Posts by Miss Rosen

Remembering Interview Magazine

Posted on May 29, 2018

Diana Ross on the cover of Interview magazine. Artwork Richard F. Bernstein

Debbie Harry on the cover of Interview magazine. Artwork Richard F. Bernstein

Last week, nearly 50 years after it first launched, Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine announced that it was ceasing publication. The large format periodical, which began as a ‘Monthly Film Journal’ in an effort to entice Hollywood to bankroll and distribute Warhol’s films, evolved over a period of five decades to become ‘The Crystal Ball of Pop’, chronicling the downtown scene.

Interview was the ultimate Warholian project, giving readers insider access to the pop cultural elite through a compelling blend of glamour photography and celebrity-on-celebrity conversations that sprawled decadently across the oversize pages of the magazine. From 1972 to the late 80s, Richard F. Bernstein gave it a stamp of distinction with his exquisitely rendered portraits of everyone from Grace Jones, David Bowie, and Diana Ross to Debbie Harry, Michael Jackson, and Bob Marley, among many others.

Under the auspices of editors like Bob Colacello, Ingrid Sischy, and Glenn O’Brien, Interview constantly reinvented itself, striking the perfect balance between art and celebrity, just like Warhol himself. Here, a handful of editors and contributors share their memories of working alongside Andy, Glenn, and Ingrid over the years.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Grace Jones on the cover of Interview magazine. Artwork Richard F. Bernstein

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther Man, Art, Manhattan

Danny Lyon: The Destruction of Lower Manhattan

Posted on May 26, 2018

Aerial view of Manhattan, 1966–67. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of George Stephanopoulos. © Danny Lyon

In 1966 at the age of 25, American photographer Danny Lyon returned to his native New York at the top of his game. Having completed his work on The Bikeriders and in the Civil Rights Movement as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, settled into an apartment in Lower Manhattan just as the neighbourhood was undergoing radical change.

Under the auspices of David Rockefeller, the Downtown Manhattan Association had been formed as part of a new program of urban renewal. Industries were decamping from Manhattan in search of greener shores, leaving the city abandoned and in an abject state of decay. The financial district was heading to midtown where they could erect shiny new skyscrapers; the Washington Street Market closed after the fruit and vegetable suppliers set up shop in New Jersey. All that remained were 19-century residential and industrial buildings.

Governor Nelson Rockefeller, David’s brother, already had plans for the construction of the World Trade Center in the works, and together they focused on a new vision for downtown New York. A plan was enacted that would wholesale erase the buildings and streets of lower Manhattan and in its place, a new neighbourhood would be built, one designed to attract middle and higher income people in the name of “urban renewal.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

View south from 88 Gold Street, 1966–67. The Cleveland Museum of Art © Danny Lyon

Categories: 1960s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Photography

Olivier Mossett: Wheels

Posted on May 25, 2018

Taken from Wheels by Olivier Mosset © Olivier Mosset, courtesy of Edition Patrick Frey

50 years ago, France was marked by a period of student uprisings known today as ‘May 68’. For nearly two months, millions of people joined in a series of occupations, demonstrations, and general strikes nationwide that brought the country to a halt. The protests ignited an artistic movement that embraced the independent spirit of radicals, rebels, and renegades.

Swiss artist Olivier Mosset was living in Paris at the time and became close with group of bikers who maintained an outlaw lifestyle. When he bought his first motorcycle, a US Army surplus Harley Davidson, he helped start a motorcycle club, a phenomenon wholly unknown in Europe at the time.

Mosset’s studio on the Rue de Lappe doubled up as a hub of radical painting, a garage and a clubhouse for the Marxist-influenced bikers. As a painter, Mosset created monochromatic, geometric abstractions that conceptually reduced the image to its formal roots – and yet he couldn’t deny the allure of the motorcycle. Throughout his career, Mosset found inspiration in its mechanical form, pairing his paintings with sculptural readymades in the mid-90s.

