MUSEYON GUIDES

Travel Obsession: Directing Duo Hunts Giants in “World’s Largest” Documentary

Gabriel — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:24:15 +0000

When we travel the world, we follow our obsessions—art, music, and film. But we tip our hats explorers with different obsessions in mind, like Elizabeth Donius and Amy Elliott, the filmmakers behind the upcoming documentary, “World’s Largest”. Instead of following in the footsteps of famous artists or tracking down the original film locations of Kung-Fu classics, Donius and Elliott hunt bigger game—the weird and wonderful monuments small towns create in order to put them on the map as the home of the largest strawberry, the longest hokey stick, or the world’s largest otter. But, as the documentary reveals, these two filmmakers have found a lot more than over-sized fruits or gargantuan concrete rodents.

From Hidalgo, Texas, home of the world’s largest killer bee, to Wahpeton, North Dakota, home of the world’s largest catfish, to the sands of Pismo Beach, California (where you can find a massive clam sculpture), the duo has crisscrossed the United States seeking out these tiny burgs and their large public works. What emerges is a portrait of American small-town life where diminishing manufacturing opportunities, increased globalization, and a strange sense of being left behind in our brave, new interconnected world compels private citizens and municipal boards alike to commission the “world’s largest” this or that simply for a listing in the Guinness Book of World Records and an outside chance at drawing in tourists and opening their wallets. Civic pride is important when your population is only in the four or five-digit range, and in the middle of America’s information deluge, a massive lava lamp (Soap Lake, Washington) or jackrabbit (Odessa, Texas) near your town hall may be the quickest, most positive way to roadside-attraction fame. The other side of the coin is that many of these monuments—the Pismo Beach clam, the boll weevil of Enterprise, Alabama—represent exports or industries that once flourished in those towns. They were totems of times of prosperity, of parades gone by. As sad as all this sounds, what “World’s Largest” promises is something very positive—the uniquely American tendency to recast one’s self and one’s surroundings in epic terms, the will to strive and excel that, for better or worse, defines our national character. Pretty heady stuff for a movie starring ordinary Americans, a trio of Paul Bunyans, and the world’s largest turkey (Frazee, Minnesota).

“World’s Largest” will screen at the upcoming SXSW Film Festival. For more information go to www.worldslargestdoc.com. For travel guides that follow our obsessions with art, music, and movies, head over to our online store.

Images:
Top—Director of “World’s Largest” Elizabeth Donius along with the world’s largest hockey stick in Eveleth, MN.
Bottom (clockwise from upper left): The world’s largest buffalo in Jamestown, ND, the world’s largest otter in Fergus Falls, MN, the world’s largest jackrabbit, Odessa, TX, the world’s largest goose, Sumner, MO.
All images courtesy of World’s Largest Productions.

Master Vermeer Forger Han van Meegeren Gets The Retrospective Treatment

Gabriel — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:44:54 +0000

When it comes to art and art history, we’ll go out of our way for an authentic experience. Sure, between the Frick and the Met, eight of the 37 acknowledged paintings by Vermeer in existence are just a walk away from our offices. But to really understand Vermeer, to get an authentic experience of his art, we suggest you buy a ticket to Holland and take the walking tour of the master’s life in Delft detailed in our new “Art + Travel Europe: Step into the Lives of Five Famous Painters”. There is however, a strange chapter of the history surrounding Vermeer that has nothing to do with authenticity. Indeed, as a new retrospective of master forger Han van Meegeren at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam has it, some of the most exciting things to happen in the field of Vermeer studies in the 20th Century centered around some very inauthentic works of art.

The tale of van Meegeren is long and twisted. Once a struggling artists and fan of the painters of the Dutch Golden Age, it could be argued that van Meegeren became perhaps the world’s best counterfeiter no for love of money, but for love of art. His recreations of centuries-old styles, techniques, and materials were exhaustive and exacting—bordering on genius by some estimations. His mastery of forgery came to public attention when he was tried in Amsterdam for collaboration with the Nazis after allegations surfaced that he had sold a Vermeer, “Christ with the Adulteress” to a broker who delivered it to German Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring. Accused of selling a national treasure to an enemy after the war, van Meegeren defended himself at the 1947 trail with the shocking admission that, “The painting in Göring’s hands is not, as you assume, a Vermeer of Delft, but a Van Meegeren! I painted the picture!” While the court lifted the collaboration charges after a full study of the painting in question and allowing him to create a new forged Vermeer (which ironically made him a national hero for keeping Nazis away from actual Vermeers), authorities still found him guilty of fraud and he suffered an eventually fatal heart attack during the appeal proceedings. A Dutch opinion poll at the time named him the second most popular public personality in the country, right behind the Prime Minister.

