One of Todd Waters’ customized Anton LaVey “Illegal Mego” action figures.
 
Michigan native Todd Waters started collecting action figures made by toy giant Mego in the 1970s when he was just a toddler and simply never stopped. He and his brother were so obsessed with the action figures put out by Mego that they started tricking out their own characters together as kids. In a 2007 interview Waters recalled that his very first custom figure was Spider-Man which he customized with ripped clothing and a removable mask which he still owns.

Eventually, Waters learned to sew which allowed him to make more creative costumes for his action figures, which he also hand-paints. After clicking through Waters’ Flickr, I was delighted to discover the wide variety of action figures he has made that include some cool, fringe characters such as two different versions of Anton LaVey, the supernatural “Brother Voodoo” from Marvel Comics, and his self-proclaimed favorite, a customized “Dr. Zachary Smith” as played by actor Jonathan Harris in the vintage television series, Lost in Space. As I’m sure you may be wondering, yes, Waters does occasionally sell his figures—but only does so to raise the funds to create more of his wacky custom treasures. If you’re interested in trying to acquire one of Waters’ unique figures, he can be contacted via his Flickr page.
 

“Man-Thing” figure. “Man-Thing” made his first appearance in the Marvel comic ‘Savage Tales’ in 1971.
 

“The Son of Satan” figure. “The Son of Satan” made his debut in 1973 in ‘Ghost Rider’ #1.
 
More Mego madness after the jump…

 
The artist and mystic Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) never described the 193 paintings she produced between 1906-15 as “Abstract art.” Instead, af Klint thought of these paintings as diagrammatic illustrations inspired by conversations she (and her friends) conducted with the spirit world from the late 1890s on.

That af Klint did not call her work “Abstract art” is enough for some art historians to (foolishly) discount her art as the work of the first Abstract artist. In fact af Klint was painting her Abstract pictures long before Wassily Kandinsky made his progression from landscapes to abstraction sometime around 1910, or Robert Delaunay dropped Neo-Impressionism for Orphism and then moseyed along into Abstract art just a year or two later. But these men were members of voluble artistic groups and Kandinsky was a lawyer who knew the importance of self-promotion. Unlike af Klint who worked alone, in seclusion, and stipulated that her artwork was not to be exhibited until twenty years after her death. Af Klint died in 1944. In fact, it took forty-two years for her work to be seen by the public as part of an exhibition called The Spiritual in Art in Los Angeles, 1986.

And there’s the issue. The word “spiritual.” In a secular world where anything with a whiff of bells and candles is considered irrelevant, contemptible, and generally unimportant, it has been difficult for af Klint to be seen as anything other than an outsider artist or a footnote to the boys who have taken all the credit. Of course, a large part of the blame for this must rest with af Klint herself and her own prohibition on exhibiting her work. It’s very unfortunate, for this self-imposed ban meant that although af Klint may have been (I’ll say it again) the very first Abstract artist, her failure to share her work or exhibit it widely meant she had no or very limited influence through her artistic endeavors.

But now that af Klint has been rediscovered, it’s probably the right time to rip up the old art history narrative about Kandinsky and Delaunay and all the other boys and start all over again with af Klint at the top of that Abstract tree.

Hilma af Klint was born in Sweden in 1862 into a naval family. Her father was an admiral with a great interest in mathematics, who could play a damn fine tune on the violin. Her family were Protestant Christians but took considerable interest in the rapid advances made by science into the world—from medicine and x-rays to the theory of evolution. Unlike today, religious belief and scientific investigation were not mutually exclusive. In the same way, there was (at the time) a scientific interest in the spiritual.

Af Klint was passionate about mathematics, botany, and art. Some of her earliest paintings were detailed examinations of plants. Her father had little understanding of his daughter’s passion for art and would ruefully shake his head when she enthused about painting. Af Klint studied portraiture and landscape at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm 1882-87, graduating with honors. Her paintings are exceedingly good and technically very fine but not extraordinary or even offering much of a hint of what was to come.

The turning point for this great change roughly stemmed from the death of her younger sister. After her sister’s death in 1880, af Klint joined a group of women who shared an interest in the spiritual, in particular, the occult theories and Theosophical ideas of Madame Blavatsky who promoted a unity of the scientific and the spiritual. These women became known as “The Five.” They held séances together with af Klint often acting as the medium. The group made contact with spirit entities which they called the “High Masters.” Under their guidance, these women started producing works created by automatic writing and automatic painting—this was almost four decades before the Surrealists laid claim to inventing such techniques.

