Zombiecore

Not all art is good. Mini-reviews again.

“Disease,” Lady Gaga

Regurgitating the same blunted metaphors of sickness and salvation, Mother Monster returns to the electro-pop arena with her first non-soundtrack single in three years. It seems we've all moved on from Sontag's Illness as Metaphor. Not quite as edgy or breathless as her golden Born This Way era, "Disease" sounds a lot like "Stupid Love," her 2020 single that drag queens latched onto during the beginning of lockdown. Heralded by some as a return to form, the woman who once told journalists it didn't matter if she was a hermaphrodite seems to have taken off the meat dress in favor of describing ecstasy rather than experiencing it. Her earlier songs could often double as piano ballads, letting her voice take flight like the diva she was. Fun as these new eras are, they are no substitute for the controversy of the "Judas" music video or the prowess of a song like “You and I.” The gods of pop music seem to have moved on, even if Gaga's rhyme schemes will eternally echo in our ears.

Nicola Tyson, “I Am a Teapot” at Petzel

I walked into the new Nicola Tyson show with my friend, herself a lesbian painter, eager to see how the little thumbnails I’d seen online would blossom on the wall. Immediately we were greeted by phallic nipples and vaginal holes. I asked my friend if I was reading the work right, the horrible lyrics from Emilia Pérez ringing in my ear (“Penis to vagina”). “The Flyover” is a massive canvas dominated by a yellow biomorphic space alien with two erect nipples pointing down at a flock of graving cattle. Nothing is certain in Tyson’s compositions–brightly colored monsters and animals populate her worlds like Pokemon. There’s a stretchiness to the wild arms of her figures in “I Am a Teapot” and “Night Interior.” They’re fungible, like wild mushrooms or cream cheese. While the first room offers some select highlights with splashy and fun pieces —including the mutant “Group” or the free-wheeling beauty of my favorite “Tree Mimer,” the second room scans a bit like under-baked cookies. There are interesting shapes and compositions, but the technical aspects of the work feel underdeveloped rather than intentionally meant to evoke the kinds of gouaches that children make.

The lesbian British painter Nicola Tyson is known for her goopy, colorful compositions held in collections by such juggernauts as the Tate Modern, MOMA, the Whitney, and the Guggenheim. She is, despite her success, not as well known as lesbian painters like Nicole Eisenman or Mickalene Thomas. Unlike the others, Tyson’s work avoids the male gaze without turning to an alternative erotic. Her work references oblique family structures, hot slits, and breasts in a more communal, more insular context. Unlike Eisenman however, there’s no narrative here. Her minions roam fields of streaky coarse grass and cerulean bedroom walls. Little is done to her paint straight out of the tube, often the white of the canvas disrupts Tyson’s rhythm, working against their bubbly appeal. In works like “A Mused” or “Index Finger,” there’s a lack of cohesion even in their appeal to elemental chaos. Not all paintings must be about technical proficiency, but then, of course, they must be about ideas.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami

I read this on the bullet train and in Ueno Park while traveling around Tokyo for the first time last summer. I don't travel often and I hadn't reread Murakami in years. His work's power remains its ability to reanimate the city streets, lost cats, and power lines. In The City, Murakami follows a man and a woman who traverse two parallel worlds through the power of an old library. The narrative offers a sentimental fable with a garrulous ghost. A Murakami bingo card will prove fruitful--all the old markers are here: strange sex, talismanic books, cozy cafes, and eerie unexplained phenomena. I wolfed it down while holding trash in my purse (there are few trash cans in Tokyo). Even if it was not as astonishing as his work before, Murakami's words still ripple with phantom promise—just not with the same hypnotic spell as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or After Dark. I only wish while in Japan I'd seen a stray cat and followed it into the remote corners of another realm. The only one I ever saw was near the Marimekko store in the Shinjuku district and she didn’t let me approach before running down an alley. Instead, I tried Koji Clear, a fermented drink that the yellow gremlin on the front calls a "drinkable IV." I felt refreshed.

Nosferatu

Too drunk on his own style to write or reinvent a script, Eggers delivers a blunted version of the old vampiric tale. Don’t worry I found Babygirl equally mediocre—another film not hot or gripping enough despite its star-studded cast and promising premise. I watched the two in a mid-off on Christmas with only a brief break for sesame chicken at a tiny restaurant and a gin and tonic at an empty bar in Queens. Nosferatu tries to do something innovative with its lighting but often ends up flattening CGI vistas. All in all, hardly a sumptuous film. Misogynistic in its hasty disposal of a female martyr, the film offers up a born sacrifice chasing the best dick she can find—only to die in the process of becoming a true slut. Lily-Rose Depp is an incredible actress, but that’s not enough to resurrect this film. The commodification of art makes zombies of us all, desperate for a shred of content masquerading as cinema.