On June 8, Edition Patrick Frey will release Wheels, a retrospective of Mosset’s motorcycle work. Here Mosset looks back on enduring appeal of these icons of outlaw style.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Taken from Wheels by Olivier Mosset © Olivier Mosset, courtesy of Edition Patrick Frey

Categories: 1960s, AnOther Man, Art, Books

Sons of An Illustrious Father: The AnOther Man Interview

Posted on May 24, 2018

Photo: Sons of an Illustrious Father, clockwise from left: Lilah Larson, Josh Aubin and Ezra MillerPhotography Michael J Fox, Styling Melissa Levy

Inside Lincoln Station, a coffee bar a couple of blocks away from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Sons of an Illustrious Father have assembled to discuss their new LP, Deus Sex Machina: Or, Moving Slowly Beyond Nikola Tesla, which releases June 1 on their own label in conjunction with Believe.

Now entering their tenth year, the close-knit trio of Lilah Larson, Josh Aubin and Ezra Miller seamlessly flow in conversation as in song, picking up each others sentences and trading quips about their aspirational Muppets.

For the record, Aubin, who wears glasses and sports a full beard, solemnly decrees, “I am Kermit. Kermit is me.” Miller, who is effortlessly chic in a long black coat, “was born in Animal, with a rising in Miss Piggy,” while Larson, who has short hair with a glorious swoop in front, claims Gonzo, “the queer Muppet, obviously.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Categories: AnOther Man, Music

Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings

Posted on May 23, 2018

Sally Mann. Bean’s Bottom, 1991. Silver dye bleach print, 49.5 × 49.5 cm (19 1/2 × 19 1/2 in.) Private collection. © Sally Mann

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” William Faulkner wrote in the 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun. He understood the ways in which history is ever present to the point in which it casts a long shadow over our daily lives. It lingers and mingles until it dyes the color of our thoughts, camouflaging itself by hiding in plain sight.

Faulkner understood the nature of the American South, a land shrouded in myth and mystique, nestled in layers of illusion and untold histories. For the novelist, the South was not so much a place as it was an “emotional idea,” one that could be mined endlessly for stories that evoke the truth about who we were – and who we are.

American photographer Sally Mann shares this knowledge of the South. A native Virginia born in a hospital that had once been Stonewall Jackson’s home, Mann’s work is infused with mix of romantic and Gothic sensibilities that underscore her southern roots. In every image there is a sense of a past so profound that it pulls the present backwards until the very sense of when these images were made melts away.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Sally Mann (American, born 1951) On the Maury, 1992, gelatin silver print, Private collection. © Sally Mann

Categories: Art, Books, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Photography

Marina Muhlfriedel & Genevive Schorr: Backstage Pass

Posted on May 22, 2018

L to R: Backstage Pass band members Spock, Marina, Holly, and Genny (1977) © Jenny Lens, Punk Pioneers

One night in late 1975, Marina Muhlfriedel went to the Whisky a Go Go on LA’s Sunset Strip to check out the Runaways, a new girl band fronted by Joan Jett. Her excitement quickly faded when she realized their notorious manager Kim Fowley had the band playing into sex kitten stereotypes.

After the show, Muhlfriedel gathered her girlfriends at the Rainbow Bar & Grill and they decided to do better. As fate would have it, Rodney Bingenheimer—a DJ and radio personality famous for breaking bands like Blondie and the Ramones—passed by the table. “Hey Rodney,” Muhlfriedel called out, “I just started a new girl band!” He asked their name, and she blurted out the first thing that came to mind: Backstage Pass.

The band started getting buzz before they even started rehearsing. But by 1976, they were on their way, becoming one of the earliest bands in the LA punk scene and the city’s first mostly-female punk band. (Aside from a male drummer, the four main band members were women.)

