robert frank/ian penman

luka

Well-known member
yeah great yeah wicked great cool
i went to see that robert frank exhibition yesterday, yeah brill, fab great yeah

i had to buy the book cos it was so good, and guess what, it came with a big long penman essay attached

so thats what he's been up to

i enjoyed it too

i'll get some quotes later
 

Woebot

Well-known member
luka said:
yeah great yeah wicked great cool
i went to see that robert frank exhibition yesterday, yeah brill, fab great yeah

i had to buy the book cos it was so good, and guess what, it came with a big long penman essay attached

so thats what he's been up to

i enjoyed it too

i'll get some quotes later
frank/penman. that figures. definitely the pensters territory. hes about the only person who makes that 1970s US-era as fascinating as it really is. UNCUT magazine culture has its claws sunk into that era, but (just like that Smile film we saw) manages to make it thoroughly enticing. penman loves bob dylan.
 

jenks

thread death
have just started the Ricks book on Dylan - visions of sin - has much that penman might have written in it - micro linguistic analysis that is both fantastic and head scratching in equal measures, also it reintroduced me to empson's term 'a handle for the bundle'.
obviously penman today!
 

luka

Well-known member
i'm reading dylans book as well as it goes. he likes ice-t and says he played on a kurtis blow record. i want to see that robert frank thing at least one more time beofre it closes if any of you scumbags fancy a visit let me know.
 

xero

was minusone
luka said:
i want to see that robert frank thing at least one more time beofre it closes if any of you scumbags fancy a visit let me know.

shit i wanted to see that but am going away and it finishes while i'm gone. i have a card which gets you in free if you want to borrow it tho'
 

paul

Member
cocksucker blues, which was sold out at the Tate is actually quite easy to download - wasn't very impressed myself, except for a bit where Stevie Wonder joins them on stage, and completely takes over with 'Uptight' - Jagger then makes them start playing Satisfaction...
 
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luka

Well-known member
here are the promised extracts from penmans essay


three degrees
in many of his images, an easily overlooked span: Eternal Nature, historical man, transient man. It's there in an early phot of Zurich (towering tree, smaller stone pillar, advertising image), as it later appears in The Americans (as eg.:timelessly gnarled tree, courthouse, snazzy man's shirt). It takes me a long time to see this pattern. Which may mean: we scan photogrpahs as if they belong to the last category when, in time, some of them will certinly end up in the second.


liability
Housing was cheap. travel was easy. there were commonual support systems. the decline of such things since is one reason a Frank or a Bukowski or Sun Ra, say, would be unlikely to flourish today, with time to drift, experiment, burn. Another reason: today, they would be 'acclaimed' - splashed accross every would be fashionable magazine and media spot - before they'd even unpacked their baggage.


set to infinity
The right photograph stop Time in a way that conservatoire art rarely does; resonance where you don't exepct it slows perception down to a heartbeat; whereas, the merely beautiful (too concise, too clear) simply hurries your gaze right along.
 

Melmoth

Bruxist
Finally caught this exhibition yesterday and it really is a winner, there's also a really good documentary about Frank when you come out. Todays the last day.

Can anyone recommend a contemporary photographer that has this kind of casual power?

The Penman piece is a series of notes and aphoristic jottings like those Luka quoted. Very apt. He
slots Frank in with Kenneth Anger and Andy Warhol in an intersting way:

'Anger, Frank, Warhol: all outsiders in one way or another. The centre does not hold them - but this temperamental inclination gifts them a unique vantage point. They g(r)aze upon much that has been left
excluded or unthought or unseen. Warhol reframes mainstream culture's cults of sign, image and glamour. Anger reveals the occult energies recessed behig the flash and filigree of new subcultures. (Hermeticism in a hot rod.) Frank patrols a wider margin, coversing is sign language with all the exiles on main street.'

The change from the fifties work to the sixties and seventies is quite startling, like he waats to destroy all of that lyricism

The catalogue as a while is beautiful.
 
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