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1. Nate Kensinger’s amazing photos of the Navy Yard (previously)

2. Brutalism in the UK

3. An experimental Plastic Dining Room in Vancouver by Goodweather Collective + Loki Ocean

4. Inside the Loew’s Pitkin Theater

5. Mount Fuji Architects Studio: Tree House

6. Though I’ve been to beach several times in the past couple weeks, I have yet to visit Rockaway Taco, which is now immortalized by photographer Todd Selby in his trademark interior / food porn-y style. “Gross” though it may be, Fort Tilden is the perfect place to spend a sweltering weekday, if you have one to spare.

7. Dalian oil spill on Boston Big Picture blog

8. Zhang Huan is easily one of my favorite contemporary conceptual artists—his clever treatment of Chinese culture is always on point—Designboom has some nice photos of his current exhibition at UCCA, Hope Tunnel.

Zhang Huan
Hope Tunnel
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
Big Hall
798 Art District
No.4 Jiuxianqiao Lu [map]
Chaoyang District
Beijing, China 100015
+86 (0) 10 8459 9269 / 8459 9387
Through October 24, 2010

9. Who Is Afraid of Red, Amber and Green?

Li Hui
Who Is Afraid of Red, Amber and Green?
Centrum Kunstlicht in de Kunst
Emmasingel 31
5600 JM Eindhoven, Netherlands [map]
+31-(0)40-2755183

10. Phenomenal close-up photos of eyes (via Notcot)

11. Lego Tattoo Pilot Pen Ads

12. “…I have since learned you like tomato soup.”

I biked down the East River Greenway for the first (and possibly last) time a couple weeks ago, before this happened...

]]> http://idolizeyourkillers.com/2010/08/images-5/feed/ 0 http://idolizeyourkillers.com/2010/05/imagery/ http://idolizeyourkillers.com/2010/05/imagery/#comments Thu, 20 May 2010 23:23:35 +0000 Ray http://idolizeyourkillers.com/?p=2776 Like Images… but, you know, ending with “-ry” instead of “-s”

• Andrew Kuo’s “My Wheel of Worry, May 2010″ (Tiny Vices via TWBE)

• Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle is screening in full at IFC through June 3rd 10th.

• Matthew Barney and Björk also had their pictures taken (opposite Marina Abramović, of course).

• Abramović fanboy Paco Blancas has sat with her 14 times (and counting), which is apparently enough times to get MoMA to interview you for their blog.

• Roy Lichtenstein at Gagosian

When we think of still lifes, we think of paintings that have a certain atmosphere or ambience. My still life paintings have none of those qualities, they just have pictures of certain things that are in a still life, like lemons and grapefruits and so forth. It’s not meant to have the usual still life meaning.

–Roy Lichtenstein.

Roy Lichtenstein
Still Lifes
Gagosian
555 W 24th St (at 11th)
New York NY 10011 [map]
212 / 741-1111
May 8, 2010 – July 30, 2010

• The new Banksy work in downtown NYC have already been, um, vandalized by the likes of IRAK and Poster Boy (supporters).

• Tag by China’s ABS Crew (NeochaEDGE)

• Hedi Slimane recently posted a series of photos of Jonathan from the Drums on his blog (alongside images of Johnny Rotten and Joe D’Allessandro).

• James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem—who has been getting mediocre-to-good (but mostly good) reviews for This Is Happening—answers fan questions for Opening Ceremony.

I love a shitty idea that you just totally go 100% with.

–James Murphy.

• Greg.org has a neat list of commonly mispronunced artist names.

• Eva & Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.org present No Fun—click through for the amazing video. Their latest show consists of bits of famous work that they pinched from museums and galleries. (Animal) (UPDATE: Commentary, and an essay on the Mattes’ virtual reperformance from a year ago. Thanks Greg.) (Almost but not really related: art theft in Paris.)

Eva & Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.org
Reality Is Overrated
Postmasters Gallery
459 W 19th St (at 10th)
New York NY 10011 [map]
212 / 727-3323
May 15, 2010 – June 19, 2010

• 2010 FIFA World Cup Official Art Posters! A well-executed, if predictable, promotion; check out the rest from the likes of Marlene Dumas, Julie Mehretu, and 14 others. (TWBE) Footnote: Kentridge’s show at MoMA is worth seeing as well.