In its heyday, Backstage Pass toured California, playing alongside bands like Devo, Elvis Costello, the Screamers, the Weirdos, and the Nuns. They also helped build and launch The Masque, a legendary Hollywood punk club, before the band dissolved in 1979.

VICE recently caught up with two key members of the band, Muhlfriedel (Marina del Rey) and Genny Schorr (Genny Body) about what it’s like being a punk pioneer and a woman in a male-dominated scene.

Read the Full Story at VICE Online

L: Tommy Gear (The Screamers) and Genny at Bomp Records (The Damned Instore), April 16, 1977. R: Joey Ramone, Genny, Arturo Vega Backstage at The Whisky, February 1977 © Jenny Lens, Punk Pioneers

L: Genny and Marina at Screamers Party Hollywood Hills with Billy Zoom (of the punk band X) and Top Jimmy, 1977. R: Holly Vincent backstage at Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco for a Backstage Pass show with Mumps, June 1977. © Jenny Lens, Punk Pioneers

Categories: 1970s, Music, Vice, Women

Hilma af Klint: Mundos Possiveis

Posted on May 21, 2018

Ain’t nothinn like getting the 25th anniversary issue of BUST Magazine in the mail and thinking on all the amazing work Laurie Henzel & Emily Rems have done throughout the years.

In one of those episodes of Psychic Friends Network, a little over a year ago I started saying, “I really want to write for BUST!” Then, a couple of weeks later Laurie hit me up with a plum assignment and we kept it moving from there.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to write a piece for the new issue on Hilma af Klint, the European painter whose abstract work predates that of Kandinsky et al. But she kept it under wraps throughout her life – and following her death as The High Masters advised.

The spirits understood the world as not ready for a woman to bring this to the world, and it is only now that historians are beginning to page through some 26,000 pages of notes and 1,200 works of art from this secret series.

What most touches me is the message that she brings to us: the resolution of contradiction and conflict through the understanding that life is an ever shifting balance of complements.

Categories: Art, Bust, Painting

Susan Meiselas: Mediations

Posted on May 21, 2018

Self-Portrait, from the series 44 Irving Street, 1971. © Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos

For more than 40 years, American photographer Susan Meiselas has grounded her work in the idea of place. Whether working on the front lines of civil war in Nicaragua or backstage with carnival strippers in New England, Meiselas is fully present in the moment, seeing not just the surface of things but that which lies beneath – the spirit within the flesh and bone that continues to live in her photographs long after they are made.

Mediations, her newest book (Damiani/Jeu de Paume/Fundació Tàpies) traces her singular journey across time and space, exploring the ways in which the photograph works as object, art, and evidence. The book, which accompanies a touring exhibition that will open at SFMoMA on July 21, is not so much a catalogue as it is a meditation on the threads that weave the complex tapestry of Meiselas’ career.

In it, a variety of writers offer their take on the issues that inform the questions at the heart of her work; such the language of the body, the meaning of place, the position of the photographer, and the legacy of documentary work. They also begin to consider the ways in which the photograph works as a book or a print, a scan or a memory.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

BOOM FOR REAL: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat

Posted on May 18, 2018

(L.) Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1979. Featured in the Zeitgeist art exhibition. (R.) Jean-Michel Basquiat in BOOM FOR REAL: THE LATE TEENAGE YEARS OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo Credit: © Alexis Adler. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

In the 1970s, the streets of New York were crumbling under the weight of the systemic denial of basic government services under a policy of “benign neglect.” As white flight took effect, landlords hired arsonists to torch their buildings, knowing they could collect more for insurance than from rent checks, while Nixon’s White House criminalized and disrupted the city under the guise of the “War on Drugs.” Then, when all hope seemed lost, President Ford dropped the death knell, refusing to bail the city out of financial crisis.

