JONATHAN BECKER: Elaine's Kitchen in Drugstore Culture's Inaugural Issue

Elaine at Elaine’s, 2002, with some regulars (L to R): 

Lewis Lapham, Frederick Seidel, Father Pete Colapietro, Mayor David Dinkins, George Plimpton, Terry McDonell, Chuck Pfeifer, Josh Gasparo, Nelson Aldrich, Bobby Zarem, David Black & A. E. Hotchner

Photograph © Jonathan Becker

John Paul Getty III, Linda Hutton, Averil P. Meyer

and Fred Hughes in Elaine’s kitchen, 1976

Photograph © Jonathan Becker

Brassaï’s 80th Birthday at Elaine’s, 9 September 1979

Photograph © Jonathan Becker

Elaine’s was a form of inheritance to me, and I didn’t squander it.  Both my mother and my father were part of an intellectual and theatrical New York culture - intelligencia, litterati, glitterati, whatever - that made the city glow in the Sixties and Seventies… 

 – Jonathan Becker

A special portfolio by Jonathan Becker of his brilliant photographs documenting the heyday of Elaine’s Restaurant in New York, illustrated with his personal reminiscences,  is published in the first ever glorious Inaugural Issue of DRUGSTORE CULTURE.

DRUGSTORE CULTURE's Publisher, Charles P. Finch

"Is it a book? Is it a magazine?...." asks British GQ's Charlie Burton. 

I don't know, but I do know it's about Culture and Politics • To be published 6 times a year • The first issue has Film, Art, and Soul and the aforementioned fabulous Portfolio by Jonathan Becker • A digital platform will be live shortly • To receive a copy of the Inaugural Issue, DM/instantmessage your address to @finchandpartners on #instagram for your free issue!

going live any day now in september • dm your address to

@finchandpartners on #instagram for your free issue

drugstoreculture.com

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@finchandpartners #jonathanbecker

GRUNDEMARK NILSSON GALLERY: Free of Immediacy

© ARTISTS, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

© ARTISTS, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

"Free of Immediacy" exhibition shows the photographic works of Matan Mittwoch (born in 1982, Israel) in combination with an installation by Royden Rabinowitch(born in 1943, Canada), curated by Ory Dessau.

The exhibition Free of Immediacy seeks to bypass the basic notions underlying the canon of modernist abstraction, i.e., the idea of a direct, unmediated visual experience within an isolated field of vision. The exhibition seeks to prevail beyond the level of appearance, visibility, and form; beyond the confinements of human observation. It relates to the world in quantitative-calculative terms to undermine the totality of subjective expression and perception; yet, while disconnecting the empirical description of the world from direct experience, the exhibition also establishes an unfamiliar ground for cultural pluralism, for self- and collective-relativity. The exhibition does not pretend to be a summary of current tendencies in the contemporary art scene, but to be a preliminary outline, a proposal of a proposal.
 

GRUNDEMARK NILSSON GALLERY

BERLIN / STOCKHOLM
WWW.GRUNDEMARKNILSSON.SE

GRUNDEMARK NILSSON GALLERY

LINDENSTRASSE 34, 

10969 BERLIN, GERMANY

GRUNDEMARK NILSSON GALLERY

 SIBYLLEGATAN 26, 

114 42 STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN

MARCIA LIPPMAN : Painting : Photographs

 La jeune fille, 2016 © Marcia Lippman

 Pax, 2016 © Marcia Lippman

Son fils, 2016 © Marcia Lippman

Marquesa, 2016 © Marcia Lippman

Painting : Photographs by Marcia Lippman

Photographer, teacher, and native New Yorker Marcia Lippman explores the passage of time and the relationship between painting and photography in her most recent series, created over the past two years in museums in the United States and Europe. Using contemporary digital techniques, her photographs isolate small areas of concentrated emotion and gesture where history, memory, and the artist’s imagination coalesce. Lippman counts among her influences the pictorial masterpieces of the Renaissance, as well as the writings of Walter Benjamin, Rilke, and Barthes, and sees her work as a point of entry into painting through the examination of both old and new techniques and imagery. “Paint cracks are intensified, underscoring their vulnerability,” Lippman writes. “Brushstrokes are exaggerated, emphasizing the human hand that made them…My photographs reject the false perfection of the whole, and instead lay claim to the ambiguity of a single gesture.”

