Posts by Miss Rosen

The 10 Best Art Books of 2017

Posted on December 21, 2017

Artwork: The Spanish Family, 1943. Oil on canvas. © The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy David Zwirner Books and Victoria Miro. From Alice Neel, Uptown (David Zwirner Books)

As the year comes to a close, the one thing we may all agree on is that 2017 has introduced “the new normal.” Forget how it’s supposed to be, this is how it is. Information and disinformation moves at the speed of light in a constant onslaught, spinning through your space like a tornado over and over again. It’s enough to drain and depress, if you allow yourself to get caught in its relentless grip.

The best way to deal with things out of your control is to redirect your energy into what is within your purview. The things you read and surround yourself with can energize, uplift, inspire, enlighten, educate, and empower you. To that end, we may turn (even return) to books for solace, wisdom, and insight from those who have been here before and had the presence of mind to record their insights.

Crave selects the 10 best art books of 2017, with an eye towards hope, justice, and understanding who we are and where we’ve been so that we know where we’re going for the sake of our own – as well as future generations.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Farah Behbehani, Love rests on no foundation II.
From Signs of Our Times: From Calligraphy to Caligraffiti (Merrell).
Read more at http://www.craveonline.com/art/1355547-10-best-art-books-2017#iCuHZWmeUhBWIBgZ.99

Categories: Art, Books, Crave

Stephen Shore at the Museum of Modern Art

Posted on December 20, 2017

American photographer Stephen Shore, now 70, began his career as a child prodigy, getting his start at just 14 years old when Edward Steichen, then the director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired his work. Three years later, in 1965, he walked into Andy Warhol’s famed silver Factory and spent the next two years fully immersed and documenting the scene, thinking about how artists worked and applying those lessons to his career.

By the age of 24, Shore had fully arrived, with his first solo photography exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ushering in a new era of photography. By this time, Shore was working in colour – which, hard to imagine now, was an extremely radical move. Using a wide array of photographic formats and mediums, he created monumental scenes from everyday life. Shore’s America is a portrait of the grandeur that lies in the most mundane of moments.

As a result of the inscrutable nature of his work due to its level of detachment, Shore’s work has been largely misunderstood, for in his seeming objectivity he captures the enigmatic qualities of the vernacular world. Curator Quentin Bajac makes sense of it all in the new exhibition Stephen Shore, currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art through May 28, 2018.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Huck, Photography

~~ Astrology Post ~~

Posted on December 19, 2017

I got into astrology cause my grandmother day a tin filled with sewing supplies that I used to use back in the days. The tin was designed with the 12 signs of the Zodiac, and I liked the fact that my sign, Virgo, was meant to work in literature.

As years went on, I wasn’t really feeling it. Neurotic virgin. Not a hot look. Yea, there were things that sounded like me (analytical, critical, organized) but I was an emo mess, whereas Virgo was cool and unbothered. I was an exhibitionist, whereas Virgo was ever-so modest. I was like, this some ol’ BS.

But that’s because I didn’t know about birth charts, houses, and aspects as well as the transits of the planets that were happened every moment I am on earth. I just read 30 words in the Daily News (back when people touched newsprint), and I was like, “This is meaningless.”

But then I started getting these amazing astrology books at Unoppressive Non-imperialist Bargain Books over on Carmine Street (a West Village institution still in business!). I got sucked in. Then the Internet happened, and I did my chart. I found astrologers to read. I felt exposed. But also informed. I immediately began to see results, so I kept going.

What drew me in is that it’s based on astronomy. The Western* zodiac is drawn from Greeks and Babylonian astronomy dating back to 1000 B.C. It refers to an elliptic coordinate system of the sky 8 degrees north of the earth, that the moon and all planets orbit as the earth revolves around the sun.

The zodiac is divided into twelve 30-degree sections and the signs refer to specific constellations within each section. Their shape of the constellation suggests the form they take: the ram, the bull, twin boys, the crab, the lion, a woman, a pair of scales, the scorpion, the centaur, the goat, a man, and the fish. Each of these signs has a healthy and unhealthy manifestation, which is why they are easily loved and loathed.

