Monthly Archives: November 2024

MoMA looks at Robert Frank’s six decades of photography and filmmaking after ‘The Americans’

NEW YORK — It makes perfect sense that someone who’d changed the face of an art form would then want to keep changing his own approach to that art form. Once Everest has been climbed, why climb it again (which begs an even harder question, how to climb it again)?Robert Frank changed the face of photography with his 1958 book, “The Americans.” And changing his own approach to photography is what he kept doing over the next 60 years of his life. To his way of thinking, there wasn’t an alternative. “Once we make a choice, it’s fate,” he said. “First thought, best thought. We don’t go back. We only move forward.”Robert Frank, “New York City, 7 Bleecker Street,” September 1993.© 2024 The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation“Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue” takes as its subject Frank’s elusive, mercurial, forthrightly ad hoc relationship to image-making post-“Americans.” The show runs at the Museum of Modern Art through Jan. 11. Like that relationship, the show is inescapably unsatisfying and incomplete. So what? So’s life. More important, it’s consistently surprising and abundantly interesting.That verb in the title, “dances,” is just right: The show refuses to stay in any one place. There are more than 200 items on display: photographs, of course, as well as photographic collages, contact sheets, and photo albums. Filmmaking was Frank’s primary interest in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and clips from many of the films play on monitors throughout the show. The exhibition takes its title from a 30-minute film Frank made in 1980.There are also letters, books, vintage magazines, drawings and paintings by his second wife, June Leaf, maquettes, two Frank-directed music videos (for New Order and Patti Smith), and album covers — for the New Lost City Ramblers, his friend Allen Ginsberg, Tom Waits, and one for the Rolling Stones that’s recognizable to millions more people than have ever heard of Robert Frank: “Exile on Main St.”Robert Frank, “Untitled (from ‘CS Blues’),” 1972.© 2024 The June Leaf and Robert Frank FoundationDespite what they want you to think, the Rolling Stones aren’t necessarily the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band. They are the art world’s greatest rock ‘n’ patrons: Andy Warhol did the cover of “Sticky Fingers” (yes, the zipper), and Frank did the artwork for “Exile.” He also made a long-suppressed documentary about the band’s 1972 US tour (suppressed by the Stones — patronage has its limits). There are stills from it in the show.This is Frank’s centenary, and MoMA is not alone in observing it. Earlier this year, there was “Robert Frank and Todd Webb: Across America, 1955,” at the Addison Gallery of American Art. “Robert Frank — Be Happy” is at the Museum Folkwang, in Essen, Germany, through Jan. 5. Another Frank show, “Hope Makes Visions,” is at New York’s Pace Gallery through Dec. 21. That same date, “Robert Frank: Mary’s Book” opens at the Museum of Fine Arts. Aperture has published a new edition of “The Americans.”Robert Frank, “Jack Kerouac,” 1959.© 2024 The June Leaf and Robert Frank FoundationEven all these years later, the book remains thrilling: filled with wary awe and a sense of irreducible discovery. It retains a wayward, offhand energy so tightly leashed it seems about to explode off the page. In his introduction, Frank’s friend Jack Kerouac called “The Americans” “a sad poem.” Cumulatively, its 83 images (edited down from nearly 28,000 exposures) are an epic poem. Whether or not it’s sad, depends on how you respond to highways and flags and jukeboxes and televisions and race relations and the emptiness of American space.The post-“Americans” work — whether in photography or film — retains a poetic quality. If anything, that quality deepens. But the poetry has undergone a transformation, shifting from epic to lyric. The images are often indwelling and meditative, not sweeping and gestural. Part of the excitement of “The Americans” is how exploratory it feels: artistically no less than geographically. What we see throughout “Life Dances On” remains exploratory, but the explorations stay close to home: confidently uncertain, proudly unassertive. “I’m always looking outside, trying to look inside,” Frank said in 1985.“The Americans” is a book of quite-literal revelations: the way a continent-sized country looked to a man who’d spent the first two-thirds of his life in Switzerland. The subsequent work is about revelations waited for rather than pursued: not the kind of revelations that one can seek out — let alone by traveling 9,000 miles in a used Ford coupe — the kind one has to hope for, not certain they’ll come. The representative title from these years may belong to Frank’s book “The Lines of My Hand” (1972). Emotionally, conceptually, even personally, so much of the work during these decades is up close, as close as, yes, the lines of Frank’s hand.Robert Frank, “Mabou,” 1977.© 2024 The June Leaf and Robert Frank FoundationIn 1970, Frank and Leaf bought a house in Mabou, halfway up the western coast of Cape Breton Island. They found what he described as “a completely different rhythm of life.” The terrain is windswept, stark, almost severe. You can see all that in the photos and footage from Mabou. More to the point, you can feel those qualities — the rhythm, too. Frank’s work becomes increasingly centripetal (even hermetic), provisional, inchoate, oblique. He turns to visual devices like layering and juxtaposition. Words, as both subject matter and device, interest him. He inscribes them on negatives. He writes them on prints. He relishes what Ginsberg, in a slightly different context, called “roughness, scratchiness, and accident.”In a 1989 letter to the photography historian William Johnson, Frank wrote, “Now — I still want more. Not fame — not money. Just more.” Then there’s a new paragraph, as if to draw away from so grand-sounding an assertion: “So far there is more snow.” Can you tell he wrote it in Mabou?Robert Frank, “Andrea,” 1975.© 2024 The June Leaf and Robert Frank FoundationPhotography is fundamentally about two things: light and those elements of the external world that that light enables a camera to capture. As he aged, Frank was drawn to darkness (not literal darkness, but darkness as doubt and consternation) and the claims of inwardness. Both of his children died: Andrea, only 20, in a plane crash; and Pablo, two decades later, by suicide. Changing the face of a medium is an extraordinary thing, and Frank’s accomplishment had become well acknowledged. But what solace can that offer someone forced to endure the most awful curse life has to offer, to outlive one’s children?“External life being so mighty,” Saul Bellow writes in “The Adventures of Augie March,” “the instruments so huge and terrible, the performances so great, the thoughts so great and threatening, you produce a someone who can exist before it. You invent a man who can stand before the terrible appearances.” Stand before and, if he has a camera, record them. The appearances of internal life can be even more terrible, though, and much of Frank’s late work is grounded in a recognition of that.Installation view of “Robert Frank’s Scrapbook Footage.” That’s Frank on the middle screen.Photo by Emile Askey © 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York/The Museum of Modern Art, New Yo“Life Dances On” has a small companion exhibition, “Robert Frank’s Scrapbook Footage.” Showing on eight screens on MoMA’s ground floor and in the basement, it’s as announced: footage that’s … scrappy. It ranges in date from 1970 to 2006. Some is in color, some is in black-and-white. Much, though not all, is in the way of being home movies: Leaf eating what looks like a chicken pot pie, a brief view of Pablo, Frank visiting his parents in Switzerland and taking the ferry to Nova Scotia. There are visits to Beirut, in 1991; Russia, in 1999; and Egypt, undated.The title comes from a remark Frank made about his filmmaking. “It starts out as ‘scrapbook footage.’ There is no script, there is plenty of intuition.” Or, construed more broadly and put another way, life dances on.MoMA is also presenting a retrospective of “The Complete Robert Frank: Films and Videos, 1959–2017” through Dec. 11.LIFE DANCES ON: Robert Frank in DialogueROBERT FRANK’S SCRAPBOOK FOOTAGEAt Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St., New York, through Jan. 11 and March, respectively. 212-708-9400, moma.orgMark Feeney can be reached at [email protected].

Luca Guadagnino Directs Omar Apollo’s ‘Te Maldigo’ Short Film with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Omar Apollo may have made his acting debut with “Queer,” but he’s not limiting his collaborations with Luca Guadagnino at just feature films: The duo have reunited for music video “Te Maldigo,” which Apollo announced as a partnership with A24.The song also brings Grammy-nominated Apollo back with “Queer” composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who also collaborated with Guadagnino on the “Challengers” score.

The video brings audiences into the underground bar scene that “Queer” encapsulates. The video, like the feature, is set in Mexico City post-WWII. Apollo sings onstage in the short film, which debuted at midnight on November 21.

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Produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who composed the score for the film, “Te Maldigo” is Apollo’s first song entirely in Spanish since 2022’s “En El Olvido.” The track is the first single from Apollo’s sophomore album “God Said No,” which was released in May 2024.

Apollo wears a custom suit created by LOEWE creative director and “Queer” costume designer Jonathan Anderson in the video for “Te Maldigo,” which embraces the aesthetic of the feature.

Apollo told IndieWire that Guadagnino cast him in “Queer” via social media.

“Somebody DM’d me on their end of things,” Apollo said. “They said, ‘Luca wants you in the film,’ and I was like, ‘OK, tell him I’ll be in it.’ I didn’t even know what it was. I hadn’t met him before, and then a few days later, we’re on a Facetime call with my manager, and then, he tells me about the role, about the scene, and what I would have to do.”

In “Queer,” Apollo plays a one-time love interest of Daniel Craig’s lead character Lee. The sequence starring Apollo involves nudity and an intricately choreographed sex scene.

“I only told a few friends because I honestly didn’t want opinions about, ‘Oh, your first role is a sex scene? I don’t know, bro,’” Apollo said of the part. “I didn’t want that. So I kept it really tight. I told, like, five of my friends; I have tons of friends but, my five, you know, the mains. Then I was just cool with that. I mean, it’s all unfamiliar. It was all new. I was like, ‘Oh, like, how confidential is all this stuff?’ I just really [was thinking] that I didn’t want to lose the role. They don’t really talk to you that much when you’re in the process of getting a role, it’s a lot of waiting on an email or something. It ended up all being fine, and I guess I gossiped the perfect amount.”

He added of appearing in the William S. Burroughs adaptation, “I was taking it in. I was looking around at everyone’s faces. I was humble about that. I’m an artist, I’m from Indiana, and I’m not going to fake being humble. I was like, ‘Yes, watch this. This is a great thing. You should be paying attention, it’s important to William’s life.’ I lent myself to develop his character.”

Guadagnino previously told IndieWire that Apollo’s role is key to the whole film.

“In the book, this is the first person that Lee actually meets in the movie. [It] was so important to be very precise and, at the same time, very iconic,” Guadagnino said. “I always [have] been a fan of Omar. I thought that he could bring this feeling of contemporaneity to a movie that is set in a period that is far from us, because I think a great period drama behaves in relation with the present of the making of the movie. So I think Omar brings that.”

Guadagnino is in talks to make his superhero debut with DC Studios’ “Sgt. Rock,” which will be penned by “Challengers” and “Queer” screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes and “Queer” lead star Craig. Guadagnino also is in post-production on Amazon MGM Studios’ “After the Hunt,” which stars Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield. Guadagnino is set to remake “American Psycho,” which is rumored to star Jacob Elordi.

Additionally, Guadagnino will work with his “Challengers” actor Josh O’Connor (who also stars alongside Craig in “Wake Up Dead Man”) for the “Separate Rooms” adaptation. Léa Seydoux is set to co-lead the feature, a queer drama based on the novel of the same name by late author Pier Vittorio Tondelli.

Check out Guadagnino’s “Te Maldigo” below.

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“Queer” premieres November 27 in select theaters and nationwide December 13.

I Wanted My Four-Year-Old to Love Moviegoing. How Hard Could It Be?

When it came time to choose a name for our first child, my husband and I had a list of one.
A couple of years before her birth, we’d been on an especially good date to see an Agnès Varda film in repertory; the protagonist’s style, wit and ultimate resilience appealed to us as much as Varda’s own story as a pathbreaking woman in the French New Wave did. We’d seen Varda’s documentary “Faces Places” at New York’s Quad Cinema just a week prior to seeing “Cléo From 5 to 7” at the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn, and, especially in the spring of 2020, the double bill sat lodged in our minds. Cleo D’Addario turned 4 this past May.

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I’d always assumed that moviegoing would be a part of Cleo’s story, and the story of our parenting her. I grew up movie mad, a town over from an AMC multiplex that’s still standing. That’s where I saw “The Lion King” and “101 Dalmatians” (the Glenn Close version) and “The Parent Trap” (the Lindsay Lohan version); you couldn’t have told me that now-forgotten movies like “Paulie,” “Gordy” or “Bicentennial Man” weren’t huge hits — I saw them as part of a crowd, after all. Visiting on school breaks from college and then after graduation, I saw “The Wrestler” and “Captain Phillips” and “Creed II” with my dad at that AMC — seeing movies together has been part of how we communicate.

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So it was with high hopes that I took Cleo to her first theatrical film last fall. I’d explained to her that in a movie theater, you have to sit quietly and respect other people’s experience, and she understood as best a 3-year-old could; I told her that when it got dark, she might get a little scared, and she could hold my hand. I also informed her of the rich tradition of movie snacks, and when we got to the Regal Union Square in Manhattan, she took full advantage, finagling an ice cream cone as well as a kids’ pack of popcorn, candy and fruit juice from a dad who just wanted her to enjoy “Trolls Band Together.”

The trouble started about midway through the trailers, when Cleo began fidgeting as ad after ad played. I’d explained that these were previews of what we could look forward to, and Cleo did OK for a while. But at some point, a commercial for a car company came on, and Cleo groaned and said, loudly, “Again?” (I was a professional critic when she was born, and perhaps that has rubbed off.) Next came a promo for the musical remake of “The Color Purple,” one that began with foreboding music and went on to feature Colman Domingo’s character screaming and firing a gun into the air. Even those who appreciate “The Color Purple” can perhaps understand that its intended audience doesn’t overlap much with the “Trolls” demographic.

“I want a break,” Cleo said. We left the theater, and she told me that it was too loud and not fun. We eventually went back in and watched just enough of the movie to begin to get the premise — they’re trolls, but they’re also NSYNC — before Cleo announced, “I want to be done.” So we went to the Strand bookstore nearby, where I told her she could buy any book she wanted; instead, she picked out a purple toy cat and named it Sylvia, after one of her classmates.

Maybe it was just the wrong time, the wrong place! Seven months later, I tried again, taking her to a small theater in the NCG chain on a trip upstate. We went to a revival showing of “The Land Before Time” — more snacks, more complaints about the trailer load, a second freakout, vivid and loud in the dark. (The world of the dinosaurs might not be a place for a sensitive 4-year-old.)

“I was just pretending,” Cleo said after we left the screening room for the bathroom break she’d requested. “I don’t need to go. But let’s stay out here.”

Maybe my expectations were too high. Whereas I spent time on the playground shouting movie catchphrases with my friends, Cleo’s peers don’t seem to go to the movies — so much so that when a family we know took their daughter to the Halle Bailey “Little Mermaid,” we were surprised. (Cleo’s younger sister, Iris, has been to three movies in theaters, but that’s just because I took her to “baby day” screenings at Alamo, back when she napped all day.)

The currency among Cleo’s peers is entertainment they control — and my little master of the universe is no different. She pauses movies to rewind to favorite parts: I don’t think she’s ever made it past a scene in “Turning Red” where the heroine trips on her backpack, and “Barbie” exists to her as a star vehicle for Dua Lipa, who has a seconds-long cameo as a mermaid.

Cleo prefers supercuts to movies — YouTube is currently banned in our household, but back when it wasn’t, a video called “Cruella de Vil laughing for 2 minutes,” created by a user named JuanDiva, was what she thought “101 Dalmatians” was. And low-fi content that feels user-created, even if it isn’t, appeals to Cleo more than high-gloss Hollywood product: Her absolute favorite program features two children named Vlad and Nikita running around a Miami mansion screaming incoherently at their beleaguered mom. It also originated on YouTube, and I thought my ban on the platform had done the trick, until I discovered that it had been licensed to Max — Cleo saw it as I was cuing up “Sesame Street.” She refers to this show as “Kids,” and asks if she can watch “Kids” every single night. (Dear David Zaslav: This one is personal.)

Looking around me at both unhappy and uneasy screenings to which I took Cleo (and then a third, months later, of “The Wild Robot”), I saw that I was not the only parent trying to contain a child crawling out of their seat with impatience. If we can’t get kids to sit through a 90-minute movie — if they’re so accustomed to personalizing every element of their entertainment experience — what other communal experiences are they missing out on?

I know this is a silly thing to be worried about, inasmuch as I’m worried at all. A love of films may eventually click in, if the right movie comes along when she’s the right age (if theaters are still around, and I certainly hope they will be). Some of the reasons Cleo doesn’t like the theater — the booming speakers, the enveloping dark, the crowds of people — feel very much of a piece with her cautious, thoughtful nature. And it’s not a comment on Gen Alpha’s attention spans, and what YouTube has done to them, to observe that a 4-year-old is more comfortable in a well-lit room with images closer to human scale.

It’s the element of control that bothers me — the sense that maybe Cleo is simply so accustomed to determining the pacing and the circumstances of every single experience in her life that the great parts of moviegoing simply can’t compare. But if the delivery system for art really is changing — if this younger generation is so immune to its charms that the theatrical experience is going away, then maybe I’ll just be forced to find things to love, or at least to tolerate, in the entertainment Cleo chooses. She’s the one with the control, after all. (By the way, huge box office grosses for the recent “Inside Out” and “Despicable Me” sequels, and early tracking for “Wicked” and “Moana 2,” suggest that the theatrical experience isn’t, yet, going away.)

And if learning to love moviegoing is something that’s going to happen for Cleo, then it’s going to happen as she grows into her ability to follow a story. I know she’s at least curious about what’s going on with great characters; I saw it the first time her eyes lit up when she saw Cruella laugh. (Thank you, Glenn Close; thank you, JuanDiva.) It’ll happen, I think. But I’ve spent enough time in movie theaters to know that the experience really means more if you can’t fast-forward to the good part.

And just as I remember my movie trips with my father fondly, there’s something I cherish about that first trip to the multiplex with Cleo, even if we only caught one and a half troll serenades. On the walk home from the subway, she and I stopped to play catch on the sidewalk, using Sylvia the cat as the ball. As I tossed Sylvia back to her, I asked her what her favorite part of the day was, expecting her to say the bookstore or the subway or riding her scooter around Union Square. Moving so fast that I struggled to keep up, she looked for all the world like the teenager she’ll someday be — hopefully by then someone I’m taking to see big blockbusters and art films and movies she’ll discover and want to show me.

“Well,” she said, “my favorite part of today was when we saw ‘Trolls.’”

It was a start.