The anticipated Turner Prize was awarded this week in the UK. For those of you not quite familiar with the prize, the Turner Prize for visual arts is a yearly award presented to a visual artist (it has been given to painters in the past, but it is usually associated with visual media) under the age of 50. The award is presented to the best piece of art work exhibited at the Tate Gallery during its annual Turner Prize exhibit.
Named after the controversial romantic landscape painter J.M.W. Turner, the prize has often lived up to it's infamous namesake. Although widely recognized as one of the greatest masters if British watercolor, Turner's provocative paintings fused elements of humanism and it's vulnerable and vulgar sublimity in natural world.
In Hannibal Crossing the Alps, this distinctive juxtaposition is clearly intended:
With this in mind it is no wonder that work as complex and provocative like the emotional sculptures (the one below is called "Virgin Mother") of Damien Hirst who was a winner in 1995 are just the type of work that Turner Prize winners often exhibit.
Hirst gained notoriety with his now equally infamous formaldehyde Shark that was exhibited at the Met a few years back, which was the winning piece in Hirst's repertoire.
Equally provocative was Tracy Emin's "My Bed" piece, exhibited at the Tate gallery in 1999 and also on the short list for the Turner. The work gained much media noteriety due to the presence of the bodily secretions in the bedsheets as well as items with other objects equally provocative ( undewear with menstrual blood, used condoms, etc). Although it did not win the prize it is representative of work constantly evaluated as a potential winner.
This year's winner is Richard Wright, who won the Prize with a gold fresco presented at the Turner exhibit as one of the official entries vying for the prize. The Guardian has published this article of the winner and his winning piece. The golden leaf fresco below was this year's winner. Sometimes the classics never runs out of style.
Well, we're back after a long pause caused in part by a four day trip to the windy city, which was not as windy as I expected but it was as cold. Unfortunately, NUTA was not able to visit the many cultural offering that the city had to offer, yet we are sure that it won't be our last time there.
Anyhow, one of my favorite weekly magazines (I must confess that I am not a subscriber anymore) is the New Yorker. Those of you who've had a chance to read The New Yorker know that it offers some of the best writing and investigative reporting out there. Their mid year fiction edition is one of the most anticipated issues for literature lovers everywhere and their regulator contributors are some of the most important figures around.
However, I've always felt that their movie reviews have not always been their strongest feature and it's usually the third or forth option when I am looking to read a bit into a film I am about to watch. Still I found this article in their movie blog about some of their favorite movies of the year. I found four films in the list that I personally like and some options that surprised me, including the Wes Anderson film Fantastic Mr. Fox, which NUTA reviewed last week. So take a look at the article and try to catch some of them before the year is over.
I'm a ritualistic reader of the Spanish newspaper El Pais. Their Culture section is very comprehensive when it comes to interviews with artists, writers and critics. The past two days I've been reading about Jose Emilio Pacheco, the Mexican poet who was awarded the Miguel Cervantes Prize in Spanish Literature and was curious to find out more about him and his work. If you are marveled by details of rhythm and frozen by the sublime beauty of words read this poem entitled Alta Tracion (High Treason)
Recently I had a debate with my good friend and Argentinean writer Eleonora Leone (small debate in which she won) about the validity of literary awards, what they mean, their political inclinations and overall agendas. At the end of our small debate, I concurred with her opinion that awards such as the Nobel in Literature have not always been given to the people that truly deserved them and surely not to some of the most spectacular writers in all of literature: Faulkner, Borges, Marcel Proust, James Joyce or even living legends like Mario Vargas Llosa or Philip Roth, just to name a few.
However some of the literary awards do shed compliment on some extraordinary writters and novels that would have remained in the dark if it was not for the prestige of receiving them (Junot Diaz comes to mind). Most importantly these awards enrich the curiosity of readers like myself who always long to discover writers and novels.
With this in mind I've put together a list of the most important literary prizes that come to mind, because as the old adage goes, Sharing is Caring:
Man Booker Award: Awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of either the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe.
Rómulo Gallegos International Novel Prize: Awarded to honor the work of the eminent novelist and also to stimulate the creational activity of the Hispanic speech writers.
Hope you found the list interesting, of course there are some awards that were not covered here and some incredible authors that even though were not mentioned in this list are also worth every single award here. We will cover some new writers and novels in a future entry.
My very good friend Melissa, who is an industrial design major at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn is a very reliable source to get your art right. Not because she is a connoisseur snob who would use the term avant garde like it was going out of style but rather because when you talk about art with her, she talks it how she sees it. Yesterday when I was trying to persuade her into writing a weekly post on art and design (her initial response was "I can't promise I'll do it every week") she texted me with a very interesting painter by the name of Eric Fischl, who is an American painter and sculpturer, considered by some as the godfather of modern realism.
