Image of the Day

. There's no particular reason I'm posting this, it's just one of my all time favorite photos by Bob Richardson... and sitting on a rocky beach, even if it's a little overcast, seems like it would be nice right now.

A book of Bob Richardson's photos came out a few years ago – get it here or from just about any other quality bookstore.

It's Not Being Filmed, I Have To Remember

.

Jean-Michel Basquiat has been copied and eulogized in equally great measure, and it would be easy to dismiss another film about him. The thing is, his work continues to be exciting, and the story of his life seems more relevant than ever.

More info on Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, directed by Tamra Davis, at jean-michelbasquiattheradiantchild.com

Image of the Day

. Eikoh Hosoe Untitled, 1965, from the series Kamaitachi.

Eikoh Hosoe is giving a talk and signing books tomorrow night at Aperture Gallery in Chelsea (NYC), and on Thursday the National Arts Club will present him with the Medal of Honor for Lifetime Achievement in Photography. Kamaitachi – Hosoe's documentation of a visit to a farming village in Northern Japan – was originally released in 1969 in an edition of only 1000 copies, but has since been re-printed by Aperture. Order the book and get more info at aperture.org.

Superconnected

.
It's a big day for Canadians and those who love them:

The New Pornographers Together

Broken Social Scene Forgiveness Rock Record

Both arriving today in the bins of your local music nerdery – go git 'em.

...
Addendum, via Pitchfork:
"When I found out our record was coming out the same day as Broken Social Scene I wanted to call Kevin Drew and shoot a little promo video, where it's like the two of us just facing each other on a windy day and then we embrace to the strains of 'Wake Up' by Arcade Fire. That would be like a dual ad for both of our albums. But I'm too lazy. I was distracted."
–A.C. Newman [New Pornographers]

Also:

Video: New Pornographers "Together" (click to play)

Photo Finish

.
In his On The Street audio slideshow at nytimes.com (as well as in the print edition of today's paper), Bill Cunningham says goodbye to the Carnegie Hall apartment he's lived in for sixty years.

For over a century, the apartments in Carnegie Hall have been home to a vast assortment of writers, designers, photographers, dancers, actors, circus performers, floral artists, and creative people of all stripes; Cunningham occupied one of five remaining rent-controlled units which are being closed down so that the building can be fully converted into a music school. When he first moved to New York, Cunningham became a milliner and assisted the fashion photographer Ray Solowinski (above right); Solowinski's wife (above left) modeled Cunningham's hats. Click here to watch the slideshow.

For people as fascinated with Cunningham as I am (he's basically a national treasure at this point, in my opinion) it's great news that he is the subject of a new documentary, directed by Richard Press and produced by the venerable Philip Gefter, entitled Bill Cunningham New York – I can't find any clips online but you can read an article Gefter wrote about it at The Daily Beast and get a little more info at the film's website.

All Creatures Great and Small

.

Two Brown Pelicans (the Louisiana state bird, recently removed
from the endangered species list) stand on the beach beyond
one of the protective booms laid just off the Gulf Coast shore this
week. Photo by William Colgin of the Sun Herald,
via A.P. and National Geographic.

The booms are part of an attempt to prevent the massive oil slick in the Gulf Coast from reaching the salt marshes at the mouth of the Mississippi River, as well as the rest of the Gulf Coast's fragile ecosystem (not to mention its tourism and fishing industries). The leaking sea floor oil well that is the source of the growing slick is currently spewing an estimated 5,000 barrels of crude oil per day (that's about 210,000 gallons) into Gulf Coast waters. As reported yesterday morning by the New York Times, some NOAA officials now fear that this amount may soon grow to "an order of magnitude higher than than that." The solution currently on the table to shut off the well will take an estimated "months."

Bird covered in oil from a 2006 Black Sea spill.
Via Marinephotobank on flickr.

I was going to rant further but I'm sure you know all about it by now so I'll spare everyone. While we're at it: on Tuesday British Petroleum reported that its profit more than doubled in the first quarter of 2010 thanks to rising oil prices. Congratulations. I guess that means you can afford to pay for the "clean up."

Happy May Day

.
This is the Washington State flower, the Rhododendron. It's not photoshopped, this is really what Washington looks like. The Rhododendron is also West Virginia's state flower. In West Virginia they have mountain dancing. Happy May Day.

Need vs. Want

.
Want. Need something approximating it. This is the kind of basic, classic piece that could easily be dressed up or down and would get me through just about anything summer has on offer. (Heels and a black halter? Yep. Jack Purcells and a short-sleeve v-neck? Check.)

