Dada Magazine, Issues 1, 2, 3 (1917-1918)

Dada Magazine, Issues 1, 2, 3 (1917-1918) at UBUWEB. "...Attempting to promulgate Dada ideas throughout Europe, Tristan Tzara launched the art and literature review Dada. Appearing in July 1917, the first issue of Dada, subtitled Miscellany of Art and Literature, featured contributions from members of avant-garde groups throughout Europe, including Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Delaunay, and Wassily Kandinsky. Marking the magazine's debut, Tzara wrote in the Zurich Chronicle, 'Mysterious creation! Magic Revolver! The Dada Movement is Launched.' Issue 2 appeared in December of 1918. Issue number 3 violated all the rules and conventions in typography and layout and undermined established notions of order and logic. Printed in newspaper format in both French and German editions, it embodies Dada's celebration of nonsense and chaos with an explosive mixture of manifestos, poetry, and advertisements - all typeset in randomly ordered lettering. Included is Tzara's 'Dada Manifesto of 1918,' which was read at Meise Hall in Zurich on July 23, 1918, and is perhaps the most important of the Dadaist manifestos."

McDermott & McGough: Because Of Him

McDermott & McGough... Late Night #3: Lizabeth Scott, 1967 (2007, Oil on linen). From the exhibition McDermott & McGough: Because Of Him at Cheim & Read. "...The new exhibition includes several photo-realist paintings of carefully selected movie scenes in which a dramatically framed actress is central. The paintings are composed of two separate scenes from different movies, one black-and-white and one color, stacked horizontally so that one scene seems to bear weight upon the other and a new relationship or narrative is formed. The strong female protagonist of each frame conveys the scenes' emotional impact, and the inevitable nostalgia of McDermott & McGough's selected imagery lends a sense of cool introspection. The sensibility of the large scale, horizontally-composed paintings are echoed in a series of eight photo-realist paintings of 1960s era televisions, the distinctly boxy but individually unique exteriors framing single black-and-white scenes, the actresses' expressive faces filling the screen."

Tianbing Li: Me And My Brother

Tianbing Li... Me And My Brother With The Tree (2007, Oil on canvas). From the exhibition Tianbing Li: Me And My Brother at L&M Arts. "...The current show highlights a new series of paintings that look back to the artist's childhood. Drawing on black-and-white photographs of him taken by his parents, Li has created a series of grey-toned portraits. These are in fact self-portraits, doubled; the youngest child in each image represents the artist, while the second is an imaginary brother, who ages as the paintings progress.

Play Around With A Toy Camera

PingMag... Play Around With A Toy Camera. "...Be it a Lomo or a Holga - thanks to their unique tint and special aesthetics, photos by a plastic toy camera are as fashionable as ever. And with the AGFA camera fair coming soon to Shibuya, PingMag wanted to see what sweet toy cameras we have in Japan - and visited camera maker Hideki Omori of POWERSHOVEL for a chat."

Rosalind Solomon: Inside Out

Rosalind Solomon: Inside Out at Silverstein Photography. "...a multimedia exhibition featuring the works of artist Rosalind Solomon. Solomon’s work is non-linear, flowing back and forth between the personal and the universal, addressing struggle and survival, ritual and reality, surface and substance. Although Solomon’s photographs have been widely exhibited around the world, including her noteworthy 1986 exhibition Ritual at the Museum of Modern Art New York, Inside Out offers the viewer an intimate glimpse of the artist through pivotal multimedia works and photographs seen here for the first time." More at The Photographs of Rosalind Solomon.

Hope or Menace? Communism in Germany Between the World Wars

Anonymous... Attention! The Red Soviet Pilots are Coming (1928, Lithograph in two colors on beige wove paper, Broadsheet for an air show, The Merrill C. Berman Collection). From the exhibition Hope or Menace? Communism in Germany Between the World Wars, March 25 - June 13, 2008 at Galerie St. Etienne in New York. "...The early Weimar era was the only period in the history of modern art in which most leading members of the avant-garde sought to engage directly with the broader community. They documented contemporary society in furtherance of a pointed political agenda, believing that the act of bearing witness would inspire constructive change. To this end, they sought to circumvent the conventional means of making and distributing art. Painting was far too bourgeois, too precious, too viscerally marked by the artist's ego. Printmaking, photography and photomechanical reproduction all offered the possibility of reaching a large and ostensibly proletarian audience with inexpensive multiples. The newer techniques, such as photo-montage, also had the advantage of minimizing any traces of the artist's personal touch."

