The Colours of Fall are settling in: Zen it

The month of September was very crowded, and went by way too quickly. The summer's gone, your tan never happened, the trees are already wearing their oranges, golds, bordeauxs and reds signaling their slow walk towards the death of winter, and you're thinking about Halloween costumes. Personally I feel like I missed the last rays of summer 2010 fighting with French grammar. Sounds tedious (and it is) but it remains a time warp.

Over at le Greffon they suggest a bit of Zenitude courtesy of Nam June Paik. I agree:

Zen For Film by Nam June Paik (1962-64):

The Pompidou also agrees: Autour de Zen For Film will be shown with a talk on the film tomorrow, 29th of September.

Murakami's Fall of Scandals

Takashi Murakami is an artist/designer/brand owner/billionaire and workholic. His work is based on the concept of the Tate Modern and National Gallery show "Pop Life: Art in a Material World," aka this object is a tacky, easy to make, and/or part of everyday culture, so is it art? (see past blog post). His latest venture is the design of the latest cover of Brit magazine Pop. Obviously the use of Britney Spears is 'edgy,' because, she too, is one of those ambiguous characters who is just as tacky, easily consumable but at the same time slightly auratic and controversial. So their association isn't that surprising - yet you should think it is. If anything is surprising here is the wonders done by good lighting, makeup and photoshop.

In parallel to that 'scandalous' cover, France is debating over the reasons why le Château de Versailles is presenting works by the Japanese artist, aka where is culture going? Where is the respect for the past going? etc... Like the Jeff Koons exhibition two years ago exactly, many are outraged but if things go as planned it will be a blockbuster exhibition. A scandal remains a scandal even if culture is at risk. It opens on September 14th.

NEW AGE FUN with a VINTAGE FEEL!!!

This is to American Apparel's bankruptcy, the New York Times' 20s something article and the death of the hipstamatic application:

One Goal, Two Girls: One Sound, Two Videos

One Goal, Two Girls Born the Same Day:

Aggravated beyond belief with the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics (between the plastic and simplistic versions of culture and history and the hypocritical nationalistic pride mixed in with the utopian beliefs of humanity as one although those Ralph Lauren suits sure made the Americans look a lot better than the rest of them) I promised never to watch any world event ceremony ever again.

But I did. I don't remember much of the Soccer World Cup opening, except for how annoyingly catchy Shakira and the Black Eyed Peas songs were compared to how much more talented and beautiful the South African Guitarist was (that I obviously, as well as symbolically for how the world works, don't remember the name of) but I do remember watching a video on female literacy that made me cry.

Obviously it was one of those change the world type of videos that immediately inflicts a deep feeling of guilt on any sane person by amalgamating 'african' children, poverty, dirt and destiny. But somehow in this video - by organization One Goal - that contrivedness is surpassed. It's a particularly precious, meaningful and poignant little video.  

Finally, I just put Florence and The Machine into the equation.

Florence and The Machine, Dog Days Are Over:

Arcade Fire's Nostalgia: The Past Packaged as New Age Fun with a Vintage Feel

Last month Chris Milk launched an 'interactive' video for the Arcade Fire's song "We Used To Wait."

While it has all the qualities to be the coolest thing on the planet - an interactive personalized trip into your childhood via multi-popup narratives (cool), google street view (super cool) and 2,335 likes on facebook (super cool and cutting-edge) - it's pretty much the visual version of the clunky nostalgia of the band's lyrics. 

If the polarized versions of the past and easy grabbing feelings of loss in their lyrics ("i don't want to work in a building downtown," "but in your dreams we're still screamin' and runnin' through the yard" or "all of the houses they build in the seventies finally fall") are tolerable because of the beautiful harmonies, in Milk's video it feels like a packaged rebellion (against what? time? change? suburbia?).

The plot is simple: in the pop ups trees growing through the (bad) cities our parents have built, and a runner (you) desperately tries to find his/her childhood by running away from his/her present (adulthood).

But the generic adolescent fear of change doesn't end there, the observer/main character can even send a digital message (a digital drawing/postcard from which root-like lines grow) to his/her past self (which is actually their tour).

