Otto Dix & Estee Lauder?

Given that cosmetics companies spend most of their efforts convincing women of 50 that they must look 25, it is thoroughly refreshing, that Estee Lauder is linking itself in a promotion with an upcoming exhibition at the Ronald S. Lauder Neue Galerie in New York of the German painter Otto Dix. In addition to his brutally harsh depictions of World War I and post-war Berlin, Dix was a scathing portraitist. His paintings, needless to say, are the complete antithesis of airbrushed glamour. How perfect that the piece being used to promote the exhibit is a portrait of the Weimar Republic’s most outrageous performer, “The Priestess of Depravity,” Anita Berber. Dix painted this portrait of her in 1925. She was 25 years old at the time, but looked not a day younger than 50. She died four years later, not even 30 years old.

The publisher of The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber, a biography by Mel Gordon describes her:

Anita Berber was the notorious actor/dancer/poet/playwright who scandalized sex-obsessed Weimar Berlin during the 1920s.

In an era where everything was permitted, Anita Berber’s celebrations of “Depravity, Horror and Ecstasy” were condemned and censored.

And from Wikipedia:
Her performances broke boundaries with their androgyny and total nudity, but it was her public appearances that really challenged taboos. Berber's overt cocaine use and bisexuality were matters of public chatter.[2] She was allegedly the sexual slave of a woman and the woman's 15-year-old daughter. She could often be seen in Berlin's hotel lobbies, nightclubs and casinos; she would walk around naked except for a sable fur, carrying a pet monkey and a silver brooch full of cocaine, while flaunting her lesbian lovers—removing the barrier between performance and normal life.

Otto Dix includes over 100 works by the artist and runs from March 11 to August 30, 2010. Available exclusively in the Neue Galerie gift shop is the lipstick, “Berlin Red” and an Art Deco inspired compact.

Read more of the salacious details of Anita Berber's performances here.
See more Otto dix here.

Legends of Grift

Endless Grift - Lost in the Open / Lady Day (Live from Prenzlauer Berg)

In Fall of 2006, I got a DAAD stipendium to go to Berlin and study Jacob Taubes. Alex and Chris came with me, for grifting's sake. We found a three-bedroom apartment near Tempelhof airport, near a little park, in an area of Kreuzberg that hadn't been bombed during the war, so it looked vaguely Parisian. Alex and I already decided we were a band. We thought about a name for a long time and landed on 'Past Lives.' We invited Chris to join and play together, as it made all the sense in the world. Our practice space was in the back basement of some squatter's building just west of Rosenthaler Platz.  It was huge and cost 9 euros an hour.

Let's not speak any more of this. It was pretty much one of the greatest times in my life. 

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We renamed ourselves Endless Grift, because this is the only form that grift should take. I recorded all the sessions. There was one jam that was a particular epiphany, an improvised jewel, one that has remained stuck in our collective heads since then. I present it to you now, in edited form. I'm still quite proud of it. It's low-fi and the whole thing is entirely in the red. It's completely rowdy and fiery. It sounds awesomely distorted and explosive. 

Do you know when you're jamming sometime and everything goes in sync suddenly and you're like "we have lift-off...look out..." Alex is playing in a superbly rolling-thunder holy-shit barrel roll. Chris is spraying fantastic siren synths. I'm playing heavy John Cale organ. In the first part I'm singing "we could be lost in the open..and never learn our names." in the second, "why don't you come over and say goodnight? you know you look good to me." It's one of the best existent records of Endless Grift, and I want to share it with you, because duh. Get up with it.

For more please visit us at myspace.com/endlessgrift.

Dark Disco from Brooklyn: Sextant

Evil Steeple (is People) (divshare)

Evil Steeple (is People) (zshare.net)



The American Friend (divshare)

The American Friend (zshare.net)


Two debut tracks from Brooklyn producer Sextant. The first, Evil Steeple (Is People), is a horror-disco banger reminiscent of Moroder or Zombie-Zombie, with haunting organs and demon-pitched vocals, apparently inspired by the midnight menace of red-lit churches in Berlin's Kreuzberg. The steeple is watching. And it's people in a soylent way, if you follow. It's also rumored to possibly be a remake or remix of an hour-long Dopesmoker-style doom-metal epic called "It's People" and attributed to a group called "Evil Steeple," but I don't know any more than that.

The flip, "The American Friend," is a more tech'ed up burner, with punchy, swaggering drums and groovy, echoey synths. It's a nod to Wim Wender's classic 70s noir (starring Dennis Hopper as Mr. Ripley) and a bit of musical diplomacy, transplanting the German capital's sexy minimalist throb to the streets of Brooklyn, - an ode to Berlin's techno strongholds like Berghain and Watergate, and further evidence that the sonic love affair between the two cities is still going strong.