Editor’s Picks: James Baldwin at 100

Frieze Editor’s Picks is a fortnightly column in which a frieze editor shares their recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to.

Colm Tóibín, On James Baldwin (2024) 

The great American writer James Baldwin’s would have turned 100 on August 2. Publishers duly marked the anniversary with a great swathe of books both old – reissued – and new. Among the latter, I was most intrigued by Colm Tóibín’s On James Baldwin, published by Brandeis University Press. The collection of essays sees the Irish writer reflecting on his first encounter with Baldwin’s semi-autobiographical novel Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953).

That coming-of-age story came out of Baldwin’s upbringing in the Pentecostal Church, in which he was a preacher until the age of 17. Tóibín read it just after his 18th birthday while grappling with his own religious upbringing. He examines Baldwin’s masterful prose on race, sexuality, and America’s ethos, while also offering insights on his own writing. The result is an emotionally weighty and personal tome that deepens our appreciation for Baldwin’s artistry.

Throbbing Gristle, TGCD1 and The Third Mind Movements (2024)

Throbbing Gristle epitomised the experimentation characteristic of the 1970s UK music scene, giving birth to the sub-genre of industrial music. An offshoot of the queer performance art collective COUM Transmissions, they had their first performance at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art in 1976, the same year COUM disbanded. Throbbing Gristle was led by the inimitable Genesis P-Orridge and legendary Cosey Fanni Tutti, later joined by Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson and Chris Carter. The group called it quits in 1981, before making an unexpected comeback in 1986 with the groundbreaking record TGCD1 – a blistering 42-minutes of intoxicating guitar noise.

Many years later, after once again breaking up and reuniting, they released The Third Mind Movements (2009), an eight-track banger that feels more subdued and approachable. Both records have been meticulously remastered and re-released on the label Mute Records, offering longtime fans and curious newcomers an opportunity to immerse themselves in the band’s thrashy sonic landscapes. Gristle’s unique and uncompromising fusion of electronic experimentation and avant-garde artistic sensibilities continue to challenge and inspire listeners all these decades later.

Bill Gunn, Personal Problems (1980)

I first saw Bill Gunn’s Personal Problems in 2018 when a restored version of the TV movie premiered at Metrograph arthouse cinema in New York. Starring Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor as Johnnie Mae Brown, the work offers viewers a raw, unvarnished glimpse into the complex lives of working-class Black Americans navigating the urban landscape of New York City. I was pleased to find out recently that I could finally watch the movie as it was originally intended, at home on a TV screen, via Metrograph’s streaming channel.

Produced by Steve Cannon and Ishmael Reed, Personal Problems was initially conceived as a TV series for public-access television, but eventually morphed into a single episodic, experimental mélange of cinematic genius. It is a unique movie that merges the techniques of the avant-garde with a documentary-style realism. At times disjointed and opaque, Gunn’s unconventional approach to narrative structure and cinematic form boldly challenges traditional storytelling conventions.

_{Main Image: James Baldwin sprawls across the bed in his New York apartment, 1963. Courtesy: Getty Images/Bettmann}