Niki de Saint Phalle at Gimpel Fils

An exhibition with works by late artist and visionary Niki de Saitn Phalle (1930 - 2002) has opened tonight at Gimpel Fils in London.

vive l'amour

Spanning over 40 years of creative endeavours of this great artist, the exhibition encompasses with its key artworks the pain, fun, darkness, colours, boldness and child-like eccentricity conveyed on St Phalle's sculptures, drawings and paintings.

Gimpel Fils has a long tradition of representing de artistic avant gard in London (Yves Klein, Susan Hiller, Josef Albers amongst many other illustrious names).

The exhibition goes until November 12th and it's free. If the weather in London starts to get too grey for your liking, drop by and discover that even from the darkest corners of our souls, we can find colours to express the resiliance of the human heart.

Gimpel Fils is located just behind Bond Street Station (central Line).
30 Davies Street London W1K 4NB UK
tel. +44 (0)20 7493 2488
fax. +44 (0)20 7629 5732
email. info@gimpelfils.com

Kate Bush to release new album

"50 Words For Snow" is the title of Kate Bush eagerly anitcipated follow up to Aerial (2005). Six years is not such a long time waiting considering how long it took for Kate Bush to return to the studio since her 1993 release, The Red Shoes (1993).

The album is out on the 21st of Novemeber, and for those who cannot wait that long, you can pre-order on through Kate Bush's official website www.katebush.com (click on the link that is this post's title and you'll get there!)

The album's first single Wild Man, was broadcast exclusively on BBC Radio 2 yesterday (Oct 10th). You can listen to the track here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0156ky4 (the track starts at 1:46:35 in case you do not fancy listening to 2 hours of radio on the computer!)

The Mistress Bookshelf: Dreamers of a New Day by Sheila Rowbothan

I will try and share some suggestions for interesting and enlightening reads. This one's on my Christmas wish list!

I stumbled upon a review of this particular book on the latest issue of BBC History magazine - from which I present an extract here on this post. For the original review, please click on the link that is this post's title.



Dreamers of a New Day: Women who Intevented the Twentieth Century
by Sheila Rowbotham
RRP: £10.99

review by Sue Wingrove

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries a confluence of factors encouraged women to envisage changes in their circumstances.

Discoveries in science and technology, the rise of global trade and a world war were among developments which inspired – and seemed to offer the chance for – real political and social change.

In this book Sheila Rowbotham, professor of gender and labour history at the University of Manchester, looks at how, from the 1880s to the 1920s, women “armed with only the sketchiest of maps” tried to take control of their destinies. She covers not just Britain but also the United States where besides the politics of gender and class was added that of race, as African-American women struggled to bring that onto the agenda.

The author has deliberately “sought out obscure dreamers” who questioned prevailing assumptions, adding to the pantheon of women’s history a whole new cast of characters. This is a story of hundreds of different movements, campaigning on everything from welfare reform to the right to ride a bicycle.

On every aspect of change there were conflicting ideals, typified by that surrounding the right to practise contraception – or even the right to write about it. Did it allow women to choose motherhood or did it simply enable men to expect sex whenever they wanted?

Those who sought to keep women from taking a wider role liked to characterise the vanguard as unsexed, oversexed or simply deranged. So although campaigners may have had different agendas, they would all learn, in the words of reformer Mary Beard in 1912, that “everything that counts in the common life is political”.

It was a message the world would hear again, in another great period of struggle for women’s rights: “the personal is political” was a frequently heard feminist rallying cry in the 1960 and 1970s.

Sue Wingrove is former deputy editor of BBC History Magazine

!WAR Premiere at the Whitechapel Gallery

Finally, after 40 years in the making, the documentary tracing the history of the Feminist Art Movement in the United States is, as they say, in the can!

"!WOMEN ART REVOLUTION A Secret History" by Lynn Hershman Leeson will be screened at the Whitechapel Gallery on October the 15th at 3PM; followed by a discussion with the director lead by Whitechapel's Chief Curator Achmin Borchardt-Hume.

Tickets are £6 (there are also concessions for members, students and OAPs)

To book tickets, please click on the link that is this post's title.

Visit: www.womenartrevolution.com

Don't miss the opportunity to witness history!

Coming Soon...New Album by Cat Power

Cat Power (aka Chan Marshall) is currently adding the finishing touches to the eagerly antecipated follow up to her last album, The Greatest (2006).

In the meantime, get yourself acquainted with the soulful frailty of this great American chanteuse.



Performed on Later with... Jools Holland, 2006.

The Price of Sex - a film by Mimi Chakarova

The real price of human trafficking:



from Women Make Movies' YouTube Channel.

www.wmm.com

www.catwinternational.org (Coalition Against Trafficking of Women International)

Dorothy Parker - Writer (1893 -1967)

I've recently purchased (on one of my meandering through the local Chatsworth Market) a second copy of Dorothy Parker's biography "What Fresh Hell Is This?" by Marion Meade. I have just started reading it, but I can tell already I'm in for a treat.

I do not know much about Parker's life at all - apart from the bohemian lifestyle which became part of her legend; and of course her sharp wit and melancholic cynicism at life's many disaventures.

I thought it'd be nice to share some of the wit for which she became renowned for and synonimous of. Her writing was a clear verbal portraiture of the carelessness and dissatisfaction of the times she was living in - the 1920s - the days in between the ravages of the WWI and WWII, when the former needed to be forgotten and the latter was seemingly unforseen.




A Certain Lady (1924)


Oh, I can smile for you, and tilt my head,
And drink your rushing words with eager lips,
And paint my mouth for you a fragrant red,
And trace your brows with tutored finger-tips.
When you rehearse your list of loves to me,
Oh, I can laugh and marvel, rapturous-eyed.
And you laugh back, nor can you ever see
The thousand little deaths my heart has died.
And you believe, so well I know my part,
That I am gay as morning, light as snow,
And all the straining things within my heart
You'll never know.

Oh, I can laugh and listen, when we meet,
And you bring tales of fresh adventurings, --
Of ladies delicately indiscreet,
Of lingering hands, and gently whispered things.
And you are pleased with me, and strive anew
To sing me sagas of your late delights.
Thus do you want me -- marveling, gay, and true,
Nor do you see my staring eyes of nights.
And when, in search of novelty, you stray,
Oh, I can kiss you blithely as you go ....
And what goes on, my love, while you're away,
You'll never know.

Search (2008) - Video by Luciana Francis (nee Saldanha)

Video by Luciana Francis (nee Saldanha).
London, 2008.
See more Luciana Francis' videos on Vimeo.

Andrea Arnold's film version of Bronte's classic novel

Edna St. Vincent Millay - Poet (1892 - 1950)

An Ancient Gesture

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried.