If you think that John Lennon was always a long-haired, zen-like peace-activist with his arms wrapped around Yoko, it’s time to see Nowhere Boy (if only as a manual for how all datable boys should dress). Turns out Lennon was a rebellious little punk who frisked girls in the woods, jumped on the tops of busses, and pissed off austere British headmasters everywhere. His family issues–he lived with his strict aunt while his zany, unstable mother lived down the street–occasionally come off as overly dramatized…but who cares? It’s all true! Not to mention the folky, Elvis inspired soundtrack is totally a better alternative to your next party than some overplayed Bloc Party. I’d mention how cool it is that the flick was directed by a notorious British female of the art world, or that the faux-Liverpool-accented star, teenager Aaron Johnson is a heartthrob…but all anyone seems to care about is that he knocked her up. Whatever. Go find an obscure cinema and see it.

Andy Serkis in 'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll'

2010 is still young, but already our screens have been graced by two films about dead rock stars. The first, Sam Taylor-Wood’s Nowhere Boy, told the story of the turbulent upbringing of John Lennon, and of the strained relationship with an estranged mother that helped to fire the future Beatle’s artistic ambition. The second, released in the UK today, is Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, a warts ‘n’ all biopic of Ian Dury, singer, songwriter and leading light of the British punk scene.

In theory, popular music and cinema should go together like love and marriage or cheese and chutney. Both are popular art forms after all, both came of age in the 20^th Century, and there’s a big overlap between gig-going and cinema-going audiences. Film inspires music and music inspires film, so naturally film-makers are tempted from time-to-time to tackle the subject of popular music and its stars.

And yet, somehow, this promising partnership rarely seems to work out well. If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then filming music is like, I don’t know, singing about theatre: not quite so remote, but still a difficult trick to pull off. 

Film-makers have set about tackling musical subjects in a variety of ways. Perhaps the most obvious, particularly when you have a Johnny Cash or a Ray Charles or an Ian Dury on your hands, is to go for a straightforward biographical approach, telling a story about a musician’s life, or part thereof. The problem here is that, firstly, once you’ve seen one TV thrown into a swimming pool you’ve seen them all, and, secondly, biography tends to be a distraction from the music. Are great musicians’ lives really all that interesting in themselves?

A noble attempt to break out of this narrative straightjacket is Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There (2007), a Bob Dylan biopic that tackles its subject by telling six fragmented stories to represent different aspects of the singer’s personality. In each story, a different actor (or actress) portrays Dylan, or a character very like him. So Cate Blanchett is the electric Dylan of the mid-Sixties, Richard Gere the reclusive Dylan of the Eighties and Marcus Carl Franklin a young boy travelling in box-cars and playing his guitar; a Dylan who never was. I’m Not There doesn’t really address the singer’s music head-on, but by dispensing with a linear, fact-based approach to his life it does have a convincing go at exploring him as a cultural icon,

Film fares less well when it comes to the tricky matter of capturing the essence of live music, with all of its energy and excitement and sweat. By far the weakest scenes in Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People (2002), for example, are those involving the epoch-making gigs attended and organised by its central character Tony Wilson. Similarly, Oliver Stone’s The Doors (1991) never quite captures what it was that made Jim Morrison so compelling, and Walk The Line (2005) gives but a taste of the energy and anarchy of Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison gig. (For the real deal, see instead the documentary footage of Cash at San Quentin Jail.)    

'Control'

One film that manages to buck this trend is Control, Anton Corbijn’s 2007 retelling of the life of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis. Control is primarily a biographical piece but somehow, miraculously, its live concert scenes seem to come alive, or at least to grip and compel much more than they do in most films about music. I’m not quite sure why this is. It could have something to do with the intensity of the lead performance from newcomer Sam Riley. It could be because Corbijn chose to let Riley sing the songs himself rather than mime to the originals. Or it could be because, increasingly, the viewer comes to expect and fear the epileptic fits that periodically strike down Curtis, often while he’s on stage.

