I am in love with Cat Power

I fell in love with Cat Power when I first listened to her rocky folky voice in 2000. And even if she did not want it, she is now one of the biggest fashion icon. I am pretty sure Miss Moss will soon be out soon...
Within 10 years Chan Marshall a.k.a Cat Power managed to become a star that Madonna, Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld love.

Born in Atlanta, and raised in the pure white trash tradition, she took the decision to go to NYC. There the “Bob Dylan fan” met Sonic Youth's drummer Steve Shelley who immediately believed in her and helped her release her first debut album.
She also met Chris Lombardi founder of the legendary Domino label, who offered her a contract she is still on today. 10 years later she launched “The Greatest” an amazing album, recorded in Memphis, which got a huge popular success. Then Karl asked her to become model for CHANEL, an offer that no one can refuse. She played for the Spring-Summer Haute Couture show of 2007 …the rest is history.


Her folk, her songwriting, her charisma make her one of the best artist of our generation and one of the good taste trend-setter.

More info on : www.catpowerthegreatest.com

Antony Gormley at Southbank Centre in London one of the best show of the year

One of the best show of the year :

Antony Mark David Gormley is currently one of the most famous living sculptor in Britain. His best known art work include the Angel of the North, in Gateshead and Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool. But this year he has been making a major step in the history of art with his "Event Horizon and Blind Light" shows, in and around the Hayward Gallery, in London.

The exhibition featured a series of brand new monumental works specially conceived for The Hayward’s distinctive spaces, including one of the largest ever urban public art commissions, "Event Horizon", which featured sculptural casts of the artist’s body on rooftops and public walkways across central London, dramatically transforming the city skyline.

These new works, including a spectacular series of suspended figures created in light-infused webs of steel, were shown alongside a selection of works from the last three decades.

A series of talks, events and guided exhibition tours complemented Antony Gormley's exhibit. From the artist in discussion with author Will Self to family stop-motion film workshops to a guided tour with psychoanalyst Darian Leader, there are several ways to get into his world.

Antony Gormley took the visitor on board in a single experiment/experience through various spaces specifically made for the exhibition. “Blind Light”, made of glass, was cold, wet and vaporous and was therefore an amazing experience which inspired blurred and confusing feelings. It completely disorientates the visitor.

“Space Station” the huge sculpture, perilously inclined and dominating all the space, invites us to “a voyage through various types of spaces” to which the body is the starting point. Another work not to be missed is the outdoor “Vent Horizon” where Antony Gormley laid out thirty of his sculptures on the roofs of visible public buildings of the terrace of the gallery for a sumptuous effect, as mentionned before.

Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950 and studied archaeology, anthropology, history of art. He received the Turner Prize in 1994 and the South Bank Prize for Visual Arts in 1999. Through its studies on the meditation vipassana in India, his works are meant to cope with the questions of inner research. The artist uses his body as a tool, a medium as well as a subject to create sculptures having for goal to answer these questions.

Prince rocked the catwalk at the London Fashion Week

My rock-soul-funky-pop god Prince had fashionistas dancing in the aisles at London Fashion Week on Wednesday when he staged a surprise performance at Matthew Williamson's catwalk show.
The singer, who is playing a series of concerts in London, at first appeared to be only a front row guest at Williamson's spring-summer 2008 collection.

But the usual fashion scene became a pop concert when a Prince track struck up and the first two models onto the catwalk - purple dresses - started to dance.

Prince, wearing a black suit and hat, then began singing into a microphone from his seat before jumping up and performing on the runway flanked by his band.
By that time, many in the audience, who included actress Trudie Styler, the wife of musician Sting, were on their feet clapping and snapping photos with their mobile phones.
"He really wanted to do this, and you don't say 'No' to Prince," Williamson told Reuters TV after the show, his first in London since he left for New York five years ago.
After the impromptu gig, Williamson, who is in London celebrating his 10 years as a designer, sent models down the catwalk in richly embroidered skirts and dresses glittering with seed pearls.

Striped jackets - a theme throughout London Fashion Week - were offset with splashes of turquoise, pink and orange.
The show closed to the strains of Prince's "Kiss" from his best-selling 1986 album "Parade".

