erika nusser

Artforum

2011-05-23T18:05:00.000-07:00

Press Play

NEW YORK

05.16.11

Left: The scene outside Christie’s “Bear Party.” Right: Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale. (Photo: Erika Nusser)

THE SATURDAY BEFORE LAST, Christie’s hosted a tony “Bear Party” in a big plastic tent erected at the Seagram Plaza in Midtown. No bears attended. “A straight person must have thought of that name,” someone murmured outside, their face washed in the glow of Urs Fischer’s twenty-ton teddy bear/streetlight, which sat, slumped and lonely, looking out at Park Avenue. Flashbulbs bounced off the glittering girls vamping in front of a CHRISTIE’S photo-op backdrop and lining up for entrance bracelets. It was like a Millionaire Matchmaker mixer, except here the goal was to partner rich people with merch. Or maybe just media and merch. “There’s no one here who could afford this,” another guest speculated, waving toward Fischer’s sculpture. “These people are comfortable wearing wristbands.”

Inside, Alberto Mugrabi, the dealer whose family was putting the feted object up for auction, admired his bear. “It would look great anywhere. It would look great in Paris. In Dubai. It will go to either the Russians or the Arabs.” Mugrabi knows how to hit the selling points, also detailed in the work’s fifty-four-page advert/catalogue, which featured a multipage spread, “A Bear for All Cities,” with the sculpture Photoshopped, like a traveling gnome prank, into various world locales: Untitled (Lamp/Bear) in Abu Dhabi, Untitled (Lamp/Bear) in the Red Square, Untitled (Lamp/Bear) in Paris’s Place de la Concorde, etc.

The auctions may or may not be a place where the mysteries of art and money are resolved or even clarified. But the way we look at them you’d think that the esoteric happenings of the salesroom might reveal something concrete about the market, something besides the fact that some people in the world are richer than you or I. If the auctions are one thing, they are a cipher for privilege, a place where entitlement is made salient, where class is rigorously policed.

On Tuesday evening, those arriving at Sotheby’s for the biannual Contemporary Art Evening Sale were greeted by a massive inflatable rat and a line of picketers who passed out information sheets decrying the auction house’s hiring of presumably nonunion painters. Sotheby’s handed out their own information sheets—a new, passive-aggressive “Media Guide to Attendance at Sotheby’s Auctions”—to reporters checking in at the entrance, each of whom was then escorted by an official representative to the auction room on the seventh floor. “All journalists must remain in the designated press areas,” read item one (of eight)—a rule that doesn’t apply to the New York Times’ Carol Vogel, who always stands beyond the ropes.

Left: Collector Peter Brant and dealer Larry Gagosian outside Sotheby’s. (Photo: Erika Nusser) Right: Collector David Ganek and dealer Alberto Mugrabi.

Sotheby’s sale began convincingly enough in the scheme of these things but never fully picked up, with audible bids for the most hyped works (Lot 10: Koons’s porcelain Pink Panther, 1988, put up by Benedikt Taschen, and Lot 21: Warhol’s Sixteen Jackies, 1964) staying below the low estimates. “This is a tough night for Tobias,” someone in the press pack observed sympathetically, referring to chief auctioneerTobias Meyer. In the end, the sale brought $128.1 million with premiums, just over the house’s low estimate of $120 million. “We took slightly larger steps, anticipating a market that isn’t there quite yet,”Anthony Grant, one of the house’s senior contemporary art specialists, explained during the press conference.

“I’m asking please that you stand in the designated area.” The next night, just before Christie’s evening sale, Toby Usnik, the house’s head of communication, tried to corral press behind the crowd-control stanchions at the back of the room. “Do we really need to suffer the additional humiliation of standing behind the line?” one writer cried. “I’m asking nicely,” Usnik grimaced. “And I’m telling you nicely,” came the retort. The face-off fizzled when a bulky security guard picked up the velvet rope and placed it in front of dissident reporters.

The press pack is a kind of collective hermeneutics—a para-society forming around a common impossible task and a similarly restricted view of events. Members try to divine meaning from the smallest gestures: a glance at the phone banks, a stutter in the bids—any wrinkle in the proceedings is weighed and interpreted. Thus, seeing is everything: “Those ladies better get out of our way,” a writer said loudly before the proceedings. “Press don’t get many perks, but one is a fucking sight line.” Penned up like unruly sports fanatics, or unmanageable oracles, reporters are the Greek chorus of the auction drama.

Left: Brett Gorvy, Christie’s international co-head of post-war and contemporary art. Right: Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale. (Photo: Erika Nusser)

A good narrative is essential to the action. The plot of Christie’s sixty-five-lot sale that night was strategically calibrated, with the right mix of pathos, climax, denouement. The first “moment” was Lot 6,Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #96, 1981, one of the artist’s iconic centerfolds, first commissioned forArtforum. Consigned by Jane Kaplowitz, wife of the late Robert Rosenblum, the print went to adviserPhilippe Ségalot for $3.89 million (with premium): a world record not just for Sherman but for any photograph at auction. “It’s great to see an artist from our community, a real collector, reap some rewards,” an exuberant Amy Cappellazzo said later.

A pair of Warhol self-portraits—a red “fright wig” from 1986 (Lot 16) and a blue quartet from 1963–64 (Lot 22) constituted the pinnacle of the sale. The first went to Jose Mugrabi for $24.5 million hammer, under its low estimate of $30 million. My neighbor in the press pack was rooting for the second, which was “so covetable. I really want it to go for more than ‘Fright Wig.’ ” And it did. Auctioneer Christopher Burge kept the bidding war going for an unheard-of fifteen minutes, eventually landing it, to much applause, at $38.4 million (with premium). “That’s what you want—a little show, some drama!” a colleague yelled.

Fischer’s Untitled (Lamp/Bear) was at Lot 32. It quickly went for its high estimate—$6 million, an easy record for the thirty-seven-year-old artist, though considering the hype, it was a relatively small amount in the grand scheme of the evening. In the end, Christie’s raked in $301.7 million, selling 95 percent of its lots. “We broke the $300 million barrier. You have to go back to 2007 to see that,” a nearly giddy Brett Gorvy said during the press conference, as Cappellazzo teasingly shushed him.

During and after the show, in the foyer and in the plaza, many journalists, freshly free from the confines of the pen, stalked principals from whom they could pry a choice sound bite. Outside, Vogel caught up with Alberto Mugrabi, whose family had done quite a bit of business that night. He plucked Vogel’s cigarette from her mouth, used it to light his own, and then held hers as she took notes. “The two sales were day and night,” he told her: a nice, summative phrase that she used in her Times report. Another writer hovered, waiting for her quote, but was blocked (“Dammit!”) by the arrival of Greek tycoon Stavros Niarchos. “Why am I even bothering with this?”

Left: Simon de Pury at Phillips de Pury & Company’s Contemporary Art Part 1 sale. Right: Amy Cappellazzo, Christie’s international co-head of post-war and contemporary art.

“What! Another auction? Don’t these people ever run out of money?” The next night, walking toward Phillips de Pury down Fifty-Seventh Street with a colleague from another magazine, I considered this weird masochistic voyeurism, how shopping becomes sport, how transaction becomes transubstantiation. How the stuff of money tangles with the stuff of history.

“I come to get a sense of the market,” said a dealer next to me at the back of the room. “It’s good so far, but still soft. And it’s hard to say what it all means. Three hundred million dollars is nothing in terms of a whole industry. It’s two planes. Or a development project in Miami during the boom.”

The cover lot and talk of the evening at Phillips de Pury was a turquoise Warhol Liz from 1963 (similar to the one Hugh Grant sold at Christie’s for $21 million hammer in 2007). Many considered it a coup for the auction house to land it in their sale. The work went in a flash, just shy of a minute, quickly achieving $24 million hammer.

Later on, an early-1980s Robert Morris wall piece came up on the block. “Oh, this isn’t going to do well,” reported the same dealer. “Too serious. Too gloomy.” And indeed, the droopy felt was passed over with nary a bid.

The sale was finished in just under an hour. Fifty-one lots brought in $94.8 million—less than one-third of Christie’s evening sale from the night prior, but just $33 million shy of Sotheby’s take-home on Tuesday. Other people will no doubt parse what, if anything, this means. It seemed like a lot of money.

Out on Park Avenue that night, after an exhausting week at the theater of privilege, members of the press pack bid their adieus in the gloaming:

“So, you fly out tomorrow?” he asked. “How about a drink next time? You never have time for a drink when you’re in town.”

“That’d be lovely,” she said, buttoning her coat. “Tea though. I don’t drink before the sales . . . I’ll see you in November?”

“Yeah, see you in November.”

— David Velasco

Recession! Pish Posh!

2010-11-13T08:30:00.000-08:00

Wild Carte

NEW YORK

11.12.10

Left: Artist Abdi Farah with Simon de Pury. Right: Amy Cappellazzo, Christie’s International co-Head of Postwar and Contemporary Art. (Photos: David Velasco)

“GOOD EVENING! And now let’s start with Carte Blanche—Philippe Ségalot!” Kicking off a dizzy week of contemporary art sales, Monday night’s auction at Phillips de Pury & Company’s freshly unwrapped Park Avenue HQ got off at 6:14 PM, a fashionably late start for the inaugural haul. Ségalot’s Carte Blanche program of works, “curated” according to mysterious but supposedly non-financial criteria by the private dealer (and former head of contemporary art for Christie’s), opened the two-part evening sale. It drew a real crowd: Larry Gagosian, the Mugrabi family, Aby Rosen, Peter Brant, Maria Baibakova, Adam Lindemann and Amalia Dayan, and, as it goes, all the rest. There were no hoi polloi in attendance.

