The Tony Awards. Sunday night June 12, 2016.
You and I
Wish I couldn't crave the ummm...hors-d'oeuvres (forget apres) and be more like Louis. No not Armstrong you idiot! Get out of here and make me a stiff cup of tea! No not a COWslip of MEAD! Oh dear: deaf, dumb and blind...no offense 'challenged' interns but: really? (Haven't said no yet- don't take it away....! )
Photographer Lillian Bassman was a sort of Degas of her day. A bold statement. But look at the ‘line’ of her early photos. Look at the MoMA Degas show that’s really quite revelatory in revealing his thinking about printing and line putting the ‘cliché’ Degas tutus in total perspective and revealing the fascinating source of the Degas cliché.
As Art Director of Harper's Bazaar it was Bassman who promoted the careers of photographers Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Louis Faurer, Arnold Newman. Who;)? In a parallel to Vivian Maier’s nanny-ing, Bassman had to work as an art director. Moreover: much of Edwynn Houk’s show (they now have the Bassman estate) is devoted to her 1990’s digital manipulation on platinum of her own photos. She loved the Photoshop that we now love (re Bassman) and hate (re the lazy and fake). There was nothing fake in Bassman-ville. Her images are so way ahead of their time and oftentimes totally exquisite and sublime. Such is history.
Thanks be to Broadway designer designer William Ivey Long who last year asked the help of Vogue's Anna Wintour to give the Tonys some fashion pizzaz! (About time the guys and gals who do 8 shows a week get a fashion break as compared to their Oscar 'caravan critter' cousins). ;) Well: it is all relative. I know.
Such is....,,,,,,
And if we can't be an 'Oscar' or a 'Tony' or a 'femme' or an 'homme' forsooth just indeed a 'normal' denizen then Marcel Broodthaers may bring hope. (I mean: if 30 years ago a clairvoyant had told film director John Waters that he'd being doing a video interview for Sotheby's Waters would have just said "you're even crazier than me: get outta here!") On a hand Broodthaers' 'art' seems so post-Duchamp/Man Ray/Joseph Cornell etc etc. Yet: isn't his world what so many of us feel who don't fit quite into the standard geometry?
Beethoven Opus 111
