Curly Red Hair 1969 Acrylic and sand on canvas 79x55in. (200x140cm) Private Collection Photo: Alain Speltdoorn

By Kiša Lala

The paintings of Domenico Gnoli are drawn with scrupulous. almost clerical detail – and yet they capture a feeling of  wide-eyed wonder and whimsy. In 1970 Gnoli died at the young age of 36, and his legacy lay dormant for four decades –  his works having been secreted away in obscure private collections until this rare retrospective at New York’s Luxembourg & Dayan gallery.

Chemisette Verte by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from a private collection

'What is a Monster? Ostrich in Car' by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober Collection, Malllorca, Spain

'What is a Monster? Snail on Sofa' by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober Collection, Malllorca, Spain

Early videos from the 1960s show Gnoli and his wife, artist Yannick Vu, cruising the Riviera and jetting between New York and Majorca, living a charmed life . Vu was present at the opening, pleased to share this large collection of her former husband’s paintings publicly for the first time. She reflected on Gnoli’s whimsical perspective and affinity for children’s fantasies, though they had no children of their own. His drawings from his series “What is a Monster?” are a treat for fans of absurdist children’s book illustrations.

Gnoli’s subjects are quotidian bedspreads, garments and human hair in which he evinces vast patterned landscapes. Often the peaks and valleys in the folds of the fabric drape Botero-like physiques. They are an intimate scrutiny into plaits, pleats and pant creases, a domain exclusively feminine with its attention to domestic detail. They shed loving light on the fastidious rituals of attire, on the neatness of pinstriped collars and pearl buttons, and painted with a mix of sand and pigment, they have a gravelly, tactile feel in imitation of textiles. Gnoli’s headless and faceless subjects remain sartorially prim, and his obsessive eye for aesthetic detail – elevates mundane rituals to an art form.

Braid 1969 Acrylic and sand on canvas 71x59in. (180x150cm) Private Collection Photo: Adam Reich

Red Dress Collar 1969 Acrylic and sand on canvas 59 x 67 in. (150 x 170 cm.) Private Collection Photo: Alessandro Vasari

Striped Shirt Lapel 1969 Acrylic and sand on canvas 57 " x 44 " in. (146 x 113 cm.) Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf Stiftung Sammlung Kem

Italian Painter, Illustrator, and Stage Designer Domenico Gnoli with his wife. This photograph was taken in December, 1969, just months before his death.Original photography by Jack Robinson. www.robinsonarchive.com

Domenico Gnoli’s Paintings On View At Luxembourg & Dayan through June 30 in New York
www.luxembourgdayan.com

From exhibition - Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada’s Impossible Conversations at Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute

(Left) GeorgeHoyningen-Huené(Russian,1900–1968) Portrait of Elsa Schiaparelli, 1932 Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hoyningen-Huené/Vogue; © Condé Nast (Right) GuidoHarari(Italian,bornCairo,1952) Portrait of Miuccia Prada, 1999 Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guido Harari/Contrasto/Redux

Still from Schiaparelli and Prada in Impossible Conversations at the Metropolitan museum, 2012

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute has organized a new show Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations. based on inspirations and similarities between these iconic Italian designers. The curators Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton have chosen to show a video that simulates a conversation between these two women of different eras in relation to their aesthetic influences and impact on style.

The eight short videos were created by the film director Baz Luhrmann, in which Schiaparelli is played by actress Judy Davis. In the films the two women are seated at a dining table and the dialogue is taken from paraphrased excerpts of Schiaparelli’s autobiography, Shocking Life, and Prada’s filmed remarks. The imaginary conversations are both illuminating and confrontational. Is fashion art? While Schiaparelli says yes, Prada disagrees.

