Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

‘Plato’s Frogs’: A Long Way from ‘Saturday Night Live’

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In 1984 Malcolm Mc Neill won an Emmy for “outstanding graphics and title design” for the opening title sequence of “Saturday Night Live,” which he conceived, designed, and art directed. Here’s his storyboard: Thirty years later, contemplating a famous passage in the “Phaedo,” Mc Neill made “Plato’s Frogs.” I have not asked him about it. […]

Tibet Comes to Taos at ‘Enchanted Mountain’ Salon

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The composer Andrea Clearfield will present her Tibetan Recording Project at the Enchanted Mountain Performance Space in downtown Taos, New Mexico, next Sunday, Aug. 30. It’s free and open to the public. (See details of time and place.) “Clearfield’s orchestral and choral works have been performed around the world,” according to an advance program note. […]

Time Capsule: Algren, Burroughs, Mailer, et al . . .

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UPDATE The Z Collection is available for ordering on line. My staff of thousands insisted on a plug for me: The Z Collection: Portraits & Sketches — my reflections on many of the writers and artists I have known, worked with, or written about — is being published by AC Books in New York in […]

A Little-Known Master Artist’s ‘Uncollected’ Works

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The pages of Uncollected illustrate the variety of the artworks that a little-known master artist produced over the years. Most of the pieces have appeared in scattered places but have never been collected in one place — thus the title. Norman O. Mustill, who died in 2013, also produced many other works that haven’t been […]

A Look Ahead: They’re Putting on a Party and a Show

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My staff of thousands informs me that the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library has acquired the Granary Books archive. So publisher and library will mark the occasion with a bit of hoopla and an exhibition that opens Sept. 8, the day after Labor Day. It’s called . . . The Book Undone: Celebrating […]

‘Outside In’: Clayton Patterson at the Howl Gallery

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Now that ​A​i Weiwei has his passport back, ​will he​ ​​make it to New York in time to catch Clayton Patterson’s art exhibition, “​O​utside In”? Ai says he’s heading to Berlin, and he’s planning shows of his own in London. Since ‘Outside In” at the Howl Gallery runs only through mid-August, chances are he won’t […]

‘Freedom Is a Career’ — Obituary for Mike Lesser

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By Heathcote Williams His approach to life and politics was fueled by emotion rather than the twisted logic of compliance. Finding himself born into an era when life on earth seemed daily–and increasingly–under threat, Mike Lesser’s logic was visceral. Other Angry Young Men long ago may have mellowed and somehow come to terms with a […]

Mike Lesser, R.I.P.: ‘In Conversation With a Dying Friend’

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Heathcote Williams’s elegy is a meditation on death. Alan Cox reads it. The collage portrait of Mike Lesser as a young man is by Claire Palmer. The text of ‘In Conversation With a Dying Friend’ is posted for reading at IT: International Times. “ . . . my atoms will just disappear. “There’ll be a […]

Artist Bronzes Writer’s Life and Work in a Store Window

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The German artist Vera Bonsen has a window assemblage currently on display in a Heidelberg storefront that bronzes the life and writings of the American expatriate poet Cody Maher. The paper hangings consist of poems, diaries, photos and so on from 30 years’ worth of manuscripts. The artifacts include hats, a pair of boxing gloves, […]

Queers & Comics: Alison Bechdel

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Click in at 14’30”. That gets you right to the funny, smart, invariably entertaining cartoonist telling her story. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Bellaart Paints Homage to Yves Tanguy

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Oil on canvas by Gerard Bellaart (left). Drawing by Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Max Morise, and Man Ray (below). Postscript: June 19 — The work of Gerard Bellaart is a continuous esoteric sub-form of question-and-answer via images. A facetious confession of being, not in the existential sense of painting and sketching, but rather through asymmetry […]

Of Poetry and Fakery, Cultural Theft, and Stolen Identity

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The title of Heathcote Williams’s memoir, Of Dylan Thomas and his Deaths, reflects the author’s belief that the great Welsh poet died not once but twice. He writes, “It can be said that he was to suffer no less than two deaths at American hands.” The first death, contrary to the accepted claim that he […]

Recapped: R. Crumb Epic Home Video (Un, Deux, Trois)

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This video was recorded on April 29, 2011 at the Society of Illustrators in New York City, where the exhibition ran from March 23 to April 30. Curated by Monte Beauchamp, editor of The Life and Times of R. Crumb, the show was a retrospective that presented key pieces culled from the underground art collection […]

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