Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

Moonage Daydream Conveys More Myth Than Man

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Moonage Daydream
Dir. Brett Morgan

Reviewed by Nicholas Goldwin

As one of the greatest shapeshifters in the expansive history of rock music, it seems only fitting that the documentary with David Bowie as its subject never seems content to express the trials, tribulations and artistic triumphs of Bowie in any one fixed way. This is expressed through the film in its alternations between rare footage of early concerts and interviews, expressive animated renderings of the science-fiction imagery laden throughout Bowie’s oeuvre and various examples of Bowie’s own artwork, both visual and musical. In doing this, Morgen allows the true scope of Bowie’s career as an artist and innovator to be appreciated by the audience in a truly all-encompassing way. Yet despite the astounding variety of ways in which Bowie is portrayed in Moonage Daydream, there is nonetheless a disarming absence of any significant insight or depth given to Bowie as an individual. This makes the film’s attempt to give Bowie himself — the man, the individual — the spotlight seem lacklustre in execution, in that Morgen can’t seem to help but identify him as anything other than an icon. [Read more…]

In Its Feminist Spin On The Turn Of The Screw, The Turning Fatally Flubs Its Finale

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Reviewed by Kristy Puchko

The glory of psychological horror is the doubt injected within it. Is there truly a malevolent spirit creeping through creaking halls of the grand old house? Is there someone lurking in the dark, hungry to do harm? Is there a Babadook knock-knock-knocking at the closet door? Or is it all in the mind of a harried woman pushed to bring of sanity? The “what if” of it all is crucial to the stinging pleasure of this viewing experience, tickling your brain with possibilities. Perhaps the most popular tale of such stories is Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. This gothic horror novella has been adapted to film and television dozens of times over the past 122 years. And Floria Sigismondi’s The Turning certainly is another one, and almost a great one! Shame its attempt to give this old tale a fresh relevance is fumbled in a bewildering final act. [Read more…]

Elizabeth Peyton: Aire and Angels

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at National Portrait Gallery, London, through 5 January 2020
Reviewed by Christopher P Jones

In her new solo show at the National Portrait Gallery in London, New York artist Elizabeth Peyton offers a procession of glistening vignettes, portraits of famous and not-so-famous faces, whose cool freshness leaves the visitor with an excited, if slightly outmoded sense of pursuit. Many of her male subjects carry a melancholy, morning-after expression that signals an unabashed adoption of the female gaze. Peyton has painted Kurt Cobain and David Bowie, David Hockney and scenes from the Twilight films, as well as personal friends and lovers. Her eye tends towards the sheen of beauty, where cheekbones are elevated and noses are streamlined. [Read more…]

Taikai Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit Is A Bold But Fumbled Entry In His Lost Boy Trilogy

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Reviewed by Kristy Puchko

Taika Waititi loves a lost boy. His latest, Jojo Rabbit, is the third coming-of-age comedy the Kiwi filmmaker has crafted that centers on a young boy facing trauma by embracing fantasy. 2010’s Boy ollowed a bullied 11-year-old, who fantasizes that his absentee father isn’t the despicable criminal everyone says, but instead a mix of a noble samurai and moonwalking Michael Jackson.  [Read more…]

Helmut Newton: Private Property

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at 10 Corso Como, NYC
Reviewed by Jill Conner

The infamous partnership between art and fashion is receiving overwhelming recognition throughout New York galleries and museums this Fall. From September to November, 10 Corso Como introduced Private Property by the world-renowned fashion photographer, Helmut Newton. Although Newton passed away in 2004, this specific set of photographs had never been exhibited in the United States. Initially Private Property was created in 1984, but Newton had not intended for these photographs to be seen publicly. This dossier of 45 gelatin silver prints covers a decade of Newton’s career, from 1971 to 1983, and presents a mix of unknown models with well-known celebrities who, at that time, were beginning to gain notoriety. [Read more…]

Mike Kelley’s Day Will Not Be Done

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At Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills (Through September 28, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

With its brilliant flashing lights and thunderously ecstatic melodies blasting through the speakers, late conceptualist icon Mike Kelley’s (1954-2012) eponymous installation currently on display at Gagosian Beverly Hills flawlessly replicates the jubilant atmosphere of a rock concert. However, upon noticing two screens projecting videos of gospel singers, an illuminated movie marquee, and a gargantuan phallic rocket pointed towards the visitor, one comes to realize that Kelley here is delving into issues of post-war Americana, the Space Age, and the corresponding meteoric rise of rock ‘n’ roll. He also reveals this beloved genre’s roots in gospel music and dissects the bizarre and beautiful relationship between the sexual and the spiritual, the sacred and the profane. [Read more…]

David Bowie’s Glorious “Sweet Thing / Candidate”

