Lyonel Feininger at Harvard Art Museum

Untitled (Night View of Trees, Burgkühnauer, Dessau)1928

Harvard Art Museum is celebrating a collection of Lyonel Feininger's photography through June 2nd, 2012.

I've for some time been interested in Feininger (1871–1956) as a dynamic creative talent of the modern art movement in Germany during the 1920's and 30's who is mostly known as a prominent artist of figurative painting, and a unique style of cubism, he also created a notable body of photographic work that is practically unknown. Pulled mostly from his own collection, now at Houghton library at Harvard University, the selections in this exhibition offers the first opportunity to reflect upon his personal triumph within photography. These works were a very personal project for Feininger, never really a focus in his outward creative life and never really being shown before in such a collection.  Centering on the diverse and productive period between 1928 and the late 1930s, when Feininger was experimenting with a variety of avant-garde photographic techniques at the time. When Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Germany in 1919, Feininger was his first faculty appointment, and then became the master artist in charge of the printmaking workshop. Feininger picked up the use of the camera while at the Bauhaus in 1928. These photographs are in the range from early atmospheric night views made around the facilities as well as interesting shots of  Walter Gropius' architecture at the institution.

Feininger's Leica camera equipment 1920's 30's

 We also see in some of the works a revealing interest in decaying architecture and avenues as well as an eerie selection of reflective shots through shop windows featuring moody female forms and artifices. After settling in NYC in 1937 he continued in photography and we can see elevated hard angled views of New York City rail systems giving a unique sense of imbalance or struggle of purpose are on display. Many of the angular architectural and layered reflected images are an obvious reminder of the hard edges and layered painterly effects he employed in his famous cubist paintings.  In an adjacent room of the exhibit space are examples of Feininger's equally enticing paintings and caricature images.  The exhibit is an interesting peek into a formerly private,  very personal creative works from a leading artist in the modern era of the first part of the 20th century.
Go to Harvard Art Museums

My 30 years with ON-U Sound

"This is the precinct of sound!"
ON-U Sound Records has been celebrating their 30th anniversary this past year.  It occurs to me that I too can celebrate my 30th anniversary with the mighty ON-U Sound Records.  As I recall I purchased my very first ON-U Sound record in 1982.  It was the remarkable, groundbreaking "Starship Africa" from Creation Rebel. I followed quickly with a succession of other ON-U artists the New Age Steppers, then Dub Syndicate, African Headcharge, Singers and Players, The Missing Brazillians, Mark Stewart + Maffia, TackHead, Strange Parcels, Audio Active, Little Axe, Two Badcard and so on.  The founding dub master and producer of the label, Adrian Sherwood, had me hooked with his idiosyncratic detailed dub rhythms embedded in roots reggae, funk and island music. A master of sampling and the ultimate groove Mr. Sherwood has indeed made his mark on independent music for 3 decades. Sherwood's knack for finding the most obscure vocal and audio samples apparently snagged from films, recorded speeches and radio is unrivaled.  Enlisting respected musicians and vocalists such as Style Scott, Erol Holt, Prince Far I,  Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Bim Sherman, as well as Hip Hop pioneers Keith LeBlanc, Doug Wimbish and Skip McDonald to name a few, he has produced some of the most memorable albums of the past 30 years.  Generally  related to DUB, the label has managed a much broader footprint in the musical landscape with numerous artists working in punk, ska as well as pop,  hip-hop, techno, industrial, and funk. ON-U and Adrian Sherwood have delivered on what I see as dub's universal experimentation and neo-dadaist association with sound effects, rhythm, sampling and audio sculpture.

Brother Culture & Adrian Sherwood

Sherwood and the label's influence can be heard today in all manner of dub,  reggae, jungle, experimental, dub-step, drum and bass, electronica, hip hop, DJ and dance music the world over.  Two new ON-U releases from Little Axe and Lee Perry are burning up my playlist right now.  I had the privilege of seeing Sherwood's live set, supported by Brother Culture in Boston MA this past September 2011 as part of the Dub Invasion Festival. I'm still in recovery!  I've selected a quote attributed to Mr. Sherwood that captures some of the experience; "Music is lovely because it stimulates people, superficial music doesn't. If you make something that you put your heart and soul into and really try to push it so it leaps out the speakers at you, and if there's a good feel to it, then you've achieved something." 

Leaping out of the speakers indeed! ON-U Sound has been leaping out of my speakers for 30 years now and counting.

Thanks for 30 years and beyond in dub sound! Cheers!  
Happy New Year!

Visit ON-U Sound

Max Beckmann @ The Saint Louis Art Museum.