Without wanting to cast any aspersions on Control’s director or his performers though, I’m not sure that even they would be able to say what the magic formula is for making gigs on film work. Live music triumphs or fails for reasons that are very hard to quantify, let alone recreate; the mood of the crowd, the feedback on Amp 6, and whether or not the drummer has a headache. The truth is that sometimes on a film set things just happen, and it’s all the cast and crew can do to scramble gratefully after the moment, and try to preserve it for the ages.

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is on general release in the UK.

Sam Taylor-Wood >>>>

Sam is having another sprog with her child fiance Aaron Johnson.

Aaron Johnson is a whopping 23 years her junior and ms Wood already has two children from her previous marriage to Art dealer Jay Jopling.

The pair who met on her latest movie ‘nowhere boy’ are expecting there first child together.

The couples spokesperson said:

“We can confirm that Sam is pregnant with Aaron’s first child.

Both are very, very happy”

Sam wood you are one lucky ladie, lets hope he doesnt keep you awake the whole night!!!

Nowhere Boy is a film about John Lennon’s childhood and adolescence and the feature film directorial debut of director Sam Taylor-Wood.

The film is about Lennon’s teenage years and focuses on the influence his Aunt Mimi and his mother Julia had on his life, it also focuses on his friendship with fellow Beatle Paul McCartney. The film stars Aaron Johnson, Thomas Sangster, Anne-Marie Duff and Kristin Scott Thomas. The film was released on Boxing Day 2009.

Overall i thought that this film was quite good and gives an interesting insight into the life of John Lennon. It’s touching, funny, sad and feels very genuine. I thought that Aaron Johnson (John Lennon) was extremely impressive and Thomas Sangster captured the mannerisms of Paul McCartney very well.

This film is worth seeing and will suit a varied audience

Film Rating: 7/10

.

Sam Taylor-Wood

No offence to Matt Greenhalgh, the screenwriter, but I can’t help thinking that the screenplay for Sam Taylor-Wood’s Nowhere Boy must originally have looked something like this:

LIVERPOOL, 1957. It’s grim Up North, but not *that* grim – more sort of grim in a picturesque way.

JOHN LENNON is a stunning-looking young man. He looks a bit tearful under his bravado. KRISTIN SCOTT-THOMAS is his stern AUNT MIMI. His uncle’s just died.

LENNON: Eh, me uncle’s dead! (Weeps)
MIMI: No use crying, we’ve got to get on with things now. (Weeps discreetly to show three-dimensionality)

To show LENNON will be a BEATLE, he wanders past Strawberry Fields home, doodles a walrus etc. To show he will be a REBEL, he spouts faintly sarcastic one-liners, wears cool glasses and shags girls in parks.

LENNON wanders off and finds his REAL MUM JULIA, played by Anne-Marie Duff, very well actually.

LENNON: Eh! You’re me mum! (Weeps a bit)
JULIA: I am John! And now we’ll never be apart! Did you know that music means sex?
LENNON: No! Never!

We see VARIOUS FLASHBACKS of the YOUNG LENNON which are A BIT WEEPY too. Something has CLEARLY GONE WRONG IN THE PAST.

LENNON goes to a village fete. A little boy comes up to him, played by Liam Neeson’s stepson from Love, Actually. This, apparently, is PAUL McCARTNEY.

LENNON:  Eh, you’re a wanker. Wanna beer?
McCARTNEY: Can I have a cup of tea please? Here, listen to my amazing guitar playing.
LENNON: Right, you’re in the band.
McCARTNEY: Can my mate George join in as well?
LENNON: Aye.

Eventually AUNT MIMI and JULIA have a terrible confrontation. There is A NIAGARA OF WEEPING.

MIMI: You were a useless mum!
JULIA: And you’re playing the part like you’re in Noel Coward!
MIMI: That’s as may be, but at least I’m not going to die tragically in the next ten minutes!
JULIA: I’ve abandoned my child! I’ve abandoned my boy!
DANIEL DAY-LEWIS: That’s my line!

LENNON looks confused and weeps.

LENNON: I can’t stand it! All I’m faced with is carefully constructed Oedipal conflict and some arty flashbacks that end up signifying that my mum’s a bit odd in the head. What do I do? (Weeps some more.)