Overall the whole thing is totally tacky. It's suppose to feel amazing;y cool and cutting edge, but it turns out ot be a bland version of what personal memories are suppose to be. Let memories run off on their own. Like Google trying to archive all knowledge, let at least memories alone (especially when google street view never gets an address perfectly enough for the thing to work).

To make your own arcade fire memories: http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

Slips instead of Bras, a Frank Capra passage into the 1930s: It Happened One Night

I saw It Happened One Night last night. I saw it on the premise that this was Hitler's favorite movie and that Claudette Colbert was French. 

Both arguments are true but slippery ones, and yet the movie is frankly quite great. It has the populist love affair mixed with the glitz and glamour of the contrived rich girl escaping rich life falls in love with handsome honest poor man, but it works. The scenario is witty, the acting actually believable. But the strongest point is the exterior settings which make the film a great medium to access the everyday (somewhat) of times past - 1930s roads, bus stops, stores, motels, farms - as well as customs - smoking, pressing clothes, hairdos and mustaches, slips instead of bras, manly high-waisted pants, print culture etc... 

Two extra details are the cherries on top: a flying machine worth Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of a half helicopter half plane makes it's entrance for the wedding scene and an actor playing a thief driver is 99% certain Doctor Phil's grandfather.

Here's an extract (with Doctor Phil's grandfather in the last second): 

Curating: Within Which All Things Exist and Move

I curated an exhibit opening at Art45. Although it opens saturday, the closing party is where things will be at: October 3rd with Pop Montreal, the artists and the catalog launch. Here's the press release:

Curated by Chloé Roubert, this exhibition juxtaposes images from Jon Rafman's Google Street View series with photographic urban shots from the 1950s onwards by Gabor Szilasi. By comparing these artistic approaches to past and current public space, the exhibit touches upon ideas of urban visuality, privacy and authorship.

Rafman will be in the forthcoming exhibit Free at the New Museum in NYC, and Szilasi is a recipient of the Governor General award whose retrospective was held at the National Gallery of Canada in 2009.

The Closing Party with catalogue launch and artists present is organized in collaboration with Art Pop of Pop Montreal, on Sunday October 3rd from 3pm to 5pm.

Art45 is open Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 5pm, or on weekdays by appointment.

Art45 - Edifice Belgo Building
372 St Catherine W. #220
Montreal, Québec
art@art45.ca

Lineups, Feeling Different and Dumping the Disc: Apple Marketing 101

Today Apple introduced the world to its redesigned iTunes symbol. Someone in their marketing department decided it was time to get rid of the CD that's hiding behind musical note. Who's uses CDs these days? Jobs doesn't.

Because I'm still not entirely over how the marketing geniuses that managed to create lineups for their new iphone came up with this boring logo, here's the totally iconic 1984 ad by Steve Hayden. 

It came out in 1984 to introduce the first Apple Macintosh personal Computer. A 'different' computer from the PC... Now people are lining up to be different. Which makes 1984 iconic and ironic.

Art + Hip Hop + Video = M.I.A vs Kanye, Who is the Most Ironic of Them All?

M.I.A's xxxo 

For an intricate dialogic discussion about what this is actually about, check the Official Youtube Comments Page

Kanye West's Power

For an intricate press review about what this is actually about, click here.

p.s. could this be intertwined in the equation? Napoleon leading the Army over the Alps (2005) by Kehinde Wiley (a work presently in the Brooklyn Museum).

Jeff Koons' penis vs. John Baldessari's brain: what does it take for the 'what is art' question to be successfully conveyed?

Curious to compare the National Gallery's Pop Life: Art in a Material World exhibit to the one presented last October in the Tate Modern, I accidently ended up in Ottawa on Canada Day. Both in the UK and in Canada, Pop Life was, and remains, a blockbuster success.

If there are a few differences - particularly in Canada, the sad spacial absence marking the controversy around Richard Prince's photograph of young Brooke Shields' nude and the unnecessary addition of a room thought-out by so-called genius concept Reena Spaulings but based on a notion articulated better by others fifty years ago (see Nouveau Realist Daniel Spoerri in particular) - both exhibits are a shiny clutter of recognizable works, names, ideas, shows, things, accessories and humor by Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol's disciples (Haring, Basquiat, etc) and Andy Warhol's sons (Hirst, Koons, etc).

