In 1985, when billionaire Greek industrialist Dakis Joannou bought the first piece of his now world-renowned contemporary art collection—a basketball signed by Dr. Jay submerged in a tank of water and simply titled “Equilibrium”—it started two chain reactions. One, Mr. Koons would never have to worry about people buying his work again, as Jonnau has been very successful in buying up most of it for his monolithic museum in Athens. Secondly, Joannou would be very adept in helping to solidify emerging artists and future greats (Terrence Koh, Cindy Sherman, Takashi Murakami), as well as helping to shape the very nature of collecting.

And thus, in the middle of last week, the world got the first look at Jeff Koons’ curatorial debut: “Skin Fruit: Selections for the Dakis Joannou Collection.” On how he chose the pieces for the exhibition, Koons told SPREAD ArtCulture: “I did everything very intuitively. I’ve known Dakis since 1985, and from meeting with him and following the collection from that time, I just wanted to try and capture what I felt represented his interests and his ambition and broadness in collecting contemporary art…but very intuitively.”

SPREAD ArtCulture: Is this your first of many curating efforts?

Jeff Koons: I think artists always curate their own work, but I have an Ed Paschke show that will open in about two weeks that I will curate that I brought together. But it’s like anything: When you’re creating an artwork, you’re just following your interests, and in curating, it’s the same thing. But it’s intuitive, there’s a lot of great work. Some of the best art pieces, some of the best works in the collection, aren’t here. Maybe they’re on loan or it’s an artist’s work that didn’t it within this context of looking at the body.

SAC: How did you choose the pieces in this show and under what context?

JK: It’s just my intuition. I would go through the collection and choose works that I felt represented Dakis’s desire with the collection, and I would go back through and go over them again, and I would find that I was always coming up with the same things. And I made models of the museum; I would lay things out and they developed their own relationships, and it’s just the same when you’re following your own ideas and creating your own works that this happens. It got to a point where if I would try and move something on one of the floors, and take it from one location to another, for me, it just wouldn’t work.

Some of the artists we were able to speak to at the opening, such as Terence Koh, were far less articulate about their involvement in the show:

A sculpture by Terence Koh

SPREAD ArtCulture: Tell me about your involvement in Skin Fruit.

Terence Koh: I was just chosen.

SAC: What are you working on now?

TK: Drinking water.

Koh was the only artist to have sculptures, as well as paintings, in the show.

Some patrons, such as the Chelsea behemoth Tony Shafrazi, were able to weigh in with the learned authority of and award-winning curator (Shafrazi was the recipient of Rob Pruitt’s “Best Group Show” in 2009 at the first ever Art Awards):

"Noodles" by Urs Fischer

SPREAD ArtCulture: What do you think of the show?

Tony Shafrazi: I love the show! I think it’s an eclectic wonderful representation of what’s going on. Dakis is a great collector, and has been for many years, and you see such a great mixture of young, new work, such as been selected from a great many things. I love this Fischer piece right here (Urs Fischer’s “Noodles”), don’t you just love it? It’s one of my favorite pieces in the place. Every piece in here is interesting.

Charles Ray's "Aluminum Girl"

"Fall '91" by Charles Ray (foreground); Terence Koh's "Chocolate Mountains" (background)

Charles Ray's "Revolution Counter-Revolution"

A piece by Downtown favorite and partner of the late Dash Snow, Dan Colen

Dan Altmejd's calamitous "Giant"

Maurizio Cattelan's very bland and largely pedantic "All," an eight-piece installation featuring life-size body bags carved from Carrara marble

"Untitled (Jack)" by Paul McCarthy, which could be a prop straight out of Kubrick

A wonderfully whimsical and weird colloboration by the team of Paul McCarthy and Paula Jones

A wonderfully whimsical and weird colloboration by the team of Paul McCarthy and Paula Jones

There seemed to be a very even split among opening-night patrons as to whether or not the show was a success. Check it out for yourself until June 6th and let us know what you think.

Documentarian George Gittoes painting in his Berlin studio

“What irritates me a bit about the fine art world,” director George Gittoes told me this week, “Is if I make a sixty-minute film about Iraq, which I do, I see my sixty-minute program as art, and I don’t the art world has caught up with Andy Warhol and other people like him. They still feel something has to go through a museum before it becomes art.”

