Flavorwire » Metropolitan Museum of Art

Muammar Qaddafi: An Irreverent Sartorial Analysis

Christine Jordan — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:00:42 +0000

Here at Flavorpill, we don’t really consider Libyan dictators to be our go-to folks or fashion inspiration or, well, anything, for that matter. But, today, UnBeige reports that one of Qaddafi’s advisers invited The New York Times’ director of T Magazine Horacio Silva to visit Tripoli and feature the leader’s closet. The idea? Such a profile would help get a retrospective on Qaddafi’s style green-lit by the Met, so the clothes can be properly revered and protected in case the country’s turmoil threatens the garments. The adviser writes, “Our President is one of the very best dressed men of the last half century.” If you ask us, that’s a pretty big claim, and probably one to be judged by someone not under Qaddafi’s thumb. Instead, we’re going to answer the world’s burning question ourselves: just how does Qaddafi’s style rank in to the political sartorial world? Does he deserve more or less closet envy than the average dictator? Check out our roundup after the jump.

Here, Qaddafi layers a bright white suit under his traditional Arabic bisht, taking to this season’s color-blocking trend in a way no other political leader has mastered.

Richard Serra Discusses TV, the Internet, and His Drawings at the Met

Paul Laster — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 18:30:14 +0000

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art opens Richard Serra’s first drawing retrospective to the public today — and quite the eye-opening, austere exhibition it is for the Met. Serra expands the definition of modern drawing by using drawing as a system of thinking, while focusing on process, gravity, and weight rather than representation and figuration. The radical exhibition, which runs through August 28 and then travels to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Menil Collection in Houston, features some 50 dynamic drawings — many of them monumental in scale — and a selection of sketchbooks from the past 40 years. We spoke with the artist at the Met to gain a deeper understanding of his groundbreaking work, to get his opinion on why young people prefer figurative work, and to capture his realistic thoughts on TV and the internet.

How do your drawings relate to your sculpture?

They don’t. It’s an autonomous body of work. I think of them as drawings and I think of them as dealing with an extended definition of drawing; but I don’t think of them having to deal with three-dimensional space in the way that sculpture deals with three-dimensional space. If anything, they deal with the architecture and they re-delineate the architecture and sometimes they make a space within the space of architecture; but I think that’s completely different than the spaces and places that are with the sculpture.

Your work since the 1970s is predominately made with black oil sticks. What does the color black signify to you?

I’m more interested in black as a property. It has limitations as a material and the fact that it absorbs light interests me. I see it as a color, but I’m not interested in its chromatic value. I’m really interested in the fact that you can make a dense weight by the absorption of light with it, and mostly I’m interested in its graphicness.

How do you achieve a textured surface with such flat materials?

Different ways, in some of them that have a more particular grain, I actually pass the paint sticks through a meat grinder; but basically what we do is take paint sticks, which are little crayons and we melt them down into bricks and I use two hands to apply them. I’ve been doing that for years — I make my own materials, so to speak.

How important is it to show your mark?

It depends on the work. The Rounds and the Out-of-rounds are very much about the hand and also A Drawing in Five Parts is very much about the arm and the hand. But a lot of them are more about the plain and about the perception of the process rather than the physicality of the process.

Are the works more about process or subject matter?

If you take the “roller drawings,” they are particularly about process because I just took a piece of paper and I inked up a roller at a print press and rolled seven times on one side of the paper and none on the other and six times and then two and reverse it, which was very much about organizing the process. The drawings before that were about looking at a sculpture and walking all around the room is all about perception in process — so one’s about the physicality of process and the others about perception in process.

How does the scale affect your work?

It has to do with site and context at this point. I try to re-delineate the context, if it’s within the framework of drawing, but if it’s within sculpture I try to re-organize the perception of the site. You either critique it or you find another way of looking at it.

Why do you think young people have less interest in abstraction than figuration these days?

Because figuration opens itself to anecdotes, narrative, critique, and a whole host of things that deal with accessing the moment.

