Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Time Capsule: Algren, Burroughs, Mailer, et al . . .

by

UPDATE The Z Collection is available for ordering on line. My staff of thousands insisted on a plug for me: The Z Collection: Portraits & Sketches — my reflections on many of the writers and artists I have known, worked with, or written about — is being published by AC Books in New York in […]

A Little-Known Master Artist’s ‘Uncollected’ Works

by

The pages of Uncollected illustrate the variety of the artworks that a little-known master artist produced over the years. Most of the pieces have appeared in scattered places but have never been collected in one place — thus the title. Norman O. Mustill, who died in 2013, also produced many other works that haven’t been […]

A Look Ahead: They’re Putting on a Party and a Show

by

My staff of thousands informs me that the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library has acquired the Granary Books archive. So publisher and library will mark the occasion with a bit of hoopla and an exhibition that opens Sept. 8, the day after Labor Day. It’s called . . . The Book Undone: Celebrating […]

‘Outside In’: Clayton Patterson at the Howl Gallery

by

Now that ​A​i Weiwei has his passport back, ​will he​ ​​make it to New York in time to catch Clayton Patterson’s art exhibition, “​O​utside In”? Ai says he’s heading to Berlin, and he’s planning shows of his own in London. Since ‘Outside In” at the Howl Gallery runs only through mid-August, chances are he won’t […]

And Now for a Different Kind of Music

by

It wasn’t intended as such. All the gear-shifting — the whining, growling, screaming soundtrack — makes the difference. Minus that it’s just a meandering road trip (at high speed, granted, on Paris streets). And that kiss? Strictly branding. Mere advertising. C'était un rendez-vous – 1976 from LeCatalog on Vimeo. Here’s the music again, Hollywood-style: EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

‘Freedom Is a Career’ — Obituary for Mike Lesser

by

By Heathcote Williams His approach to life and politics was fueled by emotion rather than the twisted logic of compliance. Finding himself born into an era when life on earth seemed daily–and increasingly–under threat, Mike Lesser’s logic was visceral. Other Angry Young Men long ago may have mellowed and somehow come to terms with a […]

The Outsider Writer on the Inside of the Outside

by

Charles Plymell (Charley to those who know him, Charlie to those who don’t) has been an outsider for decades, self-declared and otherwise, railing against everything that smacks of the inside — especially the arbiters of government arts grants, who have unfailingly overlooked him, even against his old friend Allen Ginsberg, whom he relentlessly excoriates for […]

Mike Lesser, R.I.P.: ‘In Conversation With a Dying Friend’

by

Heathcote Williams’s elegy is a meditation on death. Alan Cox reads it. The collage portrait of Mike Lesser as a young man is by Claire Palmer. The text of ‘In Conversation With a Dying Friend’ is posted for reading at IT: International Times. “ . . . my atoms will just disappear. “There’ll be a […]

Artist Bronzes Writer’s Life and Work in a Store Window

by

The German artist Vera Bonsen has a window assemblage currently on display in a Heidelberg storefront that bronzes the life and writings of the American expatriate poet Cody Maher. The paper hangings consist of poems, diaries, photos and so on from 30 years’ worth of manuscripts. The artifacts include hats, a pair of boxing gloves, […]

Queers & Comics: Alison Bechdel

by

Click in at 14’30”. That gets you right to the funny, smart, invariably entertaining cartoonist telling her story. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

A Spanking New German Edition of ‘Royal Babylon’

by

And now if you just care to look this way … it’s bi-lingual, too. The dark side of the English royal family From the publisher: Did you know that Queen Elizabeth II is the largest landowner in the world? She owns 10 times more land than the recently deceased King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The […]

Beat Scene Magazine Eyeballs ‘American Porn’

by

My staff of thousands tells me that “American Porn” was reviewed in Beat Scene, a British magazine edited by Kevin Ring. That was news to me. Here’s the review: The staff wanted to know what I thought of the review. I said I liked what the reviewer said about the poet: “Heathcote Williams is a […]

Bellaart Paints Homage to Yves Tanguy

by

Oil on canvas by Gerard Bellaart (left). Drawing by Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Max Morise, and Man Ray (below). Postscript: June 19 — The work of Gerard Bellaart is a continuous esoteric sub-form of question-and-answer via images. A facetious confession of being, not in the existential sense of painting and sketching, but rather through asymmetry […]

‘The Multimillionaire Arms Dealer — By Appointment’

by

A new poem by Heathcote Williams, posted at IT: International Times, begins like this: There’s no difference between being an arms dealer And being a wanted war criminal. Although you don’t have to get your hands bloody The results are equally abhorrent. But arms dealing will suit anyone used to gracious living In one dinosaur […]

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

an ArtsJournal blog