Book Review: "Mastering the Melon"

There are artists and then there are ARTISTS and the hair's breath difference between the two is often entirely subjective. In the case of multi-media phenom Alix Lambert, there's no denying that she is 100% unqualified ARTIST, a renaissance woman of many talents, some of which are on display in Mastering The Melon. An attractive coffee table book with some intellectual and artistic heft, Mastering The Melon - beautifully created by Spanish publisher Galeria Javier Lopez - documents a few of Lambert's most thought-provoking and stimulating artistic works.

Alix Lambert was named as one of the "30 people under 30 who will change the culture in the next 30 years" by the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and her creative endeavors have won her scores of accolades. An accomplished photographer, performance artist, filmmaker and writer, Lambert is able to seemingly tackle any artistic avenue and achieve amazing results. Her documentary film, The Mark Of Cain, went behind prison walls to capture for posterity the dying art of hierarchal tattooing that was part of Russian criminal culture. The film was subsequently broadcast on the ABC Network's Nightline and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Lambert's visual work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide for a decade and a half.

Mastering The Melon offers a glimpse at a mere slice of Lambert's creative energy. One of the most interesting sections in the book is that documenting a long-term performance art piece dubbed "The Marriage Project." Over the course of six months, Lambert married...and divorced...three men and one woman, all lovingly documented by photos, mementos and official forms. The piece artfully questions the artificial, government-and-church-sponsored edifice of marriage and reconsiders the nature of interpersonal relationships. Another fascinating photo/performance art piece is titled "Male Pattern Baldness," Lambert shaving her head and donning a suit, the twenty-something artist taking on the persona of a balding, middle-aged basketball coach. The photos astoundingly capture the personality of her chimerical creation, and except for Lambert's soft features, could pass for the real thing.

Of particular interest to music lovers and those that love a good practical joke is Lambert's involvement in the prankish band Platipussy. Formed by Lambert with friends Alyssa Sarfity and Juliette Goodwin, Platipussy was an all-woman band that wasn't really a band, an extreme performance art piece created in 1996 in response to the grunge and postpunk riot-grrl bands garnering mainstream press. As Lambert says, "we didn't spend a huge amount of time trying to be accurate about satirizing the music. (You have to practice even to make a bad album.)" However, the "band" did record an album's worth of "music," releasing a 7" EP on Calvin Johnson's renowned Olympia, Washington-based K Records label.

Challenging both the recording industry's manipulation of artist imagery and a culture that champions marketing above music, Platipussy created a five-minute trailer to a non-existent documentary film about the band, and complimented the visual portrayal of the band with a mythology of their own creation. Photos of the band show the girls in a variety of stereotypically seductive poses, clad both in grunge-approved flannel and sexy lingerie. Platipussy even imagined its own sordid demise, the grrl's penchant for brandishing firearms leading to a "Platipussy bloodbath." Needless to say, the "band" also had merchandise for sale, which in itself is probably the sweetest jab at the industry that one could imagine.

Mastering The Melon provides plenty of other food for thought, as well. Lambert explores the Russian prison tattoos that led to her film The Mark Of Cain; her "Cops" photograph series offers the other side of that coin, portraying an undercover police officer "relaxing" in a home setting, his anonymity protected by an ever-present mask. Like all of Lambert's pieces, it takes your brain in a different direction and forces us to reconsider our preconceived notions of identity, self and the world around us. Mastering The Melon achieves that which Lambert set out to do...enlightening the reader, tickling our intellects while entertaining our souls.