Mar 172025
 

The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing by former New York magazine editor Adam Moss is a fascinating look at the creative processes of several famous artists. Each artist discusses specific works and gives the reader an inside look at how they came about.

The 43 artists included are visual artists, writers, musicians, editors, designers, and many other creative categories. Moss is also an artist and you can see that in his desire to both inform the reader, and to learn for himself, what makes these individuals tick.

Many of the names will be familiar, but these behind the scenes looks are incredibly enlightening. These discussions often also inspired, for me, a deeper dive. I found myself watching videos of Twyla Tharp‘s choreography, reading Guy Talese’s essay and Sheila Heti’s book, listening to Moses Sumney, watching Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, and so on, as I progressed through the book.

While some artists will appeal more than others depending on your interests, all of them had something interesting and valuable to say. This book was one of my favorites of 2024.

 

Feb 212025
 

As part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, The Getty is highlighting the incredible work created by the engineers and artists that made up the group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T). The exhibition focuses on the history of the group and two of its most ambitious projects- 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering (1966) and the Pepsi Pavilion from Expo ’70 in Japan.

From the museum-

In 1966, engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman founded Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting and supporting collaborations between artists, engineers, and scientists. These partnerships brought disparate fields together, bridging the gap between culture and emerging technology. E.A.T.’s debut event, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering (1966), integrated art, theatre, and engineering at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City, resulting in a technology-aided performance experience that proved to be a launchpad for artistic exploration. Their second major project, the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan (1970), presented a multisensory environment featuring experiments with sound, light, lasers, a mirrored dome, and fog. Through their collaborations, E.A.T. artists and engineers came to believe that such team efforts could benefit society; subsequent multidisciplinary endeavors, such as Projects Outside Art (1970), addressed issues of housing, education, environmental sustainability, and communication.

About 9 Evenings

In 1965, Swedish electrical engineer Billy Klüver and American artist Robert Rauschenberg gathered 10 avant-garde artists and 30 Bell Labs engineers to participate in a collaborative, multidisciplinary project combining new technologies with theatre, dance, and music. The event,9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, took place at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York, from October 13-22, 1966. More than 10,000 people attended performances by John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Oyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Rauschenberg, David Tudor and Robert Whitman. These performances incorporated technological equipment such as photocells, doppler sonar, remote controls, infrared cameras, and transistors. In addition, 9 Evenings engineers created the Theatre Electronic Environmental Modular, a flexible, wireless, networked control system, and the Proportional Control System (PCS), which used photocells to adjust light and sound levels. The event led to the founding of Experiments in Art and Technology the following month.

Below are images and objects from two of the nine evenings, Open Score and Physical Things

Performance description of “Open Score” by Robert Rauschenberg

About Open Score

Open Score began with a tennis match between professional player Mimi Kanarek and painter Frank Stella. Engineer William Kaminski wired their rackets with transmitters that caused every strike of the ball to emit a loud sound and extinguish an overhead light. The game continued until the Armory was completely dark. At that point, a cast of 300 volunteers walked onto the court and performed a series of loosely choreographed movements while infrared cameras projected their images onto large screens. Rauschenberg described the action as “the conflict of not being able to see an event that is taking place right in front of one except through a reproduction,” an idea that resonates in today’s world of social media, streaming, and smartphones. For the second performance, Rauschenberg added a third section in which he carried dancer Simone Forti around the Armory in a burlap bag while she sang an Italian ballad.

About Steve Paxton and Dick Wolff’s Physical Things

For 9 Evenings, Paxton created an enormous, inflated sculpture using Polyethylene and box fans and invited visitors to walk through the structure at their own pace, confronting different environments and performances along the way. After climbing through a 100-foot inflated tower, participants emerged into an enclosed area with wire loops suspended above their heads. Using modified transistor radios, they could listen to an array of sounds, including animal noises and sports commentary. One’s location underneath the sound loops determined which part of the score was audible, allowing people to choose where to linger and what to listen to.

One of the group’s most ambitious projects was for the Pepsi Pavilion (pictured above).

From the museum-

In 1970, the Pepsi-Cola Corporation commissioned E.A.T. to design a pavilion for Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. Artists Robert Whitman, Robert Breer, David Tudor, and Forrest Myers made early contributions to the design of the pavilion; eventually the design team included 20 artists and 50 engineers and scientists.

Outside the pavilion, a water-vapor cloud sculpture by the artist Fujiko Nakaya covered the white, faceted dome. On the plaza, seven of Breer’s Floats, six-foot-high dome-shaped sculptures, glided in slow motion while emitting sounds.

Visitors entered the pavilion through a tunnel and descended a staircase into a clamshell-shaped room lit by moving patterns of laser light. On the far end, another staircase led up into the Mirror Dome, a 90-foot diameter, 210-degree spherical mirror made of aluminized Mylar. Within the Mirror Dome, visitors’ reflected images appeared to float upside down above their heads.

You can find more images and further documentation here.

This exhibition closes 2/23/25.

Feb 202025
 

Charles and Ray EamesPowers of 10, is currently on view as part of Palm Springs Art Museum‘s Particles and Waves: Southern California Abstraction and Science, 1945-1990, among a collection of experimental abstract films.

In the nine minute film you travel in powers of 10 in two directions, starting with a couple having a picnic in a park in Chicago. You then zoom out into space until you are 100 million light years distance from them and then return to travel into the man’s hand in negative powers of 10 until you reach a proton of a carbon atom at 10−16 meters.

Below is the film in its entirety but it is definitely worth seeing on a big screen if you can.

Feb 172025
 

Wim Wenders‘ 2023 film Perfect Days, stars Kōji Yakusho as Hirayama, a toilet cleaner in Tokyo who leads a solitary but seemingly contented life. He spends his time outside of work reading, listening to music on cassette tapes, taking care of his plants, and taking analog photos of trees. This simple life begins to change as smaller and larger moments with others expand his world and alter his routines.

The quiet film focuses on a few of these people- including his coworker and later the surprise arrival of his niece. Watching them together as they spend his previously solitary days mirroring each other unconsciously, is especially lovely. After her departure there is another interaction that leaves the viewer to wonder if Hirayama will continue to live this simple life or embrace potential changes to his “perfect days”.

The pictures of the trees throughout the film capture the Japanese word “komorebi”. The word is defined at the end of the film, after the credits, as “the shimmering of light and shadows that is created by leaves swaying in the wind”. These images continue in Hirayama’s black and white dreams, created by Wenders’ wife Donata.

Wim Wenders is currently showing two bodies of work at Howard Greenberg Gallery in NYC- Written in the West, from his roadtrip to the American West in 1983 and Once, a series of works from his travels and encounters with Hollywood. This exhibition will be on view until 3/15/25.

 

Jan 202025
 

Still from “Mulholland Drive”

Club Silencio scene with Rebekah Del Rio from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive

Today would have been artist and filmmaker David Lynch’s 79th birthday.

Although it was sad to hear of his passing, it was such a joy to spend the weekend looking through his artwork, reading the tributes from those who knew him, and rewatching his films and the documentary about him, The Art Life.

He also wrote Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, a short book filled with his thoughts on transcendental meditation, his films, digital video, creativity and more- worth checking out. Below is a short clip from one of his interviews with The Atlantic.

He also acted occasionally, both in his Twin Peaks series and in other projects. Below he plays another famous director, John Ford, in a clip from Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans.

And here he is on Louis C.K.’s show Louie.

David Lynch’s creative legacy will continue to influence and inspire people for many years to come. He was one of the greats.

Sep 202024
 

Isaac Julien’s video installations use multiple images on different sized screens to tell complicated stories. For Lessons of the Hour, currently on view at MoMA, he is telling the story of American abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The work presents this history in a thought-provoking way that is also visually stunning.

From the museum-

In Lessons of the Hour (2019), Sir Isaac Julien presents an immersive portrait of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who obtained freedom from chattel slavery in 1838 and became one of the most important orators, writers, and statespersons of the 19th century. Across the 10 screens of this video installation, a nonlinear narrative melds Douglass’s life and work with excerpts from several of his speeches, literary works, and personal correspondence. The most photographed American of his era, Douglass understood that portraiture could challenge racist tropes and advance the freedom and civil rights of Black Americans and subjugated people around the world.

For the first time, historical objects directly related to Lessons of the Hour will be on view alongside the work. They include albumen silver print portraits of Douglass, pamphlets of his speeches, first editions of his memoirs, a facsimile of a rare manuscript laying out his ideas about photography, and a specially designed wallpaper composed of period newspaper clippings, broadsides, magazine illustrations, and scrapbook pages. These objects reveal how Douglass’s image and words circulated in the transatlantic, 19th-century world, and also bear out Julien’s insight in Lessons of the Hour: that Douglass’s ideas about citizenship, democracy, and human dignity remain timeless.

This exhibition closes 9/28/24

Sep 152024
 


This weekend I revisited 2011’s The Tree of Life, directed by Terence Malick. The film unfolds like a visual poem and the cinematography is breathtaking. It’s a beautiful meditation on all aspects of life including family, love, death, suffering, grace, nature, and God.

It received mixed reviews at the time, and the narrative may not come together for everyone, but the performances and ambition of the film make it worth a watch.

 

Sep 082024
 

What if you could only take one memory with you for eternity-what would you choose? This is the question at the heart of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 1998 film, After Life.

The beautiful and touching film follows several recently deceased people as they arrive at a processing center to be interviewed, choose a memory, and then have it recreated for them before they move on.  The film also combines scripted interviews with actors with those of real people reminiscing about their lives.

 

Sep 012024
 

Trailer- “The First Monday in May”

The 2016 documentary The First Monday in May, follows chief curator of The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Andrew Bolton as he prepares the 2015 exhibition China: Through the Looking Glass.  The film also follows Anna Wintour as she prepares for the Met Gala party that accompanies the exhibition. Bolton’s work on the show with director Wong Kar Wai, as well as the negotiations and logistics behind creating it are fascinating.

The film is full of celebrities and fashion designers including Karl Lagerfeld, Jean Paul Gaultier, and John Galliano.

The Costume Institute’s latest exhibition, also curated by Andrew Bolton,  Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, closes on 9/2.

Aug 262024
 

Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, from 1966, explores the relationship between an actress who has become mute, played by Liv Ullman, and the nurse who is in charge of her care played by Bibi Andersson. The pair travel to a cottage on the beach where their personalities begin to conflict and blend.

The unsettling film contains several experimental elements, as well as images that are outside of the main narrative, that provide more questions than answers.