It was through her contact with these High Masters that af Klint began her series of Abstract paintings in 1906. These pictures, she claimed, were intended to represent “the path towards the reconciliation of spirituality with the material world, along with other dualities: faith and science, men and women, good and evil.”

Af Klint detailed her conversations with these spirits including one with a spirit called Gregor who told her:

All the knowledge that is not of the senses, not of the intellect, not of the heart but is the property that exclusively belongs to the deepest aspect of your being […] the knowledge of your spirit.

In 1906, af Klint began painting the images these spirits instructed her to set down. Her first was the painting Ur-Chaos which was created under the direction of the High Master Amaliel, as af Klint wrote in her notebooks:

Amaliel sign a draft, then let H paint. The idea is to produce a nucleus from which the evolution is based in rain and storm, lightning and storms. Then come leaden clouds above.

Between 1906 and 1915, af Klint produced a total of 193 paintings and an outpouring of thousands of words describing her conversations with the High Masters and the meaning of her paintings. Her work depicted the symmetrical duality of existence like male/female, material/spiritual, and good/evil. Blue represented the feminine. Yellow the masculine. Pink signified physical love. Red denoted spiritual love. Green represented harmony. Spirals signified evolution. Marks that looked like a “U” stood for the spiritual world. While waves or a “W” the material world. Circles or discs meant unity. Af Klint believed she was creating a new visual language, a new way of painting, that brought the spiritual and scientific together.

These paintings were often over ten feet in height. Af Klint stood around five feet. She painted her pictures on the floor—the occasional footprint can be seen smudged on the canvas. Af Klint worked like someone possessed. She believed her work was intended to establish a “Temple.” What this temple was or what it signified she was never exactly quite sure. All af Klint knew was that she was being guided by spirits:

The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless, I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brush stroke.

All through this, af Klint continued her own rigorous investigation into new scientific and esoteric ideas. This brought her to the work of Rudolf Steiner who was similarly following a path towards creating a synthesis between the scientific and the spiritual. When af Klint showed her paintings to the great esoteric, Steiner was shocked and told her these paintings must not be seen for fifty years as no one would understand them.

Steiner’s response devastated af Klint and she stopped painting for four years. Af Klint spent her time tending to her blind, dying mother. She then returned to painting but kept herself and more importantly her work removed from the world. After her death in 1944, the rented barn in which she kept her studio was to be burnt by the landlord farmer. A relative quickly decanted all of af Klint’s paintings and notebooks into wooden crates and stored them in a tin-roofed attic for the next thirty years.

In 1970, af Klint’s paintings were offered to the Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern Art) in Stockholm which was surprisingly (some might say foolishly) knocked back. Thankfully, through the perseverance of her family and the art historian Åke Fant, af Klint’s work was eventually exhibited in the 1980s. In total, Hilma af Klint painted over 1,200 abstract paintings and wrote some 23,000 words, all of which are now owned and managed by the Hilma af Klint Foundation.
 

‘The Ten Largest #3’ (1907).
 

‘The Ten Largest #4’ (1907).
 

‘The Ten Largest #7.’ (1907).
 
More Abstract art from Hilma af Klint, after the jump…
 

 
David Bowie was noted for, among so many other things, for his chameleon-like assumption of drastically different performative identities every few albums. As if to up the ante, producer/songwriter Lawrence Rothman has assumed a different identity for every song on his forthcoming album The Book of Law. Rothman has created nine alter egos for the album, and many will star in their own videos, to be directed by Floria Sigismondi, an illustrious music video director with a CV too long to relate—it goes back 25 years and includes Sigur Ros, Bjork, The Cure, Marilyn Manson, and, um, Bowie. She also made the 2010 Runaways biopic.

Just based on its ambitious nature alone, that project seems like it’ll be worth a good close look and listen, but what concerns us today is a song that won’t be on that album, and which in fact was released about a year and a half ago. It’s “Designer Babies,” a collaboration with Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, and the video for it has been held up for all this time because the footage disappeared and reappeared under still-unexplained circumstances. The video is a strikingly simple vignette of a rough-looking marionette on a table engaging with doll parts, an artist’s articulated hand model, and the torso of a mannequin. The effect is at once eerie and elegiac. Rothman was kind enough to take some time to tell us about the video and the puppeteer.

