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ONLY BE PARISIAN
Only-Be Parisian
The Offspring comes to Paris with the best their punk
Punk is not dead, as the graffiti says in many cities in the world. It is not dead, but it is not easy to find many groups that can keep the legacy left by the Sex Pistols or The Clash. The Offspring not only keeps the legacy, but it is also part of it. The Offspring was created in California, a city that houses some of the most important punk bands of current times. The band was formed in 1984, its members are: Dexter Holland, who besides being the rhythm guitar is in charge of singing, Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman, the lead guitarist, Greg K on bass and Pete Parada on drums, who have been playing for more than 27 years and released several successful albums that still play with the energy as when they started. The Offspring throughout their career, have sold around 35 million copies around the globe. Thanks to the album “Smash” they became very famous in the mainstream. In 2005, they compiled an album with their greatest hits, which was ideal for all who didn’t want to buy all their albums and wanted to hear just the best of Californians. Since their beginnings, The Offspring have released 8 studio albums, won a dozen awards and established themselves as one of the most important punk bands in the world. This time the group is on tour around the world to please their fans with their songs in large arenas and small clubs. The Offspring’s most famous singles include: “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)”, “Why Do not You Get a Job”, “Original Prankster” and “Hit That” among...
Marc Desgrandchamps in Paris
Until the 4th of September, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris is hosting the retrospective exhibition of contemporary French painter Marc Desgrandchamps. The monograph show is centered round illustrating his work as a whole, and includes various unfinished paintings belonging to private collections. The aim is to create a show which compiles all the work which has helped Desgrandchamps come to be considered as one of the key players in the resurgence of painting in France. The exhibition is organized round forty large-scale paintings, along with a variety of work on paper, a mix of drawings, collages and lithographs. It is an interesting way of being able to trace the evolution of the artist, and his search for an individual artistic path which is separate from the trends and demands of the global art market. Marc Desgrandchamps lives and works in Lyon, and studied in both in Aix-en-Provence and Paris. His first exhibition was the Georges Pompidou Centre in 1987, which was during a time when the critics and the public were more geared towards conceptual art, and painting had been pushed to one side, as though the less attractive, intelligent sister of contemporary art. In spite of this, Desgrandchamps´ own brand of the form and the strong identity of his work has made him into a key exponent of contemporary painting. From his beginnings, right up to the present, the artist´s style has undergone many changes. His brushstroke has strayed from classical painting, with its clearly marked lines, towards a kind of painting of subtle and ethereal lines which play with the concept of superimposition and the...
Picasso and his years in Paris
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona exhibits from the first of July to October 16th the exhibition “Devour Paris. Picasso 1900-1907,” which as its name implies, shows the artist´s evolution since his arrival in the French city. The presentation was organized by both the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands and by the Spanish Cultural Action along with Endesa as a sponsor. Picasso arrived in Paris in 1900 and almost a decade later, managed to obtain massive attention as a leading avant-garde artist in the city settling as the forefront artist of that movement. During this time the man from Malaga had a chance to see the works of Gauguin, Puvis de Chavannes, Van Gogh, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Rodin among others. As expected, seeing all of these great artists created a huge change in the head of the Spanish Painter who incorporated in his art many of the features that the before mentioned artists had utilized. Due to this reason Picasso explored many new techniques. In “Devour Paris. Picasso 1900-1907″ you can observe no less than 50 works of the Spanish artist fabricated ??through different techniques and, as if this were not enough, 47 other paintings by some of the most important artists of history as Cézanne Van Gogh and Rodin, among others. The idea behind this is not only enjoy them but see what Picasso took from those masters into his own art and how his style evolved through his years in Paris. Van Gogh was one of the few artists which he declared his admiration and respect for. That´s exactly why you see so much influence from the...
Rock Seine Festival in Paris
How much further are they going to take it? I mean, what is modern music all about now? Modern meaning Pop. If we analyze a little the patterns and trends of the development of pop music over the last 60 years, we see that it´s not just all about piecing together sounds and images, creating and producing records for the young people who scream for Elvis, The Beatles, and so on… The strange thing about those early days was the impact of those artists on daily life; something which in general you don´t see so much today. That´s to say, however much a cultural phenomenon Lady Gaga might be, she is far more of a construction, taking iconography to fetishistic levels. Her invention is nothing more than a remix of a mixture; Ziggy Stardust must be turning in his grave… Nowadays, pop is nothing but a cog in the wheels of the system- nothing but a silly game we all play, but don´t really understand. Indie Rock doesn´t count for much either. With the massive turnover of record labels, blogs, websites, the death of Myspace, the rise of Facebook, and all the other social networks you can think of, the sound of music all around the world is pretty much sold out, and exhausted. On the one hand, the mp3 is practical, useful, as a form of recreation in amongst that whole tangle of musical formats, but nevertheless it is bound to represent art, or knowledge in an inferior way. The spirit of recent vinyl has meant that monsters like Lady Gaga edit in vinyl, because if not, they...
La petite mort by Will Santillo and Dian Hanson
When we face a work of art we are excited and many feelings go through our body, but when that work also speaks of sexuality and eroticism we like it even more. That is why this book called “La petite mort” is so coveted by fans of erotic literature. In French the phrase “petite mort” is used to name the orgasm and the author of this book, Canadian photographer Will Santillo, seized on this idea for the editorial line of his book. He said that if the death was a small orgasm, masturbation could be a small suicide. And this is the theme that develops with the editor Dian Hanson, with whom he forms an excellent team. Will Santillo was responsible for photographing women while masturbating for eight years and Dian Hanson interviewed these and other woman, to create this book that combines ideology, sensuality and explicit sexuality. It is a pleasure to read as couple and see the differences among women: some are young, others adult, skinny, plump, tall, short… but the orgasm is just as enjoyable for everyone. But the book has not only erotic photos of women, but advocates a progressive stance and speaks of the power women have (or should have). Those over 50 who were taken photos said they did it so that their daughters had a better life, and this meant that they could be freer and have more opportunities to enjoy an orgasm without social or any other constraints. d.b If you rent one of the apartments in Paris you can experience first hand what the “petite mort” is and enjoy it...
