Pop Life: Art in a Material World

I've been meaning to go to the Pop Life: Art in a Material World exhibition at the Tate Modern for a while. Today I did. And I liked it. The only setback to it was that there wasn't enough time to get through all of the pieces. There was so much to see, owing to the very mass-produced ethos behind the 'Popism' movement. It was great to see Andy Warhol set within his context of a 1980's endorsement-slut, as the Tate Modern's last lengthy retrospective of his work (a good few years back) didn't really show much of this side of him, preferring to dwell on his work in the light of the seismic social shifts of the sixties and the sleazy seventies. Mate, alliteration. This exhibition showed Andy Warhol selling out, carving a niche for celebrity adulation and reality television. He almost seems innocent about it, though. Not realising that a five-minute film of him making a very mundane phone-call would, over the course of three decades, transform into multi-platform accessible TV footage of a Ms Katie Price from Brighton gobble up an array of splintery insects at the request of a lynchmob public and two scrawny Geordies with very odd-shaped faces. Or that his mantra 'In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes' would be the justification for all that is ITV.

My friend Tara was saying how she almost cried whilst looking at some of the photography at the National Portrait Gallery. This was perhaps an exaggeration, but there is a condition called Stendhal syndrome where, upon seeing vast, beautiful art, the 'sufferer' experiences hallucinations, palpitations, dizziness and confusion. This is a far cry (oh god) from weeping during New Moon because ohmygod R-Pattz. This is being so psychologically affected by a piece of art that your mind starts re-wiring itself. Stendhal syndrome is also called 'Florence syndrome', as it was first identified after over 200 tourists in the late 1970s experienced the above listed wonders after taking in some art in the Italian city. If Florentine art facilitates Stendhal syndrome, then, a lot less romantically, the Pop Shop facilitates pure consumerism. I have never wanted to buy something so much from an art exhibition before. I felt as if I had become a cartoon and that any money I spent would be fake Lego money. Keith Haring made it and it looks a bit like this.

It was covered in t-shirts and mugs and key-chains and all sorts of fun nonsense. I remember his stuff from when I was tiny teeny young, but hadn't seen it anywhere much until Madonna had it as a backing to Get Into The Groove on her Sticky 'n' Sweet tour. Apparently Madonna and Keith were good friends, too. Further proving how wicked Madonna is.

I'd leave a good hour and a half for this exhibition, perhaps even two. Especially if you want to do Tracey Emin's 'My Major Retrospective', a collection of minatures, justice. Also, if you can find me the 'Have you had a wank about me yet?' t-shirts then that would be great. I feel the confessional, bawdy nature of Emin's art was quite well replicated by whoever scrawled 'If you read this you are gay and you like to rub your tits on other girls tits' on the back of a toilet door cubicle on floor three.

Sneaking into a Madonna gig.

After Michael Jackson died, and I finished studying at university, I decided I needed a new direction in my life. I realised that as upset as I was at Michael Jackson's passing, I'd be in floods of tears when Madonna goes. I decided that, whatever I do with my degree, or my life in general, I must always have the means to see a Madonna concert. I know that with her yoga and smoothie lifestyle she's going to last a while, so I thought it would be a long term project of mine to always have enough money in the bank to afford a Madonna ticket.



Until my lodger told me about being sent a few extra tickets. The whole thing is a little dodgy, but I ended up seeing Madonna. Just about. The o2 is the most hideously large venue with a soundsystem which leaves a lot to the imagination, unlike some of Madonna's dancemoves. However, she is a living legend. A lot of her old songs were spliced with new production, with nifty little touches here and there. Frozen was sung over the Deadmau5 remix of Calvin Harris' I'm Not Alone. Holiday had bits of Everybody playing in the mix. Paul Oakenfold was onstage throughout and the whole thing was live. Her voice has deepened a lot since the early years, therefore Papa Don't Preach was out of the question. Human Nature and He Must Love Me were amazing, as were all of the newer songs.


