On the occasion of the publication of his memoir ROOM TO DREAM, Book Soup presents a screening of every episode of David Lynch’s animated series DUMBLAND, followed by a conversation with its creator.
DUMBLAND—DAVID LYNCH IN CONVERSATION WITH KRISTINE MCKENNA, Thursday, June 21, at 7 pm.
THEATRE AT ACE HOTEL, 929 South Broadway, downtown Los Angeles.
Above: Room to Dream, by David Lynch (2018).
Below: Dumbland (2002), created by David Lynch.
Earlier this year, former Interview editor and Vanity Fair special correspondent Bob Colacello made his curatorial debut with THE AGE OF AMBIGUITY: ABSTRACT FIGURATION/FIGURATIVE ABSTRACTION at the Vito Schnabel Gallery in St. Moritz.
The catalogue—published by Schnabel, with text by Colacello—is an 82-page hardcover featuring work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Jeff Elrod, Jacqueline Humphries, Rashid Johnson, Adam McEwen, Sterling Ruby, Borna Sammak, Jonas Wood, Vito’s father Julian Schnabel, and Bob’s former employer Andy Warhol.
“As the 21st century grapples its way through its second decade, America seems to have entered what may be called The Age of Ambiguity, a time when everything is fluid and nothing concrete, and confusion overwhelms certainty… It is said that the best artists are the antennae of their society, the prophets of their era. Is it any wonder, then, that many younger American painters and sculptors have long abandoned the bygone absolutisms of Minimalism on one hand and Hyper-Realism on the other and are making works today that hover in a hard to define space that might be called Abstract Figuration or Figurative Abstraction?” — Bob Colacello*
BOB COLACELLO, THE AGE OF AMBIGUITY (Vito Schnabel, 2017). Edition: 1000.
SKYLIGHT BOOKS, 1818 North Vermont Avenue, Los Feliz, Los Angeles.
BOOK SOUP, 8818 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood.
ART CATALOGUES, LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.
vitoschnabel.com/fr/publications/the-age-of-ambiguity
vitoschnabel.com/fr/projets/group-show7/artworks?view=slider
* artnet.com/galleries/vito-schnabel/the-age-of-ambiguity-curated-by/
Top: Exhibition catalogue. Bottom: The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Landscape with Travelers Resting, 2015. Both images courtesy of the Vito Schnabel Gallery.
“[When I turned twelve] it seemed necessary that I stop behaving the way I was behaving, the way I had always behaved. I would have to watch the gestures I made while talking. I’d have to make my voice sound deeper, to devote myself to masculine activities. More soccer, different television programs, different CDs to listen to. Every morning in the bathroom getting ready I would repeat the same phrase to myself over and over again so many times that it lost all meaning, becoming nothing but a series of syllables, of sounds. Then I’d stop and start over again. ‘Today I’m gonna be a tough guy’….
“Each day was a new ordeal: people don’t change as easily as that….And yet I had understood that living a lie was the only chance I had of bringing a new truth into existence.” — Édouard Louis, En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule (originally published in 2014; English-language publication, 2017)
ÉDOUARD LOUIS, THE END OF EDDY, translated from the French by Michael Lucey (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017)
Available at Skylight Books, in Los Feliz, and Book Soup, West Hollywood.
Louis is also the director of the philosophy and sociology series Les Mots, published by Presses Universitaires de France, and with Geoffroy de Lagasnerie co-authored the “Manifeste pour une contre-offensive intellectuelle et politique,” recently translated into English by Los Angeles Review of Books.
See: lareviewofbooks.org/article/manifesto-for-an-intellectual-and-political-counter-offensive/
Édouard Louis
Image credit: Alchetron
David Bowie moved to Berlin in late 1976 and stayed—on and off—for about two years. He recorded 32 songs for the “Berlin triptych”—Low, Heroes, and Lodger—but none of this dovetails too neatly: Low was started at Château d’Hérouville (“Honky Château”), outside Paris, and Lodger was recorded in Montreux. Only Heroes was made at Hansa Studios in Berlin. For the first time since Hunky Dory, he was just “David Bowie,” sans overly-constructed persona or alter ego (unless you count Iggy Pop). During the very years that punk exploded out of lower Manhattan and London and in dives off Hollywood Blvd., Bowie went back to a deeper source—his fascination with the rough imagery of the artists of Die Brücke, as a gateway to Weimar Berlin.
Bowie’s new, temporary home was a life-saving move from the death trip of Los Angeles, where the singer was subsisting on little more than cocaine, Gitanes, and glasses of milk. In Berlin, Bowie rediscovered food (and alcohol). And he began a working life with Brian Eno.
This is the subject of Tobias Rüther’s HEROES: DAVID BOWIE AND BERLIN, a Reaktion Books translation of Rüther’s Helden (2008), and part of their Reverb series. Sifting through the myths and creating a few of his own, Rüther draws from a rich vein of source material: memoirs by Romy Haag, Christine F., and producer Tony Visconti; Paul Trynka’s Iggy Pop and Paul Stump’s Roxy Music biography Unknown Pleasures; histories by Rory MacLean and Ernst Bloch; and dozens of Bowie bios, which are legion.
Following the release of Lodger, Bowie moved to New York City and entered the mainstream. The”Berlin years” are remembered as his last great period of true experimentation, until the final burst of Blackstar just before his death.
HEROES: DAVID BOWIE AND BERLIN by Tobias Rüther
reaktionbooks.co.uk
This British paperback is available locally at Book Soup for $25.
BOOK SOUP, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood.
booksoup.com
Image credit: Reaktion Books. Original image © Steve Shapiro/Corbis
