Engineer's Daughter

marry me

Annie Clark is an inspiration to tousled-headed girls everywhere.  She was so cute tonight in her St. Vincent guise at the Great American Music Hall with her hair going every which way.  Her music goes in all directions at once too, and she is a one-woman phenomenon with her crazy live looping and other assorted pedal effects.  Local band Cryptacize made an excellent choice for an opening act, especially because vocalist Nedelle Torrisi's voice is as distinctive as Ms Clark's.  Cryptacize's album Dig That Treasure was one of my favorites of last year, and it was great to hear some of the songs in a slightly more robust form live (though I missed the autoharp from the record).  Based on what they played tonight I'm very excited for their new Mythomania coming out in April.

I haven't raved specifically yet about how good the Noise Pop happy hours at Bender's have been, chock full of local bands I genuinely love every single night of the festival.  Tonight's lineup consisted of three KALX faves - Maus Haus, Sugar & Gold, Tempo No Tempo - and the bar was so packed I had to hang off a railing just to see Maus Haus, who has similarly jammed the stage full of equipment, instruments, and about two dozen band members.  I might be exaggerating, but only slightly.  They're playing another show on Wednesday already at the Rickshaw Stop with French Miami and Religious Girls.  I highly recommend.

we brave bee stings and all

I'm only halfway through an amazing week of music but I am already having the best Noise Pop ever.  Tonight was Thao Nguyen at the Swedish American Hall, and may blessings be heaped upon the doorman who let me into the uber-sold-out show even though I'd screwed up the start time and without his help was going to be looking for another show to go to, badge or no badge.  And I would have been very sad to miss Thao.  Even when it's just Nguyen and her guitar onstage the woman is an undeniable presence, all whiskey voice and stomping boots.  She puts her entire body into her performance and sings with real guts, and by her encore the entire audience was on their feet, the better to rock the hell out right along with her.

I'd also forgotten how much fun Scissors for Lefty are live since it's been a couple years since I saw them last, but it only took me one song of their set at Bender's tonight to remind me.  More, please!

the short and difficult life of b of the bang

Sad news for lovers of monumental, potentially dangerous public art: Earlier this month it was announced that Thomas Heatherwick's work B of the Bang would be dismantled by the city of Manchester.  Named after a phrase coined by British sprinter Linford Christie, pictured here with the sculpture, B of the Bang was originally commissioned to commemorate the 2002 Commonwealth games, but its construction courted notoriety as it ran over budget and behind schedule.  Then a piece fell off right before it was due to be unveiled, and public safety has been a concern ever since.  Heatherwick actually agreed to pay the Manchester city council almost 2 million pounds in an out-of-court settlement last November, and Jonathan Jones mused on the contradiction inherent therein:

It is the flirtation with risk, the frisson of the truly unpredictable, that makes conceptual art popular. In a world of tedious regulations and rational constraints, art is the last walk on the wild side. Of course, the Heatherwick settlement is a paradox. If you pay someone to create a huge metal image of an explosion, how can you then act as if any hint of physical danger was unacceptable?

Except when someone dies it's not funny at all, as did happen when Maurice Agis's inflatable installation killed two people in 2006.  B of the Bang is a marvelous feat of engineering and never injured anyone, but perhaps it's best that it be remembered in pictures alone.

real emotional trash

The Stephen Malkmus Noise Pop show at the Great American Music Hall tonight could not have been more tailor-made to me if they'd tried.  Four solo acts that I adore - Malkmus, Kelley Stoltz, Peggy Honeywell, Goh Nakamura - and all acoustic all the time.  Of course the jackass Pavement megafans couldn't be bothered to shut the fuck up during Honeywell's set, even when she point-blank asked them to be quiet.  If they missed her gorgeous rendition of "Precious Lord" it was their tragic loss.  Honeywell is the blonde-wigged alter ego of super-talented artist Clare Rojas, who I found out this evening also happens to now be married to Barry McGee, who was in attendance with Asha, his daughter with the late Margaret Kilgallen.  That broke my head a little.  But I digress.  Brent and I thoroughly enjoyed Malkmus's set, and though I would have been very happy if he'd only played his solo material he went ahead and sang everything from his work with the Silver Jews to early Pavement tracks.  And yes, he ended with "Summer Babe".

