Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Ginsberg Does Indian Mantras on Sloow Tapes

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Speaking of Allen Ginsberg, I’m told a new Sloow Tapes cassette entitled “London Mantra” is about to be released. Bart de Paepe, producer of the indie label, writes, “It’s a recording George Dowden made at his home in July 1973.” The tape features “Ginsberg solo on his harmonium, singing Indian mantras and a few of […]

Portrait of the Painter Who Loved Braque

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“Willem de Kooning always maintained that Braque’s early analytical cubist paintings were the last great bout of true painting.” — Gerard Bellaart (who also loves Braque) Now have a look at what de Kooning was talking about.Here are some of the analytical cubist paintings Braque did from 1908 to 1912. Houses at Estaque [1908] Castle […]

‘In Praise of Folly’: Advice for 2014 or Any Year

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Excerpt from Erasmus’ ‘In Praise of Folly’ (translated by John Wilson) Spoken by Folly in her own Person Do but observe our grim philosophers that are perpetually beating their brains on knotty subjects, and for the most part you’ll find them grown old before they are scarcely young. And whence is it, but that their […]

In NYC: Catching Up With Peter Schumann
and the Bread and Puppet Theater

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Peter Schumann: The Shatterer is the first solo museum exhibition of Bread and Puppet Theater founder and director Peter Schumann. The exhibition opened in November 2013 as part of the first season in the museum’s newly expanded galleries. It marks the 50th anniversary of the theater company and introduces New York audiences to a largely […]

Rotterdam Dress Code

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Ben Schot, Straight Up’s man in Rotterdam, sent the photo. He noted in an email message: “I met the kid in the street on my way to the post office exactly in the spot where the graffiti was. Spooky figure, especially at night when the skeleton print on this suit lights up in the headlights […]

A Great One Died Today

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Click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click again. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

‘Every Crumb Can Become a Piece of Cake’

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Here are a couple of Hanne Lippard’s vocal tone poems. She combines a voice and accent to kill for with a witty, whimsical sense of humor. The words and the way she says them are a kick. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

A Thanksgiving Team: Burroughs & Mustill, Redux

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A Straight Up tradition continues. William S. Burroughs’s words of gratitude on Thanksgiving Day paired with a couple of collages by Norman O. Mustill. Look and listen. It’s delish . . . Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts — thanks for a Continent […]

Antwerp Public Linguistic Poem

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‪ “It doesn’t matter what happens. I like it when there are accidents. If anybody starts to argue that’s OK. … This is a public poem. This is the work I do for 45 years. I am completely meshuga. I do one every year.” — Alain Arias-Misson EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Paris Bookfair Focuses on New Practices in Art

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14 Rue Bonaparte, from Nov. 14 to 17. Open to the general public. Free admission. Postscript: Nov. 23 — The bookfair was jammed. Very impressive. The lecture hall was a19th-century amphitheater in back of the main hall. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Chris Burden Saved From the ‘Clutches of History’

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Roberta Smith really digs the Chris Burden show at the New Museum. “Extreme Measures” is not only “a superb survey, but also a kind of transfiguration,” she writes in her NY Times review. “It liberates the Los Angeles-based Mr. Burden from the clutches of history.” I’m uncertain of what she means by the “clutches of […]

19th-Century Balzac Meets 20th-Century Bellaart

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Gerard Bellaart’s masterly washed-pen drawing of Honoré de Balzac testifies to his great admiration for one of France’s most prodigious writers. He is particularly fond of the 19th-century Balzac novel Illusions perdues, about a young poet living in Angoulême, a provincial town in “France profonde,” who is desperate to make a name for himself in […]

Seamus Heaney, R.I.P.

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Seamus Heaney died today Fred just told me. that leaves very few of his caliber. attached an anatomical study as a sign of respect. the drawing was on the desktop when Fred brought me the sad news. I have mailed you the ‘stone from delphi’ which really sums up the poet and man. small precious […]

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