Claude Cahun Retrospective. Jeu de Paume in Paris
The Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris is holding a retrospective of Claude Cahun until 25 September this year. The exhibition, curated by Juan Vicente Aliaga and Leperlier Francisco, is organized by the Jeu de Paume and co-produced with the Art Institute of Chicago and the Virreina Centre de la Imatge de Barcelona. The retrospective devoted to the writer, actress and Surrealist photographer seeks to rescue the iconoclastic nature of her work which is almost unknown. Thus, after 16 years absence from the exhibition halls of France, Cahun’s art returns to the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume to enable younger generations “to discover the work and challenges that this woman had to confront within the society of her time,” said Juan Vicente Aliaga. The exhibition shows 140 works and documents that have been provided by the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Institute of Modern Art Valeriano and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, plus pieces from a few private collections that have never been exhibited. Lucy Renée Mathilde Schwob, Claude Cahun´s real name, was born in Nantes, France in 1894. Rebellious, anarchistic and revolutionary from a young age, she took the name of her uncle, Leon Cahun. She went on to break one of the taboos of early twentieth century conservative France by openly acknowledging her homosexuality. In 1920 she moved to Paris with her partner, Suzanne Malherbe (known by the pseudonym Marcel Moore), who shared her intellectual curiosity, and began writing for the Mercure de France. Literature, theatre and photography ran through his veins, and she was bursting with ideas for transforming society completely. In 1929 she published her...
Santu Mofokeng in Paris
Until the 25th of September the National Gallery Jeu de Paume exhibits Shadow Hunter, a retrospective of the photographic work of Santu Mofokeng. The exhibition of the most important photographer in South Africa corresponds to the work that took place at the end of the Apartheid in Johannesburg and the beginning of the political transition. The retrospective, commissioned by Corine Diserens, is organized around close to 200 photographs and slides, as well as texts and documents which refer to his work and others that are part of his writings. Santu Mofokeng was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1951. Without any academical formation, he began in photographic informality of the streets of Soweto, making it into a job that would allow him to capture the political process that the country was going through in the 1980s in a privileged way. Soweto is located 24km away from Johannesburg and was built to transport the people of black race that lived in white race areas during Apartheid. The overcrowding and oppression exerted by the State against Soweto were the basic ingredients of the rebellion of 1976, when the Government announced that the education would be in Afrikaans and not in English, knowing that it was a language that the population didn´t know. The revolt was a product of the indignation for the abuse and condemnation of a miserable life that the white state imposed to the black race majority. This episode which finished with 575 dead and hundreds of arrested people who were tortured and an uncountable amount of injured, was captured by the lense of Mofokeng. Belonging to the collective...
Douglas Gordon in Paris
The Rodin Museum in Paris will exhibit the interesting Douglas Gordon’s work Predictable incident in Unfamiliar Surroundings until the 4th of September. The work was made in 1995 and it analyzes the influence of the media on people’s behavior. It has been considered as a key element to understand Gordon’s aesthetic proposal. Douglas Gordon is considered one of the more prominent contemporary creators of conceptual art. Before turning 30 years old, he had already attracted tremendous critical attention with his visual works pervaded with groundbreaking ideas about the domination of media on our society. For Gordon, we all have behaviors created by the influence of the media on our society. A few months after we are born, we are sitting in front of a computer. Then we grow up and the computer captures our attention with thousands of images. All of that has generated a society and a civilization dominated by images. This aspect, among others, is what Gordon is trying to make us understand in his installations, where he deconstructs the well-known TV or movie and he subverts and alters them, surprising the spectators and changing those preconceived images in their imaginary. This is the case of Predictable incident in Unfamiliar Surroundings, in which he took a series of sexual images of Captain Kirk and some actresses starring in the famous American television series Star Trek. Gordon projects those images from a device installed on several piled-up Budweiser beer cans. This muted work is divided in five images in slides with different projection times. The segmentation of images and the series that created the imaginary of the American...
Mario Vargas Llosa, the bad girl
“The bad girl” by the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa is an exquisite novel that was published in 2006 and since then, it has captivated audiences of all nationalities and different ages, because it is an erotic book that seduces men and women. The Nobel Prize in Literature Mario Vargas Llosa wrote this book, his first romance novel, in which he shows a magnificent story of love and passion with touches of sensuality. During four decades, the main characters of the book have an intense love story, which is developed in different cities. Everything begins in Lima-Peru where the “bad girl” or “Chilean girl” comes to enchant Ricardo Somocurcio, the main character. From the beginning their love develops in bed and other delicious places to have sex. But the historical context of this novel is also interesting, because it takes place during the second half of the twentieth century, when there were important political situations worldwide, although this is only in the background. The cities where they meet by chance are also very well described and add a personal touch to the story. Ricardo lives in Paris, but various episodes of the novel take place in London, Tokyo and Madrid. What captures you the most of this love story, is how these two characters love each other and are sexually attracted, so much that they can spend entire days locked in different rooms throughout the world. d.b Do not miss reading this novel in Paris, location that takes an important part of the story, rent apartments in Paris and walk around the streets Ricardo Somocurcio walked hand in...