A RECONCILIATION takes place for dramatic purposes (‘cup of tea Julia?’), and a brief respite from weeping, until JULIA is unexpectedly run over and killed.

MIMI: My sister’s dead! (Weeps)
LENNON: My mum’s dead! (Weeps copiously)
McCARTNEY: My mum’s dead too! (Weeps even more copiously)

There is a SYMBOLIC SCENE of LENNON and McCARTNEY playing ‘In Spite Of All The Danger’. Everyone WEEPS.

LENNON: Right, I’m off to Hamburg to become JOHN LENNON. See ya, Auntie.
MIMI: I may be stern, but I can see this is what you’re destined to do. Off you go and become JOHN LENNON. (Weeps a bit.)
SAM TAYLOR-WOOD: Blimey, Aaron Johnson as John Lennon, you’re a bit of alright. Shall we get married?
AARON JOHNSON: And helpfully whip up some publicity for our film by appearing to justify the Oedipal themes? Why on earth not? The fact that you’re a multi-millionaire has nothing to do with this…

It should be also noted of this mostly entertaining but slightly histrionic film that the Goldfrapp score is frustratingly conventional; that the decision never to use the words ‘The Beatles’ is fair enough; and that it’s a surprisingly restrained directorial debut for Sam Taylor-Wood.

Well! It’s Sunday night already. Waking up today with a) a headache and b) that Saturday feeling was not auspicious, and nor has your doughty correspondent managed even to get hold of some pine boughs. Apparently you have to get back to the stall at the exact stroke of 6, otherwise they have given them all away to other people, and if you are sitting in the hairdressers with a glass of wine which your hairdresser has brought out, unexpectedly, in hopes of buttering you up to babysit her kid on the 23rd, you are just out of luck. Well, it was a laugh. I might do it, too. He’s 3: the best kind. It was a nice sort of blush Pinot Grigrio.

Got my roots done though. And some free wine. And the holly. And mistletoe. And panettone. And some presents. Shockinly expensive presents. And my cherub necklace back from being repaired, and got the cleaner in, and washed all the bedding on a hot wash, and took out the recycling, and answered emails. Tried to clear space in the living room to put up the thing I am calling a tree this year, but got half-way through and hit some barrier or other, and the thing is now all discombobulated… I need the boughs. And help moving the sideboard.

And just got in from the all-day XMas Poetry Extravaganza at the Betsey Trotwood pub in Farringdon Road – you know, the one I said I wasn’t going to, well I got roped in to the quiz, out of which I duly got knocked on a question I should completely have KNOWN: to wit, who was the king in 1905. Damn it. But on the plus side, I heard readings from the likes of Roddy Lumsden, Tom Chivers, Luke Kennard, Kate Kilalea, and Tim (of course) (aka Santa) Wells, and set up a couple of fab readers for my Lemon Monkey reading series. Luke Kennard himself, and also Annie Brechin, who is about to move to Prague but will come back on purpose at the time. Details to be got out to you all in due course… not that most of you live in London, but one likes to do one’s bit.

In other news, there’s a post on the Turner Prize that has been half-written since Thursday or earlier. Plus I would dearly love to write something about the two consecutive evenings I spent at the Stoke Newington School Christmas concerts, my last ever. At least the last I will ever see my own kid in. All a bit much, frankly, folks. Plus there are various other ideas floating free in the shattered remains of the Baroque brain. There is little food in the house but what there is I must eat some of before I can go to bed, having had nothing but brunch, red wine and some cheese in the pub all day. Paperwork to be readied for the morrow. Clothes. Lists. All that stuff. It’s all very well but errrrghhhhh…

And in other news there is so MUCH! Kirkus reviews has stopped – folded. Eek. HMV rejoices over collapse of Borders, Waterstones trading down, end-of year lists dull, end-of-decade lists even duller aside from revelation that almost everyone thinks Ian McEwen’s latest books were crap, and Blair has said publicly that even without the so-called likelihood of WMDs he would still have invacded Iraq. Apparently he and Bush used to PRAY together – THAT was it.