So began our epic interview in his publicist’s sprawling West Village conference room. George is unlike most documentarians you’ve seen before, in a great many ways. For one thing, he’d rather be interacting with his subjects, for better or worse, whether it puts him in harm’s way or not. He has been shot at, arrested, and sentenced to death—on more than one occasion. He views news as a form of art, and therefore, warfare falls into this category. But not without lasting affects. “People talk about the psychological damage war does to people, but it also has a damaging spiritual affect. I don’t know how many times, in all the years I’ve been covering war, I’ve been with a bunch of soldiers and there’s one who keeps saying “I want to pop my cherry,” meaning he wants to kill someone. He wants to have contact. They think that once you’ve fought in combat and you’ve killed an enemy, you become a man like it’s a right of passage. I’ve always told them that they don’t want to do that, because it’s stupid. I don’t know how many times that same night, that same soldier has spent the whole night weeping on my chest, my clothes wet with his tears. As soon as you kill someone, you discover that you’ve killed part of your own soul. It’s just a fact.”

Gittoes just released Miscreants of Taliwood, a documentary about the Pakistani Pashto film genre, or, we should say, the dead Pashto genre. Gittoes tells us the story of the artists who make these films having their industry ransacked by fundamentalists and Taliban warlords who believe that films are for infidels and they should no be permitted to exist in their beloved holy land. For the time being, they’ve won, as the entire industry sits in stalemate, waiting for something or someone to intervene. Once again, Gittoes comes to the aid of the people he’s meant to be observing. He has gotten peacekeeping heavy-hitter Oxfam to step in and fund the industry, giving thousands of people their creativity—and careers—back.

AMC’s Norm Schrager tells us about Miscreants of Taliwood: “When it comes to bizarre films, Pashto movies are in a class by themselves. The cheaply made products of a once-thriving Pakistani industry have an unmistakable style, slathered in operatic overacting, automatic weapons and strange song-and-dance numbers — they’re like the twisted step-cousins to Bollywood features. We Westerners would instantly call them ‘cult.’ Australian artist George Gittoes would call them home. In the chaotic, entertaining Miscreants, Gittoes continues his mission to deliver art in the world’s danger zones, setting up Pashto productions on deadly Pakistani ground for two years, flaunting a love of cinema right under the Taliban’s nose.

“But Gittoes’ aim is true. He intends to expose the ways in which widespread control of media and arts can destroy an entire society. Smartly, he digs deep within the Pakistani culture, befriending one of the local DVD shop owners, talking with straight men who secretly engage in gay relations, and interviewing Peshawar intellectuals who have clear theories about the downfall of art and thought. It adds up to an illuminating look at street-level extremism, far from the evening news. And it’s all told with ridiculously crude editing and graphics, much like the populist Pashto films themselves.”

SPREAD ArtCulture was able to sit down and get George talking.

SPREAD ArtCulture: How is the film being received?

George Gittoes: A lot of people have said a great many stupid things in reviews about the film. Variety said, “We’re on the Taliban’s side. These films are so bad that we’re glad they’re closing them down.” I hate that. The poor guys that make the films have to follow a bit of a formula, as they’re supplying them to a mostly illiterate audience. There are no financers there. Some of these directors have made more films than anyone in Hollywood, and when they finally get this funding from Oxfam, they’re going to be able to make the films that they want to make. It’s going to be really exciting.

SAC: What gave you the idea to do this film?

GG: I’ve been making films about war, with an element of art, for more than thirty years. In 1986, I made Bullets of the Poets, which was in Nicaragua, and features the women who were fighting the Contra. I focused on the women poets who were doing this amazing existential poetry that was inspired by Ernesto Cardinal, and at the same time they’re going out and killing people. So it’s a bit of a contradiction that you can be a woman and you can be a poet and have all that sensitivity, and you can still believe in something enough to go out and kill for it, and kill lots of people. I’ve always done film, photography, writing, and painting, and my history is that in 1968, Celement Greenberg liked my art and helped me come to New York to pursue it. Instead of doing what Greenberg wanted me to do, which was continuing this minimalist tradition, I met up with first Joseph Delaney (a star of the civil right movement). He dared me to go out in the street and make art based on the Civil Rights Movement.