Stella McCartney denim skirt, $365 at net-a-porter.com.
There's probably a facsimile at a thrift store near you.

Image of the Day

.
Rest Energy by Marina Abramovic and Ulay – on display at MoMA as part of Abramovic's show The Artist Is Present.

Standing across from one another in slated position. Looking each other in the eye. I hold a bow and Ulay holds the string with the arrow pointing directly to my heart. Microphones attached to both hearts recording the increasing number of heart beats.

Here's what that looks like:



The Artist Is Present is happening for one more month at MoMA.

Traffic, Jams

.
My original intention in starting a blog was to document my last bit of time in New York, and my first bit of time in Seattle, various other stuff that crossed my mind, and projects that I'm working on – and then Emily started posting, which I love, and we have kept it up over time, sometimes more than others. I was talking to a friend about it recently and saying that while I never set out to try to build up traffic, it has naturally built up – not in a crazy way, but a lot more people look at the blog than I would have expected. Google Analytics tracks the keyword searches that drive random people here, and I thought it might be worth sharing a small selection of those with you.

Here are my favorites:

-Lighthouse attendant
-You know you're gold
-I just wanna be a doper person
-Hot dogs say what you mean
-God don't make no junk
-Meat lovers pizza in the trunk
-If you can't open it you don't own it
-Rhymes with steez
-A closed mouth collects no feet
-Ivar Haglund gay?
-Breakfast clam chowder
-Slurp and burp
-DB Cooper Ape Cave [might have to look into that one myself]
-Damned grimly fiendish
-I had a very calm day until this

And, of course:
-Mr. Littlejeans Cat

Also, one other note while we're here, behind the curtain, together (wow, awkward). I have removed all the MP3s from the site after receiving a pretty frightening email from Blogger about one of my posts violating copyright (specifically, I had posted a Fela Kuti song and they removed it). But between us, if anyone ever wants an MP3 that has appeared on the site, just hit me up and I will send it to you, as long as you're not damned, grimly, or fiendish, and you just wanna be a doper person.

Slurp and burp,
Strath

Pictured above: an image made using IOgraph, a piece of free software by Anatoly Zenkov and Andrey Shipilov that traces the movements of your mousepointer. Get it here.

Vinyls

.
To Have & To Hold Movie Trailer from Jony Lyle on Vimeo.

[ via Joe Newton via GrainEdit ]

Bonus Cat

.

Inez and her friend the goose lamp find a spot in the sun

Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

.
Littlejeans' default position when he wants attention,
which is always.

I Wanna Be Your Travelin' Girl

.

We're moving the office tomorrow and that will be the theme song – The Bitters "Travelin' Girl." Most things that are worth doing are worthy of being assigned a theme song, if only temporarily.

Op Tape

. William Furlong interviewing Philip Glass for Audio Arts, ca.1982

There's a great article in this morning's New York Times on William Furlong, who in London in the early-'70s founded Audio Arts – a cassette periodical consisting entirely of his conversations with artists, minor and major, old and new. “It was quite a revolutionary piece of kit,” he says of these magazines in cassette form. "If you put it in the post, it could be in the United States in two days or all the way to Australia in three or four. In some ways it did feel like the Internet of its day.”

Furlong produced Audio Arts for over thirty years, and at its high-point circulation reached into the thousands. But for being what the Tate Museum describes in the article as "the most comprehensive collection of artists' voices in the world," it remained an obscurity, known to only those who knew. Luckily for the rest of us, the Tate acquired the magazine's entire archive in 2004, and now Phaidon will publish transcripts of some of the best of Furlong's interviews in a new book, Speaking of Art.

Read the Times article and hear some Audio Arts excerpts (Damien Hirst, James Rosenquist, Shirin Nashat) at nytimes.com. Much more, in both audio and transcript form, can be found at tate.org.

In the '80s, William Furlong also produced a number of records, consisting of sound collages more than actual interviews.

I don't have any of them but I'll be on the hunt.
[LP image via Continuo.]

Best Foot Forward

.
It's a new weekly series. About shoes. Enough said.

On the right: Cacharel shoe-boots with lucite heel
(click to enlarge).
From a story in the inaugural issue of The Gentlewoman.
(Can't find an online source for the black,
but you can buy the same shoe in tan here.)

Swim Team

.

Eluvium "Indoor Swimming at the Space Station" (2007)
More Eluvium at his website and at the Vera Project this Friday, April 30th (more tour dates here).

[via LineOut]

Image of the Day

.

