Tag Archives: documentary

STREETSY: IS NEW BLACK-AND-WHITE PHOTO STREET ART BY JR OR JR WANNABE?

Hey, you know JR, right? The French street artist who has become something of a worldwide phenom over the past decade?

Yes, that JR. The one who takes black-and-white photos of people, their faces, close-ups of their eyes and mouths, and then prints them up at massive, mega-blown-up scale and wheat-pastes them on the sides of entire buildings, on the roofs of houses and on the sides of trains.

Yes, that’s the JR we’re talking about.

Well, that JR is the subject of some local speculation with regards to a recent work of street art that appeared on fashionable Abbot Kinney Blvd. in Venice Beach. See pic above.

Or, rather, the speculation is about who put up this street art. It has all the makings of “a JR.” But is it? Is it some other artist? Is it a JR wannabe? A copycat?

And who is the subject of this artwork? Is it, as one commenter on our Instagram feed asked, a photo of octagenarian French filmmaker Agnes Varda?  The face, the eyes and the haircut — especially the haircut — have all the makings of Varda.

These are questions we want answers to, savvy reader. And we have answers! 

The art was put there by JR (or by his assistants / minions / 3rd-party contractor). The image is of Agnes Varda. It’s placement and timing are not an accident.

As some of you savvy readers may already well be aware, JR and Varda collaborated on a documentary film project called “Faces Places.” The film was a critical success and garnered a 2018 Academy Award nomination. The street artwork appeared around the time of the Awards ceremonies in March, which, of course, are held each year in Los Angeles. Varda herself was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy last year.

So there you have it.

(Uh, BTW, follow us on Instagram! We’re @globalgraphica )

BEHIND THE SCENES: EXCRUCIATINGLY AWESOME VIDEO SERIES “AT THE MUSEUM” SHOWS INNER WORKINGS OF MOMA

The MoMA (that’s the Museum of Modern Art in the New York-fucking-City) has recently launched a web video series on YouTube called “At the Museum,” and we, savvy reader, are L-O-V-I-N-G it. (See video below!)

It’s a behind-the-scenes look at the innermost workings of one of the world’s greatest art museums as it prepares to mount a major exhibition. It’s documentary-like, but only to a point. The tone is more cinema-verite in a reality-TV-show way, but produced in ultra-understated, high-minimalist style. There’s no narration. No explanation. No formal sit-down interviews. When staff do talk to the camera, it’s while they’re working, doing the mundane daily tasks of their jobs, like the way witnesses in an episode of “Law and Order” always answer detectives’ questions at their place of work while continuing to do whatever it was they were doing (unloading a truck, wiping down a bar, butchering meat, etc.). 

“At the Museum” may have documentary and reality TV bones in its basic visual-narrative architecture, but its manner is the polar opposite of the chaos, Real-Housewivery or Kardashian-Jennerisms we’ve become accustomed to from contemporary reality TV. And it’s far away from anything by Ken Burns or Werner Herzog. No pans, no scans, no slow zooms, no German accents, no depressive anecdotes.

Each episode of “At the Museum” is about ten-minutes long and focuses on some aspect of the museum from the mundane to the important, e.g., shipping and receiving of the artwork. There’s high drama, too, but it’s not obvious and it’s largely confined to the nuances of the art world and its culture and codes. There’s much being said and interpreted in the raised eyebrow or long pause in speech by one of the many MoMA staff, some of whom seem like walking-talking art-world cliches straight outta Central Casting.

But these are real people. The type of people who live, breathe, eat, drink, fuck and poop art, and the type who love their jobs, for whom displaying a small Max Ernst sculpture a quarter centimeter higher on a platform makes all the difference. And we love it! Watch this series.

 

The Beautiful Retro-Cinematic Style of “Expencive Porno Movie” (sic)

“Expencive Porno Movie” (sic) is not your ordinary surf film. Directed by Argentine surfer and filmmaker Tin Ojeda and released in 2014, the movie features the to-be-expected great surf sequences by great surfers (the very talented Alex Knost making a couple of lengthy appearances in the flick) and highly original, arty interludes.

But what is so special about this surf film is that it was all shot on actual 16mm film in an experimental retro-style that celebrates — almost to the point of fetish — the low-fi, rough-hewn early 1970’s-era filmmaking style common to low-budget, independent American Blaxploitation, sexploitation and X-rated “adult” films of the period. All sorts of happy accidents that come with using celluloid — light leaks, dust, scratches and other flaws — can be seen in the footage. And the soundtrack is a beautifully curated set of organ-laden R&B, Afro-pop, funk, jazz, and jazz-rock from the era that perfectly matches the film’s aesthetic.

Surfing aside, the movie is a beauty, a true original that has raised the aesthetic bar for the genre. Check out the trailer below and this Wax magazine interview with Ojeda.

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Expencive Porno Movie Trailer – Available on DVD from Grandview on Vimeo.

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The Artist is Present

Below are still images from “Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present,” a 2012 documentary about legendary performance-art star Marina Abramovic. We stumbled upon a re-broadcast of the film doc on HBO a couple of weeks ago and watched it again for a second time. As an artist, Marina is controversial, and critics and the public had mixed feelings about the sensational, provocative 2010 MoMA retrospective of her work. The documentary is about her career and the months of preparation for the MoMA exhibition, as well as the days throughout the run of the show itself.

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