No Matter What We Do

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The fall colors in Seattle today made me think of this movie for some reason. The trailer doesn't really do it justice, but it's a really beautiful film...now on my repeat viewings list for this fall.

Rebel Girl

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Kathleen Hanna with some entertaining stories of the '90s.

(via Kelly O)

Also Kurt

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Patti Smith "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

Just a reminder, in case you haven't yet been, that there's two weeks left to see Kurt, the exhibition of Kurt Cobain-inspired art at the Seattle Art Museum. (I wish I had time to write a more thought-out review, but in lieu of that, I will just say that I think it's an important show for SAM and overall an excellent collection of work that should not be missed. There are pieces and themes in the show that I have thought about a lot since seeing it.)

Image of the Day

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Kurt Cobain, 2006, by Scott Fife – American, b. 1949. (Archival cardboard, ink, glue and screws, 22 x 18 x 20 in., Collection of Theodore M. Wight, Courtesy of the artist, © Scott Fife, via SAM)

On view at the Seattle Art Museum as part of the Michael Darling-curated show Kurt, which opens tomorrow. It's a safe bet that this will not be the last you hear from us about that. Visit seattleartmuseum.org for info

And hey, while we're at it:


Kurt & Courtney: required viewing no matter your opinion on the matter. (Mine would take too long to go into at this juncture.)

Serve the Servants

.Layout by yours truly from an article on Kurt Cobain, with photography by Charles Peterson, in VMAN magazine

During one of my frequent visits to Best Of recently I read that curator Michael Darling, who curated Target Practice last year at the Seattle Art Museum, has a new exhibition going up at SAM this May called Kurt.

Grunge music is arguably Seattle’s greatest cultural export of the past 20 years, and Kurt Cobain was that movement’s central figure. The historical impact of Kurt Cobain cannot be denied or overestimated. During and after his brief career—which came to a premature end in 1993—his life and work have reverberated across the globe. Kurt celebrates that influence, in particular the effect he had on the creative lives and thought processes of artists.

Kurt Cobain symbolized the ideals, aspirations and disappointments of the ’90s generation, and a diverse array of artists have incorporated his image into their work to comment on those issues. International in scope, the works on view in Kurt range from straightforward portraiture to pieces that show a more subtle assimilation of Cobain’s ethos and idealism in a broad range of media. With works from the early 1990s to the present, by artists such as Rodney Graham, Douglas Gordon and Elizabeth Peyton, among others, this exhibition will cause viewers to question why and how Kurt’s visage and his gestures came to mean so much to a generation.

I don't care how cynical you are – you will want to get down off your bar stool at the Comet and march your Pumas downtown for this. It will undoubtedly include some great work, and some not-bad-meaning-bad-but-bad-meaning-genius work.

Another thing I find interesting about it: museums are constantly trying to find new ways to pack people in, and SAM, for its very survival, needs downtown tourists to stop on by during the summer. What better way to attract people than to embrace that most stereotypically Seattle topic? A lot of great artists have addressed Kurt in their work, so it's win/win. A show of this nature has a chance to find that perfect middle ground between the commercial and critical needs of the museum.

Info at sam.org.

Some things I got Emily for her birthday.

La Perla.

Requisite lighting-related gifts.
Silver-Dipped Light Bulbs (not real silver, that's just what they call them), and a Porcelain Owl Lamp which combines two of Emily's major obsessions: Owls; Various Forms of Muted Lighting.

Streetwise book
I had been looking for this book forever, and finally found it at Left Bank Books in the West Village (the owner is originally from Eugene, Oregon). Mary Ellen Mark was kind enough to sign it for me. More on Streetwise in a future post.

Black Pumps.

"About a Son" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" DVDs.
These covers go together pretty well—maybe they should package them together as a special edition.

Issey Miyake Pleats Please dress.
It's basically just a big piece of really intricately pleated fabric, and comes with a booklet showing sixty different ways you can wear it. (Photo of Racquel Zimmerman in Issey Miyake by David Sims, from Future Shock, in V45.)

In the Papers

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Blake Nelson has a good short interview with Gus Van Sant today in the New York Times. Here's an excerpt:

Does the gray climate of Portland affect you in any way? I think of Elliott Smith or Raymond Carver; many artists that come out of that area seem to have a built-in gloom factor.

I think a person’s darkness or lightness factor is their own point of view. I don’t think Elliott Smith thought of his songs as dark. Kurt Cobain, his songs were pretty dark. Angst-ridden. And booming. And loud. Later, while working on the movie [“Last Days”], I realized that their songs really sounded like falling trees and chain saws. I don’t know if it was an accident or what. They lived in a lumber town. They were using a sound that was relevant to them.

More of the interview here. Van Sant's adaptation of Nelson's novel Paranoid Park opens this Friday.

Film still from paranoidpark.co.uk