The intervening years have only added to van Meegeren’s reputation as a skilled technician, gifted visionary, and fascinating, complicated personality. The fallout from his various forgeries was immense, costing individuals and institutions alike millions of dollars and serious blows to their prestige. He is both a villain and a hero in the modern art world, one who’s actions precipitated a whole new era in art forensics. Timed to overlap with the Mauritshuis’ upcoming exhibition, “The Young Vermeer” (which will soon have moved from the Scottish National Galleries), “Van Meegeren’s Fake Vermeers” takes the artist’s work as a whole, presenting his Vermeer forgeries as well as compositions meant to be by artists like Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, and Gerard ter Borch—artists who hold a greater, more important place in the history of Dutch art, but whose current fame is eclipsed by the man who made an art of ripping them off.

“Van Meegeren’s Fake Vermeers”
May 12 – August 22, 2010
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
18-20 Museumpark
Rotterdam, Netherlands
+31 10-441-9475
www.boijmans.nl

Images:
Top—”Supper at Emmaus”, Han van Meegeren, 1936, courtesy of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.
Middle—Van Meegeren on trail in Amsterdam, 1947.
Bottom (left to right): “The Lacemaker”, van Meegeren, 1925, courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., “Lady Reading Music”, van Meegeren, 1936, courtesy of the Rijksmuseum,

Old Master to Be New Movie Hero: Da Vinci Action Flick in Development

Gabriel — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:43:27 +0000

Whether or not they’re wholly truthful, Derek Jarman’s “Caravaggio” and Robert Altman’s “Vincent and Theo” are at least faithful to the stories of the artists they portray—delivering the tone, the feeling of those real lives if not their exact details. Wonderful and effective as they are, these and other films following the histories of these great painters do lack a few things you might want out of a biopic that also happen to be absent in the biographical walking tours through the footsteps of Caravaggio, Goya, Van Gogh, Vermeer, and Munch provided in our “Art + Travel Europe: Step into the Lives of Five Famous Painters”—chase sequences, arch villains, massive explosions. A new movie featuring the greatest hero of the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, however, will be serving up hot, violent action along with what we must imagine will be a faithful portrait of the tough-as-nails, gun-slinging badass who created the “Mona Lisa”.

The Hollywood Reporter has it that a certain Adrian Askarieh, the producer of the video-game inspired “Hitman”, is in development on a film titled “Leonardo da Vinci and the Soldiers of Forever” which we’re guessing is going to be a sort of “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension” set in the latter half of the 15th Century when the natural scientist and painter still had bugling biceps and rock-hard abs. As you may know, da Vinci was noted for proposing or designing many super-agent-style inventions and gadgets centuries ahead of their time—the helicopter, the parachute, the sun-powered ray gun. All these innovations an more will most likely be on display as da Vinci does battle with secret societies and “Biblical demons”. Previous films like “The Da Vinci Code” and “Hudson Hawk” have established da Vinci as an international man of mystery, so it’s not all that far a leap into the action genre. While no director, writer, or actor is attached to the project as of yet, we’re putting our money on Ryan Gosling to play the titular, bearded hero with perhaps Rachel Bilson or Kate Bosworth to play da Vinci’s love interest—that special dark-haired lady with the mysterious smile. Finally, art history is gonna rock!

Jeff Koons Coco, 365 Bars in 365 Days, and Hipster Homes and Gardens

Gabriel — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:50:35 +0000

Filmmakers are finding it harder and more expensive than ever to film scenes in the disappearing “dank alleys” of Manhattan. (HuffPo)

Refinery29 has a sneak peek of Todd “The Selby” Selby’s new photo-book tours of the fashionable homes of fashionable people. (Refinery29)

SXSW will play host to an award honoring what is often the best part of some movies, the opening-title sequence. (NYT)

The English are so rabid about musical theater that not only have they produced copious and contrasting reviews of “Love Never Dies”, the highly unnecessary sequel to “The Phantom of the Opera”, but now they’re reviewing the reviews. Sheesh. (Telegraph UK)

Chinese artists continue to make their stand against government-aided forces of gentrification. (PSFK)

Jaunted picks the five museum exhibits you absolutelypositivelynodoubt must see this Spring. (Jaunted)

One man is attempting (for a book deal of course) to drink at 365 New York bars in 365 days. Hopefully his agent will have a contract signed before the funeral. (Gothamist)

Thanks to online cheating, everyone can now enjoy student travel rates. (NYT)

New Yorkers and visitors to the Big Apple, get ready to spend more time sitting on the tarmac or hovering in the sky above JFK. (CNN)

At SFMoMA, Mondrian cakes and Richard Serra cookie constructions are on the menu. (Laughing Squid)

Photo courtesy of LarimdaME’s Flickr photostream.

