Vince Aletti

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Vince Aletti
Born1945 (age 7879)
Occupation(s)Curator, writer, photography critic
Employer The New Yorker

Vince Aletti (born 1945) is a curator, writer, and photography critic. [1]

Contents

Career

Music industry

Aletti was a contributing writer for Rolling Stone from 1970 to 1989. He was the first person to write about disco, on 13 September 1973, in Discotheque Rock '72: Paaaaarty! an article published by the magazine. [2] [3] [4] [5] He gave a negative review to Funkadelic's Maggot Brain in 1971, describing it as "a shattered, desolate landscape with few pleasures," competently performed but "limited." He was particularly critical of the record's second side, panning it as "dead-end stuff," and asked "who needs this shit?" [6]

He also wrote a weekly column about disco for the music trade magazine Record World [7] (1974–1979), and reported about early clubs like David Mancuso's The Loft for The Village Voice in the late 1970s and 1980s. Aletti was a senior editor at The Village Voice for nearly 20 years until leaving in early 2005. [8]

Aletti worked with New York deejay Ritchie Rivera to curate a double-album disco compilation for Polydor Records, which released it in 1978 as Steppin' Out: Disco's Greatest Hits. Music critic Robert Christgau found it superior to Casablanca Records' Get Down and Boogie and Marlin's Disco Party, writing in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981): "Although local talent (Joe Simon, the Fatback Band) is represented, I find the spacey, lush-but-cool Euro-disco that predominates even more enticing, no doubt because the filler in which such music is usually swamped has been eliminated. New discoveries include the Chakachas' legendary 'Jungle Fever' and 'Running Away' by Roy Ayers, ordinarily the emptiest of 'jazz' pianists. This is disco the way it should be heard—as pure dance music, complete with risky changes." [9]

In 1979 and 1980, Aletti also worked as the A&R Rep for Ray Caviano’s RFC Records. [10]

Photography

Aletti is best known for his contributions to fine art photography. [11] He reviewed photography exhibitions for The New Yorker until 2016. [12]

Aletti has also curated numerous photography exhibitions, [1] and has contributed writing for dozens of photography books. In 1998, Aletti was the curator of a highly praised exhibition of art and photography called Male, which was followed up in 1999 by Female, both at Wessel + O'Connor Gallery in New York. In conjunction with those shows, he was the co-editor the book "Male/Female: 105 photographs" published by Aperture in 1999, featuring his interview with Madonna, which was later anthologized in Da Capo's Best Music Writing (2000).

In 2000, he was the co-curator of an exhibition called Settings & Players: Theatrical Ambiguity in American Photography at London's White Cube. [13] The following year Aletti organized Steven Klein American Beauty a retrospective exhibition of Steven Klein's fashion work for the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Aletti was one of the two featured writers of The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century (2001).[ citation needed ]

In 2005, Aletti was the recipient of the Infinity Award for writing by The International Center for Photography. [14]

Exhibitions curated by Aletti

Bibliography

1990–1999
2000–2009
2010–2019
2020–

Notes

  1. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Grey Art Gallery & Study Center, New York University, Jan. 17-Feb. 24, 1990, and the Fine Arts Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, Aug. 1-Sept. 15, 1990.
  2. Online version is titled "'Sarah Charlesworth: Double World [sic]'".

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References

  1. 1 2 "Collecting the Male: Interview with Vince Aletti". Interview Magazine. 3 December 2008. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  2. "Playing favourites: Vince Aletti". Resident Advisor. Archived from the original on December 29, 2019. Retrieved February 8, 2019.
  3. Morley, Paul (August 20, 2009). "Paul Morley's showing off ... Vince Aletti, Bill Brewster and Luke Howard". The Guardian. Archived from the original on April 29, 2020. Retrieved February 8, 2019 via www.theguardian.com.
  4. Excerpts:
    • One of the most spectacular discotheque records in recent months is a perfect example of the genre: Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa." Originally a French pressing on the Fiesta label, the 45 was being largely undistributed by an African import company in Brooklyn when "a friend" brought it to the attention of DJ Frankie Crocker. Crocker broke it on the air on New York's WBLS-FM, a black station highly attuned to the disco sound, but the record was made in discotheques where its hypnotic beat and mysterious African vocals drove people crazy.
    • in the last year they've returned not only as a rapidly spreading social phenomenon (via juice bars, after-hours clubs, private lofts open on weekends to members only, floating groups of party-givers who take over the ballrooms of old hotels from midnight to dawn) but as a strong influence on the music people listen to and buy.
    • The best discotheque DJs are underground stars, discovering previously ignored albums, foreign imports, album cuts and obscure singles with the power to make the crowd scream and playing them overlapped, non-stop so you dance until you drop.
  5. Lawrence, Tim (22 May 2022). "Work that Body : Disco, Counterculture and the Promise of the Transformation of Work". Music as Labour: Inequalities and Activism in the Past and Present. Routledge: 66–80. doi:10.4324/9781003150480-5 . Retrieved 24 August 2024.
  6. Aletti, Vince (September 30, 1971). "Funkadelic: Maggot Brain". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on May 15, 2009. Retrieved July 17, 2016.
  7. Broughton, Frank (2007). La historia del DJ. Ediciones Robinbook. pp. 206–208. ISBN   978-84-96222-58-8.
  8. "Vince Aletti". The New Yorker. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  9. Christgau, Robert (1981). "Consumer Guide '70s: S". Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies . Ticknor & Fields. ISBN   089919026X . Retrieved March 13, 2019 via robertchristgau.com.
  10. "The New Disco Elite". New York . March 26, 1979. p. 37.
  11. "Vince Aletti: Curator, Collector, Writer Extraordinaire | Glitteratiincorporated". glitteratiinc.com. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  12. "Vince Aletti". The New Yorker. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  13. "White Cube". whitecube.com. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  14. "2005 Infinity Award: Writing". International Center of Photography. 23 February 2016. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  15. 1 2 "Wessel + O'Connor Fine Art | About the Gallery". wesseloconnor.com. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  16. "Male Work from the collection of Vince Aletti" . Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  17. "Dress Codes: The Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video" (PDF). Retrieved 2023-12-24.