YOU SEEM TO WORK STRICTLY IN LANDSCAPES, CAPTURING THE DENSITY OF NEW YORK CITY TO THE VASTNESS OF SCOTLAND. WHAT DRAWS YOU TO LANDSCAPES AS OPPOSED TO, FOR EXAMPLE, PEOPLE?
I don’t necessarily think of myself as a landscape photographer. I am not trying to capture landscapes per se. I think what I am mainly looking for or what seems to catch my attention is composition. I find myself continually drawn to simple bold shapes and often look for repetition and visual movement within those shapes. My photographs are not about the subject or scene. I never look for those things. What I see in the photographs is more graphic form. If at some point that graphic form happens to be human, I’ll probably start photographing people.
YOU PHOTOGRAPH ALL OVER THE WORLD. DO YOU TRAVEL TO PHOTOGRAPH OR DO YOU PHOTOGRAPH WHILE YOU TRAVEL?
I travel to photograph. I have tried to combine vacation travel with photographic travel, but my wife gets very bored standing around for a few hours while I wait for the sky to get interesting or a shadow to emerge. I also find that I need to turn my eye on so to speak. And vacation travel is about shutting off rather than turning on. For me making a really successful photo takes a lot of time and concentration. It means walking through fields or climbing into a ditch, or standing in the rain for hours. My process is not most people’s idea of fun.
YOUR WORK IS QUITE HAUNTING AND YOU HAVE STATED THAT YOU PREFER SHOOTING IN PLACES THAT ARE COLD AND UNINVITING. ARE THE TWO CONNECTED AND INTENTIONAL?
My life is so filled with the hustle bustle of city living, noise and visual pollution that I think I am continually looking to simplify. Or find some sense of calm or serenity. I don’t know if I am looking for haunted spaces in particular. I think what attracts me are spaces devoid of visual clutter and distraction. I gravitate to places that people have naturally stayed clear of, and because of their sparse surroundings, compositions within that type of space just seem to reveal themselves more plainly.
WHAT BRINGS YOU JOY?
A old friend and the conversation that ensues just into the 3rd pint of Guinness.
COMB OR BRUSH?
Brush.
DO YOU LIKE YOUR NAME?
I was born Antony Kevin Bennett in Southern England in 1967. And was never called Antony, only Tony. Tony Bennett was just another name to my parents who were both from New Zealand. But I think I started noticing people making a fuss about it when we moved to the U.S. in the early 70s. Once I realized I shared my name with the singer Tony Bennett, I started to look for alternatives. Maybe I would go by Kevin Bennett, my middle name. But I think ultimately it just seemed like too much work to try to change it or correct people, so Tony Bennett is what people call me. AK Bennett is for the art (more not to be confused with the singer than anything else.) But to answer your question, I would say no. To me Tony always sounded like I made pizza.
FINISH THIS SENTENCE. MY AGE IS…………….
an odd way to measure my life, I prefer to say I have been around the sun 45 times.
WHAT’S FOR DINNER TONIGHT?
I have no idea. Hopefully not asparagus.
www.akbennett.com
For the next four days the international modern and contemporary art world will once again convene in New York for The Armory Show at Piers 92 and 94 — the biggest art fair in this city and one of the most important and highly anticipated in the world. We find this year to be particularly exciting because it is the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Armory Show, from which the current annual exhibition takes its name and also its inspiration. The groundbreaking 1913 Armory Show, its official title was the “International Exhibition of Modern Art”, featured for the first time some of the most avant-garde, and considered by many completely shocking, European painting and sculpture alongside contemporary American work. Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, Pablo Picasso + Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis, George Bellows, James Abbott McNeill Whistler represent just a fraction of the artists shown. It is widely believed that this show was one of the most influential and impactful on American art. If only to have been there…
www.thearmoryshow.com
Before our minds drift completely back to New York from our lovely trip to warm and sunny Sarasota, Florida, we wanted to say a few words about the very special John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. This wonderful waterfront estate was purchased in 1911 by John Ringling, a member of the Ringling family of circus fame and fortune, and his wife Mable. In 1924, they began construction on Ca’ d’Zan, the Venetian Gothic mansion inspired by their travels to Italy, that was to be their winter home. The most magnificent part of the house is the back where Sarasota Bay stands in for the Grand Canal — truly spectacular. Completed at the end of 1925 and considered to be the last Gilded Age mansion built in the United States, they only enjoyed Ca’ d’Zan together for a few short short years due to Mable’s untimely death in 1929. Incidentally, it was at Ca’ d’Zan that the 1998 movie Great Expectations with Ethan Hawke and Gwenyth Paltrow was filmed.