After 400 Years, Caravaggio Is Once Again Emperor of Rome

Gabriel — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:50:02 +0000

When he died somewhere on the Tuscan coast in 1610, 38-year-old painter and provocateurMichelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio had already brushed the heights of contemporary artistic fame, struggled through rejection by Roman patrons, fled the law after committing murder, and perhaps found his way back into the aristocracy’s good graces. Somewhere between this talented troublemaker’s first and second acts, death snatched him away and his life and work began to recede in the memories of Romans and art critics alike. But through the vagaries of history and 400 years after his mysterious death, Caravaggio is now more famous and beloved than he ever was in life—an exile who is once again the toast of Rome and the art world beyond.

Naturally, we just have to mention that our forthcoming title, “Art + Travel Europe: Step into the Lives of Five Famous Painters”, offers a unique, unequaled walking history of his life—a tour of the palaces he frequented, the dark, seedy districts he reveled in, the chapels and museums that house his greatest works, and the streets where he found his rough muses. Of course, those locations and the other side attractions detailed in “Art + Travel” aren’t going anywhere soon—but a Caravaggio exhibition timed for the 400th anniversary of his death is and we wouldn’t be doing our due diligence if we didn’t offer you a handy guide.

No less an authority than the New York Times has stated that, “Michelangelo’s unofficial 500-year run at the top of the Italian art charts has ended,” suggesting that it’s Caravaggio who now reigns as Rome’s #1 artist. Time will no doubt have the final word on that, but at the Scuderie Del Quirinale in Rome, it’s not the painter of the Sistine Chapel who has them lined up around the block—it’s the exhibition “Caravaggio” that has the museum extending its opening hours. By far the most comprehensive of all exhibitions on the artist this year, the Quirinale’s show features all-time “hits” like “Bacchus”, “Rest on the Flight into Egypt”, “David with the Head of Goliath”, and many, many more. Many of the works, “Rest on the Flight…” included are so valuable and needed at other exhibitions around the world that their placement all in one gallery was both difficult to negotiate and possible for only a brief period of time. Though “Caravaggio” is slated to run through June 10th, “Rest on the Flight…”, “Bacchus”, and several others will be leaving the exhibition well before then—some at the end of this month! While it’s been centuries since Caravaggio enjoyed such favor in Rome, if ever, the rare collection of his greatest works in one place will last only a few weeks more. We suggest you grab your copy of “Art + Travel”, your passport, and make way to Rome with all due haste.

“Caravaggio”
Now through June 10, 2010 (some works will be leaving throughout the course of the exhibition)
Scuderie Del Quirinale
16 Via 24 Maggio
Rome, Italy
+39 06-399-67500
www.quirinale.it

Images:
Top (left to right): A patron taking a picture of “Annunciation” on display at the Scuderie Del Quirinale, Caravaggio, c. 1608, courtesy of Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy, photo by Andrew Testa for the New York Times, “Bacchus”, Caravaggio, c.1595, courtesy of the Uffizi Gallery.
Bottom (clockwise from upper left): Patrons line up outside the Scuderie Del Quirinale, photo by Maurizio Brambatti for The Los Angeles Times, “The Lute Player”, Caravaggio, c. 1596, courtesy of the Wildenstein Collection, “The Sacrifice of Isaac”, Caravaggio, c. 1598, courtesy of the Piasecka-Johnson Collection, “Rest on the Flight into Egypt”, c. 1597, courtesy of the Doria Pamphilj Gallery.

Artists Hidden in Plain Sight: Guards at New York’s Met Museum Publish Arts Magazine

Gabriel — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:46:51 +0000

As residents of a city that is home to arguably the best Modern Art museum—MoMA—the most exciting showcase of natural and historical artifacts—The American Museum of Natural History—and quite possibly the most diverse and comprehensive art museum in the world—the Met—we New Yorkers are often shockingly complacent and ignorant of the creative treasures that lie right under our noses. It’s the same odd complex that keeps Manhattan lifers from visiting the Statue of Liberty or makes us put going to engaging new exhibits on the back burner for so long that they cool and close. Well, a new publication created by the small army of guards at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is forcing us to acknowledge that interesting artists are gestating unseen all around us, even when we go gazing in the Arms and Armor wing.

