Quantcast
Channel: BLOUIN ARTINFO
Viewing all 6628 articles
Browse latest View live

Tastemaker Guide: The Best of São Paulo by Galeria Choque

0
0
English
Order: 
0
BLOUIN ARTINFO Brazil
Top Story Home: 
Top Story - Channel: 
Exclude from Landing: 
Feature Image: 
São Paulo's endless skyline -- Courtesy of Rafael Rigues via Flickr
Thumbnail Image: 
São Paulo's endless skyline -- Courtesy of Rafael Rigues via Flickr
Credit: 
São Paulo's endless skyline -- Courtesy of Rafael Rigues via Flickr
Slide: 
Image: 
Body: 

São Paulo is known for being Latin America’s financial and gastronomical center, the city also houses many art events, such as the Bienal de São Paulo, and the annual SP Arte, an important fair of the field.

 

With the ninth edition of the fair is arriving April 4–7 at the Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo in Parque do Ibirapuera, BLOUIN ARTINFO Brasil talked to a few people that make up São Paulo’s art scene, to find out what they think you shouldn’t miss in the vibrant, sprawling metropolis. First up: Mariana Martins, co-founder and partner of Choque Cultural, a gallery focused on contemporary art and experimentations in edgy new media from young and talented artists. Here, her favorite picks of the city.

 

 

Credit: 
Photo by Katia Kuwabara
Caption: 
Marina Martins of Choque Cultural
Title: 
Best Restaurants
Image: 
Executive Lunch at Dalva e Dito
Body: 

“I usually take my friends to Dalva & Dito for delicious Brazilian food, Epice for their creative cooking style, or to Bar do Biu, where you might have an experience closer to the Brazilian reality. And, if you’re not vegetarian, a rodízio steak house—specialized in all kinds of meats, sliced tableside from giant skewers, plus lavish all-you-can-eat buffet of sides—is an essential pit stop!”

Credit: 
Courtesy of Dalva e Dito
Caption: 
Executive Lunch at Dalva e Dito
Title: 
Drinks to Remember
Image: 
Z Carniceria
Body: 

In the Rua Augusta nightlife area, Martins heads to Z Carniceria (pictured) for the tipple of choice, a Mad Butcher (vodka, peach liqueur, passion fruit, Tabasco). A bloody mary with a downtown view at Ramona and Bar do Biu’s huge caipirinha are also favorites.

 

 

Credit: 
Courtesy of Z Carniceria
Title: 
The Best Spots to See Art
Image: 
Museu Afro Brasil
Body: 

“I always take foreigners to Museu Afro Brasil, for a panoramic look at Brazilian art, and to MASP because of its amazing collection. But it’s Beco do Batman,” an alley in bohemian Villa Madalena is filled with street art, “that always fascinates them the most”.

Credit: 
via Facebook
Caption: 
Museu Afro Brasil
Title: 
Favorite Architecture
Image: 
Edifício Martinelli
Body: 

In the Centro Velho (the older part of downtown), Martins loves the Edifício Martinelli, Brazil’s first skyscraper from the 1920s, and the Anhangabaú. “The architectural ensemble of the past century is amazing, though it’s a shame it’s so misused”.

Credit: 
Courtesy of Elderc via Flickr
Caption: 
Edifício Martinelli
Title: 
Best Shopping
Image: 
Mercado Municipal (Central Market)
Body: 

Martins recommends heading to Liberdade, São Paulo’s Japan Town, for the diversity of goods and people and sights, as well as Vila Madalena for its style. She also recommends casting your artistic eye (and camera lens) on the wonders of multicolored fruit at the Mercado Municipal (Central Market).

Credit: 
Courtesy of Flavio Jota de Paula via Flickr
Caption: 
Mercado Municipal (Central Market)
Title: 
Secret tip for first-time visitors
Image: 
Body: 

“Get to know the people. São Paulo isn’t a geographical place, it’s human territory. There are people from the northeast and south of Brazil, Amazonians, English, and Angolan—all deeply paulistas. What makes the city is each of those people’s life projects, from all over the world, carried out here.”

Credit: 
Courtesy of Igor Schutz
Title: 
Best Hotels
Image: 
Courtesy of Royal Jardins via Facebook
Body: 

“Hotels in São Paulo are a big problem! They’re either luxurious, too expensive five-star hotels, or too ordinary and sad. The city lacks a simple inn, a place that houses those who appreciate art, culture, have good taste, and are not millionaires. I can never recommend any to visiting friends and artists.”

 

Luckily, we can:

 

Royal Jardins Boutique Hotel

Alameda Jaú, 729 - Jardim Paulista

+55 11 4082 0000

 
Credit: 
Courtesy of Royal Jardins via Facebook
Cover image: 
Popular City: 
Where To Go Now: 
Short title: 
Tastemaker Guide: Galeria Choque's São Paulo
Body: 

As the ninth edition of SP Arte comes to town, BLOUIN ARTINFO Brasil taps co-founder Mariana Martins for her vibrant picks of where to stay, shop, drink, and eat.

Top Story France: 
Top Story - Australia: 
Top Story - Canada: 
Top Story - HK: 
Top Story - India: 
Top Story - UK: 
Top Story - China: 
Top Story - Brazil: 
Top Story - Germany: 
Top Story Russia: 
Top Story - Southeast Asia: 
Top Story - English, Chinese: 
Top Story - Korea: 
Top Story - Japan: 
Top Story - English, Korea: 

VIDEO: French Director Ozon mixes Fiction and Reality in "In The House"

0
0
VIDEO: French Director Ozon mixes Fiction and Reality in "In The House"

François Ozon's new film 'In The House' explores the mixing of "fiction and reality", according to the the French film maker.

The film is adapted from Juan Mayorga's play 'The Boy in the Last Row'. It follows 16-year-old student Claude Garcia (played by Ernst Umhauer) as he writes revealing accounts of the life and family of his friend Rapha for his homework assignments. In turn, Claude's writing fascinates his disillusioned teacher Germain (played by Fabrice Luchini), revealing truths about the older man's own life.

Ozon said he was attracted by the opportunity to explore the art of writing and bring intellectual questions to life "in a very playful way, with strong relationships between the characters."

As Garcia and his teacher get drawn into the lives of Rapha and his family, the film uses the teenager's voyeuristic writing to question art and literature. Recalling the voyeuristic nature of Hitchcock's 'Rear Window', Ozon went on to say that "all directors are voyeurists" and "cinema is about manipulation".

The film also stars British-French actress Kristin Scott Thomas, who plays Germain's wife, gallery owner Jeanne.

"You know there is not one way to work with actors. You have to adapt yourself to each actor. You don't direct Kristin Scott Thomas like you direct Fabrice Luchini. Each one has his own needs, so you have to adapt yourself to make them comfortable, to be sure they will give the best", Ozon said.