Yet within the waves of destruction, a new world began to take shape, one created by the youth who understood that necessity is the mother of invention. With nothing left to lose, they began to create grassroots cultures that would take the world by storm in the form of hip-hop, graffiti, punk, and No Wave. During the late 70s and early 80s, these scenes came together, mixing and remixing into original new forms, spawning a new breed of artist best exemplified by Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Although he died in 1987 at the age of 27, his legacy looms large, inspiring new generations who recognize that the issues he addressed 30 years ago—like police brutality, erasure of African-American history, and the commodification of art—remain unresolved. Driven by a desire to unearth the roots of Basquiat’s creativity, filmmaker Sara Driver created the documentary BOOM FOR REAL: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which explores the artist’s life and legacy through those who knew him best.

Driver also teamed up with culture critic Carlo McCormick and Mary-Ann Monforton, the associate publisher of BOMB magazine, to curate Zeitgeist: The Art Scene of Teenage Basquiat, a group art exhibition featuring Basquiat’s friends and contemporaries, including Nan Goldin, Kenny Scharf, Al Diaz, and Lee Quiñones at Howl! Happening gallery in New York.

Driver spoke with VICE about Basquiat’s New York, a playground for visionaries from all walks of life that continues to speak truth to power today.

Read the Full Story at VICE

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Manhattan, Vice

More is Less

Posted on May 17, 2018

Elena Dorfman. Valentine 4 from Still Lovers Series 2001. Courtesy of the artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery, copyright Elena Dorfman

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” Leonardo da Vinci observed, affirming the profound understanding of nature of truth. The pure distillation of idea is its highest form, allowing it to be perceived and understood universally without being corrupted or contaminated by complications.

But capturing the essence is far harder than it looks. It requires equal parts discernment and discipline to remove the contamination of irrational thought. In the best possible circumstance, this poses a fitting challenge to the mind, forcing the flabby ego to acknowledge its shortcomings and do the heavy lifting necessary to comprehend the parameters of reality for it must be said: we must conform to truth; it will never adapt to us.

Such infinite exactitude takes years of mastery. It hardly comes as a surprise that the “simple” is maligned as something foolish and half-witted, dull and plain, or wholly undesirable – while complicated masquerades as cosmopolitan. Forget the fact that Byzantine thinking creates entanglements that keep people trapped in losing paradigms, that the labyrinth of logic thinking that follows a false premise results in dependency and weakness – merely consider how disempowering it is to be trapped by a mind that isn’t able to distinguish fact from fiction.

Read the Full Story at King Kong

Categories: Critical Essays, King Kong

LES YES!: Meryl Meisler 1970s & 80s Lower East Side Photos

Posted on May 17, 2018

100 years ago, New York’s Lower East Side (LES) was the pre-eminent melting pot – a mixture of old and new immigrants leaving Europe en masse, creating a singular blend of Ashkenazi Jews, Germans, Italians, Greeks, Russians, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Poles, and Romanians. With some 400,000 Jews living in the hood, the Ashkenazi made up one of the largest groups in the LES, bringing their unique spin on old-world culture to the city that never sleeps.

A neighbourhood with a leaning towards radical politics, the LES helped foster a new culture rooted in housing reform following the publication of Jacob A. Riis’ 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives, which documented the horrors of people forced to live in slums. The New Law Tenements passed in 1901 resulted in the construction of settlement houses – such as the Henry Street Settlement on Grand Street – which transformed living conditions for the working class, and has continued to serve the community for generations.

In 1976, a young Jewish-American photographer named Meryl Meisler began frequenting art events at the Henry Street Settlement, where her cousin and roommate taught art. Here, she met Mr Morris Katz, the self-proclaimed Mayor of Grand Street. A retired widower who once worked at Coney Island guessing weights, Mr Katz cut a striking figure that could best be described as Yiddish chic. Donning a sports jacket over a zebra-patterned shirt, patterned bow tie and plaid pants, Mr Katz warmly greeted Meisler at the street corner and offered her a lollipop. She was instantly charmed.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Photography