October 31, 2007
October 30, 2007
October 29, 2007
Ileana Sonnabend, Art World Figure, Dies at 92
By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: October 24, 2007
Ileana Sonnabend, whose eye, shrewdness and lasting alliance with her first husband, Leo Castelli, made her one of the most formidable contemporary art dealers of her time, died on Sunday at her home in Manhattan. She was 92.
Sonnabend Gallery
Ileana Sonnabend in 2004.
She died in her sleep after several months of illness, her daughter, Nina Sundell, said yesterday.
Starting in the 1960s, Mrs. Sonnabend was a force to contend with in the art world. She was especially important for introducing postwar American art to Europe in the 1960s, and later for bringing Americans up to speed with developments abroad. She was also famous for amassing an enormous art collection that remained mostly in storage.
Her galleries — Sonnabend Gallery in New York and Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris — showed new, usually top-tier talent from both continents for more than 40 years, from the Pop and Minimal Americans to the Italian Arte Poveristas, to various strands of Conceptual Art, Neo-Expressionism, Neo-Geo and beyond.
The list is long, and remains an astounding record of an artistic era studded with names like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, George Baselitz and Jeff Koons.
Mrs. Sonnabend’s exhibitions often had the art world talking. One was “Underneath the Arches,” in which the British team of Gibert & George, painted gold and wearing tweed suits, lip-synched a British vaudeville song over and over. The performance opened Mrs. Sonnabend’s gallery at 420 West Broadway — one of the earliest in SoHo — in 1971.
Also talked about was the Sonnabend 1991 show of Jeff Koons’s “Made in Heaven” series of paintings and sculptures that showed the artist engaged in sexual acts with his wife, Ilona Staller.
Mrs. Sonnabend was variously described as “an iron marshmallow” and “a cross between Buddha and Machiavelli.” Short and plump, she was grandmotherly in appearance from a relatively early age due in part to an illness that necessitated a wig.
Her genteel, old Europe manner belied an often imperious yet bohemian and self-deprecating personality. Her soft, fluty voice often left a listener unprepared for the force of her comments, which she could deliver in at least five languages. On leaving a dance concert in the 1960s, she is said to have remarked to a companion, speaking of the choreographer, “I’m not coming back until someone tells me his I. Q. has gone up.”
Mrs. Sonnabend was perhaps the last in a line of important European-born American art dealers that included Kurt Valentine and Pierre Matisse as well as Mr. Castelli, who died in 1998 but whose Leo Castelli Gallery continues to operate.
She was born Ileana Schapira in Bucharest, Romania, on Oct. 28, 1914, the daughter of Mihail Schapira, a prominent Jewish industrialist. She grew up in luxury, attended by nannies and governesses. But she demonstrated an early independence and interest in art that she may have inherited from her Viennese mother, Marianne, who years later divorced her father and married the Russian-born American artist John Graham.
Mrs. Sonnabend met Mr. Castelli when she was 17 and married him a year later, asking for and receiving a painting by Matisse instead of an engagement ring. In 1935, the couple moved to Paris, where they became part of the Surrealist circle. In 1939, Mr. Castelli, backed by his father-in-law, opened his first gallery with an interior designer named René Drouin.
After World War II broke out, the Castellis and their daughter, Nina, fled to New York, where Mrs. Sonnabend’s parents had already established themselves, having purchased a town house at 4 East 77th Street in Manhattan. The Castellis reached New York on a Portuguese steamer out of Lisbon and moved into an apartment in the building. In 1957, after dealing privately for more than a decade, Mr. Castelli opened a gallery in the couple’s living room.
Mrs. Sonnabend did not begin her own career in earnest until after 1959, when she divorced Mr. Castelli. With her second husband, an amateur Dante scholar named Michael Sonnabend, whom she had met in the 1940s while attending classes at Columbia, she moved first to Rome and then to Paris. In 1962, they opened a small gallery on Quai des Grands-Augustins with a show of Mr. Johns’s work.
There, and in a larger gallery on Rue Mazarine, the Sonnabends established a European bulkhead for new American art, often to the vehement dismay of French art critics. They introduced Pop and Minimal artists like Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, George Segal, Donald Judd and Robert Morris.
Mr. Sonnabend was known for philosophical discussions while Mrs. Sonnabend sold work and arranged exhibitions. In the late 1960s, they hired as gallery director a slim, elegant Portuguese student named Antonio Homem, who bore a striking resemblance to Mr. Castelli as a young man and who became something of an alter ego to Mrs. Sonnabend. In the late 1980s, she and Mr. Sonnabend adopted Mr. Homem. Mr. Sonnabend died in 2001.
In addition to Mr. Homem and her daughter both of New York, Mrs. Sonnabend is survived by three grandchildren and two great-granddaughters.
October 27, 2007
October 26, 2007
October 25, 2007
Natalie Curtis Myspace
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=177625740
October 24, 2007
star wars trumpet solo talent
with a million plus views on youtube, maybe you all have seen this. if not, check out the acting and dance moves displayed as well.
