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If there were a gun to my head pointed by an assailant who demanded that I describe the feeling of living in the USA using only pictures (hey, this is my unreal conditional—worry about your own), I’d simply point them in the direction of Michael St. John’s “Portraits of Democracy,” which are currently on view as “These Days” at Pio Pico gallery in LA (now extended thru Jan. 1). St. John is probably your favorite artist’s favorite artist: a lifelong student of the aesthetic form who cares more about the Big Issues than making big paintings just because that’s what someone said collectors want. He’s also a preternaturally gifted painter (by practice, no less!) whose every choice involves the deliberate reproduction of the very tension that makes life in 2020 one nonstop “Party in the U.S.A.” if you know what I mean. If you’re gonna look at art, why bother with anything you couldn’t spend your whole afternoon uncovering the intricacies of, anyway? Viewings are by appointment only, but don’t let that intimidate you—it’s literally a phone call, prolly even a DM away.
Nov 24, 2020
Related Recs
If you’re in LA, you need to see his new exhibit at Residency Art. Or search his videos so you can watch him magically create Renaissance-inspired portraits up to ten stories tall using only spray paint - it’s bonkers.
Feb 4, 2024
Mar 19, 2024
hard to pin down a specific one but this is a fav genre of mine in terms of art. I remember visiting the national gallery in DC a while back and being floored by some of the pieces on display. they’re so detailed that it’s almost hyper-real, depicting things with such realism that it’s enhanced. I could spend hours poring over these, and they’re so much better to look at in person. this one I linked is by Church but there’s a ton of great ones by Cole, Bierstadt, and their contemporaries that all rock
Jul 30, 2024
Top Recs from @emerson-ray-rosenthal
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Anybody remember a clip show about banned music videos that, incidentally, ended up on one of the networks that banned them? It was either VH1 or MTV2, and they ran stuff like Nine Inch Nails’s “Closer,” Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy,” and Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up.” Anyway, I was glued to the TV whenever it came on and I think a lot of my aesthetic sensibilities came from that 90s-00s golden age, making me into (regrettably) a bit of a music video snob. No offense, but the VFX-driven spectacles of today just don’t hit when you cut your teeth on stuff from CANADA and the Directors Bureau (whose website sadly doesn’t even have their best stuff anymore). The unique exception is director Cody Critcheloe, who goes by SSION (pronounced like the latter half of *passion*), and his new video for Yves Tumor is nothing less than what I’ve come to expect from the multihyphenate: a hyperreal vision of Los Angeles replete with larger-than-life characters who are characteristically drawn up from real life, and handmade props that belong in a museum, but I’ll settle for a gallery. (In this case, it’s a smashed-up hand-painted sunburst convertible and a leather jacket with a The Cochran Firm logo.) It’s the stuff dreams are made of, cementing Critcheloe as one of the most exciting and visionary directors of our time (other notable mentions include Eugene Kotlyarenko, Anne Alexander, and Minister Akins).
Nov 24, 2020
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Ummmmmm ten years or so these creeps from the midwest changed music, more or less...And ten years later they have a new album that fucks harder than ever? And then there’s this mixtape, which also really fucks. I’ve probably listened to it 20 times now (and counting). I don’t know, listen to it. It’s hard to describe. (If I wanted to write about music, I probably would have kept writing about music lol)
Nov 24, 2020
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I found this on a massive list of Sword and Sorcery movies on Letterboxd, which is where I find obscure films that other, sharper connoisseurs already know about. Well! I was looking for something like Berserk, Excalibur, and Joan La Pucelle, and boy was this it: Bresson’s 1974 reimagining of the grand finale of the Grail Quest is as earthbound as it is transcendent, smashing the depths of legend and poetry against humanism to produce a stark vision of the end of the Age of Myth. Most of the criticisms in the Letterboxd reviews are aimed at its seeming dryness, or lack of emotion. Hooey! It’s all here. If you want to see knights cry, go watch The Witcher or something.
Nov 24, 2020