NEWSgrist - where spin is art

The Degenerate Craft Fair is This Weekend !

The Degenerate Craft Fair – www.degeneratecraftfair.com

Circle in the Square [Map]

159 Bleecker St. New York, NY, 10012

Between Sullivan and Thompson Streets

Take the 4, 6 to Bleecker Street or

A, B, C, E, E, F, M to West 4th Street

Featuring over fifty artists who frequently exhibit their work in respected galleries and prestigious museums of New York (examples include PS1/MOMA, The Drawing Center, Apex Art and others). These artists are offering inexpensive versions of their work for sale as holiday gifts. Artists who usually sell their work for hundreds or thousands of dollars will have created objects specifically designed to be sold for generally $50 or less.  [via VillageVoice]

December 10th

Noon to 9pm

Opening night reception from 6pm to 9pm

Featuring music and free beer.

Beer has been lovingly provided by Brooklyn Brewery

December 11th

Noon to 6pm

First 50 visitors receive a tote bag full of goodies!

Download 2011 Degenerate Craft Fair Press Release [PDF]

The Incredible Lighness of Boom Boom

Photo: Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times GLIDING Waitresses in Rubin Chapelle dresses at Takashi Murakami's party.

via NYTimes Fashion Diary:

Amid the Bust, the Boom Boom
By GUY TREBAY

Published: September 18, 2009

SHOULD you ever happen to run into the Japanese ultra-genius pop star artist and handbag designer Takashi Murakami at the Boom Boom Room of the Standard Hotel, on the eve of his latest art opening, it may help if you have a few questions prepared.

Sample question: Do you find that conducting the whirlwind jet-setting life of an ultra-genius pop star artist and handbag designer leaves you time for quiet consultation with your muse?

Or: What role does fate play in fame and global recognition? Do some ultra-genius pop star artist handbag designers just get lucky, while others wind up making Hendrick’s martinis behind a bar?

Or: Who styles your topknot? It’s kind of cute.

The one thing you should probably never inquire of a person of Mr. Murakami’s stature, on the eve of his exhibition at the Larry Gagosian Gallery, on the final night of Fashion Week, in the Boom Boom Room of the Standard Hotel, locus of all things flossy and urgent and cosmopolitan for the last seven days (and, looking forward, one might predict for the following 90), is what he thinks makes a party fun.

If you present such a banal query, well, be prepared for a look of smoldering incomprehension, a coldly evidenced distaste for breaches in the protocols of global celebrity. You must be ready to experience a displeasure that could atomize you, reduce you to an integer of laboring-class nothingness, a mote of dust.

“Do you know who you are talking to?” a Murakami acolyte will ask you in a tone that is equal parts astonishment and horror.

“Why, yes.”

“Do you know who this person is?” the acolyte will repeat.

“Yes.”

And then Mr. Murakami himself will give you a slow burn and mutter, “I don’t like bars,” and then another acolyte will soothingly murmur, “Let’s sit down,” and then the Murakami coterie will commence to fan the pop star artist and handbag designer with flattery, much as drones in a hive do a queen bee, so his core does not melt.

And you?

Zoe Lister-Jones, on Paper

(Zoe: we're becoming a fanzine because of you)

via Paper Magazine:

Beautiful People 2009: Zoe Lister-Jones

"I grew up with a sense that I had to make art, but that I didn't want to have to struggle financially," says actress Zoe Lister-Jones. Even when she was offered a nearly full scholarship to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts for acting, she was hesitant. "I thought I should pursue something more stable, like law school. But my parents [video artist Ardele Lister and photographer Bill Jones] said I had to go," she says. "The funny thing is, I've been supporting myself with acting ever since. So I guess what I'm trying to say is [that] my parents are awesome." Lister-Jones has appeared on Broadway in The Little Dog Laughed, on TV in all four franchises of Law & Order, and soon on cable in the upcoming Sarah Jessica Parker-produced HBO series, The Washingtonienne (based on the same-titled Jessica Cutler novel).

