Go! Go! Go!

Go! Go! Go! by Marie Menken (1962–64, 16mm, color, silent, 12 min). "...Marie Menken (1909 - 1970) became one of New York’s outstanding underground experimental filmmakers of the 1940s through the1960s, inspiring artists such as Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger, and Gerard Malanga. She was a probable role model of Edward Albee’s 'Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf' and ended up as a Warhol Superstar. The documentary allows a glimpse into her social and artistic struggle and radical integrity, drawing the picture of a modern myth in personal diary style."

Le Juif errant

Le Juif errant (The Wandering Jew, 1904, directed by Georges Méliès) at Europa Film Treasures. "...Condemned to roam the earth by Christ on whom he spat during his ascent to Golgotha, Issac Laquedem, a Jewish cobbler, walks, trips, gets up, falls and then tries to sleep. In his dream he relives the episode that sent him into exile. After successively meeting the devil and an angel he continues to walk the earth with the elements raging around him. By pairing up theatre and photography resources it’s Méliès own conception of cinema that emerges from this reconstruction of a mythical subject."

Nine Films by Leslie Thornton

Nine Films by Leslie Thornton at UbuWeb Film & Video. "...Leslie Thornton's short films combine original and archival footage, video and still images, and digital media in their investigation of the collision (and collusion) of these modes. The play that she exercises between abstract and referential imagery allows her to address moral and ethical issues as they pertain to events and as they relate to the role of art and media. By editing together controversial or transgressive material, she creates discursive cinematic spaces in which to consider humanity's inexplicable behaviors, as do fellow avant-garde filmmakers Chris Marker and Chantal Akerman. The result is a unique and strangely beautiful syntax, one that poses its critique at the same time that it mesmerizes, confounds and provokes."

Yutaka Takanashi: Towards The City

Yutaka Takanashi... Loop Road 7, Suginami-ku (Tokyo-jin 30) (1965, gelatin silver print, printed 1970). From the exhibition Yutaka Takanashi: Towards The City at Galerie Priska Pasquer in Cologne, Germany. "...In the first overseas solo exhibition to be devoted to his works since the mid-1980s, a selection of Takanashi’s works from the period 1963–1974 will be featured. Yutaka Takanashi was one of the co-founders of the legendary 'Provoke' group which revolutionised Japanese photography at the end of the 1960s. Other members of this group included Daido Moriyamya and Takuma Nakahira. The works in this exhibition were published by Yutaka Takanashi in 1974 in the two-part volume 'Toshi-e' (Towards the City). This elaborate publication marked both the high-water mark and the end of the 'Provoke' era.



Works by Emma Wilcox

Emma Wilcox... Eminent Domain No. 1 (2006). From Works by Emma Wilcox at Gitterman Gallery. "...This exhibition is comprised of work from Wilcox’s Eminent Domain and Forensic Landscapes series. Wilcox is interested in the various ways that land is marked, be it chemically, visually or textually. Taken primarily within a 5-mile radius of Newark, NJ, these haunting, enigmatic images suggest multiple narratives, hinting at crime, destruction and violence. Artist and critic Tim Maul writes: 'progress' has rendered these landscapes ancient, and Wilcox is both a cartographer and guerrilla, staging interventions embedded within photographs that like maps themselves, never succeed as precise conveyors of 'truth'. The images bear no obvious time stamp; they serve as a subjective document and challenge the notion of evidence. Though often dark, both visually and conceptually, the work has an underlying note of resilience and perseverance." More... Photographs by Emma Wilcox at her personal site.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child - a film by Tamra Davis. "...Centered on a rare interview that director and friend Tamra Davis shot with Basquiat over twenty years ago, this definitive documentary chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of the young artist."

Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield

Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield at the Whitney Museum of American Art. "...Although he lived next door to Niagara Falls, artist Charles Burchfield (1893–1967) chose to focus his nature-based art on the ground beneath his feet. Curated by artist Robert Gober, this exhibition features over one hundred major watercolors, drawings, oils on canvas, sketches, notebooks, journals, and doodles by this visionary American artist. Acclaimed by critics and known to a broad public audience during his lifetime, Burchfield is curiously under-appreciated today. Working almost exclusively in watercolor, Burchfield’s primary subject was landscape, often focusing on his immediate surroundings: his garden, the views from his windows, snow turning to slush, the sounds of insects and bells and vibrating telephone lines, deep ravines, sudden atmospheric changes, the experience of entering a forest at dusk, to name but a few."

What Goes On

The Feelies... What Goes On (.mp3 audio 03:37). From the album Only Life (1988, A&M Records SP 5214). Cover of The Velvet Underground.

Recent Acquisitions (And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)

Egon Schiele... Pregnant Woman (1910, Watercolor, gouache and black crayon on tan wove paper, Initialed, lower left). From the exhibition Recent Acquisitions (And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market) at Galerie St. Etienne in New York. "...As is traditional, our summer exhibition draws from the past season’s offerings, augmenting them with new acquisitions. Accordingly, our present inventories of works by Schiele, Grandma Moses and Kollwitz provide an especially rich array of choices. Highlights include Schiele's strong triple self-portrait, Seers, from 1913, a stunning 1917 watercolor portrait of his patron, Heinrich Benesch, and two spectacular 'red' nudes from the artist's breakthrough Expressionist period in early 1910. Such top-quality works by Schiele have been scarce at auction recently, and the same is true of paintings by Grandma Moses. Our new Moses acquisitions include a pair of unusually large works, Cambridge Valley and Cambridge Valley in Winter, as well as several high-quality smaller paintings (sought-after by collectors because good, reasonably priced Moseses are hard to come by): March 3, See the Kite, Better Going Over the Hill and June. Our recent Kollwitz show focused on self-portraits, leaving us with a good selection of these, which we have supplemented with rare prints, such as March Cemetery, and drawings."

Amy on Happist

This is my daughter Amy on the cover of the April, 2010 edition of the magazine Happist in Japan.