Being the amateur aficionado of art that I am, I asked her what she liked about Fischl's work and her response was exactly what the non cognoscenti like myself want to hear; he's a realist painter with a Freudian complex. So I went "lurking" around the interweb in search of Eric Fischl and what I found fit exactly into the description of Melissa. Here is one of Fischl's famous painting entitled "Sleep Walking":
In this painting a young pubescent boy seems to be masturbating into a kiddie pool. It seems interesting to me the depiction of this act in such a strong manner, since it is Fischl's intent to provoke indignation at seeing what otherwise is an act that is common in sexuality. "The intention of Sleepwalker was not to offend but to shock an audience. Society weren’t so much shocked by the act of masturbation but rather the fact that it had been made public" wrote one critic. Interestenly so, the boy in this scene is somewhat unaware that he is being watched, either by us or perhaps by the voyeuristic Fischl. The shadow in the pool is perhaps the only indication that there are highlights set up for an act that this boy intended to be done at night and alone.
This cosmos of sexuality, voyeurism and emotional reaction seems to be the signature of Fischl's work. His depiction of everyday people in normal but not talked about situation often weight on issues concerning moral questions and psychodramatic reactions. Here is one of his famous and controversial pieces entitled "Bad Boy"
The setting again seems brilliant: this private/intimate moment, broken again by the voyeuristic. The light emanating quietly through the blinds. Has the young boy also stumbled unknowingly into this woman's room, just like the lights and the viewers are stumbling into this very same scene? Or he is also participating, suggestively like the fruits on the table? "He paints these great scenes that make you question what is really going on" said Melissa. Is this a painting about the loss of innocence or of the often private and exciting encounters with sexuality like in "Sleep Walking"? Crude or just normal? Human sexuality is the rawest of human needs anyway and at the end we are all active participants in its menage.
P.S. I will try to convince Melissa to write this post herself next Tuesday and later this week a post about Art Basel.
I have been talking about this guy the whole year: how he suffered countless life changing events that made him retire into the mountains of Maine to seek self recovery, how he only communicated with one person during his time in the cabin and perhaps most importantly how isolation, distress and mental suffocation gave birth to one of the most beautiful albums I have heard in a long time: For Emma, Forever Ago. It's all there: it's beautiful imperfections (hisses, creaks, hollow echoes of sound), it's melancholic comfort, it's obscure optimism. Bon Iver (a variation of the french expression for "good winter") is the product of Justin Vernon a terrific musician formally of DeYamur Edison. Many of the people that I've recommended Bon Iver to, have been looping the song below in their ipods or their morning drive, I recommend you purchase the entire album ($9.99 on Itunes and even cheaper if you buy on LaLa, which is my favorite online musical store for independent music), pick a long and cool afternoon, settle quietly in your favorite place of comfort and find out for yourself why every major music critic was all over Bon Iver this year.
In one of it’s key scenes, the main character in Wes Anderson’s first stop animation film “Fantastic Mr. Fox” suddenly asks his accomplice Possum friend, “Why a fox? I mean, why am I a fox and not a horse”. His possum friend, not a very bright fellow carelessly ignores the question, but Mr. Fox, the risqué hero of this engaging film, is entrenched in his own existential identity crisis throughout this wonderful and meticulous film about a family of Foxes, their community and the efforts of three farmers to get rid of all of them. The film is an adaption of a children’s book by Roald Dahl and though the puppets that abound this tale could easily be found in any educational video for toddlers, this is a serious story about family, friendship and the search of one’s self. That the story weighs heavily on questions of morality and the sometimes not-so-ethical decisions taken by its protagonist only provides the film with the serious gravity that its animated realm may disguise. Underneath the fur and shinny eyes of these animated actors there is an oeuvre of real life dilemmas that anyone who has ever felt a desire to find out who they are and what they are here for will immediately identify with. After escaping a near death experience with his pregnant wife, Mr. Fox (George Clooney) decides that the way to go for the safety of his family is to retire from a career of chicken stealing and settle into a comfortable life as a newspaper columnist. His new life is dictated by his semi-famous published articles, (an item of uneasy insecurity since he is not convinced that many people actually read his column), a loving and artistic wife (Meryl Street) who’s body of work is to paint dazzling landscapes often ridden by thunderstorms, and a moody-angst ridden teenage son (Jason Schwartzman) constantly longing for his father’s approval.