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In tandem with Angelica Villa’s review of the wonderful Brooklyn Museum exhibition, David Bowie is, here’s a dark suite set to a deep back-cabin mood. David Bowie is, by the way, is by no means dark, but Bowie had that lovely netherworld strain which, for those predisposed to the condition, felt viral and thereby one with all high occasions — sonic theater at its most operatic and sublime:

From Diamond Dogs

An Expansive, Boundary-Blurring Exhibition In David Bowie is

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at the Brooklyn Museum, NYC
Reviewed by Angelica Villa

Arranged in a matchless array of material from David Bowie’s archive, the Brooklyn Museum’s David Bowie is encapsulates the icon’s expansive complexity. The exhibition explores the breadth of visual and musical inventions and collaborations of the artist’s prolific career. Posing challenge to social convention and encouraging freedom of self-identification for several decades, the artist’s cultural relevance is beyond compare or distillation. Including 400 objects sourced from the musician’s archive, the interdisciplinary range of material showcasing album covers, drafts of handwritten lyrics, costumes, photographs, film and audio of Bowie’s career draw together a kaleidoscopic retrospective portrait of the artist’s many selves. [Read more…]

Lou Reed: A Life

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A New Biography By Anthony DeCurtis
Reviewed David Yaffe

An extract from “Lou’s Wild Side,” in the November 23 issue of The New York Review of Books

“Just a perfect day/You made me forget myself/I thought I was someone else/Someone good.” These lines—sung indifferently over swelling, glam rock strings—are from “Perfect Day,” an achingly gorgeous and brutally honest song by Lou Reed, who died of liver disease four years ago at the age of seventy-one. Some people thought the song was about addiction—how a junkie escaping from reality also feeds on the escape of romance. But the song could also be about how pleasurable, yet impossible, it is to escape from your true self, and about how easy it is to deceive yourself when you’ve disappointed your own expectations. [Read more…]

Cracked Actor To Cracked Actor

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David Bowie's 1974 Cracked Actor Tour can be seen and listened to at Riot Material, LA's premier Arts and Culture magazine.

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Cracked Actor (Live, Los Angeles ’74)

Sweet Thing/Candidate (Live, Los Angeles ’74)

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In honor and in celebration of Cracked Actor, the new live release from David Bowie’s infamously depraved yet musically stellar ’74 tour, Riot Material scratched up a BBC documentary from that same tour — titled Cracked Actor: A Film About David Bowie. The 1975 film, viewable in four parts below, is directed by Alan Yentob. The new album narrows in on one evening, his September 5th show at Los Angeles’s Universal Amphitheater. Above are two tracks from the Cracked Actor release. 

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Entering the Mind Global Radio and Podcast Tour: Follow at Riot Material

Riot Material Founding Editor, C von Hassett, takes us luminously into the life-affirming, heart-awakening, consciousness-altering terrains of mind in its natural state. Learn More Here.

The ‘Indescribable Fragrance’ of Youths

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A Third Gender: Beautiful Youths in Japanese Edo-Period Prints and Paintings (1600–1868) 
at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
excerpted from a review by Ian Buruma

Read the full review in the May 11, 2017 issue of New York Review of Books, or read it on site at nybooks.com

Lusting after pretty teenage boys was not considered shameful in premodern Japan. Experienced older women did it. Young women did too. Older men indulged in it (as long as the boys were passive sexual partners). Adultery was not permitted, on the other hand, and it was unseemly for grown men to love other grown men. But the love of older men for young boys, a practice called shudo, literally “the way of boy love,” was considered, especially during the eighteenth century, and notably among samurai, to be a mark of erotic discernment. [Read more…]

Bowie Meets Burroughs

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London, 1974

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: Have you ever met Warhol?

DAVID BOWIE: Yes, about two years ago I was invited up at the Factory. We got in the lift and went up. When it opened there was a brick wall in front of us. We rapped on the wall and they didn’t believe who we were. So we went back down and back up again till they finally opened the wall and everybody was peering around at each other. That was shortly after the gun incident. [Read more…]

Liquid Sky

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CINEMA DISORDINAIRE

Reviewed by Janet Maslin

Slava Tsurkerman is a Soviet emigre who has lived in New York City since 1976, apparently long enough for him to get the lay of the land. Mr. Tsukerman’s Liquid Sky (1982), which opens today at the Waverly, presents a vision of the city that is genuinely startling. His film, with a heroine who is sometimes a hero and who is apt to show up in a red corset with matching red-and-blond skunk hairdo, can hardly be for everyone. But the right audiences are bound to appreciate the originality displayed here, not to mention the color, rage, nonchalance, sly humor and ferocious fashion sense.

[Read more…]