Floria shot the video the night we mixed the song, but the footage disappeared for like months, and then randomly showed up in Floria’s Dropbox. We have no idea what the hell happened and how it got placed on her Dropbox months later—it was never stored on her Dropbox to begin with. The puppeteer’s name was Eli. He showed up out of nowhere the day before we were to shoot. Floria loved his puppets and scrapped her previous idea 24 hours before shoot and had Eli bring his puppet down. He never gave us his last name, so we have no more info on him.

Rothman also gave us some background on recording “Designer Babies,” and how he secured Kim Gordon’s involvement.

Seeing Sonic Youth’s “Dirty Boots” video on MTV when my mom first figured out how to steal cable television in the 90’s inspired me to pick up a bass and start a band. I even, for a while, dressed like her when I was in my reading-lots-of-Sylvia-Plath phase. Kim’s lyrics to me are fucking beyond perfection, I am shocked she has never written any fiction. When it came time to do make my album, crazy magician producer Justin Raisen asked me who was my favorite singer of all time. My response was it’s a tie between Kim Gordon and Arthur Russell. Justin was like well, Arthur is no longer here, so let’s get Kim. We literally cold-called her and got her down to the studio, and had a great time having her sing through her guitar amp and just freestyle. From there we built like 20 versions of the song. The final has Angel Olsen singing background vocals on it, Nick Zinner from Yeah Yeah Yeahs on guitar, Stella Mozgawa from Warpaint doing some drum stuff, Active Child on Harp, and Justin Meldal-Johnsen on bass. The song also features an organ rumored to have once belonged to Harry Houdini.

 
Have a look after the jump…

Jon Snow as Peter Gabriel
 
Well, another season of Game of Thrones has come and gone, leaving boffo ratings, now-useless .mkv downloads, and millions of thrilled fans in its wake. It’s enough to make you feel like you’ve been brained by the Mountain himself (who seldom seems to brain anybody, by the way, have you noticed that?).

A raven recently brought dispiriting news that we might have to wait until 2019 (!) for the next season, but if that’s true we can at least take for granted that the six (extra long) new episodes that remain will be chock full of awesome shit. In the meantime, we have little recourse but to ponder the fate of Tormund Giantsbane (he died, right?) and enjoy amusing GoT/rock music mashups such as those perpetrated by the Why the Long Play Face Instagram feed.

Usually this feed is dedicated to Star Wars album cover inspirations, but in honor of the big season finale on Sunday, they put up a few Game of Thrones versions instead. Perhaps we can send whoever is responsible to undertake further such labors in the Citadel, where grim lectures from Archmaester Ebrose punctuate the day (but we benefit, at least).
 

The men of the Wall as the Ramones
 

Melisandre as Taylor Swift
 

Daenerys Targaryen as Lana Del Ray
 
More Game of Thrones album cover mashups after the jump…...
 

A remarkable black and white illustration by Frank R. Paul.
 
Hailing from Austria, pulp novel and comic book artist Frank R. Paul (born Rudolf Franz Paul in 1884), only attended school until the eighth-grade. At the time, affluent members of Austria received formal education beyond that, but Paul’s family were not a part of that world. So, when Paul turned fourteen, he got his first job working in a paper mill which he kept until the age of seventeen when he left Austria to avoid being drafted into the military. Paul ended up in Paris where he studied art which then led him to pursue studies in architecture in London. Finally, Paul would find himself and his first success as an artist in New York (after a short pit stop in San Francisco) where he was hired by Hugo Gernsback, the editor of The Electrical Experimenter, to create artwork for the monthly magazine in 1914.

Known today as the “Father of Science Fiction Art” Paul’s vivid work has appeared in and on the covers of a wide variety of magazines and pulp novels, most notably Amazing Stories who published a painting done by Paul on their very first issue in 1926. Other influential covers by Paul include the unique illustration of the “Human Torch” (the robot superhero created by Carl Burgos, not Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four) on Marvel Comics #1 in 1939, as well as his terrifying depiction of H. G. Wells’ vision of The War of the Worlds for Amazing Stories in 1927.

Publications containing Paul’s wild illustrations have sold for more than 20,000 dollars in the past, and his work is highly sought after by collectors. I highly recommend picking up the impeccable 2009 book, FROM THE PEN OF PAUL: The Fantastic Images of Frank R. Paul if you are at all a fan of the science fiction genre. I’ve posted some of Paul’s super spacey paintings, illustrations and magazine/pulp novel covers below.
 

1940.
 

 
More after the jump…

 
I recently came across the mind-expanding, surrealist collage artwork of Kiev, Ukraine’s Vadim Karasev. Having worked freelance under the pseudonym Karaska since 2013, Karasev’s postmodern vision is the product of several difficult years of personal self-realization and creative discovery. “Generally, I’m an engineer by education,” Karasev explained via email exchange. “I had to study and develop art on my own, which for me is the most amazing journey. The journey into the depths of oneself.”
 
This path toward innovation saw stylistic influences by the likes of Giorgio De Chirico, René Magritte, Jeff Jordan, and other modern artists, such as Maurizio Cattelan. Additionally, many narratives witnessed within Karaska’s work are inspired by classical literature from novelists Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, poets such as Arthur Rimbaud and André Breton, and many others. “I’m interested in the theme of the mystery of dreams and reality, mixing them, moving from one to another,” Karasev highlights. “These two worlds are interrelated and equally important, they exist, complementing each other and forming our reality.”
 
Take a look at some of Karaska’s reality-shifting examples of psychoactive new surrealism below.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
Hannes Bok was one of a thousand illustrators who eked out a career making illustrations for magazines, particularly scf-fi magazines, in the middle part of the last century. Born Wayne Francis Woodard in Kansas City in 1914, he grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, and lived in Los Angeles and Seattle as a young man.

His selected pseudonym, which lent his work an air of European sophistication, was a jumbled reference to the greatest of all Baroque composers, Johann Sebastian Bach. (“Hannes” relates to “Johannes,” a variant of Bach’s first name.) Early in his career Bok befriended an unknown writer named Ray Bradbury who would later become an advocate for Bok among sci-fi publishers. After Bok established himself in the late 1940s, he moved to New York City.
 

 
Bok’s work cannily melds the stately art of the pre-Raphaelites and the more cartoonish, fantastical motifs of the sci-fi stories he was illustrating. A good many of Bok’s images resemble those of his exact contemporary Virgil Finlay, but Finlay’s utterly unique output was far more delicate and “three-dimensional,” for lack of a better descriptor. Where Finlay’s work might depict a damsel in thrall to a demon, Bok would be more likely to juxtapose a stolid explorer flanked by two bizarre creatures.

Bok was also a noted astrologer as well as a creative writer. He published two novels, The Sorcerer’s Ship and The Blue Flamingo, which was later retitled Beyond the Golden Stair. First editions of the book Hannes Bok: A Life in Illustration are much prized by fans of midcentury illustration, running as high as $150. 
 

 

 
Much more after the jump….....

 
Yoshitoshi Kanemaki sketches out his sculptures on paper before taking a large chunk of tree trunk and carving out his pencil-drawn designs. He uses camphor wood which is an evergreen tree that can grow up to one hundred feet in height. As he carves and chisels, he draws onto the wood to highlight the details he wants to bring out in each sculpture. He then paints the finished work in soft pastel colors.

And what do the resulting works look like?

Well, Kanemaki’s sculptures include large intricate skeletal momento mori which achieve just what their titles describe—figures gripped by the bones beneath the skin. He also carves strange figures with multiple heads which depict human indecision, ambiguity, the swinging change of mood daily wrought by life like a unmoored boat upon torturous seas. And then we have the split personalities or “glitches,” the two-head figures that capture “the hesitations or inconsistencies” that we can never answer.

“I think that such ‘ambivalent’ emotions can be embodied regardless of whether they are ‘surface’ or ‘deep’ layer by giving the effect of an irregular shape deviating from [the] human figure. The sculpture series created with these feelings is the projection of my own emotions — it may be your figure.”

Kanemaki was born in the Chiba Prefecture of Japan in 1972. He graduated from the Department of Sculpture, Tama Art University, Tokyo, in 1999. Since then he has exhibited his work in group and solo shows across the country, won several awards, and has work in various public collection. See more of Kanemaki’s work here or follow him on here.
 

 

 

 
More of Kanemaki’s scupltures, after the jump…
 

A photo from AMBUSH’s ad campaign for their ‘Holy Mountain’ line of jewelry and accessories, 2012.
 

“You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold.”

—a quote from “The Alchemist” (played by Alejandro Jodorowsky) in The Holy Mountain

Back in 2012 Tokyo company AMBUSH created a line of jewelry and accessories based on the messed up imagery from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 film, The Holy Mountain. AMBUSH’s ad campaign for the line was ambitious, to say the least, and, as you might imagine, the line sold out quicker than you can say “The grave receives you with love.” It is possible to track some of the unique pieces down out there on the Internet such as Wrong Weather, Grailed, Big Cartel and sometimes eBay. I can’t lie, I want nearly everything from AMBUSH’s wearable homage to one of my favorite films of all time.

I’ve posted images from the ad campaign as well as several photos of items in the collection that are just too fucking cool. Some are NSFW, much like Mr. Jodorowsky himself.
 

“Eye Ring.”
 

Pin set. Available here.
 

Clutch with design inspired by ‘The Holy Mountain.’
 
More after the jump…

 
Dangerous Minds was saddened to learn that director Tobe Hooper died on Saturday. Hooper is best known for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, his 1974 low-budget horror masterpiece concerning a group of young people terrorized by a family of cannibalistic nutjobs. The movie was an artistic, critical and financial success, grossing more than $30 million in the U.S. Hopper’s anticipated follow-up was initially given a limited release in 1976.

Eaten Alive is a horror/exploitation film about a deranged hotel owner who kills his guests and feeds them to his pet crocodile. It has solid B-movie cast, including Marilyn Burns, who memorably screamed her head off in Chain Saw, and a heavily made-up Carolyn Jones, who was “Morticia” on the The Addams Family, playing brothel owner Miss Hattie. A young Robert Englund (a/k/a “Freddy Kruger”) is great as the lowlife “Buck.” Englund utters the unforgettable first words in the picture: “Name’s Buck. I’m rarin’ to fuck.’” The dialogue was later adapted by Quentin Tarantino and used in Kill Bill: Volume One.

Eaten Alive was given a wide release in the states in 1977, and in 1978, a slightly edited cut was approved by the BBFC, the British ratings board. Released in the UK as Death Trap, it gained notoriety a few years later, after it appeared on home video.
 

 
In Britain during the early 1980s, there was a moral panic regarding the availability of certain movies on VHS. At first, motion pictures that came out on video didn’t have to be rated, meaning anyone of any age could rent them. Especially violent and gory pictures like Driller Killer and I Spit on Your Grave were singled out as being inappropriate for young people; the films identified as such came to be known as “Video Nasties.” In 1982, Death Trap was one of those successfully prosecuted under Britain’s Obscene Publications Act, and the distributor had to surrender all VHS copies to the court. If you’re wondering the fate of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, well, it was denied certification by the BBFC in 1975 and didn’t come out in Britain until 1999—! The following year, Death Trap was once again made available on home video in the country.
 

Hooper and actor Neville Brand on set.

After repeated disputes with producers, Hooper quit before filming of Eaten Alive was complete, leaving it to be finished by others. While the final product certainly doesn’t match the quality of Chain Saw, the picture isn’t without its merits. Many scenes are effectively unsettling, especially those involving the terrorized child staying at the hotel, which are particularly unnerving. Hooper’s use of color is notable, and the atmospheric outside shots look really cool.
 

 
I tend to agree with this IMDb user’s assessment of the film and of Neville Brand, who plays the hotel owner:

‘Death Trap’ reminds me of Dario Argento’s movies. Not in the subject matter, or directorial style, but in the sense that what you’re seeing is a filmed nightmare, devoid of logic, but full of memorable over the top images. The sets are cheap and nasty, the acting varies from quite good to plain silly, the “plot” can basically be summed up as: people check into a seedy motel and get fed to a pet crocodile by its nutty owner, but you know what? It’s still a hell of an entertaining trashy horror movie.

Neville Brand (‘The Ninth Configuration’) gives a gonzo, almost vintage Timothy Carey-like performance as psycho scythe wielding “Judd,” owner of the one place in town you really don’t want to check in to.

 
More after the jump…