Ioannis Pappos's Blog, page 5
March 21, 2013
Chasing My First Line — From personal, to artistic, to civil disobedience
A couple of years ago I was offered the chance to salvage the original Beatrice Inn furniture, the nautical-looking sofas that Paul Sevigny used in his infamous Manhattan club between ’06 and ’09. When I mentioned this to Anthony Haden-Guest, a man who defies categorization, he asked me, “Have you seen Visconti’s film The Damned?” Anthony—a British philosopher, art critic, cartoonist, and author of The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco, and the Culture of the Night—brought a smile to my lips. I wa...
January 16, 2013
How I Ended 2012
“How To Survive A Plague,” David France’s documentary about the early days of AIDS activism, blew the roof off any I-can’t-change-the-world—or my homeland, Greece—beliefs of mine. Ten minutes into the film, as startling as it may sound, I saw something bigger than AIDS. Whether the enemy is social stigma, sickness, drug access and exorbitant costs, or today’s Greek law-making, finance, tax and unions’ corruption, firepowers like Peter Staley, Mark Harrington and Jim Eigo (featured in the docu...
January 7, 2013
Terrence McNally’s Golden Dawn
Some artists never lose their boyish looks. Jonathan Franzen, John Dowd, Terrence McNally—all these men seem to retain those adolescent smiles. As Terrence McNally shakes my hand by the fireplace of his Greenwich Village apartment, his stray-dog eyes instantly accept me. I sense his reassuring look.
“My husband, Tom, is a good lawyer,” Terrence says proudly, if shyly, about Tom Kirdahy, who’s in the kitchen fiddling with their espresso machine. “I mean, he’s the good kind of lawyer. He does pr...
Fear & Loathing: The crisis in Greece has seen the far-right soar, along with homophobia
I was at a bar in Gazi, the gay-friendly neighborhood of Athens, when my friends started talking about Ilias Kasidiaris, the spokesperson of the extreme right-wing Golden Dawn party, who had slapped a woman on live TV. My gay compatriots had gone to university, had jobs (most of them), and voted liberally—or so they said. Still, they chuckled over Kasidiaris’s half-naked photos, his street-fighting body, tattoos, and tight black T-shirt.
“Have you seen the neo-Nazi swastika on that shirt?” I a...
October 12, 2012
The Art Market’s Dead Reckoning
It was brunch time on a sunny Saturday in New York’s West Village. Julian Schnabel, the celebrated artist and filmmaker, was holding court at Sant Ambroeus’ main table. The larger than life artist, dressed in one of his signature pajamas outfits, was surrounded by seven friends. Schnabel introduced “Paolo!,” his “favorite waiter,” to the crammed table. Rula Jebreal, the stunning Italo-Palestinian journalist was squeezed to his left, and folding chairs were added so Lou Reed and Laurie Anderso...