Earlier in the evening we caught most of The Aimless Never Miss's set at Bender's during the Noise Pop happy hour, and they happily satisfied the plugged-in rock 'n' roll needs for the evening.  They're local and play out all the time.  I say check them out.

keep it under your hat

London fashion week, the most innovative and interesting of all the major fashion weeks, is currently in full swing, so what better time for a comprehensive new exhibition about hats to open at the V&A.  Curated by the one-and-only Stephen Jones, the show goes all the way back to an 1807 straw and silk bonnet and also includes such modern fantasias as Elsa Schiaparelli's famous shoe hat and Jones's own "Wash 'n' Go", pictured at right and in the online gallery here.  The V&A's fashion exhibits are legendary, but you definitely don't have to go to a museum to find style inspiration in London.  Just spend some time walking the streets.

the crying light

I've been a fan of Antony and the Johnsons for quite some time, but I was still not quite prepared for what it was like to be in the presence of The Voice live at Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium tonight for the official Noise Pop kickoff.  I was absolutely transported.  And what a charmer Antony Hegarty is.  He smiled and cracked jokes in between his deeply emotional and wrenching songs, and totally defended Beyonce to an audience member who was trying to give him crap for covering "Crazy in Love".  He then launched right into his amazing "Fistful of Love", which was about the point I totally lost it.

And then I went to Mezzanine and jumped up and down to Deerhunter while they firmly put the noise in Noise Pop.  Holy balls they were good.  The rest of this week is going to rule.

a love letter to new york - in lego

I'm sure all of you Web-savvy types have already seen illustrator Christoph Niemann's fabulous I LEGO N.Y., first posted on his New York Times blog earlier this month, but I'm pointing to it here in giddy anticipation of my upcoming trip to NYC in mid-March.  Niemann distills some quintessential New York experiences into tableaux constructed out of his sons' Lego bricks, and the results are altogether quirky and absolutely charming.  I would love to do a similar project for the Bay Area, as soon as I can figure out how to build a suitable representation of a Pabst Blue Ribbon can to stand in for the Mission hipsters.  You can see Niemann's whole piece at the link above, or click here for a small gallery of highlights from The Guardian.

lachrymose

African face mask made from wood, lime and soot.  Date unknown.  I like the graphic simplicity of the mask, and how the black is used to define the eyes, lips and hair, contrasted against the white of the rest of the face.  I also adore the little mini-me perched on the mask's forehead.  A guilty conscience, perhaps, or a guardian spirit?  This image is a copy of a copy taken from the 1961 book Kunst der Welt: Ozeanien und Australien by Alfred Bühler, Terry Barrow and Charles P. Mountford, and if anyone wants to buy me the original text there's an edition for sale right here.

rodchenko and popova at tate modern

Russian constructivism is easily in my top five favorite art movements of all time owing to its bold experimentation coupled with the cleverest of modern graphic design, and Alexander Rodchenko and Liubov Popova were the masters of the form in a time when innovation was busting out all over.  Popova is pictured here to the right of Varvara Stepanova, Rodchenko's wife and an artist in her own right whose fabric designs are referenced in the current Mai-Thu Perret show at SFMOMA.  Curator Margarita Tupitsyn has paired work by Rodchenko and Popova for a new exhibit at Tate Modern entitled Defining Constructivism, and Adrian Searle found himself absolutely entranced:

They began as painters, working through the heady influences of cubism, futurism and expressionism, and Malevich's suprematism, with its overtones of religiosity. In Popova's earlier paintings, bars cross the surface as though they were in a great hurry to get somewhere. Her percussive rhomboids have all the emphasis of a hand slamming a desktop. She mixes metal dust and sawdust into her paint, giving her forms extra oomph and weight. Sometimes these experiments give her work a weird, lumpy tactility. At other times, it is as bright and unexpected as a chaffinch. You can lose yourself in her paintings' complications. In Rodchenko's works, lines take decisive turns, ricocheting back from the edges. There are flat, eclipsed discs, with penumbras of light. His shading is insistent, as if daring you to doubt. Rodchenko could turn his hand to anything, and would adopt whatever artistic position was necessary at the time. I wonder if the two artists, working at the service of the new state, knew how good they were, and how prophetic their paintings now seem to be.

Besides their paintings the show includes an entire section on the artists' design projects, from awesome posters by Rodchenko to Popova's sketches of dresses Tilda Swinton might still be inclined to wear today.  You can see some highlights from the exhibition here, and then click here for an excellent interview with Rodchenko's grandson Alexander Lavrentiev in which he talks about his grandpa's prankster side.

christie's art sale: right on the monet?

While it seemed maybe six months ago that the art market was holding up despite the global economic downturn, proof that things are continuing to get a little squishy for artists and dealers alike came in the form of a sale of major paintings by the likes of Monet, Modigliani and Matisse at Christie's earlier this month.  The gorgeous painting pictured here by Monet of his wife Camille fetched several million less than was estimated, while a striking Matisse work of a woman on a balcony found no buyer at all.  That said, a dual Modigliani portrait went for more than was expected, and other paintings met their expected asking prices.  You can see some of the artworks that were in the sale here.  I think the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists are so popular that we would have to slide much further into recession before a sale like this would be a complete bust, but the major auction houses have definitely been seeing the writing on the wall.  And I worry about the up-and-coming artists, especially my local favorites, trying to break into the market.