Miss. Tic!
One of the most inspiring things about Paris is its support for and pride in its street artists. Among the best known are space invaders, L’Atlas, and my favorite: Miss. Tic.
Miss. Tic’s works are funny and poetic - retaining an 80s sensibility (she first developed her style in 1985) that is nonetheless still relevant and chic. Each of her stenciled works examine female sexuality, subjectivity, and sometimes simply what it means to be in the world.
better than nothing isn’t enough
I LOVE that I can be walking through the city (in the case of the above photo on my way to buy Paris honey at the bee store in Butte-aux-Cailles) and come across such an awesome, direct, thought-provoking artwork - and it won’t be painted over as if simply offensive garbage (as is often the case in US cities, even though all these French artists are inspired by American street art culture). Aside from the fact that Miss. Tic’s style simply embodies cool, her words and images are sexy and empowering - the kind of phrases that (when I can understand the wordplay) seem to speak directly to me.
(critiquing [Ingres'] historical female nudes - literally says that passive and loose women are easy to blame [instead of the real culprit], but also taking the guerilla girls’ line, implying that traditions like that seen in Ingres’ paintings are historically and visually disenfranchising to women. street art that’s complicated and smart.)
She currently has an exhibition up at Galerie Fanny Guillon-Laffaille in the 8th (though the gallery’s website doesn’t seem to be working) showing 30 of her new paintings on canvas. Otherwise you can see her works throughout the 13th. My favorite neighborhood to run into Miss. Tic-marked walls is the charming Butte-aux-Cailles. Go for a stroll, buy some honey, and discover some renegade art.
says something like: Just you wait and see (you’ll get yours)!
latter two images courtesy of www.missticinparis.com
A video from a 2009 exhibition:
Miss Tic Go Homme
envoyé par MrBenlou. - Regardez plus de courts métrages.
The Doodles of My Dreams
Today, while I was on a Christmas shopping reconnaissance mission at the Louvre’s kid gift shop, I picked up this amazing coloring book. Initially I thought I’d give it to one of our many nieces and nephews back home in california, but I’ve decided instead to keep it for myself. Selfish, I know, but I can’t bring myself to part with this find.
The book is huge, maybe 11 x 14″, and features the playful artwork of Lili Scratchy, a French designer living in the eastern suburbs of Paris. Her work is hilarious and cute, with a bit of a punk rock, outsider-y edge to it, featuring labyrinthine moustaches and spaghetti full of lost jewels. The illustrations are funny enough to make even mushrooms laugh. See?
Below is my favorite illustration, and the first I’ll color with the included watercolor pencils.
And all the pictures are one-sided and perforated, so when you’re done coloring they’ll make excellent and sophisticated decor of your own making (almost).
If you’re not going to be in Paris any time soon, you can also order these books online from that timeless purveyor of cool, colette.
So, I’ll be spending the rest of my Sunday with singing vegetables and the world’s smallest elephant, thanks to lili scratchy.
Amazing Site-specific Project
Check out this amazing project by a design studio in the Czech Republic, where a group of artists have cached sound-producing sculptural works in the forests surrounding Brno. Their works are fantastic and industrial at the same time, playing off both natural (wind) and industrial (train tracks) phenomena. The website itself is beautiful and imaginative, make sure to turn your volume up.
There are more interesting works than the one pictured above: podvedomim
antony hegarty at agnes b. galerie du jour
ANTONY HEGARTY
Galerie du Jour Agnes B.
Until 6 May
In a demonstration of his versatility, singer Antony Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnsons, extends his hand to the visual arts with this show entitled Six Eyes. His personal photographic and montage work is exhibited along side that of five other talented artists: Barbara Cummard, Peter Hujar, Alice O’Malley, Kiki Smith, and James Elaine. Hegarty’s scratchy, macabre montages and purposefully worn photographs mingle seamlessly with Hujar’s depictions of New York City’s street refuse (people, animals, things – dead and misused). The knowing women of Kiki Smith’s brut drawings nod to Alice O’Malley’s equally self-possessed photographic subjects, while domesticity and the rural are central themes of both Barbara Cummard’s photographic series and James Elaine’s film installation (set to an eerie track by William Basinski). These artists are successfully united under a thematic umbrella of the essentially and inescapably human: memory, home, and life in its unavoidably bodily casing.