Marcia Lippman’s work has been the subject of two monographs, Sacred Encounters East and West (Edition Stemmle, 2000), which includes twenty years of photographs from Asia and Western Europe; and West Point (Edition Stemmle, 2001), photographs created during a year in residence at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, published for West Point’s bicentennial with an introduction by James Salter. Lippman has been the recipient of two grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work can be found in the collections of the International Center of Photography, New York, NY; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; and the Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY, among other institutions and private collections. She has been exhibited regularly throughout the United States since 1985. – Nailya Alexander Gallery

MARCIA LIPPMAN 

Painting : Photographs

Jan. 26 – March 2, 2017

Nailya Alexander Gallery

41 East 57th Street

Suite 704

Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to present Painting: Photographs by Marcia Lippman, on view Thursday, January 26 through Thursday, March 2 at 41 East 57th Street, New York, NY, Suite 704. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 AM – 6 PM, and by appointment.

SHEILA PINKEL: Folded Paper, Glass Rods

 Folded Paper Pieces © Sheila Pinkel

Folded Paper Pieces © Sheila Pinkel

Glass Rods © Sheila Pinkel

Folded Paper Pieces © Sheila Pinkel

"I realized that if I sculpted photographic paper in the darkroom and then illuminated that sculpture with a one point light source, the planes of the paper would be exposed to differing amounts of light. When I developed that paper it flattened and the image became a two-dimensional representation of the paper when it was three dimensional, or a time-space paradox. As I continued to make paper sculptures in the darkroom the resulting images became less structural and began to reveal more intuitive dimensions of my imagination." – Sheila Pinkel

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Higher Pictures will present Folded Paper, Glass Rods, 1974 – 1982, two seminal bodies of cameraless photographic work by artist, writer, and professor emerita Sheila Pinkel. The prints on view evolved from experiments Pinkel began as an MFA student at UCLA. Fascinated by the possibilities of using light to make images without a camera or enlarger, Pinkel studied with a physicist and subsequently conducted rigorous visual experimentation with light phenomena including incandescent, X-Ray, ultraviolet, prismatic and digital sources.

To make Glass Rods and Folded Paper Pieces, Pinkel exposed her compositions—solid glass rods arranged directly onto photosensitive surfaces and sculptures made from sheets of photographic paper—to a brief flash of light from a single light source. From within this seemingly narrow set of parameters come rich and varied studies. In monochrome and candy-colored palettes, some of the glass rods are clearly identifiable, others begin to break down into vibrating woven patterns and further into geometric abstractions, and still others are stretched and warped into melting psychedelic planes. Pinkel found that layering the rods at increasingly perpendicular angles led to greater light refraction, bringing the final photograms closer to what she describes as visual music.

The Folded Paper Pieces are lushly textured trompe l’oeil, pictures that Pinkel calls “time-space paradoxes,” two dimensional representations of the paper as a three dimensional form. When the artist flashes the dimensionalized folded paper with light, planes of paper are exposed to varying degrees, giving the final image its dramatic shading and sense of volume. But developing the print itself requires flattening the sculpture back into a two-dimensional sheet that now holds an image of its own prior form. Distilling her process to the very essentials of photography allows Pinkel to work precisely at the intersection of the medium’s double nature. It reproduces vision and has an endless capacity to defamiliarize it.

Sheila Pinkel: Folded Paper, Glass Rods, 1974 - 1982

January 10 - February 14, 2015

Higher Pictures, 980 Madison Avenue, NYC

Opening: January 10, 2015, 6 - 8pm

SheilaPinkel.com

Photograph © Loretta Ayeroff

Sheila Pinkel was born in Virginia, lives and works in L.A. Over the course of her 40-year career, Pinkel has created a strikingly diverse body of work that encompasses experimental light studies, documentary photography, social and political critique, and public art. Pinkel’s work is held in the collections of numerous museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; The Santa Barbara Museum of Art; and the Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou, Paris.