The first Cindy Sherman, Lot 14, Untitled #153, 1985, secured a new record for the artist ($2.8 million, with buyer’s premium), but it was the second Sherman, Untitled #420 from the “Clown” series, that set my neighbors off. “$1.2 million… I never would have guessed. Champagne and caviar tonight!” Was it theirs? “Not even—we have a better one at home.” Everyone’s a winner.

Between Ségalot’s thirty-three-lot kitty and the regular twenty-six-lot Contemporary Art Part I sale that immediately followed, Phillips de Pury raked in $137 million, more than twice the amount made for any evening sale in the house’s history. Nearly half that number came from one big Warhol, Men in Her Life, 1962, a silkscreen of Liz and her exes, which sold for $63.3 million with premium, the second-highest amount ever paid for a Warhol at auction.

According to de Pury, who lingered in the auction room in the aftermath, the sale was “a self-portrait of Philippe” and had “the aura of a private collection.” (Earlier, someone had invoked Christie’s controversial 2007 sale of dealer Pierre Huber’s personal collection—a “Carte Blanche,” some argued, avant la lettre.) Ségalot himself continued in this vein in manifesto-like rhetoric: “The sale was very personal to me, telling the outside world that this is where we are, this is who I am, this is my taste, and these are the artists I believe in.” The next thing in conspicuous consumption: the statement auction.

Left: Dealers Dominique Lévy and Robert Mnuchin. (Photo: Erika Nusser) Right: Dealer and Carte Blanche curator Philippe Ségalot. (Photo: David Velasco)

A visibly excited de Pury contextualized his house as a sort of grand private academy. “Some of the artists from the Part II (morning) sale will someday become the artists of the Part I sale, and part of the great future blue-chip artists!” One of those Part II artists was in fact present that evening: Abdi Farah, the first winner of Bravo’s reality program Work of Art, an artist de Pury had “mentored” on that show. Part of his prize-package was to have a work sent to auction (remember when Rauschenberg punched Robert Scull for putting his work on the block?) and his large work-on-paper, Baptism, was kicking off the Part II sale the next day at 10 AM. (Estimated at $6,000–$8,000, it ended up fetching an eyebrow-raising $20,000.) Farah thought it was all “pretty darned exciting.”

For those dealers and collectors impatient with $5,000 bidding increments there were Sotheby’s and Christie’s sales on Tuesday and Wednesday evening, respectively. At Sotheby’s, Tobias Meyer hammered out four new artist records (Urs Fischer [$1.1 million], Jim Hodges [$2.1 million], Cady Noland [$1.8 million], and Larry Rivers [$1.1 million]) in the first eleven lots. They rang like the opening bars to a highly produced pop song. With Lot 12 came Warhol’s 1962 Coca Cola [4] [Large Coca-Cola] and the evening’s big money-maker: $35.4 million, with buyer’s premium. “What you saw tonight was a single global iconic market,” Meyer later explained to the press.

After the sale, Takashi Murakami, perhaps the only artist who is a habitué of the auction circuit, was enthusiastic, a stark contrast to his crew of soigné attendants. “I really learn from this environment,” he said. (In more ways then one, no doubt. His 1997 sculpture Miss ko² had sold for $6.8 million to Warhol wallah Jose Mugrabiduring Ségalot’s sale the night prior.) “Tobias is amazing—bam bam bam. Asia sales are much slower. Hong Kong Christie’s can go on for nine hours.”

The next night’s auction at Christie’s at Rockefeller Center wasn’t nearly that long, but with seventy-five lots on the docket, punters were grouching before it even began. “Well this’ll be a quick one…” Christie’s chief auctioneer Christopher Burgestarted shortly after 7 PM and ended a little over two hours later, after some fifteen Warhols, seven Lichtensteins, six Calders, five Twomblys, and four Richard Lindners(?), among others, had had their shot at art-market immortality.

Left: Dealer Tim Blum with artist Takashi Murakami. Right: Tobias Meyer at Sotheby’s. (Photos: Erika Nusser)

“Right here is the mirage of capitalism. It proves its power by accruing around arbitrary objects,” a colleague espoused. “We’re lucky that rich people like art. It’s trickle-down Reaganomics in action. They could just like yachts and cars. Then we’d all be doing something else. Making documentary movies, maybe.” Just philosophizing in the press pack.

The night’s star was also the catalogue’s cover, Lot 5, Lichtenstein’s 1964 paintingOhhh … Alright… Bidding began at 7:16 PM at $29 million and ended roughly a minute later at $38 million, or $42.6 million with buyer’s premium, a new world record for the artist. There was some scattered applause, and small bills changed hands as a guy who’d made the right bet on the price point took his pot. “Too easy,” he announced brusquely.

Thirty minutes later, with the sale not even half over, men in suits were sheepishly passing out a three-page, stapled, and color-illustrated “Media Alert” announcing that Christie’s had “made history” with the sale of this “striking and subtly and humorous” painting. [Sic].

In the end, Christie’s brought in $272.8 million after premiums, well within its estimate. On Tuesday, Sotheby’s reached $222.4 million with nearly a third fewer lots. Both results were well above last spring’s already dramatic rebounds, and at the nocturne sales records were set for more than twenty artists—Noland, Hodges, Fischer, Rivers, Sherman, and Lichtenstein, of course, but also Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Lee Lozano, Thomas Schütte, Wade Guyton, and Julie Mehretu, among others: the entering class of 2010.

Leaving Rockefeller Center Wednesday evening, during a week in which more than three-quarters of a billion dollars was publicly spilled on contemporary art, a bemused Mera Rubell put it best: “It’s another reality in there.” Out here, it was simply cold.

— David Velasc
o

Fashion night !

2010-09-13T16:55:00.000-07:00

Nicky Epstein Photo Shoot!

2010-08-12T21:14:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos I did for Nicky Epstein!

Travel 2010

2010-06-27T06:09:00.000-07:00

Denver was amazing! From snowy mountains to desert in minutes!

Artforum!

2010-05-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

“LADIES!—TEN TO FIFTEEN,” said a woman in gray sweatpants eyeing Lot 45, Warhol’s Silver Liz, 1963. She meant the estimate: ten to fifteen million.

http://artforum.com/diary/id=25606

“Not very well stretched,” sniffed another, wearing a quilted Burberry jacket. She meant the canvas.

“Trixie’s husband has a self-portrait Warhol did on a napkin in a restaurant,” boasted a third.

Christie’s last public “viewing,” as the house calls it, of works in Tuesday’s Post-War and Contemporary evening auction did have some of the character of a funeral visitation, with long-lost relatives gathering to size up the competition. Determined-looking women with bouffants and antique 35-mm cameras scanned the goods; men in bespoke suits juggled paper coffee cups. John McEnroe floated around the ground-floor galleries in a ball cap and white Converse, pausing to examine at length a blue Warhol “Electric Chair” from 1964–65. The art, of course, looked impeccable.

Louise Lawler was there too, hauling a medium-format Mamiya and a tripod. “I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing here—I often plan not to come, but jump in at the last moment,” she said. “Many years ago I came to shoot the actual auction, having gotten permission, but when I arrived with my camera I was confronted by someone higher up who looked at me and said, ‘I thought we’d decided not to do that.’ It was like I wasn’t a person. Now, I feel totally welcomed. I’m certainly not the only camera around.”

Indeed she wasn’t—but her presence added a bit of aura to the proceedings: art transmuted to merchandise and turned, again, into art. (Then, probably—hopefully?—back to merchandise.) One thing was clear: Auction houses seem to lean more and more heavily in the direction of the contemporary, the enduring Warholian “moment” continuing to encourage the sublime marriages (and bitter divorces) of art and commerce.

Left: Salman Rushdie. Right: Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. (Photos: Erika Nusser)

That night the regular crowds made their way to Rockefeller Center for Christie’s biannual contemporary evening sale. The usual, more genteel starting time of 7 PM had been pushed forward to 6:30 PM to accommodate works from author Michael Crichton’s estate, which constituted the first thirty-one lots of the immense seventy-nine-lot auction. It was going to be a long night. Salman Rushdie was there with his “good friend,” art advisor Kim Heirston. “I wish I could buy,” he said. “I did know Michael. It will be interesting to see his collection.”

People seemed in high—if slightly anxious—spirits. The fall 2009 Christie’s sale had been a nadir, with a mere thirty-nine lots selling for $74.1 million, and a solid run seemed necessary. Auctioneer Christopher Burge kicked it all off at 6:41 PM, hitting his stride early and handily steering bidders through the first six lots, all of which went for over their high estimates.

At Lot 7 there was a slight pause, murmurs. Jasper Johns’s Flag, from 1960–66, would be a bellwether for the week. Burge began the bidding at $7 million—$3 million below the low estimate—and it quickly began to rise. “I always wanted to sell a painting for a million dollars,” Crichton quotes Johns as saying, in his monograph on the artist. This one went for $28.6 million, with buyer’s premium, to New York dealer Michael Altman. A world auction record for the artist. A good way to kick off the night.

From there it was smooth sailing. The next “major” lot was the aforementioned Liz. The painting quickly hit its $15 million high estimate and soon after began to rise in $100,000 increments, a duel between Christie’s Jean-Paul Engelen on the phone and a mysterious bidder standing in the room. With no guess as to who he was, my neighbor began calling him “The Quarterback,” after his youthful, brawny appearance. At $15.9 million, dealer Dominique Lévy joined in the game, eventually picking it up for $18.3 million, with premium. “Well, you’ve had a time,” Burge said in consolation, as the mystery bidder briefly left the room.

