An exhibition featuring artwork by the late outsider artist Daniel Johnston is opening at Electric Lady Studios in New York City.
Dubbed Daniel Johnston: Psychedelic Drawings, the exhibit comprises over 30 works and was curated by cartoonist, painter designer, and musician Gary Panter. As a release notes, Johnston often worked with Magic Marker and his work frequently incorporated pop culture characters like Casper the Friendly Ghost.
“In Johnston’s vocabulary, Satan and Captain America are not jokes; they embody internal virtues, aspirations, fears, and resistance that he himself lived out,” Panter said.
Dubbed Daniel Johnston: Psychedelic Drawings, the exhibit comprises over 30 works and was curated by cartoonist, painter designer, and musician Gary Panter. As a release notes, Johnston often worked with Magic Marker and his work frequently incorporated pop culture characters like Casper the Friendly Ghost.
“In Johnston’s vocabulary, Satan and Captain America are not jokes; they embody internal virtues, aspirations, fears, and resistance that he himself lived out,” Panter said.
- 1/12/2021
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
It’s March 17th and if there’s any one, basic, simple apolitical truth we can all agree on, it’s this: You know about the coronavirus. It sounds reductionist to the point of moronic; even the most doltish Neanderthal or Henry Darger-worshipping recluse knows that the world is facing a major pandemic that requires outreach, unity, and physical isolation on a global, unprecedented scale. Whether you’re a responsible social distancer or an asshole who has to get that one last pub crawl in, the sole commonality is that this virus exists.
- 3/17/2020
- by Jason Newman
- Rollingstone.com
“With Stop Making Sense, we brought everything onstage so people could see what it takes to put on a show, and with this, I’m taking everything away,” David Byrne says of American Utopia, his quasi-theatrical Broadway residency, which is scheduled to run into next year. “I wondered, ‘Can we do a show where it’s just us, the musicians, and none of the other stuff?’ If you do something simple, it’s sometimes really hard. But I think audiences appreciate it when nobody’s trying to fool them.”
During the show,...
During the show,...
- 11/1/2019
- by Kory Grow
- Rollingstone.com
A satirical thriller set in the inane world of Los Angeles’ contemporary art scene, Dan Gilroy’s deliriously garish “Velvet Buzzsaw” is a film that’s every bit as shiny and hollow as those colorful balloon animals that Jeff Koons has sold for millions of dollars. It’s a dull-witted joke about the violent relationship between art and commerce, and the punchline is that it’s therefore the Platonic ideal of a Netflix movie.
Nothing could better define the industry-devouring studio (or its prolific motion picture output) than a star-studded cautionary tale about the fatal danger of assigning value to an abstract thing. Not only is “Velvet Buzzsaw” the kind of batshit insane, fiercely uncommercial gif-factory of a movie that only Netflix could make, it’s also blood-soaked propaganda for a streaming platform where every piece of art has an equal price. Where a magnum opus like “Roma” is effectively...
Nothing could better define the industry-devouring studio (or its prolific motion picture output) than a star-studded cautionary tale about the fatal danger of assigning value to an abstract thing. Not only is “Velvet Buzzsaw” the kind of batshit insane, fiercely uncommercial gif-factory of a movie that only Netflix could make, it’s also blood-soaked propaganda for a streaming platform where every piece of art has an equal price. Where a magnum opus like “Roma” is effectively...
- 1/28/2019
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
In the rare event when a major Hollywood studio advertises one of its films as “the most original movie of the year” — as Universal has done in the trailer for “Welcome to Marwen” — it tends to be code for: “We spent a ton of money on something that we have absolutely no idea how to sell.” And while that was certainly the case here, it’s hard not to sympathize with the poor souls in the marketing department, who were tasked with promoting a story that director Robert Zemeckis had no idea how to tell. In hindsight, it seems they did the best they could. As disconcerting as it was when the previews for “Welcome to Marwen” reduced the complicated and ineffably human saga of Mark Hogancamp into a glossy inspirational fable about the power of friendship, it’s even more disconcerting to find that the film itself does much the same thing.
- 12/19/2018
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Finding Vivian Maier co-director Charlie Siskel: "I think that Vivian had in mind an audience for her work, that some day people would see it." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Finding Vivian Maier directors Charlie Siskel and John Maloof at a reception for Vivian Maier: In Her Own Hands at the Howard Greenberg Gallery gave me a tour of the exhibition. There are more than 40 Maier photographs including Lena Horne in 1954, marvelous cityscapes, and people whose thoughts can be felt in the twist of a shapely leg. Emily Dickinson, Franz Kafka, Henry Darger and Pippi Longstocking entered into our conversations.