JONATHAN BECKER: Celebrates 30 Years at Vanity Fair with a New Assouline Book

 

Jonathan Becker

Photograph © Copyright by Ralph Gibson

 

Assouline, December 2012

Read my entire Interview with Jonathan Becker here:

Le Journal de la Photographie

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: Sculptor Louise Bourgeois Died

Arch of Hysteria, 1993
Polished Bronze (c) Louise Bourgeois /All Rights Reserved

An Interview With Louise Bourgeois
(Elizabeth Avedon Editions|Vintage Contemporary Artists)

Cover Photograph (c) Richard Avedon
Polished Bronze Sculpture (c) Louise Bourgeois

Maman by Louise Bourgeois
Spider Sculpture outside the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain

"Art is not about art"

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New York Times Obituary

Artist and sculptor, Louise Bourgeois, born in Paris December 25, 1911, died at home May 31, 2010 at 98 years old. She began her career as a draftsman at 12, providing drawings for the missing pieces of tapestries for her families business. At 15 she studied mathematics at the Sorbonne, then began studying painting at the École du Louvre and the École des Beaux-Arts, later working as assistant to Fernand Léger. After moving to the U.S. with her American husband, art historian and Director of the Museum of Primitive Art of New York, Robert Goldwater, she studied at the Art Students League of New York.

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MICHAEL DWORNIK: The Travellers

Matthew Avedon in The Travellers

Tokion Magazine, vol 3 #2. Photograph (c) Michael Dwornik

The Travellers

Tokion Magazine, vol 3 #2. Photograph (c) Michael Dwornik

Salcantay Inca Trail, Peru
Photograph (c) Michael Dwornik

Salcantay Inca Trail, Peru
Photograph (c) Michael Dwornik

Salcantay Inca Trail, Peru
Photograph (c) Michael Dwornik

Salcantay Inca Trail, Peru
Photograph (c) Michael Dwornik

MICHAEL DWORNIK, a self taught photographer living in NYC with his wife and child, was born and raised in Pennsylvania. His work includes travel and fine art photography, as well as editorial and advertising work. His clients include Puma Nuala with Christy Turlington, Puma Sports, Ecco, and Urban Outfitters "Free People" campaign, among many others.

Dwornik shot THE TRAVELLERS for the current issue of the cutting-edge art publication Tokion Magazine (Vol 3 #2) with artist Aurel Schmidt on the cover. Styled by Risa Knight, the bohemian family includes models Matthew Avedon and Will Lewis who could easily pass as brothers. TOKIAN is on the news stands now.

BILL NARUM: Austin Artist Remembered

Photograph (c) Bill Narum /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Bill Narum /All Rights Reserved

Album Cover Design by Bill Narum

Photograph (c) Bill Narum /All Rights Reserved

Bill Narum... Man of many talents as a gifted artist, designer and persistent protagonist on many fronts. As the designer and creator of each and every early ZZ TOP cover, his hand forged the perception of the artist essence of ZZ TOP... Cactus, desert sand, rattlesnakes and javalenas, jalapenos, hot sauce and hot bluesrock imagery from way deep down in Texas. Scribble on, Bro Bill. You were the best! –Billy Gibbons

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BILL NARUM, one of Texas' most famous artists, also Art Directed posters, album covers, stage sets, logo's and corporate branding for musicians Z.Z.Top, The Allman Brothers, Santana, Taj Mahal, Stevie Ray Vaughan, B.B. King, Johnnie Winter and many others for over 40 years. Narum died Wednesday, November 18, in his art studio.

"An important figure in Houston's counterculture in the late 1960's and 70's, Narum co-founded Houston FM rock station KLOL and worked as an illustrator for an underground newspaper. He went on to become Texas Band ZZ Top's graphic artist, moving from Posters and Album Covers Tejas, Tres Hombres, La Grange, Fandango to epic murals for the band's fleet of semis and the famous cactus-and-cattle-skull stage design for the trio's legendary 1975-76 "Worldwide Texas" tour." Bill will also be remembered for his recent exhibition "You Call That Art?"