Exotic Body Gallery View Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

From exhibition - Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada’s Impossible Conversations at Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute

From exhibition - Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada’s Impossible Conversations at Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute

ElsaSchiaparelli,Vogue,September15,1938 Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph by Horst Horst / Vogue; © Condé Nast

From exhibition - Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada’s Impossible Conversations at Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute

Wallis Simpson in Elsa Schiaparelli, British Vogue, July 10, 1935 Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cecil Beaton/Vogue © The Condé Nast Publications Ltd.; Courtesy of the Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby's

Miuccia Prada, spring/summer 2004 Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph © Toby McFarlan Pond

Surreal Body Gallery View Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The exhibition features almost 100 designs and 40 accessories by Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973) from the late 1920s to the early 1950s, and by Miuccia Prada from the late 1980s to the present

Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada’s Impossible Conversations at Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute
Exhibition dates: Exhibition location: Press preview:
MMay 10–August 19, 2012 Special exhibition galleries, first floor Monday, May 7, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.

Hook and Eyes, LucyandBart - a collaboration between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess

Lucy McRae and Bart Hess have been bending and revising the body with simple low-tech alterations. Their works builds on fashion forms combining it with everyday technologies like safety-pins, Q-tips.

Bart Hess has been exploring the effect of new materials on the body using animation and photography. And Australian artist, Lucy McRae was trained as a ballerina, which has helped her to become a visual architect of the body, playing with its symmetry to create alien yet organic deviations. Together they play with the human silhouette, the body grows fur or gills, attenuates, hyper-extends, balloons or shrinks. Their work is also inspired by new developments in genetic manipulations & plastic surgery.

Evolution, a Lucy McRae and Bart Hess collaboration

Hunt For High-tech (above)

Chlorophyll Skin is a film experimenting with color, movement, absorption and the body – using Q-tips

A mini music video made by Lucy McRae for a forthcoming book and DVD entitled Black material with music by Spencer Product in collaboration with Champagne Valentine

Dripping Color, LucyandBart - a collaboration between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess

Bart Hess presents a performance inspired by the Photoshop filter that allows you to “liquify” images at Exit festival in Paris. 2012

Germination Day One, LucyandBart - a collaboration between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess

Germination Day Eight, LucyandBart - a collaboration between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess

Lucy Mcrae at 2012′s TED conference

Lucy McRae was invited to participate in 2012’s TED conference in California, where she spoke about using stockings, safety-pins and simple everyday objects to transform or grow a second skin to create animal textures and change colors, chameleon-like. Wanting to blur the edges of her skin, she sprayed her arms with a garden hose to watch how the water dripped and was inspired to create a textile made out of water tubes with different colored waters. She has worked on commercial projects for companies, one of which involved developing ideas on swallowing a perfume pill that would alter the body’s scent.

A collaboration between stylist Alister Mackie, artist duo LucyandBart, and Nick Knight

For more information:

http://lucyandbart.blogspot.com/
www.barthess.nl
www.lucymcrae.blogspot.com

Arturo Vega © Bobby Fisher

Arturo Vega wants to be canonized. First Order as Saint Arturo…“Save The Bowery, Bring Back Crack!” Half a block away from where Punk rock’s womb lies is now the mid-life crisis that is John Varvatos. While paparazzi picnic across the street from the Bowery Hotel, waiting to pounce on anything reeking of Hollywood, Arturo is thriving in  ‘The Ramones loft,’ which is 1500 sq feet of pure Punk history. Since 1974 Vega has been making art there relating to his 22 years as creative director to The Ramones.

Some 38 years ago a skinny kid from Queens popped his head in the door and said, “Hi I’m Dee Dee, I like your music,” and the rest is history.

Arturo Vega © Bobby Fisher

Arturo Vega © Bobby Fisher

Arturo Vega © Bobby Fisher

Arturo Vega © Bobby Fisher

Arturo Vega © Bobby Fisher

Arturo is currently in Chihuahua Mexico for a few shows with his new band Animo Cabrones. He contributes all things artistic while coaching Elias Mertz, the lead singer, on how to travel to hell…and make it back. Last September, a retrospective of his work was shown at OMR (Ortiz Monasterio Riestra) gallery in Mexico City. It included silk-screen prints and paintings from the early 70s, The Supermarket paintings 1973-75, The Silver Dollar/Flag silk-screen prints 1973/1992, The Insult Paintings, 1992-96, The Words Paintings 1992-1996, The Mondrian paintings 1996-2002, The Minimal Nihilism paintings 1996-2002

When asked why he made art, his reply was simple:  “What makes me free, makes me happy!”