The other person I bumped into was Andy Warhol who let me have access into his movie cameras and his world. This was after he had been shot, when he was around Union Square, and he was very kind to me, and I was inspired by him. I remember saying to Andy, and he already knew this, but I was a stupid nineteen-year old, I said “You know, I think news is pop art,” and he said “Yeeeeah yeah!” in the way that he did. It was something he’d figured out a long time ago.

SAC: As war is a facet of the news, is war art?

GG: My attitude to art is that all good art comes out of discomfort. I don’t have anywhere to live; I love in war zones. I don’t have a dealer and I run huge financial risks making these films. My actual life itself is extremely uncomfortable. Even here, I’ve gone from Houston to Washington, D.C., to here, staying in cheap hotels. Whenever it’s uncomfortable, you’ll be doing fucking good art. Comfort is the artist’s ultimate enemy.

George Gittoes

The only table in the house, Cesar Ramirez's chef table in the Brooklyn Fare's kitchen

Chef Cesar Ramirez of Brooklyn Fare, gourmet food market by day and fine dining destination by night, is not your famed media-hungry celebrity chef. So the fact that reservations for his nightly dinners are booked through June is very telling. In Ramirez’s 10-seater stainless steel kitchen table, craftsmanship stays alive with culinary artisans at work every night serving more than 15 courses of salacious dishes featuring impeccable quality and creativity.

Though Mexican, Ramirez is a Francophile in the kitchen who got his start as a cook in a French bistro in his hometown of Chicago. But it is Ramirez’s work with David Bouley, in the restaurants Danube and Bouley, which solidified his reputation as a French chef. Ramirez’s food philosophy today comes from a combination of French and Japanese disciplines. In Ramirez’s words, “I cook food with French technique but with the Japanese mentality in terms of plating, simplicity, and high quality ingredients. Going to Japan changed my life. I had the most memorable experiences there. I went to a restaurant where the sous-chef cooked rice for 40 years and that’s all he did. They take a lot of pride in what they do.This is what we are trying to do here. I thought to myself, if I can do something like that, then I’m very lucky.”

Everything that Ramirez has put into Brooklyn Fare, in the daytime as a prepared food chef and nighttime as a fine dining master, pays homage to craftsmanship. He relates his work in the kitchen to fashion and in, particular, the art of tailoring. “The craftsmanship that they do in fashion,” he explained, “is the same craftsmanship that I want to apply to my cooking. One of my heroes is not a chef; he is designer Carol Christian Poell. His philosophy—keeping yourself very small, keeping yourself very in demand by creating quality products in limited quantities—is the philosophy that I try to follow in my kitchen. I think that’s the best way to do it. I could’ve gone bigger but that’s not what I want to do because I don’t want to lose the intimacy and connection I have with the customers.”

To be frank, Ramirez’s vision of quality, seasonal ingredients executed simply but perfectly is not entirely unique. Many chefs profess to this philosophy. However, I do believe that the exclusivity of his ten-seat restaurant and his craftsmanlike devotion to food (and not his ego) allows him to truly rise above his peers. My experience at Brooklyn Fare last December is the best meal (and the best deal) I’ve had in New York since I could remember. There are chefs who flourish through celebrity and then are the rarer ones, like Cesar Ramirez, who succeed by working hard, respecting traditions, and staying true and humble to their craft. And he is what makes Brooklyn Fare a rare jewel in a brightly bejeweled New York.

A piece by Indian-born artist, Raghava KK

On Friday, February 26, 2010, life as Raghava KK knew it, changed forever. It was 12pm and we were meeting for coffee, a mere two hours after his much-hyped TED talk went live on the web. Earlier in the month, KK had given a talk to a group of self-proclaimed “nerds” in the ongoing series of interactive talks presented by TED. His talk is now considered one of the most engaging and engrossing in the organization’s history. He speech touches on living and painting in his native India, becoming a gallery sensation at a very young age, and having it all ripped away as the government’s draconian censorship slipped between him and his collectors. Slipping in the art community and inching closer to being flat broke, KK stopped painting for himself and started pandering to his audience. “They called me a sellout, and no one bought my art,” he told me, reflecting on a very dark time. “I don’t have to censor my art now that I’m in the US.”

