Apropos of yesterday's lovely video of female unity and power by Cher here, visual artist, filmmaker, and photographer Shirin Neshat has created an amazing video starring the always-powerful Cate Blanchett and the voice of transgender singer-songwriter Anohni.
“For a long time my work has focused on women and the ways in which they defy society’s repressive codes. I was interested in how female singers are universally treated as objects of desire. At first, Cate looks gorgeous, but when she sings it’s a transgender’s voice. The audience heckles her, and she becomes confrontational. When the music comes back on, she does a seductive dance but her face is evil. For her final act of subversion, she takes off her hair and makeup and walks away. That part was Cate’s idea. F**k the beauty.”
After her stint in the second film installation of "Mamma Mia" featuring the music of ABBA, Cher secretly embarked on a new record project covering nothing but ABBA songs. The result is her new album "Dancing Queen" featuring this delightful version of "SOS," one of my favorite ABBA songs (I really appreciate that she did not try to reinvent it, but let it sound like ABBA).
But it is the video that is truly special: while Cher is absent, the sense of empowerment and unity for women is a moving, beautiful message (witness all the different ages, sizes, shapes, and colors of beauty). It's no surprise that Cher created this message as she has always been a vocal critic of leaders and the Republican party who are anti-women and who look for ways to continually strip women of rights and equality. I do not follow people's social media accounts because I am a busy man, but please take a look at her Twitter feed because it is representative--sometimes hilariously so--of her no BS attitude while actually being quite a political voice of reason.
And if anyone is thinking "Why Cher?", I will let Mark Bego, Cher's biographer fill you in: "No one in the history of show business has had a career of the magnitude and scope of Cher's. She has been a teenage pop star, a television hostess, a fashion magazine model, a rock star, a pop singer, a Broadway actress, an Academy Award-winning movie star, a disco sensation, and the subject of a mountain of press coverage." I would like to point out that she has also won a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Cannes Film Festival Award, a special CFDA Fashion Award, and a Kennedy Center Honors prize, among several other honors. She has sold 100 million records worldwide to date, becoming one of the best-selling music artists in history. And get this: she is the only artist to date to have a number-one single on a Billboard chart in each decade from the 1960s to the 2010s.
"Simone Leigh's practice is an object-based on-going exploration of black female subjectivity. She creates sculpture, videos and installations informed by her interest in African art, ethnographic research, feminism and performance."
I love how these sculptural ceramic busts look like African fetishes carved from wood.
For International Women's Day, here is Tracey Thorn's new anthem/protest song "Sister" from her new release "Record."
Don't mess with me
Don't hurt my babies
I'll come for you
You'll find you've bitten off more than you can chew
You are the man
But I'm not your baby
I get so scared
I know you own the world
And I fight like a girl
But I am my mother
I am my mother now
I am my sister
And I fight like a girl
All I can do is all I'm doing
All I can stand
You trample like dirt
But I'm used to things that hurt
Oh, little man,
You're such a baby
Put up your fists
Nobody ever loved
Someone they were afraid of
I am my mother
I am my mother now
I am my sister
And I fight like a girl
Oh, what year is it?
Still arguing the same sh*t
What year is it?
Same same old sh*t
I get so scared
Tell me you'll stand beside me
Is that enough?
No nothing is enough
Nobody is that tough
And I miss my mother
I miss my mother now
Thank god for my sister
And for all the girls
And I am my mother
I am my mother now
I am my sister
And I live like a girl
And I love like a girl
And I think like a girl
And I fight like a girl,
Like a girl
These fun, colorful pieces by South African artist Turiya Magadlela utilize nylon and cotton pantyhose and fishnet stockings on canvas with sealant. I love the palette, and the unexpected material which, according to the artist, speaks to a more weightier and profound idea: the "fragility, transparency, beauty, pain, distortions and liberations of a woman." Magadlela won the prestigious FNB Art Prize last year and this year exhibited work at The Armory in New York City.
I love soft sculpture, and the work of New York artist Vadis Turner not only explores the medium it is made of but explores the larger meaning and cultural context of the fabric itself. Fashioned from items (ribbons, antique quilts, vintage clothing and lingerie, vintage bedsheets, handkerchiefs, and vintage gloves) that have connections to femininity, cultural and physical womanhood, dowries, betrothal, marriage, and the commodification of a woman's sex, her work speaks to how ideas and expected behaviors have been imposed on women from, yes I will say it, the patriarchy.
Her abstract wall pieces made from satin ribbons and antique quilts function on their own.
But the aforementioned artist commentary on femininity and feminism is quite apparent in her installation work. Just take a look at her wedding cakes made from lingerie or tampons, a woman's pelvis made from throw-away costume jewelry, and her piece entitled Vanity (My Beautiful Education) in which she cuts up MFA and BFA diplomas to make fake eyelashes, jewelry, and press-on nails.
Top to bottom: Forest Fire; Primrose Path Engulfed In Smoke; Red Mold Melt; Ripe Dirt/ Fresh Burial; Scorch; Best In Show; Bridal Lingerie Cake; Burial Feast (at the Brooklyn Museum Artist's Ball); Pelvis; Tampon Cake; Vanity (My Beautiful Education); Vanity (My Beautiful Education) detail
"Oh, By The Way" is my digital scrap book of things I like, things I would share with a close friend and say: “Oh, by the way, do you know of this artist/ clothing or interior designer/ model/ singer/ actor/ gorgeous man… or, have you seen this video/ photo/ film... or heard (or do you remember) this song/ band... or, read this book/ poem/ inspiring quote... or, visited this place/ museum/ restaurant/ famous building... or, have you heard of this amazing new scientific discovery?”
I am dedicated to posting the positive, the fascinating, the beautiful, the interesting, the moving, and the inspiring and uplifting. Sometimes I post cultural as well as personal observations, milestones, and remembrances. And just like life, all of these things may often have a bit of melancholy or even sadness in them, which is what makes our time here so lovely and bittersweet and precious.
Some of the photos, art, poetry, and prose are my own original work, credited with my initials, JEF. When it isn't, I always try to post links to the original source material, but often I find photos on the web that are not linked or other material that is not sourced. In these instances, I post them without malice since it is assumed that such things, by being globally posted on something as uncontrollable as the internet to begin with, are in the public domain. If you identify the source of an image that is not linked, please politely let me know (without accusing me of theft) and I will be happy to provide a link. If you are the owner of an image and would prefer it be removed, I am happy to do that as well.
I hope to inspire and entertain my readers with things that inspire and entertain me. There is a startling amount of beauty and creativity in the world and it enriches us all to participate in it.
All-time Favorite Films
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
After Hours (Hysterical, hair-raising ride through NYC at night)
Amelie
American Beauty (Alan Ball)
Baraka (Stunning, transcending—the "spiritus mundi" on film)
Belle et Bete (Cocteau)
Big Sleep, The (The epitome of film noir)
Bringing Up Baby (Hepburn & Grant—the epitome of screwball comedy)
Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, The (Greenaway)
Crash (Cronenberg—DIFFICULT subject, not for everyone)
Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg—ultimate modern gothic horror)
Drowning By Numbers (Greenaway)
Easy Rider
Edward II (Derek Jarman)
Erendira (From magic realist Marquez’ brilliant short story)
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick's last film)
Fearless (Jeff Bridges—life and death)
Funny Bones (Leslie Caron, Jerry Lewis, and the brilliant Lee Evans)
Holiday (Hepburn & Grant)
Howard’s End (The ultimate statement of the unfairness of class systems)