The director admitted that once he has finished shooting a film he often goes on "to work on something else very quickly. I'm a very bad father, I abandon my children."

Yet Ozon stressed that critical response isn't as important as seeing each film as part of a much larger picture in his overall career.

"I'm always happy when I have good reactions and a good response. But I don't do a film for a film, you know, like [German director Rainer Werner] Fassbinder said, I'm building a house with different rooms and each film is a room", the director explained.

Ozon's previous films include 'Potiche', in which Luchini also starred alongside Catherine Deneuve, 'Ricky' and 'Swimming Pool'.

'In the House' will open in UK cinemas on March 29.

The Evolution of a Slacker: Wavves's Nathan Williams (Sort Of) Grows Up

0
0
The Evolution of a Slacker: Wavves's Nathan Williams (Sort Of) Grows Up

This week sees the release of “Afraid of Heights,” the fourth album from Wavves, the brainchild of San Diego’s Nathan Williams. The record, a lush collection of reference-heavy pop punk, is one of the better “rock” releases of the year so far. Williams has shown himself capable of writing compelling songs since emerging from his parent’s basement five years ago, but few could have anticipated the polished music he’s created this time around, with the aid of guitarist Stephen Pope and pop producer John Hill (who’s worked with Rihanna and M.I.A., among others). The music is universes away from the lo-fi rabble that first earned Williams attention and acclaim in 2008.

Williams’s debut, self-titled album was made up of scuzzy lo-fi noise rock – everything sounded warped and masked in layer after layer of fuzz. If the formless songs even had vocals, the odes to slackerdom seemed like they’d been recorded miles under the sea. For the follow up, “Wavvves,” released just months later, Williams hadn’t evolved much sonically, though he had learned to let his bratty voice free and didn’t shy away from melody, especially on the catchy “No Hope Kids” and “So Bored.” Again, he showed a penchant for writing songs about burnouts who suffered from malaise and drank or did drugs when they could drag themselves away from the television.

On Williams’s third record, “King of the Beach,” he made the shift from noise rock to straight up pop punk, joined, for the first time, by other musicians in the recording booth  Pope and drummer Billy Hayes. The album mined the same thematic material, but its sound turned off some of Williams’s earliest fans, who were attracted to the project’s abrasive aesthetic, which drew inspiration from Nirvana and Blink-182.

As drastic as the shift between his second and third albums was, it doesn’t compare to what’s happened between then and “Afraid of Heights.”  Williams’s latest album shows him as a fully polished musician, in line with mid-’90s and early-’00s alternative bands – a touch of early Green Day and mid-career Weezer can be heard. His lyrics still deal with feelings of self-loathing and tales of the slacker life (would you expect anything different from someone whose merch table once carried a weed grinder?), but this time the songs show a professional touch long absent from his discography. From the opening notes, a mixture of bells and pianos, it’s clear that this album is not from Williams’s garage days. Tempos change, he sometimes sings, and the songs feel distinct from one another, showing a focus that was lacking in previous records. The album is not perfect, but it reflects a musician who has evolved and might even be a fixture on the indie rock scene for years to come – something few people, including Williams, probably ever expected. You can stay true to who you are, but everyone needs to grow up sometime.

Growing Up With Nathan Williams

Across his four albums, Nathan Williams has gone from a role model for noise obsessed basement musicians to one of the few people creating radio-ready rock you’ll actually want to pay attention to. Here’s how he got there:

“Wavves”

The messiest and least accessible of William’s records, his self-produced debut set the tone and expectation for the musician – a burnout who lived with his parents making surprisingly interesting music.

Representative Lyric:

“Called my dad, he's not at home, things were good, but times were slow, Called again and hang my head, why is it I hate my friends?” – “Side Yr On”

 

“Wavvves”

Though released just months after its predecessor, the record is a much more melodically satisfying follow up. The first record could be described as noise punk with trace amounts of pop, but this one showed that Williams could write a catchy song or two.

Representative Lyric:

“I'm getting high to pass the time, No reason why was my reply” – “California Goths”

 

“King of the Beach”

This was one of the first signs that Williams might be an artist worth paying attention to. The shift was jarring to some of his earliest converts, but it was an exciting if unexpected change of pace. At least it was clear that Williams could change.

Representative Lyric:

I'm not supposed to be a kid, but I'm an idiot, I'd say I'm sorry, but it wouldn't mean shit– “Idiot”

 

“Afraid of Heights”

Proof to all the haters that Williams belongs, and while he might be still come off as a brat, he's a brat with talent. The third distinct, and compelling, version of Wavves in just five years.

Representative Lyric:

“In the sky, it's never coming back, No hope and no future, We'll die the same loser” – Demons to Lean On

Can 20x200 Be Saved? Anger From Collectors Mounts as Leading Art Site Flounders

0
0
Can 20x200 Be Saved? Anger From Collectors Mounts as Leading Art Site Flounders

NEW YORK — On January 16, Esther de Hollander placed an order from affordable print purveyor 20x200 for her sister’s birthday. Her credit card was charged immediately, but she did not receive shipping confirmation. A week passed. Then two. After emailing the company, she was told it was experiencing delays and she would receive an update within three days. Nearly two months and several follow-up emails later, de Hollander has neither her print nor any answers from the company.

De Hollander is one of several customers who have ordered artworks from the well-known site, only to be left hanging after it suddenly went offline on January 31. Details of the company's troubles are murky at best, but it appears there may have been some sort of dispute between Bekman and investors.

Just last fall, 20x200 founder Jen Bekman celebrated the company’s fifth anniversary. At the time, she reported the website had raked in $15 million in cumulative revenue and anticipated that it would turn a profit in 2013. Widely considered a leader in the online art startup scene, 20x200 produced more than 200,000 prints by more than 200 artists, including stars like Lawrence Weiner and William Wegman.

Behind closed doors, however, the situation was less rosy. Printers and artists were consistently paid late and communication among different branches of the business had become difficult, according to several people close to 20x200. By the end January, several members of the board had resigned, including Tony Conrad, a partner at the venture capital firm True Ventures, who led the company’s second round of financing in 2010.

On January 31, tensions finally came to a head: The website went offline. (A simple but vague message — “Stay Tuned: We’re taking stock and making updates” — has greeted visitors ever since.) Though rumors of Bekman’s departure proved premature — according to people familiar with the company's transition, she is still technically CEO — her entire staff of 18 is no longer working with 20x200 in any official capacity.

Without a staff, board, or cash flow, 20x200 has been unable to fulfill orders. “I was a loyal customer — I have at least a dozen 20x200 prints in my home and loved giving them as presents,” De Hollander wrote ARTINFO in an e-mail. “But the way they're handling this situation has left me cold. The form letters [sent to clients] are filled with subtle jabs at some mysterious entity, but without knowing the details, they just come off as lame.” Emails sent to de Hollander from a former staffer were adressed to “XX and noted that the company was “in the middle of a ‘rocky transition’ and a ‘complex situation.’”

