Christian Boltanski’s Bonfire of Humanity in NYC

Christian Boltanski’s new project, No Man’s Land, fills 55,000 square feet inside the Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. Using 30 tons of discarded clothing in all shapes, colors and sizes, Boltanski piled a twenty-five-foot high bonfire pyramid, surrounded by 45 rectangular plots of clothing arranged in a mass grave fashion. 

This unusual graveyard is complimented by a 60-foot crane, which grabs and lifts garments up in the air, just to discard them back. The exhibit opens with a 66-foot-long crypt wall of rusty numbered tin cans and is accompanied by the sounds of 45,000 human heartbeats from around the world.

This exhibit challenges the futility of possession and explores the themes of individuality and anonymity in life and death.  

As part of the installation, visitors are invited to record their own heartbeat and offer it to the artist for his collection.

Christian Boltanski, “No Man’s Land,” 2010.

Curated by Tom Eccles.


Photos Courtesy of Park Avenue Armory

May 14 - June 13, 2010

Open Hours

Tuesday through Sunday (except Thursday): Noon – 7:30pm

Thursday: 2pm – 9:30pm

Monday, May 31: Noon – 7:30pm (Memorial Day)

CLOSED MONDAYS (except Memorial Day)

Admission

$12 General Admission (12 and older)

$10 Seniors (62 and up), Students (with valid ID), Groups (8 or more)

FREE: Children (11 and under)

FREE: PARK AVENUE ARMORY MEMBERS 

The simplicity of watercolor

Watercolor is my favorite medium. When I meet artists who have perfected this medium, I bow in admiration.

One of my friends, Cynthia Bogart combines ink with watercolor to create simple and delicate imagery.  Below are two of my favorites by this New York born / Houston based artist / designer.

The Ghost Writer - a film review

Setting aside my negative sentiments about Roman Polanski, I went to see his new film. 


Based on the novel “The Ghost” by the best-selling English novelist Robert Harris, partially mimicking the life of real former British prime minister, Tony Blair, The Ghost Writer is a modern day political thriller re written for the screen by Harris with the help of Mr. Polanski.

Perhaps because I have not read the book, I thought that the Ghost Writer was a bit reminiscent of the British comedy Pulp, in which a writer is offered a large sum to ghostwrite the autobiography of a gangster and is transported to a remote island, where he plays an amateur detective after the murder of his subject.

However, this fictional satire is neither a traditional comedy, nor a simple murder mystery. Like other work by Polanski, it a film noir, which pokes fun of itself with light irony of a very menacing kind.

Ewan McGregor delivers one of his best performances as the Ghost, a compliant and suitable substitute ghost writer, with convenient lack of past and family, who is hired to finish an autobiography already written by a famous writer, who mysteriously drowns. The Ghost is given only four weeks, which later get cut down to four, to finish the memoirs of a former British prime minister, Adam Lang (played by Pierce Brosnan). To do this task, the Ghost is shipped off to the secluded Martha’s Vineyard, where he attempts to both write a bestseller and solve the mystery surrounding his predecessor’s unfortunate death.

The story itself may not be weighty, but Polanski certainly creates a heavy atmosphere - a dreary, colorless, and windy environment, in which the storm is imminent and anxiety builds over time, in a suspenseful veil of darkness equal to that of a Hitchcock film. 

The uncomplicated plot, coupled with monochromatic hues and subtle acting of other leading characters create an artful setting for Ewan McGregor’s shine as the Ghost Writer.

The Ghost Writer never lets off tension until it culminates at the very end, which is much anticipated but somewhat predictable. 

Despite the obvious ending, the Ghost Writer does not disappoint. It is masterfully crafted and  worth watching, if just for the sheer diversion of seeing a well directed creation with a thespian polish. 

Art on tap - Linn Olofsdotter

Linn Olofsdotter is an illustrator and mixed media artist from Sweden. After getting her education in both advertising and graphic design in Europe and the US, she moved to Brazil to start up a motion graphics studio along with her husband and creative partner. More recently Linn worked as a senior art director at a Boston advertising agency and is now settled in the Portland area.  

Performance Art in the Flesh

From March 14 through May 31, 2010,  the prolific performance artist Marina Abramović offered a retrospective exhibit The Artist Is Present to MOMA visitors.

