The director Gus Van Sant is one of those creators synonymous with the youth culture of the 90s, when the fringes hit the mainstream. The Drugstore Cowboy (ok, it came out in ‘89, but you know what I mean) and especially My Own Private Idaho (’91) made him more than an instant cult figure. And if his later releases like Gerry, Last Days, and Paranoid Park, did not seem as impactful, perhaps it’s because the youth culture that changed and not the man.
Last week we again visited the studio of the artist Barry X Ball, whose engrossing, unsettling sculptures are at the top of our art list. See our photo essay below and read our extensive profile on the artist.
It is hard to believe that that the perennially young Japanese label UNDERCOVER turned 25 last year. As part of the anniversary, the publisher Rizzoli is releasing a 256-page book on the brand ($65). It is the first comprehensive overview of UNDERCOVER’s body of work and the first book on the brand available in the West (if you can find it, hunt down the fantastic “The Shepherd,” which documented UNDERCOVER’s first Parisian shows.)
Aaaah, the Smiths! As a late convert I cannot claim allegiance to the good old formative days when meat was murder and the queen was dead. But, the more I listen to the Smiths as of late the more their music overtakes my consciousness.
Please join us for our Black Celebration party in Paris with our guest Leon Emanuel Blanck.
I did not know that one of the most impressive modern buildings is in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, until I saw its photo in This Brutal World (Phaidon, $49.95). The jaw-dropping structure is a testament to the human aspirations and follies. If architecture, like art, should reflect our world, the still-unfinished (inside) Ryugyong Hotel is it.
One of the things we love at StyleZeitgeist is bringing interesting people from fashion and other cultural realms together, especially when these people are musicians. Bryan Black, known popularly as Black Asteroid has played at some of our events, and his heavy hitting industrial techno has kept us dancing more than once well into the night.
This week the new fashion exhibition “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology” opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It aims to challenge the notion, usually found in the popular imagination, that handwork and machine work somehow exist in the state of opposition.
If you happen to be in New York this spring, Enrico Castellani’s new exhibit, Interior Space, at the uptown gallery Dominique Levy is worth a visit. It’s the first solo exhibition of the revered Italian artist in the gallery, and it spans Castellani’s oeuvre from the 60s to the near present. Castellani was part of the Zero movement, which is now having a resurgence of interest with museum and gallery exhibits around the world, and he, along with his acquaintance Lucio Fontana, is one of the best known Italian figures of the mid-20th Century avant-garde.
Underneath the pressing debate in the publishing industry that’s threatened by e-readers and Amazon, there lies one basic question – what does a book make? Especially, a book of literature? Is a text simply a text? Does the physical book matter? Ask any old bibliophile, and their lament will extend way back to the rise of the cheap trade paperback that replaced the beautiful folios of yore in most home libraries. To them the physicality of the book extends the respect due to the text.