SPREAD ArtCulture made the trek over the bridge during last week’s blizzard to speak to Raghava, who we’re quite certain will be on all of your radars very soon.

SPREAD ArtCulture: What do you hope to accomplish with your art in the US?

Raghava KK: I want to be a grassroots artist. I want to start with Brooklyn, then go to New York, LA, and then I want to make a difference. I’m giving myself three years (in the US), and if I haven’t reached people by then, I’m going to leave. Three years is a fair deadline. I’m just trying to be myself, as simple and mundane as that is, it’s honest. I’m just trying to be raw and unadulterated. I know that I appear to be civil and decent, but I’m really capable of anything. I don’t censor my thoughts and my artwork reflects my thoughts. I think uncensored, honest thought has tremendous value.

There will be much more from this artist to come very soon. In the meantime, be sure to check out the link for his TED interview below.

Raghava KK

Raghava KK at TED

"Aurel Schmidt," shot by Juro Schneider

Though only slightly more than half of the artists showing at the Whitney’s 75th annual Biennial are women, it’s already been dubbed “the Women’s Biennial,” thanks to cyberspace’s fervid bloggers and social networkers. The split highlights the blase gender blindness that the art community has boasted for years, and if people can actually buy into it, it may prove to be a very effective measure taken by chief curator, Francesco Bonami.

One artist that SPREAD ArtCulture is particularly interested in braving the elements to see at the Whitney is Aurel Schmidt, and her deranged 7-foot-tall drawing of a minotaur, comprised of condoms, cigarettes, banana peels, and bottle caps. “It’s really an insane portrait of a man, but it’s interesting to explore what is masculine and make it look sexual and positive,” Aurel explains about her newest piece, going on to add: “I don’t want anyone to accuse me of being a man hater, which I’m not. This is also about the masculine side of me.”

"Master of the Universe: FlexMaster 3000" by Aurel Schmidt

Mr. Brainwash, aka Thierry Guetta, holding court over his maze on West 13th Street

“If you do something you love, you become an icon, because you do it so well that in one moment, everybody appreciates it,” says Thierry Guetta, leaning back in a paint-splattered Eames lounge chair in the middle of his newest exhibition, Icons. The street artist-turned gallery sensation went on to talk about his time spent decorating the walls and sidewalks of New York: “The street is just a large gallery to me. Even the people that don’t like it are obligated to see it. There are no rules on the street, there is just freedom. Thousands of people can see it.”

During the first week of his debut New York show, it’s safe to say that no one could have anticipated the turnout that the gallery at 415 West 13th Street has seen. “People started lining up at five o’clock in the morning to get into the gallery, because they knew they were going to get a screen print.” In the few days since the show has been open, it’s received an incredible amount of foot traffic, attributed directly to the marketing phenomenon behind Guetta’s show, his alter ego, Mr. Brainwash.

Mr. Brainwash's Street Art in the Meatpacking District

A highly excitable man with a wild nest of black and gray curls sitting underneath his signature fedora, Brainwash spoke to me through an old pair of aviators, their lenses splattered with paint. I questioned their practicality, but it just adds to the “Mr. Brainwash starter kit,” complete with a pair of old sneakers and jeans so thoroughly covered in every shade of paint imaginable, it almost seems contrived. Almost. Until he starts speaking about his art, frantically moving around the 15,000 square foot gallery. “So the other day I was hanging this painting of Madonna and I thought that I would like to color her face more.” He reached up to said painting and recreated smearing paint on his hands and rubbing it across her eyes and mouth. I said I liked it. “I’m always added to my work, even years from now, I will look at something and want to change it. I’m not a guy who gets mad when someone is carrying one of my paintings and he drops it. I’m not going to run up to him and yell at him about how he destroyed it and it’s worth so much money. I’m going to say ‘You know what, it looks beautiful.’ Accidents can improve work. I accept everything that happens to me in a good way. It’s always enjoyment to me.” I considered testing this theory by reaching up and ripping a piece of vinyl off the broken-record collage on the canvas that we stood admiring, but knowing what I do about how much his work has been going for since his first show, I decided against it.

From Mr. Brainwash's "Icons"

As we strode through the gallery, the door never stopped opening. People were in and out all day, some staying for hours at a time and reclining on the furniture with friends. The look on their faces was a calm, satisfied one. They could understand the art they were seeing and enjoy it. It’s wasn’t overly cerebral for the Sunday afternoon browsers, tire kickers, and tourists.

Amidst the chaos, SPREAD ArtCulture was able to get him to sit down (not an easy task) and give us the details on his new work and artistic philosophies.

SPREAD ArtCulture: Tell us about your show. What makes someone an icon?

Mr. Brainwash: It’s people who really give deep effort in life and make something out of it. And what I like about icons, there are some people who come from nothing. Take Jimi Hendrix: I’m sure he came from a poor family and things, but he had the passion in life and he had something he wanted to do. He was not just about money or success but it was about believing in something he loved. If you do something you love, you become an icon, because you do it so well that one moment everybody appreciates it. It’s like the guy from Twitter who is twenty-five. To do something so giant that everybody in the world are using what he did and he’s twenty-five! It’s for me to show the people that you can do it. There’s a possibility you just have to do what you love in life. All of the people (in this exhibit) they’re just normal people, just like everybody else. Somewhere it’s like giving a message to the ordinary people that you can do it. Just go for it.

SAC: Your work is influenced, quite clearly, by some of today’s commercial art frontrunners: Shepard Fairey, Banksy, and Warhol’s ubiquitous pop art portraits. How is what you’re doing different from what they’ve already done?

Mr. B: When I did my first show, a lot of people said, “He looks like this, it looks like this guy’s,” but somewhere, it’s like I’ve said, you cannot judge somebody by their first show. You have to let them evolve. Like my new show, “Icons,” I don’t see any resemblance of any other artists today. You couldn’t say that you see Shepard (Fairey)’s work. I don’t see it. You couldn’t say, “This looks like a Banksy.” Little by little, I’m finding my way of being my own artist. I don’t believe that nobody doesn’t look at someone else. That’s what the recycle of the world is. It’s like me putting a taxi in a box. I’ve never seen it before and it’s something that I wanted to do.

SAC: What are you doing to further culture?

Mr. B: I don’t think too much, the only thing I do is try to do something that will make people happy. I’m not here to judge myself or what’s going to happen to me in my life. You can’t judge someone without knowing him, you need to give him time to do his own thing. During my first show, they were trying to judge me and I asked them to “Let me go, it’s my first show. You’ll see if I’m a copycat or if I’m good or bad.” You cannot get away from talent. If you have it, you have it.

SAC: Do you have talent?

Mr. B: Talent is something that is a judgment. I just work. My talent is just to work. Every single day is another life to me. One life, one day. The next day is another life. You have to be in the moment. I do everything with passion. You can have talent, but not use it. There’s a million people who are more talented than I am, but maybe they don’t work to get it all out.

SAC: Are you going to keep filming?

Mr. B: I don’t know. I’m so involved with making art now, I don’t have the time. I did it for so long: twelve years non stop. I have more than thirty-thousand hours of footage. I’m going on another path.

SAC: What do you want people to think and feel about your art when they come into this exhibition space and see your work for the first time?

Mr. B: I want people to have fun. I want for them to be able to do something with it, to get influenced by it and maybe go home and start doing some art of their own. Right now, sitting here with you, I hear kids running around and to me, this is the best thing possible. I didn’t do anything wrong with this show. It would come with too strong a message, because maybe a kid would see it and not understand it. You can bring people from two years old to seventy-five years old and they can enjoy the show. I will let the other artists be controversial. I just want people to smile.

"There are no rules or judgement in the world of art for me." -Mr. Brainwash

By Michelle Cheung

Derrick Cruz of Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons

“Like paradoxical black sheep and prodigal son” wrote Anatole Broyard in his autobiographical tale, “Kafka Was the Rage,” as he described the outcasts and rejects, who lived in Greenwich village after the Second World War. When Derrick Cruz read these words more than five years ago, he knew right away that it would help name and shape the story for his accessories brand.  Broyard’s words captured Cruz’s repatriation to New York as an adult.  “Like paradoxical black sheep and prodigal sons,” he said, “we all come here [to New York] kind of outcasts, being rejected, seeking something new, seeking redemption of some sort. When I saw that line, I knew that was going to be the name and, aesthetically, it became more about archetypes that, in my head, were both wise and stubborn at the same time.”

Black Bighorn

Five years later, Cruz has made Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons a much-coveted jewelry and lifestyle accessories brand. Inspired by his Native American heritage and aesthetic inclinations for funerary and alchemical imageries, Cruz’s work looks deeply into the soul of the past and passes it on for our modern world.  He tells stories through objects that teeter between art and craft. In his words, “It’s artful craft with the goal of blurring the line of kitsch, craft, and art, in order to create a sense of wonder. The main goal being is what does it say? Why does it feel like it has an energy of its own?” As we possess one of his creations, he gifts us a catalyst to add on to each handcrafted story that he has initiated.

The book box, for example, has been an early theme that Cruz has used repeatedly in his repertoire. Concealing a chain of curated charms, the book is sometimes used as packaging. To him, it is a literal representation of his desire to tell and inspire a story through his work.  He explained, “I wanted the packaging to immediately emote here’s the story that you need to read or you need to add to or you need to make. That’s why, in the packaging of the book, you open it up and the necklace is inside. It’s your story now, the moment you put it on.”

Abandoned Comb Amulet

Cruz continues to push his narrative with each new piece he conceives. In “A New Hive,” he starts a conversation about bee extinction. He created the “Abandoned Comb Amulet” described as a honeycomb necklace encased in hexagonal sugar-glass pyramid filled with New York rooftop honey. In this piece, Cruz has made his story more interactive by giving the owner the responsibility to make a choice. “You have to make the decision—do you love this as an object or what’s inside more?” said Cruz. He then added, “The story is that we make the decision everyday with the way we treat the environment. The reason bees are disappearing is because we decided that we could tear through our environment to get certain things at whatever expense necessary. So, that was the story there. You have to make the decision yourself in this tiny little world. Do I love this beautiful thing or do I break it to get the gold?”

Cruz’s stories are enchanting, hypnotizing, complex, involved, and truly personal. It wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to say that any of his creations is like a fine book, a rare and prized possession that, if not old, has an old soul. It is perched quietly on your bookshelf for nobody else but you to treasure and enjoy. Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons’s storytelling pieces, according to Cruz, are evolving and getting better. When asked what is to come, Cruz replied with excitement. “I’m thinking about the universe now,” he said. “I’m thinking Carl Sagan; I’m rewatching Cosmos. I think I’ve got something but I can’t let that out of the bag yet.”

Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons showroom and workshop in NYC

Phantogram playing in New York City, Summer 2009 photo by Alexander B. Stein

“Oh my god, you know Phantogram?!”

“Honey, I knew them back when they were Charlie Everywhere.”

Such was the mood Thursday night at Brooklyn’s Union Hall, the site for Phantogram’s—formerly Charlie Everywhere’s—most recent venue domination. A smattering of loyal followers fell in line with recently enlightened gormandizers (in the tradition of Hilly Krystal’s CBGB) and swayed to the haute electronic waves of music that spewed forth from the stage of Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel, the Saratoga Springs duo dubbed Sub-Bombin’ Record’s “First big success.”

Since moving on from the smaller-scale Sub Bombin’, Carter and Barthel have been scooped up by none other than Barsuk Records, indie music’s heavy hitter, with names such as Rilo Kiley, Death Cab for Cutie, and Mates of State in their stable of talent. Called “street beat, psych pop,” by fellow Saratoga Springs Musician Matthew Loiacano, they’ve undoubtedly filled any void that this already strong label had.

Waiting at the door to be let in to the venue, it was interesting to be a veritable fly on the wall amongst genuine Phantogram newbies and aficionados alike, having known them for quite some time. “I don’t know much about these guys, but my brother lives in Albany, where they’ve played a lot, and he said I had to come see them…That they’re amazing,” one hipster crowed to her friend in between choreographed sips from her Pabst Blue Ribbon. “They get better each time I see them,” a guy said behind them, loosening his tie and taking off his cufflinks. It truly was a diverse crowd that trudged across the icy sidewalks to take in the band as they returned to their maiden New York venue.

Sarah Barthel of Phantogram photo by Alexander B. Stein

Carter gets lost in the crowd when playing, his eyes glazed over with a mix of concentration and unadulterated passion. A doppleganger for Harry Connick Jr. when in an embrace with his microphone, his tender voice supplies the depth to the group’s vocal pairing. Barthel’s angelic cries are the guiding force for the symbiotic harmony that makes their sound unique; one picks up where the other left off. It’s very safe to say that in the early days their music didn’t need to improve, but over time, their music has evolved into a precise science.

SPREAD ArtCulture had a chance to sit down with the pair over drinks and talk about their lyrics, their latest CD, and their groupie situation.

SPREAD ArtCulture: Tell me about your new album, which I have not yet been able to listen to.

Josh Carter: It’s a mix of a lot of rhythm and spaced-out synthesizers and kind of swirling guitars and delays. It’s emotional as well, and very dark at the same time.

Sarah Barthel: Dark?

JC: I mean, it’s dark with kind of a light at the end of the tunnel.

SAC: Like the kind of light that New York sees at the end of the tunnel in New Jersey?

JC: Exactly.

SAC: What were your respective roles on this album?

SB: Josh produced it, and wrote most of the tunes and the lyrics, and I played the bass, the synth, and I sing.

JC: Also, I didn’t write everything. Sarah and I definitely collaborated on it. Sarah wrote a couple of the songs that are on the new album, and they’re awesome. The first album was a lot of my own ideas and Sarah helped fill in the blanks, but since we’ve become a band, we collaborate really well. It’s a partnership.

SAC: You’re on the road all the time together and you’re best friends. How do you avoid killing each other?

SB: We’re really used to it, and we’ve been really good friends for so long. There’s no surprises, we already know everything about one another. We can tell when the other person is in a shitty mood or a strange mood and we can understand that.

A still-bearded Josh Carter photo by Alexander B. Stein

JC: We don’t have to walk around on egg shells around each other. It’s not really difficult. The most stressful part about everything is probably touring…Whenever we get lost on a road trip.

SAC: In the same vein as that, when it comes to touring, do you have an arrangement about groupies, since you probably share a room?

JC: We do our own thing mostly. It’s a little entertainment. It feels nice to be admired, but at the end of the night, we’re always to tired to try anything.

SAC: You seem to achieve a perfect symmetry in your music. What do you think helps this?

SB: We believe in our sound, and I love hearing Josh’s beats bumping. All the time and every time I hear them, no matter how many times I’ve heard the songs, having that energy and the loud beats refreshes me to start over and it’s not a repetitive feeling. I feel like we both connect in that way on stage.

SAC: So you trust each other’s abilities?

SB: We do, and we love our sound.

JC: Obviously we practice a lot, it didn’t just come together. We work really hard together, but I think a lot of it has to do with a mental and kind of psychic chemistry we have together to make our music what it is because we feel each other so much and love each other as friends so much.

SAC: That ties into the visceral state of mind you both appear to be in when you’re playing. Sitting with you here right now and chatting, I know it’s not the same Sarah and Josh I see on stage. What’s going through your minds when you’re playing?

JC: Our best shows are when I really bring myself to the music and think about how it affects me emotionally. It’s what I try and translate live.

SB: We are always trying to bring an experience to the audience and, as goofy as I am, with a strange sense of humor that I have, on stage, it’s important to try and pass the energy and emotion we want our audience to feel when we’re doing a show. I love when I see Radiohead or whoever play and you just forget everything.

JC: We just want to convey how we felt when we wrote the songs and we try to bring across the energy that we felt and how we do feel about our own music. We’re honest with it. There’s no schtick with our music. We’re happy that other people are responding to it and enjoying it.