Left: Collectors Don and Mera Rubell. (Photo: Erika Nusser) Right: Collector Jonathan Colby at Sotheby’s.

But in fact he’d just begun. The next Warhol, Lot 51, Holly Solomon, was his for $4.8 million hammer—a relative steal, being one of very few works in the sale to go under estimate (in this case, $7 million).

Outside, after the auction, Marc Jacobs stood smoking with diamond dealer (and “Rattle Ring” inventor) John Reinhold. “He really wanted that Liz,” the designer said. Jacobs himself had just picked up Ellsworth Kelly’s Yellow Curve, 1962, for a little under a million dollars. “Auctions are a lot of fun,” he remarked casually.

“Fun if you win—sad if you lose,” Reinhold clarified.

“Depressing,” Jacobs concurred.

At Sotheby’s the next night, the bidder, by now identified as Miami-based medical malpractice lawyer Jonathan Colby, could be seen in a busy skybox in the southwest corner of the room. Still, no one (not even the Rubells, who sat in an adjacent skybox) seemed to actually know him—an unusual situation in the cozy, predictable cadre of high-end collectors. Every so often, Colby would ceremoniously descend from the loge to the auction-house floor, where he would loom auspiciously. Several times he bid, crossing his arms and shaking his head when he reached his limit (as high as $27 million, when underbidding a Rothko), high-fiving his partner when he won (twice, on an early-’60s Joan Mitchell and a 2005 stainless steel Anish Kapoor). It was an inspired performance.

But the most compelling drama of the evening was the cover lot, Warhol’s 1986 “big fright wig,” being sold by Tom Ford. At Lot 9, the work would either be a kick-starter, like Johns at Christie’s, or a bump in the road. Auctioneer Tobias Meyer began bidding at $8 million but the next bid leapt to $15 million, then $18 million. It then climbed in million-dollar increments until going to an unknown buyer on the phone for a cool $32.6 million with premium, more than double the high estimate and an (unofficial) record for the artist’s late period. The only other work that night to elicit as many claps was the back-cover lot, Maurizio Cattelan’s sculptural portrait of himself peeking through a hole in the floor, which went for just under $8 million.

Left: Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s chief auctioneer. Right: Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti. (Photos: Erika Nusser)

In the end, Christie’s pulled in an impressive $231.9 million and Sotheby’s $189.9 million, each house selling 94 percent of its lots—by all appearances two controlled, confident sales. Christie’s total was more than triple its fall auctions; Sotheby’s more than quadrupled its results from last May. Sales especially “paid off” for living artists, with Cattelan, Brice Marden, Richard Tuttle, Richard Serra, and Ellsworth Kelly achieving new records at Sotheby’s; Johns, Mark Tansey, Lee Bontecou, and Christopher Wool setting records at Christie’s. “While the euro may be falling, America is clearly in recovery,” Christie’s Amy Cappellazzo said after Tuesday’s sale.

At Sotheby’s, Meyer brought back the human angle: “May I add that Tom Ford is very happy, too.”

— David Velasco

Left: The salesroom at Sotheby’s. Right: Art advisor Thea Westreich. (Photos: Erika Nusser)

Left: Dealer Larry Gagosian. (Photo: Erika Nusser) Right: Brett Gorvy, Christie’s International Co-Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art. (Photo: David Velasco)

Please donate!

2010-05-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

This year I am on Team WEP, the running team of Women's Education Project, a non-profit that helps women in South India from poor backgrounds succeed in college and careers. As educated women, they pursue have meaningful careers, have healthier families, and ensure education for the next generation. They are leaders in their community. Please visit their website at www.womenseducationproject.org.

I am running in NYRR New York Mini 10K on June 12, 2010 / 9:00 a.m.and my goal is to raise $250 to send one WEP student to college. Can you help me to reach this goal? You can contribute through myhttp://www.firstgiving.com/erikanusser2 page here or directly through the womeneseducationproject.org paypal link.

Your tax-deductible contribution to Women's Education Project will make a large imact in one women's life, her family andcommunity and our world.

Thank you!
Erika Nusser
About my nonprofit:
Women's Education Project
Mission: Women’s Education Project prepares women of limited means but unlimited potential for college and career success, to improve their lives, families, and communities.

uptown girl snoods

2010-01-23T18:17:00.000-08:00

Check out my friend's site:
www.uptowngirlsnoods.com
www.uptowngirlsnoods.blogspot.com
www.snoodsny.com

Mpls Photo Center, LLC

2010-01-13T20:09:00.000-08:00

The portraits show has been a great success thus far with between 500 - 600 people attending the opening reception last week. Mary Abbe, the art critic to the Mpls Star Tribune is running an article this Friday regarding the exhibit and she has encouraged us to leave the exhibit up until the 14th Feb.

A catalog of the show will be on Blurb Books!

Mpls Photo Center, LLC

2400 North Second Street,

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55411

Cell + Studio: 651-246-1831

visit: www.mplsphotocenter.com

elvis presley happy birthday

2010-01-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

Opening this week

2009-12-30T04:40:00.000-08:00

www.mplsphotocenter.com

Jay-Z

2009-12-27T06:03:00.001-08:00

DREAMING OF A DAY-GLO XMAS

2009-12-27T05:46:00.000-08:00

Doug Harvey's mostly psychedelic shopping list

By Doug Harvey

published: December 24, 2009

I've been looking around at all these Top 10 Art Books of 2009 lists, and geez, it's no wonder everyone thinks art is so boring and stuffy. The upside is that if some rich, misguided relative actually buys you the $600 six-volume edition of Van Gogh's complete letters the cognoscenti are drooling over, you can return it and buy everything on my list, with enough left over for a bag of weed and six hours of Thai massage.

Speaking of a bag of weed, those who routinely flipped by their L.A. public-access cable channel between 1996 and the untimely demise of the medium in January of this year at some point probably stumbled incredulously upon The Threee Geniuses, a transcendently self-indulgent orgy of cheap video wipes, stroboscopic edits, trashy glam psychedelia and incoherent studio actions, all mashed up in real time, usually to the equally fragmentary soundscapes created by the Venemous Invisible Amanda, aka Don Bolles. Augmenting the titular genii (Dan Kapelovitz, Jon Shere and Tim "Mr. X" Wilson) were an array of talents ranging from cable-access luminaries like Francine Dancer and David Liebe Hart to noted schizophrenic street people Andy Dick and Ariel Pink. Titled The Re-Death of Psychedelia (3geniuses.com) the 3Gs' new compilation DVD proves the show was as physically difficult to watch as it always seemed, and perhaps the most challenging and inventive structuralist video art of the new millennium. If it ain't headache-, nausea- and seizure-inducing, it ain't avant-garde!

Andy Kaufman was only incidentally a professional comedian, though the exact nature of his primary vocation is hard to pin down. I used to consider him in a similar light as the 3Gs - a great performance artist whose work was ignored by the Art World because it frequently took place on TV - but now I tend to think of him as more a sort of confrontational philosopher along the lines of Diogenes the Cynic, using his body and personality as mutable props to instruct the public in the flimsiness of socially constructed realities. Dear Andy Kaufman, I Hate Your Guts! (Process Media) compiles a remarkable set of documents that bear witness to his effectiveness - letters from women (mostly) accepting his 1979 challenge on Saturday Night Live to wrestle any member of the weaker sex as proof of male superiority. If defeated, he would shave his head, award his opponent $1,000 and allow her to marry him. Outraged, off their rockers or in on the joke, Kaufman's respondents seem to draw their energy from his disruptive creativity, cartooning, collaging, striking poses in the requisite photo, and inventing novel epithets ("spineless mollusk" "inane drone") on their "Broad Power" postcards or "Notes from a Sensuous Woman" stationery. Kaufman would pick the sexiest challengers, then book a college performance in their town, ultimately claiming to have bedded 80 percent of his opponents. Whether that's art or philosophy is still up in the air.

Mike McGonigal always seemed like the archetypal zine editor as he came of age helming the deeply idiosyncratic mix of indie music/comix/free jazz/outsider art/experimental literature known as Chemical Imbalance, before being stabbed by a mugger, descending into junkie squalor and disappearing from public view. He turned up on amazon.com in the late '90s, writing and editing reviews, lending the young online company the credibility of his visionary-leaning literacy. For the last decade he has operated out of Portland, publishing YETI - an occasional book-format journal whose latest, eighth issue includes typically eclectic features on a lost collaboration between Johnny Mathis and Chic, a transcribed polylogue by multiple-personality blues preacher Bishop Perry Tillis; an interview with French female drone composer Eliane Radigue; selections from Luc Sante's collection of mind-blowing folk photography (also the subject of a beautiful new YETI book) and much more - as well as a CD featuring a mix of McGonigal's current audio obsessions, lately hovering between vintage gospel and neo-psych, and always the cherry on the sundae of anything he edits (yetipublishing.com).

It may have been in the pages of Chemical Imbalance that I first encountered the work of Michael Kupperman - back when he was known as P.Revess and drawing the Alzheimerific adventures of Cousin Grampa and Pablo Picasso. His nostalgic graphic style - reminiscent of old engravings and woodcuts - was more rickety and disjointed then, and his humor and narratives even more incoherent. In the late '90s he produced Up All Night, an awesome alt-weekly comic, anthologized as the brilliant Snake 'n' Bacon's Cartoon Cabaret, which for some reason went straight to the cutout bins. Small wonder Kupperman fell in with the thugs at McSweeney's, cleaned up his line and took to the illustration fields. A couple years ago, he resurfaced at Fantagraphics with his own comic book, Tales Designed to Thrizzle, whose first four issueshave just been anthologized as a hardcover - bringing a slick, hyperreal illustrative consistency that amplifies the already dreamlike mixture of familiarity and strangeness, which permeates his deadpan surrealist slapstick. This year also saw the debut and immediate disappearance of the Adult Swim TV version of Snake 'n' Bacon. But third time's the charm. I say go for the feature film.

Along with Tim & Eric, the video auteurs who have been actually keeping Adult Swim's edge alive are the Brooklyn-based multimedia enclave PFFR, who record addled rock music and make gallery art, and who stretched the limits of decency and humor with their two-season "kids' show" for MTV2, Wonder Showzen. Since finding a home at AS, their most remarkable achievement has been a totally fucked-up animated series called Xavier: Renegade Angel a cryptic, recursive, ridiculous spirit quest/criminal investigation rendered in a clunky video-game cubism. The protagonist is a hirsute, beaked, six-teated humanoid with a snake for a left arm, and sneaker-clad backward legs, who poses questions like, "I flip more lids than a monkey in a soup kitchen ... of the mind! Does this make me a hero?" in a voice remarkably similar to that of Keanu Reeves. The recently released, essential two-DVD set collects the first two seasons, and it appears there will actually be more - a blessing if only for its infuriating effect on the whining anime fanboys who only tune in for the Saturday night J-porn marathons and reruns of Family Guy and Futurama.

While we're torturing geeks, I have to put in a good word for Andrei Molotiu's Abstract Comics: The Anthology, also from Fantagraphics. Given the historical simultaneity of modern art and graphic narrative, and the considerable amount of crossover between the traditions (Japanese ukiyo-e prints, pop art, etc.) it seems odd that there hasn't been a movement to bring the language of nonrepresentational painting into the narrativizing sequential structure of comics. As editor (and contributor) Molotiu points out in his introductory essay, artists like Hans Richter and Oskar Fischinger were quick to successfully translate geometric abstraction into the equally narrative-prone language of cinema. Many of the best works here could in fact be storyboards for animations. But the thing is, most comic readers are primarily interested in the medium's conventional storytelling potential, often vitriolically so. The collection has a wealth of rewarding material, some of it awkward, some groundbreaking - on the whole, it is a significant historical document that may jump-start an actual new genre. I'd have liked to have seen the fine-art examples reproduced on equal footing with the contemporary comic art, and some love for Jess and Oyvind Fahlstrom, but that's what volume 2 is for, right?

Fantagraphics (again) certainly delivered big-time on the second (and probably final) collection of primitive comic savant Fletcher Hanks' You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!, as well as with the almost-as-weird Supermen!: The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941.

It has been harder and harder to find underrecognized areas of graphic design - a notoriously self-cannibalizing visual field - to revive and valorize (or crib from), but Dan Donahue has come up with a doozy with Ultraviolet: 69 Classic Blacklight Posters from the Aquarian Age and Beyond, which promises that each of the winged, blue unicorns, righteous soul brothers, floating crystal palaces, and many, many naked hippie couples will "shine brilliantly" in the presence of a black light (not included). The Red Book: Liber Novus by Carl Jung makes no such claims but compensates with a deeper, more heartfelt and artistically significant array of personal mythological symbolism. Created during a prolonged period of craziness after his split from Freud, Jung's Red Book is more than 200 hand-painted illuminated manuscript pages chronicling his experiments in "active imagination" - basically dreaming while you're awake. Hidden from public view until this year, its publication by Norton - and current exhibition of the original at the Rubin Museum of Art in NYC - are significant moments in the history of analytic psychology. But the real surprise for most will be seeing what an interesting and accomplished painter Jung was. Having just gotten around this year to reading Deidre Bair's excellent 2003 biography of the depth-psychology patriarch, we know the guy was something of a dick. And clinical psychology is no excuse for being a dick. Luckily for Jung, philosophy and art can be.

LA Weekly
© 2009 Village Voice Media

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-26T11:14:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone Seasons Greeting! It has been a great year and all thanks to your support! If it wasn't for all of you I wouldn't be who I am today.

To recap some of the highlights:

I have started teaching at SUNY Purchase's Youth Program and have been shoting for Artforum.

I was the recipient of the Ernst & Cecile Holzinger Memorial Award for photography and the Metropolitan Council of Jewish Poverty: Creative Award for volunteer photographic project.

I have shown my work in some exhibits such as Mpls Photo Center's Portraits exhibition, juried by David Little, Minneapolis, Minnesota. National Association of Women’s Artists, Salgumndi Gallery, Nurture Art Benefit, Claire Oliver Gallery, and Potluck Slideshow New York, NY. In addition, one of my images will be used on the cover of next month's Imprint magazine by the Professional Women Photographer Magazine.

HAVE A GREAT NEW YEAR!

www.erikanusser.com

WOW I'm in Artforum!

2009-11-15T20:37:00.000-08:00

http://artforum.com/diary/id=24160
http://artforum.com/diary/#entry24172

Irving Penn: Fashion photographer | Times Online Obituary

2009-10-13T05:00:00.001-07:00

Irving Penn: Fashion photographer | Times Online Obituary

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More u2!

2009-09-24T14:34:00.001-07:00

U2 & Muse concert September 23, 2009

2009-09-24T11:37:00.000-07:00

Judge Sotomayor? hmm maybe not

2009-07-17T20:37:00.001-07:00

In an era when slides and negatives are no longer the coin of the realm, the case of Usher v. Corbis-Sygma may seem to have lost much timeliness. Except for this: one member of the three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals that most recently heard the case was Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

On April 10, sitting in Manhattan, Judge Sotomayor and her colleagues affirmed a district court’s award of $157,000 to the photographer Chris Usher for the loss of what he says were more than 12,600 images by Corbis, to whom he had entrusted the pictures for a brief period almost a decade ago.

The portfolio included photographs Mr. Usher had taken during the 2000 presidential campaign.

“The value of these images is certainly more than $7 each,” Mr. Usher, 47, said in a telephone interview Tuesday from Alexandria, Va., where he lives. “But I’d so much rather have the images back.”

“No one has learned anything from this exercise,” he said. “Corbis can say, ‘Ha ha, all we need to do is reach into petty cash.’”

In their three-page summary order, Judge Sotomayor and her colleagues, Rosemary S. Pooler and Mark R. Kravitz, said the district court had appropriately reached a figure based on Mr. Usher’s past earnings, as calculated by reference to his 16-month licensing history with Corbis. They also said the district court was “not required to specifically address uniqueness when, due to inadequate record-keeping, it is impractical or impossible.”

Corbis’s chief lawyer in this case, Douglas C. Fairhurst of Dorsey & Whitney, said the award was sensibly premised on market economics. But Mr. Usher’s lawyer, Edward C. Greenberg, said the award was aberrantly low, given the court’s finding of negligence on the part of Corbis, which was founded and is owned by Bill Gates.

“Judge Sotomayor did not get that this is blatantly absurd: to treat one of the top photojournalists in the world as if he was a child who lost the snapshots he’d brought into CVS or Walgreens,” Mr. Greenberg said in an interview on Tuesday.

“She displayed absolutely no empathy or compassion for an individual who’d won his case against the world’s richest man by upholding an award to him in the exact same amount of money that a six-year-old would have gotten from Walmart or Walgreens merely for asking. The judge did not understand the uniqueness of the images and their historical significance and that they were unrecreatable.”

“You can’t shoot Bush and Gore on the campaign trail again,” he added.

Following up in an e-mail message, Mr. Greenberg said, “It was the impression of my ‘entourage’ — consisting of clients, witnesses, staff and interested parties who attended the oral argument — that Sotomayor had no understanding of the historical context of the photo business.” He continued: “She viewed — in my crew’s opinion — the case as the ‘last in a line’ of cases concerning the loss of analog materials, an anachronism. While arguing, I personally could not read that, but others did.”

Mr. Greenberg did not fault the overall demeanor of Judge Sotomayor, before whom he appeared for the first time when he argued Mr. Usher’s appeal four months ago.

“Did she pay attention to the arguments?” Mr. Greenberg said. “Yes, absolutely she paid attention to the arguments. Judge Sotomayor was involved, engaged and understood what happened. And she couldn’t have cared less.”

Mr. Fairhurst said in an interview Wednesday that he has known Judge Sotomayor since the 1980s, when they both served on the legal committee of an imported automobile trade association. (She represented Fiat, he Jaguar.)

As for her recent handling of the Usher appeal, Mr. Fairhurst said, “She was well-informed about the case and she’d obviously carefully read the briefs.” He also noted that she questioned Mr. Greenberg vigorously. “He wouldn’t answer,” Mr. Fairhurst said. “He wouldn’t refuse to answer, but he’d start talking about the price of tea in Ceylon.”

For his part, Mr. Greenberg said, “I was — shall we say — much more theatrical than one would ordinarily be in an appellate argument.” But he was aroused, he said, by the sense of injustice that Mr. Usher was “being paid seven bucks a picture.”

The outcome from the Court of Appeals was greeted with dismay by Paul Melcher on the Black Star Rising blog.

Why is the Usher case important? Because, like any judgment, it will become a judicial reference. It will affect how photographs are valued in future cases. And that affects every single photographer out there.

This ruling means that from now on, any agency, any magazine, any publisher will never have to worry about losing your photographs, since it will cost them peanuts to pay you back. It will be cheaper for them to trash them than to return them to you.

Mr. Fairhurst said he was puzzled by the sense of outrage he had detected on photo blogs.

“Why would photographers be immune from the laws of economics?” he said. “If I had a 20-year-old business selling nails, and you were interested in buying my nail business, would you not look at how it performed? Would you not look at the gross revenue over 20 years and at the net and what the competition is, in order to fix a price? Why would photographers think they’re immune from these things? It’s a commodity.”

While acknowledging that individual images might command higher prices in the future, Mr. Fairhurst said that assigning value to them in advance would be a gamble, not unlike “going to the ponies.” He said that the courts had to take into account the actual earnings to date.

“If what you have is 200,000 images, one of which is worth $10,000 and the rest are worth zero, you get $10,000,” he said.

As for Mr. Usher, he said he was heading to Capitol Hill on assignment Wednesday. “But not shooting the Sotomayor hearing, ironically.”

2009-06-21T19:37:00.001-07:00

Issue 124 June-August 2009

ALONE AGAIN, OR

The persistent and enigmatic subject of women turning away

by Jennifer Higgie

Gerhard Richter, I.G. (1993) <http://tinyurl.com/n4fdgj>

'There's so little risk of finding her.'
Rosemary Tonks

She turns her back on you; this, it would seem, is her appeal. She's been painted like this for centuries, and, more recently, photographed. Often she is naked, in a bathroom or bedroom, solitary, sleeping or day-dreaming, or at a picnic, momentarily stilled, enveloped in a vague, dark space. The one constant is that her face is obscured. Her identity is fluid, nuanced; it can be elegiac, erotic or sullen, an homage to something lost or never quite gained, a study in both negation and yearning. It's impossible to know whether she - who appears in so many guises - was ever, in the act of being represented, aware that someone was looking at her (the observed is often innocent of the observer). Whether we read the artist's rejection of her face as a reflection of her inner life, or read the focus on her body as an indication of sensual preoccupations, she is ultimately irreducible and as such can be whoever we want to her to be. As Stuart Morgan once wrote: 'Since perception of the human figure is also perception of one person by another, we credit that other with attributes of our own; we use them, to satisfy our needs.'1

A woman looking away is obviously considered worth looking at; her resistance to our scrutiny must be compelling, pleasurable even. Otherwise, why have men - and it is almost always men - returned to portray her silence, her enigma and her malleability, again and again? Search the collections of London's National Gallery, Tate Modern and Tate Britain and it doesn't take long to come across examples of paintings of women looking away painted by men - from Johannes Vermeer, Diego Velázquez and Pierre Bonnard to Edgar Degas, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Eric Gill, Duncan Grant and Man Ray - and none by women. Even taking into account the historical exclusion of the work of women artists from national collections, this is surprising.

These scenarios are impossible to write about conclusively; each demands its own analysis, as, after all, a resistance to scrutiny lies at their heart. A negation of the reciprocity of seeing (we can't see her eyes, she can't see the artist's) implies an opposition to communication (people say 'I see' when they mean 'I understand'). These images are also complicated about gender - although painted or photographed by a man, the effect is one of being ignored by a woman; and it is, obviously, not only men who look at her. It's too easy to suggest that she exists for Laura Mulvey's influential definition of the male gaze - that is, to satisfy a man's voyeuristic (i.e. seeing women as whores) or fetishistic (i.e. seeing women as madonnas) impulses; her aesthetic function, if you can call it that, is in a constant state of flux, shifting with time and context. She's a paradox made flesh: she's intimate and absent, oddly vivid, yet mute; she can look away all she wants, but she'll always remain an object of thwarted interest and inconclusive innuendo. She's also, despite her stillness, active: her gesture is one of imminent movement, as if she's about to turn towards you, or get up and move away. Occasionally, especially in Rococo painting (in particular in Jean-Antoine Watteau's dreamy fêtes champêtres) with its love of mystery, codes and game-play, she is accompanied by other people, but still, she seems isolated. To think of her with accomplices is an anathema. She is, by definition, alone.

<http://tinyurl.com/njqfep>

A painting of someone turning away defies portraiture; the backs of these women are as unfathomable as masks. Despite how delicately, even realistically, her hair, her skin, her clothes are rendered, she's an abstraction; a formal exercise in secrecy, her body reduced to plane, volume and colour. Conventionally, her prop is a mirror; tantalizingly, she can look at her face, but we cannot. There are, of course, exceptions. The only surviving nude by Velázquez, The Toilet of Venus, also known as The Rokeby Venus (1647-51), is possibly the most famous one, but even here, in a looking-glass held by her son Cupid, her reflected face is blurred, her expression uncertain. The emphasis, undoubtedly, is on her skin; scrutinizing her is a curiously intimate act despite her very public visibility in London's National Gallery. The sense that this representation of an anonymous woman, has, over the years, been confused for a real woman was made apparent in 1914 when an axe-wielding suffragette, Mary Richardson, notoriously slashed the painting. The outcry was universal: many newspapers reported the vandalism as if it were attempted murder. The Times, for example, reported that the painting suffered from 'cruel wounds to the neck' and 'incisions to the shoulders and back'.2 Richardson's statement about her actions was as circular as it was defiant. She declared that 'I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history.'3

Looking away she is, of course, the embodiment of vulnerability - a fact ironically made clear by Richardson's actions. The implicit assumption of voyeurism is the stuff of nightmares for many women, yet the power play here is not straightforward. The artist has asserted his power by creating a likeness of a woman who rejects his gaze in the same instance he renders her eternally immobile. Yet, at the moment that she looks away, so, in a sense, does the artist - it is safe to assume he is in agreement with his subject. Where does that leave you, looking at her?

She makes you look at what she is looking at. Her gaze, the direction of which is only indicated by the angle of the back of her head, directs yours. Often, she is staring at nothing but the innate abstraction of an inky black space.

A face you cannot see is always full of possibility. An image of a woman turning away gives you permission to do something denied in life: stare. Such demand from a picture - that you look at someone who has been stilled at the moment she might be considering moving - is compelling, a double-bluff - she's not a real woman, she's a real representation. This person, this woman you are looking at is a fragment, hidden behind the veneer of a seemingly straightforward appearance that, despite its apparent clarity, refuses to give anything up. She's in her own world, but it's not of her making. She did not choose to represent her own reality. Usually her identity is obscured; when she's named, the emphasis shifts from seeing her as a type to wondering about her as a person; biography hovers in the wings.

<http://tinyurl.com/kllhya>

In João Penalva's black and white photograph, Sumiko (2009), a Japanese woman is pictured from behind. Dressed in a modest kimono, all we can see of her, apart from a slim sliver of the side of her face, is her hair, which, elaborately coiffed and coiled, shines like polished wood. It is, in a sense, a conventional image of discreet Japanese womanhood, tinged with the erotic possibilities that such a mix of modesty and anonymity might promise. However, beneath the photograph, a text both complicates and humanises the subject by illuminating the sobering reasons for the obscuring of Sumiko's face. It reads:

'Sumiko worked in the Ginza, in the office of her aunt's modeling agency. She had resigned herself to the fact that she could never be a model, but her aunt thought otherwise. She sent her out one day with Miss Ouchi, the hairdresser, on a hair assignment to Mr Enbutsu's photographic studio in Akasaka. She had made it clear to him that Sumiko was exclusively a hair model and only to be photographed from the back or her left profile. She had a beautiful face, though ruined by a scar off-centre on her chin, thin like a strand of hair curling back on itself. After months of working together, Mr Enbutsu told Sumiko that he would like to do a portrait of her from the front, to show her how he could paint out her scar. As she took the retouched portrait home she wished that life, like photography, had such simple tricks to set things right.'

<http://tinyurl.com/lp9jc4>

Perhaps this story is a fiction. Perhaps it's not even someone called Sumiko in the photograph. Perhaps all pictures are riddles. The final room in the recent exhibition of portraits by Gerhard Richter at London's National Portrait Gallery reinforced a similar deferral of meaning. It included a mix of paintings of the artist's family and friends - women (wives, lovers, friends), many naked and some with babies, most of whom seem to be emerging from a faint fog. Like a blown-up detail from earlier historical paintings, a large mirror (simply titled Spiegel, Mirror, 2008) was the only work in the room that was not painted - an object that shifted the emphasis in the gallery from people looking at other people, to looking at themselves. Unsurprisingly, most scurried past it. (Richter has written that his interest in mirrors is to do with the 'provocation of the viewer, who sees himself instead of a picture.'4) Almost everyone in the room was clustered around one of the artist's most popular paintings: Betty from 1988. (Indeed, when frieze ran a survey of over 150 people in the art world in 2001, asking the question: 'What work of art would you like most to live with?', Betty came out third, after Andy Warhol's 'Electric Chairs' series from 1965 and Peter Brueghel the Elder's painting from 1565, Hunters in the Snow.) A lot of people, it would seem, want to live with her, a fact that should - considering how conventional she is, with her youth and gleaming hair, her delicate ear, bright red flowered jacket, remoteness and grace - come as no surprise. Betty is, despite Richter's radical credentials, the kind of image the public is hard-wired to like. With its echoes of past great paintings (especially Ingres' La Baigneuse (The Bather) from 1808, where the woman's back appears carved from light and glass and varnished in pale honey) and its mix of virtuoso skill and inscrutability, Betty is superficially accessible, compelling and undemanding; a picture that was, in a sense, familiar before it was even made. And yet - there is something in this painting that transcends such pat definitions even as it rests comfortably within them. With its near-hallucinogenic relationship to photography, and the dynamic pyramid of its composition; with its high-pitched contrast of realism, abstraction, history painting and the family snap-shot, like a chaste variation of an erotic masterpiece, Betty straddles traditionally conflicting worlds. Perhaps this is her appeal. I don't know. But I do know that I, too, like looking at her. As Richter irascibly declared: 'good paintings are incomprehensible. Creating the incomprehensible has nothing to do with turning out any old bunkum, because bunkum is always comprehensible'.5

Opposite Betty, grouped in the corner of the same exhibition, hung three paintings depicting the back of a slim, naked, short-haired woman seen from the waist up: the series 'I.G.' from 1994. In one picture, she stands with her head bowed, her arms limp by her side, as if resigned, defeated or sad; in the second, her head is lowered even further. Her right arm is bent in front of her, while her left is stretched out sideways as if she is punching air with a gesture so urgent her hand has disappeared outside the frame. In the third, in a composition that indicates imminent movement, her head is tilted slightly upwards and to the left; her arms are, once again, hanging by her body. In all three paintings, she faces a wall interrupted by a dark space that hints at, if not a door, then at least a dark passageway: it is hard not to read it as an ominous exit. Contrasted with the golden serenade of Betty, 'I.G.', with its milky, melancholy browns, greens and blacks, is a wintry sonata in three movements.

Unlike Ingres' painting, whose subject remains anonymous - as do most historical paintings of naked women - Richter has chosen to identify his subjects. His attitude to portraiture is twofold. On the one hand, he has expressed straightforwardly sentimental reasons for making them: 'Everyone has produced his own "devotional pictures": these are the likenesses of family and friends, preserved in remembrance of them'.6 On the other hand, he is quick to reiterate the essential mystery of his subjects and the fallibility of portraiture as a genre, declaring that 'images (and ideas and ideals) are static, superficial, unachievable and are to be doubted' and that 'I don't think the painter need either see or know the sitter. A portrait must not express anything of the sitter's "soul", essence or character. Nor must a painter "see" a sitter in any specific, personal way.'7 As is well known, Betty is a portrait of Richter's 22-year-old daughter, and 'IG' a study of his ex-wife, the artist Isa Genzken, whom Richter chose to portray soon after their relationship had ended. (How anyone could possibly represent either a daughter or wife without 'seeing' them in a particular way, is, I must say, beyond me.) In 1977, Richter also painted two other portraits of Betty. One is a fogged image of her face, the other a small portrait of her head and shoulders, animated by the bright contrast between her milky skin and vivid red sweater. She is seen from above, as if the artist is looking down at her. Her expression is blank, her youth evident. However, despite the fact that in this painting we see her face clearly, compared to the later, faceless Betty, this earlier picture is both highly descriptive, yet lacklustre; a good illustration, perhaps of Richter's statement: 'I want pictorial content without sentiment, but I want it as human as possible.'8

Soon after I visited the Richter exhibition I traveled across London to see Genzken's solo show, 'Open, Sesame!', at the Whitechapel Gallery. I have never done this before: moved, quite literally, from looking at images of someone to then seeing their own art works. Walking into the gallery, I was greeted by Ohr (Ear, 1980), a blown-up photograph of a delicate ear, sculptural in its detail and brushed with silvery-gold strands of wind-blown hair. As if waiting for a confession, the photograph immediately hints at an interior world of secrets and whispers. It is part of a series of the same name that Genzken created by stopping women on the streets of New York to ask if she could photograph their ear. According to the artist: 'not a single woman said no. Because I didn't ask for their face, but for something largely anonymous [Š] everyone thought that was a nice experience [Š] Of course, I did work with some light and hair shining in the sun [Š] I tried to make the situation nice for the ear.'9

Ohr pre-dates Betty by eight years, and in many ways, shares certain qualities with it, but with one major difference. Both images are dependent on photography, lit dramatically, delight in the intimations of anonymity and intimacy, and in the complicated zones that demarcate divisions between what is public and what is private (both in art and life) yet in Genzken's image - a woman by a woman - the body is cast away. Surreal in its dislocation, the ear hovers alone, like a memorial to secrecy, its fleshy structure the support for a passageway that leads not to a corridor or the room of a house but into the woman's head - the place where her thoughts reside. In a gallery sight is privileged; here Genzken has shifted the focus to a different form of communication: listening and, by association, thinking, which will always remain, in its purest form, invisible.

1 What the Butler Saw, Selected Writings of Stuart Morgan, Ian Hunt (ed.), Durian Publications, 1996, London p.243
2 Lynda Nead, The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity, and Sexuality, 1992, Routledge, New York, p. 35
3 Ibid.
4 Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting, Hans Ulrich Obrist (ed.), Thames and Hudson, Anthony D'Offay Gallery, London, 1995, p. 99
5 Ibid.
6 National Portrait Gallery
7 Ibid.
8 Op. Cit. Daily Practice of Painting, p.97
9 Wolfgang Tillmans interviews Iza Genzken, Camera Austria, No. 81, 2003, pp. 7-18

Jennifer Higgie is co-editor of frieze.

Frieze Magazine

Yoga for sale

2009-06-07T16:56:00.000-07:00

Just another day in Brooklyn

2009-06-07T16:53:00.000-07:00

Alone in Berlin

2009-05-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

Making the most of harsh light

2009-05-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

sometimes you just have to make the most of the light you are given

roof top of Gawker 2

2009-05-10T13:55:00.001-07:00

roof top of Gawker

2009-05-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

PARIS PHOTO 2009

2009-04-01T16:22:00.000-07:00


Van Leo - Sherihan actrice égyptienne - Le Caire, Egypte, 1976 Collection Fondation Arabe pour l'Image © Fondation Arabe pour l'Image		PARIS PHOTO 2009 The world's leading photography fair Spotlight on Arab and Iranian photography 19 - 22 NOV. 2009 Carrousel du Louvre http://www.parisphoto.fr
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From November 19 to 22, 2009, Paris Photo will present a panoramic overview of worldwide photographic expression, spanning the 19th century to the present day while also unveiling an emerging international scene. For its 13th edition, Paris Photo turns the spotlight on photographic work from the Arab countries and Iran in what is an unprecedented exploration of the practice in this part of the world. Curated by Catherine David who was responsible for Documenta X in Kassel in 1997 as well as numerous exhibitions and publications on Middle Eastern artistic expression, this year's project will be based on three components. The Central Exhibition will unveil a selection of rare studio photographs from the archives of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut; the Statement section will present a number of emerging talents from the region - from Tehran to Damascus, Beirut to Cairo, Tangiers to Dubai... The Project Room will offer a series of video works, testimony to the growing interest for the dynamics of this medium among the artists of the region. THE 6th BMW – PARIS PHOTO PRIZE Launched in support of contemporary photography, the BMW - Paris Photo Prize has become an important landmark in the world of international photography. Every year a panel of prestigious experts selects a prize winner among 20 short-listed artists represented by galleries participating in Paris Photo, on a theme inspired by the world of BMW. The short-listed works will be exhibited during Paris Photo, and the winner will be awarded the 12,000 euros prize. Details Dates: Thursday, 19 November - Sunday, 22 November, 2009 Opening by invitation only: Wednesday, 18 November, 7:00 pm -10:00 pm Venue: Carrousel du Louvre, 99 rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris, France Opening hours: 19 Nov. from 11:30 am to 8:00 pm, 20 Nov. from 11:30 am to 10:00 pm, 21 Nov. from 11:30 am to 8:00 pm, 16 Nov. from 11:30 am to 7:00 pm General admission Information: http://www.parisphoto.fr The Paris Photo selection committee: Guido Costa, Turin Howard Greenberg, New York Edwynn Houk, New York Tim Jefferies, Hamiltons, London Priska Pasquer, Cologne Françoise Paviot, Paris Timothy Persons, Taik Gallery, Helsinki Renos Xippas, Paris/ Athens The Paris Photo team: Jean-Daniel Compain, Reed Exhibitions Managing Director for the Culture, Sports and Leisure Division, and Paris Photo Fair Manager Fair Management Guillaume Piens, Deputy Fair Manager Véronique Prugnaud, Exhibitors Relations Manager Diane Amiel, Collectors and Institutions Manager Communications and partnerships Catherine Vauselle, Director of Communications and Partnerships Claire Poisson-Quinton, Communication and Media Coordinator Domitille Nau, Publishing Manager Reed Expositions France/ Paris Photo Tour Vista, 52-54, Quai de Dion-Bouton, CS 80001, 92806 Puteaux Cedex Tel: +33 (0) 1 47 56 64 74, E-mail: parisphoto@reedexpo.fr

Helen Levitt, Who Froze New York Street Life on Film, Is Dead at 95

2009-04-01T05:47:00.001-07:00

March 30, 2009

Helen Levitt, Who Froze New York Street Life on Film, Is Dead at 95

By MARGARETT LOKE

Helen Levitt, a major photographer of the 20th century who caught fleeting moments of surpassing lyricism, mystery and quiet drama on the streets of her native New York, died in her sleep at her home in Manhattan on Sunday. She was 95.

Her death was confirmed by her brother, Bill Levitt, of Alta, Utah.

Ms. Levitt captured instances of a cinematic and delightfully guileless form of street choreography that held at its heart, as William Butler Yeats put it, “the ceremony of innocence.” A man handles garbage-can lids like an exuberant child imitating a master juggler. Even an inanimate object — a broken record — appears to skip and dance on an empty street as a child might, observed by a group of women’s dresses in a shop window.

As marvelous as these images are, the masterpieces in Ms. Levitt’s oeuvre are her photographs of children living their zesty, improvised lives. A white girl and a black boy twirl in a dance of their own imagining. Four girls on a sidewalk turning to stare at five floating bubbles become contrapuntal musical notes in a lovely minor key.

