I fell into Greer Lankton’s exhibition DOLL PARTY at Company—or more precisely, I stumbled. I don’t mean I stumbled upon the show at random. I actually caught myself before I went tumbling off the bottom step of the steep staircase that led to the dim black-walled gallery space, stabilizing my unsteady legs before my joints … Continue reading
I’ve never really liked zombie movies. I know that’s sacrilege coming from a Pittsburgh native, where George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead famously staggered around Evans City Cemetery. But I just never got the appeal of the ravenous undead. Yet, cinematic zombie apocalypses are really the only comparisons I’m finding to describe the … Continue reading
Why hello there, Filthy Dreams ghosties, ghouls, and goblins! Happy Halloween! What’s that? What am I doing? Oh, just cutting all our Halloween candy in half to make sure there aren’t any razors in there! Remember those old trusty scare tactics from trick-or-treating days of yore? Did YOU ever find a razor? Or better yet … Continue reading
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, dearest Filthy Dreams readers, but I have a tendency to be a little, um, WORDY. Because we all need a break sometimes from my unending (draining) gush of thoughts and because there are shows closing soon still worthy of our attention, I thought we’d try something different: brevity! So … Continue reading
“Please come. Don’t abandon me. Please.” Ana de Armas as Norma Jeane Baker as becoming-Marilyn Monroe prays to a mirror; her hands clasped together in desperate supplication. She’s begging for, as Joyce Carol Oates describes in her novel Blonde, “her Friend-in-the-Mirror.” Tears stream down her face as she pleads to the bulb-ringed three-way mirror. Her … Continue reading
“I’M A STAR!” Mia Goth’s psychotic stardom-reaching farmer’s daughter Pearl bends at the waist in her scarlet red version of Margaret Hamilton’s nefarious cyclist Almira Gulch’s high-collared dress in The Wizard of Oz and howls that line from the depths of her soul. Pearl has just attempted a rousing half-imagined bomb-strewn trenches boogie, a kind … Continue reading
Jesus Christ. This shit is fucking ugly. That’s the immediate thought I had upon clicking on the installation views of the current exhibition Painting in New York: 1971-83 at the two Karma spaces on 2nd Street. My eyes watered staring at squiggles of bold yellow paint resembling squirts of yellow mustard on a hot dog … Continue reading
Does an artist need to believe—or at the very least consider—the existence of God (or the divine, a higher power, or whatever it is you want to call it) in order to create transcendent work? That’s the question I’ve been wrestling with ever since listening to an advanced copy of the audiobook for Nick Cave … Continue reading
I’d like to begin with a fact. A simple yet shocking fact. It is this—a floodtide of filth is engulfing our country in the form of obscenity and is threatening to pervert an entire generation of our American children! At least that’s what George Putnam said, finger-wagging in his Middle America-terrorizing introduction to the fear-mongering, … Continue reading
Two sultry gazes stare sightlessly from a weathered window or a picture frame as if stolen from the bedroom wall of a fanatical teenage girl in 1955. James Dean and Elvis Presley, icons of mid-20th century rebels without causes. Ripping it up, hip thrusting, jailhouse rocking, Vampira attracting, drag racing, they are double martyrs to … Continue reading