Saturday in the Fall at the High

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Photo by me, November 2025.

 

The city was alive on a fall day on the first of November. There was a crispness in the air and spots of color in the trees except the ginkgos which awaited their seasonal cue to turn a brilliant yellow. People were on the sidewalk and there was traffic on the northern end of Midtown above 14^th street. I arrived at the High Museum to a large wedding taking place next door at the fine stone First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta built in 1919 with stained glass windows by Tiffany and Nicola D'Ascenzo. An event was taking place in front of the Woodruff and it was bustling in the plaza outside the doors of the High. Atlanta was its better self and not shooting itself in the foot for a change.

I have been coming to the High since I was a child in the mid 1980s only a year after the gleaming white, curving Richard Meier designed building opened in 1983. Forty-two years later, I still like to admire the building and imagine it filled with exciting treasures from around the world. It has not lived up to those dreams, but I have seen some interesting touring or special exhibitions in my lifetime. The permanent collection outside of the modern and folk art has never inspired me. The architecture of the building rises higher than the art contained within. 

Photo by me, November 2025.

The atrium and the ramps that spiral around it are my favorite part of the building. As a child it felt like something special waited at the top, but the reality is that is that it is mostly scowling, unfriendly and bored security guards. 

Photo by me, November 2025.

I do not think they want you to enjoy this art unless you bring a ladder with you.
 

Somber corner. Photo by me, November 2025.

In 2018 the galleries of the permanent collection were redesigned and that was unfortunate. The galleries went from open, airy, spacious and easy to move through to cramped, darker and more prone to bottlenecks around blind corners. Some of the placement of the art is odd too. I found a Rothko painting hanging in a small, dark corner like it was an unloved lost child while much lesser known and important artists were taking up better spaces. The curatorial choices were very curious. Do not even get me started on how the museum treats photography with its dungeon basement gallery with low ceilings and a feeling reminiscent on an eighties office park for telemarketers. 

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

The folk art of Georgia artist Howard Finster is the highlight of the folk art gallery. Putting his religious messaging aside, I find undeniable happiness in his work. He makes me smile.

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

In the modern art galleries I was disappointed to find a sculpture in front of the Alex Katz painting of the trees and the bench moved far away. I cannot remember a visit where I have not sat on that bench and gotten lost in the trees. It was a kind of ritual of mine. The sculpture is a distraction and does not relate to the trees. Also, while the ceiling is beautiful, the lighting is far too dim now.

Photo by me, November 2025.

 

Cramped and dim like a hallway at Grady Hospital. Photo by me, November 2025.

After browsing the permanent collection I came to what brought me to the High, the special exhibition Viktor&Rolf Fashion Statements. The exhibition features the avant-garde fashion designs of the Dutch duo Viktor & Rolf and runs through early February 2026.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

From the No collection, Autumn/Winter 2008-2009.

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

From the Bedtime Story collection, Autumn/Winter 2005-2006.

Photo by me, November 2025.

I have been to a number of fashion exhibits at the SCADfash museum, also in Atlanta, but this was my first at the High Museum. The museum did a phenomenal job with the presentation and it was fun.

Photo by me, November 2025.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

From the The Fashion Statements collection, Spring 2019. The collection was inspired by social media. 

There have been numerous fashion exhibitions of Victor & Rolf since 1994 in Paris and around the globe. This marks the first one in Atlanta. Their work makes for good entertainment.

Photo by me, November 2025.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

As much as one admires the craftsmanship and imagination, I enjoy the sense of humor present in these pieces.

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

There is a debate, perhaps less common these days, in the art and fashion worlds about whether fashion should be considered art. Karl Lagerfeld thought they were separate worlds. I do not have a firm opinion on whether fashion should be considered art, but I do enjoy fashion exhibitions at museums. The debate reminds me of the 1970s and whether photography was art and whether it was worthy of being collected. Sam Wagstaff was an early collector of photography and was instrumental in getting photography accepted into the art world. Wagstaff was also a lover and patron to Robert Mapplethorpe, both of whom would die of AIDS; Wagstaff in 1987 and Mapplethorpe two years later.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

There are also sketches and photographs included in the exhibition. I loved that wallpaper. If department stores put as much as effort into their displays as they once did then I could see using a wallpaper such as that.

Photo by me, November 2025.

From the Monsieur collection, Autumn/Winter 2003-2004. 

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

Though it looks like it would be very heavy to wear, I was taken by this design. It has a post industrial, Eastern Bloc chicness. 

