New First Unexpected

PAINTED INTO A (BEAUTIFUL) CORNER

 
 My take on the "Malevich & the American Legacy" show at the Gagosian Galleries for Bomb Magazine.

Just before the 1915 opening in St. Petersburg of 0,10: The Last Futurist Painting Exhibition, the main exhibitors came to blows. Kazimir Malevich, whose new Suprematist school of painting was to have its debut at the show, and Vladimir Tatlin, a founder of Constructivism, were in violent disagreement over the validity of abstract art.

LAUNCH PARTY FOR POEMS FROM CHILDREN'S ISLAND

I'll be reading from my translation of Sasha Chernyi's Poems from Children's Island (illustrated by Jessica Seamans) on May 5 @ Book Thug Nation, located @ 100 N3rd Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn from 7:30 pm until 9;00--hopefully afterwards to adjourn to the Radagast Hall & Biergarten across the street .

As appropriate for a reading of 100-year-old children's poetry, wine and cookies will be on hand. As will copies of the book and related posters designed and illustrated by comics artist wunderkind Gabrielle Bell.

Please come out and support:

• a great used bookstore;
• a terrific comics artist; and
• an amazing translator.

 

EASTER CHIMES

Drink-drunk! Red eggs.
Drunk-drink! Red noses.
Beat-bash! Happy faces.
Bash-beat! Heaps of sausage.

Give-gave! Holiday bribes.
Gave-give! This and that.
Trim-tree! Gloved visits.
Tree-trim! Vodka and cream.

Drink-Drunk! Syrups and jellies.
Drunk-Drink! Stomach aches.
Beat-bash! Back to work.
Bash-beat! Dream is over.

--Sasha Cherny,1909 (translated from Russian by me)

 

 

VERTOV'S EYE

 
This poster followed me around during much of my post-college/grad school years. Now I can follow it!

Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, whose works are now being shown at MoMA as part of a major retrospective, spent the 1920s developing many of the techniques of avant-garde cinema—in the belief that the new technology of film would help the working class transform reality.

THE CONVINCING VICTORY

 
My short review for Bomb magazine of Belarusian artist Marina Naprushkina's "The Convincing Victory: Two Stories on What Really Happened," a graphic novel about two reports of events leading up to and surrounding the 2010 presidential election in Belarus: the government-controlled media’s story and the story taken from voters, demonstrators, and victim...s of violence. Printed as a large-format newspaper relating these two versions side by side, "The Convincing Victory" is a blow-by-blow comparison of the incongruous statements in both stories.

THE SEEKER

If you like, or are interested in Sasha Chernyi's poems for children, perhaps you'll enjoy some of his poems for adults. Here is a collection I translated, which was published in the last edition of the late, great Archipelago. Enjoy!