Dennis Hopper & The New Hollywood

I remember… Billy going to the Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans… Easy Rider…
I remember… Thomas Ripley playing pool humming Dylan's I Pity The Poor Immigrant and the Beatles' Drive My Car… Der Amerikanische Freund…
I remember… a pretty stoned photojournalist… Apocalypse Now…
I remember… a father working amongst the rubbish… Out Of The Blue…
I remember… someone called Cracker in Human Highway, a fantasy directed by someone called Neil Young…
I remember… sweating while I watched The Hot Spot…
I remember… a bomber terrorist who has nothing in common with “the” Billy from Easy Rider: Speed…
I remember… the Dennis Hopper exhibition that I saw last Saturday.

The Cinématheque Française in Paris – who hosts the largest archive of films, movie documents, and film-related objects in the world – offers until mid-January a wonderful retrospective of all the works and fantasies that Dennis Hopper produced since 40 years or more: movies, drawings, photos, sculpture, and so on. Be careful, it’s a unique exhibition only made for Paris with the “invaluable collaboration” of Dennis Hopper. You won’t see it elsewhere. So, take a plane, a train, a bike and then a Vélib’ and make an exciting journey through the past of Hollywood after Easy Rider.

Did I tell you that Easy Rider changed my life many years ago? And that I gave my old LP to some lucky fellow long time ago?… stupid me!

Web: cinematheque.fr Dennis Hopper & Le Nouvel Hollywood – October 15, 2008 to January 19, 2009

The Band - The Weight .mp3
Jimi Hendrix - If 6 Was 9 .mp3
Ice-T - Personal .mp3
Devo and Neil Young - My My Hey Hey .mp3

Nico Icon - Cologne Girl Exhibition

Just come back from another great week-end in Cologne. No marathon or concert this time but a museum night with the visit of a remarkable exhibition that must be brought to your attention. Nico (Christa Päffgen), who died 20 years ago in Ibiza, is now celebrated until the end of January by her native town, Köln.
The exhibition is a nice retrospective covering every stage of her life from the time she was a young fashion model, then an actress, up to the moving singer-songwriter that everybody knows. All the documents are exhibited with taste and love: photos, movies, press articles, letters, posters and vinyl covers. The die-hard fans won’t discover anything really new but for those of you who just know her as a member of the Velvet Underground, you’ll understand why Nico became an Icon to many.

Info: Nico – Köln, Berlin, Paris, New York – Stationen einer Popikone Museum für angewandte kunst: October 30, 2008 to February 1, 2009 (in German)
Or here: Arte (in French)
And on… Leaky Sparrow

Nico - I'll Keep It With Mine .mp3
Nico - Nibelungen .mp3 via Greenpeaness
Velvet Underground And Nico - All Tomorrow's Parties .mp3 Via WFMU's Beware of the Blog
Bonus: Big Star - Femme Fatale .mp3

Patti Smith - Land 250 - Paris

The Fondation Cartier in Paris is hosting Land 250, a major solo exhibition of the visual work of American artist and performer Patti Smith. Bookerfatz2 and I, we met there during lunch time last Wednesday to discover that behind the expressive voice that we love so much is a multi-faceted artist.
It's not a surprise that Patti choose Paris to exhibit the various aspects of her creative process. She used to live in the Montparnasse district during her first Parisian sojourn in 1969 close to the cemetery where are buried poets like Charles Baudelaire, Robert Desnos, Serge Gainsbourg and Tristan Tzara as well as writers like Samuel Beckett or Susan Sontag. Also, the source of much of her inspiration has been key figures of French culture, including Arthur Rimbaud, Nicole Stéphane, Jean Genet, Antonin Artaud and René Daumal.
More than just assembling selected drawings, paintings, photographs, recording, short films or handwriting poems coming from all over the world (1967 to 2007), the exhibition as a carte blanche given to Patti Smith is intended to be a comprehensive project that expands beyond the exhibition space. For example, she organized herself the program of artistic evenings where she will perform solo or accompanied by her group and invited various musicians and poets to perform on stage (Jeffrey Lewis, Tom Verlaine, Fred Frith...).
For those of you like me who don't know what is a Land 250: it’s a Polaroid, the Automatic 250 Land Camera. My feeling is that it's not the quality of the photographs taken by Patti Smith who is interesting, it's her relation with what she seen or the ones she met. “I am not a photographer, yet taking pictures has given me a sense of unity and personal satisfaction. They are relics of my life. Souvenirs of my wandering. All that I have learned concerning light and composition is contained within them.”