This year the 26-year-old adds writer-producer (and soundtrack chanteuse) to her résumé with Breaking Upwards, a film she made with her real-life boyfriend, director-actor Daryl Wein. "We were in an open relationship for a year. We play ourselves [in the film] and, in essence, perform the story of our relationship's demise." Where most auteurs her age would chronicle this so-wrong-it's-right young urban ennui with handheld cameras and improvised mumblings, Breaking Upwards is well-scripted, well-shot and features an intergenerational cast that includes Tony winner Julie White and Juno's Olivia Thirlby. "My friends don't live in a world of awkward silences and shaky cityscapes," says Lister-Jones. "We were interested in reinventing a classic genre, and in some ways, defying it."
H HOBEY ECHLIN

Zoe wears a dress by Sass & Bide. · Hair: John Frieda Frizz-Ease Original Formula Hair Serum · Mascara: Givenchy Phenomen'Eyes Mascara · Lipstick: Estée Lauder Pure Color Long Lasting Lipstick in Classic Red · Brow shaper: Clinique

via Foam Magazine:

Samuel Fosso featured in NYT

via GoldwaterLibrary.org:

Samuel Fosso featured in NYT

From the New York Times T Men's Fashion Spring 2009:

Samuel Fosso, Man of a Thousand Faces
by Leslie Camhi

Fosso satirized the corruption of Africa’s leaders in a color picture he created in 1997, when the Parisian department store Tati invited him to set up a photography studio (with, for the first time, a budget for makeup and costumes) in Barbès, a neighborhood popular with African immigrants. ‘‘People think it’s Mobutu,’’ he said of a comically surreal image that shows the seated artist, draped in gold jewelry and leopard skins and holding sunflowers, a symbol of traditional African medicine. (In other pictures from that series, he appears as a Japanese sailor and a ‘‘liberated’’ African-American woman.) ‘‘In fact,’’ he explained, ‘‘it’s a photograph that represents all those African chiefs who sold their continent to the whites.’’

See the whole article here.

From the New York Times T Men's Fashion Spring 2009:

Samuel Fosso, Man of a Thousand Faces
by Leslie Camhi

Fosso satirized the corruption of Africa’s leaders in a color picture he created in 1997, when the Parisian department store Tati invited him to set up a photography studio (with, for the first time, a budget for makeup and costumes) in Barbès, a neighborhood popular with African immigrants. ‘‘People think it’s Mobutu,’’ he said of a comically surreal image that shows the seated artist, draped in gold jewelry and leopard skins and holding sunflowers, a symbol of traditional African medicine. (In other pictures from that series, he appears as a Japanese sailor and a ‘‘liberated’’ African-American woman.) ‘‘In fact,’’ he explained, ‘‘it’s a photograph that represents all those African chiefs who sold their continent to the whites.’’

See the whole article here.

The Met Launches blog.mode!

via Flavorpill:
   
Comme des Garçons by Junya Watanabe, Ensemble, fall/winter 2000–2001, Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

blog.mode: addressing fashion

When: Tue Dec 18 - Sun Apr 13 (schedule)

Where: Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 5th Ave, 212.535.7710)

Price: $20

Details: Event Info

Fashion is a relative newcomer to the reputable Metropolitan, but now the Upper East Side institution is stepping into the fracas of the fashion blogosphere. The museum is displaying 40 new acquisitions from its Costume Institute in blog.mode: addressing fashion, and — hold onto your chapeau — inviting the public to comment on the pieces through a blog on its website. While the armchair fug-sters do battle for most catty remark, the Met's sincere curators intersperse relevant art-historical commentary about such highlights as a 1983 black Comme des Garçons jersey dress and a 1947 Adrian piece featuring a Salvador Dalí design. While the high-class items are undoubtedly worthy of the Met's collection, it's the public dialogue that merits close scrutiny.

– H.G. Masters

via Artnet news, 12/19/07:

MET GETS INTO BLOG MODE
  While the average citizen "might shy away from commenting on the merits of a Juan Gris or a Henry Moore," notes Metropolitan Museum Fashion Institute curator Harold Koda, they have no such compunction when it comes to fashion. Thus, the Met’s first blog -- located at http://blog.metmuseum.org/blogmode/ -- invites the public to comment on the new exhibition in the Costume Institute galleries, a presentation of 65 recent acquisitions dubbed "blog.mode: addressing fashion," Dec. 18, 2007-Apr. 13, 2008. Comments can be registered at the Met's website, or on what is called a "blogbar" of eight computer terminals in the museum galleries. So far, remarks seem to be confined to "fabulous" and the like, though one contributor notes that 99 percent of the costumes in the show are for women, "reinforcing the idea that women are the peacocks and men should be looking on or not seen at all."

One of the many interesting items in the exhibition is the "Remote Control" Dress (2000) by Hussein Chalayan (b. 1970), a cast-plastic form with side and rear flaps that open to reveal pink tulle. According to Met curator Andrew Bolton, who co-organized the show, Chalayan is one of several contemporary designers who is beginning to issue his designs in limited editions in order to encourage collectors.