The Spanish interlude was a bit trashy, with all the intentions of being classy disrupted by the audience clapping fat-handedly and out of time. The montage of all the Romany children's suffering around the world was also a bit righteous. I'm not sure how far Madonna's charity work extends, but it was interesting to see an act who vibes off of general humanitarian crises to get an emotional response from the audience.

Michael Jackson was someone who did this exact same thing, and I don't think it's a massive problem, as it does draw attention to the issues, but gazing around the audience, I realised that a lot of Madonna fans are stupid twats. Showing starving children on a big screen won't line anyone but Madonna's pockets. Luckily, she does decide to donate a fraction of her millions to charity work.


The whole thing was a bit of a blur but I'm very pleased to have gone. Now I must make a new mission for life and achieve it within the next week.

some more thoughts on Michael Jackson.

When I found out that MJ died upset me more than I thought it would. I realised how much he affected social consciousness all throughout my childhood, and even now, as I check this oft neglected blog, I see that I've written something about him recently. RIP.

It also makes me realise how horribly upset I'll be when Madonna dies. So this is me promising myself, now that I've graduated, to always have enough money in the bank to buy the exorbitantly priced tickets to whichever tour Madonna embarks on next.

Larry Levan and a whole host of other people

A couple of Popbitches ago this marvellous piece was featured:

>> Miami splice <<
Sam/LiLo: not the new Larry Levan

Honk writes:

"A friend was in a Miami club this week where

Sam Ronson and Lindsay Lohan were booked to DJ.

They shared a single laptop between them, indeed
Lohan seemed to be 'rocking' a room of 600

using nothing more sophisticated than iTunes.

And it showed, as her four-second attention

span meant guests were treated to something

akin to the 'intros' round of a pub quiz. Lohan

disappeared to a crouching position behind

the decks for a good 10 minutes whilst she er,

blew her nose and Ronson took over. She at least

tried. 15 minutes later, they'd packed up, the

club emptied immediately, and a real DJ took

over and played to a near-empty club."

I wrote an article about Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson. Why, despite not being amazing role models, are brilliant because their relationship can serve to teach some home truths. Like: not all girls need to be super-feminine to get laid, but that's cool. Or that really generically astoundingly hot girls do fancy other girls. Or that people don't have to define their sexuality anymore.

The shortened article is here. The full article is remarkably defunct now, as a whole load of shit happened. But I wouldn't want to write any further on that in case the whole thing changes again.

Changes is the name of a song by Larry Levan. He was a DJ and producer in the 70's- 80's.



He's credited as the founder of dub, and dubstep is meant to be a derivative of dub. But I think it's a bit like taking that little plastic thing on the tip of your shoelace of your Nike Air Force IIs and putting it in your nose. Dubstep takes a small, irrelevant element of dub and makes it really dangerous for no particular reason other than to look a bit hard.

Larry used to play at the Paradise Garage in New York. People used to have sex on the dancefloor. Men used to wear heels and big hair and women were mostly made of sequins. The Paradise Garage probably reeked of poppers. When I was 14, my mum found some poppers in my bag and made me pour them in the sink. She muttered "Smells like Studio 54".

Remember that scene in Forrest Gump when Jenn-nay is in a bar doing lines and KC and the Sunshine band is playing? Well, yeah, a bit like that. I think Jenn-nay had a cooler life than Forrest. Like when Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird is playing and she's about to jump out of a window a gajillion storeys high? That was cool. She was played by Robin Wright Penn who was married to Sean Penn who was married to Madonna and is also known to hang out with Lindsay Lohan. Who got compared to Larry Levan.

Madonna used to go the Paradise Garage. The promotional video to Madonna's first song, Everybody, was filmed there. Not that Youtube will let me find it. Wikipedia says: "The song introduced classic Madonna themes like individuality, dancing and singing as forms of self-expression, as well as the optimism that dominated the first five years of her career."

And now I kind of wish, oncemore, I could do my dissertation on Madonna. Enjoy: