Painting by Eunice San Miguel of Los Angeles
Here’s a blog post ode to one of my most beloved films Harold and Maude. I guess I’m not the only one totally gaga over this movie—I put together a collection of artists’ creations in a shared celebration of their affection for Harold and Maude too.
By Julian Callos of Los Angeles
Harold-n-Maude by leodhas
More after the jump…
Denver-based street artist Theo has only been working since February but already he’s getting a lot of attention. Inspired by his love of beat writer Jack Kerouac’s novel On The Road and the Banksy documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, Theo and other members of the Kerouac Project, have taken to stenciling pensive looking “Kerouacs” around various locations in Denver where the writer was known to have visited or that he mentioned in his book. It’s also a protest of the fact that the upcoming film adaptation of the book is being shot in Canada. From the Denver Westorld:
Sixty years after Jack Kerouac filled a 120-foot scroll in a haze of lust, creative ambition and amphetamines that resulted in the original On the Road, producer Francis Ford Coppola is actually making a movie of the book — his third attempt. But while On the Road is a distinctly American classic, he’s filming the entire movie in Canada.
That snub is particularly egregious considering that Denver factors prominently into the action — in fact, you could argue that our fair city is a main character in the book. While, sure, some of the action takes place on either coast, Denver is like the meat of that literary sandwich, providing the book with a prodigious amount of its soul, not to mention its hands-down best character: one Dean Moriarty, known in real life as Neal Cassady, Denver boy and Beat god.
And in the rabble-rousing spirit of Cassady himself, at least one team of “elite street thugs” is not taking the slight lying down. For the last few months, cloaked in secrecy and carrying a copy of On the Road and a handful of stencils, this group has been visiting known Kerouac hangouts and doing the writer a favor he may or may not have gotten around to himself: tagging them with a likeness and the words “JACK WAS HERE.”
“I got the idea when I heard about the film adaptation coming out,” explains the artist and ringleader, a shadowy figure who calls himself only Theo. “The filmmakers substituted Gatineau, Quebec, for Denver. I’ve been a Kerouac addict for years, and I’ve always wanted to pay tribute to the author in some way, but it only recently hit me just how this could be done: It’s just a simpler reminder that Kerouac was here in Denver and not some small town in Canada that no one’s ever heard of. I think it’s an appropriate gesture to celebrate one counterculture with another.”
There is a very cool Tumblr blog dedicated to the “Jack Was Here” Kerouac Project.
Above, outside of Neal Cassady’s favorite bar at 15th and Platte Street in Denver. Below, Kerouac interviewed in French on Canadian television, 1967.
Doc Popular made this sweet animated GIF from photographs he took near the 24th street BART station in SF. of Lou Reed Transformer stencils. I love it!
Below, the individual photographs.
(via Laughing Squid)
This is a lot like the light painting with a Roomba that’s been making the rounds on the Internet the past few days. However, this one is a bit more dangerous.
Experimental and slightly mental. The D*Face spray paint skateboard interface. What better way to paint the pool then letting everyone get involved? With high-tech remotely controlled spray can apparatus mounted to the underside of skateboards…every line a skater took became the paint job of the pool.
(via The High Definite )
Glasgow-based artist Angela Tiara makes these incredible custom order plushies. Here’s her stuffed rendition of Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange. I checked Angela’s Etsy account, and it looks like she’s no longer selling her work there. However, it does appear you can still contact her on Etsy and she’ll make one for you. Her dolls sell for around $50.
Makes the perfect gift for that troubled child in your life. (Now I know what to get for my troubled child’s husband’s birthday.)
(via Cherrybombed )
Some live shows are great, some live shows are awesome, and then there are the live shows that are so good they feel like genuine magickal occurrences - a culmination of sound, vision, venue, performance and atmosphere. Bjork’s Biophilia, which is currently making its international debut with a sold out run at the Manchester International Festival, is definitely one of those. Clichéd terms like “elf-like” have haunted Bjork for years, but when an artist can pull together a show that is this all consuming, this transformative and powerful, there is definitely some truth to those clichés.
Everything about this show is unique. On a baking hot July afternoon we are ushered into a blacked out, cavernous Victorian warehouse space - in the middle sits a round stage, flanked by instruments, and overhead hangs a neat circle of 8 large screens. At one corner of the stage sits a pipe organ, a harpsichord and new instrument called a “gameleste” (a cross between a gamelan and a celeste). These instruments have been programmed to play themselves, a fact which is relayed to the audience by webcams projecting live onto the screens. In another corner sits a huge, manually operated music box, amplified through two very large gramophone trumpets, and beside it stands two new, purposely built, pendulum operated harps, The thudding bass line for the opening track “Thunderbolt” is provided by a large Tesla coil, which spits sparks of electricity over the crowd’s heads.
