Alans Krig i Information
I Informations bogsektion har jeg i dag en anmeldelse af Emmanuel Guiberts mesterværk Alans krig. Læs den!
A certain tendency in hip hop?
Over at RapSpot, I’ve just reviewed Chicago speed rap veteran Twista’s incredibly poor showing in Pumpehuset, Copenhagen this past Saturday (in Danish, unfortunately). A large part of my criticism is the fact that he lip synched almost his entire concert, which ties in with the reservations I recently expressed about the Wacka Flocka show at…
Stop the Motor City Sellout
As most of you are no doubt aware, Detroit is bankrupt, and one of the worse ideas the city has for keeping its creditors at bay is selling off the treasures in the Detroit Institute of Arts, one of America’s finest art museums. Deaccessioning masterworks from the collection, or dissolving it entirely, would be a…
The Week
The week in review This week the rap game experienced tremors when Big Sean released the song “Control” online. It featured a verse from the still-young, still gunning Kendrick Lamar on which he not only claimed for himself as many indices of hip hop royalty as he could — ‘Makavelli’s offspring’, the ‘Black Beatle’ or…
Institution and Individual – French Satire at the Comics Journal
A new instalment on my lamentably irregular column on European comics, “Common Currency” is up over at The Comics Journal. It examines the winners in the two major categories at this year’s Angoulême festival — Abel Lanzac and Christophe Blain’s Quai d’Orsay vol. 2 and the work of Grand Prix awardee Willem, exemplified in his…
Party and Bullshit
Went to Waka Flocka Flame’s concert in Copenhagen last night. Didn’t quite know what to expect, but arrived stoked to find out whether the energy he channels so freely on record translated well to the stage. Well, it did and it didn’t. Waka Flocka’s music is simple, testosterone-charged, almost vitalistic hip hop that carries the…
The Week
The week in review This weekend saw the first Vanguard Festival here in Copenhagen. A bold step up from long-time hip hop booker Peter “Soul Kitchen” and his team, it spread over two days divided between indie rock (Friday) and hip hop (Saturday). Surely a risk, it seems to have paid off — at least…
Tegneserier i Information
I dag debuterer jeg som tegneserieanmelder i dagbladet Information med en anmeldelse af sommerens danske tegneserier. (Deriblandt Jan Solheim og Henrik Rehrs Insolitus, billede ovenfor). Det er planen at jeg fremover vil varetage broderparten af tegneseriestoffet for avisen, om end filmskribent Christian Monggaard naturligvis fortsat vil bidrage på området ind i mellem. Tak til Christian…
Anonymous Venetian
The drawing reproduced above was sold last week at Sotheby’s London. It fetched £20.000 including the buyer’s premium. Which, if the old attribution to Titian were correct, would be an amazing bargain. As I’ve mentioned before, Titian is hard to pin down as a draughtsman because there are so few surviving drawings securely attributable to…
Titian in Rome: Notes
In what is becoming a bit of a trend hereabouts, I’m writing notes on another art show which is no longer available for viewing: this time the Titian exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, which closed several weeks ago. As an exhibition, it was fairly lacklustre. The kind of blockbuster whose curatorial muscle…
Remembering Kim Thompson
I was incredibly saddened to learn of Fantagraphis co-publisher Kim Thompson’s death last week. At age 56 it is early to go and my deepest condolences go out to his family, friends and colleagues. He shall be sorely missed, not the least within the field of comics where he made his mark. Although I’ve written…
A Titian Fragment?
Another possible Titian is coming to the block. The picture at right will be auctioned at Christie’s, London on 2 July. It’s clearly a fragment of a picture that was once bigger, most likely a half-length portrait. Is it a Titian? Christie’s seems cautious, having set the estimate at only £400,000 : £600,000 (low for…
Eyes Wide Open
The great Barocci show at the National Gallery in London closed last Sunday. I’d been meaning to write something about it here since I saw it in its first weeks, but things got in the way and I never got around to it. The show, however, has stuck in my memory as a particularly exhilarating…
More on comics criticism at the Hooded Utilitarian
In the latest instalment of my irregular column at the Hooded Utilitarian I present a late entry in the debate kicked off last month by Eddie Campbell, with his essay for The Comics Journal, “The Literaries”. In his essay, Campbell took issue with the insistence by some critics not just of comparing the achievements of…
Donald Richie RIP
Besides technique, however, there’s something else about [Seven Samurai] that defies analysis because there are no words to describe the effect. What I mean might be called the irrational rightness of an apparently gratuitous image in its proper place, and the image I always think of is that wonderful and mysterious scene in Zéro de…