At the Fondation Cartier from March 28 to June 22, 2008.

Web: pattismith.net
MySpace: myspace.com/pattismith

Patti Smith - Gimme Shelter .mp3
Patti Smith - Parade .mp3
Patti Smith - Smells Like Teen Spirit .mp3
Patti Smith - When Doves Cry .mp3
Patti Smith - A Poem_For Jim Morrison - The Nova Convention .mp3

Photo: Autoportrait, New York / Selfportrait, New York City
Polaroid/Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, March 28 – June 22, 2008
© Patti Smith/© Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain

Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series

Last Saturday topic was to drive five long hours way and back to visit the Kunstsammlungen a museum in the eastern German city of Chemnitz, south of Berlin. There, 170 watercolour and gouache paintings by Bob Dylan were shown under the heading The Drawn Blank Series (October 28, 2007 to February 3, 2008). This is Bob Dylan’s first ever museum and exclusive showing of his work, charcoal, during the period from 1989 to 1992 while on tour in the US, Mexico, Europe and Asia.
I know Bob Dylan very well for his music but not so much for his drawings. It was a surprise for me to discover how this man has so many skills. I was really fascinated by the motifs and the different effects of the colours. It was worth to take the road for hours with friends to share together our feelings.
In 1994, a selection of 92 of black-and-white drawings was published in a book entitled Drawn Blank, but they were never publicly shown. To mark the exhibition, an extensive catalogue (in German and English) with numerous colour and black-and-white reproductions was published by Prestel Munich, New York, and London. More information below.

Lucky Girl

Web: antennaaudio.com/content/view/680/31/lang,en_GB/
Web: chemnitz.de/kunstsammlungen/flash.htm

Bob Dylan - Wallflower .mp3
Bob Dylan - Gotta Serve Somebody .mp3
Bob Dylan - Absolutely Sweet Mary .mp3
Bob Dylan - Every Grain Of Sand .mp3

Bonus: Phil Lesh - When I Paint My Masterpiece .mp3 Live, September 24, 1994 – Berkeley Community Theatre

Jutta Koether - Metalist Moment

Prospective 1981-2004… Steven Parrino. Before (plus ou moins)… Andy Warhol, Electric Chairs, 1971. Bastard Creature… Michael Lavine, Courtney Love Kneeling, 1994. Metalist Moment… A 25 minutes performance by Jutta Koether member of Steven Parrino's Electrophilia…

Steven Parrino (bass guitar) and Jutta Koether (synth) construct music that becomes a megalith that collapses into a black hole. Since the mid-nineties, Electrophilia has been pushing the cause of the meta-extreme within music. Developing from performance works that Steven Parrino did in 1979, grinding two electric guitars into each other at high volume, Electrophilia becomes a black rite. Jutta, no stranger to Extreme performance art, joined Electrophilia in 2002. Steven Parrino died January 1, 2005.

Jutta Koether emerged from the art scene in Cologne. She is a noted painter, writer, rock and art critic, musician and performance artist, and her projects often interlace all of these assumed roles.
Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether regularly collaborate on installations and performance projects. Apart from being a founding member, bass player, vocalist and guitarist in the legendary alternative rock group Sonic Youth, Gordon has worked on numerous creative projects across many genres.

Kim Gordon & Jutta Koether - Reverse Karaoke (London, 2005). Film: Christabel Stewart via SHOWstudio.com

Her Noise A video on Ubu.com documenting the development of the Her Noise project between 2001 and 2005 and features interviews with artists including Diamanda Galas, Lydia Lunch, Kim Gordon, Jutta Koether, Peaches, Marina Rosenfeld, Kembra Pfhaler, Chicks On Speed, Else Marie Pade, Kaffe Matthews, Emma Hedditch, Christina Kubisch and the show's curators, Lina Dzuverovic and Anne Hilde Neset.

Bonus: Kim Gordon - We Are The Princesses .mp3

That was yesterday evening, the 'vernissage' of Steven Parrino’s retrospective that gathers nearly one hundred major works by the artist (in the Palais de Tokyo - La Marque Noire - May 24 to August 26, 2007).

More info: http://www.dogsbloodrising.org (thanks for the contribution!)