• Marijuana Fuels a New Kitchen Culture (NYT)

• Surface to Air – Colder Front launch event at Oak

Surface to Air
Colder Front
Oak
28 Bond St (at Lafayette)
New York NY 10012 [map]
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 20, 7–10pm

• Plus, a spot of Ai Weiwei coverage for good measure:

His cultural and political footprint is unique in a country where people generally face a choice between thriving within the confines of the system or shouting from the shadows outside it. For the moment, he is attempting to do both, and nobody is at all sure where that leads. As Chen Danqing, a fellow artist, puts it: “He is doing something more interesting, more ambiguous…. He wants to see how far an individual’s power can go.”

Ai Weiwei is an evangelical believer in transparency: He chronicles his own life online and on film and, in particular, he has taken to documenting his interactions with officialdom with blunt precision.

–Evan Osnos, Ai Weiwei’s Transparent Life,
Letter from China blog on the New Yorker, May 17 2010

Osnos also suggests some recommended reading on Ai Weiwei.

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Hyères, France, 1932 / Magnum

First of all, the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit at MoMA is really quite remarkable, and I echo Kottke’s rave review (he mentions the image above, which was the first of many that caught my eye).

What he excelled at was seeing things in a different way from most other people.

–A Father of Modern Photography: A Hunter and His Prey, The Economist, April 15 2010

The retrospective has a personal resonance on several levels: I’ve become increasingly interested in photography, journalism and photojournalism in the past couple years; his photographs of early and mid-century China are vaguely nostalgic (probably because I recently spent a couple months living in Beijing with my grandparents, who lived through it); and I recognized HCB’s portrait of Sartre from a book cover.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Discovered while eating a turkey hoagie and contemplating the meaning of life at a roadside stand. Also, admit it: he’s cute as a goddamn bug!

–Mike Sacks, Famous Philosophers and How They Were First Discovered,
McSweeney’s, May 2010

(More on HCB at Vanity Fair via 3qd.)

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Liu Bolin at Eli Klein: an excellent show despite the blue-chippy crowd at the opening. It might be more of the same and it probably has a certain loaded cultural content that can only be appreciated as someone who has recently spent time in China, but I would still say that the pieces in On Fire are visually compelling even without the political subtext.

His works have been communicated via emails, blogs, magazines and journals on a massive scale.

Liu Bolin’s earlier Hiding in the City photography series, in which he paints himself into the urban landscape, was inspired by the Chinese government’s demolition of the Suo Jiacun Artist Village in Beijing in 2006. He drew attention to great landmarks in China, both old and modern, while highlighting the lack of recognition which was paid to the citizens that built them. He portrayed the tragedy of the increasing insignificance of the individual in China as the government focused on presenting a modern commercial and industrial image. Rather than trying to fight, people attempted to hide and adapt to these forced changes.

–Liu Bolin’s On Fire press release & additional images via Eli Klein.

Click images for larger versions.

索家村 – Suo Jiacun [Artist's Village] (apparently, Liu Bolin reps it); 中国当代 – Contemporary China

折 – fold, discount, break, bend, snap, lose, roll over, convert, rebate, twist, double up, be convinced, turn back, turn over, lose money in business, change direction, be filled with admiration, suffer losses (Google Translate)

Dude's shirt (bottom right) matches the photograph...

Liu Bolin
On Fire
Eli Klein Fine Art
462 West Broadway (near Houston)
New York NY 10012 [map]
212 / 255-4388
April 30, 2010 – June 4, 2010

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I didn’t make it to the Scott Campbell opening, but it made it into other “emails, blogs, magazines and journals on a massive scale”: TBWE has a nice gallery of the work and the opening; OC has a gallery of the work itself; HB recap; Interview studio visit via HB; Terry stays relevant.

I did make it to Faile & BAST’s DELUXX FLUXX NYC opening (after stopping by Liu Bolin), but my photos didn’t turn out so well. Again, you can find more/better coverage elsewhere.