Long Live Arturo…Punk is not dead!

Arturo Vega © Bobby Fisher

More information:

Arturo Vega
www.glassinebox.com
Bobby Fisher

'Three boys become Pa Wowo—painted, coconut-leaf-skirted peasants who personify poverty,' photographed by Phyllis Galembo in in the Haitian port city of Jacmel. © Phyllis Galembo

Phyllis Galembo’s love for masquerade began early as a child while trick-or-treating from her home in Long Island where she was raised, and led to her passion for collecting Halloween costumes for fifteen years. In 1985 she travelled to Nigeria to photograph some of the ceremonial robes used for traditional religious rituals and then on to Haiti to study the shamanistic clothing used in the practice of voodoo rituals.

Galembo is particularly interested in the use of masks for spiritual transformation, and has traveled extensively in the African diaspora to document carnivals held in Benin, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso among others. African costumes invoke deities and spirits of ancestors and are often used during initiation ceremonies.

© Phyllis Galembo

A water buffalo spirit. Photograph by Phyllis Galembo in Sierra Leone. © Phyllis Galembo

© Phyllis Galembo

Sierra Leone, 2008-2009 © Phyllis Galembo

Boy at beach in Jacmel, Haiti © Phyllis Galembo 2004

Today carnivals in Venice and Rio have become annual festivals that pull communities together for celebration, but the anonymity of masks also offer people a chance to change identity and transform, which is the root of shamanism.

Photo by Phyllis Galembo in her series on West Africa

Comparing Nick Cave’s soundsuits to Galembo’s portraits of African masks reveal some of Cave’s sources of inspiration behind his African costumes.

Photo by Phyllis Galembo - Baby Dance of Etikpe, Cross River, Nigeria, 2004 © Phyllis Galembo

Sierra Leone, 2008-2009 © Phyllis Galembo

Galembo is featured in April’s issue of the National Geographic Magazine, the 12 page spread highlights her anthropological exploration and research into African masks.

Phyllis Galembo is represented by Steven Kasher Gallery New York

Original Sin, By Alex Gross - 2012 -Courtesy of Jonathan Levine Gallery

Corporate brands are quickly assimilated across global cultures and divide the world into consumerist tribes. The more coveted luxury brands elicit elitist loyalties. The Dior painting below is from the series ‘Product Placement‘ in Alex Gross’ recent exhibition, drawing heavily on brands in an exploration of modern global landscapes, with Coca-cola, Fendi, Dior and Chanel prominently featured in his paintings.

Alex Gross, Dior, Product Placement, oil on canvas, 2012 Courtesy of Jonathan Levine gallery

Fashion shoot originally published in US Marie Claire December, 2006 Photographer: Neil Kirk, Fashion editor: Eric Nicholson

Western corporate brands like Coke and Disney had a slight imperial edge in colonizing Asia and the Middle East before their Asian counterparts infiltrated the West with greater infectious speed.  The ubiquity of advertising and its penetration of urban landscapes begs the question whether paid advertising has become part of our subconscious terrain and can therefore be claimed as common cultural property for artistic appropriation.

Alex Gross Product Placement oil on canvas 32 x 34 inches Courtesy of Jonathan Levine gallery

Alex Gross, Fendi, Product Placement, oil on canvas 32 x 34 inches Courtesy of Jonathan Levine gallery

Fashion shoot originally published in US Marie Claire December, 2006 Photographer: Neil Kirk, Fashion editor: Eric Nicholson

Gross’ paintings create a dystopian scenario of disconnected realities with floating references. His product placements do not recontextualize  brands as boldly as Tom Sachs does with his Chanel Guillotine and Prada Toilet, or as Wim Delvoye did when tattooing live pigs with LVMH logos, but they retain the nostalgic retro aesthetic of hand-painted Indian billboards and sultry B-movie posters. They are the absurd confluences of channel-surfed realities.