This success is obviously tied to the overt and cool 'contentious' issues that are embedded in the show's premise: Brillo Boxes (courtesy Warhol) and a calf in formaldehyde (courtesy Hirst) question art with an 'ironic' regard Mona Lisa incontestably can't. However how does this type of art get to be such a success when similar contentious questions have also been tackled by artists without the clunky use of their penis stuck in La Cicciolina waxed asshole (courtesy Koons)?

When I saw Pop Art at the Tate Modern, the neighboring temporary exhibition was a retrospective, John Baldessari Pure Beauty. After the bustling business and literal heat of the Pop Art rooms, John Baldessari's space was strikingly different - it was empty. Better to contemplate his thoughtful yet biting career of videos, words, canvases, collages and a final installation (see photo above) subtly questioning the nature of our contemporary human condition, the difference of public interest between both shows was a sad nod to what Pierre Bourdieu hoped for: the opening up of museums. Indeed in the 60s this French sociologist observed the exclusion of people lacking a cultural capital, and invited museums to democratize their spaces with better formulated labels, programs, visits, relaxed atmospheres, cheaper entrance fees, etc...

Ideally I'm all about this, I think art can be a powerful force to question our own assumptions on reality. Practically, though, exhibitions that are public successes seem to require the straightforward 'irony' and (at this point) boring 'controverse' of Warhol and this results in people like Jeff Koons and Cosey Fanni Tutti imposing their wet dreams to my face in the name of 'irony', 'mockery' and 'art.'

I believe in Baldessari. (the MET is opening his retrospective next October).

Nike Air Max 90 Ad: An analysis of the Shoe Collector's Core Values

After "Write the Future," Wieden and Kennedy launched a new commercial for the Nike Air Max 90 shoe in the UK. Entitled "I am the Rules" this is a one minute film of clean, concise, energized and assured images. If the symmetrical geometry of each frame and beat-based music are powerful factors to this effect, the colours are just as important: the six colours of the exclusively designed for Footlocker shoe are used throughout the ad, with black, grey and white as base, and colza, red and violet as decorative highlights.

If at first the whole thing feels like a mish-mash of rule-breaking attitude, it's unsurprisingly filled with stereotypical ideas (that sell) about tradition, innovation and respect. How are these materialized?

During the first few seconds of the clip we are introduced to the very majestic notion of time and history - somewhat of sports, but also in general with the a shadow clocking away, the iconography of kingdoms lost and of traditions forgotten (aka the projection of the colosseum). Then, skipping through a few centuries, we are facing present-time sport brands' favorite athletes - the consuming shoe collector - commanding the video with his remote control. From then on things get a little crazy, when intercutting slow motion and rapid shots of various activities paralleled with statements about defying tradition (by dancing hip hop or being a girl boxer), expectations (screaming at microphones/media) and stereotypes (wear Nike instead of suits) are presented. The guys who created hip-hip might be 60 by now and blowing up in front of media not so revolutionary (or appreciated by brands like Nike see Tiger Woods or Les Bleus), but these ideas look great. The weirdest thing is when the ad turns to illustrating how to defy prejudice via Nike shoes. They come up with two Brian Jungenian masks, a DIY time machine from Japan with flags waving and lighting fire crackers over an athlete in front of the projection of the amphitheater. 

Really defying your idea of prejudice, right?

"I AM THE RULES"

Timelessness might have begun in 1961 and take the Form of a Giraffe called Sophie

Timelessness is a reassuring concept overused particularly by fashion people to increase sales and/or indulge their own consumption - depending on the season and the year the necessity to own certain time-adapted timeless objects over other time-adapted timeless objects varies (these days the timeless things are Burberry trenches, Chloé bell bottoms, Hermès Kelly bags and Cacharel re-editions of their liberty print collections - and if they aren't timeless right now wait till next season) - yet recently I came across an object that might just be the closest thing to timelessness: Sophie la Girafe.

Yes, it only appeared in 1961, and yes, it was mostly a success in France - which, relative to the dawn of time is short and to the size of the planet small - but even after the slue of inventions in the past half century by the toy industry - that in the US alone makes 21 billion dollars a year, - Sophie remains as perfectly enjoyed in my mother's baby hands as in three-month old baby Eva Madeleine's.