And did YOU know that Sam Taylor-Wood’s boyfriend is only 19? She’s 42! He, the child, plays the infant John Lennon in the execrably-named upcoming bio-pic, profiled at length in the December Vogue, Nowhere Boy. What kind of a title is THAT. Sorry. (They tried to be discreet on set.) And let us see, well maybe that’s enough. For now. You know I’m alive and Baroque Mansions has not yet burnt to the ground, that’s something. Touch wood.

And it is freezing out. As if you didn’t know that.

And by the way, I really am very sorry to be giving you all these me me me posts, not poetry poetry or some sort of brilliant take on current events. The past few weeks really have felt like being a puppy pulled along on the end of a leash, you simply try to stay upright. I haven’t even read anything. I printed out a poem off the internet and put it in my bag to read later when I had a chance, but that was on the tube and I was too tired, and just looked at the Metro instead, and I forget what the poem was now. Maybe by Harold Munro. It really is like that. I have a yellow exercise book which I’m writing lists in, of presents and tasks and days and things to do and so on, and it even contains items like “make list of emails I have to answer.” Friends say I am very organised for Christmas but it is at a cost. And I’m certainly not organised for writing. Or reading. Oscar who?

If I wanted to boost the SEO for Simple Pleasures part 4 I’d be writing this evening about Jim Morrison, The Snowman, lonelygirl15, Dylan Thomas, Lara Croft and Albert Camus, but I’ve got other stuff in mind, first and foremost The Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley, London N2. I’m just back from there where we went for a family matinee outing to watch Glorious 39.

Glorious 39 is considerably less glorious than Inglourious Basterds – basically it belongs on TV like many BBC Films ‘movies’ – but the Phoenix itself was its usual blaze of Art Deco glory, gilded but faded but ready to rise again in even greater splendor…

…which is why two nights ago I arranged a preview screening of Nowhere Boy at the Phoenix. It was just the second public screening of Sam Taylor-Wood’s new film about the young John Lennon and it was raising money towards the Phoenix Restoration Fund. The Phoenix is the UK’s oldest purpose-built cinema and to celebrate the centenary of its 1910 opening the charity trust which runs it is striving to complete a major restoration by its 100th birthday next year. (If you feel like donating a couple of quid, you can do that here – we’ve got 90 grand left to raise to release the lottery grant needed to do the job.)

Anne-Marie Duff – of Channel 4’s Shameless, Film4’s Garage and The Virgin Queen fame (especially Shameless! pretty much the best TV drama of the last decade) – kindly pitched up to do a Q&A after the screening and gave a great insight into her intelligent and feeling approach to acting. She plays Julia, John Lennon’s mother, who found herself giving him up as a child but later helping spark his musical genius. The scene of Julia teaching John to play the banjo and then his swift but hard-earned mastery of the instrument is thrilling.

Film4’s Nowhere Boy was rousing. I didn’t like Matt Greenhalgh’s script for Control but this was a story well told and moving. Anne-Marie as Julia and Kristin Scott-Thomas as John’s aunt Mimi (who raised him) were both powerful and affecting, making sense of a tragic love tussle. But the big revelation was the charismatic Aaron Johnson as the young Lennon, old school charisma and strikingness on screen.

Sam Taylor-Wood came in to visit us a couple of years ago at Channel 4 to talk about her work and inspirations, and showed us a short art video depicting the decomposition of a partridge and a peach – very impactful in a short, sharp way. A feature is a very different prospect and she pulled this one off with energy and aplomb. I suspect her interactions with the actors were lacking in experience but the thesps were all good enough to make up for any wooliness in that aspect of the direction.

One of my first insights into Channel 4 was in 1988 when a programme called Lennon /Goldman: the making of a best-seller was being cut in Solus Productions where I was working, my first job. It was about the rather grubby biographer of Elvis and Lenny Bruce and his biog of Lennon which was due to come out shortly after. The director, Binia Tymieniecka, kindly gave me a copy of  it, The Lives of John Lennon, which I dug out after the Phoenix show.  I could see from a cinema ticket bookmark that the last time I had dug it out was in April 1994 when Stephen Woolley (who I believe used to work at the Phoenix) & Nik Powell’s Backbeat came out. The inscription reads: You’ve heard the gossip. You’ve seen the rough cut. Now read the book. The gossip and the aforementioned insight involved Goldman pulling all his contributions from the documenatry at the 11th hour (not sure what kind of C4 contract allowed for that kind of veto, but Channel 4 was still in its naively golden first decade then).