Photo by me, November 2025.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

The space was wonderfully designed and lighted. The clothes popped from the background.

Exhibitions such as this one offer the viewer fantasy. There is some snobbery too, is there not always at an art museum, as this is not an exhibition featuring Abercrombie & Fitch clothes. Though I would certainly enjoy an exhibition of the fashion photography of A&F from the 90s too.

May The Spell Be Broken

 

Udo Kier in Madonna's Erotica music video in 1992.

It is worth mentioning the death of actor Udo Kier this past Sunday. He was a pleasure to watch in anything from Andy Warhol's Dracula to My Own Private Idaho to Madonna's Erotica music video. His performances and roles were outlandish, unexpected, subversive and original. His face and eyes made anything he appeared in so much more delightful and campy. There are not enough actors and roles today for people like him. The world just became a little less interesting.

One of Kier's scenes with River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves in My Own Private Idaho. 

 

******** 

 

After the Hunt

 

Last night, I finally watched After the Hunt. I liked it with a few reservations and Julia Roberts' acting exceeded my low expectations of her. If I were rating the film on a scale of one to ten, then I would give it a six and a half. Luca Guadagnino's film is not a background movie or even a good time and sometimes that is what is needed. With time I suspect opinions may shift more favorably toward it.

I am in the minority in liking this film as critics and audiences have disliked everything about it. Some probably dislike it without having seen it just for the premise alone. For those who did watch it and hated it, perhaps it made them realize how ridiculous and juvenile the moralistic and self-serving lip service that drives the current culture and its attempts to redefine, not just re-frame, the past is. Audiences do not like to have their cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy mirrored back at them using their own rhetoric. It still stuns me how intellectually dishonest and fearful much of the cultural discourse has been for the last several years and the stranglehold it has over so many. Such is the case in public, but in private I have found there is much more sanity and this is also one of the points made in After the Hunt.

The reservations I had were that the film needed crisper editing, better casting in the role of the student and a less ambiguous perspective. The ending scene in the diner was unnecessary as it reveals nothing of importance in a film that runs two hours and eighteen minutes. Also, the role of Maggie, the student accuser, was a miscast. It was utterly implausible that the accused professor would have been attracted to someone as psychotic and completely unattractive as the student character. In terms of perspective, nuance is fine but stronger clarity was needed in the plot.

The film has strong supporting performances by Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloe Sevigny. In one of the more humorous scenes, the character played by Stuhlbarg gets up from dinner without a word during a conversation with student Maggie, closes the door and begins to play loud music in another room. He had had enough of her gibberish nonsense and decided for the sake of his own sanity it was best to no longer engage and encourage her. 

I rather liked the soundtrack that many have complained about. The Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross compositions reminded me of the avant-garde work of Morton Feldman, though Feldman was on another level. 

 

If the 2022 film Tar with Cate Blanchett appealed to you, as it did me, then you might like this. Between the two, Tar is the better, sharper and deeper film. I am glad that art, at least in film, is challenging people to reconsider what certain segments of western society are shaming others into believing is the truth without examination. May the spell be broken.

Alchemy of the Sky

 

Suwanee, Georgia. Photo by me, November 2025.

A storm approached, diving south from the Great Lakes, on Sunday at sunset. 

Winter howled and then bit early on Monday with afternoon highs in the upper thirties and wind of forty miles per hour. Occasional snow flurries fell through the afternoon on the strong northwest wind and I watched from the windows like an excited child. It was one of the earliest times I can remember snow this far south outside of the Georgia mountains. In the early 1990s there was a Thanksgiving with snow showers the entire day that left a dusting, but snow on November 10^th is quite exceptional in the Piedmont region. More significant and accumulating snow was common in the mountains including Brasstown Bald at 4,784 feet which had a Tuesday morning low of eleven degrees and a high for the second day in a row in the upper 20s. It was not quite so cold here at 1,000 feet with a morning low of twenty-six degrees. The first frost was at the beginning of the month and now the first freeze is out of the way too.

 

It was cold enough for quilt weather. I pulled out a quilt made by my grandmother in the early 1970s. I think of my grandparent's 1800's Victorian house and I remember how cold it was in winter in that bedroom I sometimes slept in during the 1970s. The disorder of the quilt is comforting to me.

 

****** 

 

Rimbaud as a man and boy.

