Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey

lepusculos depinxit

Saw a great double bill yesterday Boxing Day afternoon on DVD: À ma sœur! (called Fat Girl in its US release) by Catherine Breillat and How to Draw a Bunny by John W. Walter. At first I thought the film about the death of proto-pop artist Ray Johnson was a mockumentary. It had a strange and familiar edge to it, like I’d seen it before on late-night TV, but somewhat later I remembered having read an article about Johnson in Arthur Danto’s wonderful The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World. My favorite sets of interviewees were Jeanne-Claude and Christo and Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein. Both couples sounded as mirth-inducingly confused as my dad’s generation confronting Warhol’s Brillo Box when they tried to explain what Johnson was on about. In the French movie, the scene of the older sister’s seduction was both hilarious and banally sad. I’ll have to put Breillat’s Romance on the Netflix queue.