Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Say Hello to Claes Oldenburg’s Cheeseburgers

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“I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum. … I am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs. I am for the art of ice cream cones dropped on concrete. … I am for an art that takes its forms […]

Ernest Hemingway, Heathcote Williams, and So Forth

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And then I sent a photo of the Ernest Hemingway plaque in the series … Which drew this reply … Serving as further testament to what has been lost, or as the poet noted with his reply, “Pace Hemingway.” EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

A Difference Between the 16th Century and the 21st

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When I sent Heathcote Williams a photo of the Francis Bacon plaque in the Library Walk series … He replied with an ironic poem, like so … … which illustrates a difference between the 16th century and the 21st, doncha think? EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

From Laugharne Boathouse to Library Walk

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On my way to work I sometimes take a street in midtown Manhattan where an unsung marvel known as “Library Walk” celebrates the world’s great books and writers. For the length of two city blocks I’m distracted by bronze reliefs in granite plaques set into the sidewalk. They are beautiful to look at and inspiring […]

Unbuttoned: Samuel Beckett Meets William Osborne

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I knew my friend Bill Osborne and Samuel Beckett had met and spoken about Osborne’s musical settings of Beckett’s plays. But I had never heard the details. Now at last the full story! By William Osborne I spent seven years doing nothing else but setting the works of Beckett to music. At the end in […]

An Absurd Debate About the Last Word

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Following up on the previous blogpost, Gerard Bellaart sent a superimposition of several lines on Beckett’s short dramatic monologue “Not I.” Bellaart also sent an excerpt from Michael Maier’s paper, “GEISTERTRIO: Beethoven’s Music in Samuel Beckett’s ‘Ghost Trio.’” To which, Bellaart says: “The debate as to whether music has the last word is rather like […]

Menu-Size Art: Quicker Than You Can Say Fast Food

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Cold Turkey Press has just put together a beautiful portfolio of menu-size collages by Norman O. Mustill dating from 1975, when Mustill sent them to Carl Weissner, who wanted to illustrate his German translation of Harold Norse’s Beat Hotel with Mustill’s artwork. Phew … got that? Weissner didn’t receive the collages in time to make […]

‘Sacred Elephant’ Is Coming to New York’s La MaMa

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I haven’t seen much theater lately, for reasons I may already have mentioned — so much is dull dull dull — but the dramatization of Heathcote Williams’s epic poem, “Sacred Elephant,” has got my attention as nothing has in years. The show, not yet officially announced, is coming in September to La MaMa‘s First Floor […]

Topor Nails It: Drone Attack Avant la Lettre

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And for further edification, there’s “A Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood” about the “origins of the C.I.A.’s drone war in Pakistan” by Mark Mazzetti and “Targeted Killing Comes to Define War on Terror,” about the policy of the “drone campaign” by Scott Shane. They’re part of a continuing NY Times series. Mazzetti’s latest […]

N.O. Mustill’s ‘Critic’ Lowers the Boom, Whimsically

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If I said I put him in a class with the great collagists dating back through the 20th century (like Hausmann, Heartfield, or Höch) — which I do — he’d laugh at the presumption. But anyone who has seen Flypaper, his book of demonic collages in black and white, or the huge collages in blazing […]

MacFadyen Takes ‘Front Porch’ Look at Burroughs

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I knew when RealityStudio posted Ian MacFadyen’s review of “The Name Is Burroughs: expanded media at the ZKM, Karlsruhe” that it would be a major critique. I had already read his “Codename Burroughs,” the pamphlet that accompanied the retrospective, which was excerpted from a more complete text in MacFadyen’s book, William S. Burroughs. Cut. With […]

Now for Something from the Lookalikes Department

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Ben Schot’s drawing, “Study of Majesty” — executed on the stationary of LES FREGATES Hotel **NN Restaurant, which the Dutch artist uses as a “conceptual constant” for all his drawings — was not separated at birth from Picasso’s “She-Goat.” But they look a helluva lot like fraternal twins. I’d say they make a lecherous brother […]

From the ‘Let Us Compare Obscenities’ Department

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The other day a call went out for “comparative obscenities” to add to the literary examples by Bukowski and Catullus. One reader obliged by sending a drawing by Topor, whom he regards as a “sheer genius.” Straight Up’s staff of thousands agrees and decided to pair Topor’s drawing with one of Tomi Ungerer‘s. (And here’s […]

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