Prada Toilet ('97) made from original Prada packaging, Chanel Guillotine (Breakfast Nook '98) © Tom Sachs

Wim Delvoye Louise, 2004 Stuffed tattooed pig 23 x 14 x 45 in./9.1 x 5.5 x 17.7 cm Courtesy the artist; Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris and Miami; and Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York © Wim Delvoye

View more paintings by Alex Gross
Alex Gross’ exhibition ‘Product Placement’ can be viewed at Jonathan Levine gallery.
Jonathan Levine Gallery | 529 West 20th Street, 9th Floor | New York, NY 10011

Nick Cave Soundsuits, Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery

Artist Nick Cave has been using his wearable Soundsuits in performances, collaborating with locals to create dynamic visual and aural sequences that are unlikely to be confused with the output of the other musician with the same name.

Nick Cave Soundsuits: Untitled, 2009 Digital c, print, Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery

Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth (travelling exhibition), Seattle Art Museum, Washington, March 10–June 5, 2011. Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery

Cave’s work resembles moving sound sculptures that appeal to both kids and adults cross-culturally. He brings his Soundsuits to different cities and hires locals to perform in them, engaging the community. Recently he collaborated on a video with Dr. Dre beats and Fendi for a fashion sequence.

Cave is comfortable in the melding of art and fashion being the director of the graduate fashion program at the Art Institute of Chicago. But Cave has said that his first Soundsuit was created as an emotional reaction to the Rodney King beating in 1992, when he decided to address his response through art, creating a suit out of twigs that he later discovered made sounds. Since then he has created suits from various discarded and scavenged materials that borrow from African, Carnivale and high fashion traditions.

Nick Cave: Speak Louder, 2011 buttons, wire, bugle beads, upholstery, and mannequin, Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery

Nick Cave Soundsuits, Soundsuit, 2011 dogwood twigs, wire, upholstery, and mannequin - Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery

For more information on where his Soundsuits will be traveling next visit: http://soundsuitshop.com/

Monegros County, Aragon, Spain 2010 Chromogenic Color Print 60 x 80 inches Edition 2/3 photographed by Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of mines, quarries, oil fields, ships and airplane graveyards have transformed landscapes of devastation into a thing of beauty. His new photographic series depicts the earth from above, abstracting the terraced farming practices of Spain into a Kandinsky-like painted canvas.

Burtynsky is passionate about the environment, but his work attempts to frame the truth without judgment. Burtynsky spoke in general to me about the farming practices he’s photographed, citing that a country like China had been largely agrarian in the past. “80% used to be involved in growing food for the rest. Now with mechanical advantages…a tractor can create precise patterns with ploughing on gps.”

Burtynsky explained that only a tiny segment of the population, just about 2% in the USA, is now responsible for feeding the rest of the country, my assumption being that the rest of us are in media or finance busy manufacturing paper money… For my more detailed interview with Burtynsky, read here.

Monegros County, Aragon, Spain 2010 Chromogenic Color Print 48 x 64 inches Edition 1/6 photographed by Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky - Aragon, Spain 2010 Chromogenic Color Print 39 x 52 inches Edition 2/9 photographed by Edward Burtynsky

Monegros County, Aragon, Spain 2010, Chromogenic Color Print, 48 x 64 inches Edition 1/6 photographed by Edward Burtynsky

Monegros County, Aragon, Spain_ 2010 Chromogenic Color Print 60 x 80 inches Edition 1/3 photographed by Edward Burtynsky

The exhibition at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery features works shot in the gypsum hills of Monegros in northeastern Spain where the farmlands of barley and corn carve painterly patterns into the arid terrain. Farming the earth brings the white mineral to the surface which seem like dustings of fallen snow, but in fact are nutrients that enrich the dry land, helping the crops to grow without irrigation.

A second exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery Pentimento contains a retrospective of Burtynsky’s photographs exploring the tension between industry and nature.