ROSS BLECKNER: Birds

Copyright (c) Ross Bleckner

ROSS BLECKNER PAINTINGS HERE

VANESSA SOMERS VREELAND: Mosaics

Vanessa Somers Vreeland Mosaic

Vanessa Somers Vreeland: An Illustrated Talk on Mosaics Through the Ages
John Cabot University–Via della Lungara 233–00165 Rome
October 15, 2009– 19.00. RSVP 066819121

VANESSA SOMERS VREELAND trained with professor Odoardo Anselmi, art director of the Vatican Mosaic Studio in Rome and taught at Corning Museum of Glass, Penland School of Crafts, and the Columbia Museum of Art. She has had gallery shows in Paris, Rome, London, Brussels and North Africa. Vreeland's artistic path to mosaics began with painting on canvas, then on glass. She independently developed a fused glass mosaic technique and also works in marble and cold glass in traditional Roman style.

Vanessa edited My Colorful Life, an autobiography of her remarkable aunt, British Portraitist Juliet Pannett. Pannett had her own seat in the House of Commons, from which she sketched Britain's political milestones - including the debates on the Profumo affair in 1963 and Winston Churchill's last appearance in 1964. When Juliet died in 2005, she left a legacy of commissioned portraiture throughout Britain including 22 portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Vanessa Somers Vreeland Mosaics, Marrakech, Morocco 2009

A film by Director Fabienne Strouve
Play Video Here
_____________________________

FREDERICK VREELAND, former U.S. Ambassador and U.S. Senior Diplomat to Rome and wife Vanessa's Key To Rome: A Guide Book reflects the Eternal City's layers of cultural history, from ruins of antiquity and Christian Rome to the splendor of the Renaissance and the Baroque. "Their book guides travelers through layers of time, exploring major sites and revealing insider secrets. Written in a brisk, anecdotal style, this beautifully illustrated handbook is packed with photographs, historical drawings, sidebars, foldout maps, and floor plans. The guidebook's site descriptions are framed by historical timelines and punctuated by special "must-see" highlights. A comprehensive reference section at the back details day trips of interest, a guide to Italian food, specialty shops, "Rome by Night," and "Rome for Kids," as well as transportation, hotel and restaurant suggestions."

KIYOHARU ICHINO: Land of Red Waves

Wood-fired Ceramic Bowl
Contemporary Tanba Pottery by Kiyoharu Ichino

Wood-fired Ceramic Vase, Two Views
Contemporary Tanba Pottery by Kiyoharu Ichino

Wood-fired Ceramic Bowl
Contemporary Tanba Pottery by Kiyoharu Ichino

"Nestled in a beautiful valley along the Shitodani River among towering mountains northwest of Kyoto is the picturesque village Tachikui, the historic center of Tanba pottery. The rich ferrous soil in this area has supported generations of farmers and artisans since the early Kamakura period (1180-1230). The oldest existing noborigama (climbing kiln) in Japan is here. This serene locale is home of some of the most beautiful ceramics that have influenced aesthetic development in Japan and the western world. Tanba, Tan meaning red and Ba meaning waves, or Land of Red Waves, got its name from a red rice grown in ancient time which turned the fields into seas of red.

Because of its relative isolation, Tanba is less influenced by outside commercial trends than some other more accessible pottery towns in Japan. Old Tanba pottery had a restrained dignified appearance, exuding quiet confidence that reflected its proud heritage. This unique quality is evident in the works of contemporary Tanba ceramist Kiyoharu Ichino above.

KIYOHARU ICHINO was born in 1957 in Tachikui into a family of traditional pottery-makers. He learned all aspects of Tanba pottery since childhood. His works have been selected repeatedly by the prestigious juried Japan Crafts Association. Traditional Tanba pottery is fired unglazed at very high temperature in large wood-fueled kilns. Ichino uses both an anagama (hole kiln) and a noborigama (climbing kiln), burning almost a thousand bundles of wood over several days to bring out the unique personalities of Tanba clay, which is renowned for its rich texture and deep purplish brown colors. Many of his pieces show silvery fire-marks left by the wood fire. To show the unique clay texture, he often includes seemingly unfinished edges in his designs, exposing the rough clay body. Despite the high level of sophistication and innovation, Ichino's works maintain a strong connection with the ancient Tanba pottery tradition." (from Touching Stone Gallery)

Also View Yoshitaka Hasu Masterworks
Touching Stone Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