You made a video in the early-‘70s titled Television Delivers People that critiques the relationship between television, advertising and audiences — accompanied by a Muzak soundtrack. It basically says that the product of commercial television is the audience and that television’s function is to deliver people to an advertiser. Do you still believe that to be true?

Sure.

How does the internet relate to that concept?

Less, because you can interact with it. You are less the product of the internet, particularly for young people that use it as a communications device. You’re not just on the receiving end. I use the internet, but I use it more like an encyclopedia.

Click through a gallery of images from the Met show and view the video Television Delivers People below.

Richard Serra, Taraval Beach, 1977/2011. Paintstick on Belgian linen, Dimensions variable, Shown installed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1977, Private collection, © Richard Serra, Photo: BeVan Davies

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

Caroline Stanley — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:06:56 +0000

1. MTV has given the go-ahead on two Jersey Shore spin-offs: one show will follow Snooki and JWOWW “when the vacation is over,” while the other will track Pauly D’s “music career.” [via NYT]

2. Ben Affleck is in talks to play Tom Buchanan in Baz Luhrman’s 3-D film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, a part that was originally rumored to be going to Bradley Cooper. This sounds like a better fit to us. [via Deadline]

3. Finally we have news about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first post-political office live-action role! He’s currently in negotiations to play a border town sheriff in Jee-Woon Kim’s thriller The Last Stand — which is so much more exciting than that crime-fighter cartoon, The Governator. [via Vulture]

4. Kristen Bell is returning to TV! She will star opposite of Don Cheadle in House of Lies, a new Showtime workplace comedy based on the book House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Tell You the Time. [via Zap2It]

5. This summer’s exhibition on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art sounds a bit tamer than years past. Starting April 26th, steel abstract sculptures by the British artist Anthony Caro will be on display. Museum officials are also teasing next summer’s exhibition by the Argentine artist Tomas Saraceno, which will be “inspired by eco-utopian visions for future sustainable communities.” [via ArtsBeat]

Bonus link: “America In My Book” — Haley Nahman’s map of US stereotypes by region

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

Caroline Stanley — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 15:00:28 +0000

1. Jimmy Fallon’s popular Thank You Notes segment, a recurring Friday night homage to everything from his dad to hangovers, just landed him a two-book deal. The first Thank You Notes book will hit shelves May 23. [via TV Guide]

2. To be filed under things that we find hard to believe: James Franco is launching a college class on James Franco at Columbia College Hollywood. The class will ask student editors to “create a cinematic image of James Franco” using behind-the-scenes videos from the short films that he has directed. [via The AV Club]

3. Ricky Gervais has told the UK’s Heat magazine that he has been asked back to host the Golden Globes for a third year in a row: “The ratings were up again and the organizers asked me to consider a third year. I don’t think I should. I don’t know what I could do better. I certainly couldn’t get more press for them, that’s for sure. You know me. Two seasons is enough.” [via Vulture]

4. Barbara Bush (also known as the less-drunk of President George W. Bush’s twin daughters or the one who went to Yale) has released a video endorsing gay marriage in New York. [via Gawker]

5. The Google Art Project, an interactive street-view-style interface, launched in London this morning, bringing seminal works from Germany, Russia, New York, and 14 other locations online. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art are among the participating institutions. [via Fast Company]

Bonus link: PETA’s Super Bowl video features models fellating vegetables

Photo Essay: K-I-S-S-I-N-G in the Museum

Kelsey Keith — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:31:48 +0000

Even if you haven’t wandered up to 5th Avenue at 89th Street recently, chances are you’ve heard whispers of something unusual afoot. That something is courtesy of performance artist Tino Sehgal, whose ephemeral pieces rely on empty space and spectator involvement. One such piece in his current solo show at the Guggenheim, titled “The Kiss,” involves a couple embracing on the floor of the rotunda in a “changing, slow-motion, amorous” entanglement. We at Flavorpill love staging elaborate photo shoots in museums and decided to reinterpret Sehgal’s performance piece in five New York City art institutions: The Metropolitan Museum, New Museum, Rubin Museum, P.S.1, and the Brooklyn Museum. Could we choreograph the same magic?