Yesterday was the also the anniversary of the death of gay poet and miscreant Arthur Rimbaud. He died of bone cancer in Marseilles one hundred and thirty-four years ago at the age of thirty-seven. I did not remember the occasion, but he had crossed my mind while retrieving the Christmas tree from storage in the garage. Unbeknownst to me it was the day he died. Sometimes life is strange that way. 

I do not fully understand Rimbaud leaving Europe and never writing again for a life in exile in Yemen at twenty-six when he had such a gift. He was part poet, lover and explorer. It sounds romantic, but his life was not easy and his death was a miserable one. I suspect there was some self hatred, plenty of disenchantment and perhaps he was a misanthrope, but who is to know for sure? There are likely abundant numbers of modern mind readers who would like to pathologize him instead of simply enjoying his art. I am content with not knowing everything in his heart and letting his exile be a mystery.

“For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes and I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable.

What I liked were: absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints; old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children’s books, old operas, silly old songs, the nave rhythms of country rimes.

I dreamed of Crusades, voyages of discovery that nobody had heard of, republics without histories, religious wars stamped out, revolutions in morals, movements of races and continents: I used to believe in every kind of magic.”

Season In Hell, Delirum II, Alchemy of the Word - Arthur Rimbaud

 

Or I do understand him.

 

 

Alchemy of the Word (Altered Video Version) (video, 16 min, color, sound, 1987) 

This video above reminds me of something that would have been shown on Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes MTV show during the same period in the 1980s.



I would love to see the original version of this film from 1975.

Athfest 2025

 

Athens, Georgia. Photo by me, June 2025.

We dropped into Athfest for another year this past weekend. It was Sunday afternoon at the arts and music festival that many townies see as the highlight of townie summer in Athens after the UGA students leave. We parked on the north end of campus and walked over to the scene. I am not keen on arts festivals; I have been to too many and seen the homemade crafts made with glue guns and chainsaws enough times, but I like Athfest as it has more live music than art. Though you can find plenty of crafts with tongue-wagging bulldogs stuck on them if you are inclined.

A rainbow crosswalk at College Avenue and E. Clayton Street out front of Wuxtry Records. Photo by me, June 2025.

A sparse bunch at the main stage outside the 40 Watt Club. Photo by me, June 2025.

The weather was hot and perhaps that was the reason the crowd was thin at the main stage outside the 40 Watt when we showed.

A band performs on another stage on N. Hull. Photo by me, June 2025.

The crowds. Photo by me, 2025.

Over on N. Hull Street by The World Famous, we found the crowd by another stage. Maybe they sought the shade? The mood of the people was that of not wanting to let it wind down, to keep the party going until it was a last call, beer-goggle-eyed evening that ended in a long walk of shame to Normaltown or Five Points. We did not stick around long enough to witness that.

I had heard that James Franco was in town working on a project with William H. Macy and that he had been seen in the downtown restaurants. If he was going to be in Athens on Sunday, then he might as well have been at Athfest incognito. Franco does have an Athens connection, as he directed videos for R.EM.'s That Someone Is You and Blue from the album Collapse Into Now.

The arts? Photo by me, June 2025.

So many movies and television shows are filmed in Georgia that you regularly run into them. A television show for ABC was filming recently in a park that I often walk in for exercise and I recently passed another show featuring Sylvester Stallone that was shooting in Monroe. At my last place in Atlanta, before I moved, some scenes from Hillbilly Elegy were filmed within walking distance around the corner and Stranger Things was partly shot nearby too. I am not impressed by the lights or stars, as I find the productions are often a hindrance to public spaces and roads closed to the public.

Walking through Athfest I passed a man on W. Washington Street who looked exactly like Franco and we made eye contact. He was with two other rather attractive guys who were more fashionably dressed than most. They gave off the air of not being townies even though Athens has plenty of local wannabe hipsters. I was inches from the guy for a few seconds and in that brief moment I thought it was Franco.

Later, I spotted the trio again playing hacky sack on a closed street. I wanted to snag a photo, but the guy was looking my direction as I walked by. I wanted to be more subtle about it and the opportunity passed. Was it James Franco? Maybe or maybe not.

I am pretty terrible about recognizing famous people in person. I have been a huge fan of R.E.M since the 1980s and I could walk by Michael Stipe on E. Broad Street and never realize it. Well, I did see Stipe once in Atlanta in the 1990s, but that was work related. Franco is only five years younger than I am and the more I consider it, the guy I saw looked like he was in his twenties rather than his forties, but some people do age incredibly well.

I look forward to another Athfest next year to see whom I do not meet on the street.