Friday, August 17, 2007

A hot and sticky Summer of Love


I just had a coffee with my 4th devoted reader (Hi Daniel!), everyone else being on vacation right now. My one and only faithful fan mentioned his frustration at my lack of posting due to joyous reunions, so I'm happy to oblige him today.
Anyway, back in NYC the weather was excruciatingly hot and sticky, this tornado hit Brooklyn wreaking havoc on the subway system. So with this and the neck and back pain I didn't feel like going to the city, really, but for the Whitney psychedelic show. I'm normally not too much into that stuff but it saved me from having to do research for this project I'm working on.
It was definitively not worth $15.
There was very little art, most of it not very good with the exception of almost all the film works. The show was a collection of posters and photos of bands from the era, some memorabilia (booklets, fanzine, concert tickets, etc.) and very anglo-saxon. Summer of Love seems to have been a really Brit-US thing, though many loans were coming from this German collection apparently.
The show really looked like the fantasy of a giant 1970s teenager bedroom, albeit very tidy and clean. No messy dirty rags on the floor, etc. It was all very well behaved really, with orange walls slightly off because of the wrong hue. They looked more Martha Stewart-pumpkin than glossy plastic Verner Panton-y.
Which brings me to the really cool thing there, the Panton "Visiona" room reconstituted in the image above. The second cool thing was the record cover for 13th Floor Elevator, a band I like a lot (mostly their hit "You Gonna Miss Me" and I also like the Jad Wio cover version).
Aside from that, bof bof as we say in France. I don't find the material very engaging really, and the show seemed more lik a baby-boomer nostalgic attempt to remember their teenage years than anything remotely interesting. I'm sad I skipped the Met new Greek & Roman Art galleries for this. Ah well. Next time.

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