This week (Tuesday) was the 29th anniversary of John’s death. I remember it clearly – I was in Tijuana in Mexico and saw the headlines in Spanish, struggling to translate them exactly. I associate that time with realising for the first time my eyesight was dodgy, taking off my specs and realising the degree of my myopia (your youropia, his hisopia), getting a bit upset about it as a person who’s always been visually driven, through still and moving pictures. There’s a lot of play in Nowhere Boy about John’s short-sightedness – Mimi’s always reminding him to put on his specs and he’s always taking them off again as soon as he gets out of range. He has to put them on when Paul (superbly played by the fresh-faced Thomas Sangster) is teaching him guitar. The chemistry between John and Paul is palpable. On Tuesday I was listening, trusty ol’ iPod on shuffle, on my walk home past the Phoenix to Yer Blues from the White Album and was greatly struck by the haunting words he wrote in India and recorded just a few miles from the Phoenix at Abbey Road:

Yes I’m lonely wanna die
Yes I’m lonely wanna die
If I ain’t dead already
Ooh girl you know the reason why

In the morning wanna die
In the evening wanna die
If I ain’t dead already
Ooh girl you know the reason why

My mother was of the sky
My father was of the earth
But I am of the universe
And you know what it’s worth
I’m lonely wanna die
If I ain’t dead already
Ooh girl you know the reason why

The eagle picks my eye
The worm he licks my bones
I feel so suicidal
Just like Dylan’s Mr. Jones
Lonely wanna die
If I ain’t dead already
Ooh girl you know the reason why

Black cloud crossed my mind
Blue mist round my soul
Feel so suicidal
Even hate my rock and roll
Wanna die yeah wanna die
If I ain’t dead already
Ooh girl you know the reason why.

I'm coming down fast but I'm miles above you

A serious contender for my favourite film of 2009, Nowhere Boy is a beautifully crafted and astonishingly accurate portrayal of his life pre-Beatles. Growing up with a Beatle-mad mother I was introduced to their music very early on and John quickly became known as ‘my Beatle’. I was reading the famous Beatles biography by Hunter Davies in primary school, as well as listening to their records whenever I could. My sister and I would watch A Hard Day’s Night and Help! on repeat over the weekends, so much that we can recite them both by heart. Although I don’t -yet- own it on DVD, the Beatles Anthology that was shown on television when I was in grade six remains one of my favourite documentaries about the greatest band in the universe. Needless to say, I was a little nervous about seeing this film.

I shouldn’t have worried. This film exceeded my expectations in portraying one of my favourite human beings. I was so moved by Aaron Johnson’s performance, whom I believed in the part immediately. There were moments when I gasped in wonder at how he became John: from the guitar-playing and singing, to the subtle changes in his facial expression that though small, made me believe in his performance even more. Although it is difficult to highlight any particular scene, the now famous church fete meeting of John and Paul was incredibly well-handled. Kristen Scott Thomas gave a beautifully complicated performance as Mimi, and Anne-Marie Duff (brilliant in Shameless) was revelatory as Julia.

The film is directed by Sam Taylor Wood, an English conceptual artist, and in Nowhere Boy she has created a work that is a worthy addition to my Beatles education.

Nowhere Boy, a film about John Lennon’s teenage years in Liverpool that was directed by Sam Taylor Wood, is being released in the UK on December 26th. Lennon (pictured above in a Bob Gruen photo) is portrayed in the film by Aaron Johnson. Kristin Scott Thomas plays Mimi Smith, Lennon’s aunt, who raised him. Anne-Marie Duff portrays Lennon’s mother Julia and Thomas Sangster plays Paul McCartney. The screenplay was written by Matt Greenhalgh, who also wrote the excellent 2007 feature Control, a film that told the story of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis.