Finding Vivian Maier co-director John Maloof: "In this one with the building being demolished you can see the beautiful gothic architecture behind it." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
nm6381264 autoVivian Maier[/link]: A Photographer Found with a foreword by Laura Lippman - writer for Amy Berg's Every Secret Thing -...
Finding Vivian Maier directors Charlie Siskel and John Maloof at a reception for Vivian Maier: In Her Own Hands at the Howard Greenberg Gallery gave me a tour of the exhibition. There are more than 40 Maier photographs including Lena Horne in 1954, marvelous cityscapes, and people whose thoughts can be felt in the twist of a shapely leg. Emily Dickinson, Franz Kafka, Henry Darger and Pippi Longstocking entered into our conversations.
Finding Vivian Maier co-director John Maloof: "In this one with the building being demolished you can see the beautiful gothic architecture behind it." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
nm6381264 autoVivian Maier[/link]: A Photographer Found with a foreword by Laura Lippman - writer for Amy Berg's Every Secret Thing -...
- 12/4/2014
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Gina Magid is a Brooklyn-based painter who creates psychologically and visually layered imagery in paint, charcoal, satin, and other materials. She was the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2003 and a McDowell Colony Fellowship in 2004. Magid has had solo exhibitions at Feature Inc., New York; Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Los Angeles; and Artists Space, New York. Her work has been included in group shows at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, New York; DiverseWorks, Houston, Texas; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; Exit Art, New York; and Greater New York 2005 at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York. Her work is currently at Ana Cristea Gallery, 521 West 26th Street, New York.
Bradley Rubenstein: Growing up on Long Island and being near New York City with all of its museums and galleries, did that have a big effect on you?
Gina Magid:...
Bradley Rubenstein: Growing up on Long Island and being near New York City with all of its museums and galleries, did that have a big effect on you?
Gina Magid:...
- 9/16/2014
- by Dusty Wright
- www.culturecatch.com
Outsider Art Fair 2014, NYC
Art brut, Naïve art, Outsider art -- the times have changed. Artists no longer have to study and refine their craft in schools of higher learning. They can trust their own instincts, use their own mediums, often mixed and often any found canvas -- street buildings, pieces of wood, any type of paper or board -- to share their muse.
And just as important, because every artist needs a patron, "new" collectors can afford to purchase art that is both relevant and exciting and has real potential to increase in value over the years.
Make no mistake, self-taught artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Henry Darger, Morris Hirshfield, and to a lesser extent even Howard Finster, certainly never get snickers from snobbish art dealers and collectors who might have thumbed their collective noses at these "unskilled" artists just because they lacked formal training. Moreover, with the rise...
Art brut, Naïve art, Outsider art -- the times have changed. Artists no longer have to study and refine their craft in schools of higher learning. They can trust their own instincts, use their own mediums, often mixed and often any found canvas -- street buildings, pieces of wood, any type of paper or board -- to share their muse.
And just as important, because every artist needs a patron, "new" collectors can afford to purchase art that is both relevant and exciting and has real potential to increase in value over the years.
Make no mistake, self-taught artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Henry Darger, Morris Hirshfield, and to a lesser extent even Howard Finster, certainly never get snickers from snobbish art dealers and collectors who might have thumbed their collective noses at these "unskilled" artists just because they lacked formal training. Moreover, with the rise...
- 5/10/2014
- by Dusty Wright
- www.culturecatch.com
In Mr. Jones, Scott (Jon Foster) is desperate to make a great documentary. That’s why he moved himself and his other half, Penny (Sarah Jones), to a cabin in the secluded wild. They thought they were alone, but they discover a legendary reclusive artist known only as “Mr. Jones” living nearby. It looks like Scott’s found the subject of his documentary. Too bad it could cost his and Penny’s lives…and more.
With Anchor Bay set to release Mr. Jones to Blu-ray and DVD next week, we recently chatted with Mr. Jones writer/director Karl Mueller (co-writer of The Divide) about his directorial debut.
Karl, thank you for taking the time to talk about your directorial debut, Mr. Jones, which you also wrote. To start things off, can you tell our readers what inspired you to write this story and why you chose to direct it as well?...
With Anchor Bay set to release Mr. Jones to Blu-ray and DVD next week, we recently chatted with Mr. Jones writer/director Karl Mueller (co-writer of The Divide) about his directorial debut.
Karl, thank you for taking the time to talk about your directorial debut, Mr. Jones, which you also wrote. To start things off, can you tell our readers what inspired you to write this story and why you chose to direct it as well?...
- 4/30/2014
- by Derek Anderson
- DailyDead
These scratchy recordings reveal the lonely man behind the public bravado – and the drive that made the great man such an original talent
"Was he putting me on, was he joking?" In Radio 4's The Lost Tapes Of Orson Welles, director Henry Jaglom offered up highlights from his private archive of recordings, made during a series of lunches he and Welles had in La's Ma Maison restaurant between 1983 and 1985.
Unlike so many celebrity interviews we get to hear today, these scratchy tapes are unfiltered by the pressures of public performance – neither party thought they'd be broadcast. Welles is still the great raconteur – but he's also bitter, holding grudges against Hollywood and old colleagues; a wind-up merchant whose spur-of-the-moment rants (Irish-Americans: "They've become a new and terrible race") are met with genuine amazement from the patient Jaglom ("I can't believe you said that Orson!"). They also reveal someone who was lonely,...
"Was he putting me on, was he joking?" In Radio 4's The Lost Tapes Of Orson Welles, director Henry Jaglom offered up highlights from his private archive of recordings, made during a series of lunches he and Welles had in La's Ma Maison restaurant between 1983 and 1985.
Unlike so many celebrity interviews we get to hear today, these scratchy tapes are unfiltered by the pressures of public performance – neither party thought they'd be broadcast. Welles is still the great raconteur – but he's also bitter, holding grudges against Hollywood and old colleagues; a wind-up merchant whose spur-of-the-moment rants (Irish-Americans: "They've become a new and terrible race") are met with genuine amazement from the patient Jaglom ("I can't believe you said that Orson!"). They also reveal someone who was lonely,...
- 12/20/2013
- by Richard Vine
- The Guardian - Film News
Henry Darger’s little girls, Gustave Courbet’s genital close-up, even Picasso’s explicit depiction of fellatio: You might think we had passed the point where a major painting by a first-tier artist is still taboo. Nonetheless, The Guitar Lesson, from 1934, by (the bogusly named) Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, better known as Balthus, is just such a forbidden work. At its 1934 debut in Paris, it was shown for fifteen days, covered, in the gallery’s back room. In 1977, it appeared for a month at Pierre Matisse’s 57th Street gallery. It has never been exhibited again, as if it were some metaphysical equivalent of the cursed videotape in The Ring that kills anyone who views it.In his review of that 1977 show in New York Magazine, Thomas Hess lamented that it “can’t be illustrated in the pages of New York.” (Well, times change.) Alas, you also won’t...
- 9/23/2013
- by Jerry Saltz
- Vulture
The Outsider Art Fair has been beautifully revived, and today through Sunday, you can see it in the charmed spaces of the former Dia Building at 548 West 22nd Street. Launched in 1993, the Fair spent many happy years in the Puck Building, during which time brilliant visionaries were seen for the first time — artists like James Castle, Morton Bartlett, George Widener, Melvin Way, Judith Scott, and A.G. Rizzoli, all now part of the "outsider" canon. Then the show hit a plateau about eight years ago and eventually went all but bland in an out-of-the-way office high-rise on West 34th Street. By last year, I thought we'd seen the end of a great thing.The Chelsea dealer Andrew Edlin shows contemporary artists and also represents the estates of geniuses Henry Darger and Ralph Fasanella. In the past year, Edlin bought the fair, weeded out lesser dealers, added new ones, and...
- 2/1/2013
- by Jerry Saltz
- Vulture
Capturing Reality: The Art Of Documentary Review Pt.1 The problem with those comments is that none of them really addresses the fact that documentaries are not really concerned with truth, but with reality vs. fiction. Many people confuse truth with reality, and given this film’s title it would have behooved Ferrari to explore the very difference between reality and truth that so many of the interviewees declaim. The two words are not synonyms. Truth requires an act of volition whereas reality does not. If I am wearing a blue shirt, that is reality. If you say to me, "Dan, you are wearing a blue shirt," that is a truth. Reality doesn’t care if it is noticed or not, but a truth always requires an act of notice. Paradoxically, reality is sometimes best captured via "falsehoods," such as those Herzog and Morris employ. What separates a propagandist like Michael Moore...
- 11/11/2011
- by Dan Schneider
- Alt Film Guide
A couple of months ago I featured all the international posters for Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Palme d’Or routing Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, but this new poster, designed by the great Chris Ware for Strand’s Us theatrical release, is far and away the best of them all, and definitely an early contender for the best of 2011. I’ve been a fan of Ware’s for many years and his one-sheet for The Savages was one of my favorite posters of the 00s. This one is even better.
When I heard on the design grapevine that Ware was working on the poster I was thrilled and also curious as to how his sensibility would mesh with that of this most enigmatic and lovely of films. Despite the fact that the lengthy title of the film has a certain graphic novel quality similar to that of Ware’s most famous work,...
When I heard on the design grapevine that Ware was working on the poster I was thrilled and also curious as to how his sensibility would mesh with that of this most enigmatic and lovely of films. Despite the fact that the lengthy title of the film has a certain graphic novel quality similar to that of Ware’s most famous work,...
- 2/11/2011
- MUBI
I'm adding the make-up of the Venice Film Festival Horizons sidebar selections a little late to the site, I'm mostly curious to see the low ratio of films that'll be picked up from this section for the upcoming Tiff announcements. Deemed as re-branding of the section, a more eclectic melange of titles mixing short, medium length pics, documentaries film and feature length items, of the items that will generate the most interest are the opening and closing titles which were revealed the week before, but we should see media coverage mentions on Paul Morrissey's News From Nowhere, Jose Luis Guerin's docu Guest (I've yet to see 2007/2008's In the City of Sylvia) and Sion Sono's Cold Fish and short film offerings from Guillermo Arriaga, Isaac Julien and Clara Law. Horizons: Feature-length Works "Sleeping Beauty," Catherine Breillat (France, opener) "Oki's Movie," Hong Sang-soo (South Korea, closer) "The Nine Muses,...
- 8/2/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
Patti Smith brought the crowd to its feet Saturday night when she performed at a benefit for the American Folk Art Museum in New York. The party celebrated the (supposed) birthday of Henry Darger, the reclusive and prolific Chicago artist who created a fantasy world through his manuscripts and watercolor paintings. His work is on display at the American Folk Art Museum's exhibition "The Private Collection of Henry Darger" through September. Smith's daughter, Jesse, joined her onstage on the keyboard and guests included Betsey Johnson and her company's cofounder Chantal Bacon, artists Justine Wheeler and Jeff Koons and Oscar de la Renta's son, Moises. Smith also hawked her new memoir, 'Just Kids,' which centers on her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989. Robert's younger brother Edward attended the concert along with artist Jack Walls. Photos: Justine Wheeler and...
- 5/17/2010
- by Katy Hall
- Huffington Post
I've never really understood art. But on a trip to New York, I did my dutiful rounds of the big museums and discovered a painter I really dig. His name was Henry Darger, and he was a recluse who devoted his life to writing the epic story of the ... Read more
Filed under: Shows to Know, Cheat Sheet, Screen Time
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- 9/23/2009
- by Stephanie Earp
- Inside TV
A few years back, Jessica Yu made a positively hypnotic documentary called "In The Realms Of The Unreal," about a painter/writer named Henry Darger, the ultimate outsider artist. I loved that film. I put it on my top ten of the year list. And yet, when she released her first two narrative films in 2007, I didn't see either of them, and I only just caught up with the first of them last night. And "Ping Pong Playa" couldn't be more different than "In The Realms Of The Unreal" if it was directed by a different person. That's not to say...
- 2/3/2009
- Hitfix
- Protagonist is the latest documentary by the very talented Jessica Yu. Her short film Breathing Lessons was the winner of the 1997 Oscar and was followed by the wonderfully creative In the Realms Of The Unreal about the mysterious artist Henry Darger. She is a master of exploring the odd and extreme in the everyday world around us. Her latest film is no exception as she opens our eyes to the good intentions of a terrorist and the secret homosexuality of a televangelist.Protagonist inter-cuts pieces of ancient Greek Tragedy with the stories of four redeemed men. Each man tells an incredible story of dysfunction and obsession while the Greek text (performed by wooden puppets) creates a dramatic undercurrent for the true stories. It seems to ask the question: Can real life be as dramatic as classic tales of accidental incest and self inflicted eye-gouging? Yu came to the idea
- 11/29/2007
- IONCINEMA.com
IFC Films
Inspired by the plays of Euripedes, Jessica Yu brings a fresh and bracing slant to the psychology of personality in Protagonist, her documentary look at four lives defined by fanaticism.
