paintings + drawings

Nitrate Kisses

Barbara Hammer, 1992.

Embrace Of The Irrational, Trailer

The latest from John Herschend.

Air Stream Envy

Erik Friedlander, 2009.

photos by Lee Friedlander, video by Bill Morrison.

Get Out Of Here, You Shameless Vixen

Epilogue

<click through to play>

Peter Gidal, 1978.

Two Collaborations

Both Bay Area, both recent.

First, Art Practical. It's just up and running so it's a bit early for comment. The design is snazzy in a staid kinda serious-art-mag way.

From the site: "Art Practical is the new home of three important chroniclers of San Francisco Bay Area contemporary art and visual culture: Shotgun Review, Happenstand and Talking Cure Quarterly. The site represents the current shifting landscape of arts journalism by serving as a juncture for critical dialogue rather than a proprietor of it.." <yak, yak, yakkkity yak... some more art speak, then> "Art Practical is emblematic of... a long local history of incubating experimentation and innovation with international perspectives. <and then some more art speak.>"

Second, The Grand Piano. A cool historic-sorta project involving the always amazing Ron Silliman.

From the site: "The Grand Piano is an experiment in collective autobiography by ten writers identified with the rise of Language poetry in San Francisco — Rae Armantrout, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Tom Mandel, Ted Pearson, Bob Perelman, Kit Robinson, Ron Silliman, and Barrett Watten. The eleventh pianist, Alan Bernheimer, takes the lead in organizing documentation for the books and this website.

The Grand Piano takes its name from a coffeehouse at 1607 Haight Street in San Francisco where from 1976 to 1979 several of us programmed and coordinated – and all of us participated in – a weekly reading and performance series.

The project focuses on the 1970s when we first met and collaborated. Yet the volumes engage issues beyond that time, and the project adheres to no prescribed set of themes.

New volumes of The Grand Piano appear several times a year. The complete series will comprise ten volumes."

photo: Anna Halpern. Performance still, UC Berkeley Art Museum, 1970. Courtesy of Peter Selz.

Visions

Municipal Palace for the Capital of a Great Empire, E.-L. Boullée 1792.

National Congress Area, Oscar Niemeyer 1956.

Project for the Palace of the Soviets, brothers Vesnin 1931.

Iggy Pop, David Bowie and Soupy Sales' Sons

on the Dina Shore show. Wow.

Michael Abramson Slideshow

Over at the NYTimes, images he shot of Chicago's mid-70s blues scene. Terrific.

Isn't Bernard Sumner Looking Kinda Truman Capote-ish