October 23, 2007
shirley bassey
So you were wondering what Shirley Bassey, who sang "Goldfinger" has been up to lately? Well, the 72 year old is apparently a fan of Philadelphia's own Pink, and recoreded a cover of one of her songs:
October 21, 2007
October 20, 2007
K.C. & The Sunshine Band - I Get Lifted
George McCrae does an awesome cover of this K.C. song. Way smoother. This performance is live disco at its best.
October 19, 2007
George McCrae
the invention of the seconf half of Bryan Ferry's career, and disco, or at least just a great song:
a certain romance
I haven't heard the 2nd Arctic Monkeys record, but this-the closer on their debut-is one of several reasons to listen, along with a jillion brits.
the floaters - float on
chris smith sent me this today. he says he has dibs on being larry. i am probably partial to charles. i do know that this song rules.
October 18, 2007
Be Your Own Pet
this is like care bears on fire's older brothers and sister's band. justin and i saw them last year. i liked them. (the guitarist wore a muscle shirt and just barely kept himself from falling off stage) they are the next dalliance in the sonic youth mentored old skull, redd kross chain
October 17, 2007
Aly and AJ (Walking on Sunshine)
aly and aj are currently my most hated thing about america. i think this video and their career proves that the happy disney ideal requires having your brain removed. i wouldnt be surprised if they turn out to be related to vicki (aka small wonder) the appear surprised at every turn 'wow here's a soundstage and they are making a video!' 'wow i love the teacup ride!' 'wow working in a factory is messy!' i also detest the amount of time they spend smiling and laughing at each other as if every moment of their existence is one long aw shucks.
October 16, 2007
October 15, 2007
October 13, 2007
raymond scott
i don't know much about this, but it's cool. if anyone can identify/tell me anything about the paintings, i'm all ears...
October 12, 2007
Birth of a monster
Old school grimace either used to ave six appendages or else what i'm looking at are fat rolls used as shelves for drinks.
October 11, 2007
Grimace or something.
A few days ago I did a studio visit with a painter friend. One of the shapes in her paintings looked like the shape of Grimace.
So I told her. I was shocked (and she at the same time thought I was very weird for saying it) that she didn't know who Grimace was. "ya know, that purple gum-drop doofus from the McDonalds clan". Blank stare. I wondered if she was alive in the United States anytime between 1970 and 2000. The next day I searched for the perfect image of Grimace to send her and hopefully regain some of her confidence in my sanity. Within a couple of tries I found this image. I think it's great. Not sure it has anything to do with Grimace but worth contemplating anyhow.
October 9, 2007
October 7, 2007
black flag Depression
back to a previous subject: is there good black flag? i would have to give a resounding yes. when i was 11 i had a mix tape with minor threat on one side and black flag the first five years on the other. i could have wrote depression, it is my song. also noteworthy is that greg ginn's favorite band was the grateful dead. slightly related note last night chris and i were watching the phillies lose at our friend max's house. someone put a zz top record on, but chris thought we needed a more phillies timezone friendly tune something defiantly east coast so we blasted the first agnostic front record till the end of the game. it didnt work but it made chris and i take back some of our smack talk about hardcore.
Performance - Theatrical Trailer (Mick Jagger James Fox)
one of my favorite movies sex drugs violence rock and roll and the last poets.
als varying reports state that donald cammell emulated part of the end in his own demise.
Donald Cammell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Donald Seaton Cammell (January 17, 1934 – April 24, 1996) was a Scottish film director who enjoys a cult reputation thanks to his debut film Performance, which he co-directed with Nicolas Roeg.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Cammell was a prodigy as a society portrait painter and thanks to family connections became a central figure of the swinging London social scene of the 1960s, specifically of what became known as the 'Chelsea Set'. Cammell's father was biographer to Aleister Crowley, and Crowley, who lived nearby the Cammells for a time, was Donald's godfather. After Performance Cammell struggled to get another film produced until the visually stunning but low key Demon Seed in 1977. He also made the eccentric horror thriller White Of The Eye in 1987. Between infrequent film and TV directing jobs, Cammell made a mark directing music videos for the likes of U2.
When Cammell's 1995 film Wild Side was cut by the producer, he committed suicide by shooting himself, though his wife claimed the wound was not immediately fatal, and that he asked for a mirror so that he could watch himself die. (This is disputed in the published Cammell biography.) A posthumous "director's cut", commissioned by FilmFour, and edited by his widow and co-screenwriter China Kong and editor Frank Mazzola, was released in 2000 to critical acclaim.
In 2005, Fan-Tan, a novel Cammell conceived with actor Marlon Brando in 1979, was released.
October 5, 2007
October 4, 2007
Henry Rollins on Woody Allen
Sometimes Henry Rollins in his elder years is really, really bad. Sometimes he's good though.
THE FALL on the tube channel 4 - 1983
john peel got roped into doing some stupid ryan seacrestesc shit and he made a stipulation that he he would only do it if his new favorite band the fall was able to play a song,. this is a bit north but perpendicular to brooklyn SMILE! first time the fall was on tv
October 3, 2007
October 2, 2007
Television Personalities - All the Young Children on Crack
there arent enough tvp videos online. this is from last last year. tap dance to handclaps.