Yesterday’s (December 6th’s) edition of The Sunday Times of London published a feature about Nowhere Boy’s director Sam Taylor Wood. In the article, Wood discusses the challenge of making a film about an icon like John Lennon. She said:

“It was nerve-racking and daunting, but I also went into it quite naively. I don’t think I really took on the scale of that fact until people started saying, ‘A film about John Lennon? How are you feeling about it?’ But I couldn’t start letting myself get too panicked about it, because I knew it would start to destabilize me. I knew that if I could shut that out and just focus on a coming-of-age story, rather than who he goes on to be, then I could make the film.”

You can read the full article about Sam Taylor Wood and Nowhere Boy from the December 6th edition of The Sunday Times of London by clicking here.

To watch the trailer for Nowhere Boy, click below:

While the film will be opening on December 26th in the UK, I don’t have any info about when it will premiere in America. When it does play here, though, it will probably be on the art house circuit.

On the subject of John Lennon, tomorrow marks the sad anniversary of his murder in New York City. I can’t believe that 29 years have passed since that awful Monday evening in December 1980.

John Lennon 1940-1980 R.I.P.

Sam Taylor Wood, UK, 2009

Being that this is the film that was chosen to close this year’s London Film Festival, it has to be said that it’s pretty forgettable.

Maybe that’s that the point, I don’t know, I’m not the artist here. Perhaps Taylor Woods intention was to capture the monotony and claustrophobic feeling of growing up in 1950’s Liverpool where dreams of escaping and a passion for American rock n’ roll culture were the order of the day.

Out of John Lennon’s remarkable life, tales of his child and teenhood often go overlooked, maybe because it is not especially different to that of any other angsty, young man growing up in an industrial British town and that’s why nowhere boy can tend to feel slightly flat, it’s just not that interesting a story. There are no problems with the direction, the clothes, dialogue and music are dead on and most of the performances are pretty solid, although I couldn’t help but notice that there were frequent accent transplants but I concede that a Liverpool accent is very distinctive and difficult to nail if you are not a native.

Another aspect of the film that griped me is in fact one of its strengths, in that Lennon comes across as an arrogant bully who thinks he is funnier than he actually is. This is where I have to give kudos to Aaron Johnson for pulling this off whilst maintaining his charisma and still managing to make the audience care for him as a troubled, abandoned child with a determination to live his dreams.

I also hated the creepy sexual tension between Lennon and his mum but I can just about forgive this for the part where one of my personal dreams came true, seeing Paul McCartney smacked in the gob.

If you are a fan of Lennon, the Beatles, 50s music or British cinema then this could be the film for you, if not, see it anyway, it’s pretty watchable, just don’t expect it to change your life.

Interested in Renaissance portraits, contemporary sculpture, or even Cold War design? Login to RDID using your RISD username and password, and check out the latest additions to the RISD Digital Image Database:

• Renaissance Faces: Images from an exhibition of portraits by artists such as Titian and Van Eyck, which took place at the National Gallery in London, between November 2008 and January 2009.
• Cold War design: Images of cold-war related objects, including Socialist posters, sheets from artist Bela Kolarova’s diary, spacesuits, spy cameras, a Mao jacket, and even a design for the Brainwashing Chamber in the spy film “The Ipcress File”!
• White Cube Gallery Exhibitions: Works from exhibitions that took place in 2008 and 2009 at the White Cube Gallery in London, by artists such as Josiah McElhenny, Robert Irwin, and Sam Taylor-Wood.
• Wood sculpture: Works by Louise Bourgeois, Andy Goldsworthy, Tyrone Mitchell, Mel Kendrick, David Nash and other artists working in wood.

We hope you enjoy these slideshows! RISD faculty, students and staff can download the images by going to the Search section, doing a simple keyword search, and clicking on the floppy disk icons under the thumbnails in the results pages.

Un film del 2009, regia di Sam Taylor Wood, con Kristin Scott Thomas / Aaron Johnson / Thomas Sangster / David Morrissey. Prodotto da 01 Distribution ()

Drammatico

Un biopic su John Lennon incentrato sulla giovinezza del cantante e sull’influenza che hanno avuto sua madre e sua zia Mimi sulla sua vita.