While Williamson plans three boutique openings -- in New York, Los Angeles and Paris -- in the next two years thanks to an injection of private equity cash, Aquascutum Chief Executive Kim Winser said her aim was to extend in the United States and into accessories. But she was already seeing a surge in sales across its 200 store network thanks to a year-long revamp.
"The figures in the stores -- which is the most exciting thing -- are double what they were last year, and for women's wear they are three times higher," Winser told Reuters.

Louise Bourgeois' spiders from Mars

Louise Bourgeois has two shows in London, and even if she is at the age of 95, she remains one of the most prolific artist.


Her eerie 35-foot-high black spider entitled Maman, was the first artwork commissioned for the Unilever series for the opening of Tate Modern in London 2000. This month, she will have two shows : her first major retrospective in the UK at Tate Modern in London from 10 October to 20 January 2008 and, concurrently, an exhibition of new works at Hauser & Wirth Colnaghi.

Louise Bourgeois uses various materials for her works such as latex, marble, tapestry, and old underwear. Her sculptures are always autobiographical, often recalling her traumatic childhood in France.
These shows will offer a rare opportunity to immerse in her unique and rewarding world. Whether viewing her earliest pieces placed alongside her 1990s works that include Cells at the Tate or her most recent bronze sculptures at Hauser & Wirth, Louise Bourgeois provides a fascinating universe.

Frances Morris, curator of the Tate show, puts it : "She is a very frail, tiny, old lady - it is remarkable even that she is still making work today, let alone continuing to reinvent herself."

Louise Bourgeois - Arch of Hysteria, 1993.

Courtesy Cheim & Read, Galerie Karsten Greve, and Hauser & Wirth

© Louise Bourgeois.

Photo: Allan Finkelman

To learn more :
www.hauserwirth.com/

www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/louisebourgeois/default.shtm

R.I.P Gianfranco Ferré

15 August 1944 - 17 June 2007

I just wanted to pay tribute to renowed Italian designer Gianfranco Ferré, who passed away in June. He will always be remembered as the "Frank Lloyd Wright of Italian fashion" since he originally studied architecture. This epithet can also be applied to his unique take on fashion.

Harmony, geometry, finesse, free-flowing silhouettes, volume and fullness, classic yet modern, are some of the expressions used to describe the creations of Gianfranco Ferré.

http://www.gianfrancoferre.com/

DRAWING RESTRAINT by Matthew Barney

At Serpentine Gallery
20 September – 11 November 2007

Matthew Barney - DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 2005Production still Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York© 2005 Matthew BarneyPhotograph: Chris Winget

Matthew Barney (born 1967, San Francisco) is one of the most celebrated artists of his generation. His practice encompasses a diverse array of media including drawing, sculpture, photography, performance, film and installation, which are presented in exhibitions that are conceived by the artist as a gesamtkunstwerk or total work.


Barney’s exhibition at the Serpentine presents works from his Drawing Restraint series, which he began in 1987 while still in art school. Inspired by the idea of resistance training, he applied restraints to his body while drawing, exhibiting the resulting drawings, props and video documentation of the performances in the spaces where the actions had taken place. The Drawing Restraint series investigates the relationship between resistance and creativity and artistic and athletic bodies working at the threshold of physical limitations.


More recent works in the series continue to explore ways in which the body can be transformed, incorporating scripted narratives and diverse references ranging from Greek mythology to Japanese tea ceremonies. The exhibition at the Serpentine explores, in some depth, the sculptural cycle related to Barney’s recent feature film DRAWING RESTRAINT 9, 2006, which is being screened at the Gate Picturehouse cinema during the course of the exhibition. The Serpentine has worked closely with the artist to realise this ambitious presentation of work featuring sculpture, drawings, film, photography and video. Barney has also made a new work, Drawing Restraint 16, for the Serpentine; drawings and other residue of this performance fill the Gallery’s large central space.


The Serpentine Gallery exhibition will be accompanied by Drawing Restraint Volume V. The publication will include new texts on Barney’s Drawing Restraint series by New York-based writer and curator Neville Wakefield, Serpentine Gallery Chief Curator Kitty Scott and a short story by the award-winning Icelandic poet and lyricist Sjón. The book will also include previously unpublished images of Barney’s recent artworks.


Barney was awarded the Hugo Boss Prize in 1996 and has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in the USA and internationally. The complete Cremaster cycle was the subject of a major exhibition organised by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2002 that travelled to Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris.
More recently, the Drawing Restraint series has been presented in different incarnations at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, both in 2005; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2006.


To learn more : http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2007/04/matthew_barney20_september11_n.html