In Ms. Levitt’s best-known picture, three properly dressed children prepare to go trick-or-treating on Halloween 1939. Standing on the stoop outside their house, they are in almost metaphorical stages of readiness. The girl on the top step is putting on her mask; a boy near her, his mask in place, takes a graceful step down, while another boy, also masked, lounges on a lower step, coolly surveying the world.

“At the peak of Helen’s form,” John Szarkowski, former director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art, once said, “there was no one better.”

The late 1930s and early ’40s, when Ms. Levitt created an astonishing body of work, was a time when many noted photographers produced stark images to inspire social change. Ms. Levitt also took her camera to the city’s poorer neighborhoods, like Spanish Harlem and the Lower East Side, where people treated their streets as their living rooms and where she showed an unerring instinct for a street drama’s perfect pitch. In his 1999 biography of Walker Evans, James R. Mellow wrote that the only photographers Evans “felt had something original to say were Cartier-Bresson, Helen Levitt and himself.”

Helen Levitt was born on Aug. 31, 1913, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Her father, Sam, a Russian-Jewish immigrant, ran a successful wholesale knit-goods business; her mother, May, was a bookkeeper before her marriage.

Finding high school unstimulating, Ms. Levitt dropped out during her senior year. In a 2002 interview with The New York Times in her fourth-floor walk-up near Union Square, she said that as a young woman she had wanted to do something in the arts though she could not draw well.

Her mother knew the family of J. Florian Mitchell, a commercial portrait photographer in the Bronx, and in 1931 Ms. Levitt began to work for him. “I helped in darkroom printing and developing,” she said. “My salary was six bucks a week.”

With a used Voigtländer camera, she photographed her mother’s friends. Through publications and exhibitions, she knew the documentary work of members of the Film and Photo League and of Cartier-Bresson, Evans and Ben Shahn.

In 1935 she met Cartier-Bresson when he spent a year in New York. On one occasion she accompanied him when he photographed along the Brooklyn waterfront. She also trained her eye, she said, by going to museums and art galleries. “I looked at paintings for composition,” she said. In 1936, she bought a secondhand Leica, the camera Cartier-Bresson favored.

Two years later, she contacted Evans to show him the photographs she had taken of children playing in the streets and their buoyantly unrestrained chalk graffiti. “I went to see him,” she recalled, “the way kids do, and got to be friends with him.” She helped Evans make prints for his exhibition and book “American Photographs.”

Both the quintessentially French Cartier-Bresson and the essentially American Evans influenced Ms. Levitt. Cartier-Bresson had a gift for catching everyday life in graceful, seemingly transparent flux; Evans had a way of being sparingly, frontally direct with his commonplace subjects. Ms. Levitt credited Shahn, whom she had met through Evans, with being a greater influence than Evans. Photographs Shahn took of life on New York sidewalks in the ’30s have an unmediated, gritty spontaneity.

James Agee, a good friend, was also a major influence. She had met him through Evans, who noted, “Levitt’s work was one of James Agee’s great loves, and, in turn, Agee’s own magnificent eye was part of her early training.”

The kind of pictures Ms. Levitt took demanded a photojournalist’s hair-trigger reflexes. But photojournalism didn’t interest her. She was too shy, she said, and lacked the technical proficiency that is a must for any practicing photojournalist. “I was a lousy technician,” she said. “That part bored me.”

Fortune magazine was the first to publish Ms. Levitt’s work, in its July 1939 issue on New York City. The next year her Halloween picture was included in the inaugural exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art’s photography department. In 1943 she had her first solo show at the Modern.

To support herself, Ms. Levitt worked as a film editor. Her friend Janice Loeb, a painter, introduced her to Luis Buñuel, who hired her in the early ’40s to edit his pro-American propaganda films. By 1949, and for the next decade, Ms. Levitt was a full-time film editor and director.

With her friends Agee, who was also a film critic, and Ms. Loeb, she started filming “In the Street” in the mid-’40s. Ms. Loeb was financially well off and was for a time married to Bill Levitt. Mr. Levitt survives his sister, as do several nieces and nephews.

“In the Street,” released in 1952, is the way one imagines Ms. Levitt’s photographs would look if they were to spring to life. The 14-minute documentary of Spanish Harlem, with a piano playing on the soundtrack, is antic, droll, artless and dear.

When Ms. Levitt returned to still photography in 1959, it was to work in color; she was among the first notable photographers to do so. She was helped in this project by Guggenheim fellowships that she received in 1959 and 1960. But much of this early color work was lost when her apartment was burglarized in the late ’60s. In the ’90s she gave up color, she said. She had to go to special labs to get prints made, and the colors weren’t always what she wanted.

Intensely private, Ms. Levitt shunned the limelight and seldom gave interviews. Comprehensive surveys of her career were held at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York in 1980 and at the Laurence Miller Gallery in 1987. But she remained little known to the general public even as late as 1991, when the first national retrospective of her work was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and traveled to major museums.

From the 1930s through the 1990s, Ms. Levitt permitted the publication of only a few books of her images, among them “A Way of Seeing” (Duke University Press, 1965), which includes an essay by Agee; “In the Street: Chalk Drawings and Messages, New York City, 1938-48” (Duke University Press, 1987); and “Mexico City” (Norton, 1997), revisiting her one trip abroad.

Recently, though, PowerHouse Books has published several volumes of her work: “Crosstown” (2001); “Here and There” (2004), black-and-white work not previously published; “Slide Show” (2005), showcasing her color work; and “Helen Levitt” (2008).

Ms. Levitt stopped making her own black and white prints in the 1990s, she said, because of sciatica, which prevented her from standing for long. The sciatica also made carrying the heavy Leica difficult, and in recent years she used a small automatic Contax. She had other health problems. Her lungs were scarred by a near-fatal bout of pneumonia in the 1940s or ’50s, she said. And she was born with Meniere’s syndrome, an inner-ear disorder. “I have felt wobbly all my life,” she said.

Changes in neighborhood life also affected her work. “I go where there’s a lot of activity,” she said. “Children used to be outside. Now the streets are empty. People are indoors looking at television or something.”

Despite her many pictures of children, she had always been “an animal nut,” Ms. Levitt said. Driving in New Hampshire in summer 1985, she recalled, she asked a man near a barn if he had any animals. They’re coming in now to feed, she was told. Sure enough, an enchanting trio traipsed single file down the country road: a thoughtful-looking Shetland pony, a sedate sheep and a frisky mountain goat. She took the picture.

“It was luck,” she said. “Luck, as James Agee said in an essay, is very important in this kind of stuff.”

Landscapes

2009-03-30T05:15:00.000-07:00

Wow! I can't believe this wouldn't fly in grad school... I love landscapes and just might start shooting them again!!!

Use your gun as you would your lipstick

2009-03-30T05:14:00.001-07:00

WOMEN ON THE BEAT

By JASMIN K. WILLIAMS

Over the past 100 years, women in the NYPD have gone from corsets and handbags to the highest ranks of the force.

Women in the NYPD have come a long way from their early days as police matrons. The first matron was hired in 1891. Their uniform, in keeping with the Victorian times, featured a long skirt, buttoned-up shirt -- and a corset. Their job was to keep an eye on the female detainees.

Before matrons were hired, female arrestees were searched by male officers, their wives, or the maid on duty at the station.

Being a matron wasn't easy. You had to be recommended in writing by at least 20 women in good standing, and pass a civil-service test. The hours were long, with only one day off a month. The pay was $1,000 a year. Matrons didn't get a raise until 1918, and, of course, the men were not happy about having women working at the station.

From 1917 to 1921, women broke new ground, moving from police matrons to protective officers and, later, to policewomen.

In 1918, Ellen O'Grady became the first woman in the United States to supervise a group of male officers. That same year, the NYPD appointed its first six official "policewomen," who each earned a salary of $1,200 a year.

Titles and job duties were changing. In 1919, police matrons became policewomen and former policewomen were now called patrolwomen. By 1937, all women on the force were called policewomen.

The policewoman's uniform changed, as well. Women now wore a knee-length skirt, heels and gloves.

In 1943, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia issued the first combination gun and makeup bag.

He told them, "Use your gun as you would your lipstick -- use it only when you need it, and use it intelligently. Don't overdo either one." This uniform would remain until 1973

In 1963, Felicia Shpritzer fought for and won the right for policewomen in the NYPD to take promotional exams. In 1965, she and Gertrude Schimmel became the department's first female sergeants. In 1967, the two passed a second exam, making them lieutenants.

In 1972, despite much protest from other officers and even their wives, policewomen began patroling the beat on foot and in cruisers with male officers.

Later that year, Policewomen Lucille Burrascano and Kathaline Salzano became partners on patrol as part of the experimental Policewomen on Patrol program.

"Chief Schimmel called and said, 'Hey, Lucille, how would you like to work in a radio car? That was like a dream come true," Burrascano said.

The greatest victory for women on the force came in 1973, when policewomen officially became police officers and achieved equality in the ranks.

"Everything changed in 1973," said Schimmel. "Women took the same test, gained the same title, wore the same uniform and shield and took the same assignments. The Bureau of Policewomen was disbanded."

Gone were the skirts and bags. Female police officers now wore pants and gun belts like male officers.

In 1978, Schimmel topped off a ground-breaking career in law enforcement and made history with her appointment to deputy chief -- the highest rank of any female officer.

