Breaking news! I realize this is very last minute and only applies to our brethren in Northern California, but tonight Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is hosting a “Disco Extravaganza” at the gorgeous Castro Theater in SF. They’ll be showing prints of The Wiz, Staying Alive, and best of all, everyone’s favorite futuristic spiritual disco rock opera cult classic,The Apple.
Wait, what’s that you say? You’ve never seen The Apple before?
Mister Boogalow disapproves.
The Apple is a steaming Midas turd of a film baked in massive amounts of tin foil. It’s a glitter-encrusted, mylar-ensconced acid trip. It’s Jem and the Holograms’ flea market jamboree. It’s… it’s…. oh I have no idea what on earth these people were thinking, but the result is utter crackpot genius.
The great art of films does not consist in descriptive movement of face and body, but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation. ~ Louise Brooks
On this day 101 years ago, Louise Brooks, patron saint of unrepentant flappers, was born. By all accounts, she was a fiercely intelligent and complicated woman who would not suffer fools in an industry that consists of nearly nothing but. She made only 25 films before being blacklisted walking away from Hollywood at the height of her career, and remains one of the most iconic, (in)famous starlets of all time.
Although she is perhaps better known for the trademark black bob that launched a thousand Red Hot Mamas, Brooks also happens to be one of the most remarkable actresses, um, well… EVER. Onscreen, the one-time Ziegfeld dancer carries herself with effortless grace. Brooks understood that great acting was more about reacting than anything else. In stark contrast to many of her mawkish, mugging co-stars, she seems more comfortable, more real, somehow.
The mystical paintings of Madeline von Foerster invoke names like Van Eyck, Brueghel, Bosch, Remedios Varo, Ernst Fuchs. It’s vibrant, multi-layered work, filled with Occult and Medieval symbolism and rendered in the painstaking egg tempera oil tradition of the Flemish Old Masters. Ageless, yet thematically timely, scholarly but always deeply personal, hers is simply some of the most moving work in the medium that I’ve seen from anyone of my generation.
I remember the first time I viewed the following self-portrait at a gallery showing in midtown NYC:
“Self Portrait (Trepanation)” 2005 by Madeline von Foerster
It’s a fairly large piece, 34″ x 42″ (not including the lavish frame, which she constructed and painted as well). If you’re familiar with the technique of egg tempera, closely examining a painting like this can be mind-boggling… all of those smoothly-placed, minuscule brush strokes, patiently layered, culminating in subjects that can only be described as having an unearthly inner glow. The enigmatic subject matter of trepanation thrilled me as well.
It was your typical overcrowded NYC gallery opening. Plenty of cheap wine and fabulously dressed people, all talking a little too loudly over one another. Then there was Madeline, standing off to one side, as gracious, elegant and mysterious as one of her paintings. Since that time, I’ve come to know her as one of those exceedingly rare examples of a person whose life reflects purely in their art.
Some of her recent work is currently up in a group show at the Strychnin Gallery in London. Take a peek at it and some other pieces behind the cut.
Nnnf. No words, really. Well, except perhaps to remind readers that this is a woman who demanded that Max Factor sprinkle half an ounce of gold dust in her wigs to keep them sufficiently glittery, sucked lemon wedges between takes to keep her mouth muscles tight, and whose make-up artist once divulged that Marlene Dietrich kissed so hard, she needed a new coat of lipstick after every smooch. The tuxedoed “Queen of the World” is as commanding and stylish today as she was when Morocco was filmed in 1930.
Heads up, Pennsylvanians. Cabaret noir performer Nicki Jaine will host an evening of Dietrich’s music in honor of the singer/actress’ 106th birthday on Thursday, November 8 at the Stockton Inn.
Nicki Jaine’s velvety contralto is sure to thrill Dietrich fans to their very marrow. Talk about two great tastes that taste great together. Just like strawberries hotdogs and champagne (once said to be Marlene’s favorite meal) only decidedly less zaftig.
This vengeful cult classic starring our beloved Vincent Price has got it all. Art Deco by way of the 70s. Clockwork orchestras. A creepy, yet relentlessly stylish assistant named Vulnavia. (Yes, I said Vulnavia.) Bats. Bees. Deadly frog masks. A killer musical score by Basil Kirchin. Rat-induced plane crashes. Unicorn impalement. (Yes, I said unicorn impalement.) And the list goes on.
Perfect Day of the Dead fare. Watch at your peril.
By the way, if anyone wants me to name my secondborn after them (my firstborn shall be called Vulnavia, natch), all they have to do is give me an original mint condition copy of this poster:
As far as I’m concerned, Grace Jones was the It Girl of the 80s. Her partnerships with Jean-Paul Goude and Keith Haring yielded some of the most iconic, otherworldly images of the decade.
photo by Jean-Paul Goude
She was valorous, donning multiple personas that confronted racial and sexual stereotypes, her “jungle cat” performances lampooning primitivist readings of the black female body in much the same way Josephine Baker‘s send-ups in banana/tusk skirts had half a century earlier. She played a mean accordion, rocked a buzz cut like no other, was witty and elegant, but did not hesitate to smack a bitch when the occasion called for it.
Initially, exposure to composer/performer Judy Dunaway and her “virtuostic balloon-playing” broke my brain. But after the giggle fit subsided, I realized I was genuinely in awe of the woman, for many of the same reasons I’ve long adored Harry Partch, Hans Reichel, Clara Rockmore, and Klaus Nomi. Like them, Dunaway is utterly fearless in her approach to her craft, and unflinching in the face of inevitable backlash from both her classical and avante-garde contemporaries. (It takes ovaries of steel to play Lincoln Center with nothing but an amplified balloon between your knees, ah tell you whut.)
Her Etudes No.1 and 2 for Balloon and Violin (2004) are particular favorites of mine, perhaps because they’re what my own stuffy classical violin instructor would undoubtedly have dismissed as “good musicans behaving unforgivably.” I’m at a loss to accurately describe the music… imagine what an orgy of parasitic wasps being slowly pressed to death between two lubricated sheets of mylar might sound like. New York Press writer Kenneth Goldsmith likened Dunaway’s live performances to witnessing “Cab Calloway in Munchkinland… Olivier Messiaen on helium.”
Dunaway’s own statement of purpose is more straightforward:
My own work … does not come out of a void. Creating a large body of work for balloons has allowed me to develop a vocabulary outside the realm of oppressive classical heritage. It has raised the ordinary and mundane to the status of high art. I have fetishized this simple cheap toy in my music, as the violin has been fetishized for centuries by Western European-influenced composers. In an era where the progress toward a woman’s control of her own body is threatened, I have coupled myself to a musical instrument that expresses sensuality, sexuality and humanity without inhibition.
