Patty Astor in a Still from Celine Danhier's BLANK CITY, 2009
Last night, Laura and I were privileged to attend the world premier of Celine Danhier's BLANK CITY at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film is a beautifully directed documentary montage about the underground cinema scene in New York in the late '70s and early '80s. The soundtrack features a great selection of music from that era by Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Contortions, DNA, Theoretical Girls, my old band The Dance, and many others. The narrative is carried by a series of fantastic interviews with many of the key players in No Wave cinema and music, including Amos Poe, Jim Jarmusch, Lydia Lunch, Beth & Scott B, James Chance -- and an incredible collection of film clips from long lost archives -- films so obscure that they may have only been shown once in somebody's apartment, but were nevertheless at the forefront of the fiercely iconoclastic creative groundswell of that moment in New York. Danhier's film gloriously and accurately portrays the scene's gritty, dangerous, druggy adrenalin, and while convincingly asserting the truth, courage, and historical importance of all those uncompromising projects, also erases any trace of nostalgia for that time.
Eva Lake’s recent blog post and subsequent comments about Thurston Moore’s new book on the No Wave music scene, and the notion of the subjectivity of oral history made me think of a great and hilarious piece called “Losing My Edge” by LCD Soundsystem from 2005 – check out the lyrics -- and here's the video.
The NY underground music scene of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s was a pretty small scene – everybody knew everybody, whether they spoke to each other or not. And while there are certainly plenty of areas of consensus, each participant was a fiercely independent artist, experiencing that moment in an individual way, and now 30 years down the road holds his/her own memory and version of how it happened and what the most important contributions were. There are many great stories to be told.
Don Christensen, House NM, 2004, 44" x 57", oil based enamel on wood
Don Christensen, Biskit, 2007, 55" x 77", oil based enamel on canvas
Over the past several years, there has been a pervasive renewed interest in, or nostalgia for the New York underground music scene of the late ‘70s & early ‘80s. It was indeed an exciting time of creative cross-fertilization, experimentation and anarchic energy. Many of us who were making music in that scene were visual artists, working in a context that no longer exists. It was a unique moment, a true “post-Art” moment if you will, when the immediacy of live performance, loud dissonance and hopped-up rhythms, was the most direct and natural response to the world. It was also a whole lot of fun. At the center of the No Wave music scene in ’78 or so – without question the most explosive, dynamic and influential band – was The Contortions. The drummer for The Contortions was Don Christensen who joined with the late George Scott on bass to make a jerky driving punk-disco-funk throb that is still unrivaled. But as I said, this moment was very short lived, as the music industry quickly began to co-opt the underground, and change the context from art to entertainment. Don went on to do some other music projects including work with Philip Glass, then began to reorient his focus back (or forward) to painting.
I mention this history because, for me it is hard to look at Don Christensen’s paintings and not relate them to his past music. Often built out of small rectangular hunks of wood, his pieces are literally percussive painting -- polyrhythmic, layered, structurally solid with plenty of synchopation and surprises on top. And like drumming which taps the most primal of sources, his paintings seem to emerge from a ritualized process, or at least a strong sensitivity to those impulses – a possible reflection of his deep interest in outsider artist Emery Blagdon. Also evident is a prevalent element of play that gives rise to unexpected shapes and lively juxtapositions. Some of his more recent paintings are direct enamel on canvas works that simplify the image and loosen the geometry, and in doing so, heighten the tension and focus of the configuration. In all his work, color is the key -- a lively animated substance that brings a kind of Pop humor, and also reads as celebratory.
Recently opened at Spanierman Modern in midtown, is the exhibition titled “Present Tense”, curated by Don Christensen and Mary Heilmann (thru Aug 2). This is a group show that includes abstract works by fourteen contemporary artists, including Christensen and Heilmann. According to the press release, “The works were selected on the basis of their ability to produce instant and visceral responses in the viewer, without the necessity of contextualization.” I like that -- and I look forward to seeing the show and reporting on it later.
Patty Astor in a Still from Celine Danhier's BLANK CITY, 2009
