"Edie Factory Girl" - Biography of Warhol's Femme Fatale

It’s probably a safe assumption that Edie Sedgwick – the original Reality Star – is probably someone that Kim, Kloe, Koo Koo, and whatever other Kardashians there are know nothing about. 

In their book, Edie Factory Girl (VH1 Press), writer David Dalton and photographer Nat Finkelstein give an insider’s glimpse into the dysfunctional, speed-fuelled, short life of Sedgwick during her brief but meteoric tenure as Andy Warhol’s muse and mid-‘60s It-Girl. 

In an appropriately pop-artsy, collage-like format with rare photos taken by Finkelstein, the biography is written from the authors’ perspective as inhabitants of Warhol’s inner sanctum at the notorious Factory.  Dalton writes in a colorful, wildly veering, and decidedly opinionated tone that captures the fabulous era, the avant garde circus that was The Factory, the Technicolor drugs, all of which mirror the trajectory of Sedgwick’s manic life.  The inclusion of interviews and quotes from many of the scenesters including Betsey Johnson and Marianne Faithfull adds to the immediacy of the biography. 

Whether Sedgwick was a unique product and footnote of the times or wholly a creation of Warhol’s or all of the above, for a fleeting moment she was America’s answer to Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, and Twiggy.  However, unlike her closest British and European counterparts, Sedgwick was famous only for being famous.  Her sole accomplishments were being Andy’s visually arresting female twin at groovy NYC happenings and for starring in Warhol’s art films, which were usually mind-numbing, plot-less, script-less, hours- or day-in-the-life documents in bizarrely contrived, stoned-out scenarios.  Her mere presence in Warhol's films inadvertently made Sedgwick the world’s first reality star.  In retrospect, the films were Keeping Up With The Kardashians minus the editing, plus the drugs.    

Edie Factory Girl is a fast read in a good-looking package befitting its subject.  

For Sale: Imaginary Art - bidding starts at $160,000

One of the most sought after works at this year's Great Art Basel fair in Switzerland was "conceptual art" - art that either hasn't been created yet or never will be.  One such piece by American artist Lawrence Weiner was called "2 Metal Balls + 2 Metal Rings (Set Down in the Groove)."  It was nothing more than words painted on the ground that described Weiner's idea for a sculpture.  The lucky person to purchase his concept (starting price $160,000) receives a certificate allowing them to write the phrase in a room, or come up with their own sculpture. 

According to one collector of such art, "You may think more about a Weiner [text piece], over time, than about some canvas you've bought...An idea may not be material, but it's powerful."  The argument for wanting such pieces is that "it makes you wonder if it's even art - and therefore might be the art that's breaking new ground."

..Sound Duchamp-ian?  Zoolander-ish, even?  Read more in Blake Gopnik's Newsweek piece "Buying Art You Can't Take Home."

...Or don't read it, but pretend that you have read it, because the idea of reading it may be more powerful than actually reading it....

Art Du Jour





Blue Lou

©2011 RTunes68

  

The Return To Form Of An American Auteur

Full Disclosure: I have an obsessive fascination with all things Paris in the 1920s and the Lost Generation.  So I secretly have a hunch – call it fantasy, if you must – that Woody Allen made Midnight in Paris especially for me, and no one else. 

For a while, I – like a lot of long-time Woody Allen fans – thought that Allen’s days of making classic, smart, insightful, biting comedies were a thing of the past.  Then he surprised everyone with Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  As if to prove that it wasn’t some late-career fluke, Allen follows up that cinematic triumph with another winner here.

Gil (Owen Wilson), a screenwriter with literary ambitions, and his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) are visiting Paris with her stereotypically Republican parents (Mimi Kennedy, Kurt Fuller).  The conflict between Gil and his fiancée and her parents lies in the fact that he has romantic notions of giving up his lucrative Hollywood career to become a serious, full-time novelist in Paris while they want him to follow the money in Malibu and ignore whatever “fantasies” he may harbor.

One night, after a wine tasting, Gil walks alone through the streets of Paris.  At the stroke of midnight, a 1920s-model Peugeot pulls up with a group of party-goers who invite Gil to join them.   At the party, Gil realizes that he has been transported to the 1920s where he is a sort of intruder in A Moveable Feast.  During the evening, he befriends Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Allison Pill, Tom Hiddleston) and Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll).  Hemingway, who speaks to hilarious effect just as he writes in economical sentences, even promises to have Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) critique Gil’s manuscript.

In the following days, Gil spends much of his time walking.  During the daytime while he’s in 2011, he meets a storeowner, Gabrielle (Lea Seydoux), with whom he shares a love of the 1920s.  His evenings are spent in the 1920s, where he meets such Lost Generation luminaries as Picasso, Salvadore Dali (played by a hysterically show-stealing Adrian Brody), and Man Ray.  One of the funniest scenes in the movie occurs when Gil confesses to his Surrealist friends that he is actually from 2011…and they find nothing particularly unusual about his revelation.  

Gil also falls in love with Picasso’s mistress Adriana (Marion Cotillard), who like Gil, wishes she lived in a bygone era.  Adriana pines for the romanticism of Belle Epoque, Paris’ Golden Age.  Similarly, a horse and carriage full of party-goers invite Gil and Adriana, and soon they are transported to turn-of-the-century Paris and meet Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, and Edgar Degas.  Adriana is smitten with this era and proposes that the two of them stay. 

At this crossroad, Gil has an epiphany that while there is a “good old, glory days” comfort and romanticism to the past, it was never as perfect and memories have a way of rewriting history.  He decides that it’s better to accept the imperfections of the present and make the best of it.  With his new-found wisdom, Gil comes back to 2011 and makes a few decisions to improve his present and pursue a more satisfying future.   

In many ways, Midnight in Paris is Woody Allen’s love letter to Paris – the city, the art, the literature.  In fact, the first two minutes or so of the movie looks like a combination of a film made by the Tourist Board of Paris and a Monet painting.  However, despite the Parisian setting, the characters and dialogue are very much Woody Allen’s chatty and illustrious New York City.  Owen Wilson plays Gil by channeling Woody Allen.  Clearly, no one but Allen could have written Wilson’s dialogue.  Inez’s parents’ repartee is intrinsically Upper East Side.  Inez’s friend, the insufferable pseudo-intellectual Paul (played hilariously by Michael Sheen), who is a self-proclaimed expert on everything is also pure Manhattan.  We’ve seen all these characters in other Woody Allen movies, but they are still extremely funny and watchable.

Midnight in Paris shows Woody Allen at the peak of his abilities as an auteur.  Bravo.     

A SuperHeavy Super Teaser

SuperHeavy have all the potential to be super cool:  Mick Jagger, Joss Stone, Dave Stewart, Damian Marley, and A.R. Rahman.  According to Jagger, their debut "fusion" album features songs that "range from reggae to ballads to Indian songs in Urdu" and is due out in September.

If only this teaser offered a clip of music....

Let's hope this new cast of musicians is the catalyst Sir Mick needs to recapture that sense of adventure and willingness to innovate that the Stones once possessed...