Burtynsky’s work is also appearing in a group show Being American organized by School of Visual Arts (SVA) presenting responses by visual artists to ’some of the most pressing social issues in America today’, ranging from recent environmental catastrophes to the pervading effects of the economic crisis.

Castile-La Mancha, Spain 2010 Chromogenic Color Print 48 x 64 inches Edition 1/6 photographed by Edward Burtynsky

Monegros County, Aragon, Spain 2010 Chromogenic Color Print 39 x 52 inches Edition 4/9 photographed by Edward Burtynsky

Castile-La Mancha, Spain 2010 Chromogenic Color Print 39 x 52 inches 99.1 x 132.1 cm. Edition 3/9 photographed by Edward Burtynsky

Until December 10th 2011:
Dryland Farming: http://www.brycewolkowitz.com and
Pentimento at http://www.howardgreenberg.com/

From November 22 — December 21:
“Being American” at Visual Arts Gallery,
School of Visual Arts, 601 West 26 Street, New York City

Charlotte Rampling: photograph for SPREAD by Kareem Black, 2011

“Being ready at 9am in any country…” sighed Charlotte Rampling, smartly turned out in a black suit after a late night of revelry in the West Village. ‘The Look,’ had just premiered the night before in New York and Gabriel Byrne had popped out to greet her after the show. Byrne recalled how he’d sweated over how to impress her while on a first stroll through Central Park together, and seeing a night guardsman walk past, had quipped, “Ah, Night Porter!” Rampling had ignored his remark and had kept walking.

Later Byrne had asked, but wasn’t that funny?

“You don’t know how many fucking times people have said that to me,” Rampling had replied.

Paul Auster and Charlotte Rampling in a scene from Angelina Maccarone's documentary CHARLOTTE RAMPLING: THE LOOK. Credit: Kino Lorber/Les films d'ici

More prolific than ever, she has recently starred in Lemming, Swimming Pool, Heading South, playing conflicted, reclusive roles or evil, camp cameos, like in the sci fi flick Babylon A.D. She has also appeared in a Marc Jacobs fashion shoot, in an extended love fest with photographer Juergen Teller who played nude antics over a piano and gleefully peed into a flowerpot while Rampling, curled in bed, indulgently looked on. All the excavation and over-blown analysis into her enigma seems redundant when she is, more evidently, an artist committed to questing in life. While “The Look” is a bio-pic, featuring conversations with friends, it is tamer and less confrontational than past roles that explore darker aspects of her nature, revealing instead, a more contented side.

Charlotte Rampling photographed by Kareem Black, 2011 © Kareem Black

We share a couch near a lovely blazing fireplace at a lounge in Soho. I tell her that I wished she’d included a conversation with a younger woman, beautiful and successful as she had been when young, to create a tenser dynamic. Rampling fixes me with her hooded leopard gaze, “Hmm. I didn’t think of it…but it could have been good.” It was a bit early to talk about love, aging and mortality at breakfast, but I struggled to get past the platitudes.

KL: What about a crossover artist like Tilda Swinton?

CR: I don’t know her, though I’ve met her once. She’s certainly someone I would identify with; we are on the same sort of path. I feel in some ways she’s stronger than me, able to take on certain things I can’t take on.

KL: When you’re born beautiful you aren’t expected to do much more in life…

CR: It’s already enormous. What beauty brings is huge. It brings great privilege, great power and potential to do many things. If you are beautiful, doors open for you; people smile at you; you are accepted in places where others aren’t. So the relationship that people have with beauty, in a sense, is almost deforming.

Charlotte Rampling in 1974 film by Italian director Liliana Cavani, Night Porter

Anthony Palliser and Charlotte Rampling in a scene from Angelina Maccarone's documentary CHARLOTTE RAMPLING: THE LOOK. Credit: Kino Lorber/Les films d'ici

CR: Yes, because you know there’s a brutal end. However it will be. Her death was brutal and I had that in the face very young.