That’s just the start of the story. Each planet refers to a specific aspect of our internal self that can work for us – or against us. The Sun is the self as “I” – the essence. The moon is the personal self, laid up at home, who they are in privacy. Mercury is the way we communicate. Venus is the feminine: love and beauty. Mars is the masculine: lust and aggression. Jupiter is good fortune through operating principle. Saturn is strategy, structure, and defense.

Then the last three are generational, and more abstract. Uranus is rebellion and transformation. Neptune is trippy: dreams, psychic powers, illusion and confusion. Pluto is renewal and rebirth.

Lastly, your Rising (the zodiac sign on the horizon the moment you were born) indicates how you appear and respond in public. Click here to get your birth chart.

The moment you were born, each planet was in a specific sign, at an exact degree. This is your birth chart. It has all the coordinates you need. It will tell you about yourself: how and why you function, the source of strength and weaknesses, habitual behaviors and beliefs, the source of your inner conflicts, and how to resolve them. Then there are the Houses, which speak to aspects of your life (Home, Health, Family, Relationships, Work, etc), which are determined by your Rising sign.

But there is way more to astrology than reading your chart. A lot has happened since you were born. These planets stay in transit, creating new energetic relationships that you can tap into if you so desire. I look at it as a flow of information at my disposal.

For example, tonight at 11:49 pm EST, Saturn moves into Capricorn. Each sign has a planet who rules it, and when Saturn for three years, until December 2020. This is a kick ass period for anyone who is down to step their game up.

Once you know your birth chart, you can investigate other placements and planetary transits to investigate your conflicts and maximize your potential. Here, finding an astrologist or two is helpful. They put out tons of free content online and on social media, and you can get a personal reading, if you’re so inclined.

I prefer to do it myself. I get more out of it this way. You don’t have to do much to get something out of it, provided you keep an open mind and ask questions you want answers to. And, what’s more, when you get comfortable, you can read other people. Got me feelinn like I’m at the Regal Beagle talking about, “Hey, what’s your sign?”

*The zodiac we use is the Western version. There are also ancient Chinese, Mayan, Egyptian, and African versions that I know little to nothing of.

Categories: Astrology

Lucas Foglia: Human Nature

Posted on December 19, 2017

Photo: Maddie with invasive water lilies, North Carolina. © Lucas Foglia, courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery, London.

On average, Americans spend 93 per cent of their lives indoors. The lack of exposure to the most basic elements of nature takes its toll, as we drift away from our true selves and adapt to the human-made world. To maintain this unnatural environment known as “progress,” we consume larger quantities of fossil fuels, adding to the greenhouse emissions heating the earth and fostering climate change. The result is a cycle that we need to break in order to save the earth as well as improve our health.

“The news has a tendency to talk about climate change like a cliff that we’re about to fall off of,” American photographer Lucas Foglia observes. “I think climate change is a bumpy road that if we keep on driving down, we will ruin our ability to go further. At the same time, we are able to slow down and make changes and those changes are important. The average person can change their behaviour and in aggregate we can make a global difference.”

Foglia grew up on a small farm bordered by a forest, just 30 miles east of New York City – a far enough distance for him to have a distinctive formative experience. In 2006, he began taking pictures of people in nature, exploring how spending time in wild places changes us and allows us to access a deeper, more primal self. He photographed not only human activities but the landscape as well, showing the interplay between men and women with forests, deserts, ice fields, and oceans.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: Art, Books, Huck, Photography

The 10 Best Photography Books of 2017

Posted on December 18, 2017

Photo: © Susan Meiselas. From Susan Meiselas: Prince Street Girls (TBW Books).

The photography book is like a repository of soul, a place where spirits linger long after they have left the mortal realm. Here a fragment of time is frozen forevermore so that we may gaze upon it with awe, with understanding, with curiosity and questions. It is a magical space where three dimension become two, and we can transport into other eras and other realms, into private lives and public spheres of influence.

When collected as a book, the photograph takes on another role: it becomes evidence of the past and a message to the future. It becomes something we bring into our homes and set on our shelves, awaiting the moment we choose to pick it up and nestle it on our laps, absorbing each image page by page in quiet contemplation of wisdom that speaks beyond words.

Crave has selected ten of the best photography books of 2017 that speak to who we are and where we’re been to help us understand where we’re going in 2018.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Photography

Zackary Drucker: Future Gender

Posted on December 15, 2017

Photo: Amos Mac and Juliana Huxtable, Rest, 2013. Courtesy the artists

Photo: Nelson Morales, Dear Mother, Unión Hidalgo, Oaxaca, 2016. Courtesy the artist

Newton’s third law, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” goes far beyond the scope of physics. We can see it in all areas of life, perhaps most clearly where oppression exists and takes root.

Last month, American Danica Roem was elected Virginia’s first trans state legislator – unseating Bob Marshall, the man who sponsored the state’s transgender bathroom bill banning trans students from using public facilities that corresponded to their gender identity and required administrators to out trans students to their parents.

Marshall’s efforts to deny fundamental human rights – life, liberty, and privacy – were the ultimate cause of his downfall, helping to bring forth a new era in the fight for trans rights and queer visibility as gender pioneers continue to push beyond the binary of the masculine-feminine divide.

As photography has shown throughout its 180-year history, representation has the power to influence ideas, beliefs, behaviours, and ultimately, laws and society around the world. This winter, Aperture magazine introduces “Future Gender,” a new issue dedicated to the representation of trans and gender-nonconforming lives, communities, and histories.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Sabelo Mlangeni, Iduku, Tshepo, 2011, from the series Black Men in Dress. Courtesy of the artist and ICA.

Categories: Art, Dazed, Photography

Alexander Thompson: Inside the Latinx Rockabilly Revolution

Posted on December 14, 2017

Photo: Constancio in leather, Las Vegas, 2005. © Alexander Thompson.

Chicos in plaid Western shirts spotted on way to car show, Las Vegas, 2005. © Alexander Thompson.

In the 1950s, Rockabilly music burst on the scene in the form of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, and Bill Haley. Coming out of the American South, it fused country music with rhythm & blues, bluegrass, and boogie woogie into a sound all its own.

But it wasn’t just a sound: it was a style and attitude as well, defined by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Marlon Brando in The Wild One. It was leather jackets and jeans, pompadours and tattoos, pin-up girls and burlesque, hot rods and drag races. It was an act of defiance against an oppressive society.

In the decades since, Rockabilly has taken different forms, enjoying a resurgence in the 1970s with the Teddy Boys and Girls in London and an American revival with the Stray Cats during the 1980s. Since then, it’s maintained its place among subcultures, paying homage to the roots of teenage rebellion in music, fashion, and cars – most notably among the Latinx community on the West Coast.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Photo: Paulina dancing with beau, Las Vegas, 2006. © Alexander Thompson.

Turban head, Las Vegas, 2010. © Alexander Thompson.

Categories: Art, Huck, Music, Photography

Deviant Desires: A Tour of the Erotic Edge

Posted on December 12, 2017

Artwork: © Ron H

Katharine Gates made Furries a household name, being the first person to document this curious kink in her landmark book Deviant Desires (Juno Books, 2000). But Furries were far from the only fetish Gates researched at length, as she delved into the lives of Sploshers, Crushers, Balloonatics, Pony Players, Feeders & Gainers, and Adult Babies with exquisite care, bringing the world of kink out from behind closed doors.

Now Gates returns with Deviant Desires: A Tour of the Erotic Edge (powerHouse Books), a revised and updated version featuring new chapters on Cannibals and Foot Fetishists. Beautifully illustrated with new images that are the perfect mix of the sexy, sensual, and subversive, Deviant Desires will satisfy your inquisitive mind with fascinating stories from the sexual fringe.

