The Daily Rumpus
Get Overly Personal Emails
From Stephen Elliott
In a special visual edition of the Generation Gap column, renowned Rumpus illustrator Jason Novak and I team up to bring you a tale on the very edge of natural history, a story about haunted 18th-century illustrator of bug and bird, Eleazar Albin.
About a year after the breakup, I started keeping a text message journal.
Why has the work of Robert Vickrey, one of the last living masters of egg tempera, remained so obscure?
...more
Rollo Press is continuing the slowest book swap in the world.
The often-thrilling little outfit has been playing around lately with Linus Bill, a photographer who has taken to silkscreening because, he tells Interview, “Until I made those silkscreens, I was never satisfied with how my work looked as prints….With the silkscreens, you really work with color.
...more
Marwa Arsanios and Vartan Avakian are still young. They belong to a generation of artists who grew up during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), and their unique experience with artistic research in Lebanon is revealing new narratives for a catastrophic historical episode.
One unintended consequence of David Ross’s appearance on the Colbert Report last year has been the misunderstanding of intention.
Writer and artist Alasdair Gray is his own best nightmare. It took the modern Scottish bard twenty-five years to finish Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981), his fat, strangely inspirational novel of urbanism gone awry.
I keep the first picture in mind, but I frame each new picture as if it’s its own composition, bearing in mind that it is related to what came before it and what’s coming after it.
...more
Sir Richard Bishop is a lot of things to a lot of people. He’s a gentleman! He’s a post-punk Guitar God! Now the half-Lebanese indie instrumentalist is about to release an expansive little record on Drag City called The Freak of Araby.
...more
I hate agreeing with Harold Bloom. But what can I say? I fall easily and oddly and often (if sceptically) into Bloom’s spells of (particular) historical illumination and (annoying) lucidity.
Despite–or maybe to spite–bitter winds, spring is in the air. The art world and its rags are responding in kind. In Oslo, rabbits are about to do funny things with humans. Vartan Avakian investigates his (heroic!?) namesake for Bidoun.
...more
Pandora too much work for your lazy ass? There’s a new indie-throbbing Music That Matters podcast over at KEXP (via Morr Music). Stellar rock photographer (and folky musician) Henry Diltz was a guest DJ at KCRW–the historical insight is better than the music.
Too much revelation at your indie fest? Too much Jesus? Shut up, naysayer. I want more.
The new issue of Bidoun has glitter on both covers, smells like a pack of baseball cards, and includes a stellar essay by Negar Azimi, “I Often Dream of Slavs.” The last issue of frieze celebrated FILE Magazine‘s idiosyncrasy; the new one features the best solo shows of 2008.
The de Young Museum in San Francisco is holding Andy Warhol tryouts for Warhol Live. Do you have to do everything he did? Do you gots to “interview” Steven Spielberg on a bed? Must you have annoyingly advertised exhibitions in London?
I was looking for flesh at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts last Thursday. But alas. The promo photos for “Irreverant: Contemporary Nordic Craft Art” feature Louise Nippierd‘s spectacular jewelry-sculptures on real people, but at the opening of the show the socially conscious pieces were slightly withdrawn and resting on fabric busts.
...more
Is it possible to resuscitate and reinvigorate the nonviolent resistance movements of the 20th century?
It’s all about the row boat of life.
Some peace boats (video) have a duty free shop and a Japanese club soundtrack. Involved with the Peace Boat US, the Global Campaign for Peace Education focuses on teachers and learners.
...more
Wendy MacNaughton’s visual blog provides “drawings of people on public transportation on their way to and from work. Five days a week, twice a day, twenty minutes each way. And other commutes to boot.” The effect is somewhere between the chillingly under-acted and over-costumed TV series Mad Men, a song by The Zincs, and drunken half-memories of watching Slacker.