It sent me on a very deep search. Not necessarily to be rebellious or provocative. But it so happened, within that journey … it led me to get to the depth of something – a feeling, a life, or philosophy; to get my teeth into something, which made some sense, and which wasn’t just [sighs] beautiful and suddenly finished – and what are we here for, and what on earth is going on in the world and how are we supposed to live… I started to quest, and began my journey into life then.

KL: And you surrounded yourself with challenging men. Dirk Bogarde coined that expression about ‘The Look,’ you had. Was the film, in a certain sense, an homage to him?

CR: Yes, you’re completely right. The meeting of me and Dirk… it is an homage, this film almost could be made because of him. And because of the circumstances in my life then, I started something with him… And he was older. He became my master, my trusted friend, he and Tony [Bogarde’s partner]. They were that side of my family that were gone.

KL: Being in a place of vulnerability you had protection from the right people perhaps?

CR: Perhaps…and is it because one has the animal instinct to seek out the people that suits one – you see people that go on life’s journeys and get muddled along the way. If you look at their lives they’ve always gone with the wrong people… can you say it’s the wrong people – I don’t know…

I was working with these very iconic people, [like Visconti] who were able to inspire me into a way. You can choose many ways can’t you? Again, if you are beautiful and talented, and I had made films, and people were looking at me, and so I could choose.

Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling in 1974 film by Italian director Liliana Cavani, Night Porter

Louis XV by Juergen Teller, Charlotte Rampling

KL: Dirk Bogarde also explored a spectrum of sado-masochistic and gay roles … the Night Porter, the Servant, the Victim…

CR: He’s gone into dangerous areas that at that time had not been exploited; not been seen with homosexuality; with things that were beginning to come into the open.

KL: You are lucky you share this rich cinematic history with your public and with younger generations; it’s now part of collective memory. What about the personal impact of memory – is it a gift or a burden?

CR: I think you can choose…you don’t need the painful memories, because either you’ve resolved them – Denying always makes them want to come back. Denial is a mechanism that doesn’t work. But allowing them to come back in little by little, those memories, you can begin to be quite comfortable with them, and it’s even nice to have that as part of the map of your life.

KL: That’s wise…

CR: But as human beings, we do need to learn to become wise… because we all can, and it’s not something only given to wise old men with beards sitting on top of mountains.

Charlotte Rampling: photographed for SPREAD by Kareem Black, 2011, © Kareem Black

KL: Letting go of the fear of exposure can be liberating – and you were finally public about your father trying to suppress what your mother knew about your sister’s death, and having to go along with that for so long.

CR: By trying to control everything we become very neurotic, more and more desperate. It’s a huge tragic thing. The reason I talked about that when my mother died – because I wouldn’t say anything till she died, and then I realized in some ways, bizarrely, I did want to talk about it … but then you know, it’s always going to be talked about – but that’s what I needed to do, and I couldn’t not.

Now what happens with a lot of information is that it keeps coming back and back and back…[beating the couch emphatically] and soon as it’s out there, it sort of loops back through all the different channels and all the networks.

But what we need to do is go back to each time we do something and remember and respect why we did it.

KL: As long as it was a conscious decision and you weren’t drunk…

CR: Yes! And you weren’t forced into it.

KL: In the age of the internet, you’re not just separated from your public by film critics, people can access your films online, give immediate feedback, has that affected your relationship with the public.

CR: I find that a bit confusing and I suppose I am not that generation. Even for other things I don’t look at it. I get dizzy. Not even about myself, but generally. [laughs] It’s dizzying all this information.

KL: Do you think you’re more of a rebel in films than in real life?

CR: No, I am the same person.

KL: But perhaps you are straighter in terms of love; a serial monogamist? Are you a believer in true love?

CR: Ya, I believe – well I say now, because each love evolves very much over the years. I’ve always been monogamous – [within it] I’ve been in love with people, but very platonically. For me, monogamous love is about learning how to be able to trust someone completely; so you need to be able to think you can trust them. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have extraordinary feelings for other people and not feel guilty about them, but not necessarily go and wreck marriages and consummate, and you don’t have to do all that.