Today, the property includes two Circus Museums, the Museum of Art that houses the Ringling’s world-renowned collection of Old Masters as well as special exhibitions; the Historic Asolo Theater, an 18th-century palace playhouse from Asolo, Italy that was dismantled in the 1940s, brought to the estate and lovingly reconstructed over the course of several years; numerous gardens and the glorius Millenium Tree Trail. All of which is not to be missed.
We have just returned from Sarasota where we had the very good fortune of seeing Herb Ritts: L.A. Style at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, its final destination after shows last year at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Cincinnati Art Museum. The exhibition focuses on Ritts’ work in fashion, celebrity and nude portraiture and also includes iconic music videos he directed such as Madonna’s “Cherish” from 1989. Supermodels, gorgeous bodies, beautiful clothing, popular culture. His photographs are remarkably powerful in person — so much about form and light and very uniquely California. We are convinced that the ONLY way to revisit the 1980s and 90s is through the lens of the great Herb Ritts, lost far too soon to AIDS at age 50 in 2002.
Herb Ritts: L.A. Style is on view through May 19. www.ringling.org
Today the New Museum opens the much anticipated exhibition NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star. Centering on 1993, the exhibition is conceived as a time capsule, an experiment in collective memory that attempts to capture a specific moment at the intersection of art, pop culture, and politics. The social and economic landscape of the early 90s was a cultural turning point both nationally and globally. Conflict in Europe, attempts at peace in the Middle East, the AIDS crisis, national debates on health care, gun control, and gay rights, and caustic partisan politics were both the background and source material for a number of younger artists who first came to prominence in 1993.
The name of the exhibition draws its subtitle from the album the New York rock band Sonic Youth recorded in 1993 and captures the complex exchange between mainstream and underground culture.
It is amazing to think that we are old enough to look back on history that we helped shape. The phrase “someday you’ll tell your children about this” never rang so true.
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Photograph by Thérèse Bonney circa 1930.
Copyright Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
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I am always reminded of Gertrude Stein during this first week of February as she and I share a birthday — February 3. I love this photograph taken by Thérèse Bonney of Stein and Virgil Thomson reviewing the score for the opera he composed to her libretto, Four Saints in Three Acts. Conceived and written in Paris over several years beginning in the late 1920s, the opera premiered in Hartford, Connecticut in 1934 with fantastical sets and costumes designed by the American artist Florine Stettheimer. The photograph was shot at Stein’s much revered rue de Fleurus home and salon.
I have just picked up Dancing Around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp — the catalog for an exhibition I very regrettably just missed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Described in December 2012 by The New York Times as a “favorite museum show of the year,” it examined the intersections and collaborations among the composer John Cage, choreographer Merce Cunningham, and visual artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg with the great Marcel Duchamp at the center of it all. We are talking about, arguably, some of the most exciting, profound and pivotal years in New York and in American art. Conceived and presented by curator Carlos Basualdo and contemporary artist Philippe Parreno, the exhibition contained over 100 works in addition to live performances. The catalog is full of seriously interesting essays by and about these artists and features a truly masterful chronology. While it certainly doesn’t replace the experience of the exhibition, I have to say, I am completely enthralled.
Dancing Around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp. (Philadelphia Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2012)
as interviewed by Angie Nevarez, co-author of THE BATON:
YOU ARE AN AUTHOR, WRITER, RESEARCHER, MOTHER, SISTER, DAUGHTER, ALUMNA, DEDICATED COMMUNITY MEMBER AND SEEKER OF THINGS THAT DELIGHT — HOW DO YOU INTRODUCE YOURSELF?
I love to introduce myself as Ella and Grace’s mother — it’s my favorite position in life and the one I find most inspiring.
HOW HAS YOUR FIRST MAJOR PUBLICATION, THE INVENTION OF CHIC: THÉRÈSE BONNEY AND PARIS MODERNE, INFLUENCED YOUR LIFE AND WORK?