“Most people are aware of the Internet’s Rule #34: ‘If it’s out there someone is making porn of it,’” Gates observes. “Kinky people are no longer thinking they are all alone in their idiosyncratic interest. Isolation is a terrible, dangerous thing. They are able to connect with other people and get support as well as tips for how to act on fantasies safely and consensually.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: Books, Huck

Altered States: The Library of Julio Santo Domingo

Posted on December 12, 2017

Photo: Still Kicking, a Polaroid of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat taken shortly before his death from a heroin overdose in 1988.Taken from Altered States: The Library of Julio Santo Domingo

Weed. Acid. Coke. Opium. Erotica. The Occult. There are many paths to achieve an altered state where mind and body blast off, leaving behind the mind-numbing banality of everday life. Fascinated by the possibilities of achieving transcendence on earth, Julio Santo Domingo (1957-2009) amassed the greatest private collection of sex, drugs, rock, and magic in the world – featuring some 100,000 books and objects by luminaries from Andy Warhol, Timothy Leary, and the Marquis de Sade to Charles Baudelaire, The Rolling Stones, and Aleister Crowley to name just a few.

Writer Peter Watts teamed up with designer Yolanda Cuomo to create Altered States: The Library of Julio Santo Domingo (Anthology Editions), the definitive book drawn from the collection, which now resides at Harvard University. Here, alongside a preview of images from the book, which has just been released, Watts tells us about Santo Domingo’s passion for enchantments of all sorts.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Office wall in Geneva illustrating both Julio Santo Domingo’s eclectic, unorthodox hanging style and the wide range of material in the library. Note the stone phallus in the center of the pictureTaken from Altered States: The Library of Julio Santo Domingo

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, AnOther Man, Art, Books, Painting, Photography

Magnum Contact Sheets

Posted on December 11, 2017

We would like to believe that photographs convey an element of truth, that in the fraction of a second recorded for posterity, we have captured something that lies beyond mere celluloid of digital technology – something we can gaze upon and discover verifiable facts, unearth an ineffable aspect of reality that lies beneath the surface.

Perhaps this is possible, in as much as we wish to believe it so, but when we consider that the single frame lies in a larger body of work can we be absolutely sure that we’re not being guided by the aesthetic power of the form. Are we not sentient beings whose powers and perceptions of sight heavily influenced by the perfection of the art?

It may be the best way to know is to consider the context, in as much as it is available to us: the circumstances of the moment, the players, the photographer themselves. And, if we are to consider the artist, where does this image fall, not only within their oeuvre but more specifically in project from which it is drawn? This is where the contact sheet comes in.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Avram Finkelstein: After Silence – A History of AIDS Through Its Images

Posted on December 11, 2017

Kissing Doesn’t Kill, Gran Fury, 1989–1990, For Art Against AIDS On The Road.

During the early years of the AIDS crisis, when an HIV positive diagnosis meant certain and gruesome death, Avram Finkelstein became a pivotal figure in ACT UP, the direct action advocacy group that worked tirelessly to combat U.S. government silence around the disease.

“Power structures count on our silence, but that doesn’t mean we’re obliged to give it to them,” Finkelstein remembers. “Raising your voice is a tremendous threat, and it’s the only threat you ever have to make.”

As co-founder of the collective Silence = Death and member of the art group Gran Fury, Finkelstein worked tirelessly to raise awareness and fight the power through a powerful combination of art and activism. “When words and images are combined, their power increases exponentially,” Finkelstein explains. “We thought: Why not just sell political agency the same way everything else is sold to us?”

During his years in the trenches, Finkelstein kept a journal documenting his work, which became the basis for After Silence: A History of AIDS Through Its Images (University of California Press). “I wrote After Silence so activists in the middle of the 21st century might be able to reinvigorate the political lessons these images contain, and see them as acts of strategic resistance that relate to struggles we have yet to imagine,” Finkelstein reveals.

Here, Finkelstein shares tips for artist-activists working today to fight the power.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Artwork: Silence = Death, The Silence = Death Project, 1987, poster, offset lithography.

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Huck