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.
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.
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.
Famous French actor Alain Delon passed away on Sunday, 8/18.
The stills above are from his film Le Samourai from 1967, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. The beautifully shot film follows a mostly silent Delon as an assassin trying to discover who is trying to kill him. It also stars his then wife Nathalie Delon.
After hearing the sad news of Shelley Duvall’s passing, I decided to watch a few films from her filmography and started with 3 Women, released in 1977. Based on a dream writer/director Robert Altman had, the film follows Duvall and Sissy Spacek as their lives and identities intertwine in the California desert. Later a third woman played by Janice Rule, becomes more important in the pair’s world.
Using reflections, water, mirrors, mirrored actions, and twins, Altman creates a mysterious space for these women to inhabit. Adding to the unsettling energy of the film are a series of murals created by artist Bodhi Wind (Charles Kuklis).
It’s definitely worth a watch, with an ambiguous ending that has been subject to many interpretations.
Die Spitz- I Hate When Girls Die
Twin Peaks references and heavy metal vibes combine for Austin band Die Spitz’s latest video.
This week they are playing in Los Angeles at Zebulon on Thursday, 5/23 (with Teen Mortgage and Dagger Polyester) and Friday (5/24/24) at Permanent Records Roadhouse.
Kwakwaka’wakw artist and activist Chief Beau Dick’s (1955-2017) carved masks for the exhibition Walas Gwa’yam / Big, Great Whale at Andrew Kreps Gallery draw you in with their intriguing visages.
From the press release-
“Our whole culture has been shattered. It’s up to the artists now to pick up the pieces and try and put them together, back where they belong. Yeah, it does become political. It becomes beyond political; it becomes very deep and emotional.” – Beau Dick speaking in the 2017 film ‘Maker of Monsters: The Extraordinary Life of Beau Dick.’
Beau Dick’s works are deeply informed by the tradition of potlatch, a gift-giving ceremony practiced by Indigenous people of the coast of Pacific Northwest Canada, which focused on the redistribution of wealth as a tool for building solidarity. Outlawed by the Canadian Government for nearly seventy years as part of an ongoing history of forced assimilation, the seclusion of Dick’s birthplace on Kingcome Inlet (Gwa’yi) allowed his community to continue practicing customs relatively free from the gaze of colonial authorities. Trained in wood-carving by his father, grandfather, and other master carvers, and completing his education in Vancouver, Dick was acutely aware of inherent tensions between contemporary consumer culture and Kwakwaka’wakw teachings. Refuting his masks as static objects, his carvings reference supernatural figures, like Dzunuk’wa, the “wild woman of the woods,” and her counterpart, Bakwas, “wild man of the woods,” which are reanimated to combat what Dick saw as capitalism’s “ravenous” oppression. Frequently employing his works in dances and performances, in 2012 he took forty Atlakim (Forest) masks to his community in Alert Bay, where after one final ceremony, they were ritually burned, referencing the ongoing responsibility for rebirth, and recreation in the face of erased tradition.
This tribute to artist Margaret Kilgallen was spotted in Los Angeles in 2014. The quote is paraphrasing what she said during an interview for the PBS program Art21. The full quote reads- “I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line work… when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that’s where the beauty is.” Kilgallen died of cancer in 2001, at only 33, but left behind a remarkable body of work.
You can currently see one of these works at Cantor Arts Center’s as part of the group exhibition, Day Jobs, on view until 7/21/24. The exhibition examines the impact of day jobs in the lives and work of several famous artists.
Image courtesy of Cantor Arts Center: Margaret Kilgallen, “Money to Loan (Paintings for the San Francisco Bus Shelter Posters)” [detail], 2000. Mixed media on paper and fabric, sheet 68 × 48½ inches Courtesy of the Margaret Kilgallen Estate, photo by Tony Prikryl
Mary Timony- The Guest
This song is from Mary Timony’s 2024 solo album, Untame the Tiger. Timony, (who was also part of ’90s band Helium, and currently Ex Hex) wrote the album during a time which saw the end of her long term relationship and the death of her parents. She talks about the experience here.
The video is directed by Brett Vapnek, who also directed Timony in her short 2000 film, Dream Machine.
Timony is playing at Lodge Room in Los Angeles on Thursday, 3/28/24, with Rosali.
Francesca Woodman, “Untitled (Rome), 1977-8, Gelatin silver print (image via Columbus Museum of Art)
Two of Cindy Sherman’s “Film Stills”, Gelatin silver prints from the 1970s
Four Gelatin silver prints by Diane Arbus
Francesca Woodman’s “Italy”, 1977-1978 (printed later) Gelatin silver print
Currently on view at Columbus Museum of Art is Arbus • Sherman • Woodman: American Photography from the 1960s and 1970s. Although many of these photographs by Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman and Francesca Woodman are well known, it’s great to see the work of these three exceptional artists in person. The black and white images still captivate, even in our current image saturated world.
About the show from the museum-
This selection of monochromatic prints reflects a shared interest in capturing the world outside oneself as well as the world within. Perspective is an elemental link between each work: the images speak to how we see ourselves as individuals, how we are perceived, and how we observe others.
While Arbus was known for photographing families, children, pedestrians, performers, and celebrities, both Sherman and Woodman turned the camera on themselves. Dressing as anonymous female film characters from the 1950s and 1960s, Sherman poses in the series “Untitled Film Stills”. However, these works are not considered self-portraits, but rather carefully constructed performances of various female identities. Conversely, Woodman’s surrealist images might be called non-traditional self-portraits. By obscuring, blurring, or cropping parts of herself out of the final image, the photographs become intimate, personal snapshots that reflect a wider human fragility.
Arbus, Sherman, and Woodman are considered among the most prominent twentieth-century photographers and remain influential to contemporary artists today. By including aspects of feminism in their work and pushing the limits of the medium, these women challenged societal norms of their time while contributing to the elevation of photography as an art form.
It’s always interesting to hear artists discuss each other’s work. Included in the exhibition is this quote by Cindy Sherman about Francesca Woodman-
“She had few boundaries and made art out of nothing: empty rooms with peeling wallpaper and just her figure. No elaborate stage set-up or lights… Her process struck me more the way a painter works, making do with what’s right in front of her, rather than photographers like myself who need time to plan out what they’re going to do.”
For more on Francesca Woodman, her short life, and her artistic family, The Woodmans is an excellent documentary.