By Bergotte Mulatu Astatke went to music school in London, studied jazz in Boston, played vibraphone in New York, and then went home to Ethiopia and made something that had never existed before. He took the pentatonic scales and ancient modal structures of Ethiopian music — a tradition reaching back centuries, untouched by the WesternContinue reading “What’s So Special About Mulatu Astatke”
Category Archives: Art
Nan Goldin
Encounters · No. 5 The Ballad Nan Goldin spent decades photographing the people she loved — in bed, in bars, in hospital, in death. Then she turned the same unflinching attention on the family that had helped kill them. By Bergotte There is a photograph taken in 1984 that Nan Goldin has described as theContinue reading “Nan Goldin”
Art in the Wake of September 11
Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, the attacks remain curiously difficult to assimilate into the history of art. This is not because they lacked images. Quite the opposite. Few historical events have been so comprehensively photographed, televised, replayed and digitally circulated. The second aircraft entering the South Tower, the towers burning against an unnaturally blueContinue reading “Art in the Wake of September 11”
What’s So Special About Laura Nyro
By Bergotte Laura Nyro wrote some of the most commercially successful songs of the late 1960s. She also made some of the least commercially successful records of that era — records so strange, so emotionally extreme, so structurally unwilling to behave, that the music industry dealt with her the way a mining company deals withContinue reading “What’s So Special About Laura Nyro”
Harumi Klossowska de Rola at Villa Kérylos
Culture · Art The Animal Remembers Harumi Klossowska de Rola at Villa Kérylos In a house built from a modern dream of ancient Greece, the Swiss artist’s bronze creatures ask what happens when humanity returns the animal world to the realm of the sacred. By Bergotte Harumi Klossowska de Rola, Chinook (Salmon), 2024, bronze, 28Continue reading “Harumi Klossowska de Rola at Villa Kérylos”
Balthus
Encounters · No. 4 The Count of Nowhere Balthus was one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century and the author of images that remain genuinely, irreducibly disturbing. Both of these things are true. The difficulty is that they cannot be separated. By Bergotte Toward the end of his life, Balthus lived in aContinue reading “Balthus”
See Something – Irving Penn 2026
The Passenger is a weekly dispatch on travel — places, hotels, restaurants, the strange logistics of being elsewhere. See Something Irving Penn is everywhere in 2026. Three cities, three exhibitions, and the case for making a trip specifically to see him Irving Penn directed his models with two words. Not an expression — he wasContinue reading “See Something – Irving Penn 2026”
What’s So Special About Nick Drake
Nick Drake made three albums between 1969 and 1972, sold almost none of them, and died at twenty-six of an antidepressant overdose in the bedroom of his parents’ house in rural Warwickshire.
Paris in September: Vincent Beaurin at Galerie Poggi
Vincent Beaurin trained as a silversmith, worked as a designer, blew paint at canvases, and eventually found his way to the disc — the simplest form available, saturated with the colour of the last light before the sun disappears. A retrospective profile ahead of his show at Galerie Poggi.
Yayoi Kusama
Encounters · No. 15 – This was written before Kusama’s passing, and originally scheduled for a November release. Due to current events, we have moved things around. You can read her obituary here. Infinity, One Dot at a Time Yayoi Kusama has been covering every surface she can reach with dots and nets and flowersContinue reading “Yayoi Kusama”