After discussing his situation with his supporting wife (a brilliant dialogue where he talks about his aging life; he is 7 fox years old and nearing the end of his life) and considering the possibility of relocating somewhere more appropriate for his intended way of life (“I feel poor”, he tells his wife), Mr. Fox decides to move his family to a somewhat more affluent household against the advice of his attorney (Bill Murray) who is afraid that Mr. Fox will fall victim to three vicious farmers who will be his new neighbors. Yet where others see danger, Mr. Fox sees opportunity and he soon finds his way back to his old Foxy ways. What follows next is an uplifting, comic and witty examination of belonging to a family and consequently to a community while finding or perhaps not losing a part of one’s self in the process. Family dynamics are put to the test when Mr. Fox’s nephew, a precocious and naturally gifted teenager by the name of Kristofferson, moves in with the family, ensuing an ongoing competition for the attention of Mr. Fox by his teenage son and the new visitor. As is the case with all children’s tale, the interaction between Mr. Fox and his farmer assailants is met with the levity that would make a children’s fable both entertaining and sufficiently clear for a child to understand, however, Anderson (The Royal Tennenbaums, Rushmore, The Life Aquatic with Steve Sizzou) packages such minute and dazzling details in the film, that such idiosyncrasies lend the film the appropriate gravitas that other films with human actors can only dream of. Perhaps it is the combination of a fantasy animated world that disguise certain physical marks in the characters that make it somewhat more real when you see it coming from a puppet, or perhaps it is the tone of a completely fantastic world (the yellow tones that decorate the complete set are dazzling, hypnotizing and mood setting) which provides the story with the necessary realism to make you forget that your watching an animated feature. No U Turns Allowed recommends Fantastic Mr. Fox as a must see film.
After a delicious and coma inducing Thanksgiving dinner I am back at No U Turns thinking mostly about Black Friday, not because I'm ready to make those long lines to buy a laptop at $177 (true advertisement at Best Buy) but rather because it seems that Black Friday is the beginning of the holiday season, the season of giving. Following in the spirit and appropriately so, NUTA (that's our acronym people, c'mon) is proud to unveil Fridays as "What The Hell Just Happened?" day, a recap of the week's highlights on music, movies, arts, books and anything else that caught our attention, it's kind of our weekly day of giving back.
It was a week of nice surprises everywhere:
The New York Times gave us it's annual and anticipated Fall Movies Special, which includes a list of break out performances to expect in what is considered Oscar season. Also, here is a review of Pedro Almodovar's "Broken Embraces" starring the beautiful Penelope Cruz who has become Almodovar's preferred muse, a choice that NUTA completely agrees with. We've also included a review of the highly rated "Me and Orson Welles" a story of the brilliant director and the consequences of becoming charmed by art.
We are also looking forward to watching Wes Anderson's new anti-fable 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox" starring George Clooney and Meryl Streep. Don't let the Sesame Street antic fool you, this is not a movie for children (I least I hope it's not).
NUTA favorite KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic had some interesting guests these past weeks. The soul infused Fitz and The Tantrums is jumpy, catchy and a must listen. If your into something more Jazz(y) listen to Orgone a Los Angeles entourage of awesome musicians ( they remind me a bit of another multiple member great band from Miami, The Spam Allstars). And last but not least the excellent Colombian duo Bomba Stereo is a mix of cool rock, techno, hip hop and cumbia. Please remember to make a donation to KCRW to keep programs like Morning Becomes Eclectic up and running.
Pitchfork published a great article about the past decade in Indie, an examination of what exactly the word means, how it's metamorphosed into a cultural phenomenom and become the defining concept of a generation. The usual culprits are included: Interpol, The Shins, Death Cab, Arcade Fire, as well as some established figures of neo-hipster culture, Zooey Deschanel, Jason Schwartzman, Diablo Cody and her infinitely quirky film Juno.
Over at NPR we found this interesting list of the years best cookbooks. Fresh Air had an interview with director Judd Apatow and the alchemy of "Funny People". Listen to it here.
The pop culture story of the week was Adam Lambert's overt performance at Sunday's American Music Awards and while the storm has receded about whether it was appropriate for him to kiss another man on national television (as well as simulating oral sex and walking his dancers around on a leash) many had their say on the issue, from those that think that it was inappropriate and tasteless, to those that say that there is a double standard between what women performers (think Madonna kissing Britney Spears at the VMA's a few years back) and Hip Hop stars have been doing for years: capitalizing on sex and violence as a vehicle to sell records. And while Lambert's display may have pushed the envelop of what is "acceptable decency" in American society here at NUTA we are 100% for freedom of expression and equanimity when it comes to art.
Thats it for now and remember: make the best of each road taken because in life there are No U Turns Allowed.
This morning during my commute to work, (a gloomy but incredibly tranquil Wednesday morning) I was listening to Thao Gnguyen perform on KCRW's Morning Becomes Electic and on the related videos that YouTube provided me with I found this incredible gem of a singer. Her name is Emily Wells, a 26 year old musician from Los Angeles who performs a mix of folk, jazz and hip-hop fusion which along with her incredible voice creates what I can classify as "quirky/melodic/gloomy music to feel happy". I immediately sent the YouTube video to my music loving friends and the response was nothing short than I expected: they loved it. Some people compared her to Sia Furler the wonderful chanteuse from Australia, I wouldn't go that far geographically speaking and for those of you who have heard of our local folk prodigy Rachel Goodrich, you will love what Emily does with a few instruments, a haunting loop and her vocal range. I've included a review from a website I found called iheartdaily.com. Enough chattering, here is Emily performing the right song for a gloomy and rainy Miami day, enjoy:
