Amanda Lear is a French singer, model, TV personality, actress, novelist, and painter. An enigmatic character, her birth sex is disputed, and the exact details of her birth are unknown; she was born sometime between 1939 and 1950 in either British Hong Kong or Saigon. She began her career as a muse for Salvador Dalí in the mid 1960s. In the 1970s and 80s she was a popular Disco singer, especially in Scandinavia and Continental Europe, with songs such as "Queen of Chinatown", "Blood and Honey", "Follow Me", and "Fashion Pack". Her first album, I Am a Photograph, was released in 1977. She began working in television in the mid 1980s. Lear released her most recent album, I Don't Like Disco in early 2012. She currently lives in Saint-Étienne-du-Grès in the south of France. Lear was a favorite of Ull Hohn and Tom Burr.

www.facebook.com/reinelear

Amanda Lear is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Tom Burr

Christian Francois Bouche-Villeneuve was born in France on July 29, 1921. He was an enigmatic writer, photographer, filmmaker and multimedia artist who pioneered the flexible hybrid form known as the essay film. He worked and traveled under the pseudonym Chris Marker, because it was pronounceable in all languages. His films are shocking, innovative and often autobiographical. During a 1985 exhibition, the artist Gordon Matta-Clark took Marker on a tour of his work, which resulted in the creation of the film Matta. He is best known for his films concerning time and memory, "La Jetée" and "Sans Soleil". "La Jetée"(1962) was the basis of the 1995 Hollywood movie "12 Monkeys" starring Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt. Mr. Marker continued traveling and producing well into his 80's. Little is known about the artist due to his refusal to take interviews or be photographed, inspiring an elusive character that is furthered by his work. He died July 29, 2012 at 91 years old.

peterblumgallery.com/artists/chris-marker

www.chrismarker.org

Chris Marker is featured in Edition: Lunacy and Edition: Guest Editor Tom Burr

Frank O’Hara was born in 1926 in Baltimore, Maryland.  He attended Harvard after serving as a sonarman in World War II, initially pursuing a degree in music.  While he remained a devoted and talented pianist throughout his life, influences such as Edward Gorey and John Ashbery shifted his focus to English.  After receiving his MA in English Literature, he moved to New York City and began writing seriously.  His light-hearted poetry was spontaneous, conversational and often paid homage to his dearest New York and beloved friends.  O'Hara was a curator at MoMA, and on his lunch breaks, he would write poetry. Many of his poems reference people, from Mayakovsky to Lana Turner.  He died in 1966 after being struck by a dune buggy on Fire Island.  His friend Larry Rivers delivered his eulogy.  The title of Tom Burr's exhibition is taken from a O'Hara's poem Mayakovsky.


www.frankohara.org

Frank O'Hara is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Tom Burr

Gordon Matta-Clark was born in New York on June 22, 1943 and grew up in New York, Paris, and Chile. He studied architecture at Cornell University, where he met Robert Smithson and Dennis Oppenheim; however, he did not practice as a conventional architect. In the 1970s, he helped organize 112 Greene Street, an exhibition space showing new art. He also collaborated on Food, a combined restaurant and performance piece; made Garbage Wall, a prototype shelter for the homeless; and was active in building SoHo as an artists' community. He addressed popular culture in the 1973 Photoglyphs, hand-colored black-and-white photographs depicting New York's burgeoning graffiti. Matta-Clark is best known for his 'anarchitecture' of the 1970s, which were temporary works created by sawing or carving out sections of abandoned buildings and then documented in photography or film.  One of the most famous examples is his 1974 piece, Splitting, in which a wooden house in Englewood, New Jersey was sliced through.  Matta-Clark passed away from cancer on August 27, 1978.  The original Sauna, located in an apartment on East 4th Street and featured in the film Sauna View, was Matta-Clark's first cut work.  After Matta-Clark moved out, this sauna was removed by Alexander Schröder, the founder of Galerie Neu, which represents Tom Burr, Ull Hohn, Hilary Lloyd, and Josephine Pryde.

Gordon Matta Clark is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Bryan Leitgeb and Edition: Guest Editor, Tom Burr

Born in 1964 in Halifax, England, Hilary Lloyd currently lives and works in London. Her work is characterized by presentations of sequential images in either video or slide installations. Her work has been shown in many international exhibitions such as Artists Space- New York, Raven Row- London, Tramway- Glasgow, Venice Bienniale, and the Tate Triennial- London. She was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2011.  Galerie Neu represents Lloyd along with Tom Burr, Ull Hohn, Nick Mauss, and Josephine Pryde.

www.sadiecoles.com/artists-web-app/lloyd

www.galerieneu.net/artists/show/id/10

Hilary Lloyd is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Tom Burr

Jean Cocteau was born to a wealthy family on July 5, 1889 in Maison-Laffitte, a small village near Paris. His father committed suicide when he was 9 years old, and in 1900, he entered a private school but was expelled in 1904. After expulsion, he ran away to Marseilles. He published his first volume of poems, Aladdin's Lamp at the age of 19. In the early 1910s, Cocteau became associated with members of the Parisian avant-garde and collaborated with Léon Bakst and the Ballets Russes. Cocteau is known for his poetry, books, plays, art, and films. Some of his films include, Le Sang d'un poète, La Belle et la Bête, and Les Parents terrible. His writing includes the novel Les Enfants terrible and many poetry collections. In 1955, he was made a member of the Académie français and The Royal Academy of Belgium. He died in France on October 11, 1963 from a heart attack. His influence can be observed across the arts, including Les Six, John Cage, and Erik Satie.