JIM DENEVAN: Sand Man

Sand Drawing by Jim Denevan

Sand Drawing by Jim Denevan

Jim Denevan Drawing in Sand

JIM DENEVAN makes freehand drawings in sand. At low tide on wide beaches Jim searches the shore for a wave tossed stick. After finding a good stick and composing himself in the near and far environment Jim draws-laboring up to 7 hours and walking as many as 30 miles. The resulting sand drawing is made entirely freehand with no measuring aids whatsoever. (from Jim. thanks madamelamb)

Jim Denevan Art

CHINA CONTEMPORARY ARTIST: Yang Jinsong

A Gutted Fish Painting, Fei Jia Cun, Beijing, China 
Photograph (c) William Avedon/All rights reserved

Yang Jinsong Painting in his Studio, Fei Jia Cun, Beijing, China

Photograph (c) William Avedon/All rights reserved

YANG JINSONG, a leading Chinese painter from the Chong Qing municipality, in his studio in the Fei Jia Cun Artist Village in Beijing, China. Yang explains his 'consumerist-critical' paintings depicting fish, traditionally a symbol of wealth in Chinese culture, critique China’s construction boom and over-development by depicting bulldozers infesting the fish’s gutted innards. Yang often paints himself with his wife, She Cai, surrounded by emblems such as pollution, electrical appliances, and cigarette butts (2nd image, center painting), symbolizing China’s rapid development and embrace of consumerism.

The Fei Jia Cun Artist Village is one of several art communities surrounding Beijing where leading painters, sculptors and photographers from across China work and exhibit. These art villages represent the forefront of China’s Abstract, Pop, and Neo-Realist artists. – by William Avedon

Yang Jinsong Website

CHINA CONTEMPORARY ARTIST: Wang Xing

Wang Xing, Dragon Sculpture, Fei Jia Cun, Beijing, China
Photograph (c) William Avedon/All rights reserved

Wang Xing, Dragon Sculpture, Fei Jia Cun, Beijing, China
Photograph (c) William Avedon/All rights reserved

Photographs (c) William Avedon/All rights reserved

Mythical Creature by artist Wang Xing
Photograph (c) William Avedon/All rights reserved

Chinese sculptor WANG XING is from China’s He Bei province. Above, Wang Xing was creating a series of nine dragon sculptures for an exhibition in Beijing. Wang’s clay and bronze sculptures are a mixture of Buddhist art, Japanese lacquer, and ancient mythical texts depicting half-human half-animal creatures. He is fascinated by the concept of dragons in Chinese culture as they were traditionally symbolic of the Emperor.

Wang’s studio is in the Fei Jia Cun Artist Village on the outskirts of Beijing, China. Fei Jia Cun is one of at least 10 artist communities surrounding Beijing where painters, sculptors and photographers from across China have come to work and exhibit. These art villages represent the forefront of China’s Abstract, Pop, and Neo-Realist artists. –William Avedon

More China Contemporary Artists:

Yang Jinsong

Yang Li Ming

JEFFRIS ELLIOTT: In His Own Words

Islamic Woman Ascending Stairs

Photograph (c) Jeffris Elliott/All rights reserved

Two Hawks. Photograph (c) Jeffris Elliott/All rights reserved

I am a painter and draftsman as well as a photographer. It is impossible for me to separate my photographic work from my traditional art. Such greats as Henri Rousseau, Marc Chagall and Joan Miro as well as Minor White and Wynn Bullock have all had deep influences on how I see the world.

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I was first introduced to the work of JEFFRIS ELLIOTT a few years back when he submitted his series Mother and Portraits From Mexico to Photo-Eye Gallery Photographers Showcase, then juried by Rixon Reed, Melanie McWhorter and myself. I had the pleasure of meeting Jeffris and viewing his impressive work from the Middle East at the 2009 Portfolio Viewing at CCA/Center For Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, NM.

In Elliott's own words: Minor White introduced me to the conscious link between a spiritual life and the photographic image. I worked as Minors apprentice, helping with his darkroom, arrieses, viewing sessions and classes at M.I.T. We also traveled through Nova Scotia photographing and camping. I was in the beginning of my artistic life and Minor was nearing the end of his. He introduced me to the work of his spiritual teacher Gurdjieff, which later led me to living and practicing ZaZen.

Elliott was one of 100 photographers invited to participate in Review Santa Fe 2009. Website: www.jeffriselliott.com