SAC: Talk about the European tour you just came off of.

SB: It was awesome. We weren’t expecting to have a fan base out there, but I guess we should. We are signed on a record label. It was great meeting people over there and was fun playing crowds that knew who were were and liked the sound. We didn’t have a lot of time to venture out and explore, but we saw some from the car. There were big windows. We’re going to be going back over there in May for about a month.

SAC: Josh, do audiences receive you better without the beard?

JC: People take me less-serious with a beard…I mean without a beard, but the girls like it more clean-shaven.

SB: He has a nice face. The girls want him to grow his unibrow in.

SAC: (reciting Phantogram lyrics for “Mouthful of Diamonds”) “And if it isn’t me, than pack your bags and leave.” Who was it, and where did they go?

SB: Oh…my god. Ask Josh, he wrote those lyrics.

JC: Well, basically, the lyric means if I am in the wrong, than I’m willing to accept it but, I feel like I’m not, so get the fuck out. “Mouthful of Diamonds” is a song about a relationship, not necessarily a romantic relationship, but any kind of relationship, be it good friends or whatever.”If it’s not me” you know, pack your bags and leave. It’s kind of a literal line. It’s a line of accepting your own flaws and wondering if you are in the wrong and, if you’re not, then say goodbye to the problem or the argument that you’re having with someone else.

Phantogram will be touring extensively for the next few months; the West Coast in March and then SXSW.

"Alexander McQueen" by David LaChapelle

Fashion visionary Lee McQueen, creative director and founder of the Alexander McQueen label, was found dead in his home in London Thursday morning. The former creative director of the famous House of Givenchy and Gucci was mourned in the Lincoln Center Tents during the first day of Spring 2010’s Fashion Week.

Editor of British Vogue, Alexandra Shulman, commented: “Lee McQueen influenced a whole generation of designers. His brilliant imagination knew no bounds as he conjured up collection after collection of extraordinary designs.

“At one level he was a master of the fantastic, creating astounding fashion shows that mixed design, technology and performance and on another he was a modern-day genius whose gothic aesthetic was adopted by women the world over. His death is the hugest loss to anyone who knew him and for very many who didn’t.”

His visions graced numerous red carpets in recent years, most recently by Lady Gaga.

Alexander McQueen from Paris Fashion Week, Fall 2009

McQueen was a master at calling fashion’s bluff; inevitably being courted by under-zealous contemporaries who called him one of fashion’s greatest influencers. Cindy Weber Cleary, Fashion director for InStyle, said of McQueen: “He was a huge talent, a master of tailoring and always willing to push the envelope. He was forward thinking.”

An example of such forward-thinking fashion would have to be his runway littered with broken mirrors and shredded Givenchy “little black dresses” during Paris’s Fall 2009 Fashion Week.

SPREAD chooses not to speculate on the details surrounding Lee McQueen’s death, but bids farewell to a true cultural instigator who made a noticeable impact during his relatively short career.

The "Hotel" Series by Erwin Olaf

Through March 20, 2010, Chelsea’s Hasted Hunt Kraeutler gallery will be displaying the latest exhibition by Dutch sensation Erwin Olaf. “Hotel, Dawn & Dusk” is a retrospective look at the photographer from 2004–2009, and focuses on his attention to his subjects at their most intimate.

The “Hotel” series looks at vulnerable subjects in various states of undress in seedy, retro hotel rooms. Scorned lovers, forgotten companions, and protagonists have all taken up residence in these rooms, from Raleigh, North Carolina to Kyoto, Japan, and all leave something to be desired. One can find solace in their loneliness, or at least satisfaction in not being them.

The “Dawn” series offers a whimsical and somewhat sterile look at a Victorian household with twiggy model types looking like they just walked off the runway at last month’s Paris couture shows.

Both the “Grief” and the “Rain” series look like an early Matthew Weiner storyboard for a Mad Men episode.

"The Mother," 2009, from the "Dawn" series

"The Boardroom," 2004, for the "Rain" series

"Caroline," 2007, from the "Grief" series