Category Archives: Video
THE PAINTING TECHNIQUES OF AD REINHARDT: Abstract Painting, AB EX NY via MOMA, 5 min.
Another chapter of the great AB EX NY series of short videos discussing the painting techniques of key NY Abstract Expressionist artists. Produced for the MoMA exhibition: Abstract Expressionist New York, October 3, 2010–April 11, 2011
Filmed by Plowshares Media
Images courtesy of the Estate of Ad Reinhardt/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Photos by John Loengard/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Music by Chris Parrello
Chris Parrello, Ian Young, Kevin Thomas, Ziv Ravitz
WILLIAM S BURROUGHS:: THE JUNKY’S CHRISTMAS, 1989/1993, 22 min.
William S Burroughs narrates his story about Danny, a poor unfortunate junkie who reveals his last remains of selflessness and humanity despite his urgent physical predicament.
The Junky’s Christmas is a story by William S. Burroughs. It appears in the 1989 collection Interzone and on the 1993 album Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales. It was also made into a 1993 short claymation film directed by Nick Donkin and Melodie McDaniel. The film was produced by Francis Ford Coppola and was released by Koch Vision on DVD in North America on Nov. 21, 2006. Burroughs narrates the film and appears in live-action footage at the beginning and end of the film.
JOHN CALE :: (I KEEP A) CLOSE WATCH, live, from the album, Fragments of A Rainy Season, 1992
(I Keep A) Close Watch originally appeared on John Cale’s 1975 album, Helen Of Troy and was produced with a full orchestration. Over the years, Cale has pared the song’s arrangement down, and usually performs the song alone with solo piano.
Fragments Of A Rainy Season is a 1992 live solo album by John Cale, performed at various locations during his 1992 tour. The album cover was designed by noted conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth.
ANTHONY AND THE JOHNSONS :: HOPE THERE’S SOMEONE, live in Malmö, Sweden, 2005
ON FEBRUARY 12, 2011, 8:00AM
At Your Funeral: Antony and the Johnsons – “Hope There’s Someone”
The task of choosing the musical backdrop for one’s final send-off is a daunting one. Many questions present themselves: Why further burden such an emotionally weighty occasion? Would making light of the situation go over poorly? Do you play something familiar that’s likely to move everyone in attendance, or attempt to work in a hidden gem/personal favorite? Of course, all of those concerns hardly matter in comparison to much more pressing ones. For instance, what could possibly be a fitting way to cap off a human being’s time on Earth?
The answer, for me, is, and has been ever since I heard it for the very first time, Antony and the Johnsons’ “Hope There’s Someone”, off of their indelible second album, I Am a Bird Now. To say that death permeates the 2005 Mercury Prize-winning album, which features the likes of Lou Reed, Devendra Banhart and Boy George, would be a major understatement; The album cover features a morose-looking old photo of actress/Warhol Superstar Candy Darling on her deathbed, and all of the tracks speak to death or loss in some way. Surprisingly, I Am a Bird Now is certainly not a sad album. Instead of wallowing into the sort of black-clad misery that many pieces of art on the topic of death seem to fall into, I Am a Bird Now seeks to reconcile with death, expressing a certain joy in the freedom that comes with it, via key themes of hope and freedom.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, The South Bank Show, documentary by Kim Evans, 1986, 53 min.
THE SOUTH BANK SHOW: THE VELVET UNDERGROUND
Originally broadcast in 1986 in the UK, The South Bank Show’s Velvet Underground documentary. It contains interviews with Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Moe Tucker, Nico, Andy Warhol and lots of early Velvet performance footage.
LOU REED / WIM WENDERS :: THERE IS NO TIME, from Faraway, So Close, 1993
Lou Reed & Band make a cameo performance in Wim Wenders’ Faraway, So Close, 1993
STORIES FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION, documentary, US National Archives
The National Archives Southeast Region presents stories from survivors of the Great Depression overlaid with powerful pictures from era.
ELLSWORTH KELLY, hard edge art legend
Red White 1966 Ellsworth Kelly born 1923 Presented by the Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of Douglas S Cramer 2013 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T14156
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Ellsworth Kelly’s earliest works of art were created in service to the United States, as part of a special camouflage unit in France during World War II. Kelly and his fellow artist-soldiers were tasked with fooling the Germans—using rubber and wood to construct fake tanks and trucks—into thinking the multitudes of Allied troops on the battlefield were much larger than reality. While this seems an unconventional early training for an artist, it proved a fitting one for Kelly.
“He was able to understand that there were these realities that for most of us are camouflaged,” says Virginia Mecklenburg, chief curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “He would evoke those realities—a distinct feel of gravity, or the physics of weight and momentum that we rarely think about in tangible terms. He was able to get that across.” Continue reading ELLSWORTH KELLY, hard edge art legend
WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP, docu-drama by James Marsh, 1999, based upon the famous 1973 book by Michael Lesy
Wisconsin Death Trip is a 1999 American black-and-white and color docudrama film written and directed by James Marsh, based on the 1973 book of the same name by Michael Lesy. Original music for the film was composed by DJ Shadow, with original piano music for the closing credits by John Cale.
The film dramatizes the photographs by Charles Van Schaick found by in the early 1970s by Lesy, connected to a series of macabre incidents that took place in Black River Falls, Wisconsin in the late 19th century, and, in part, the film was shot on location there. Marsh makes use of silent black-and-white recreations with voice-over narration by Ian Holm contrasted with contemporary color footage of the area.
Wisconsin Death Trip is a 1973 non-fiction book by Michael Lesy, based on a collection of late 19th century photographs by Jackson County, Wisconsin photographer Charles Van Schaick – mostly taken in the city of Black River Falls – and local news reports from the same period. It emphasizes the harsh aspects of Midwestern rural life under the pressures of crime, disease, mental illness, and urbanization.
The Incubator 