visited on, but the natural light entering (from the less art-damaging northern direction, as per Piano's design) the Modern Wing started to make me wish I was back outside, a feeling that disappeared once I was back in the main body of the Institute.
On the other side of the Institute, Dan Kiley's '60s-era South Garden may now be overshadowed by all the design action to the north, but it has aged well and remains a high point of Modernist landscape architecture. Kiley's design sets up a simple grid, gets the grades, materials, and proportions right, and basically gets out of the way to let a by-now-mature grove of cockspur hawthorns create an environment quite apart from the nearby Loop.
Visiting the exhibit, Looking After Louis Sullivan, was a bit like going to church for me, as I consider myself an initiate in the great master's dualistic-mystic cult of organic-geometric architecture. The show featured the work of four photographers, including the heroic martyr to architectural preservation, Richard Nickel, as well as some of Sullivan's own drawings. Among these drawings, I spent a long time studying the incredibly intricate, pencil-drawn plates from A System of Architectural Ornament, According with a Philosophy of Man's Powers, a commissioned work completed near the end of Sullivan's life. A diagram (titled "Manipulation of the Organic") showing how a relatively simple natural form like a leaf or a seed pod could, by following nature's example, be elaborated and abstracted into a complex piece of ornament, reminded me of some of the ideas of Sullivan's approximate contemporary Gaudi (an adjacent drawing, showing a similar process of elaboration with geometric forms, also had some resonance with Gaudi's work). Just because both men took inspiration from the forms of plants and obsessively elaborated geometric forms doesn't mean they were aware of, or in any way influenced by, one another's work, but it's an intriguing possibility.
I also visited the Garfield Park Conservatory, one of the masterworks of another of my heroes, Sullivan's fellow Midwestern mystic, landscape architect Jens Jensen. The conservatory, and specifically its fern room, were recommended to me as a must-see masterpiece, but I had a hard time believing than an interior landscape could be in the same class as Jensen's great parks and gardens. It is, though. The fern room is a complete landscape, a complete work of art even, as meticulously thought out and calibrated for various effects as a traditional Japanese garden, but with more of a concern for hiding the hand of man. The fern room is both an immersive, mist-shrouded prehistoric fantasy and a landscape composition that would reward close study. This story, which is also summarized on a plaque in the fern room, gives a sense of Jensen and the perhaps more genteel times in which he practiced (whether or not the story is 100% factual hardly matters).
For the first time in several years, I revisited Millennium Park and the adjacent Art Institute. Last time I was there, the Cloud Gate was being buffed to remove the seams between the individual mirror squares that make up the surface of the "bean". Now, there's not a seam in sight, and one could almost believe the whole thing had been poured into a mold. Looking again at Frank Gehry's Pritzker Pavilion, I was thinking what a thrill it would be to stand in front of a big audience and unleash a highly amplified open E chord into that space. Has anyone ever asked Jeff Tweedy or Steve Malkmus about that?
If it does nothing else, Renzo Piano's addition to the Art Institute, the Modern Wing, provides a much-needed connection between the museum and Millennium Park, both at ground level and via a bridge that rises from park level to the 2nd floor of the new wing. Fortunately, it's also a pretty nice piece of architecture - well-detailed, restrained in its use of a limited palette of colors and materials, and in harmony with both the park to the north and the main Institute building to the south (apparently, there are some problems, though). A lot of care was taken to make the new wing energy-efficient, including the admittance of quite a bit of natural light, which actually made me realize that I prefer to feel a little less connected to the outdoors when looking at art in a museum. Maybe it was the beautiful day I visited on, but the natural light entering (from the less art-damaging northern direction, as per Piano's design) the Modern Wing started to make me wish I was back outside, a feeling that disappeared once I was back in the main body of the Institute.
On the other side of the Institute, Dan Kiley's '60s-era South Garden may now be overshadowed by all the design action to the north, but it has aged well and remains a high point of Modernist landscape architecture. Kiley's design sets up a simple grid, gets the grades, materials, and proportions right, and basically gets out of the way to let a by-now-mature grove of cockspur hawthorns create an environment quite apart from the nearby Loop.
Visiting the exhibit, Looking After Louis Sullivan, was a bit like going to church for me, as I consider myself an initiate in the great master's dualistic-mystic cult of organic-geometric architecture. The show featured the work of four photographers, including the heroic martyr to architectural preservation, Richard Nickel, as well as some of Sullivan's own drawings. Among these drawings, I spent a long time studying the incredibly intricate, pencil-drawn plates from A System of Architectural Ornament, According with a Philosophy of Man's Powers, a commissioned work completed near the end of Sullivan's life. A diagram (titled "Manipulation of the Organic") showing how a relatively simple natural form like a leaf or a seed pod could, by following nature's example, be elaborated and abstracted into a complex piece of ornament, reminded me of some of the ideas of Sullivan's approximate contemporary Gaudi (an adjacent drawing, showing a similar process of elaboration with geometric forms, also had some resonance with Gaudi's work). Just because both men took inspiration from the forms of plants and obsessively elaborated geometric forms doesn't mean they were aware of, or in any way influenced by, one another's work, but it's an intriguing possibility.
I also visited the Garfield Park Conservatory, one of the masterworks of another of my heroes, Sullivan's fellow Midwestern mystic, landscape architect Jens Jensen. The conservatory, and specifically its fern room, were recommended to me as a must-see masterpiece, but I had a hard time believing than an interior landscape could be in the same class as Jensen's great parks and gardens. It is, though. The fern room is a complete landscape, a complete work of art even, as meticulously thought out and calibrated for various effects as a traditional Japanese garden, but with more of a concern for hiding the hand of man. The fern room is both an immersive, mist-shrouded prehistoric fantasy and a landscape composition that would reward close study. This story, which is also summarized on a plaque in the fern room, gives a sense of Jensen and the perhaps more genteel times in which he practiced (whether or not the story is 100% factual hardly matters).
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Four Things Found On The Internet
1
This photo book, from Thurston Moore's new publishing concern and featuring the work of former Village Voice photographer James Hamilton, looks like it could be some kind of milestone in the photos-of-musicians genre. That Johnny Rotten photo! He looks downright huggable, almost angelic. [via]
2
The limited exposure I've had to Tao Lin's work (like the majority of the small minority of people who've heard of him, I have a greater familiarity with his self-promotional stunts and shenanigans than his writing) has left me intrigued but a bit doubtful of the success (in literary terms) of his admittedly distinctive project. I didn't really "enjoy" but was at least semi-engrossed by his recent account of being arrested for "trespassing" at NYU, but this piece in Canteen is a pretty impressive literary performance, bordering on heroic feat of sustained concentration (actually, I think "heroic feat of sustained concentration" might more accurately describe the act of reading the piece). I hate to go here, but it did remind me a little bit of a DFW footnote (like, say, some of the longer ones in Brief Interviews) in its "how long can he keep this up?"-ness.
3
I'm glad somebody (Ben Ratliff, though there are probably others by now) has written about the "new" (1940) Savory recording of "Body and Soul", a sample of which was posted by the Times yesterday. I don't really have enough knowledge of the state of jazz saxophone circa 1940 to know just how far ahead of its time Hawkins' playing is in this sample, but it seems like he's making some pretty strikingly radical choices here. The playing is so much more modern-sounding than the recording that it produces an exciting friction (frisson?) - there must be a good analogy, but I can't come up with it. It's not like he's into Dolphy territory exactly, but it's hard to believe anybody else was playing like this 70 years ago. It's also hard to believe that I'm posting about a 47-second sample of something. Obviously, I'm eager to hear the whole thing.
4
And last but far from least, rare foulmouth Elvis blues (with commentary by Nick Tosches!). The Hound should be declared King of the Internet, at least for today, for posting this. Go listen before somebody makes him take it down.
This photo book, from Thurston Moore's new publishing concern and featuring the work of former Village Voice photographer James Hamilton, looks like it could be some kind of milestone in the photos-of-musicians genre. That Johnny Rotten photo! He looks downright huggable, almost angelic. [via]
2
The limited exposure I've had to Tao Lin's work (like the majority of the small minority of people who've heard of him, I have a greater familiarity with his self-promotional stunts and shenanigans than his writing) has left me intrigued but a bit doubtful of the success (in literary terms) of his admittedly distinctive project. I didn't really "enjoy" but was at least semi-engrossed by his recent account of being arrested for "trespassing" at NYU, but this piece in Canteen is a pretty impressive literary performance, bordering on heroic feat of sustained concentration (actually, I think "heroic feat of sustained concentration" might more accurately describe the act of reading the piece). I hate to go here, but it did remind me a little bit of a DFW footnote (like, say, some of the longer ones in Brief Interviews) in its "how long can he keep this up?"-ness.
3
I'm glad somebody (Ben Ratliff, though there are probably others by now) has written about the "new" (1940) Savory recording of "Body and Soul", a sample of which was posted by the Times yesterday. I don't really have enough knowledge of the state of jazz saxophone circa 1940 to know just how far ahead of its time Hawkins' playing is in this sample, but it seems like he's making some pretty strikingly radical choices here. The playing is so much more modern-sounding than the recording that it produces an exciting friction (frisson?) - there must be a good analogy, but I can't come up with it. It's not like he's into Dolphy territory exactly, but it's hard to believe anybody else was playing like this 70 years ago. It's also hard to believe that I'm posting about a 47-second sample of something. Obviously, I'm eager to hear the whole thing.
4
And last but far from least, rare foulmouth Elvis blues (with commentary by Nick Tosches!). The Hound should be declared King of the Internet, at least for today, for posting this. Go listen before somebody makes him take it down.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Look Into The Gorilla's Eyes
Recently came across Spanish photographer Amparo Garrido's website and was especially taken with her photos of dogs and gorillas, putting me in mind of Werner Herzog's quote (which I can't find or remember precisely - was it from Grizzly Man or Burden of Dreams?) about how your beloved family pet would be quite willing to kill you for food if it came to that. In trying unsuccessfully to find the Herzog quote, I discovered that at least two people on Flickr have cats named for the great director. Unsurprisingly, both cats appear to be Brooklyn residents.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Two @ MOMA
Fun times to be had these days at MOMA (well, apparently not for these people). On a recent visit, my museum-going companion and I only took in two of the current shows (no William Kentridge or Tim Burton), but it was still a fully satisfying art meal. The Cartier-Bresson retrospective is one of those shows you could spend hours, days in. There are hundreds and hundreds of great photographs, arranged variously by theme, period, and location. Though the sequence is somewhat hard to follow and seems more-or-less arbitrary, seeing the range of work C-B undertook in his long career, photographing everything from Ganhdi's funeral pyre to photos of the day-to-day operations of a bank for a corporate annual report, is a revelation in any order. His compositions are often surprising; they can seem casual or even challengingly avant-garde, but somehow always right. And there's a sense, present in all the work - even the bank photos - of lost worlds: people, things, and ways of life that will never be seen again.
While the Cartier-Bresson retro can lull the viewer into a state of blissful contemplation, Marina Abramovic's work is more likely to jar, provoke, stimulate. While it's in the nature of retrospectives to crowd together works that were originally shown singly or in small groups, there's something particularly strange (and surely challenging for the curators) about doing this with mostly performance-based work. The preponderance of videos of past performances and live recreations/restagings means that the show is a kind of thrill-a-minute, performance art funhouse, with surprises (sometimes of the naked flesh variety) around every turn (I'm sure my friend J.P. would love the skeleton-themed room, featuring an ongoing performance of Nude with Skeleton).
Coming across the by-now well-documented title piece of the exhibition, The Artist Is Present, feels like walking into an ongoing "media event", the set of a particularly spare one-on-one talk show, or at least a photo shoot. The space with Abramovic's table is flooded with light from four sides, creating a sort of overlit performance art arena, as well as facilitating the ongoing photo and video documentation. I found that watching my fellow "spectators", standing or seated around the "squared circle" as at a boxing or wrestling (or chess?) match, was as interesting as what was or was not going on with the artist and her current stare-down challenger/collaborator. It also reminded me of Cartier-Bresson's technique, of which there were many examples on display at MOMA, of documenting an event, whether a baseball game or a coronation, by photographing the faces of the spectators.
While the Cartier-Bresson retro can lull the viewer into a state of blissful contemplation, Marina Abramovic's work is more likely to jar, provoke, stimulate. While it's in the nature of retrospectives to crowd together works that were originally shown singly or in small groups, there's something particularly strange (and surely challenging for the curators) about doing this with mostly performance-based work. The preponderance of videos of past performances and live recreations/restagings means that the show is a kind of thrill-a-minute, performance art funhouse, with surprises (sometimes of the naked flesh variety) around every turn (I'm sure my friend J.P. would love the skeleton-themed room, featuring an ongoing performance of Nude with Skeleton).
Coming across the by-now well-documented title piece of the exhibition, The Artist Is Present, feels like walking into an ongoing "media event", the set of a particularly spare one-on-one talk show, or at least a photo shoot. The space with Abramovic's table is flooded with light from four sides, creating a sort of overlit performance art arena, as well as facilitating the ongoing photo and video documentation. I found that watching my fellow "spectators", standing or seated around the "squared circle" as at a boxing or wrestling (or chess?) match, was as interesting as what was or was not going on with the artist and her current stare-down challenger/collaborator. It also reminded me of Cartier-Bresson's technique, of which there were many examples on display at MOMA, of documenting an event, whether a baseball game or a coronation, by photographing the faces of the spectators.
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