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Keith W. Bentley – “Cauda Equina” (1995-2007)

The New York Times has an interesting article on the kind of organic art that is currently on display at the Museum of Arts and Design.

Jan Fabre – "Skull" (2001); Fabián Peña – "The Impossibility of Storage for the Soul I (Self-Portrait)" (2007)

Of course, people have always used natural materials to make their art, for the simple reason that until recently nature was all they had, said Ellen Dissanayake, a scholar on the evolution of art [who notes that] from the beginning, art demanded transformation. “Even in hunter-gatherer societies, they tend to make their stuff look not organic,” she said. “When they’re painting, they’ll use geometric shapes, make a row of triangles or circles, as though to show humans are more than nature.”
…
As Ms. Dissanayake sees it, when people make art, or “artify,” they follow several “aesthetic principles,” whether they know it or not. “They simplify, repeat, exaggerate, elaborate and manipulate expectations,” she said.

–Natalie Angier, Of Compost, Molecules and Insects, Art Is Born,
The New York Times, May 3 2010

Billie Grace Lynn – "Mad Cow Motorcycle" (2008)

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I didn’t particularly regret missing the Shepard Fairey opening until I saw this:

Classic.

Animal / TWBE

More Shepard Fairey and many more after the jump…

Julia Chesky documented the opening nicely. (TWBE)

Christal Smith interviews Fairey for Huffpo, including insight into his inspiration and process; see also: A Conversation between Shepard Fairey, Deanne Cheuk and Chris Rubino

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Designboom has more on those fantastical Shanghai Expo 2010 Pavilions. Meanwhile, Huffpo investigates the embarrassing backstory of the US Pavilion.

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I completely forgot to mention last week, but I was quite impressed with Skylar Fein’s Remember the UpStairs Lounge at the new Empty No Longer space in Chelsea. (Thanks Greg.)

Skylar Fein
Remember the UpStairs Lounge
Empty No Longer
447 W 16th St (near 10th)
New York NY 10011 [map]
April 29, 2010 – May 30, 2010
Wednesday–Sunday 12–7

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Mark Ryden’s The Gay 90’s: Old Tyme Art Show at Paul Kasmin: recapped on HB and AM; also on WOM, my friend’s blog for CN Traveler, though she very recently moved to the newly-redesigned Businessweek—congrats Eimear.

Mark Ryden
The Gay 90’s: Old Tyme Art Show
Paul Kasmin Gallery
293 10th Ave (at W 27th)
New York, NY 10001 [map]
April 29, 2010 – June 5, 2010

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Obligatory infographic on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill; click image to see in full. (GOOD)

Air spill via Huffpo.

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Flash of Genius: A Gaga Journal by Matthew Williams for V Magazine via Huffpo.

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Os Gemeos’ new blog via HB / S×H

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Tim Barber’s gorgeous series of New York Creatives 2010

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Colours in Cultures via Information is Beautiful

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I don’t use the internet at all.

–Paul Smith, interview on Designboom, Feb 2010

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Growth Spurt – T Magazine on rooftop gardens in New York

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I had expected something rather more bohemian from this ‘metaphysical’ painter, but found, instead, an airy bourgeois apartment full of antique furniture, comfortable sofas and rugs. Not what I had predicted from this one time friend of Apollinaire, Picasso, and that arch surrealist André Breton, who had hailed de Chirico’s early dream-like cityscapes as pivotal within the development of Surrealism. Most odd was the tiny monk-like bedroom, Spartan in its decor except for a few books, with its narrow childlike bed under a white cover…

–Sue Hubbard, On being in Rome: visiting de Chirico’s home and Richard Serra at Gagosian,
3qd, May 3 2010

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(Fake) Werner Herzog reads Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, Where’s Waldo, other childrens’ books. I just wish it was the real Herzog…

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Henri Cartier-Bresson's portrait of Sartre is currently on view in his retrospective at MoMA

As with his entire body of work, Sartre’s theory of imagination refers to—and, naturally, affirms—his ontology, in which he explores Husserl’s tenet that “all consciousness is consciousness of something” in the context of the ‘detotalized totality’ of being-in-itself / being-for-itself dualism. Sartre postulates an admittedly underdeveloped notion of image consciousness in his early work The Imaginary (1940), though these writings are largely eclipsed by his later political [viz. Marxist] proclivities; nevertheless, his theory of imagination is a sufficient foundation of a phenomenological aesthetics.

Notably, Sartre implies that the imaginary (or ‘irreal’) has the same ontological import as the real: if the real is never beautiful, it is simply because beauty is, by definition, imaginary, where imagination is a permanent possibility of consciousness. A painting, photograph, film, song, performance, etc., necessarily transcends perception—i.e. consciousness of oil on canvas, ink on paper, a projection, an actor, etc.—as an object of image consciousness, which overflows with the meaning of the portrait (etc.): a particular arrangement of brushstrokes or sounds immediately presents itself to consciousness as an image or melody. The abstract, then, is that which escapes us in experience qua perception; colors transcend pigment to conjure mood or geometry.

Hence, Images (in no particular order):

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1. Liu Bolin opening in Soho this weekend (I used one of his pieces to illustrate my very first blog post). (ArtCat)

Liu Bolin
On Fire
Eli Klein Fine Art
462 West Broadway (between Houston & Prince)
New York NY 10012 [map]
212 / 255-4388
April 30, 2010 – June 4, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, April 30, 6-9pm

2. Scott Campbell’s first solo show in NYC (OHWOW via S×H; also on Nowness)

Scott Campbell
If You Don’t Belong, Don’t Be Long
OHWOW
109 Crosby Street (at Prince)
New York NY 10012 [map]
April 29, 2010 – May 30, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 29, 6-8pm

3. Skye Parrott of Dossier curated a photography show at BAM

Younger Than I’ll Be
Curated by Skye Parrott
Natman Room
BAM Peter Jay Sharp Building
30 Lafayette Ave (between St. Felix & Ashland) [map]
Brooklyn NY 11243
718 / 636-4100
April 7, 2010 – May 23, 2010

4. Michael Joo & Damien Hirst: Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun? (S×H) [A: Yes.]

Michael Joo & Damien Hirst
Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun?
Haunch of Venison
Heidestrasse 46
10557 Berlin, Germany [map]
+49 (0) 30 39 74 39 63
May 1, 2010 – August 14, 2010

Hirst also has work at the Oceanographic Music of Monaco.

5. Barzman’s “Pink Terror” = slow-motion video and Stephen Hawking over a hot beat. (Barzart via 3qd)

6. Faile & BAST bring their street artcade to New York (TBWE; interview on Gothamist; previewed at AM; previous [London] coverage))

Faile & BAST
DELUXX FLUXX NYC
158 Allen St (at Rivington)
New York NY 10002 [map]
April 30, 2010-May 27, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, April 30, 7:30-10:30pm

7. Maya Lin’s so-called last memorial What Is Missing at Times Square (DB)

8. Zaha Hadid for the 2012 Olympics in London (DB)

9. Longo-esque Trent Mitchell photography (ISO50 on FFFFound)

10. The Tribeca Film Festival saw the New York premiere of Tamra Davis’s documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (Nowness)

11. Bursts of Color in Public (KitsunéNoir via FFFFound)

12. Whistler’s Father (FFFFound via TBWE)

13. Dead or Alive at MAD (Animal)

Dead or Alive
Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle (SSE Corner)
New York NY 10019 [map]
212 / 299-7777
April 27, 2010 – October 24, 2010

14. Marina Abramović Made Me Cry (via Marco Anelli’s flickr); for more on The Artist Is Present, Kottke aggregates so I don’t have to.

