archive
Beneath the dense network of tags and links, there is a particular order at the root of the BOMB archive…

James Woods in Videodrome. Courtesy Museum of Modern Art/ Film Stills Archive. (From BOMB 26, Winter 1989)
John Wesley Harding performs this Saturday at the festival “Words and Music: A Literary Feast in New Orleans.” Cannes winner Michael Haneke’s film “Das Weisse Band” (The White Ribbon) opens the Festival of European film “Cinedays” and will be opening in NYC next month. Last night at Canon Theatre, David Cronenberg interviewed Stephen King about his possible upcoming sequel to The Shining (so perhaps an upcoming film adaptation [perhaps by Cronenberg?!?—ed]) Patti Smith plays this Saturday along with Sonic Youth and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Chicago Filmmakers. In the new issue of Paris, LA, Hilton Als talks about self-portraiture. Joel Shapiro has nine new prints with Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl. John Zinsser’s Art Dealer Archipelagos, a collection of drawings by the painter, opens today at James Graham. Film The Blind Side with Kathy Bates comes to theaters today. And tonight, Jayne Anne Phillips reads from her latest novel at NYU’s Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House.

Amy Sillman DETAIL from "Fatso," 2009, oil/canvas, full painting 7'x7.5', area of detail: approx 8 inches.
Earlier this year I posed a question to 12 admired painters: “What is the current state of abstraction?” The following is a collection of their responses, spanning the absurd, the analytical, and the visionary, all linked by an undercurrent of curiosity for the unknown.

Glenn Kaino and Ryan Majestic’s HONOR ANOMG THIEVES, 2009, photograph by Meghan McInnis, courtesy Creative Time. In my opinion, the true test of a good magic trick is that after it’s performed, you don’t want to know how it’s done. Questions about magic tricks are like money—it’s a good feeling to have them jingling contentedly in your pocket. When I went to watch the Glenn Kaino/Ryan Majestic magic show at the Slipper Room the other night, I really didn’t have a clue what I was in for.

 AN APRIL MOOD, 1946–55. Watercolor and charcoal on joined paper, 40 x 54 in. (101.6 x 137.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art. Purchase, with partial funds from Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence A. Fleischman.
Anyone that can get to the UCLA Hammer Museum soon is in for a treat. Two strong yet very different shows share the upper level. Heat Waves in a Swamp: the Paintings of Charles Burchfield (October 4–January 3, 2010) is an abbreviated retrospective curated by Robert Gober and Cynthia Burlingham. In another well designed space hangs The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis (October 24–February 7, 2010).

Peter Hildebrand; WARP AND WEFT; Gouache on paper; 22 x 30 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Pierogi Flat Files.
Weston Cutter turns his regard to the rare enigma of the quotidian: shunning any suggestion of pretension in favor of an Ammonsian phrasing, “No Science” mulls over clues pulled from their contexts, tapping into questions of exclusion and intrusion, the thin distinction between durability and stability.