Photograph by Donald Felix Cervantes.
WARHOL’S TV at Maison Rouge
Today I attended my first official “vernissage presse” - an exhibition preview open only to the press. I signed in my name, disclosed the publication I represented (gogoparis), and received a neat little packet full of useful and illuminating information. Only, I was nervous so my French was even worse than it is when I’m comfortable, so I fumbled and twitched as I tried to describe exactly who I was. I’m awkward and wouldn’t have known how things like this work in my own language, let alone one that I’m in the process of learning. At any rate, awkward as I felt it was exciting and new and I felt very official with my little notebook and my dossier de presse.
And the exhibition was amazing!!! The Maison Rouge opened three exhibitions today, but I was most interested in Warhol TV, which focuses on monsieur Andy’s fascination with and attempts at making television. Apparently, as I learned today, he made a sweet little interview series, featuring stars like Debbie Harry, Divine (see above image), Duran Duran, Courtney Love, Liza Minelli, and Halston. Throughout all the interviews Andy remains random and mumbling (par for the course), but it is fascinating to watch his love affair with the celebrity/jet set crowd.
Though distracted and made shy by the crowds of video cameras and television crews, it was hard for me not to enjoy the elaborate environments the maison rouge created to set the scene for each different screening. Silver-painted walls, a lush reproduction of Warhol’s bedroom, a night club, pew-like benches before a screening of his funeral - the exhibition is truly theatrical.
To top it all off, I afterwards saw a man riding over pont austerlitz on a uniycle.
It runs until May 3rd - for more information go here
My official review will be up on gogoparis.com in a few days.
Ecstatic Onions on Beautiful Faces
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
Galerie Serge Le Borgne
Until 30 April
Galerie Serge Le Borgne presents a retrospective in stills of famed performance artist Marina Abramovic. Originally from Belgrade, Abramovic has been referred to as “the grandmother of performance art,” having begun her career more than thirty years ago. Perhaps best known for their anti-institutional sentiments, many of her works are incendiary, prompting widespread debate as to their status as “fine art.” The bulk of this exhibition is composed of large and beautifully printed stills taken from Abramovic’s filmed works, dating back to the mid-1970s. Though at turns shocking and lovely, they’re difficult to appreciate removed as they are from their filmic or performative contexts. At the end of the hall-like gallery, however, one such film is looped in its entirety. Titled The Onion, dating from 1996, this film features the artist ecstatically, painfully devouring an onion whole; the sonorous crunching, chewing and slurping nearly drowning out the artist’s careful voiceover. Affective and ambiguous, this work speaks of apathy and unrealized cravings.
A Very Territory Christmas
Well, not quite - i mean, it isn’t Christmas yet, and I won’t be here for the real thing, so what you’re getting is the little pre-christmas that Sergio and Marina cooked up as a farewell-see-you-in-january mini-fete. Nevertheless the territory is beautifully warm and festive in this season, Russian tank heaters running on high (see pics) and bubble wrap working its insulating magic. We’ve had a lot of changes in the territory these past few weeks so most of us are also hoping that with the new season comes a new souffle (as sergio says in his Russin-accented franglais) for our little rabbit-hole.