Cheekily titled “Sw!pe Magazine: Guards’ Matter” in a reference to punching in for duty with the museum’s time clock, the publication acts as a showcase for a clique of Met guards who may spend their days securing some of the world’s greatest art treasures, but are artists at heart. According to the New York Times article on the publication, these aren’t your typical sentries—one has a degree from FIT, another was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Some have been artists since childhood. Others have arrived at painting, photography, or illustration later in life. What they all share in common is a need to pay the rent and a way to get medical insurance. For an aspiring artist extra time and few funds, keeping the sugar-coated mitts of touring toddlers off the Giottos seems a fine way to make ends meet—especially when the guard corps is made of similarly minded individuals. Indeed, as the Times noted, widely recognized artists such as Jackson Pollock, Sol LeWitt, and Dan Flavin have all punched time cards as members of the Met’s security detail in their younger years. Now, though, as guards finally get their own regular showcase for their off-hours efforts and have enjoyed a successful exhibition of their work at local gallery 25CPW, will a new generation of out-of-town neophyte painters arrive in New York with dreams of standing duty at the Temple of Dendur in their heads? That would be just SO New York.

For more information on “Sw!pe”, go to their website at www.swipemagazine.com. To see these guards at their day jobs and discover the best the world of art has to offer head to…

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York, U.S.A.
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org

Images:
Top (left to right)—The cover of “Swipe”, Jack Laughner, “Before I Put on My Make Up”, Barry Steely, courtesy of the New York Times.
Bottom (clockwise from upper left)—”M-Hands” Jason Eskenazi, “The Palisades”, Peter J. Hoffmeister, “2 Swimmers”, Barry Steely, “Poe”, Phil Padwe, courtesy of the New York Times.

Travel Obsession of The Day: Rachel Sussman Hunts for The World’s Oldest Living Things

Gabriel — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:38:09 +0000

Being obsessives about art, music, and film ourselves, we love stories of world travelers who let their passions, no matter how particular they may be, draw them off of tourism’s beaten paths as they journey around the world. Photographer Rachel Sussman has certainly let her love for the oldest living things on earth determine her travel itinerary over the last few years, taking her to Chile, Greenland, and home of many of our longest-living Americans, Florida.

No, Sussman didn’t travel to the Sunshine State to snap impromptu scenes of Jewish grandmothers enjoying the Early Bird Special at IHOP. Instead, she traveled down to the marshy green forests of Seminole County to capture an image of the 3,500-year-old bald Cyprus tree named “The Senator”. As you flip through Sussman’s portfolio and accompanying blog, brought to our attention by Swiss Miss, there are no jaw-dropping images, no searing scenes of ancient flora that will dazzle your eyes. Turns out that these living artifacts of the natural world, some of them older than human civilization itself, have achieved their ripe old ages not through spectacular showmanship, but through millennia of quiet, slow growth resulting in a subtle beauty. If one didn’t know better, you could walk right past the “The Fortingall Yew” that has stood in what is now the churchyard in Perthshire, Scotland since before Christ was born never suspecting that tradition says that Pontius Pilate once played in its shade of this, Europe’s oldest tree. To the untrained eye, the stunted Welwitschia mirabilis of the Namib Desert seems an unremarkable clump of leaves and bark. But to Sussman, there is something holy about these 2,000-year-old plants that demands a pilgrimage. Yes, her shots of a sample of Siberian actinobacteria under a research microscope at the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen seem intriguingly mysterious. But that momentary delight becomes jaw-dropping awe when one realizes that these living bacterium have survived frozen in the Russian tundra for 400,000 years—200,000 years before the coming of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. There’s a big world of travel and obsessions to enjoy out there. In her photographic journeys to South Africa, the Pacific Northwest, and even Pennsylvania, Sussman reminds us its a pretty old world too.

For a step-by-step guides to traveling the world for the obsessions of art, music, and film, check out our online store.

Above (clockwise from upper left): Laretia acaulis, up to 3,000 years old, Atacama Desert, Chile, Map lichen, approximately 3,000 years old, Alanngorsuaq, Greenland, Welwitschia mirabilis, 2,000 years old, Namib Desert, Namibia, The Fortingall Yew, 2,000 – 5,000 years old, Perthshire, Scotland, all photos shot by and courtesy of Rachel Sussman.

SXSW Screenings, Flaming Lips Return To Film, and How To Travel With Sex Toys

Gabriel — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:24:39 +0000

Between viewings of Vermeers and Van Goghs, catch Tulipomania at the Rijksmuseum this month. (Artdaily)

Jaunted has all the SXSW screenings you can’t afford to miss. (Jaunted)

Will Botox destroy acting as we know it? (NYMag)

Learn the “sexy” ways to carry your important valuables when traveling abroad. (Gadling)

And from the same people, learn the important ways to carry your “sexy” valuables when traveling abroad. (Gadling)

Taking a listen to two new singles from MGMT, it seems the boys from Wesleyan have been listening to “Music From Big Pink” on repeat. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. (Fader)

The “Flaming Lips” are working on a second film to follow up their “Christmas On Mars”. Apparently, Justin Timberlake has signed on to join the cast of crazies. (/Film)

Thanks to this viral video, you’ll never need to watch a movie trailer again. (Urlesque)

Designer McQueen’s Final Collection is an Art Lover’s Dream

Gabriel — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:39:08 +0000

Last season, before his sad and untimely suicide in February at the age of 40, designer Alexander McQueen offered fans an exhaustive, exhilarating SciFi vision of fashion—an outrageous, masterful collection of organic-inspired prints and alien shapes that looked to both the natural sciences and humanity’s future. Materials recalled butterfly wings and spaceships as the mix of natural and technological motifs presaged fashion’s current obsession with “Avatar” by a full season, all in a way that seemed free of guile and gimmickry despite the two-foot high heels and extraterrestrial makeup. The genius, the fluidity of McQueen’s execution of Spring 2010 only compounded the tragedy of his death. James Dean, Kurt Cobain, and a tight list of other artists whose work touched popular culture, he left suddenly, surprisingly, and at the height of his creative powers with so much more to offer a waiting audience. While the collection that debuted in Paris earlier today was a incomplete, truncated look at his work for Fall 2010, it shows that McQueen was moving forward from Spring’s success with confidence and a look back at the history of Western classical art.

For those of you not attuned to the particular wavelengths of high fashion, just trust us when we state that one could never say enough about this collection. It marks what would have been a turning point, a watershed for a designer who was always, at his heart, dark and punky. As much as this collection is an example of McQueen’s brooding, confrontational style, it is also lovingly traditional and aristocratic.

Using the digital scanning and laser printing techniques that he, Dries Van Noten, and a host of others have pioneered in the creation revolutionary prints and textiles (often sourced from old materials) McQueen employed Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” on one top, Byzantine motifs on another, images of saints pulled from frescoes in a dress, and angels photographed from bas-reliefs in a gown.

Displayed in the antique headquarters of Francois Pinault, it seems as if the contents of the Hermitage had come to life and, as usual, all the digital tricks and sculptural flyaways did not imprison McQueen’s models—they transported them. It’s little wonder, then, that multiple sources reported that some of the lucky attendees began crying. The beauty of this collection alone would make some weep. That it was effectively a wake for one of fashion’s brightest stars who had only begun to deliver on his promise was cause for even more tears.

New Album is Sing-A-Long Biography of Van Gogh

Gabriel — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:43:04 +0000

When we first started putting together our brand new “Art + Travel Europe: Step into the Lives of Five Famous Painters”—our exhaustively researched guidebook that walks you through the biographies of Vermeer, Van Gogh, Goya, Munch, and Caravaggio via the places they worked and the cities they lived in—we thought we had a pretty high-concept way of documenting the stories of artists. After all, most people would simply go to Wikipedia to learn about Van Gogh, not all the way to Arles. But, as much as we thought we had the wildest way to get to know Van Gogh, we just found ourselves trumped by one of the great artist’s countrymen. Straight out of Holland, Dutch musician Diederick Van Eck has recorded an album of tracks that, for our money, constitute the weirdest biography of Van Gogh you’ll find anywhere.

Logically titled “Van Eck on Van Gogh”, the album offers up 12 tracks detailing various stages and themes of the troubled painter’s life recorded in. More than just a sonic biography, though, each of these songs is named for and written as an accompaniment to some of Van Gogh’s most recognized works. The lyrics to “Red Vineyard (Lost Letter to Theo)”, for instance, showcase the artist’s frustration with his brother after he sold the painting of the same name to a private bidder—the only time a Van Gogh would be sold in his lifetime. While this and many of the other phrases and ideas in “Van Eck on Van Gogh” veer on the historically spurious, it is, nonetheless, a soulful celebration of the man’s work and life. Just don’t expect the songs to offer the addresses of relevant museums or nearby places to catch a good meal. That’s our job.

For more information and to listen to the tracks, go to www.vangoghbyvaneck.com. To walk through Van Gogh’s life using your feet instead of your ears, order a copy of “Art + Travel Europe: Step into the Lives of Five Famous Painters”.

Image: “The Red Vineyard”, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, courtesy of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow