I love it when fresh images of iconic artists make the gallery rounds. When it comes to the Velvet Underground, the Factory and anything Warhol, I am always interested. It's too bad the exhibit, All Tomorrow’s Parties - Andy Warhol, la Factory e i Velvet Underground is opening in Bologna, Italy, because I would have loved to view the more than 80 pictures shot by internationally renowned photographers, like David McCabe, in person.
Warhol was a close friend and collaborator with the Velvet Underground, and there is something so fabulously vivid about way the musicians and artists of the period were captured on film. Here are some pictures from the show, in case you don't have a flight booked to Europe for the holidays.
"After 10 years of Berlusconi as a PM, thanks to the impressive media power at his disposal, Italians are now living in his imagined world. It's a world without respect for women, legality or financial accountability; which values only individual success, money. It sees the image as more important than the word."
Giulio D'Eramo, Index on Censorship website, in response to the Government "pushing for a bill that would restrict internet freedom by making it compulsory, even for blogs, to get a government permission before posting political comment on the web."
Globe and Mail's Elizabeth Renzetti explains why the celluloid vision of Italy glamorized in the filmNINE (clip above) is a far call from the Italy many Italians know today. Matteo Garrone's gritty docu-drama Gomorrah (clip below) shows the harsh reality that undermines the culture in Naples and Caserta, two cities in the region of Campania.
As an Italian it is hard to look at the depth of corruption, but it remains a quiet reality regardless. Please know that as a southerner I have never seen first-hand the violence or grit documented in Gomorrah, nor do I necessarily agree with everything Renzetti articulates, but I am aware of the corrupt underbelly that continually breaks the country down from the inside.
Click the link at the bottom of this post to view Renzetti's complete article.
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