We decided, at the territory, to have a gift exchange this year. A sort of secret Santa, if you will. Most will be exchanging gifts closer to the actual date, but, since i’m returning home early and for nigh on a month, I said my farewells this week. Interestingly enough, when drawing names out of “the cleaning hat” (a sort of embroidered fez that one must wear while cleaning - gratefully, I’m exempt from such activities) Marina and I unknowingly chose each other. Trying hard to stick to the 5 euro budget we set, I showed up on Wednesday with an unceremonious red-paper bag filled with Kombucha and something called “etoiles de bonne humeur” (good mood stars) that seemed to be a french version of not-chicken nuggets. In return I received a lovely ceramic figurine . . . I think I might place it in the territory in the future, to rest among other objects of yet-to-be-determined magical uses.
But, Sergio also surprised me with his own gifts: flowers, a lovely little piece of the territory to keep with me, and a gift for my husband as well — I’m as warmed by this gesture as i am by the Russian tank heater hanging near my desk.
The Quotidian Carnival: Diane Arbus in Print
DIANE ARBUS
Kadist Art Foundation
http://www.kadist.org/
Until 8 February 2009
On the walls of this exhibition one meets trannys, strippers, celebrities and their look-alikes, circus performers, giants, and motor gangs – Arbus’ photographic treatment of each like a loving glimpse into a twisted carnival. Placing this American artist’s famously despondent photographs in their published context, this exhibition is the first French retrospective of Arbus’ work since the Centre Pompidou’s in 1980. Instead of displaying original photographic prints, the exhibition features an archival collection of her work as published on the pages of magazines. While this format doesn’t have as great a visual impact as would original photographic prints, it does allow the viewer to better understand the development of Arbus’ style and her public reception. From the contextualization of these photographs, it becomes apparent that Arbus always imbued a given subject with her own melancholic air. Even when documenting the most quotidian lives Arbus managed to capture disenchantment in her subjects’ faces and her compositions are consistently disjointed and unsettling – providing insight into the psyche of this ill-fated artist.
The Cult of Celebrity: Patrick Demarchelier at the Petit Palais
PATRICK DEMARCHELIER
Images et Mode
Petit Palais
www.petitpalais.paris.fr
Until 4 January 2009
The Petit Palais is celebrating this famed celebrity and fashion photographer with a huge retrospective. The exhibition is incorporated into the museum’s vast permanent collection so that Madonna’s Gautier push-up stares-down art nouveau beauties and Cindy Crawford’s beauty spot sets off the eyes of a Medieval Virgin icon in gold.
Though Demarchelier’s photographs are technically and aesthetically masterful, his use of black and white photography imparting his works with an illusion of intimacy, the show becomes more a game of name-that-famous-face rather than any sort of intellectual/emotional exercise or aesthetic experience. It does, however, lead one to consider the link between the cult of celebrity and the cult of the artistic genius (i.e. the artist as celebrity). Is Demarchelier celebrated because he photographs famous people and physically “perfected” fashion models (a living record of elite [notions of] beauty) or because his works are formally beautiful in and of themselves? More likely the famous and Demarchelier are mutually dependent: Demarchelier photographs famous people; if you are photographed by Demarchelier you are famous.
Despite my reservations as to the artistic merit of the exhibition, reduced as it is to celebrity spectacle, it is amusing. Moreover entrance is free and the petit palais itself is a vision of fin de siecle grandeur, built as it was for one of the Parisian World Fairs (Exposition Universelle) and it’s permanent collection features a wide range of historic French masterpieces.
Shirana Shabazi
SHIRANA SHAHBAZI
Centre Culturel Suisse
www.ccsparis.com
Until 4 January 2009
In this exhibition photographer Shirana Shabazi, mixes still lives, landscapes, and monochromes – her work undulating from the quietude of Dutch Baroque to a Warhol-esque pop color palette. While Shabazi states that she chooses to work from such influences and to mix these influences liberally in order to keep the viewer focused on the nature of photography as an artistic process, her works’ visual themes take the viewer to a natural world that is desolate and still. Her works keep the viewer questioning and interested in their visual diversity: from a scientifically psychedelic butterfly, to a gracefully rendered black and white of dead birds, to the lush fruits of Shabazi’s still lives.