Ice Queen: Bjork 2015

The Museum of Modern Art presents a retrospective of the multifaceted work of composer, musician, and artist Björk. The exhibition draws from more than 20 years of the artist’s daring and adventurous projects and her seven full-length albums—from Debut (1993) to Biophilia (2011)—to chronicle her career through sound, film, visuals, instruments, objects, costumes, and performance. The installation will present a narrative, both biographical and imaginatively fictitious, cowritten by Björk and the acclaimed Icelandic writer Sjón. Björk’s collaborations with video directors, photographers, fashion designers, and artists will be featured, and the exhibition culminates with a newly commissioned, immersive music and film experience conceived and realized with director Andrew Thomas Huang.

Lucian Freud: A Master of the Human Figure

Naked portrait in a Red Chair (1999)

Lucian Freud created an entirely new genre in the depiction of the human figure. His ‘naked portraits’ present subjects as pure animal forms not dissimilar from inanimate still life objects, while at the same time rendering painted flesh with an extraordinary, penetrating humanity. ‘A Not So Still Life’ presents Freud’s late large paintings ‘Naked portrait in a red chair’ (1999) and ‘David and Eli’ (2003–4). By turns clinical and intimate, stark and tender, the works resulted from weeks of intense sitting by and scrutiny of the artist’s subjects. While the woman in the first portrait goes unnamed, the second picture identifies Freud’s two most constant companions: his long-time studio assistant and friend David Dawson, and his whippet Eli. Both paintings evidence Freud’s almost ruthless process of observation and forensic reckoning of the human body. “Living people interest me far more than anything else,” Freud stated. “I’m really interested in them as animals. The one thing about human animals is their individuality: liking to work from them naked is part of that reason, because I can see more.”

Listen: Ex Hex’s new song “Beast”

David Byrne Explains the Secret “Psycho Killer” Subtext of ‘Stop Making Sense’ at Lincoln Center

Exquisite Corpse… Surrealism in Haute Couture

The fashion artisanal’s modus operandi is alchemy: a dramatic and dark aesthetic replete with peculiar, irresistible romance and high/low extremes. Unwearable wearable art. 

Givenchy by John Galliano, Haute Couture 1996/1997

The Elusive Echo- The Sculptural Instillations of Neil Dawson

Neil Dawson (born 1948) is a prominent New Zealand sculptor. His best known works are large-scale civic pieces crafted from aluminum and stainless steel, often made using a lattice of natural forms which between them form a geometric whole.

Clean Space: The Architecture of Augustine Kofie

Augistine Kofie’s series entitled “Circulatory System” feature a clean delineation of geometric forms
and divisions of space with a resemblance to the technical precision of architectural  drafting. Kofie’s adept grasp of sharp illustration results in a style of meticulous rendering, which never seems cold or sterile due to the delicate sense of balance maintained within each composition.

Pictures of the Week: May 23 – May 30

30 Photos of Marilyn Monroe Not Giving a Damn

Vampyres: The Hipster Generation

Nostalgia’s a strange habit for an undead creature, but that doesn’t stop Adam, a vampire rocker in Jarmusch’s latest, from keeping a curmudgeonly lament on permanent simmer. People—i.e., humans—just never learn when it comes to preserving culture, or the Earth. His pale partner, Eve, retains a sense of wonder, and patience, and she knows how to flick gently at his pessimism: “How can you have lived so long and still not get it?” Yet theirs is still a “marriage of true minds,” to quote Shakespeare, or Marlowe, as Jarmusch playfully has it, in this tender, and perhaps personal, romance.

Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton) belong to each other but they also belong to a rare breed, revived. If Jarmusch filters the West through Blake in Dead Man and remixes samurai codes in Ghost Dog, here he taps the conceit of the vampire as oldest-of-old-school hipster, communing with artists across the ages. When the nocturnal film begins, drone rocker Adam is laying low in the photographically popular ruin of Detroit. Eve leaves bohemian Tangier to join him in his crumbling mansion pad, crammed with rare guitars and vinyl. Adam knew Byron; he and Eve were dead before it was cool. For bloodwork, the couple drinks only “the good stuff” with druggie abandon; a hypnotic opening overhead shot is a ringer for a scene of post-high bliss. The biggest downer is when Eve’s kid sister visits from (shudder) LA and wrecks everything.