Icons of kitsch #1

Crying Boy (?) – Bruno Amadio

Bruno Amadio, popularly known as Bragolin, and also known as Franchot Seville, Giovanni Bragolin, and J. Bragolin, is the supposed creator of a group of paintings known as Crying Boys. The paintings, which feature a variety of tearful children looking morosely straight ahead, [are the prime example of 1900s kitsch.]

There does not seem to be a coherent biography of Bragolin, although tradition makes him Sevillian. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno Amadio [Sept 2006]

Link: A whole gallery and bibliography: http://www.quasimondo.com/bragolincryingboy.php

See also: Kitsch and compare the work of contemporary artist Jill Greenberg.

Une Belle Dame Sans Merci

La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1926) – Frank Cadogan Cowper

Une belle dame sans merci is a merciless and beautiful lady, a femme fatale.

Keats’s poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci (French: “the beautiful lady without pity”) is recited by the protagonist of Susanna Moore’s In the Cut. I love films and books which heavily refer to literature. Examples include Borges and Erica Jong in Fear of Flying. There is a website dedicated to poetry in the movies.

Part of Lou Reed’s lyrics of Femme Fatale recorded by The Velvet Underground in 1966:

Here she comes,
You’d better watch your step,
She’s going to break your heart in two,
It’s true.

It is reported that Lou Reed wrote the 1966 song about “Warhol superstar” Edie Sedgwick at the request of Andy Warhol. Here is CIAO! MANHATTAN lost footage Of Edie Sedgwick.

 

The Robber Bride (1993) – Margaret Atwood

The Robber Bride (1993) – Margaret Atwood
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

In The Robber Bride, Atwood depicts a femme fatale’s malevolent role in the lives of three women.

Maragaret Atwood has 6 of her novels listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. To a cinematic audience she is best known for her novel The Handmaid’s Tale which was adapted for film by Volker Schlöndorff.

See also: Margaret Atwood

Lee Siegel suspended for sock puppeting

Lee Siegel, an American cultural critic was fired for commenting on his own work pseudonymously by using a so-called sock puppet.

  • Lee Siegel, writer for The New Republic magazine, was suspended for defending his articles and blog comments using the user name “sprezzatura“.

More: International Herald Tribune

Lee Siegel in other blogs:

In the most recent issue of The Nation, Lee Siegel laid into Camille Paglia’s newest barnstormer, Break, Blow, Burn. His article, Look at Me, is a magnificent blast of snark against the self-maligning agitation that Paglia seems to fall more & more victim to. —Poetry Snark, 2005

And the final sentence of Lee Siegel’s review (which also features a very good analysis of Paglia’s zeitgeist and work) of Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn:

To invoke two other writers from the past, Paglia used to come on like Byron; now she is like some cynical version of Dickens’s Oliver Twist, trampling on her very own standards, stooping as low as she can go in order to get a second helping of attention from the public that has forgotten her. But bullies always end up being reduced to their inner weakling. It’s called poetic justice. –Lee Siegel in Look at Me [June 13, 2005 ]

Eva Deadbeat on Peep Show

Eva Deadbeat does a portrait of the UK tv series Peep Show.
Who is Eva Deadbeat?

Eva Deadbeat (aka Eva Sollberger), who has worked at various film festivals (Sundance, San Francisco Int’l) in the past and now resides in Burlington, VT where she has a public access television show and makes “obsessive montages with an eye for the absurd and a taste for pop culture in all its glory.” Eva has an astonishing 93 vids on YouTube so far. —indiewire

Eva Deadbeat uses Youtube for what it is best at: for broadcasting original material. A couple of posts ago I introduced her with her ‘tortured artists 101‘. I love her work and I’m sure we will hear more of her.

Girl on the Bridge (1999) – Patrice Leconte

In search of hope and hopelessness

“Vous avez l’air d’une fille qui va faire une connerie” (Eng: You look like a girl who is about to commit a terrible mistake.) –Daniel Auteuil

Girl on the Bridge (1999) – Patrice Leconte
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

La fille sur le pont (The Girl On the Bridge) is a French film released in 1999, directed by Patrice Leconte, starring Daniel Auteuil and Vanessa Paradis.

At the beginning of the film, the character played by Vanessa Paradis is about to throw herself off a bridge when she is asked by Daniel Auteuil: “Why are you doing this?” Vanessa’s character answers: “Because I am desperate” and than retorts: “What are you doing here?”. Auteuil answers: “I am looking for desperate women.”
See also: Girl on the Bridge (1999) – Patrice Leconte

Notability, significance, importance vs obscurity

In search of significance

Insignificance (1985) – Nicolas Roeg
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Plot Synopsis: Four 1950’s cultural icons (Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Senator Joseph MacCarthy) who conceivably could have met and probably didn’t, fictionally do in this modern fable of post-WWII America.

See also: significance – 1985 – film – Nicolas Roeg

Momus on thin models

Audrey Marnay

Momus:

I find calls to ban “unrepresentative” or “abnormal” models from the catwalk farcical not only because I’m a thin person myself, or because I’m an artist whose work is often about beauty, and who doesn’t think that art should restrict itself to merely average levels of beauty. It’s also because I’m fundamentally anti-rockist. In other words, I’m against “keeping it real”, and I think that claims that a catwalk show, or even a street fashion shoot, are only valid when they’re “based on a true story” are overblown. (If rockism is Stanislavskian, all about realism, anti-rockism is Brechtian, about drawing attention to the fact that all spectacle produces illusion.) —Momus

Digression #1: Vanessa Beecroft Google gallery

See also: heroin chic – fashion