The exhibit featured approximately fifty of the artist's works spanning over four decades of sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, solo performances, and collaborative performances made with Uwe Laysiepen. 

The most controversial works of the exhibit featured nude performers facing each other at a doorway 

or lying under a skeleton 

The Artist Is Present also included Abramović seating in the MOMA atrium for seven hours, five days a week, and for ten hours on Fridays. Visitors were invited to sit silently across from the artist for as long as they liked.

Photographer Marco Anelli took these incredible photographs of all people who participated in Marina Abramović's art performance and posted them to Flickr.

 Each photo provides the duration of each participant's seating. Most staid only a few minutes but a couple of women sat with Abramovic for six and a half hours. 

Photos by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images North America

100 Best Films of all time

Let's not kid one another; all film lists are just as ridiculous as book lists.

Film is the dominion of poetry and all poetry is indescribable and subjective. Yet, every person has a list of favorite films, novels and poems, which he is eager to share with others.  Further, we judge people by the books they read and movies they watch, so why not share more than just a handful of favorites?

The process of picking favorite films turned out to be a cerebral exercise of double guessing myself, which was actually a lot more fun than I expected. It was hard to pick just 100 because I enjoy watching all kinds of films.

The only genre that does not appeal to me in any shape or form is horror. I prefer fables unquantifiable by time and space, films filled with beautiful imagery that floats through conscience like a song, bizarre comedies, and deep psychological classics that make me reflect on their meaning for many years to come.

Below, in chronological order, is my list of 100 films that stay in my memory and conscience, which I would like to own or own already.  Many of these are American films, but quite a few are foreign (with the majority being British or Russian):