De Hollander is not the only one still waiting on prints, either. Several 20x200 customers have contacted ARTINFO about orders from January they have yet to receive. “It feels like keeping track of 20x200 has become my full-time job,” said Jill Krupnik, who is trying to pin down a print her parents ordered for her in mid-January.

Collector Tim Clark received a form email in January when he wrote to check in on his $110 print order. It reads in part: “We normally try to respond to our collectors' emails within 24 hours. Right now, though, we're in the midst of a transition here at 20x200, so there have been some hiccups in our process. We're working hard to get things back on track, and will have more news about what's next in the coming week.” He has yet to hear back.

Meanwhile, several printers who work with 20x200 and artists who sell work through the site have not been paid for months. Though a representative for the company declined to comment on how much money it owes partners, some familiar with its operations estimate that the bill is conservatively in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Reached by ARTINFO, Bekman declined to comment on the state of matters at her company, beyond stating that she was “100 percent focused” on finding a solution. An integral part of that solution, people close to the company say, is securing alternate sources of funding for the site. But that may not be easy. (Investors often retain their stake in a company even if they are no longer on its board. 20x200’s venture capital funders would therefore need to approve any proposed arrangement that might infuse cash into the company, such as a new investor, partner, or buyer.) An arrangement of this kind will likely take weeks, if not months, to iron out.

Even if 20x200 manages to secure new funding, some still question the sustainability of its business model. “I always thought there was no way they would achieve the volume necessary at the low price points they sold at to be successful,” said Jim Hedges IV, president of the art-oriented investment firm Montage Finance. (20x200 offers prints at prices ranging from $24 to $10,000.) “You have to be selling on fab.com or Gilt Groupe— somewhere where you’re touching 12 million customers — to sell art that costs $20. 20x200’s customers may get burned here, but I think they are dealing with a very small universe. If it were anything but, they wouldn’t be in this situation.”

The state of this one-time art leader illustrates just how challenging it can be to bring art into the start-up space. Venture capitalists take big risks lending money to small companies, and for their investment to continue, they expect major growth — the kind of growth the slow-moving art world is unaccustomed to seeing. “Venture capitalists are looking for significant returns on investment because their returns for many of their investments are negative to zero,” said James D. Cox, a professor of corporate and securities law at Duke Law School. Large VC investments — like the $2.85 million pledged over several years to 20x200 — often dribble according to specific performance goals that company management must meet. 

Despite the dire straits, the idealism behind 20x200 — its oft-repeated mission statement is “art for everyone” — continues to inspire. “I believed in what we were doing,” said Dylan Fareed, 20x200’s former director of technology. “Everyone I’ve talked to is looking forward to having 20x200 back online. And Jen has been dogged in her pursuit of that.” 

EMERGING: Christine Sun Kim's Sound-Wave Paintings and Silent Operas

0
0
EMERGING: Christine Sun Kim's Sound-Wave Paintings and Silent Operas

In the summer of 2008, California native Christine Sun Kim— a painter who has been deaf since birth — spent a month living in Berlin on an artist residency. While visiting local galleries, she encountered spaces that were devoid of objects, but filled with sound installations; having never before encountered audio installations, Sun Kim understandably found them dissatisfying. Initially, Sun Kim did not know how to interact with the sound works, but she applied for several grants and was able to hire a tutor and purchase speakers, amplifiers, and other equipment to begin her study of the sense that had remained inaccessable to her throughout her life.

For her first audio works, Sun Kim created visual and physical representations of soundwaves by placing paint-dipped brushes on paper on top of subwoofers. She then made noises with paper, drumheads, amd other materials which made the subwoofers vibrate, causing the brushes to move around on the paper and thereby creating abstract designs. “When I started employing sound as the medium of my work, the first obvious step was to work with vibrations. However, after producing a few series of speaker drawings, my curiosity quickly disappeared and I recognized the great degree of social currency surrounding sound,” Sun Kim explained recently. “It was no longer about the simple translation from intangible/inaccessible sound to visual/tangible medium.” 

These studies of the visual side of the aural world therefore led to her current practice, which includes performances, lectures, and installations exploring the social roles of sound and the limits and limited nature of spoken language. Much of her work is interactive. In the public performance, “Face Opera: Nuances of Language,” she created a silent opera-based performace where the score was expressed entirely through a choir's facial expressions. “People often rely on hearing to obtain information, so I used the opera format to show the visual and grammatical aspects of American Sign Language (ASL) and how most of its content is conveyed through the face. It is a way for me to examine non signers’ language preferences and to encourage them to 'hear' by looking at those choir singers’ moving faces,” Sun Kim explained.

In addition to being selected as a speaker at Creative Summit in Sweden this summer and a 2013 TED Fellow, Sun Kim has a part in an upcoming show at MoMA in New York and a performance at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Winnipeg. For her part in the group show at MoMA, Sun Kim will show works created as part of her “Scores and Transcripts” series, for which she created graphic works that combine elements from written language, musical notation, and ASL to challenge the way we think of communication.

Perhaps it is because Sun Kim has been forced to approach sound on her own, self-constructed terms — rather than take it for granted — that she is able to access so many rarely examined and layered complexities of the aural experience.

To see works by Christine Sun Kim, click on the slideshow

 

Slideshow: 2013 New York International Auto Show

Summer in the City: Adam Léon on His Graffiti Adventure Film "Gimme the Loot"

0
0
Summer in the City: Adam Léon on His Graffiti Adventure Film "Gimme the Loot"

LOS ANGELES — Right out of the gate, first time writer/director Adam Léon, 31, is commanding Hollywood’s attention with his indie film “Gimme the Loot” — a story about two New York teenage graffiti artists.

Malcolm (Ty Hickson) and Sofia (Tashiana Washington) are on a mission to get $500 in two days so they can gain access to Citi Field to pull off the ultimate gig: bomb the New York Mets’ home run apple.

The flick was shot in just 21 days in 70 different locations in the Bronx and Manhattan, brilliantly showing a gritty and edgy side of the city we rarely see in films these days.

“Gimme the Loot” cost less than $170,000 to make and Léon demonstrates with his powerful storytelling and vivid characters that you don’t always need money to make a good film — you just need great writing and directing, and a clear, imaginative vision.

The movie, which opens in theaters on March 29, has already received high accolades on the film festival circuit, earning the Grand Jury Award at SXSW last year. Léon also took home the 2012 Spirit Award for Best Director to Watch.

Léon spoke with BLOUIN ARTINFO about the journey of making his directorial debut.

You wrote a great story about urban teens and their life in New York City that depicted authentic dialogue and situations. But as a young attractive white guy, did you think people wouldn’t initially take the screenplay seriously because you wrote it?