Gala Bent Matrix for Praxis, 2008 (Graphite and gouache, 30” x 22”)

I had the pleasure of meeting Seattle-based artist Gala Bent at an AIGA portfolio review I participated in this past Saturday (I recognized her name from Joey Veltkamp's interview with her at Best Of). The image shown above is from Transubstantial, an exhibition at Catherine Person Gallery, also featuring work by Colleen Hayward, Renee Zettle-Sterling, and Heidi Schwegler. The show is up through May 8th – click here for info – and you can see more of Gala Bent's work (and that of her husband and collaborator, Zack) here.

Closer to Heaven

.

La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona (exterior)

Been meaning to post about this one for a while....way back in December I caught a story on PRI's The World about the effort to beatify the Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí (b. 1852). Beatification is the third of four steps in the process of canonization.

La Sagrada Familia

Supporters of the petition have submitted evidence to the Vatican (obviously preoccupied right now with more pressing matters) that they say demonstrates Gaudí's ability to intercede with God on behalf of us mortals. They point specifically to La Sagrada Familia, Gaudí's unfinished masterpiece begun in 1882, which they maintain has the power to convert non-believers. As reported by The Guardian, Cardinal Ricard Maria Carles of Barcelona, where much of Gaudí's work resides, asserts that "only divine inspiration could have produced such a monument to God. 'Can anyone acquainted with [Gaudí's] work believe that all which one contemplates could possibly have been produced only by cold thought?'"

La Sagrada Familia

La Sagrada Familia (exterior detail)

I'm not Catholic myself and have no basis for an opinion as to whether Gaudí is deserving of sainthood. (Apparently one of the requirements is evidence that he performed at least two miracles, which seems to have presented a challenge for his supporters. They've recently managed to find one man willing to testify that contemplation of Gaudí's work healed his bum leg; this strikes me as a little suspicious, but again, I'm not qualified to judge.)

La Sagrada Familia (exterior detail)

That aside, there is something incredibly touching about this effort, which is a testament to the power of art and architecture to provoke a transcendent experience. I also have to admit that as I was standing in the Sagrada Familia a few years ago, surrounded by crowds of people and looking up at the ceilings still under construction, I had the sudden reaction of bursting into tears. (I know, I know, super dramatic.) I mention it because it was odd – not odd that I would cry; I'm a crier – but odd that a religious symbol would trigger that response. I was raised to have a healthy distrust of all organized religion and have been in cathedrals and churches all over Europe without feeling anything remotely approaching religious epiphany.

La Sagrada Familia (interior)

That particular reaction was probably less about religious inspiration than the poignancy of witnessing in the ongoing construction a very human effort to connect with the divine. But still, when I read that supporters of Gaudí's beatification point to this building's power to inspire heathens to get religion, I had to reflect on the experience.

La Sagrada Familia (interior)

Gaudí died on June 10, 1926, after being struck by a tram while on his way to La Sagrada Familia. A while ago my friend Michelle put me up on a beautiful 1979 documentary directed by the late Hiroshi Teshigahara that captures Gaudì's architecture, ecclesiastical and otherwise, and sets it to music by Toru Takemitsu. UbuWeb lets you watch the entirety of the 72-minute film here.

La Pedrera, Barcelona

In the Belly of the Cloud

.

Wye Oak "I Hope You Die" from their new EP, My Neighbor My Creator – available in physical forms June 8th, or digitally now – from Merge Records. I love this band. They're playing Thursday at the Triple Door and I would love to go but I'm in the middle of moving my office this week and it's too hectic. Life intervenes, that's just what it does.

Yes. No. Maybe.

.
Say what you will about her professional choices, but I love Rebecca De Mornay's personal style as Lana in Risky Business. Proof positive that a little attitude is always the best accessory.











Joel's parents aren't too shabby, either, for that matter.




Tangerine Dream "The Dream is Always the Same"

Image of the Day

.
Karen O, from a very classic, natural set of portraits by one of my favorite current photographers, Daniel Jackson, in this past weekend's (very slim) issue of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Click here for more.

Humane Interest

.
A small selection of images available in the Humane Society of New York's Third Photography Auction...

Gösta Peterson Mademoiselle, January 1964

In addition to the works shown here there are photographs by Arthur Elgort, Slim Aarons, Elliott Erwitt, Herb Ritts, Hiro, and many more. 100% of the proceeds from the auction, which is tomorrow night at 6pm, benefit the Humane Society.

Brigitte Lacombe Studio Cat

lan Kleinberg Shampoo In Tahiti (Lauren Hutton and Susan Forristal)

Michael O'Neill Panda Body

Christopher Micaud Untitled

Click here for images and info, and to bid online.