Play voyeur and peep our exclusive slideshow after the jump.

CLICK THROUGH for our exclusive photo set featuring real-life couples in five New York museums »

Lacking a makeout partner of your own? Fear not; the museum experience can be just as intimate. Another major performace artist, Marina Abramović, has a career retrospective opening at MoMA on March 14 and a DIY inner peace talisman called the Energy Blanket to accompany it. The huggable art (retailing for $460 at the MoMA store) contains “fourteen magnets and a drawing of Abramovic’s body indicating where they ought to go before climbing under it.”

All photos courtesy of Megan Feldman. A special thanks to our friends at The Met, Brooklyn Museum, Rubin Museum of Art, New Museum, and P.S.1 for letting us shoot on premises.

Robert Frank and Jacob Holdt: Documenting America

Paul Laster — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:42:49 +0000

Outsiders often observe a side of society that those living within naively overlook or simply accept. Such are the situations in Swiss photographer Robert Frank’s seminal series of black-and-white photos, The Americans, which he shot during road trips across the US in the mid-‘50s; and Danish photographer Jacob Holdt’s American Pictures, a series of color snapshots that he made while crisscrossing the US from 1970 to 1975. Two current solo shows of these inquisitive artists’ work allow us the opportunity to look back at the turbulent times they documented and to consider where America is going now.

View a slideshow of images from Robert Frank and Jacob Holdt »

After receiving a Guggenheim Foundation grant in 1955, Robert Frank went on the road to document America and traveled through 30 states, where he took 27,000 photos, until January 1957. He photographed people of all races in all walks of life, as well as barbershops, gas stations, drive-ins, and highways to construct an insightful, visual overview of the US in 83 pictures. The Americans was first published as a book in France in 1958 and the following year the US edition hit the stands, but not without controversy. Frank’s street style photography, which was influenced by Walker Evans and the Beat poets and writers, was criticized as “blurry, grainy, muddy, and sloppy,” but would later prove to be inspirational to a new generation of artists.

The exhibition Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans, which is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, displays all 83 photographs in The Americans, as well as earlier works, work prints made for the book, and contact sheets that include other images shot on the road trips. The show is accompanied by a new, expanded edition of The Americans, which was published by the National Gallery of Art.

Jacob Holdt left Denmark in 1970 to travel through America for a long as he could last on very little money. After regularly writing his parents to share his exciting escapades with the well-heeled and downtrodden people he had met, his folks sent him a camera to record his experiences. Over the next five years, Holdt would stay with some 400 families, mostly in the South, while working menial jobs, selling his blood, and hitchhiking between communities. He hung out with criminals, prostitutes, drug addicts, Klansmen, migrants, and politicians, while documenting their diverse lifestyles in a straightforward manner with his simple point-and-shoot camera. Eventually, his vast body of work came to the attention of curators and publishers. His traveling exhibition United States 1970-75 is currently on view at the Kunsthal Rotterdam and Steidl published a monograph of his American pictures in 2007.

Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans remains on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York through January 3, while Jacob Holdt: United States 1970-75 continues at the Kunsthal Rotterdam in the Netherlands through January 17.

Daily Dose Pick: Roxy Paine

Paul Laster — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:07:10 +0000

Roxy Paine creates stainless-steel trees, faux fields of poppies and mushrooms, and robotic machines that make monochromatic art.

Studying nature intently, Paine turns reproductive and developmental patterns into an understandable language and growth process that can be recreated by both man and machine. The conflicts between these two approaches give his art an existential edge that questions the relationship between nature and technology, while providing exciting new results.

Check out his rooftop show at the Met, view his gallery page, watch a video profile, read an interview, and buy his new Prestel monograph.

