A Night in Palermo

It is loud & messy & warm, and there is no difference between inside and outside.

In the narrow streets you peer through curtains and see families, half-naked, watching TV or cutting onions. Old ladies sit outside on plastic chairs, chatting, a fairy-lit Madonna glittering above their heads.

Almost everything is in ruins. You think a house is ready for death with doors barely held-up by beams when a couple emerges from its depths, enlaced.
You will fantasize about living in that palazzo only to approach and see it hollow like an eaten tooth.

It smells of garbage boiled by heat. But there there is more, for finer noses: cooking, jasmine bushes, the smell of heated bricks. At night it's balmy. The temperature is that of your skin. There is no difference between inside and outisde.

photography by Letizia Battaglia

Getting Over It

Like an appendix to the previous post, my estival hangover has been fading.
Too bad then, that I discovered German photographer Herbert List. Like legendary Wilhelm von Gloeden before him, List was fascinated by Italy and Greece, and their local resources of male beauty. But as a member of the photo agency Magnum he also worked with actors, artists and all important fashion magazines of the day.
Can you see how he influenced Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber?

The only photo by List I could find that contained the cold is this. And somehow, it made me look forward to it.

For Now

Yes, summer is over
You no longer strip to merge with the air.

You no longer
Search the shade
Fan your face
Vandalize with pee or paint.

Soon your thighs will jitter in bed
Sweat reserved for rarer efforts.
For now.

Le Corbusier

Revamping and De-gaying

For those who'd been starting to give up on Woody Allen, Blue Jasmine will come as a surprise. Because Allen's latest - and fourthy-third - feature is without doubt the director's best since at least Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008).

Blue Jasmine (2013) Trailer

That is, first of all, thanks to Cate Blanchett. In this revamped version of Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, she excells as Blanche a.k.a. Jasmine, a fallen Park Avenue wife who needs to move in with her sister, Ginger. Like in Botho Strauss' play Gross und Klein, Blanchett does a brilliantly subtle psychotic. 

Cate Blanchett as the delusional Jasmine...

...and as deranged Lotte in Big and Small

But if this film avoids being another tedious digression on European life, it's because Allen is back in the US for the first time in a long time. And adapting an existing tale to contemporary American life works: The clash of classes is as relevant in 21st century post-crisis America as when the Streetcar rattled through New Orleans in 1947. 

Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

The only regret is the utter de-gaying of Williams’ story. Allen turns Blanche’s ex-boyfriend, who killed himself because he was gay, into a husband who killed himself because he was convicted for financial fraud. Even worse, the sexual power of Stanley Kowalski, played by Marlon Brando in the stage and film adaptations, finds no substitute in the somewhat failed (and very badly-dressed) masculinity of Chili, Ginger's boyfriend. Fortunately and unfortunately, this says more about how things have changed since Tennessee Williams than it does about Woody Allen's new film. 

Summer Snaps

1 - Levanzo, an island off Sicily
2 - Naomi Campbell for Harper's Bazaar, 1994
3 - Polish feminist art: Katarzyna Kozyra, Men's Bathhouse 
4 - Małgosia Bela by Glen Luchford for Self Service F/W 2011
5 - Flo Wales Bonner 

DIY Sacrifice

Please press the lever: Saint Thomas' hand needs to poke the wounds of Jesus.
Or do you prefer to make Saint Jerome hit himself with a rock to expiate his sins (and maybe yours)?

No, this is not a dream or a Bible Theme-park, it's the National Gallery. Never has one seen the place so irreverent. But who else to jazz it up - and re-interpret their collection - if not machino-phile oddball artist Michael Landy? 

Like his Credit Card Destroying Machine which ate my Visa at Frieze 2011, Landy's pieces in the current show "Saints Alive"  playfully tackle themes of sacrifice and self-destruction. And this is good. Because it lifts the rest of the Gallery halls from the dusty depths of history and pulls them into the now, the moment your foot hits that lever. You have to feel it before you believe it.

Is one disappointed to learn that Landy had the sculptures made according to drawings? A little - like hearing a saint say he curated a miracle. Does that make the show any less relevant? No. The effect of the sculptures - together with Landy's collages - is so moving it will make you forgive. Praised be the artist.

Until 24 November at the National Gallery. 

Photo/Opportunity

When you held its body between your fingers,
And it was yours alone,
Brushes and lips could turn it into what you felt;
And no one would ever know.