From the “everything is possible as long as it isn’t painting” attitude of the ‘90s we have arrived at “everything is possible as long as it is painting.” However, as art critics David Lillington and Benjamin Buchloh have outlined, we have returned to “a new classicism” that manifests itself in the return of easel painting and traditional values; and of which schools such as Leipzig, Dresden, and artists like Neo Rauch and Peter Doig are the clearest representatives. Maybe we should ask ourselves a basic question: what would Velazquez’s artistic practice be like today?

As we find more and more artists using interdisciplinary approaches in making their work, it has become increasingly difficult to categorize their art as simply painting, photography and video and so we have resorted to using the term “image”. It is this polysemic and de-constructive value of the image which has recently enabled a reformulation of the traditional pictorial techniques, materials, and genres, which, on the other hand, fitted very well in post-modern hybridization strategies.

Today our ability to access visual information is enormous as is our ability to disseminate it. If most information reaches us via television, Internet, I-phones, video consoles, Facebook, and other mass media, the way in which we manipulate and redistribute images should also be radically new. This sentiment has brought us to a place where the distinctions between the pictorial, the photographic, the performative, and the digital have blurred, generating a sort of “diffused pictorialism”. This in turn dramatically affects how we look at historical images.

TECHNO-REFERENTIALITY

In order to reference this new reality we could give birth in a speculative as well as practical manner to the concept “techno-referentiality”: a context where painting measures itself against its own history and myths while at the same time deploying interdisciplinary and digital approaches, and where the authenticity of an art work or the origins of the source material are irrelevant.

When does a painting cease to be a painting? How can we construct a painting that informs itself through the analogue and digital realms? Is a moving painting a perversion of painting? These are some of the questions that the exhibit When a painting moves…something must be rotten!… tries to tackle. The artists in the exhibition work in a formal, literal, or conceptual manner and play with the pictorial as “moving painting”, reformulating such classical genres as still life, landscape, and portraiture.

Participating artists include Alexey Buldakov, Myritza Castillo, Raúl Cordero, Raphael DiLuzio, Chus García-Fraile, Ori Gersht, José Maçãs de Carvalho, Fabián Marcaccio, Enrique Marty, Krisdy Schindler, Sam Taylor-Wood, Mariana Vassileva and Tim White Sobieski.

The exhibition opens November 18th at the Musem of Art of Puerto Rico (MAPR).

Text by Paco Barragán

Images provided by Paco Barragán and the artists

E’ chiaro che come giornalista non farò molta strada: sono troppo ignorante in materia di gossip. Di reality tv ne so anche meno di nulla, le poche volte che accendo la tv (che quando avrò un figlio volerà dritta dalla, seppur bassa, finestra) è solo per guardare South Park o Family Guy o documentari BBC. Ho visto la prima puntata di X Factor della mia vita solo domenica scorsa, con la mia cara amica, nonché coinquilina, che cercava di indottrinarmi ma si è trovata davanti una che non sapeva nemmeno chi fosse la tipa delle Girls Aloud. Figuriamoci, dunque, se potevo sapere che Sam Taylor Wood, 42 anni e regista del film Nowhere Man sul giovane Lennon, si stesse per sposare con l’altrettanto giovane attore, e protagonista, Aaron Johnson, 19 anni. E così, quando ho scritto riguardo il film sul Secolo XIX (in chiusura del London Film Festival questo è il link per leggere il pezzo) non ho manco menzionato la gossippata del toy -boy. Un po’ ne sono felice e un po’ mi sento inadeguata per questo lavoro. 

Il film, però, mi è piaciuto molto. Essendo una lennonologa sapevo bene quei fatti ma vederli mi ha quasi commossa. Parlando con altri giornalisti dopo lo screening, che invece non sapevano nulla del dramma familiare vissuto da John, ho visto che per loro il film è stato illuminante. Non parla dei Beatles, non c’è nemmeno una canzone dei fab four, oh well, fatta eccezione per “Hello Little Girl”, la prima firmata Lennon-McCarteny, del 1957. Tutto è incentrato sulla vicenda personale: Lennon e le due mamme, Mimi e Julia.