KL: It can be platonic, perhaps like with the chimpanzee in Max? I like the idea of living in solitude, but together. With desire though, it doesn’t necessarily change with age does it?

CR: That’s right, exactly. But I am able to somehow work through that differently because sexual desire, it’s not a priority…well it’s just less complicated, but I can quite understand why for other people it is.

Charlotte Rampling: photograph for SPREAD by Kareem Black, 2011 © Kareem Black

KL: I am curious about your paintings. I often write about art, and it says more about a person’s emotions than asking them to be literal about who they are in conversation.

CR: Those are my funny strange creatures I live with. One of my favorite artists is Giacometti. And I didn’t even realize that I was doing it, but those sort of Giacometti creatures come out of me…it’s the spirit of him, it could be his family. They are not sculptures but I work on materials with wood. I bring these people out of them that are rather like very strange lonely creatures that come out of the darkness. A person will come out… I’ve been asked to expose them, and I might, but I need to be more diligent and work on them a bit more.

KL: I am wondering about the film’s reception in the UK.

CR: I know, in your own country, you always sort of wonder – so it’s going to be very interesting.

KL: Hmm… a tough audience there, but perhaps next, a knighthood is in the cards?

CR: Knighthood! [chuckles] I am not qualified to be a Dame. To be Dame you have to represent England in a way that I don’t. No, I got the O.B.E because I represent England outside of England more…but thinking of me as an actor, I haven’t done all the classical theatre, all the great roles. Think of Helen Mirren and me. Helen, who I adore, is a friend – should be Dame. I am the rebel, the revolutionary on the side.

KL: The edgy icon? The daring Dame Rampling, you definitely deserve it…

Well, thank you, that’s very sweet. [peals of laughter]

Charlotte Rampling: photograph by Kareem Black, 2011 © Kareem Black

Charlotte Rampling: The Look, Directed by Angelina Maccarone, A Kino Lorber Release

Stylist: Jessica Van Niel at BA-REPS.com

Master manipulator, Erik Sanko Photographed by Bobby Fisher at His Studio, 2011 ©Bobby Fisher

Coming up post-Halloween is Erik Sanko’s pagan puppet premiere at BAM for Phantom Limb’s performance of 69°S.

The production dramatizes the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s harrowing 1914 trans-Antarctic expedition in which his vessel, the Endurance, was stranded amid freezing ice-floes for an entire winter only a few miles from the South Pole. 69°S is the latitude at which the intrepid arctic pioneers struck peril. The ensemble, led by Erik Sanko and Jessica Grindstaff, brings to life Shackleton’s adventure with elaborate hand carved marionettes in a series of tableaux vivants using music, film and photography to create a fantasy Antarctica.

Erik Sanko's marionettes. Photograph © Bobby Fisher, 2011

Erik Sanko. Photograph © Bobby Fisher, 2011

Erik Sanko's studio. Photograph © Bobby Fisher, 2011

An original score by Kronos Quartet and costumes designed by threeAsFour will set the stage for a magical tale of human generosity and collective sacrifice (Shackleton gave away his mittens and the last of his biscuits to save his fellow crewmen from starvation, while barely surviving himself with frostbitten fingers). The inspiring story is one of personal heroism triumphing over cataclysmic hardships.

Bobby Fisher’s captivating photographs for SPREAD are a behind-the-scenes revelation of the upcoming show at Erik Sanko’s Tribeca studio – a cabinet of curiosities, with a Gothic bestiary of taxidermy creatures and a coven of eerie, elegant marionettes that await resurrection through the hands of their lord.

Erik Sanko's marionettes. Photograph © Bobby Fisher, 2011

Erik Sanko. Photograph © Bobby Fisher, 2011

Sanko, a master manipulator of strings, is similarly musically inclined, having played with the Lounge Lizards, John Cale, Yoko Ono, and his own band, Skeleton Key. When he is not touring with his puppets for stage productions, he also performs more macabre marionette acts at the BOX in New York City.

For more information: BAM and Erik Sanko’s and Jessica Grindstaff’sPhantom Limb Company