In the most tangible sense, I discovered new subject matter while I was researching and writing this book. It pretty much set my course for the next several years and very much continues to do so. In a less tangible but certainly more profound sense, I met a lot of fascinating and generous people here and in Europe during the preparation of The Invention of Chic — many of whom I remain close friends with. I am still in awe of all of the doors that were opened to me during that process and all of the information very willingly exchanged. This generous and open spirit has definitely influenced my professional life resulting in a number of great collaborations and connections with other scholars and writers.
WHAT PROJECTS ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?
Two books, two articles and this blog!
WHAT BRINGS YOU JOY?
My family first and foremost. And second, travel — with my family, of course.
COMB OR BRUSH?
A large wooden paddle brush — it’s the only thing that can get through this head of hair.
DO YOU LIKE YOUR NAME?
I do, although its a bit of a mouthful — Lisa Pilar Schlansker Kolosek. I especially enjoyed growing up with the middle name Pilar — its so beautiful and strong and I was named after a family friend in Spain which I find quite endearing. In fact, I think it’s such a good name that I passed it on to my daughter Grace as her middle name. She really likes it too.
FINISH THIS SENTENCE: MY AGE IS…………….
something I hope makes me more interesting and something I know makes me more confident. I don’t worry about the small things like I used to and I know myself so much better now which is really quite liberating.
WHAT’S FOR DINNER TONIGHT?
Lovely organic blueberry pancakes. Its been a crazy day……….
YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF AN INTUITIVE ARTIST. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT THAT MEANS AND YOUR PROCESS AS AN INTUITIVE ARTIST?
I saw two butterflies flying together. It looked like they were in love, floating and dancing and seemingly playful. Yeah, I think about shit like that. I knew it was a human fantasy, but I embraced it knowing so. And it made me feel like a little boy again. I wanted for that moment to be with them. Free.
I thought about what they ARE before they were…worms, for the most part, called caterpillars that went through growth stages called instars. They crawled slowly, they ate, they constantly shed layers and in the last stage of instar their wings began to develop. They lived half their lives in slow motion and then by some natural design, wrap themselves up in a cocoon and are reborn. Were they capable of being aware of any of this, of how slow they moved, of how a transformation was constantly happening? Did it even matter? Miraculously they transform inside of their own space and then break out of it. No longer trapped on the ground they see and go where those of us without wings, those of us that once towered above them, cannot. Then after a short life they die. Their entire journey of slow rewarded with flight and float and hover and see…and escape. Their freedom of movement is the beginning of the end of their journey.
These butterflies were a catalyst for my own truth – found in nature, making me feel childlike, as if I needed to be a child to remember. Their movement and their truth affected me. I had been looking for my own truth, confused as to the purpose of my journey and more so in the slowness in which I was crawling and in the layers that I was constantly shedding.
My truth is in the journey to, and my expression of movement – constant, from subtle to extreme – driven by my unending restlessness for next. My truth is in the shedding and the constant rebirth of my self. My truth is in MY movement, seen in all the work I’ve ever done, in the energy of all I have created. My truth is in the escape and the freedom of that movement.
This expression is not OF me, it IS me. “I” am the “art” – a living, breathing, evolving creating organism. I am not caught up in the ego of discipline but rather in the Id and the abandon and exploration of all things intuitive to my nature and to my journey. I must touch every thing that I am pulled to touch – paint and paper and food and flowers and words and music and wood and stone and steel and…and.
I crawl. I nourish. I shed. I grow. I shed. I build. I transform. I break free. I fly. I die…I begin again.
I never really gave a shit about butterflies, really, until they saw me on that day.
WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON TODAY?
The second edition of my kid’s book, Your Very Own Space. Specifically, the digitally created illustrations using my photos and my Illustrator drawn characters. I’m also working on some anger management due to some Twitter political discussions.
SOME OF YOUR PIECES, FOR EXAMPLE THE MOTHER SERIES AND ELEPHANT GRAVEYARD SCULPTURE, INVOLVE THE RECYCLING OF MATERIALS INTO WORKS OF ART. HOW DID THESE PROJECTS COME TO YOU AND IS ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS PARAMOUNT IN OTHER ASPECTS OF YOUR LIFE TOO?
I have a special place for saving things, thanks mostly to my father I think, who hated to ever throw anything away given his very poor childhood and his belief that all things could be used for something. And I have a drive to use them, thanks to my mother, who was not fond of the “clutter and junk” my father kept but rarely discouraged him.
I also grew up roaming the fields and woods of the countryside, it is the place where I created things from what I found and not from what I was given. I have a powerful and emotional respect and love for that (environment) teacher. I believe it must be preserved and cherished for the sake of all the young students who are meant to explore it.
The idea of finding beauty in things that have been deemed worthless is also a peek into my own dark waters.
WHAT BRINGS YOU JOY?
The sweet and gentle puff of my husband’s breath as he sleeps beside me. The piercing blue eyes of my 97 year old grandmother. The sound of my mother’s laughter. The beginning of the sentence “Uncle Tim…” The unquestioning and commanding love of my siblings. The phrase “fuck it.” My BFF Rich’s fried chicken and okra. Finding words and feeling color. Trees. Lilacs. Making shit.
COMB OR BRUSH?
Fingers.
DO YOU LIKE YOUR NAME?
I would never reject a gift given with such love. But yeah, I do, it’s not a sexy name but it’s who I see when I look in the mirror every morning.
FINISH THIS SENTENCE: MY AGE IS…………….
of no consequence, I was way old a few lifetimes ago.
WHAT’S FOR DINNER TONIGHT?
It’s a clever question because it’s the hardest one to answer and who the fuck has time to eat!?
HAVE YOU ALWAYS LOVED JEWELRY OR IS IT A PASSION THAT HAS DEVELOPED OVER TIME?
I have always loved jewelry and all things that sparkle! My grandmother had a tradition with her granddaughters that when we turned 13 we could pick out what we wanted from a special jewelry box designated for just this. I loved everything I chose, mostly because of the sentimentality. It was then that I learned about Regard Rings, a type of ring whose gemstones spell the word “regard”. I would later come to discover that acrostic jewelry originated in the Georgian period. Certainly my passion for jewelry has developed with time and continues to develop on a daily basis!
WE STUDIED ART HISTORY TOGETHER IN GRADUATE SCHOOL. HOW HAS YOUR BACKGROUND AND SCHOLARSHIP IN ART INSPIRED AND INFORMED LARKSPUR & HAWK? ARE YOU STILL DEALING IN ANTIQUE JEWELRY OR ARE YOU FOCUSING SOLELY ON YOUR NEW COLLECTION NOW?
My studies and work in the history of decorative arts and material culture have played a huge role in my professional life. While I never formally studied jewelry and jewelry design, my exposure to and education in antiques taught me how to approach, evaluate and research objects. My foray into jewelry was as an antique jewelry dealer which came very naturally to me because each piece I sold had a story to tell and I loved teaching and revealing each tale! Just as the antiques reveal the past, my new designs also do so in a special way. The entire modern collection employs an 18th Century jewelry making technique of foiling gemstones, a labor-intensive art that plays with color and light. Sharing and, as such, reviving this very special craftsmanship with my clients continues to connect me to antique jewelry. As a result, the modern collection has superseded my longing to sell antique jewelry.
THE JEWELRY YOU DESIGN FOR LARKSPUR & HAWK IS TRULY BREATHTAKING. I AM ESPECIALLY INTRIGUED BY THE PIECES THAT ARE FOIL-BACKED — A VERY OLD PROCESS YOU HAVE REVIVED — BECAUSE OF THE EXQUISITE COLORS YOU ARE ABLE TO ACHIEVE. WHY IS THIS PROCESS SO APPEALING TO YOU AND ARE YOU STILL SURPRISED BY THE RESULTS WITH EACH NEW PIECE?
For me, it was love at first sight, long ago, with Georgian foiled jewelry. I adored the duplicity that colored foils offered a gemstone. There is a unique and specific play of color and light that comes with placing faceted gemstones over metallic foils and I had the urge to experiment with this myself. Each piece of jewelry is literally transformed by its foil and it is endlessly fun and rewarding to see which colors look best with certain pieces. I never tire of foiled jewelry!!
WHAT BRINGS YOU JOY?
My husband, boys and cats!
COMB OR BRUSH?
Fingers.
DO YOU LIKE YOUR NAME?
I love my name and always have. My middle name is Jane and I feel that I truly am an Emily Jane.
FINISH THIS SENTENCE. MY AGE IS…………….
A woman never tells!
WHAT’S FOR DINNER TONIGHT?
China Spice… “smile and dial” as they say!