1.       Battleship Potemkin (1925) dir. Sergei Eisenstein

2.      City Lights (1931) dir. Charles Chaplin

3.      Modern Times (1936) dir. Charles Chaplin 

4.      Aleksandr Nevskiy (1938) dirs. Sergei M. Eisenstein and Dmitri Vasilyev

5.       The Wizard of Oz (1939) dir. Victor Fleming 

6.       Gone With The Wind (1939) dir. Victor Fleming

7.       Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), dir. Frank Capr

8.      Casablanca (1942) dir. Michael Curtiz 

9.      Hamlet (1948) dir. Laurence Olivier

10. The Bicycle Thief (1948) dir. Vittorio De Sica

11.  Singin' In The Rain (1952) dir. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly 

12. Les Diabolique (1954) (Diabolique) dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot

13.  Rebel Without a Cause (1955) dir. Nicholas Ray

14.  The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957) dir. David Lean 

15. Det sjunde inseglet (1957) (The Seventh Seal) dir. Ingmar Bergman

16.  Some Like It Hot (1959) dir. Billy Wilder

17. La dolce vita (1960) Federico Fellini

18.   Lawrence of Arabia (1962) dir. David Lean

19. 8½ (1963) dir. Federico Fellini

20. Ya shagayu po Moskve (1964) (Walking the Streets of Moscow) dir. Georgi Daneliya

21. Goldfinger (1964) dir. Guy Hamilton

22. Mary Poppins (1964) dir. Robert Stevenson

23. A Hard Day's Night (1964) dir. Richard Lester

24. Operation "Y" & Other Shurik's Adventures (1965) dir. Leonid Gaidai

25. Doctor Zhivago (1965) dir. David Lean

26. Alfie (1966) dir. Lewis Gilbert

27.  Vojna i Mir (1967) (War and Peace) dir. Sergei Bondarchuk

28.  Midnight Cowboy (1969) dir. John Schlesinger 

29.  Briliantovaya Ruka (1968) (The Diamond Arm) dir Leonid Gaidai

30. Beloe solntse pustyni (1970) (White sun of the desert) dir. Vladimir Motyl

31.  A Clockwork Orange (1971) dir. Stanley Kubrick

32. The Last Picture Show (1971) dir. Peter Bogdanovich

33. A zori zdes tikhie (1972) (The Dawns Here Are Quiet) dir. Stanislav Rostotsky

34. Solyaris (1972) Andrei Tarkovski

35. Last Tango in Paris (1972) dir. Bernardo Bertolucci

36.  The Godfather Part dir. II (1974) dir. Francis Ford Coppola

37.  Jaws (1975) dir. Steven Spielberg

38. Zvesda plenitelnogo schastya (1975) (The Star of Fascinating Happiness) dir. Vladimir Motyl

39. The Irony of Fate, or "Enjoy Your Bath" (1975) dir. Eldar Ryazanov

40.  One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975) dir. Milos Forman

41.  Taxi Driver (1976) dir. Martin Scorsese

42.  Annie Hall (1977) dir. Woody Allen 

43. Saturday Night Fever (1977) dir. John Badham

44. The Deer Hunter (1978) dir. Michael Cimino

45. Obyknovennoe chudo (1978) (Ordinary Miracle) dir. Mark Zakharov

46. Tot samyy Myunkhgauzen (1979) (That very Münchhausen) dir. Mark Zakharov

47.  Apocalypse Now (1979) dir. Francis Ford Coppola 

48. Stalker (1979) Andrei Tarkovski

49. Moskva slezam ne verity (1980) (Moscow doesn’t believe in tears) dir. Vladimir Menshov

50.  E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), dir. Steven Spielberg 

51.  Blade Runner (1982), dir. Ridley Scott

52.  Vokzal dlya dvoikh (1982) (A Railway Station for Two) dir. Eldar Ryazanov

53. Scarface (1983) Brian De Palma

54. Zhestokiy romans (1984) (Ruthless Romance) dir. Eldar Ryazanov

55. This Is Spinal Tap (1984) dir. Rob Reiner

56. Amadeus (1984) dir. Milos Forman

57. The Terminator (1984) dir. James Cameron 

58. Idi i smotri (1985) (Go and look; also known as “come and see”) dir. Elem Klimov

59. A Room With A View (1986) dir. James Ivory

60. Blue Velvet (1986) dir. David Lynch

61. Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986) dir. Adrian Lyne

62.  Moonstruck (1987) dir. Norman Jewison

63. Der Himmel Uber Berlin (1987) (Wings of Desire) dir. Wim Wenders

64. The Princess Bride (1987) dir. Rob Reiner

65. Full Metal Jacket (1987) dir. Staley Kubrick

66. Zabytaya melodiya dlya fleyty (1988) (A Forgotten Tune for the Flute) dir. Eldar Ryazanov

67. Cinema Paradiso (1988) dir. Giuseppe Tornatore 

68. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) Pedro Almodovar

69. Rain Man (1988) dir. Barry Levinson

70. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) dir. Philip Kaufman

71. Dangerous Liasons (1988) dir. Stephen Frears

72. When Harry Met Sally (1989) dir. Rob Reiner

73. GoodFellas (1990), dir. Martin Scorsese

74. The Silence of the Lambs (1991), dir. Jonathan Demme

75. True Romance (1993) dir Tony Scott (written by Quentin Tarantino)

76. Short Cuts (1993) dir. Robert Altman

77. The Age of Innocence (1993) dir. Martin Scorsese

78. The Remains of the Day (1993) dir. James Ivory

79. Pulp Fiction (1994), dir. Quentin Tarantino

80. Twelve Monkeys (1995) dir. Terry Gilliam

81. Stealing Beauty (1996) Bernardo Bertoluci

82. Trainspotting (1996) dir. Danny Boyle

83. The English Patient (1996) dir. Anthony Minghella

84. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) dir. Terry Gilliam

85. Run Lola Run (1998) dir. Tom Tykwer

86. Fightclub (1999) dir. David Fincher

87. The Matrix (1999) dirs. Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski

88. Being John Malkovich (1999) dir. Spike Jonze

89. Eyes Wide Shut (1999) dir. Stanley Kubrickir

90. La vita e bella (1997)  ( Life is Beautiful) dir. Roberto Benigni

91. American Psycho (2000) dir. Mary Harron

92. Wo hu cang long (2000) (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) dir. Ang Lee

93. Amelie (2001) dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet

94. Shrek (2001) dirs. Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson

95. The Lord of the Rings (Trillogy)(2001-2003) dir. Peter Jackson

96. Lost in translation (2003) dir. Sofia Coppola

97. Closer (2004) dir. Mike Nichols

98. Bad Education (2004) dir. Pedro Almodovar

99. El laberinto del fauno (2006) (Pan's Labyrinth) dir. Guillermo del Toro

100.         Avatar (2009) James Cameron