Malcolm McLaren Puts on a Show

"It's all the same," is an argument at the core of the Twentieth Century.  We find it in the totalizing narratives of anthropology (Joseph Campbell or Sir James Frazer), and structuralist-inclined psychology (Freud or Jung)-even in notions of art as universal or timeless. But by the second half of the century, artists and critics were no longer convinced that everything was the same, world-over, even if they had gained assurance that as far as pop culture went, the same, over and over and over, was all there was: a uniform dimension of the spectacular, insipid, and unfathomably shallow. Step in, cultural decoders and re-fashioners like Andy Warhol—and prefabricator extraordinaire (and not coincidentally post-FabFour) producer-cum-artist Malcolm McLaren.
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Sterling Ruby's Evening Trap

PaceWildenstein, the rapidly expanding temple to post-war American art, added Sterling Ruby, an artist with what some would call new blood, to its roster in 2009. With the opening of his first solo exhibition, 2Traps, at the 22nd Street space on Thursday night, the gallery laid claim to the young artist's legacy, one that increasingly focuses on theories of entrapment. Pace icons like Chuck Close and Alex Katz mingled in the space between the two installations in the exhibition, Pig Pen and Bus. Created using a public transportation vehicle painted black and splattered with graffiti, the interior of Bus is outfitted with solitary confinement chambers and sub woofers, making it both a metaphorical space of imprisonment and an apocalyptic version of a rap star's tour bus. Pig Pen exposes the metal cells of Bus and stacks them on top of one another, creating a rectangle that is reinforced by green, pink and orange lines that divide the piece into smaller geometric spaces. The effect of the installation was best summed up by Corban Walker, who said, "It feels quite intimidating. But I like Ruby's color."
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It's In the Jeans

Whether filled with concrete or crotchless, the depiction of fabric in David Rimanelli's exhibition, "Denim," at New York University's 80WSE Gallery extends well beyond the bounds of the material. Using the blue jean as a platform to clothing as a uniform, as a means of expressing social or sexual identity, the exhibition also highlights our ability to rebrand ourselves depending on our attire. Complicating the reading of literal materiality with abstraction and metaphor, Rimanelli curates a show of artworks by 11 artists created over the last 40 years. Here he explains the bias against exhibitions on fashion, and how to get more action out of your pants:

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Mariposa's Individual Politics

"Were you always...gay?" an interviewer behind the camera asks a Hispanic woman as the film opens. The camera's subject, Nadine Armijo of Pasadena, is simultaneously posed on her bed and avoiding the gaze of the camera pointed at her. She hesitates, then affirm this. Nadine's reserve is not unique among the 26 voices interviewed in Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977), re-released at Anthology Film Archives this week. The film, directed and produced by Mariposa Film Group, recorded openly gay men and women from around the country as they relayed their pasts and sought to define their role in a society that had long excluded them. Word is Out would set a precedent in gay and lesbian filmography for candidly documenting the gay experience in the Twentieth Century.
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