2009-03-30T05:08:00.000-07:00

Dublin

2009-03-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

I love this shot! I was trying to finish my film before boarding

2009-02-10T05:43:00.000-08:00

Don’t Be Like Jessica Simpson: A Lesson For Young Girls Everywhere

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February 9th, 2009
By: HBN

Lately, there’s been a lot of questions about Jessica Simpson’s weight gain. Questions like: Is she fat? How fat is she? How did she get so fat? And, wait, who’s Jessica Simpson again? Well, you might remember her as the once svelte singer and actress whose songs you don’t own and whose movies you haven’t seen. But more likely, you remember Jessica Simpson only as that naughty, barely legal piece of eye candy you could convince to have sex with you by promising a brand new unicorn and/or Travis Tritt tickets.

Well, times have changed and now everyone’s talking about the new Jessica:

Yeah, but don’t feel too bad. True, she may have been called fat by many different people, but hordes of utterly unimportant celebrities have also rallied to Jessica’s defense and castigated the media for this name-calling. Over and over they plead their case: “Leave Jessica alone! What kind of message is this sending to young girls everywhere?”

Well, I’d like to take this opportunity to answer that question: It’s sending a wonderful message! Are you listening young ladies? The lesson is clear and true:

WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T BE LIKE JESSICA SIMPSON!

Do you want to be ridiculed? Do you want to be unloved? Do you want to be mocked on the cover of national magazines? Perhaps, even by the President? Then I urge you:

DON’T BE LIKE JESSICA SIMPSON!

Oh, but before anyone gets too uppity, I should clarify: I’m not telling you never to gain 10 or 15 pounds. I’m not saying that only skinny women deserve love. No no no. That misses the point. I’m saying don’t be like Jessica Simpson. You know, don’t be a no-talent shell of a celebrity with absolutely nothing going for you aside from your kicking body. Because guess what? Once that body goes, and it will go (as surely as Jessica goes for the last remaining Twinkie in her Costco-sized package of Hostess treats), you’ll be nothing.

The whole reason it’s wrong to define women by their appearance is because it unfairly overlooks all their more important talents, qualities and achievements. But in the case of Jessica Simpson, I’m just not sure what those are. Wasn’t her only talent the ability to unite 14-year-old boys and dirty old men in a mutual interest? Am I missing something?

Calling Jessica Simpson tubby does not unfairly obscure our appreciation of her musical talents. I mean, I hear she’s opening up for Rascal Flatts next week (yeah, I don’t know what that is, either). And if she were a better actress, we probably wouldn’t notice her difficulty in creating a waist even with two leopard print belts working overtime. But her former ability to wear Daisy Duke shorts is just not the stuff Oscars are made of.

Do you understand, girls? No one is saying that chubby women are worthless. But everyone is saying that no one cares about worthless women who used to have good bodies. And don’t think this is confined to women. Do you think Keanu Reeves would still get work if he let himself go? Oh really? When’s the last time you saw Val Kilmer in a summer blockbuster? So the key here is don’t be useless. And set your sights higher than Jessica Simpson. Emulate women who have, you know, done something. And the great thing is, if you do that, you won’t have to worry about your dress size. And you won’t have to run to your MySpace page crying about the mean things blogging scum like me have said about you.

So listen up, ladies; next time you want to supersize your value meal, first ask yourself this question: “Am I an uneducated, no talent, individual whose future livelihood depends solely on my appearance because I have absolutely no other redeeming characteristics?” If not, congratulations. You’ve probably read a book. Keep it up. But if the answer to that question is “yes,” then just know you’re running the risk of losing your only asset and being laughed at by an entire nation. At least for a few minutes until we forget about you completely

2009-02-09T18:06:00.001-08:00

again!! anti-smoking and smoking! I feel for those trying to quit!

New Pics

2009-02-04T22:25:00.000-08:00

Below are some new images that I love!! I miss shooting in daylight!

2009-02-04T22:13:00.000-08:00

2009-02-04T21:54:00.000-08:00

- Get ‘Em Girls - http://www.getemgirls.com -

2009-02-02T10:43:00.000-08:00

- Get ‘Em Girls - http://www.getemgirls.com -

My 2 Cents: Back Up Off the First Lady!

Posted By Shakara On January 30, 2009 @ 8:00 am In Fab | 7 Comments

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I don’t quite understand why people are sweating our First Lady, but enough is enough. The Black Artists Association is feeling some type of way because Michelle did not wear clothes by any African-American designers during the Inauguration ceremonies. My people, can we not focus?!! BAA Cofounder Amnau Eele, told WWD.com,

“It’s fine and good if you want to be all ‘Kumbaya’ and ‘We Are the World’ by representing all different countries. But if you are going to have Isabel Toledo do the inauguration dress, and Jason Wu do the evening gown, why not have Kevan Hall, B Michael, Stephen Burrows or any of the other black designers do something too?”

When asked if perhaps the First Lady is looking at the world colorlessly, Eele said, “It’s one thing to look at the world without color but she had seven slots to wear designer clothes. Why wasn’t she wearing the clothes of a black designer? That was our moment.”

Ok, I am lost…”our moment?” Who exactly is “our?” I thought it was America’s moment. The Obama’s do not owe us (Black people) anything, but to do a great job in the White House. Let Michelle wear whatever she wants. Maybe the Black designers just didn’t do a good job. Step your sewing game up and maybe in four years your designs might make the cut! Sometimes I feel like Black people can be our own worst enemies. Lets focus people..Economy, Healthcare, Education…WAR.

Back up off of our First Lady!

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అనోతేర్ రేఅసన్ నాట్ తో హవె kids

2009-02-02T10:34:00.000-08:00

BBC NEWS
Selfish adults 'damage childhood'
By Mark Easton
BBC News Home Editor

The aggressive pursuit of personal success by adults is now the greatest threat to British children, a major independent report on childhood says.

It calls for a sea-change in social attitudes and policies to counter the damage done to children by society.

Family break-up, unprincipled advertising, too much competition in education and income inequality are mentioned as big contributing factors.

A panel of independent experts carried out the study over three years.

The report, called The Good Childhood Inquiry and commissioned by the Children's Society, concludes that children's lives in Britain have become "more difficult than in the past", adding that "more young people are anxious and troubled".

According to the panel, "excessive individualism" is to blame for many of the problems children face and needs to be replaced by a value system where people seek satisfaction more from helping others rather than pursuing private advantage.

A spokesman for the Department for Children Schools and Families said: "We know there are still risks and challenges ahead for children and parents and that there is more for us all to do".

'Tone deaf'

The inquiry has a long list of recommendations including:

• abolishing Sats tests and league tables in English schools

• a ban on all advertising aimed at the under 12s and no TV commercials for alcohol or unhealthy food before the 9pm watershed

• stopping building on any open space where children play

• a high-quality youth centre for every 5,000 young people

"Individual freedom and self-determination bring many blessings," writes the report's principal author, Labour peer Lord Richard Layard.

"But in Britain... the balance has tilted too far," he says.

Another contributor, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, suggests society has become "tone-deaf to the real requirements of children in a climate where the mixture of sentimentalism and panic makes discussion of children's issues so difficult".

The panel, made up of 11 experts including eight university professors, says its conclusions are evidence based.

But some of its findings on family life in Britain are bound to be controversial.

Working mothers

It cites research suggesting that three times as many three year olds living with lone parents or a step-parent have behavioural problems compared with those living with married parents.

"Children with separate, single or step parents are 50% more likely to fail at school, have low esteem, be unpopular with other children and have behavioural difficulties, anxiety or depression," it argues.

"Child-rearing is one of the most challenging tasks in life and ideally it requires two people," the report concludes.

It also suggests that having many more working mothers has contributed to the damage done to children.

"Most women now work and their new economic independence contributes to levels of family break-up which are higher in the UK than in any other Western European country."

The panel has a series of recommendations aimed at improving the quality of family life experienced by children:

• a civil birth ceremony conducted by a registrar in which parents publicly accept the responsibilities of parenthood

• free parenting classes available around the time of birth

• free psychological and family support if relationships struggle

• rules making it easier for parents to stay at home to rear their children

Chief Executive of the Children's Society, Bob Reitemeyer, commissioned the research which included more than 30,000 submissions from organisations and children.

"Essentially the report brings a taboo into the open which is that we have to confront our selfish and individualistic culture," he said.

"We need to realise that we are collectively responsible for the welfare of all children and that together we can make childhood better."

The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls, is studying the report.

Although government may be sympathetic to some of the inquiry's conclusions, it is unlikely it will implement its radical proposals in the near future.

The government statement said: "The report mirrors the ambitious plan for improving children's lives and outcomes we set out in our Children's Plan, which aims to give every child the best chance in life, and we are pleased that the review acknowledges the positive impact that the Children's Plan is already having on children's lives.

"We know there are still risks and challenges ahead for children and parents and that there is more for us all to do.

"But as the report points out, in many ways our children have never lived so well - children are more educated, less sick, and more tolerant, and the government is working hard to invest, help and support children and their families to make Britain the best place in the world to grow up."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/education/7861762.stm

Published: 2009/02/02 05:01:08 GMT

© BBC MMIX

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౨౦౦౯

2008-12-31T10:30:00.000-08:00

WORST YEAR? NOT BY A LONG SHOT

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T06:28:00.000-08:00

Irony

2008-12-21T18:52:00.000-08:00

This is funny to me because the owner of the store doesn't realize how the placement of these ads work against each other

Snow by Erika Nusser

2008-12-16T09:09:00.000-08:00

If it's going to be cold let there should be snow, if there is snow I want to be on a mountain with my board!

Random Photos from Art Basel Miami 2008

2008-12-15T20:00:00.000-08:00

Aqua Hotel Party

Bird house

2008-12-09T22:20:00.000-08:00

2008-12-09T22:17:00.000-08:00

Miami 2008

2008-12-09T22:16:00.000-08:00