After a Triennal Downtown and Biennale Midtown, a Dynasty in Paris: are young artist getting better or are institutions changing?

I went to the collaborative curatorial exhibition Dynasty by the Palais de Tokyo and the Musée d'art Modern in Paris earlier this month.

I was particularly interested in seeing, what feels like, yet another manifestation of an established art institution's lust for showing work by emerging new talents - some of whom, may or may not, be the next biggest thing and some of whom, may or may not, have anything but youth to convince you their presence in these shows is legit.

With the recent Whitney Biennale and the New Museum Triennal as American examples of this fashionable trend, I was wondering how the French version would compare, and, if, in my short review for Corduroy I clearly found the Parisian version of the concept better concocted, with my visit I also started to wonder how 'new' this thirst for young new art really was?

Obviously throughout art history young age never obstructed recognition or hype, and so clearly that isn't what is new here - there are dozens of examples of artists that were recognized, revered and admired before they hit thirty - by 27 (age of his death) Basquiat had amassed quite some fortune and been honored with numerous gallery retrospectives, by the age of 24 Picasso was selling to Leo and Gertrude Stein and throwing fancy diner parties in Montmartre, and by age 29 Michelangelo had a few exploits under his belt including two chef d'oeuvres La Pietá and David (respectively done at 24 and 29) and 4 years working for the at the Medici family (which he left at age 17).

So artists can be artists before they are older than Jesus for sure, yet has something changed in the way our institutions - these large, highly profiled centers - are portraying them? Portrayed more for their emergence and youth, as much as their art and craft? In 1953, the Guggenheim Museum held an exhibition entitled "Younger European Painters" on the then new and exciting expressionist movement, in which many were over 33 - like Pierre Soulages, 34 or William Scott, 40. Unlike Dynasty, though, it seems youth wasn't what brought these painters together but rather the unity of their aesthetic - and in a way accessorily a particularly young one at the time.

A second difference seems to be the role the institutions are starting to embrace. If Basquiat was world-renowned with gallery representation and enamored collectors by his death in 1988, it was only four years later that the first museum - the Whiteny - curated a solo exhibition of his work. Could it be, then, that today our large are institutions partake in and expose a 'selection process' that once was more hidden - with gallerists, critics, a bit of time and artistic self-doubt that led certain artists to become part of a certain canon and others not as much?

My short review on Dynasty: http://www.corduroymag.com/events/a-dynasty-in-paris/

(images: All taken at Dynasty - Upper: in the Musée d'art Modern de la Ville de Paris Imaginez Maintenant by Robin Meier and Ali Momeni; Lower: in the Palais de Tokyo, a work by Julien Dubuisson entitled Visite Exterieure d'une Grotte)

Pretty Birds and Big Guitars: a lovely mediated version of an installation by Boursier-Mougenot

This Céleste Boursier-Mougenot installation was presented some time ago as a commission in the Barbican's The Curve. Although I never experienced the installation - it has now been replaced by John Bock's playful metallic home structures - and maybe the mediated version of it was better than the art it captured anyways, but there's something so subtle, delicate and humorous as well as violent and dark about this video/art piece that it is still worth a look every then and again:

Embroidery classes at l'Atelier Lesage and Jean-Paul Gaultier's hoddie: French material culture and métisses origins

JP Gaultier's fall/winter 2010-11 Prêt-à-Porter collection of embroidered patterns on skirts, hoodies and jackets is up at Colette - a collection the concept store describes as one "dédiée à la France métissée. Afrique, Mongolie, Chine, Mexique, ses influences sont multiples et mixées à son propre style." 

Which doesn't say much - fashion likes to find its origins in concepts by simplifying them - but does demonstrate that this year's crew of interns, while forgetting to include Peruvians to their list of bearers of colourful patterns and being particularly out-of-date with what is multiculturalism, struck up an interesting point, not so much on contemporary French identity, as on contemporary French (and more broadly western) material culture.

I just finished an intensive 18 hour embroidery stage in the last of Paris' embroidering ateliers:  Atelier Lesage - an all female crew of 70 pattern makers, designers and embroiders headed by one man (François Lesage, the owner) who spend hours crocheying and needling beads, threads and precious jewels unto haute-couture creations. The last atelier of a French tradition that now is done in countries with cheaper labour - 101 econ: this is called offshoaring.

Back at Colette, with my newly acquired knowledge of point de Boulogne and point de graine, it was clear that Gaultier's prêt-à porter hadn't, indeed, gone through these brodeuses' hands - with the inside full of small industrial white strings. It's hard to blame JP in today's economic structure (the hoddie's already selling for 1561 bucks), but with the chances of the hoodie coming straight from China - just like it's so-called conceptual roots - it's a perfect artefact of our Western contemporary material culture's base: a métissage of concepts, sure, maybe, but especially a métissage of producers, makers and consumers. And not even a métissage really but more an international chain of production/consumption that goes mostly one way.

I still love it. But that's because I'm French, and as Gaultier has demonstrated the French are all about métissage.

A recent example of an anti-modern twist to LaTour's 'quasi object', or Why does the Hipstamatic iphone application exist?

Compare and Contrast: France from Hondarribia in Spain

I was in the Pays Basque for a couple days and finally discovered the what behind the uploading of 'hipstamatic' images on facebook (which is mostly a French phenomenon). These images are slightly fuzzy and sporadically covered with clearer dots. They are also darker around the frame and their colours are warmer than the reality they capture. Another distinguishable feature is the varying result - so the size of the shadow near the edges is different from one photo to another,- and the beige film paper of a Polaroid that frames all the photographs.

Interestingly it isn't only the aesthetic of the image that recall the photos of the past but also the act itself. So unlike all the recent digital photographing processes, there is a lapse of time between when the photo is taken and when the final photo is visible - a lapse of time or process called 'development' - and a definite unclarity of what you are actually photographing since the frame of the hipstamatic camera is reduced to a few centimeters while the final image captures a much larger reality.

The original Hipstamatic was created in 1982 and was the result of a merge between the Kodak Instamatic and the desire to make a cheap and practical camera by two Americans called Bruce and Winston Dorbowski: "It doesn't matter if the photos aren't prefect -- as long as people are capturing memories I will be happy." And basically the iphone App is quite successfully trying to recapture that imperfect image quality and process.

But why?

In 1993 the French theorist Bruno LaTour articulated the idea of 'quasi-objects' or things that can create multiple times and diffuse conceits of a predictable ontological order. In other words the hipstamatic iphone app is jumble of multiple time periods (both of 2010 and the 1980s) or a combination of anachronistic artifacts. It's a retro aesthetic and a ultra-modern device. And in many ways this can be paralleled to other contemporary lifestyle choices that are often coined anti-modern: "DIY labor, recycling, thrifting, urban gardening, sewing while simultaneously seizing individual control over mystified technologies such as computers, the internet, digital recording, medicine, and even water purification and food production and consumption. This is sustainability with an attitude and an aesthetic" (Lee Dawdy June 20th 2010).

Corduroy and Ryan McGinley's new cool art thing (question mark)

I find this annoying, yet the maker's acclamation profoundly fascinating. Here is the link to a short thing I wrote about it a few weeks ago in Corduroy:

The grass always looks greener in the other photo reportage: the example of Hobo Magazine

The Palais de Tokyo bookstore has probably one of the best selection of magazines to discover in the city. Yesterday I was going through the latest edition of Hobo Magazine. It's a very glossy, quite fancy yet hipsterièsque multidisciplinary magazine covering stardom, art, travel, etc. This month two photographic stories were strikingly comparable: one of everyday scenes in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris and another somewhere on the Californian Coast with dashing sunlight and seascapes.

In my opinion none of the two were particularly remarkable in originality, both reflecting the current style of naïve Vice reportage meets a 70s photographic medium. However what was interesting is the instinctual reaction both my friend (living in the 19th) and I had to the Parisian photos - utterly uninteresting, rather banal and definitely not capturing the parc's people, space and overall identity within the makeup of the city. But without that power of critic we just absorbed the Californian images as truth - the sun looks amazing, the cliffs breath-taking, etc... and without the power to fathom how much we were missing and how much was constructed we simply cruised through the pages.