Still obsessed with the sounds and textures of modern electronica, Bjork underpins all this bizarre musical automata with sub-bass and electronic drums, played live by percussionist Manu Delago and music director Matt Robertson. Plucked chamber music collides with sliced-and-diced breakbeats, booming 808 bass lines accompany delicate organ pieces. It’s a perfect combination of the past and the future (and which is which is hard to tell). The sound world Bjork has created for this show is extraordinary, but it is the choir that really tips this performance over into something otherworldly. Featuring 26 female Icelandic singers, moments of harmony and discordance float from the stage that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Quite simply, this is a new kind of sacred music.
The much-trumpeted visuals are gorgeous. Animated cells sing and coo while spitting out cuddly-looking viruses. Mushrooms grow and expand in stop-motion, a seal carcass is consumed by underwater worms and starfish, and we zoom through veins and arteries while triggering musical notation á la Audiosurf. Bjork has taken a bit of flack for her use of an iPad in Biophilia, but if this is what the actual apps look like, well that’s fine with me. We keep returning to images of the solar system, of galaxies floating in space. There seems to be a theme of circular motion and symmetry here, a music of the spheres if you will, but for Bjork this works on a microbiological scale, as well as the cosmological. At one point she informs us that the rate at which our fingernails grow is the same as the Mid Altantic Ridge drifts. It’s psychedelic without being druggy. In fact, with the heat, the darkness and the spectacle, this is a show where no extra stimulus is needed.
The music itself is largely new and very good too, but there are some classics from her back catalogue thrown in (namely “Unravel”, “A Hidden Place” and a gorgeous choral version of “Isobel”). The new songs are each prefaced by a voice-over by natural historian David Attenborough, which manages the trick of both commenting on the music and unifying it. The show ends with a rousing, triumphant version of “Earth Intruders”, Bjork in a massive orange wig flanked by the choir who are wearing matching gold and blue tunics. We seem to be inundated with crazily-dressed lady pop at this point in time, but we shouldn’t forget that Bjork is a true pioneer of this, and on this showing she still does it the best. Biophilia is set to tour later this year, and I urge anyone with an interest in music to go to a show - it really is that good. 2011 is only half over but I seriously doubt I’ll see another show to equal it. There is no footage of Biophilia yet, as the audience had been asked not to take pictures or make video recordings of the performance. It is a mark of the kind of respect the crowd has for Bjork that they comply to this request - well for the most part , anyway.
Here is the audience’s reaction to Bjork’s Biophilia after the opening night on Thursday June 30th:
Artist Randy Hage’s replica of New York City’s Ideal Hosiery.
Describing his project as “an extension of my occupation as a scale model maker for the television and film industry” Randy Hage is lovingly creating 1/12th scale models of some of his favorite New York store fronts before they vanish forever.
We love these places and feel a deep sense of loss when they are gone. I know I was very broken up when I found out that Joe. Jr’s in the Village had been forced to close. It was like losing an old friend.”
You can visit Randy’s website and see more of his incredible tiny memorials to the disappearing and unsung architecture of New York City and the Outer Boroughs. The detail is astonishing.
I used to patronize Ideal Hosiery when I was in the fashion biz. The boxes stuffed with socks and stockings cluttering up the front display window is exactly how it was as depicted in Hage’s model. When you entered the store it was like entering a dark maze-like cave filled with footwear. For anyone who strolled around the Orchard Street area in the late 70s that window is iconic. I wonder if there are itsy bitsy socks in Hage’s little boxes.
In these photos the actual stores are contrasted with Hage’s recreations. At first glance can you tell the difference? I couldn’t. I still can’t…and I’m sober.
Kavel Rafferty collects record sleeves and has a wonderful website devoted to the underappreciated art of the 45rpm record jacket. It’s called “Record Envelope, the little library of factory sleeves” and can be enjoyed here.
Here’s a sample of Rafferty’s impressive collection of sleeves from all over the world..
More groovy jackets after the jump…
Linda McCartney: Life In Photographs has just been published and it is a lovely retrospective. Linda shot over 200,000 photos in her life and the book contains just a fraction of her work. Here’s a selection of photographs of some of her better known subjects.
Via Open Culture
Negativland’s Mark Hoesler will be delivering the keynote address at the big Everything Is Festival this Friday night at Cinefamily in Los Angeles:
Is Negativland a “band”? Media hoaxers? Activists? Artists? Musicians? Filmmakers? Culture jammers? Comedians? An inspiration for the unwashed many? A nuisance for the corporate few? Decide for yourself in this video & storytelling presentation from founding Negativland member Mark Hosler that uses films and stories to illustrate the many creative projects, hoaxes, pranks and “culture jamming” that Negativland has been doing since 1980. Whether you’re a hardcore Negativland fan, or even unfamiliar with the band (but interested in a highly entertaining and informative jaunt into the evolving landscape of art vs. ownership), Hosler’s EIF! keynote presentation is essential, and we can’t recommend it enough. As well, stick around for a Q&A with Mark Hosler after the presentation!
If you can’t actually make it in person, fret not, Hoesler’s EIF address will be webcast on Stickam! More information on the Everything Is Festival here.
Below, an excerpt from a past Mark Hoesler lecture: