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Meet Ling: She’s the worst (and also the best) graphic designer on the entire Internet!
07.10.2013
12:21 pm
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STOP! I know your first impulse is just to click on lingscars.com—it’s the website version of a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s castile soap! Beware the siren song of Ling Valentine!

First of all, if you’re epileptic or prone to seizures, don’t even go near this Ling thing—it’s basically a rave.

Second, a friend of mine used to say that only octogenarians (and sociopaths) had auto-play music on their websites. I would mostly agree, but when you hear the dulcet sounds of Karaoke standards and what I assume to be Chinese pop tunes upon visiting Ling’s site, it’s clear that an exception must be made for an exceptional woman.

Third, this website is so damn beautiful—and hypnotic in its awful greatness—that you will have to lease a car from Ling after viewing it.

Behold, screengrabs of the busiest website in all the land!
 
Ling Vader
 

 
Ling's quiz
 
Everything from games, to quizzes, to live cams of the office, to political statements, to animation, to the wise words of Ling herself grace this monument of human ambition, in all the colors of the rainbow! You can buy a portrait of Ling or even chat with her online, if she;s in the office! And she isn’t all flash. She’s a savvy businesswoman who knows what works! Take her assessment of cookies, which I found buried in the website.

EU cookie law. Piss off Von Rumpy. Me… I hammer visitors to death with cookies, so I can find out what they want. EU Cookie Law Cookies allow my website to serve visitors the content they need. Get used to it. The EU cookie law is an ass.

I don’t even know what EU cookie laws are, but right now I totally oppose them, in solidarity with Ling.

Below, a video of Ling, giving a lecture on digital marketing while wearing a Chinese military helmet. Before she is introduced (and played on to the Chinese National Anthem, for which she asked the audience to stand), the speaker acknowledges that although she does everything wrong according to marketing doctrine, it just kind of works. I’m not sure if this is some elaborate performance piece, trolling us all, or if she’s just mastered the art of the spectacle.

Only one thing is clear: Ling Valentine is a damn genius.
 

 

Posted by Amber Frost
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07.10.2013
12:21 pm
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Sexy and Scandalous Scrap Metal: Ron Boise’s Legendary Kamasutra Sculptures
07.06.2013
08:59 pm
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Ron Boise Kama Sutra Sculpture 1
 
Ron Boise’s infamous Kama Sutra sculptures from the early 1960’s look almost quaint now. A series of eleven small (the tallest was a foot high) sculptures depicting sexual positions from the ancient Hindu text on sexual behavior, the Kama Sutra, were formed out of scrap sheet metal taken from wrecked cars. And that’s when the prudish shit storm began.

Boise grew up in Colorado and Montana, where he learned to weld from his father, before moving to California. In addition to being a self-taught sculptor, Boise was one of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and even used old tools, car parts, bucksaws and old scraps of metal to create the always-locked front gate on Kesey’s La Honda, California property, on the far side of the rickety bridge that spanned La Honda Creek.

Boise himself lived and traveled in an old telephone company service van which he painted wild psychedelic colors and modified to become a mobile studio and camper.

In 1964 Boise’s Kama Sutra series was shown at the two-year-old Vorpal Gallery in San Francisco, then located in the alley behind Vesuvio Cafe and a few steps from City Lights Bookstore. (Still open, it is now located in the San Francisco Civic Center at 444 Market Street.) Art professor Richard H. Grooms described the pieces:

His sculpture was extremely sensual and the rendering of flesh and texture of the sheet metal made you forget they were scraps of metal at all. He had a sensitive line in his work that made all the metal personages seem to have a personality all their own. They became like real people, but without the idea they were portraits.

The sight of fewer than a dozen small, charming depictions of a man and a woman engaged in various heterosexual activities was enough to completely freak out the upright citizens of San Francisco. San Francisco police raided the gallery, confiscated almost all of the sculptures, and arrested gallery owner Muldoon Elder for offering “lewd objects for sale.” An obscenity trial ensued, where expert art historians Walter Horn and Catherine Caldwell and philosopher Alan Watts testified in defense of Boise’s work. Watts’ statement was reprinted in The Evergreen Review in June 1965:

Ron Boise is a sculptor who is doing something which I call ‘pushing the line back’ – in the same way as great modern writers, such as Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce have been pushing the line back in literature. We haven’t seen much of it in sculpture – or in painting…

Here we see an extraordinary example of getting away with murder but in a fantastically good way. But it’s not actually getting away with murder; it’s something much worse than that; it’s getting away with love…Very rarely, unless we are familiar with Hindu sculpture or Tibetan painting can we see anything like this done with superb mastery.

Elder was found not guilty.  He wrote in 2004:

Thank God the A.C.L.U. defended me at the two-week trial since in 1964 I hardly had a penny to my name to pay for a lawyer and I doubt if the public defender would have been as eloquent as Ephriam Margolin and Marshall Krause were in that courtroom. You’ll have to ask me about the trial sometime, it was a hoot.

During and after the trial, the Kama Sutra sculptures became a rallying point for the local counterculture. Calendars and postcards were sold featuring the sculptures. Hip Pocket Bookstore in Santa Cruz, California proudly displayed one of the original sculptures over the front door. Another sculpture was installed on the roof of the Anchor Steam Beer Factory in San Francisco in full view of the freeway until Fritz Maytag took over the company in 1965 and removed it.

Boise died of the blood disease hemochrotouisis in 1966. He was on his way to Mexico to celebrate a successful show in California, where he sold nearly all of his works. He had told friends that he did not expect to live a long life and wanted to fully enjoy what years he had allotted to him. In a 1968 Martlett magazine article Richard H. Grooms wondered what had happened to Boise’s unsold sculptures after his death. Photographs of the Kama Sutra sculptures that were to accompany Grooms’ article were censored by Martlett’s printers.

Excerpt from a documentary about Boise’s work.  It contains footage of him working on a sculpture shortly before his death in 1966.

Posted by Kimberly J. Bright
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07.06.2013
08:59 pm
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Happy Birthday Jean Cocteau
07.05.2013
07:25 pm
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Happy Birthday to Jean Cocteau—man of many (p)Arts: artist, novelist, poet, playwright, film-maker, and designer, born today in 1889.

Cocteau was firstly a poet, who described himself as a lie that always told the truth.

He was also a highly controversial figure—often criticized for being a mere dilettante; he was easily swayed in his political views (he thought Hitler a pacifist and once speculated about the Führer’s sex life); had an obsession with underage boys; and was addicted to opium.

Yet for all the questionable things Cocteau’s life is always redeemed by his Art.

Je suis Jean Cocteau is a short film that collects together moments from Cocteau’s films (Testament of Orpheus, Blood of a Poet, Beauty and the Beast, Orpheus, and Les Enfants Terrible) creating a showreel to his imagination.

“When I make a film, it is a sleep in which I am dreaming.”

Dreams that have inspired subsequent film-makers, writers and artists.

(And today is also my brother’s birthday, so Happy Birthday Michael!)
 

 
H/T Paraphilia Magazine

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.05.2013
07:25 pm
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‘Men Wearing Their Girlfriends’ Clothes’ is my new favorite thing
07.05.2013
11:37 am
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man in dress
To be fair, when you already have hair like a Democratic Senator’s wife, you’ve already started to embrace The Pretty
 
Spanish photographer Jon Uriarte is not gender-bending with his project, “The men under the influence.” In fact, these pictures of men in their girlfriends’ clothes only emphasizes masculinity in a way that belies the girly threads. It’s not even drag—it’s dudes looking completely incongruous to their clothes, despite sometimes looking totally comfortable (and sometimes pretty hot). It’s oddly mesmerizing, especially when the clothes aren’t really far off from “men’s” clothes, betraying the increasing gender neutrality of fashion.

Uriarte describes his project thusly:

“The men under the influence” addresses the recent change in roles in heterosexual relationships from the relationships of our predecessors and how those changes have affected men in particular. the photos attempt to capture men’s sense of loss reference, now that women have taken a step forward and have finally come into their own as equal partners. The project consists of full-length portraits of men wearing the clothes of their girlfriends or wives, taken in the space shared by the couple.


I’m not that familiar with Spain’s gender politics, but I’m sure that anxieties around emasculation are at least as prevalent there as they would be anywhere else. In nearly every developed country you have a current of reactionaries bemoaning the death of traditional gender roles (as if they’ve somehow been completely eradicated). The project is a compelling way of dealing with evolving romantic relations, but avoids the false nostalgia for a time when “men were men.”
 
man in jumper
 
man in dress
 
man in pencil skirt
 
man in tights
 
man in gf's jeans
 
Via Feature Shoot

Posted by Amber Frost
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07.05.2013
11:37 am
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Gallery of Lost Art: Work from Bacon, Beuys, Kahlo, Haring, Freud & more will soon disappear forever
07.04.2013
06:52 pm
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Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, 1952

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye!

All good things must come to an end, and after a highly successful year, the Gallery of Lost Art is about to (sadly) disappear forever!

The Gallery of Lost Art is on-line site which showcases artworks that have been lost, stolen, discarded, rejected and destroyed. It explains how great works of art can fall victim to heists, fire, war, bad luck–even an artist deciding to destroy their own works. The virtual exhibition tells the stories of what led to the disappearance of these major pieces, some (like Christo’s “Wrapped Reichstag”) which were never intended to be permanent in the first place (like this digital exhibit).

Some of artists included in the ephemeral exhibition are Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, Frida Kahlo, Tracey Emin, Egon Schiele, Kurt Schwitters, Lucien Freud, Marcel Duchamp, Willem de Kooning, Rachel Whiteread, and Keith Haring among many others.

There is now just over one day until the site will cease to exist and all its exhibited artworks, information, and archive materials will simply disappear into the ether. Now is your last chance to visit the Gallery of Lost Art before it’s too late. The project was a collaboration between Tate Modern, Channel 4, and ISO Design, and has picked multiple awards from SXSW, Design Week, and the Museums and Heritage Innovation Award, as well as becoming a Webbys Honoree. The gallery has received over 100,000 visitors from more than 150 different countries.

Visit the site here.
 

Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Gallery of Lost Art: A century of vanished work by the likes of Freud, Kahlo & Duchamp

With thanks to Heidi Kuisma

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.04.2013
06:52 pm
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A pair of Paul McCartney’s sweaty old pants immortalized in verse by ‘Mersey Beat’ Roger McGough
07.03.2013
01:14 pm
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“Hello mate, can I have me trousers back? It’s Paul.”

Roger McGough, one of the cool “Liverpool Poets” of the 1960s deeply influenced by the Beats, was in the band, The Scaffold, with Paul McCartney’s brother Mike from 1964-1973. Mike went by the stage name Mike McGear to avoid being too obviously associated with Paul. He is the Mike mentioned in the poem below, “To Macca’s Trousers.”

McGough recalled that he owned a pair of McCartney’s old pants (“They were part of a blue mohair suit and they’ve got quite a sweaty waistband. They’ve obviously been worn a bit.”) when a museum exhibit about the “Mersey Beat”—and Mersey Beats, to make that distinction—scene(s) of the 1960s was staged in Liverpool in 2009.

McGough wrote the poem about having them framed and then got the idea for pairing the pants and poem together as a work of art. He told Laura Davis of the Liverpool Post: “I didn’t want to put them on eBay, just because of knowing the family, it would be a tacky thing to do.”

“Paul used to give Mike some of his old cast-offs and the trousers were too short for Mike so he gave them to me. I never wore them, forgot I had them and then I realised ‘oh I’ve got a pair of Paul McCartney’s trousers’.

“Then, as the trousers unfolded, so did the story.”

In 1973, McGough and Mike McGear joined GRIMMS, a merger of The Bonzo Dog Band, The Scaffold and Andy Roberts from Liverpool Scene. McGough is the author of more than 50 books and plays. He also worked on the script for The Beatles’s Yellow Submarine cartoon. 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
GRIMMS: The most incredible 70’s Supergroup, you’ve probably never heard of

Below, Roger McGough reads “To Macca’s Trousers” at National Museums Liverpool
 

Posted by Kimberly J. Bright
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07.03.2013
01:14 pm
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Barbie doll created with average US woman’s measurements is repulsive hag
07.03.2013
10:17 am
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Barbie
I, for one, am baffled that anyone has sex with women at all.

Just kidding! She’s totally cute!

Artist Nickolay Lamm, who previously created “clean-faced” Barbies intended to look makeup-free, has gotton even more ambitious with his most recent conceptual Barbie project. Using the Center for Disease Control & Prevention’s measurements of an average 19-year-old woman, he has created a Barbie shaped like an actual person. Declaring, “we should at least be open to the possibility that Barbie may negatively influence young girls,” Lamm taps into a can of worms that’s been debated in parenting and feminist circles forever—when children use play to learn, is there really such thing as “just a doll?”

On some level, hyper-realistic dolls are a bit silly anyways, since anyone who’s ever been around kids will admit you can draw a smiley face on a jar of pickles and they’ll play with it like a doll. In many parts of the world, dolls don’t attempt the detail of Barbie, and people don’t have to think about dolls’ “bodies.” On the other hand, when a doll is produced with such an uncanny attention to detail, especially when it’s a hyper-stylized depiction of the sort of bodies ubiquitously heralded as “hot,” (and oh so rarely achieved via nature alone) you have to wonder if kids are internalizing the Barbie “body” as something attainable.

Regardless, it’s an interesting concept, and it says something about how deeply ingrained Barbie has become as an American icon that a realistic body makeover looks jarring and surreal.
 
Barbies
Barbie’s got back.


 
Via Bust

Posted by Amber Frost
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07.03.2013
10:17 am
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Deliciously demented life-size ‘Dexter’ cake
07.02.2013
12:02 pm
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An impressive confectionery tribute to Dexter‘s eighth and final season by Miss Cakehead and Annabel de Vetten aka Conjurer’s Kitchen. Whoa!

The entire cake Took over 100 hours to make and weighed over 105 kilograms. 24 eggs, 25 kilograms of flour, 16 kilograms of butter cream, 18 kilograms of sugar, 20 kilograms of sugar paste and marzipan, and 15 kilograms of butter cream were used in the creation of the edible masterpiece. So 20 blood oranges were used, the cake flavor inspired by the iconic titles of the series.

You can read all about the cake here.


 

 
Via Nerdcore

Posted by Tara McGinley
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07.02.2013
12:02 pm
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Timelapse video of a woman making her own prosthetic leg from LEGO pieces
07.01.2013
08:05 pm
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Something you don’t see every day: An awesomely creative woman makes a prosthetic leg for herself out of LEGO pieces!

Uploader AmputeeOT writes a friendly warning to anyone considering doing this:

Someone in my research lab jokingly suggested I make a prosthetic leg out of legos.

Please don’t do this yourself, I don’t want you to fall and get hurt!

Sometimes, you just need to be silly.

 
With thanks to Kip Silverman!

Posted by Tara McGinley
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07.01.2013
08:05 pm
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Kurt Schwitters performs ‘Ursonate’: ‘The greatest sound poem of the 20th century’
07.01.2013
02:10 pm
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Kurt Schwitters, London 1944 - ‘Nine Portraits’

Kurt Schwitters was rebuffed from joining the Berlin Klub-Dada, as he was considered insufficiently political. It was their loss, as Schwitters proved himself to be far more radical and original than anything produced by this political off-shoot of the avant-garde movement.

The rejection disappointed Schwitters, but he was in good company as neither Max Ernst or Jean (Hans) Arp—who had been central figures in the original Zurich Dada group—joined this new Dada political off-shoot. Instead, Hans Arp teamed-up with Schwitters, and the pair collaborated on various projects over the next decade.

In response to his rejection, Schwitters formed his own brand of Dada, which he called Merz—the name lifted from a Hannover bank, “Kommerz und Privat Bank.” Schwitters was influenced by many of Dada’s ideas, in particular he developed some of Arp’s theories about language and the written word.

Arp saw Dada as a constructive force, and defined it as:

“...the primal source of all art. Dada is for the ‘without sense’ of art, which is not to say non-sense. Dada is without sense like nature. Dada is for nature and against art. Dada is direct like nature and tries to find for each its real place.”

 

Hans Arp ‘Dada Sprüche.’
 
Arp produced a series of poems where words and phrases were placed together not for their semantic message, but for the possibility in creating sensation through their associate sounds.

the nightbirds carry burning lanterns in the beams of
their eyes. they steer delicate ghosts and ride on wagons
with delicate veins.

Like his paintings and drawings, Arp’s poetry developed organically. His intention was to restore a sense of wonder to the world through sound.

Schwitters, on the other hand, broke language down into individual words and letters, with which he created early examples of Concrete Poetry. His aim was to create a new form of expression.
 
More on Kurt Schwitters and his ‘Ursonate’ sonata after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.01.2013
02:10 pm
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