Vicissitudes of the Damned: January 2012

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Issue No. 165: Neither A Man Nor A Woman

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus automne-hiver 2012-13 from PREMICES FILMS on Vimeo.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Issue No. 164: "My Pussy is Still in Los Angeles..."

Issue No. 163: Five Favorite Looks from LUST NEVER SLEEPS

Walter von Bierendonck (Fall 2012)

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Issue No. 162: Qasimi Homme: Autumn/Winter 2012 (4 Favorites)

Friday, January 20, 2012

Issue No. 161: The Brilliance of Ziad Ghanem

This post is dedicated to Shawna Lynn Marie Price.

A/W 2011

S/S 2012

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Issue No. 160: Spaces of Life

Spaces of Life: The Art of Sonya Rapoport presents a group of Rapoport's interactive works, created between 1979–2011 that function in the intersection between questioning and inviting.

Recognized for her early embrace of computer technology, in the mid 1970's, and participatory web-based works, Rapoport presents new works alongside earlier ones in an all encompassing installation that fuses the spaces of the museum with the energy of the artist's Berkeley home and studio. Rapoport's work has long operated as a bridge between the public sphere of intellectual curiosity and scholarship and the domestic one of spiritual inquiry and nurturing.

Central to the installation of Rapoport's work at the Mills College Art Museum is Objects on My Dresser (1979–1983), an 11-phase work intended as a kind of conceptual visit to the artist's home and studio. The titular dresser, which has occupied Rapoport's foyer for decades, is installed along with the original objects that sparked her investigation of the connections between symbols, words and ideas. Documentation of "netweb plots" created by Rapoport and by visitors to installations of previous project phases is included along with new plots created with Mills students and museum visitors. Rapoport's work continues to be influenced by a range of disciplines including technology, biochemistry, anthropology, psychology, and feminist studies. Visitors to Spaces of Life are encouraged to engage in ongoing, distributed performance actions that draw on these influences and related imagery.

Sonya Rapoport's sixty-year career spans painting, works on paper, interactive installations and digital works. Rapoport's approach to art-making is naturally diverse, underpinned by her pioneering use of scientific and social science research as the basis for a conceptual practice. Her work reveals deep philosophical and psychological perspectives, humor, expression, and creativity, which she brings to such topical concerns as gender, religion, politics, bioengineering, and the role of technology in contemporary life explored through interactive processes, systems and media.

This exhibition is supported by the Agnes Cowles Bourne Fund for Special Exhibition and the Hezel Family Foundation.

Related Public Programs
Opening Reception & Curator Walk-Through
Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 6–8pm

Objects on My Dresser: Artist Talk and Performance
Sunday, February 12, 2012, 1–3pm
With Sonya Rapoport, Dr. Revathi Vikram, psychiatrist, and gallery visitors.

Pre-Release Book Launch
Pairing of Polarities: The LIfe and Art of Sonya Rapoport, edited by Terri Cohn
Wednesday, March 7, 2012, 7pm
With Malcolm Margolin of Heyday Press.

About the Mills College Art Museum (MCAM)
Founded in 1925, The Mills College Art Museum is a forum for exploring art and ideas and a laboratory for contemporary art practices. Through innovative exhibitions, programs, and collections, the museum engages and inspires the intellectual and creative life of the Mills community as well as the diverse audiences of the Bay Area and beyond.

Contact:
Maysoun Wazwaz, 510-430-3340, mwazwaz@mills.edu

Monday, January 16, 2012

Issue No. 159: Origins

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)
The Origin of the World
1866
Oil on canvas
H. 46; W. 55 cm

L'Origine du monde [The Origin of the World]

The first owner of The Origin of the World, who probably commissioned it, was the Turkish-Egyptian diplomat Khalil-Bey (1831-1879). A flamboyant figure in Paris Society in the 1860s, he put together an ephemeral but dazzling collection devoted to the celebration of the female body, before he was ruined by his gambling debts. Exactly what happened to the painting after that is not clear. Until it joined the collections of the Musée d'Orsay in 1995 – by which time it belonged to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan – The Origin of the World epitomised the paradox of a famous painting that is seldom actually seen.

Courbet regularly painted female nudes, sometimes in a frankly libertine vein. But in The Origin of the World he went to lengths of daring and frankness which gave his painting its peculiar fascination. The almost anatomical description of female sex organs is not attenuated by any historical or literary device. Yet thanks to Courbet's great virtuosity and the refinement of his amber colour scheme, the painting escapes pornographic status. This audacious, forthright new language had nonetheless not severed all links with tradition: the ample, sensual brushstrokes and the use of colour recall Venetian painting and Courbet himself claimed descent from Titian and Veronese, Correggio and the tradition of carnal, lyrical painting.

Image & text borrowed from Musee D'Orsay.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Issue No. 158: Scented Illusions: Avon & Art

Scented Illusions: Avon & Art was a multidisciplinary exhibition utilizing Avon perfume bottles and contemporary art to explore ideas of transformation, value and the absurd. Here is a selection of photos from the opening reception by Daniel Teafoe and Erik Peterson.