All photos by HENRY GROSSMAN except the final image by JOSH PELTA-HELLER BY JOSH PELTA-HELLER In March of 1967, on assignment for Life Magazine, photographer Henry Grossman found himself sitting in EMI Studio Two at Abbey Road with The Beatles, while they sculpted and shaped the early demos of what would become “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.” “I remember when we walked in that Paul [McCartney] came over and said ‘hey guys, listen to this…,’” recalls Grossman fondly, “and he sat down at the piano and started playing something, and [the other three Beatles] all gathered around, and by […]
THE LADY OF THE LOG: Q&A w/ Catherine Coulson
Artowrk by JJUSTINE DEVINE EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally posted on September 28th, 2015. In advance of Sunday night’s long-anticipated reactivation of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, we present this reprise edition. EDITOR’S NOTE 4/25/16: Just found out the sad and shocking news that Katherine passed away today. In tribute, we present a reprise edition of this very in-depth interview we did with her last October in advance of her talk at the Pennsylvania Academy Of The Arts, which was part of PAFA’s David Lynch retrospective, The Unified Field. She was very generous with her time — this was probably the […]
ARTSY: Being David Lynch
Playing Lynch: Official trailer to Psychogenic Fugue from Squarespace on Vimeo. Psychogenic Fugue is the full length Director’s Cut film from the project “Playing Lynch”, a collaborative meditation on the work of David Lynch. Hosted by Squarespace, and directed by Sandro, this film features seven re-creations of some of Lynch’s most iconic characters, as performed by John Malkovich, and featuring the music of David Lynch, as performed by artists like The Flaming Lips and Angelo Badalamenti. The film was lovingly created for the benefit of the David Lynch Foundation. RELATED: “It’s Like You’ve Gone Through a Black Hole:” Five Artists […]
ARTSY: Night Of The Igguana
Like all things Iggy, this is undeniably badass. PREVIOUSLY: There may well be a sound more thrilling than the tub-thumping opening salvo of Iggy Pop’s “Lust For Life,” but after five decades of listening closely I’ve yet to hear it. When that song starts, stillness is simply not an option. Resistance is futile. It’s a showstopper, which is why it’s usually the last song of the night. So when Iggy (known to his mother as James Newell Osterberg Jr.) kicked off his concert at the Academy Of Music last night with it, the question hanging in the air was: […]
VINTAGE VIOLENCE: A John Cale Q&A
Photo by CRAIG MCDEAN via Interview EDITOR’S NOTE: A shortened version of this interview first appeared on VICE’s NOISEY website on February 3, 2016 BY JONATHAN VALANIA In 1982, VU architect John Cale recorded Music For A New Society, an album of wrenching, emotionally-shattered torch songs that prophesied a denatured dystopia, somewhere between Blade Runner and Metropolis, looming ominously on the horizon, full of vintage violence and hysterical laughter, homicidal mothers and greedy angels with broken wings exfoliating the crawling skin of God. Thirty-four years later, we may not quite be there yet, but you can see it from here. […]
ARTSY: Season’s Greetings
Artwork by VICTOR DELORENZO RELATED: Q&A With Victor DeLorenzo, Singer, Actor, Songwriter, Drummer, Recovering Violent Femme
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: Q&A With Author, Essayist & New Yorker Staff Writer Adam Gopnik
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally posted on November 17th 2011, upon the publication of Adam Gopnik’s book The Table Comes First: Family, France & The Meaning Of Food. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Longtime New Yorker staff writer, author, essayist, children’s novelist and Philly homeboy Adam Gopnik will be delivering the keynote lecture of the Philadelphia Museum Of Art’s Object Lessons: New Thinking about Still Life symposium at 6:30 pm tonight — his talk is called Things that Mean Things: Objects and Inventory in American Art. Back in 2011, we got Gopnik on the horn and we discussed writing, food, crime and punishment, […]
ARTSY: Jean-Michael Basquiat, The Radiant Child
Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) “Basquiat’s canon revolves around single heroic figures: athletes, prophets, warriors, cops, musicians, kings and the artist himself. In these images the head is often a central focus, topped by crowns, hats, and halos. In this way the intellect is emphasized, lifted up to notice, privileged over the body and the physicality of these figures (i.e. black men) commonly represent in the world.” —Kellie Jones, Lost in Translation: Jean-Michel in the (Re)Mix[27] WIKIPEDIA: Fred Hoffman hypothesizes that underlying Basquiat’s sense of himself as an artist was his “innate capacity to function […]
ARTSY: The Greatest ‘Pope Francis In Philly’ Commemorative Memorabilia Story Ever Told
Artwork by FRED LAMMERS EDITOR’S NOTE: Todd Kimmel’s legend looms large in the annals of proto-bohemian Philadelphia. He was cool before it was even possible. TODD KIMMEL: We’ve created a series of large format prints featuring Pope Francis in general, and his visit to Philly in particular. I dreamed up this project, and now these prints are selling like crazy to Catholic and utterly non Catholic people alike. I like the guy, and what he represents to all the entrenched, doomed naysayers who are now being dragged into the light as just that. Francis throws down this love bomb thing, […]
ARTSY: Happy Nightmare, Baby
THE GUARDIAN: One little girl has pigtails and a Hannibal Lecter mask, another wears a bacon blindfold, while a boy has a moustache made of maggots. In Shi Mohan’s illustrated worlds, everything – even childhood – is bizarre and sinister. MORE BEAUTIFUL DECAY: There is an unnerving quality to Shi Mohan‘s paintings, as though they are capturing daydreams, complete with all the surrealness and subconscious metaphors that come with the territory. According to Art Seasons, a gallery in Singapore and Beijing that has previously shown her work, “Shi Mohan jocularly calls herself a life Illustrator. Pleasantly and sensitively, she […]
REWIND 2014: The Year In Questions And Answers
If armies run on their stomachs, blogs run on their big fucking mouths. We’re no exception. But we’d like to think that, on a good day, we put all that hot air to good use when interrogating visiting dignitaries in advance of their triumphant arrival into the City Of Brotherly Love. We’ve never pretended to have all the answers but we do know all the right questions. And we’ve never settled for easy answers to hard questions. Sometimes feelings get hurt and sometimes new connections are made. Sometimes painful truths emerge and sometimes we actually learn something. And sometimes we […]
ARTSY: For They Shall Inherit The Earth
Photo by LEE JEFFRIES LIGHT BOX: In 2008, accountant and amateur photographer Lee Jeffries was in London to run a marathon. On the day before the race, Jeffries thought he would wander the city to take pictures. Near Leicester Square, he trained his 5D camera with a long, 70-200 lens on a young, homeless woman who was huddled in a sleeping bag among Chinese food containers. “She spotted me and started shouting, drawing the attention of passersby,” Jeffries says. “I could have just walked away in an embarrassed state, or I could have gone over and apologized to her.” He […]
ARTSY: Q&A w/ Photographer Jessica Kourkounis
CLICK TO ENLARGE Jessica Kourkounis [pictured, below right, with chicken) is a Philadelphia-based photographer specializing in documentary, editorial and portraiture work. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Time, The Art Economist and ESPN The Magazine. Her brother plays drums on many of the albums in your collection. Presumably. PHAWKER: How did you get interested in photography? What was the ‘Eureka!’ moment when you decided that this is what you wanted to do with your life? JESSICA KOURKOUNIS: I’ve been interested in photography for so long I honestly can’t even remember […]