we teamed with intrepid west coast visitors sara and josh for a trip to the brooklyn museum on the last day of the basquiat exhibit; god bless corporate memberships (yeah, i said it), for my company card saved us at least a few hours of grumbling and shuffling. the show itself was capital, though i was disappointed that the spooky painting from basquiat’s times magazine cover (the same image on the museum site’s exhibit page) wasn’t actually present. menacing drawings from radiohead albums and mid-‘90s comics conditioned me to like that sort of art best of all.
in other graffiti news, spotted a bitchin’ batman / neckface billboard as we crossed the williamsburg bridge on the way back home last night. in other other graffiti news, banksy is fucking awesome (as long as he isn’t hurting the farm animals).
am reading until i find you, john irving's newest. it is also awesome, at least the part about tattooing one’s way across northern europe. and who knew sailor jerry worked in canada?
post script: thank you, pica, for drawing attention to "the case against coldplay" ("the most insufferable band of the decade") in today's times. lest i echo a link without providing anything of my own, dear readers, i'll tell you a dirty secret: joe is partially responsible for the visas that got chris martin et al. into the united states a few years ago. while it's tempting to hate him for this, remember that he thought he was serving his country.
3 comments:
my only exposure to basquiat is from his movie "downtown 81," which megan rented a few months back. horribly dubbed, and basquiat is pretty insufferable. the movie is partly saved only by the musical appearances of some really fine bands like james white and the blacks and kid creole and the coconuts. you might also be interested in this basquiat slide show on slate from last week: http://slate.com/id/2118128/
sort of a mixed review on his legacy.
my prior exposure was limited to the '96 movie; i remembered david bowie as andy warhol talking about rubber ducks, and that's about it. i agree with slate on the race stuff, and on the fact that his final pieces are some of the most compelling.
at the ~300-page mark in the irving novel, i'm sorry to say that the first section stands alone. the second could be called Everyone Molested This Kid, and the third thus far is But That's Okay, Since He's Kinky. more tattoos, less sex with old portuguese women, please.
what a cutting article about coldplay! i just read it and, i'm learning about the art of "music crtitcal" if you will. great piece, but, i still like them and am listening to the latest on josh's laptop. it is difficult to appreciate a band when you're listening to them on 2 too tiny speakers and you don't know the songs well enough to fill in the blanks. i digress...
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