Why New York can sing it's the center of world openly, and how other cities do the same thing differently

Praising New York, "a concrete jungle where dreams come true," Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind is a hit beyond the Big Apple. Yesterday in the tight department of Les Galeries Lafayette in Paris, hesitating between white woolen tights and apple green cotton ones, I listened attentively to the lyrics. The structure is catchy - an emotional chorus, concise and pleasing beats and builds that are hard to stay cold to. In addition to this steady recipe for success, Mr.J sings about the endless golden possibilities nyc offer whoever you started out to be (himself included) through a variety analogies including the Virgin Mary, Eve and Jesus, sports teams, neighborhoods, the World Trade Center, diversity in music, Robert De Niro and Bob Marley. A glorified rehashing of the american dream.

As I paid attention to the video and words, I wondered how other cities had been sung about by its own. I looked into the cities I've lived in - Paris, London and Montreal - and this is the palmares I came up with: 

For Paris, Teki Latex who embodies the Parisians' love to hate themselves and hence inability to sing about Paris in any other way than by using ambiguous irony; the Montrealers, Malajube, who with a DIY creative approach dilute their love for a provincial town into an endearing glass roof effect situation seen from within a fridge; and Blur for London - because even without a video - their sounds captures the terrible wit with which Londonders talk about the grayness of a city most would never want to leave because it's the only place where museums are free, beers are cheeper than water and Indian food better than in India.

Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys for Empire State of Mind (2010):

Teki Latex feat. Lio for Les Matins de Paris (2007):


Malajube for Montréal -40 (2006):


Blur for London Love (1994):

L'américain in Paris

I've been in Paris for 24 hours and there's a shocking quota of Americans (and perhaps, but honestly not so sure, anglo peeps) that can't switch their thank yous for mercis. Come on everyone knows merci. Maybe it's particular to the Marais and les Halles but come on, even the daftest of Frenchies is able to switch his native semiotic reflexes for a thanks when in an English speaking country.

I'm not a puritan but I'm all about integration - so if you loved all that Hemmingway and Shakespeare and co. give more than the muted buildings a chance. merci.

The nonsensical advertisements before a Dicaprio Blockbuster and French McDonalds is said to have Macaroons

I saw Inception last night at the MK2 Odéon. The plot-line - a dream within a dream within another dream - was a genius marketing move broadening the range of the flick's target audience exponentially (from Matrix lovers to chick flick freaks) and the characters were as flat (a wannabe James Bond stud and a miserable Japanese version of the evil turn good guy) as much as their relations improbable (Juno as therapist?).

If that could have been expected, if not calculated, it's actually the advertisement and preview period before the movie that was the best and most disconcerting experience of my time in front of the screen. It reminded me I was paying to be sold things, and gave me the shitty feeling that either I should have downloaded it or that I was suppose to be a sexually open-minded 13 year old geek with a love for green-conscious fast food.

Demonstration:

Targeted towards teens, preferably geeks, the first ads are by SFR and promote their phones' games with animated Princess Peach and her other forgotten gameboy friends. Check here. I might be totally out of the loop but what in the world is it promoting? good friendships? SFR's lack of cool? Nostalgia for Mario World? Not sure? Me neither. After seeing three versions of that same concept, McDonalds kicked in with their new bio friendly image: lush tomatoes collected meticulously by a McDo employer and brought in every morning fresh in a wooden box merged with happy meal boxes entering a miserable city filled with miserable black puffy things who, by the mere presence of happy meals, change into colorful dancing puffy things:  



What's going on? Is it really that straightforward: buy a happy meal and you will be happy? Is it for parents? Rare McDo eaters? Rare to never McDo eaters (I didn't leave convinced)? Kids? Sad people? After that and my neighbor telling me McDo menus have now salads, biological yogurts and also macaroons (which by shape is just like a hamburger), this soft porn artsy indie Mexican preview played. If most likely American censors would have banned it from the eyes of any adult under 21, what is weirder is that someone must have thought that placing it after Princess Peach animations selling games on cellphones and happy meals' happiness was a good move.


 
and then bam Dicap was in a dream.