St. Louis Art Museum holds the world's largest collection of Max Beckmann paintings. These works are an absolute treasure trove and a real feather in the cap for that museum.  Whenever I visit STL I make a pilgrimage to view these wonderful paintings. Beckman was influential to me in my studies and holds a special place in my creative perspective. His rich handling of thick paint and texture, crazed whores, fishermen, clowns, laborers, circus performers and kings are haunting as well as absurd. Obviously his influence over modern painting can go with out saying, at least by me.  As many of us know Beckmann was a leading German modernist/expressionist whose work was deemed perverse by Nazi Germany in the 1930's and he fled to the United States after WWII. "Beckmann spent the years of World War Two in Germany, outlawed by Hitler from exhibiting, but his paintings, though branded as "degenerate by the Third Reich, were never confiscated or destroyed. He was drafted, but rejected as unfit. After the war he came to America where he and his wife lived in Missouri. Beckman was a Painter in residence at Washington University in St. Louis" Richard E. Schiff ASL SoHo ART. Thus through a local collector SLAM obtained the bulk of Beckman's prominent works.
This ongoing gallery exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum is a must see! Go to SLAM http://www.slam.org

Sarah Frost @ the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO.

Part of the Great Rivers Biennial 2010.  Sarah brings us hand made paper replicas of weapons.  "Arsenal" is a sculptural installation depicting violence made impotent through cut paper and tape.  The viewer enters into a floating canyon of AK-47's, Uzis, Tech 9's, handguns, hunting rifles, 50-caliber tripod mounted machine guns, Thompson sub-machine guns and grenade launchers and shells.  This reminds me of sort of an absurd child's mobile floating over a crib.  I was amused and moved by the broader implications of tools of violence depicted in such a harmless and whimsical way. Given that our nation is in a state of perpetual war and our citizens are all too often killed and mutilated by our own homegrown gun violence, the installation possesses broad implications in regard to the impact of guns and violence in our collective consciousness. Born out of adolescents building paper weapons found on YouTube. These images deliver yet another element of innocence to serious and dangerous subject matter.Visit www.camstl.org and www.sarahfrost.info/

David Bates @ the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. 
Bates delivers yet again a startling glimpse of realism through rich textural portraits. These paintings are not only portraits of people in anguish because of their surroundings, but something beyond. Something that can speak to all of us. Ok, yeah, we have seen photos of the pain and suffering of our neighbors who dealt with Hurricane Katrina, but Bate's representation of that pain and the people who have endured and continue to endure it is manifest. Made whole in the depth of pigment and texture and color and dynamic that can only be found in fine painting. These moving portrayals are found for now at the amazing Kemper Museum in Kansas City, MO. Please visit http://www.kemperart.org

Chakia Booker @ deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum

Enormous, bio-morphic, monstrous, articulate, rubbery, aggressive, beautiful!  Booker's large scale sculptures fabricated from truck and car tires form a thought provoking forest of harrowing and dynamic creatures. Densely packed with interwoven strips and segments of petroleum by-product they stare back at us and tower over us perhaps reflecting something in our collective love affair with vehicles,  waste, organic sensuality and our over consumptive industrial lifestyle. Beautiful and organic they give a strange connection between the natural and the man-made.  Booker's work is also directly reflective of African textile art and garments providing a dialogue about history, tradition, African American cultural dynamics in our industrialized western culture. Chakia Booker's "In and Out" On view, May 15th through August 29th 2010 at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln MA....

Visit deCordova.org
Be there...ALoha
http://www.StevenDuede.com

Almodovar's "Broken Embraces"
In  case you missed this film at the Cinema give this one a download or rental.  Pop it to the top of the list on your netflix que.  Once again Almodovar has given us a beautiful multi-layered deeply romantic love story.  Moving and sensuous this story features what you expect from this master of film. A sterling performance from Penelope Cruz whose portrayal of an actress, lover, manipulator and victim is one of the great screen performances of 2009.  Rich in texture and color, romance and mystery, Pedro and Penelope deliver yet again a thought provoking and insightful story that brings a contemplative perspective on love, passion, family and film.  Vavava-voom! go to--Broken Embraces

TRiiiBE at Gallery Kayafas!
Questioning identity, beauty, gender, power, economics and sensuality the Casilio triplets again bring serious subjects to us in a powerful and at times amusing way.  Staged by TRiiiBE and Photographed by Cary Wolinsky the rich large format photographs present dramatic images of iconic symbols in pop culture from beauty queens to criminals, middle aged men in wood paneled basements to pregnant punks and the condemned. We find barmaids to clergymen and as ever a striking resemblance to one another.  Dramatic and gussied up the triplets look amazing!  No surprise there.  TRiiiBE is on view at Gallery Kayafas, 450 Harrison Ave. Boston, through May 29th.  Visit http://gallerykayafas.com/

Visit TRiiiBE's outstanding website at http://triiibe.com 

Oh also, these ladies are super nice!