15. Shepard Fairey’s May Day marks Deitch Projects’ last hurrah. (Full mural image & coverage at AM (also on NYT); video and other news on Animal; listing on ArtCat)

Shepard Fairey
May Day
Deitch Projects
18 Wooster St (at Grand)
New York NY 10013 [map]
212 / 343-7300
May 1, 2010 – May 29, 2010
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 1, 6-8pm

16. Herzog & de Meuron Special (ArchDaily)

17. DQM Spring 2010 Lookbook (HB)

18. For the 13th-consecutive single-artist installation on the Roof Garden of the Met: bamboo. (NYT via Inhabitat)

…Twin brothers Mike and Doug Starn (born in New Jersey in 1961) will present their new work, Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop, opening on April 27. The monumental bamboo structure, ultimately measuring 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 50 feet high, will take the form of a cresting wave that bridges realms of sculpture, architecture, and performance. Visitors will witness the continuing creation and evolving incarnations of Big Bambú as it is constructed throughout the spring, summer, and fall by the artists and a team of rock climbers. Set against Central Park and its urban backdrop, Big Bambú will suggest the complexity and energy of an ever-changing living organism.

–Doug+Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú

Doug & Mike Starn
Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave (at E 82nd St)
New York NY 10028 [map]
April 27, 2010 – October 31, 2010

19. Peter Root’s Ephemicropolis; see also NYC in staples. (DB; making-of video)

20. Shanghai Expo 2010 Pavilions (Dezeen / ArchDaily)

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Not as coherent but also interesting:

Images from the earthquake in Yushu, China (Boston)

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Mother for Stella; see also: Fading Ads, Pickled in Pixels (NYT)

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Parting Shot: [the view from Brooklyn Bridge Park] Glowingly (Animal)

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Interpol goes in a new [art] direction. (BV)

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Nike Music Shoe revisited: it was Ableton all along. (Core77)

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fin.

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1. Bracketology (1985-2009) infographic by Leonardo Aranda.

2. Jan Smith photographed the abandoned ships at Nouadhibou in Mauritania. (GOOD)

3. Jeff Koons × BMW (NYT / PSFK)

4. Domino Sugar Factory bombed by NEKST, ADEK, HAELER, and CHEW. (TWBE)

5. My boy Eugene from Hypebeast is curating a photography show in Hong Kong. (HB)

Day Job
curated by Eugene Kan
Above Second Gallery
31 Eastern Street [map]
Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
852.3483.7950
Opening Reception: Friday, April 9, 6-10pm

6. Photo gallery of construction for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. (Boston Globe)

7. Work by Beijing-based photographer Phoebe Jin. (NeochaEDGE)

8. Usugrow – Shinkai, from Hasadhu, in the Night Before a Storm. Juxtapoz / s.butterfly

Usugrow
Hasadhu, in the Night Before a Storm
StolenSpace Gallery
Dray Walk, The Old Truman Brewery
91 Brick Lane [map]
London E1 6QL
+44 (0) 207 247 2684
Through April 18, 2010

9. Zuriick website re-design: the Salt Lake City-based footwear purveyors are stepping it up this season with the new premium ‘Shug‘ silhouette, just in time for the nice weather.

10. Photorealist painter Emily Burns is cutting her teeth as a Koons studio assistant. (Notcot)

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Bonus pic: Springtime at Nighttime in NYC (Terry Richardson)

Matthew Picton’s sculptures are right up my alley: he makes roadmaps into art.

DB; more at Toomey-Tourell.

Claire Burbridge & Matthew Picton
Absence and Presence
Toomey-Tourell Fine Art
49 Geary Street [map]
San Francisco, CA 94108
415 / 989-6444
Through May 1, 2010

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Connie Brown makes detailed, vintage-y (not to mention pricey) custom maps. She’s giving at talk at NYPL on April 10th. Much more info (and images) at NGS, linked below.

National Geographic Society via Boingboing.

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The Times has an interactive feature on taxi pick-ups (in Manhattan), a nice to their piece on taxi traffic and, by extension, Jonah Lehrer’s musings on commuting. Now if only there was some way to track the Cash Cab…

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I happened to mention Sam O’Hare’s captivating short film “The Sandpit” and the 8-Bit NYC meme in the same post a couple weeks ago: watch the rough equivalent of a mash-up via Asciimeo. It’s not nearly interesting as either of the originals; ASCII-conversion technology was YouTube’s April Fools’ Day joke. (TechCrunch)

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Lastly: SXSW, geolocated.

Munk One

The recent Upper Playground × Inglourious Basterds poster collaboration inspired me to finally watch Quentin Tarantino’s latest masterpiece (six months late is forever sooner than never).

All images via Arrested Motion (full-size images available, since my web-optimized crops don’t do the artwork justice).

L: David Choe; R: Estevan Oriol

Like most of my postmodern peers, I’m predisposed to like anything that Quentin Tarantino has a hand in (I actually genuinely like Jackie Brown) and it was largely a foregone conclusion that I would enjoy his fifth feature-length film. Even so, I would say that Basterds is somewhat unique, not just as Tarantino’s take on a war flick—homage-y, genre-agnostic and immanently quotable—but even within his oeuvre: the film relies heavily on the absolute moral compass dictated by historical hindsight, operating within a framework of unambiguous good guys and bad guys. This isn’t the clusterfuck of Reservoir Dogs or, say, Vietnam: the eponymous team of Americans is fighting goddamn Nazis, a.k.a. evil in its purest form.

NB: Spoilers ahead.

L: Alex Pardee; R: Rene Almanza

With history on his side, Tarantino can afford to instill the Basterds with a measured, weirdly heroic, sadism: the American boys sent to terrorize enemy forces in Nazi-occupied France can do no wrong. Scalping, clubbing, scarring, it’s all good—it’s nothing compared to the horrors of the Holocaust.

Nevertheless, Basterds is relatively tame for the auteur who made his name by transcending senseless violence by depicting it for what it is: nasty, brutish and short. Seasoned film viewers have certainly seen worse.

But Tarantino is (and arguably never was) going for shock value, and graphic violence is but one of his calling cards: he’s at his best when he’s spins tension out of talk, typically between arch-enemies (knowing or otherwise), over milk, strudel, whiskey or fashionable pumps (T has always had a bit of a foot fetish). Tarantino further demonstrates his mastery of dialogue with the clever but unforced play on language: if English is the lingua franca, America is the punchline—cheap shots, perhaps, but all in good fun.

L: Sam Flores; R: Grotesk

The majority of those jokes come at the expense of protagonist Brad Pitt Aldo Raine, a blue-blooded A-mur’can Lieutenant and leader of the Basterds, even as he pulls some punches of his own (apologies for the terrible pun). Raine is the good guy, simple but not stupid, earnest in a cartoonishly Middle American way, by far the most idealized and least human of the characters—in other words, it’s a good fit for Pitt. As always, he puts on an excellent, if a bit wooden, performance, but, as always, his familiar physiognomy—even behind a silly non-disguise of  a ’stache—precluded a full suspension of disbelief. (This, I suppose, is the double-edged sword of being a successful, talented actor.)

Straight-faced sidekick B.J. Novak was similarly problematic albeit for different reasons: Tarantino introduces the Basterds such that fans of The Office might literally pick him out of a lineup. Whereas Brad Pitt’s visage instantly conjures a film career that explores the full spectrum of confidence —from the infamous Tyler Durden to doofus Chad in Burn After Reading—it’s hard not to see Novak as douchey sidekick Ryan. Which is fine because he’s not all that important anyway.

L: Nate Van Dyke; R: Dora Drimalas

Of course, the sheer recognizability of the Americans only underscored the singular brilliance of Christoph Waltz’s turn as the perfect nemesis: I had no idea who he was before I saw Basterds and the film was better for it. SS Colonel Hans Landa was as compelling as any of Tarantino’s inimitable characters, except without the pretense of moral ambiguity: he’s a goddamn Nazi, and he’s delightfully despiccable for it.

Waltz imparts an uncanny charm to the villain whose cheerful plastic demeanor barely belies his motives, channeling a bare sarcasm that transcends the human emotion of contempt: he likes to play games, but he likes winning even more. Even as we hope that Landa—calculating but not quite cold, inscrutable yet oddly sympathetic for his delusions—gets his comeuppance, we’re not sure what he deserves until that final moment when he holds up his end of the deal, only to face justice à la Raine.

L: Mike Skinner; R: Jeremy Fish

Meanwhile, the relatively obscure (and absolutely lovely) Mélanie Laurent is on point as Shoshanna, Tarantino’s obligatory vengeful heroine. After losing her family at the hands of Landa, she never wavers in her animus towards the Third Reich, especially as it is embodied by fawning Nazi war hero Frederick Zoller. In fact, Landa meets his match not in Raine but in Shoshanna, whose tragedy is matched by her beauty and cunning: she is human in all the ways that Landa is not. It was too much to hope that Landa and Shoshanna would ultimately meet some kind of a Kill Bill-style showdown; instead, Tarantino sacrifices her in trademark martyrdom opposite Zoller, who deserves her neither in life nor in death.

L: Morning Breath; R: Patrick Martinez

But Shoshanna’s cause is just and her heart is pure, and Tarantino’s ego prevails when he transgresses historical fiction to consummate her revenge and, by extension, his own. If the theater is an easy symbol for the rejection of reality, where a film becomes a universe unto itself, Shoshanna is merely an instrument for the immolation of that sacred place. She need not know that her nemesis lives: Landa controls his own fate until the very end, and Lt. Raine is not as deserving as his cocksure smile might suggest when he delivers the überironic closing line, “I think this just might be my masterpiece.”

Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but all in all, I thought that Basterds was a thoroughly entertaining film with perfect pacing after a slow start, and I look forward to watching it again in the near future.

Of course, now I can’t help but see Christoph Waltz in his breakout role as Hans Landa: his face will forever bear the mark of unironic superciliousness that Tarantino takes pains to avoid.

Bonus pic:

Lt. Aldo Raine Action Figure via Hypebeast

]]> http://idolizeyourkillers.com/2010/02/the-lost-art-of-inglourious-basterds/feed/ 0 http://idolizeyourkillers.com/2010/01/images-2/ http://idolizeyourkillers.com/2010/01/images-2/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:58:07 +0000 Ray http://idolizeyourkillers.com/?p=1140

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1. Crayola Color Chart, 1903-2010—I love shit like this. (PSFK via Weathersealed)

2. Banksy was at Sundance in Park City, Utah, to ‘promote’ the film Exit through the Gift Shop (Animal / AM)

3. Barry McGee at SFMoma (AM)

4. Nick Knight’s striking ophidian fashion photography for Alexander McQueen, featuring last year’s infamous claw shoe, also immortalized as a Barbie accessory. (Fashiontography)

5. The inimitable (post-Criticism?) Damien Hirst at Gagosian.

Damien Hirst
End of an Era
Gagosian Gallery
980 Madison Ave (at E 77th) [map]
New York NY 10075
January 30, 2010–March 6, 2010
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 30, 6-8pm

6. Speaking of Mr. Hirst, he’s among the art stars and luminaries featured in the Little Artists’ Art Craziest Nation. John Cake and Darren Neave went meta with this cloyingly simple 2005 work, a Lego version of a modern art exhibition.

7. Ryan McGinley × Tilda Swinton for Pringle of Scotland.

8. Ron Mueck photo gallery via Life. Amazing.

9. Refinery29’s Six Most Outrageous Moments at Men’s Fashion Week

10. Kanye was also spotted at the absolutely absurd Walter Van Beirendonck runway show.

11. Josh Keyes at Jonathan Levine Gallery.

Josh Keyes
Fragment
Jonathan LeVine Gallery
529 West 20th St, 9th Fl (at 10th Ave) [map]
New York NY 10011
January 16, 2009–February 13, 2010

12. Heather Sherman at Sloan Fine Art

Heather Sherman
Feral
Sloan Fine Art
128 Rivington St (at Norfolk) [map]
New York NY 10002
January 27, 2010–February 20, 2010

13. Summer 2010: Shepard Fairey × Deitch Projects (Obey via AM)

14. In the meantime, check out Jef Aerosol’s stencil graffiti at Ad Hoc.

Jef Aerosol
All Shook Up
Ad Hoc Art
43 Bogart St (at Grattan) [map]
Brooklyn NY 11206
January 29, 2010–February 21, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, January 29, 6-10pm

15. The Times has a related slideshow for the article that I so callously saw fit to supplement with my own images.

16. My first drawing of the new year.