Eggleston’s Democratic Eye

“I had this notion of what I called a democratic way of looking around, that nothing was more or less important.” 
— William Eggleston

Quotidian. Democratic. Spontaneous. Mundane. Trenchant. Subdued. Poetic. Prosaic. Intimate. Vernacular. Gothic. Any Google search reveals an array of terms that apply with equal precision to the quality and content of photographer William Eggleston’s work, whose exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of art opens today. 
William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 was curated by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in association with Haus der Kunst, Munich, and it encompasses an array of 1960s black and white photos and video work, 1970s dye-transfer images and more recent ink-jet prints. 
His images have inspired both derision and praise. When his exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1976 — the first one-man color photography show presented by the institution — the New York Times denounced it as “the most hated show of the year”.

Yet his work now invites comparisons to William Faulkner, and his sensibility is imprinted into films by Gus Van Sant, Dennis Hopper, David Byrne, David Lynch and Sophia Coppola. Consider The Virgin Suicides, Coppola’s 1999 film starring a splendor-in-the-grass Kirstin Dunst; compare it with Eggleston’s mid-1970s Memphis girl, a posy-print grass angel with a Brownie box camera held askew.

And if being photographed by Juergan Teller for a Marc Jacobs campaign is the equivalent of sealing one’s fate as an icon, Eggleston and his anthology of detritus and minutiae have transcended the cultural stratosphere. Look back to Jacob’s 2007 Spring-Summer campaign, which featured Eggleston, Charlotte Rampling, pinstripes, a rumpled bed, a seedy Paris hotel and a flat-light embrace of the domestic grotesque.

Visit the exhibition at LACMA: William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008, October 31, 2010 through January 16, 2011.

Get the book: William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008,  (Whitney Museum of American Art) by Ms. Elisabeth Sussman, Thomas. 
Watch: The Virgin Suicides.
Read: A Very Singular Vision, SF Said, telegraph.co.uk.

Untitled, Memphis, Tennessee, c. 1974-75.

Kirstin Dunst as Lux Lisbon in The Virgin Suicides, 1999.
William Eggleston and Charlotte Rampling, Juergan Teller for Marc Jacobs, 1997.

In Living Color

Most mornings last week, 7:15 am.

Yippie-Y-Yay

Seven-Year Itch

Jean Paul Gaultier presented his final collection for Hermès, ending a seven-year collaboration with a mix of streamlined separates in leather and suede for Spring 2011, a look reminiscent of Zorro and High Plains Drifter, with a dash of Lola Montès.

Happy 20th Anniversary, Film Foundation

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is presenting an array of feature-length films that are nearly operatic in scope, from last weekend’s noir classics, The Big Combo and They Made Me a Fugitive, to upcoming color-saturated melodramas and suspense thrillers.

Louise Brooks and Richard Arlen, Beggars of Life, 1928

LACMA’s Film Department is marking the 20th Anniversary of the Film Foundation, a non-profit founded by Martin Scorsese and other filmmakers in 1990. The Film Foundation has partnered with major film archives in the US and abroad, and has provided funding to preserve and restore nearly 545 films — a variety of productions that includes silents, documentaries and shorts, along with the kind of features that make it worth enduring a night in a Bing Auditorium seat.

October 15,  7:30 pm, Bonjour Tristesse, 1958

October 15,  9:15 pm, The Barefoot Contessa, 1954

October 16, 5:00 pm, Leave Her to Heaven, 1945

October 16 , 7:30 pm, Senso, 1954

October 23, 7:30 pm, Beggars of Life, 1928

October 29, 7:30 pm, Shadow of a Doubt, 1943

October 29, 9:30 pm, Cloak and Dagger, 1946

The X Factor

There’s a dearth of the letter X in Los Angeles signage.

Some restaurants have seemingly effortless, yet somewhat obligatory scripted lettering, such as Xi’an, Beverly Hills; Xai Verandah Lounge, West Hollywood; and Xiomara, Hollywood. 
Then there are the X, XX and XXX theatres, but for all their lurid glory, once you’ve seen one, you’ve seem all. 

Despite the banality with which the letter X has been subjected to since the death of the last King Louis, the letter X has a rich history as a powerful symbol. 
An abbreviation for Christ. 
The sign that marks the spot. 
The signature of the illiterate. 

So it’s not surprising that a double-X configuration would continue to give rise to The most INTERESTING MAN in the WORLD and one of the funniest campaigns in the world. 
But somehow, I can’t picture THE most INTERESTING MAN buying beer from a battened-down liquor store on Brand Boulevard in Glendale.

Cheers.