www.jeancocteau.net/index.php

Jean Cocteau is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Tom Burr

John Cage is one of the most important avant-garde composers of the twentieth century. He was born in Los Angeles in 1912 and studied at Pamona College and UCLA with the classical composer Arthur Schoenberg. Two of Cage's earliest and most important collaborators were Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg. At Black Mountain College, Cage, inspired by Marcel Duchamp, began to create sound for performances and to investigate the ways music composed through chance procedures would become something beautiful. Cage is probably most well known for his 1952 composition 4'33", which requires the performer to remain silent for the duration of the piece. The influences of his study Zen Buddhism, I Ching, and Indian philosophy can be observed throughout his career. Other notable compositions include Imaginary Landscape No 4 (1951), Water Music (1952), Cartridge Music (1960), and Roratorio, an Irish Circus on Finnegan's Wake (1979). Cage passed away in 1992 in New York City. He is the subject of Tom Burr's 2009 work, American Master.

johncage.org

John Cage is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Tom Burr

Kathy Acker was born in April 18, 1947 in New York. She first attended Brandeis University and studied classics but transferred to the University of California and graduated in 1968. Her first published writings emerged in the New York literary scene in the 1970s and are said to of been influenced by her experiences as a stripper. Other influences include, William S. Burroughs, Fluxus, the Black Mountain College, Gilles Deleuze, and French philosophy and feminism. In 1972, she published her first book, Politics; her first novels, The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula: Some Lives of Murderesses and I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac: Imagining, followed in 1973 and 1974. She received a Pushcart Prize in 1979 for her short story "New York City in 1979". Acker moved to London in the early 1980s, and published her most well known work, Blood and Guts in High School, in 1982. Her writing is characterized by controversial topics such as sex, violence, rape, abortion, incest, and feminism and a tendency to adapt or borrow from older literature, such as The Scarlet Letter, Don Quixote, and Great Expectations. Upon her return to the US, Acker taught at multiple colleges. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in the spring of 1996 and passed away in in alternative cancer clinic in Tijuana, Mexico in 1997. Her clothing was photographed by Kaucyila Brooke from 1999-2004.

www.egs.edu/library/kathy-acker/bibliography/

Kathy Acker is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Tom Burr

Robert Smithson was born January 2, 1938.  Smithson’s first works were Pop Art-esque collages inspired by beefcake magazines.  After reevaluating his position and platform, Smithson reemerged as a minimalism enthusiast.  He began exploring industrial sites and installing “non-sites,” collected sediment mixed with mirror or glass, in galleries throughout New York.  Smithson remained fascinated by landscapes and their minute pieces, publishing an Artforum article in 1968 promoting the initial land artists.  The following year he began producing land-art pieces, to push-the-limits and explore concepts of the medium.  He died July 20, 1973 in a plane crash surveying sites for his work in Amarillo, Texas. Photographs of Smithson by Dan Graham are included in Tom Burr's guest edit.

robertsmithson.com

Robert Smithson is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Tom BurrEdition: Paradise Found>

Vladimir Mayakovsky was one of the most compelling Soviet literaries. He was born in 1893 in Bagdadi, Georgia, then a part of the Russian Empire, and moved to Moscow with his mother as a child. At the age of 15 he joined the Russian-Social Democratic Workers’ Party. Mayakovsky started writing poetry in 1909 while in solitary confinement for politically subversive activity. Upon release he was influenced by noteworthy Russian Futurists and began writing prolifically. Openly Communist, fervently political, and a driving force behind the Russian Futurist movement, his poems were prosaic, daring and meant to reach and incite a mass audience. El Lissitzky illustrated his 1923 book of poems, "For the Voice". He died April 14, 1930 and is remembered as the leading poet of the Russian Revolution and early Soviet period. Mayakovsky can be said to have influenced many artists, poets, and musicians. Tom Burr created an entire series of works thinking about Mayakovsky's poem, "Cloud in Trousers".

v-mayakovsky.com/english/biography_e.html

Vladimir Mayakovsky is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Tom Burr

Yvonne Rainer was born in San Francisco, California in 1934. She attended acting school in San Francisco but soon moved to New York and became involved with the visual arts scene. At the age of 25 she began training full-time at the Martha Graham School of Dance and later moved on to the Merce Cunningham studios. Rainer began choreographing in 1961 and soon became a central figure in the American postmodern dance movement, especially at the Judson Dance Theatre. Her dances are known for their tension between content material and performance. These themes are carried into her work in film, which she began in 1967. Issues of performer/spectator relationships were also carried from her dance performances into film work. She completed her first full length film in 1972, Lives of Performers. Rainer has continued to make feminist, queer, and experimental films throughout her career. She has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Wexner Prize, and a MacArthur Fellowship. She currently teaches at the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum in New York. Her memoir Feelings Are Facts: A Life was published in 2006. Rainer was photographed by Babette Mangoldte inside a Robert Rauschenberg box, and Tom Burr finds traces of her influence in Emily Wardill's work.

www.zeitgeistfilms.com/director.php?director_id=8

Yvonne Rainer is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Tom Burr