One of the best ways to gauge how the mainstream views artists is by looking at the movies. Before people associated artists with money, artists were an exotic species. If an artist had any degree of success, they were a newspaper illustrator, or had a job with an ad...
BUNKER VISION
Trying to actually define The Situationists is a slippery business. The more people who weigh in on what they were about, the more confusing it becomes. As an official art movement, Situationism existed from 1957 to 1972. They are considered a missing link between...
BOOKS
Yves Klein is having a moment. If one goes to the news section of the Yves Klein Archives, one will notice that there has recently been a discernible uptick in the number of recent exhibitions of his work. Given that he died in 1962—at an unexpectedly young age—this...
BUNKER VISION
“Scientists are saying that the future is going to be far more futuristic than they originally predicted.” So says Krysta Now in the underrated film Southland Tales. It’s hard to imagine that film getting made for theatrical distribution today. On the other hand, it...
BUNKER VISION: The Magic Christian
You’re sitting at an art fair (on what you hope is a chair) while your spouse has another look around. They handed you a magazine before they left, and you’re already back here. You can afford anything in the place, but everything was covered in hold stickers when the...
BUNKER VISION
This is a golden age for people who like to watch movies at home. Films considered obscure or lost are turning up on YouTube, in deluxe boxed sets, and at museum screenings. Digital projection is causing DVD bootlegs of museum screenings to look as crisp as commercial...
BUNKER VISION
There was a recent article about the waning attendance at churches that featured a striking drop quote from a lad who went to a Catholic church for the first time. The only reference point he had for all of the standing up, sitting down, repeating or responding to the...
BUNKER VISION
One of my favorite photo monographs by Kahn & Selesnick is an accordion-folded book that stretches out to 19 feet when it is fully unfurled. There is a narrative involving an Edwardian moon mission that is rescued by the Apollo astronauts. A version of these...
BUNKER VISION
When a sculpture takes on the character of a national monument, it is easy for the name of the artist who made it to get lost. Making a documentary of recognizable landmarks of the flatter parts of the United States? Don’t forget that row of old Cadillacs half buried...
BOOKS
According to his Wikipedia entry, this is Michael Peppiatt’s eighth book about Francis Bacon. If all of his Bacon books were packaged like a deluxe DVD, this would be the really good feature length documentary about the “making of.” He certainly deserves to tell his...
BUNKER VISION
Long films aren’t new. As early as 1914, there was a film (The Photo-Drama of Creation) that ran eight hours. Wikipedia lists at least five films from that decade, which ran at least six hours. In 1971 Jacques Rivette made a famous 13-hour film (Out: One) that had one...
BUNKER VISION
Agnes Varda is the sort of filmmaker that is always worth paying attention to. According to many film historians, her 1954 film La Pointe Courte was the first French New Wave film. A peek at YouTube reveals a 200-video playlist assembled by obsessed fans. (She gives...
BUNKER VISION
The cliché of the naughty schoolgirl is so ingrained in Western culture that it’s hard to imagine a time before they existed. You can read Japanese Anime about them while wearing a professionally manufactured naughty schoolgirl costume. You can mix a Naughty...
BOOKS
Given the current narrative of Los Angeles art (dueling contemporary museums on Grand Street, hangar-sized prestige galleries in East LA, art openings timed to coincide with Oscars) it is surprising to remember that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is only 50...
BUNKER VISION
One of the things that always troubled me about Andy Warhol’s legacy was the matter of people who got elevated and left behind. It is quite one thing to sign your name to a found object, but a whole other matter to treat people as found art.Warhol could be quite mean...
BUNKER VISION
If anybody reading this is looking for a topic for an art book, I would like to suggest La Fura dels Baus. Although they are well known in Europe (they designed the opening ceremony for the Barcelona Olympics, and have had other pieces performed before audiences of...
BUNKER VISION
» Now that binge-watching is officially a thing, it’s getting easier to convince people to sample Jacques Rivette. A three-hour film by Rivette is considered average to short. His longest film (Out: One) runs over 12 hours. The length of his films is more than a...
BUNKER VISION
There’s something wonderful about the idea that one of Japan’s most avant-garde films was originally intended to be a second feature for a double bill from a studio that was famous for cranking out formulaic Yakuza B movies. Seijun Suzuki began his stint at Nikkatsu...