Although it takes a while for Yu's thesis to jell, the film makes a lasting impression as it delves into an unfashionable territory: character as fate rather than a function of pharmaceuticals. Through the prism of its central quartet -- an "ex-gay" minister, a bank robber, a German terrorist and a martial arts devotee -- the docu lays bare the delusions and dangers of extremism, a timely subject in this age of black-and-white thinking.
A selection of the International Documentary Assn.'s DocuWeek theatrical showcase, Protagonist is slated for release Sept. 26. Its stylized aesthetic touches are best appreciated on the big screen, but the docu's intellectual sheen and unwillingness to pander will probably make it a stronger performer on DVD than as a theatrical title.
To structure the dramatic arcs of her central quartet's stories, Yu -- whose In the Realms of the Unreal dared to animate the paintings of outsider artist Henry Darger -- uses striking visual motifs. Robert Conner contributes elegant title animation sequences to announce thematic chapters that include Provocation, Turning Point, Fever and Catharsis. Supplementing the talking-head interviews, home movies, news footage and stills and serving as a true Greek chorus are puppets designed by Janie Geiser. The muslin-clad wooden creations of primitive, intricate beauty perform excerpts from Euripedes, with voice-over performance in ancient Greek. The puppets also enact some of the more crucial, often brutal scenes from the protagonists' sagas, their masked faces hauntingly expressive.
After considering hundreds of potential subjects, Yu selected four men whose stories' connective threads might at first seem elusive. But the film builds a compelling composite portrait of obsessive, all-or-nothing allegiance to a chosen pursuit, and the eventual embrace of uncertainty as a truer -- and less destructive -- approach. Outcasts during often devastating childhoods, they channeled primal rage into transgression and power over others, only to find themselves living a lie or having become precisely what they set out to oppose. That they found the strength to leave the fold -- whether revolutionary cells or an evangelical church -- is extraordinary. In Yu's nimble narrative, their disparate experiences of struggle, triumph, collapse and rebirth overlap and parallel one another in increasingly fascinating ways.
Inspired by the plays of Euripedes, Jessica Yu brings a fresh and bracing slant to the psychology of personality in Protagonist, her documentary look at four lives defined by fanaticism.
Although it takes a while for Yu's thesis to jell, the film makes a lasting impression as it delves into an unfashionable territory: character as fate rather than a function of pharmaceuticals. Through the prism of its central quartet -- an "ex-gay" minister, a bank robber, a German terrorist and a martial arts devotee -- the docu lays bare the delusions and dangers of extremism, a timely subject in this age of black-and-white thinking.
A selection of the International Documentary Assn.'s DocuWeek theatrical showcase, Protagonist is slated for release Sept. 26. Its stylized aesthetic touches are best appreciated on the big screen, but the docu's intellectual sheen and unwillingness to pander will probably make it a stronger performer on DVD than as a theatrical title.
To structure the dramatic arcs of her central quartet's stories, Yu -- whose In the Realms of the Unreal dared to animate the paintings of outsider artist Henry Darger -- uses striking visual motifs. Robert Conner contributes elegant title animation sequences to announce thematic chapters that include Provocation, Turning Point, Fever and Catharsis. Supplementing the talking-head interviews, home movies, news footage and stills and serving as a true Greek chorus are puppets designed by Janie Geiser. The muslin-clad wooden creations of primitive, intricate beauty perform excerpts from Euripedes, with voice-over performance in ancient Greek. The puppets also enact some of the more crucial, often brutal scenes from the protagonists' sagas, their masked faces hauntingly expressive.
After considering hundreds of potential subjects, Yu selected four men whose stories' connective threads might at first seem elusive. But the film builds a compelling composite portrait of obsessive, all-or-nothing allegiance to a chosen pursuit, and the eventual embrace of uncertainty as a truer -- and less destructive -- approach. Outcasts during often devastating childhoods, they channeled primal rage into transgression and power over others, only to find themselves living a lie or having become precisely what they set out to oppose. That they found the strength to leave the fold -- whether revolutionary cells or an evangelical church -- is extraordinary. In Yu's nimble narrative, their disparate experiences of struggle, triumph, collapse and rebirth overlap and parallel one another in increasingly fascinating ways.
- 8/28/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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