Roxy Paine, Maelstrom (detail), 2009, stainless steel; Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery; Photograph: Sheila Griffin

Roxy Paine, Maelstrom (detail), 2009, stainless steel; Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery; Photograph: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Teresa Christiansen

Roxy Paine, Maelstrom (detail), 2009, stainless steel, courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery Photograph: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Teresa Christiansen

Roxy Paine, Maelstrom (detail), 2009, stainless steel; Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery; Photograph: Sheila Griffin

Top image: Roxy Paine, Maelstrom (detail), 2009, stainless steel; Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery; Photograph: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Teresa Christiansen

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

Caroline Stanley — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:35:11 +0000

1. Lollapalooza. [via Pitchfork]
2. Germany’s Central Council of Jews wants to republish a critical version of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a book that has been banned in the country since the end of World War II. [via PW]
3. Have you ever eaten from the most expensive hot dog cart in the world? (It was parked right outside the Met.) [via NYDN]
4. The LA Times thinks Perez Hilton is a tastemaker; Gawker says he’s an unapologetically awful person. [via Gawker]
5. ABC would love to have Paula Abdul on Dancing With the Stars because of her sensitivity and empathy. [via People]

On Flavorpill: Events Today in NYC, SF, LA, and CHI

Alexandra Wexler — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:26:17 +0000

We’re back with your daily reminder of cool events happening tonight across the Flavorpillaverse. If you’d rather have this information delivered straight to your inbox each Tuesday, sign up for our Flavorpill City Guides.

• If you’re in New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts a screening of Douglas Keeve and Isaac Mizrahi’s Unzipped tonight, to accompany its fashion exhibit, The Model as Muse.
• If you’re in Los Angeles: Head over to retro, Def Poetry Jam-style Flypoet, a monthly music show/poetry slam/performance art exhibition, and check out featured artists Steve Connell, Sekou tha Misfit, and Norton Wisdom.
• If you’re in San Francisco: Nick Laird will be giving a reading from his new book, Glover’s Mistake, a brutal comedy of manners about a 30-something academic who accidentally initiates a romance between his roommate and former professor.
• If you’re in Chicago: Get outside and enjoy the summer weather while watching an outdoor screening of Wall-E, everyone’s favorite robot, take on the world. Literally.

Bringing Home the Bacon: What the Critics Say About the Met’s New Show

Sarah Sternberg — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:42:50 +0000

As a Brit, I’m often proud that we manage to beat the Yanks when it comes to cultural progress: the subway, Baseball, gin and tonics… we were there first. To this end, I managed to catch the Francis Bacon retrospective at the Tate Gallery in London last summer, where I was bowled over by the range of work showcased (from the artist’s early sketches to his most famous masterpieces) and the detailed curation (personal letters, photographs, and information about his greatest influences and turbulent relationship with lover, George Dyer). Bacon’s work is haunting at best and confusing at worst, and this exhibition brings out the former whilst dispelling the latter.

Don’t trust the opinion of a posh English snob? Here’s what the critics had to say about Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective, currently on view at the Met through mid-August.

The New York Times was easily scared and somewhat grossed out by Bacon’s graphic earlier works, but conceded that there is real skill, rather than simply a capacity to shock, particularly in paintings that reference other artists such as Velazquez and Van Gogh.

Time Out, it seems, couldn’t really handle it either. They championed his avant-garde ways that shocked British society and the art world of the ’40s, and argued that whilst these gruesome expressions of passionate rage weren’t all that striking any more, the full force of the show left them queasy: “Individually, paintings like this are hard to beat, but seen en masse, they are somewhat oppressive.”

Meanwhile, the New Yorker focused more on Bacon as anti-establishment, framing their review with a rigorous analysis (in gloriously florid language, obvs) of Bacon’s position in the sweeping tide of 20th Century artwork. Where the Times was shocked and appalled, they were thrilled by Bacon’s raw gore, even if it did leave the reviewer a little lightheaded.

Rather than a review, New York Magazine offered a more historical overview of Bacon’s work, influences, and place in British 20th century art. A fantastic crib sheet for the exhibition.

Are all these reviews scaring you off? As us red-blooded Brits would say, man up! The show can be a little terrifying at times, but that’s the point. The fact that Bacon’s work, over 60 years on, still has the capacity to leave seasoned critics blinking in disbelief is nothing if not a strong recommendation to go and see the work for yourself.