For me it’s about writing characters that feel authentic and that have integrity and doing right by those characters, whether it’s the two African American leads or whether it’s the Caucasian wealthy private school girl that’s sort of the third biggest part in the movie. I think that growing up in New York and going to public school and working with kids like that on a short film [“Killer”] that I did a couple of years ago, there’s a certain element of the language and there’s a certain element of all different kinds of culture that you pick up. Really, it’s not enough so you have to do your work. You have to do your research and you have to work with the actors. You have to work with a team of people that know this and make sure you’re passing the smell test and not just in terms of the dialogue, but in terms of the graffiti, in terms of the location, in terms of the clothes, and that’s a process. So I didn’t go into writing a script thinking I knew all of that. If you’re making a period film you don’t go into knowing every single thing about the silverware they used or every single cadence that was used. You bring in experts that know that stuff. So it’s a long development process. I think it’s important to know what you do know and what you don’t. Ultimately it comes down to who are the characters as human beings, and I think I can relate to all the characters in this movie as people and that’s where it started. Getting the language right is really essential, but it’s something you know you can get if you’re honest with yourself.

Do you think in addition to teenagers screwing around and having a good time, that this is part of their survival as well? We don’t see their family life and we don’t know where they’ve come from. We have a good idea, but we haven’t seen it so I felt like in a way they had to engage in petty crime and sell pot as a way to survive.

There are these universal themes of the relationship between Malcolm and Sofia, but there are also those summers that you kind of let loose. I do think that yes, especially in this graffiti culture there is a bit of its own currency, whether it’s black market spray cans or the skateboarder culture that we’re trying to tap into a little bit. Definitely survival is harder, but with Malcolm he is getting calls from his mother all the time so there is a family backbone there. When you do sort of finally see where he lives, he lives in a very middle class home. It’s not “Precious.” It’s not “Kids.” It’s a different kind of story, but a story that very much exists. But yes, I absolutely agree survival is harder if you’re poorer. These kids know who they are. It’s not really a journey about self-discovery. It’s an adventure that they go on over the course over a couple of days in the summer. They don’t have to go to school so they can try to write graffiti on the Mets’ home run apple. They’re on break. It’s not that different from any sort of teenage quest movie. I think that we did something that was hopefully a little bit more authentic and set in a world that you normally don’t see. It’s not really that different than, “We’re going to lose our virginity tonight!’” It’s a similar structure.

What I also loved about the film is that a lot of movies that are shot in New York City show what people’s idea of New York is. So they shoot the Empire State Building, or Saks Fifth Avenue and Times Square. You seemed to intentionally stay away from those trademark places and you showed a gritty side of the city that isn’t seen often.

There are so many different vibrant neighborhoods. There is so much of New York that I think is still so electric and alive and gritty that you haven’t seen in TV and movies recently. There are people who visit New York and they tell me that it’s turned into a mall and I’m like, “Yeah, the parts that are a mall.” It’s not all like that. I think we really saw this as an opportunity actually to show a New York that is really exciting and really different. I think people are tired of seeing that same New York in movies.

Can you talk about the relationship between Malcolm and Sofia? I know the movie isn’t a love story, but it was interesting to see where their relationship was going to go, but not in the sense like I wanted to see them hook up. It was more about just enjoying watching their interactions and strong bond.

Right. Thank you! I really wanted to explore this relationship between a teenage boy and a teenage girl where it’s a partnership. They really are each other’s safety nets in both the very liberal sense where they have each other’s backs, but also the emotional sense. That kind of relationship has a lot of depth and I think it’s something a lot of people can identify with. When you’re dating someone and it’s just purely sexual at that age, you’re usually not dating them in a month, but this is something that’s a little bit more than that.

Do you think if you had a bigger budget for this movie that it would have taken away from what you have now with this film?

Yeah, and I think that’s a very important point. I’ve seen people try to make a $5 million movie for $100,000 and it doesn’t work, but the other way doesn’t work, too. If this movie is successful, I think part of the charm is that it’s a group of first-timers that really had a story to tell and really had these characters that they believe in. We went out there into the streets without professional actors and we did it. We shot with real people, which is very in tune with what the story is. The story lends itself to this kind of filmmaking. The story lends itself to a first time movie. That’s what was so exciting about the script — this feels like this should be my first movie.  This feels like I should just go out and get the people that I know — characters from around the place I live in and go out into the streets and enter this thing gorilla style. That’s the way this story should be told. It would be worse if we had more money. That’s not always the case, but it was right for this particular story.

How did you choose the music for the film? It was the perfect selection of songs.

Thank you very much. I feel a lot of pride in that. I had a huge playlist of songs before I began writing, which for me is setting the tone. I think if you first hear about what this movie is you’re going to think tonally it’s something that it’s not. We wanted to take the audience on a ride for 80 minutes and have a big night out at the movie theater. There’s a wide range of music, but there’s a lot of old ’60s rock and gospel stuff. There’s old R&B in it, there’s hip-hop, and there’s even disco tracks with funky jazz stuff in it. I think that all helps with the tone. We had this phenomenal composer, Nicholas Britell, and he did a lot of the songs. A lot of the songs that people think are older, he actually did himself.

Can you give me the titles of a couple of songs that are in the film or that you were influenced by?

Yeah there are three songs in particular that are really special to me. One is the first song in the movie and it’s by King Coleman and it’s called “Let’s Shimmy.” I really wanted to start the movie with that song because that’s what he’s saying. He’s like, ‘Let’s go on an adventure guys.’ There’s also a song that’s played during the water tower scene and it’s a gospel version of “The Lord is my Shepard” and it’s by a band called Mosby Family Singers. I think it’s one of the greatest rock and roll songs ever made. I wouldn’t play it for people because I knew I wanted to put it in the movie and I didn’t want anyone to steal it. And the third song is by Marion Williams, “I Shall Be Released.” It’s a very beautiful song.

VIDEO: Pretty on the Inside, The 2014 Corvette Stingray

0
0
VIDEO: Pretty on the Inside, The 2014 Corvette Stingray

Over its storied 60-year history, the Corvette has come to mean many things: speed, power, physique — in essence, the quintessential American sports car.

Interior design? Not so much.

It’s Helen Emsley’s job to change that. “There was nothing bad about today’s interior, what we are replacing,” said Emsley, interior director for performance cars at General Motors. “It was a good interior. But, back then, we didn’t focus on the interior as much as the exterior. So whenever anybody talked about the Corvette, it was always about the exterior. Then it was like, ‘Oh yeah, the interior, it’s nice.’ But there was never the wow factor.”

The 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Convertible, making its North American debut this week at the New York International Auto Show, is a dramatic improvement on that front, outfitted internally with hand-wrapped leather, carbon fiber, and aluminum trim accents. “For a car of this level and stature, you need real materials,” said Emsley, who, prior to her career in the auto industry, studied textile design at London’s Royal College of Art. “I think that was lacking in today’s car. It was a good car. But it didn’t have real aluminum, it didn’t have real carbon fiber.”

Making ample use of these genuine articles, the new seventh generation Vette aims for a “cockpit” effect that is both comfy and snug. “You feel that it’s enclosing you while you’re driving,” Emsley said.

No more banging your knees uncomfortably against the center console as you wheel around corners. The new model notably includes padding to protect the driver’s precious patellae.

Another highly visible sign of the renewed focus on interior is the vibrant hand-stitching, which is done in an accenting color to emphasize the level of detail. “If you buy something nice, that attention to detail is so important,” said Emsley. “It’s like a beautiful handbag or beautiful pair of shoes that you buy.”

Not wanting to go down in history as the British woman who destroyed an American icon, Emsley said she and her team tried to honor the car’s long tradition while simultaneously ripping out the insides and starting anew. But, like any significant overhaul, the objective is more about expanding appeal than appeasing purists. “Yes, there is a lot of history and everything else and that’s great. We can’t forget that,” she said. “But we need to get the guys that are buying Porsche, those customers that are not buying our car.”

How buyers respond to Emsley’s enhanced interior will soon be apparent. The 2014 Corvette Stingray goes on sale this fall.


The Icemen Cometh: Movies Are Turning to Adventurers of the Great Outdoors

0
0
The Icemen Cometh: Movies Are Turning to Adventurers of the Great Outdoors

Movies about heroic and sometime tragic expeditions, incorporating mountaineering and seagoing adventure stories, are an emergent trend in international mainstream cinema. American audiences will get their first taste of these films when the Weinstein Company releases the Norwegian Oscar nominee “Kon-Tiki” on April 19.

It’s ironic that Espen Sandberg and Joachim Rønning’s account of Thor Heyerdahl and his crew’s Pacific voyage in 1947 is the tip of this particular iceberg, since it unfolds in a tropical zone. Snowy wastes and frozen waters are the backdrops to most of them.

ARTINFO has reported on some of these films before. Currently, in development or production are the linked whaling epics “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex” and “Moby Dick," and the Scott-Amundsen saga “Race to the South Pole." There are also two pictures tentatively titled “Everest”: one about the pioneering British climber George Mallory, who died on the mountain in 1924, the other about the 1996 ascents of three separate crews that ended in the deaths of eight climbers. The latter is based on survivor Jon Krakauer’s book “Into Thin Air” and will reportedly star Christian Bale.

(A horror film that may partake of the kind of maritime thrills common to the whaling movies, “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” is about the Russian ship that carried Count Dracula from Transylvania to England and ran aground in a tempest in Bram Stoker’s novel.)

Closer in spirit to “Kon-Tiki” is the Danish documentary “The Expedition to the End of the World,” which was co-produced with Swedish money. It follows the crew of a sailing ship as they endure the hardships of a voyage to the northeast of Greenland.

The movie “places the characters in a disconcerting situation as they cross the immensity of these virtually unknown territories,” Guilhem Caillard writes in Cineuropa. “Even so, the film is not intended to be too serious: [the director] Daniel Dencik shows the sense of humor of his heroes, whether they are artists, geologists, archaeologists or photographers. The film describes how they step back for a wider take, which translates for each one of them into a vast sense of self-derision.”

Caillard continues: “As the great sailboat makes its way through the ice, the filmmaker takes advantage of stopovers on the coasts and various events (melting glaciers falling into the seas, the sudden appearance of a polar bear) to gather everyone’s impressions. The artist admits that, when all’s said and done, we are nothing…”

The dwarfing of awe-struck humanity amid the Arctic wilds in “The Expedition to the End of the World” suggests the film engages with the Romantic-Gothic sensibility of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and of Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings “The Wreck of the Hope” (a.k.a. “The Polar Sea” or “The Sea of Ice”) and “The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog.”

Hollywood’s current fairytale craze and the upcoming raft of biblical movies seem like desperate bids to harness and exploit the kinds of digital effects and imagery that made “The Lord of the Rings” films so popular. In contrast, the arrival of a series of films about adventurers taking on the elements may be prompted by a collective desire to restore to the cinema a kind of rugged integrity. Some of these films with undoubtedly use CGI, but hopefully the likes of Bale, Tom Hardy (who’s playing Mallory), and Casey Affleck (cast as Scott) will get to freeze their toes in real locations, too.

Silent Film Gets the Fairytale Treatment in Pablo Berger's "Blancanieves"

0
0
Silent Film Gets the Fairytale Treatment in Pablo Berger's "Blancanieves"

Are faux silent movies the new (old school) animation? Calculated or lucky, Pablo Berger’s “Blancanieves” arrives on the crest of a genre resurgence, conflating the most resilient of the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm (and turned into a cartoon feature by Walt Disney) with an Oscar winning stunt. Anachronism lives: It’s “Snow White” meets “The Artist” in old Seville.

Spanish born and NYU educated, the 50-year-old Spanish director transposes the story of the quintessential fairytale heroine to early 20th-century southern Spain. The eponymous heroine, known mainly as Carmen, is the daughter of famous flamenco dancer who dies in childbirth and a celebrated matador who, momentarily distracted and consequently disabled in the ring, provides the story with its necessary evil stepmother by marrying his scheming nurse. In a further Hispanicizing touch, the Seven Dwarfs are los enanitos toreros, appearing late in the movie as an itinerant troupe of six short-statured bullfighters who might have stepped from a Velazquez painting or a Buñuel film. (Angela Molina, the title character in Buñuel’s “That Obscure Object of Desire,” appears as Carmen’s benign grandmother.)

An international prize winner and one of the hits of last September’s Toronto Film Festival, “Blancanieves” is rich with atmosphere. Berger’s production design is detailed and impeccable — as is his mise-en-scène. Filmed in glamorous black and white, all dialogue furnished via intertitles (but lots of lush flamenco music supplied by sometime stand-up comedian Alfonso de Vilallonga), the movie is less a pastiche than “The Artist” and, at least initially, it’s not as precious. The expressionist lighting, gothic architecture, and textured look are self-consciously European although it’s striking that Maribel Verdú (best known here for her role in “Y tu mama también”), slinking and vamping through the role of the Stepmother like Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard”, and Antonio Villalta, in the role of Carmen’s beloved wheelchair-bound Father, strongly resemble the two ersatz Hollywood stars of “The Artist,” Bérénice Bejo and Jean Dujardin.

Shot with a panoply of overhead angles and close-ups, and an occasional rapid fire montage, the movie is visually lively and ingenious and even affecting, up to a point. The first half, when the heroine is a persecuted child (charmingly played by Sofia Oria), is considerably more intense than her eventual triumph in the arena, recognized as her father’s heir at last. Although Berger eschews certain details from “Snow White”’s Spanish version in which the evil queen demands not her stepdaughter’s heart on a plate, as in the Grimm version, but a bottle of the girl’s blood stoppered by her toe, the movie has a measure of fairytale cruelty — not least when the Stepmother kills a beloved pet (not the cute doggie that trotted through “The Artist”) and serves it up for dinner — although the sequence does have echoes of Robert Aldrich’s 1962 silent film star shocker, “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”

Still, Berger’s exercise in old-fashioned cinematic attractions is basically affirmative and perhaps even didactic in making the point that where female self-actualization is real, Blancanieves being a far more dynamic character than Disney’s Snow White, Prince Charming only exists in fairytales.

Read more J. Hoberman at Movie Journal.

VIDEO: Easter Eggs for Czar, Houston Couple Shows off Large Collection of Faberge Eggs

0
0
VIDEO: Easter Eggs for Czar, Houston Couple Shows off Large Collection of Faberge Eggs

It began 10 years ago while on a quest for French chandeliers. Instead, Dorothy McFerrin bought what she believed to be an Easter egg created by the famed Russian artisan Peter Carl Faberge.

"I thought, 'Oh my God, I have no light fixtures, but I have this Easter egg,'" Dorothy McFerrin said, laughing when she recalled purchasing that first egg.

Quickly, though, she learned she had been duped. She had spent thousands of dollars on an egg covered in real gems and gold that was not the work of the Russian czar's personal jeweler. That mistake sparked what has become nothing short of an obsession.

Today, McFerrin and her husband, Artie McFerrin, own one of the largest private collections of authentic Faberge items in the United States. Included in that collection, now nearly all of which is on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, is one egg gifted by the Russian czar to his wife, and two others considered by experts to be among the "big ones" because they were made for the Nobel family of later prize fame and the Kelch family, affluent merchants from Moscow.

"It is interesting. It's a good investment — the prices have just risen over the years, especially as the Russians have gotten interested," McFerrin said, explaining the interest she and her husband have in collecting Faberge pieces. "A lot of it has gone back to Russia and will never be seen again."

The tradition and creation of Faberge's ornate Easter eggs began in 1885, when the Czar Alexander III gifted one to his wife, apparently to commemorate the 20th anniversary of their engagement. He was so delighted by the egg and its cleverness — inside was a little bejeweled "surprise" — that he ordered one every year, a tradition continued by his son Nicholas II until 1916. Each egg took more than a year to create, and often the czar was intimately involved, whispering ideas to the artists as they worked in secrecy on the piece.

Of the 52 eggs Faberge made for the Romanov family, 42 have survived, according to the website of Faberge, a modern fashion house that makes creations under the name of the 19th century artist. Dozens of other eggs were made for other affluent families — though only the czar's wife could have the color mauve in a creation — and the McFerrins own between 40 and 50 of those.

"There was certainly a culture of luxury at the court and a general indifference to the vast differences to the way the royal family lived and the vast majority of the people in the country lived," said Joan Neuberger, an expert on modern Russian cultural history at the University of Texas in Austin. "Nicholas II was particularly averse to engaging with the social and economic realities of the country that he governed and at the time enjoyed ... giving lavish gifts to his wife."

By 1916, Russia was in the throes of World War I and the anger that would lead to the first Russian Revolution, which would erupt just months later, was already brewing. In 1918, after the second revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power, Czar Nicholas II, his wife, their five children, their servants and their dog would be executed at the orders of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.

Faberge, and his Easter eggs, was viewed as a symbol of the disparities between the country's small affluent class and the more than 85 percent who were landless servants. The Bolsheviks, as part of their revolution, seized Faberge's shop and the family fled to Paris, leaving all his creations and tools behind.

Over the years, the collection — now worth tens of millions of dollars — has spread out across the globe. Some has never been found.

While the McFerrins have a broad collection of Faberge and czarist artifacts, including photo albums of yellowing pictures of the Romanov family, ornate cigarette holders, exquisite jeweled matchboxes, elaborate gold-threaded women's evening bags and even the pillowcase in which some items were smuggled out of Russia, the focus of most collectors are the so-called Imperial eggs the Czars had made as Easter gifts.

The quest to find and purchase the eggs evolved almost into an extension of the Cold War as a race erupted between wealthy American and Russian collectors to get their hands on the most eggs. Today, roughly half are believed to be owned by Russians, though not all are in the country, McFerrin said. About 11 are displayed in the Kremlin.

To understand why the Czar was gifting his wife such a lavish gift on Easter — rather than, say, on Christmas — one has to understand the significance of the holiday in Russia.

Easter comes on the heels of winter, a frigid, snowy season, said Joel Bartsch, the Houston museum's president and something of a Faberge expert. It is a time of rejuvenation and renewal, a time to look over the past year and correct mistakes.

"Americans just look at it as Easter and the Easter bunny. But for Russians, it's their high season, at time for rejuvenating your life," McFerrin said.

And eggs are inextricably tied to the holiday, key even in a special cake generations of Russians have baked on the holiday to have blessed at church, she added.

The McFerrins, who made their fortune in the Houston-area chemical and petroleum industry, are committed through the purchase of the artwork to sharing not only Faberge's art with a new generation that may know very little about the czars and their tragic downfall, but also the ideas Russians associate with the Easter.

"We love it because of the workmanship. It's a lost craft, it will never be reproduced again," McFerrin said.

Judge Rules William Eggleston Can Clone His Own Work, Rebuffing Angry Collector

0
0
Judge Rules William Eggleston Can Clone His Own Work, Rebuffing Angry Collector

Photographers across the country can breathe a sigh of relief. The U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York dismissed collector Jonathan Sobel’s lawsuit against photographer William Eggleston. The case, art law experts say, has broader implications for all artists who incorporate old photographic negatives into new work — and the collectors who support them.

Filed last April, the complaint alleged that Eggleston diluted the value of Sobel’s collection by printing larger, digital versions of some of his best-known works and then selling them for record prices at Christie’s.

On Thursday, March 28, judge Deborah Batts dismissed Sobel’s complaint on all four counts (fraudulent misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, unjust enrichment, and promissory estoppel). “Although both the Limited Edition works and the Subsequent Edition works were produced from the same images, they are markedly different,” Batts wrote in her 20-page decision.

The lawsuit was spurred by Christie’s sale last March of 36 poster-size, digital prints of images that Eggleston had shot in the Mississippi Delta more than 30 years ago. Some were created from negatives he had never printed before, while others were based on iconic works, such as “Memphis (Tricycle).” (Sobel owns a 17-inch version of that photograph, for which he reportedly paid $250,000.) The sale was a massive success — by the time it was over, the large digital works accounted for seven of the artist’s top 10 prices. (The five-foot “Tricycle” came in on top, selling for a record $578,500.)

For Sobel, who owns 190 Eggleston works, the success of the sale was part of the problem. “The commercial value of art is scarcity, and if you make more of something, it becomes less valuable,” he told ARTINFO last April.

The judge disagreed. Egggleston may have profited from the Christie’s sale, she concluded, but not at Sobel’s expense. Eggleston could be held liable only if he created new editions of the limited-edition works in Sobel’s collection using the same dye-transfer process he used for the originals — a move that would directly deflate their value. In this case, however, Eggleston was using a new digital process to produce what she deemed a new body of work. 

“The decision is important because it confirms that artists who work in multiples will continue to have the right to use the images that they create,” Eggleston’s lawyer John Cahill of Lynn Cahill LLP, told ARTINFO in an e-mail. Virginia Rutledge, art lawyer and advisor and consultant to Eggleston's legal counsel, added that “the decision is right on the New York law, and is an important affirmation that artists are entitled to continue to work with images that they create to produce new editions. This is good news for artists, and their audiences.”

Sobel’s lawyer Thomas Danziger did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Through a representative, Sobel told ARTINFO: While the judge has given her opinion, we respectfully disagree with it and we do not think it is fair or equitable for photography or print collectors.” Though he did not specify whether he plans to file an appeal — in her decision, the judge denied his request to amend the existing complaint — Sobel seems determined to have the last word. We have become aware of potential new facts in our case as a result of a suit that has been filed in Tennessee, and we are reviewing that information at this time,” he said.

Artist Dossier: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

0
0
English
Order: 
0

Danny Boyle Does His Part to Correct Hollywood Gender Imbalance With “Trance”

0
0
Danny Boyle Does His Part to Correct Hollywood Gender Imbalance With “Trance”

LOS ANGELES — Oscar winning director Danny Boyle crafts a creatively twisted enigmatic mind game exploring identity in an altered state of hypnosis in his latest film, “Trance.”

The idea of one’s unconscious awareness that lies within our darkest dreams, proclivities, and wants is conceptualized in the film raising the question, who or what can you trust?

Simon (James McAvoy) becomes involved in a seemingly well-planned heist with a band of thugs who have their sights set on a famous Goya painting worth millions.

Their idea is to take over a high-end art auction where the picture is being sold, however, things go awry when Simon suffers a major blow to the head during the robbery and is knocked out cold.

After the poorly executed caper is over, the group realizes Simon intended on stealing the painting for his own purposes, and the gang leader, Frank (Vincent Cassel), vows to get it back.

There’s one problem though – Simon has no recollection of what happened to the piece of artwork because he totally lost his memory after being attacked during the hijack.

Frank hires hypnotherapist Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson) to extract the lost memories and as she begins to crack Simon’s broken subconscious, reality slowly vanishes and he can no longer understand what is the truth and what is abstract.

The three main characters collide in unexpected ways throughout the seductive not-what-you-expect thriller, but are all seen as equals, which is an uncommon characteristic in Boyle’s other movies, “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Trainspotting.”

Dawson dazzles in the key role and effortlessly dominates the big screen with power and authority alongside the male protagonists, which is a welcome change.

Boyle gravitated towards that aspect of the story and explained he had personal motivations for wanting to take on the project.

“The reason to do the film originally is that I have two daughters who are now in their 20s. I’ve never made a film where the woman is the engine of the film and I thought that is disgraceful,” he told BLOUIN ARTINFO at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills.

“The real reason to do the film was that there was a woman at the center of the film. Having said that, you can’t change your spots so I can’t make a feminist film. So it’s still a boy film. It’s still a visceral thrill ride, but why shouldn't I have a woman at the center of it?”

Raving about Dawson’s piquant performance, Boyle firmly stated that more parts like hers in “Trance” need to be created for women in Hollywood, and commented on how little there is for female entertainers to do in film.

“I think it’s a problem for the actresses. They just don’t have the roles and they often play the girlfriends. You know it could be a nice part, but they are kind of the sidekick typically.”

“Trance” opens in limited release April 5. 

Slideshow: Highlights from the AIPAD Photography Show

0
0
English
Order: 
0

Q&A: “The Place Beyond the Pines” Director Derek Cianfrance on Fathers and Sons

0
0
Q&A: “The Place Beyond the Pines” Director Derek Cianfrance on Fathers and Sons

Director Derek Cianfrance went 12 years between his first two feature films, “Brother Tied,” which he says “no one saw,” and the Oscar nominated examination of a disintegrating relationship, 2010’s “Blue Valentine.” Fortunately, the wait for his third film, an epic about fathers and sons called “The Place Beyond the Pines,” has been significantly shorter. The crime drama, which opens today, stars Ryan Gosling as troubled motorcycle stuntman Luke Glanton and Bradley Cooper as the young police officer Avery Cross – two men haunted by their fathers, whose lives become intertwined attempting to ensure the same does not happen to their sons. ARTINFO recently sat down with the filmmaker to discuss the importance of legacy, why face tattoos are a bad idea, and how he was influenced by the show “Cops.”

You started thinking about this film back in 2007. What was it that got you interested in the idea?

Back in ’92, I saw “Napoléon,” by Abel Gance, for the first time in film school. I was blown away by the triptych ending and for years wanted to make a triptych movie. It was around then I saw “Psycho” for the first time. I’d always known there was the shower scene in “Psycho,” I just didn’t know you had to live 45 minutes with Janet Leigh before she goes into the shower. I was blown away by that baton pass between characters. I had that kind of formal and structural idea floating around my head for so many years, but I didn’t have a story to tell. Then in 2007, my wife was pregnant with our second son and I was thinking a lot about legacy. All of a sudden this idea of these baton passes, this kind of fire being passed from one generation to the next.

Where did the idea for the story’s characters come from?

We were thinking a lot about the tribes in America. In terms of this idea of legacy, when you’re born into a small town, you’re born into a certain tribe, and thinking about what happens when tribes collide. What is the reverberation and echo of that collision over the generations. We also wanted to tell the story of two different people on different sides of the law. Subvert the genre piece. I’d originally thought of it as more of western actually. [Writer] Ben [Coccio] suggested we modernize it, take out the horses and put a motorcycle in it.

So you started out thinking of this film as a western?

I love westerns. They’re American movies. “Blue Valentine” ends on Independence Day, this movie ends with a shot of the American flag in the far distance. Think about the bloodshed that’s in this country’s history. Now we’re very domesticated. We eat with forks and knives, we say please and thank you, but we can’t get away from the brutality of our past. It’s still there. I really firmly believe that those things never go away.

That seems to be a part of Luke’s essence, that you can’t escape your past sins.

Ryan and I thought a lot about him as a matinee idol, the kind of guy that the Shangri-Las would sing about. He’s literally in a cage when we first see him. He grows up without a father and when he finds out he has a son, the last thing he wants to do is have his son feel the way he felt when he was a kid. He tries to avoid that by being there for him, but he has no skills for being a father. He’s a danger.

Avery, on the other hand, had all the things that Luke didn’t, but seems just as ill-equipped to be a father.

I think the thing with Avery, he’s also trying to avoid something. He grows up in the shadow of a very powerful father, a very present father, a father who’s sort of royalty in this small town. He’s meant to be his father’s son, but he’s going to try to prove himself as a cop. As a cop he ends up making this mistake, then instead of owning up to it, he buries it because he can’t deal with the trouble. He’s still a good man, so he tries to clean up everything else around him, but he still has this toxic shame that never goes away. I think in America there’s a lot of reward for self-preservation. He’s a guy who preserves himself, but that corruption never goes away from his life, that corruption becomes manifest in his child, and that comes back to get him.

How much did the actors contribute to their characters?

I always ask my actors to do two things: please surprise me and please fail. Because if they fall on their face, they can also succeed. As a filmmaker, if I’m on set, if I’m surprised, I know that’s going in the movie, because I know that’s what the audience will feel. Ryan called me a few months before we started shooting the movie, and he says: “Hey D, how about the most tattoos in movie history. And I want to get a face tattoo. Face tattoos are the coolest. This one’s going to be a dagger, and it’s going to be dripping blood.” Flash forward to the first day of shooting and he’s covered in tattoos, has put on 40 pounds of muscle, and he’s got this face tattoo. He walks up to me at lunch time and is like, “Hey D, can I talk to you for a sec? I think I went too far with the face tattoo. Think we can take it off and reshoot all that stuff?” And I say, “Absolutely not, that’s what happens when you get a face tattoo, you regret it, and now you have to walk through the movie regretting it.” So now this thing that was cool to him, and was probably cool to Luke at the time, all of a sudden now, he can’t get away from it, and it’s not very cool. It becomes this shame, so when he holds his baby for the first time, he feels dirty. What I’m looking for in my movies is the place where acting stops and behavior begins.

This probably results in a lot more work for you though, right?

If they do the script, I’m disappointed. To me writing is like dreaming, shooting is like living, and editing is like murder. You take all these beautiful moments, all these gifts that actors give you, you take entire performances sometimes. I’ve had to cut my mom out of a movie before. They talk about 10,000 hours to be a master of something, I’ve at least clocked 30,000 hours in the editing room. I know it more than any other aspect of filmmaking. It doesn’t make things easier for me. I don’t like killing things. But when you take them out you reveal the sculpture. That’s the x-factor for me in my movies. I want them to be honest. It’s not about my shouting, it’s about my listening, it’s about funneling in the world.

Something that might surprise some viewers is the action scenes, which are particularly intense. What was your approach to the louder scenes in the film?

I know “Blue Valentine” was recognized for its realism, its frank take on sexuality, and for this movie I wanted the action scenes, the genre elements, to feel just as true. My reference points weren’t other movies, it was “America’s Wildest Police Chases” and “Cops.” I watched “Cops” my whole life, it’s one of the greatest shows on TV. So we decided let’s make it like that, which means camera in the passenger seat, and we have to go fast. I remember that we wanted to do a lot of unbroken takes, like real chase scenes. It raised the stakes for it. All of a sudden we were making a film that was in a dangerous place.

Slideshow: "César Galicia: Man At Work" at Forum Gallery

0
0
English
Order: 
0

WEEK IN REVIEW: From Basquiat to 20x200, Our Top Visual Arts Stories, Mar. 23-29

0
0
WEEK IN REVIEW: From Basquiat to 20x200, Our Top Visual Arts Stories, Mar. 23-29

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ex-girlfriend Alexis Adler revealed a trove of works that he created in the East Village apartment they shared, which she plans to publish, exhibit, and, most likely sell.

— Julia Halperin profiled six artists, all women — including Carmen Herrera, Grandma Moses, and Alice Macklerwhose big breaks came after they turned 70, proving that the hottest artists aren't necessarily always young.

— Rachel Corbett looked into the Fridge Art Fair, a cool new fair launching in May during Frieze New York.

— Lawyers for Chuck Close, Laddie John Dill, and the estates of Robert Graham and Sam Francisfiled an opening brief in their appeal of a federal judge's ruling that the California Resale Royalties Act— which ensures royalties for artists when their works are sold on the secondary market — was unconstitutional.

— Ben Davis noted the total absence of crucial contextualizing history from the Museum of Modern Art’s blockbuster show “Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925.”

— Editors from BLOUIN ARTINFO’s branches around the world picked their favorite artworks of March for the latest installment of Planet Art.

— Kristen Boatright was on the scene at Grand Central Terminal when Nick Cave’s Soundsuit horses began dancing their way through the 100-year-old station.

— Almost a year after moving his operation and home from New York to Los Angeles, gallerist Perry Rubenstein reflected on the City of Angels's rising art world profile: “There is a freshness, a newness that doesn’t exist elsewhere.”

Boston-based serial collector John Axelrod threw open the doors to his Back Bay townhouse, where works by street artists like Crash and Lady Pink are on view beside classical American prints, European Art Deco artifacts, and much, much more.

— The founders of the new online-only biennial BiennaleOnline, David Dehaeck and Nathalie Haveman, invited an all-star roster of curators — including Jens Hoffman, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Daniel Birnbaum— to select Web-based work for its inaugural outing.

— Collectors who recently bought prints from Jen Bekman’s affordable art start-up 20x200 have been left with neither prints nor refunds since the site went offline on January 31.

— In our weekly Gallery Night seriesBLOUIN ARTINFO spoke with Charles McGill and Mac Premo at Pavel Zoubok's new Chelsea digs. 

— BLOUIN ARTINFO's editors took a stroll with Cuban-born artist Alexandre Arrechea through his city-within-a-city of sculptures along Park Avenue

— The New York International Auto Show rolled into town. Among the highlights: the 2014 Corvette Stingray. Take a tour of the show in 60 seconds.  

— West meets East in Shanghai. Tom Chen visited "Downtown: A View of the Lower East Side" a the James Cohan Gallery in the city's former French Concession. 

— Vanessa Yurkevich hit the beach, visiting the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands where they're hoping to to build the nation's credibility in the art world. 

— Janelle Zara and Dion Tan explored the resonance of Henri Labrouste's influence at the Museum of Modern Art's “Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light.

Slideshow: "Game of Thrones" Fashion

0
0
English
Order: 
0

Younger Than Baby Jesus: 6 Superstar Artists Under 6

0
0
Younger Than Baby Jesus: 6 Superstar Artists Under 6

Collectors are always looking for the next big art star — but what if they should be looking for the next little art star?

ARTINFO’s researchers have scanned the rosters of galleries around the world to find six figures who truly redefine the definition of "emerging artist." Our pint-sized Hirsts are already piquing the interests of heavy-weight collectors looking to cash in on the youthquake that has been shaking the art world.

These artists employ diverse media, ranging from traditional painting to the extremes of scatological performance art. One thing is true about all of them, though: These infant terribles are rewriting the rules about what it means to make art today.

To see our list of “6 Artists Under 6 Whom You Need to Know,” click on the slideshow.

Viewing all 6628 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images