Quanto alla scelta di Aaron Johnson per la parte del Lennon teenager, all’inizio non l’avevo capita: quegli occhi azzuri e corporatura muscolosa mi sembravano del tutto fuori luogo. Poi Johnson-John mi ha portato lentamente dentro la parte, con il suo carisma e i modi di fare. Ora ripensandoci è stata una scelta apprezzabile e forse mi avrebbe più indispettito un irritante look-a-like che non sapeva nemmeno recitare. Anche Paul McCartney assomiglia all’originale almeno quanto io assomiglio a Gigi Marzullo (lo so, ho seri problemi di autostima) ma il profilo del personaggio è stato poco approfondito per superare le iniziali differenze estetiche. Ora sappiamo per quale motivo la regista abbia scelto l’attore e, se fossi una brava giornalista, avrei dovuto sapere pure che il suo ex marito, l’art dealer Jay Jopling (siamo nel mondo arty farty degli Young British Artists) dopo la separazione, ha avuto anche lui una toy-relazione con Lily Allen, 23 anni più giovane di lui. Avrei dovuto saperlo prima che me lo facesse presente un amico e collega giorni fa… Che posso farci? I’ll never get into gossip! 

Having read the announcement that Sam Taylor-Wood was to marry a 19-year-old actor, I, like many others no doubt, raised my eyebrows to a rather discerning height.

However, I have just placed who Aaron Johnson (for that is his name) actually is and where I’ve seen him from! He was ‘Owen’ in Nearly Famous! (amongst other roles which people will know him far better for).

I had the biggest crush on him back in Autumn 2007 when Nearly Famous aired on E4, and have recently been re-watching the episodes (and pausing at all the topless bits heh!!).

I love the music sequences, especially ‘What A Feeling’ (at 38 secs):

So now, I am even more mortified at this news of marriage!

I am not going to pretend to understand how the relationship works, that’s not really my business I guess – I’m sure many people wouldn’t fully understand Greg and I, which I accept. If it makes them both happy, then good for them – I’m not averse to the idea, just slightly surprised. Ultimately, as long as he is allowed to get his kit off with the same frequency as a quick Google Images search seems to suggest, I’m happy!

What’s that you say? You want to see proof of those images?

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Je hebt nog maar drie dagen van de tien om in Huize Frankendael de samenwerking met het Stedelijk in de stad te bekijken. Het Stedelijk heeft zes van zijn topvideowerken tentoon gesteld in het statige pand aan de Middenweg te Amsterdam. Elk werk krijgt ruim de aandacht door de unieke setting van de kamers. Of zoals de organisatie zelf schrijft:

“In ‘The Living’ ontvouwt de tentoonstelling zich als een verhaal met een plot, waarbij ieder werk een eigen kamer of salon invult. De routing door het huis, met de keuze van de werken voor specifieke kamers, sluit aan bij de geschiedenis van Frankendael als voormalig woonhuis. The Living is een intense video-ervaring, die niet snel vergeten zal worden.” Stedelijk in de Stad

There’s a few of us here at CoS… all with a different opinion on our end of year awards. That’s right, we’re individuals.
The first result are in from… hmmm… let’s call him ‘DAVE’. More to follow from the other STEVEs and IANs. Oh, and ‘SUSANs’ of course.

Most Ridiculous Idea For An Exhibition

THE RUSSIAN LINESMAN
& ANYTHING INVOLVING TOM MORTON

Most Ludicrous Use Of Production Funds

DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ-FOERSTER

Most Tiresome Self-Promoter

ADAM SUTHERLAND

Best Art Blog

CATHEDRAL OF SHIT!

The “Really? Is That Actually Good?! You Rate That? Huh.” Award to An Artist

KARLA BLACK

Moodiest Gallerist

TOBY WEBSTER

and finally, the Cathedral Of Shit Award for the Person We’d Most Like To Just Change Career or Disappear Entirely As They Don’t Even Serve Us As An Object Of Mockery.

GORMLEY OR QUINN OR SAM TAYLOR WOOD – WHITE CUBE BASICALLY. ALTHOUGH GLEN SCOTT WRIGHT IS ANOTHER GOOD CANDIDATE.