Gathered
Lorna Simpson: Gathered presents works that explore this Brooklyn-born artist’s interest in the interplay between fact and fiction, identity and history. Through works that incorporate hundreds of original and found vintage photographs of African Americans that she collects from eBay and flea markets, Lorna Simpson undermines the assumption that archival materials are objective documents of history. The exhibition also includes examples of Simpson’s series of installations of black-and-white photo-booth portraits of African Americans from the Jim Crow era and a film work. On view until August 21, 2011 at the Brooklyn Museum.
Vanity & Salvation
Hans Memling – First Two in “Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation” 1485 – Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg
Black Lust
“One of those bizarre works of fiction and fact whose haunting details live with the reader forever. This diabolic novel is an encyclopedia of venery, a kaleidoscope of perversions, a jungle of horrors. Historic realism appealing only to people with mature, shock-proof tastes -the love and hate of a white woman for a black Mohammedan chief forms the overtone of this historic novel whose background paints the native tribes in the Valley of the Nile before the turn of this century.” Jean de Valliot was actually the failed pornography writer Georges Grassal de Choffat, or Hugues Rebell, depending on who you ask. Black Lust was published in 1931 and only 2000 copies were printed “for private collectors.” In my library is edition no. 1967.
Necromance: Fool Death, My Playmate
From Narre Tod, Mein Spielgesell (Fool Death, My Playmate), a series of portraits of a necromancy between a female model and a skeleton, by eccentric photographer Franz Fiedler, 1921.
Flower Myth
Left: Klee in 1911, by Alexander Eliasberg Right: Flower Myth (1918), Watercolor on pastel foundation on fabric & newsprint mounted on board
Paul Klee in His Studio