Scrap Book of Russian Bookjackets, 1917-1942

Scrap Book of Russian Bookjackets, 1917-1942 (8 volumes, published 1942) at the NYPL Digital Library.

Things Once Seen: Richard Quinney Photographs

Things Once Seen: Richard Quinney Photographs at the WHS. "...Richard Quinney has spent more than 40 years documenting his life, time and community through photography. Intimately tied to and intrigued by place, the Wisconsin-born photographer, scholar, and writer has written several books that combine autobiographical writing with images of the places he has lived and traveled. His most recent book, Things Once Seen, contains photographs Quinney donated to the Society’s permanent collection."

Clickety Clack

Jerry Irby and The Texas Ranchers... Clickety Clack (1956, Daffan 108 .mp3 audio 02:10).

Works by Brian Dettmer

Brian Dettmer... The Picture Bible (2005, altered book). From Works by Brian Dettmer at Kinz, Tillou + Feigen. "...Brian Dettmer sifts through stacks of antiquated books, boxes of dusty cassette tapes, and piles of obsolete maps to uncover the perfect source and subject for his conceptual explorations and sculptural dissections. Dettmer alters pre-existing materials by selectively removing and manipulating elements as a way to allow new interpretations and ideas to emerge. With the precision of a surgeon, Dettmer uses scalpels, tweezers, and other medical instruments to carve into the surface of his found objects to reveal hidden meanings."

Photobiennale 2008

Photobiennale 2008 - The Seventh International Photography Month in Moscow.

Flashy Lights: Taxi Illumination In Japan

PingMag... Flashy Lights: Taxi Illumination In Japan. "...Prowling the city of Tokyo are hoards of taxis, chasing down lonely passengers on their way, to and fro. Characteristically, all are equipped with automatically opening doors and a driver’s white gloves. However, little distinguishes these roaring vehicles, classically Japanese, outside the small glowing beacon perched on the center of their tops - each company from every region set themselves apart with their own special logo and shape. How practical, since, from far, a passenger can see what type of ride they are in for that night! Today, PingMag spots some of the great variety of roaming lights for you."

Dinner With Henry

Dinner With Henry (1979, directed by Richard Young). "...Dinner With Henry is a rare, 30-minute documentary about Henry Miller. It is exactly what the title implies: footage of Henry having dinner. With him at the table is the film crew, and actress/model Brenda Venus, to whom Henry was enamoured in the final years of life. Henry - at age 87 - spends the majority of his time speaking on a number of subjects, the most persistent of which is Blaise Cendrars. Occasionally, he complains about the food. That is all. It may not be of much interest to a general audience, but is a curious "slice of life" for any Miller fan who likes to imagine being at the table with him."

Perfidia

The Ames Brothers with Esquivel and His Orchestra... Perfidia (.mp3 audio 01:50). From the album Hello Amigos (1960, RCA Victor LPM-2100). From WFMU's On The Download.

Works by John Stezaker

John Stezaker... Marriage (Film Portrait Collage) XLV (2007, collage). From Works by John Stezaker at the Saatchi Gallery. "...In his Marriage series, Stezaker focuses on the concept of portraiture, both as art historical genre and public identity. Using publicity shots of classic film stars, Stezaker splices and overlaps famous faces, creating hybrid 'icons' that dissociate the familiar to create sensations of the uncanny. Coupling male and female identity into unified characters, Stezaker points to a disjointed harmony, where the irreconciliation of difference both complements and detracts from the whole. In his correlated images, personalities (and our idealisations of them) become ancillary and empty, rendered abject through their magnified flaws and struggle for visual dominance."

Photothèque imaginaire de Shuji Terayama, les gens de la famille Chien Dieu

Terayama Shuji... Photothèque imaginaire de Shuji Terayama, les gens de la famille Chien Dieu (Yomiuri Shinbunsha, Tokyo, 1975).

Raymond Meeks

Raymond Meeks... Hard Rock Miner (1993, mixed media, edition of 3). From the portfolio A Clearing by photographer Raymond Meeks. Also... Raymond Meeks: Topsoil at Candace Dwan Gallery. "...Topsoil follows Raymond Meeks’ richly emotive debut collection, Sound of Summer Running, which invited us inward, through the expressive interiors of family and place. More recently, Meeks has been exploring a landscape that is in constant shift. As the foundation for what is organic and underlying, the depicted landscape suggests a direct, but subtle, synchrony between the state of the land and that of the individual."

Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680–1860

Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680–1860 at the Asia Society. "...Designed for Pleasure is a dazzling exploration of Japan’s famous 'floating world' of spectacle and entertainment. Through 140 masterworks from museums and private collections in the United States, the exhibition makes new discoveries about the patronage and commerce of an art that has been characterized for a century as sensational but plebeian. From luxury paintings of the pleasure quarters to Hokusai’s iconic “Great Wave,” "Designed for Pleasure" presents a focused examination of the period’s fascinating networks of art, literature, and fashion, proving that the artists and the publishers and patrons who engaged them not only mirrored the tastes of their energetic times, they created a unifying cultural legacy."

Long Tall Sally

The Out Cast... Long Tall Sally (.mp3 audio 02:45).

Polaroids by Grant Hamilton

FILE Magazine... Polaroids by Grant Hamilton. "...We are pleased to present a selection of Polaroids by Iowa City-based photographer Grant Hamilton, who uses an SX-70 to create beautiful abstract photographs from found objects and colors."

Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe

Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe at the Guggenheim Museum. "...Cai Guo-Qiang has literally exploded the accepted parameters of art making in our time. Drawing freely from ancient mythology, military history, Taoist cosmology, extraterrestrial observations, Maoist revolutionary tactics, Buddhist philosophy, gunpowder-related technology, Chinese medicine, and methods of terrorist violence, Cai’s art is a form of social energy, constantly mutable, linking what he refers to as 'the seen and unseen worlds.' This retrospective presents the full spectrum of the artist’s protean, multimedia art in all its conceptual complexity."

Frank Gohlke: Grain Elevators

Frank Gohlke: Grain Elevators. From Works by Frank Gohlke.

Adventures of Electric Rod Boy

Denchu Kozo no boken (Adventures of Electric Rod Boy, 1987, Kaijyu Theater, Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto).
Part 1 (Flash Video 10:36)
Part 2 (Flash Video 10:20)
Part 3 (Flash Video 09:56)
Part 4 (Flash Video 10:01)
Part 5 (Flash Video 04:11)

Horacio Coppola: Buenos Aires

Horacio Coppola: Buenos Aires - photographs by Horacio Coppola from the 1930's.

New Dance In France

Bobby Lee Trammell & The Paulettes... New Dance In France (1964, Atlanta 1503 .mp3 audio 02:45). From Probe Is Turning-on The People!

RIP: Michael 'Mikey Dread' Campbell

RIP: Michael 'Mikey Dread' Campbell.

Marcel Dzama: Even the Ghosts of the Past

Marcel Dzama... Untitled (Page 1 of 13) (2007, 13 sketchbook pages, including cover - mixed media on paper). From the exhibition Marcel Dzama: Even the Ghosts of the Past at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. "...Marcel Dzama is best known for his figurative compositions of pen and watercolor on manila-colored paper. Bearing a characteristic palette of muted browns, grays, greens, and reds, Dzama’s drawings are populated by an expansive cast of human, animal, and hybrid
characters. In this exhibition distinct personalities take center stage, most notably the masked and armed 'terrorist.' In the sixteen-part drawing Inflated Threat, 2007, this character is obsessively repeated amongst cowboys, archers, and femmes fatales, suggesting the exaggerated climate of fear and shoot-'em-up mentality at the forefront of American politics."

Brevity's Rainbow

Works by Maya Hayuk from the exhibition Brevity's Rainbow - a Galaxy of Tiny Artworks at Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. "...I asked some of my favorite artists and some of my best friends to interpret the idea of the Lilliputian and the temporal, the specks of dust that make up the world, the fleeting moments of pleasure and pain. I wanted the artists to bend over their workbenches and canvases and get inside of their tiny artworks. I wanted to freeze a moment so you could all lean in, get our faces right up next to the artwork, as close as you can possibly get, and see a tiny beautiful thing."

Here and Gone:

Lens Culture... Here and Gone: 21st Century Anonymous Portraits - photographs by Alexei Vassiliev. "...For moments or hours every day, urban dwellers often find themselves temporarily trapped in enclosed spaces, bathed in artificial light, surrounded by garish colors, and mired in a sluggish state of pause. This can happen in a subway station, a waiting room, an indoor shopping mall, an airport lounge... While the people may be physically present, their minds and spirits are often elsewhere. The blurred portraits of anonymous strangers made by Russian photographer Alexei Vassiliev capture this phenomenon with surprising, emotional force." More Works by Alexei Vassiliev at his personal site.

Beat Out My Love

Lee Dresser and The Krazy Kats... Beat Out My Love (1960, Damon D-12350 .mp3 audio 02:10).

Muzi Quawson: Pull Back the Shade

Muzi Quawson: Pull Back the Shade at Yossi Milo Gallery. "...The style of the photographs recalls the cinematography of New American Cinema of the 1970s and its aggrandizement of the anti-hero. Pull Back the Shade was first shown at the Tate Britain in London where the works were displayed as a slideshow, bringing their collective effect closer to that of a film. For this exhibition, the color negatives have been developed as Duratran prints and placed in light boxes; the result is a series of illuminated photographs that resemble stills from a color film." Also... Works by Muzi Quawson at Documentography - a UK based collective of photographers dealing with documentary, reportage, journalism and fine art.

Rob Conger: Feeling Lucky?

Rob Conger... Steve Chang, Anti-Virus (2008, woven acrylic yarn on quarter-inch mesh, 18 x 12 1/2 inches). From the exhibition Rob Conger: Feeling Lucky?, March 13 - April 12, 2008 at Mixed Greens Gallery in New York.

Cosplay

Lost Art presents... Cosplay. Photographs from the finals of the World Cosplay Summit at the Mercado Mundo Mix in São Paulo.

Works by Lori Field

Works by Lori Field at Kinz, Tillou + Feigen. "...Lori Field's encaustic paintings with collaged drawings portray hallucinatory visions derived from her flirtation with demonic realms, personal fairy tales, and the human world. The chimerical creatures that populate Field's mixed media works are at once familiar and mysterious. They are the realization of modern day myths that draw on a primitive lore. Her fanciful visual and cultural vocabulary is embellished with elements such as thread, lace, and insect wings - a mélange that inspires discovery and wonderment."

Signs from Waukegan and Kankakee

Signs from Waukegan and Kankakee at Interesting Ideas.

The Mexican Suitcase

Lost negatives by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and David Seymour "Chim"... The Mexican Suitcase by Trisha Ziff at Zone Zero. "...I returned from a short trip to New York in January 2007 with a project to find a Ben Tarver in Mexico City. He had inherited photographic negatives taken by Robert Capa during the Spanish Civil War. I was not the first person to be asked to help retrieve them, but for many reasons 12 years had passed since Ben Tarver had first reached out to Professor Green of Queens College an expert in the Spanish Civil War. It was a result of this brief correspondence initiated by Tarver that Cornell Capa became aware of the lost material of his brother."

Trailer for Suspiria

Trailer for Suspiria (1977, directed by Dario Argento, QuickTime Video) from Blue Underground. Also... the Trailer for The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (QuickTime Video) - Argento's debut.

Miroslav Tichý

Miroslav Tichý at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York. "...Using self-made cameras, constructed from tin cans, bottle caps and plastic, Tichý captured the poetry of everyday life in photographic images. Making only one print from each negative, Tichý created compositions featuring mainly anonymous female characters who lent themselves unwittingly to his practice. Taking mothers, students, waitresses and others as his live models, situated on park benches, sunbathing, or even on TV screens, these intimately scaled black and white prints often feature hand-drawn details and a washy, mottled print quality. Some of the works feature elaborate ink or watercolor, cardboard framing elements. The resulting works fall dynamically between painting and photography, between image and object, embracing chance, and time in a unique process of presentation and production."

Handsome Beast

Sir Bald Diddley & His Wig-Outs... Handsome Beast (.mp3 audio 03:43). From the album To Baldly Go... (1998, Sympathy For The Record Industry SFTRI 614).

Flight Attendants

Brian Finke... Yasuko, ANA, All Nippon Airways (2006, chromogenic color print). From the exhibition Flight Attendants - photographs by Brian Finke at ClampArt in New York.

McClellan Street

David and Peter Turnley... McClellan Street (Digital Journalist, March 2008). "...With its rundown sidewalks and shabby houses, McClellan Street was never America the Beautiful. The photographs are not pretty, in the conventional sense. The street's residents are not chic or stylish; many go barefoot. But they are beautiful members of the Family of Man. It was a friendly neighborhood, its residents enjoying life's daily joys, sharing sadness, good weather and bad. It was for those reasons that the Turnley twins felt at home there and made it their own neighborhood. Their subjects became their friends, proudly displaying Turnley pictures of themselves. This is the street's family album."

QUESTING Bandstand

Fung Po Po at QUESTING Bandstand - The Golden Age of the Music Scene in the Far East. YES!

Burning Burning

Takeshi Terauchi and The Bunnys... Burning Burning (.mp3 audio 02:13). From the album Let's Go Terry! (1966, King Records). Features one totally crazed guitar break. Also... Julian Cope presents Japrocksampler.

František Kupka: Lysistrata

František Kupka: Lysistrata at galerie art svìtlana a luboš jelínkovi. (cz)

Sympathetic Spectators

Kinoeye... Sympathetic Spectators - Roman Polanski's Le Locataire (The Tenant, 1976). "...Le Locataire, one of Polanski's lesser-known films, utilises both an "unreliable" narrator and manipulates an "unreliable" audience to achieve it's horror effect. Aaron Smuts analyses the film."

Japanese Vintage Bizarre Effect Site

Ace Tone FM-2 Fuzz Master. From the Japanese Vintage Bizarre Effect Site. A great collection of vintage Japanese stompboxes, amps, guitars, and more. (jp)

Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum

Works by Louis Wain. From the brilliant Gallery of Artists at the Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum.

China Design Now

China Design Now at the V&A Museum. "...China is huge. China is becoming topical. Yet China remains a mystery to most people in the West. 'Made in China' has become a familiar tag, but the spectacular creative energy in modern China is barely known. During the last twenty years, the Chinese have rediscovered their pre-socialist past and begun to combine their own traditions with global influences to produce a cultural rebirth. At the heart of this lies a new culture of design. This exhibition will take you on a journey along China’s coastal cities to experience the country’s creative landscape."

Jan Svankmajer... Byt (The Flat)

Jan Svankmajer... Byt (The Flat, 1968, Krátký Film Praha) - Part One (Flash Video 05:44) | Part Two (Flash Video 06:40).

Shanty

The Quests... Shanty (1964, Singapore EMI CHK 1009 .mp3 audio 02:15).

Print Works by Hans Bellmer

Print Works by Hans Bellmer at Gallery Tokinowasuremono in Tokyo. "...20 etchings from the series 'A Sade' (1961), and 'Morals Essay' (1968)."

Works by Youssef Nabil

Youssef Nabil... John Waters, Paris 2005 (hand coloured silver gelatin print, edition of 10). From Works by Youssef Nabil at Michael Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town, SA. "...Nabil was born in Cairo in 1972. He studied literature at the Ain Shams University in Cairo and started taking photographs in his early 20s. In the 1990s he worked as an assistant for David LaChapelle in New York and later for Mario Testino in Paris. Between 1999 and 2002 Nabil worked with Middle Eastern magazines photographing Arab celebrities. He had his first international solo exhibition at Centro De La Imagen in Mexico City in 2001. In 2003 he exhibited on the African Biennale of Photography in Bamako, Mali and was awarded the Seydou Keita Prize for portraiture." More works by Youssef Nabil at his Personal Site.

Sam Taylor-Wood: Video Works, 1998-2003

Sam Taylor-Wood: Video Works, 1998-2003 at UBUWEB. "...Sam Taylor-Wood makes photographs and films that examine, through highly charged scenarios, our shared social and psychological conditions. Taylor-Wood's work examines the split between being and appearance, often placing her human subjects - either singly or in groups - in situations where the line between interior and external sense of self is in conflict."

The Seduction

Greg Miller... Flamingo (2008, Oil, paper, resin, on panel). From The Seduction - paintings by Greg Miller at Kidder Smith Gallery in Boston, MA. "...His resined works on panel are a seamless blend of fragmented photographic imagery, familiar everyday objects, celebrated literary novels, and painted surfaces. His work engages nostalgia, simple beauty, and feelings of times past, juxtaposed against a sultry film noir, pulp fiction, and Hollywood backdrop."

Boogie Interview

Lost Art... Boogie Interview. "...Usually people ask me how I got close enough to the gang members and drug addicts to photograph them. They also ask me the same thing about Nazi skinheads."