Creepy, but awesome dolls made by Alejandro Jodorowsky on display at the “Happily Ever After” exhibit during the second annual “Rise of the Dolls Festival.”
The festival was held in the amphitheater of the Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, Chile on May 24, under the direction of Jaime Lorca.
Via UPI and with thanks to Franco!
A brilliant and beautifully executed wood cassette tape coffee table by artist Jeff Skerka.
This coffee table is a 12:1 scaled replica of a cassette tape. It is made of reclaimed maple, walnut and lucite. Dimensions are 47.25” x 30” x 5” with a 3/8” plexi top. This is a first prototype and one of a kind table. Future versions will be CNC machined out of high grade plywood with a variety of ply combinations and a glass top. This table has been an obsession of mine for 5 years! It is amazing to finally have it come to fruition. The table is completely reversible (sides A and B).
I’m not sure if Jeff’s “Mixtape Table” is a one-of-kind prototype or others have been made for purchase? You can contact him here to find out.
Via KMFW
Nice time-lapse video of a Robert Moog mural commissioned by Moog Music for their factory in Asheville, NC. The mural was created by local Asheville artist, Dustin Spagnola.
Thanks, Dustin!
In 1970, Fontana Books published the first of seven paperback books in a series on what they termed Modern Masters - culturally important writers, philosophers and thinkers, whose work had shaped and changed modern life. It was a bold and original move, and the series launched on January 12th with books on Camus, Chomsky, Fanon, Guevara, Levi-Strauss, Lukacs, and Marcuse.
This was soon followed in 1971 with the next set of books on McLuhan, Orwell, Wittgenstein, Joyce, Freud, Reich and Yeats. And in 1972-73 with volumes on Gandhi, Lenin, Mailer, Russell, Jung, Lawrence, Beckett, Einstein, Laing, and Popper.
Fontana Modern Masters was a highly collectible series of books - not just for their opinionated content on the likes of Marx or Proust, Mailer or McLuhan, but because of Oliver Bevan’s fabulous cover designs.
This eye-catching concept for the covers came from Fontana’s art director, John Constable, who had been experimenting with a Cut-Up technique, inspired by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin and based on The Mud Bath, a key work of British geometric abstraction by the painter David Bomberg. It was only after Constable saw Oliver Bevan’s geometric, Op Art at the Grabowski Gallery in London, did Constable decide to commission Bevan to design the covers.
The first full set of books consisted of nine titles. Each cover had a section of a Bevan painting, which consisted of rectilinear arrangements of tesselating block, the scale of which was only fully revealed when all ten covers were placed together. Bevan designed the first ‘3 sets of 10’ from 1970-74. He was then replaced by James Lowe (1975-79) who brought his own triangular designs for books on Marx, Eliot, Pound, Sartre, Artaud and Gramsci. In 1980, Patrick Mortimer took over, with his designs based on circles.
The original Fontana Modern Masters regularly pop-up in secondhand bookshops, and are still much sought after. Over the years, I have collected about twenty different volumes, but have yet to create one complete painting. Here are a few samples, culled from my own collection and from the the web.
A small selection of Fontana Modern Master covers, after the jump…
I prefer Guy Maddin movies in small portions, like an Italian dessert, and his short film Sissy-Boy Slap-Party is just the right amount of deranged fun to keep me satisfied without going into sugar shock..
Kenneth Anger meets Jean Genet meets Jack Smith meets The Three Stooges meets White Zombie in this slap happy tableaux that hints at all kinds of debauchery and yet is chaste enough to be shown at a Saturday morning kiddie show or used as an aftershave commercial.
The title kind of says is all, doesn’t it? Maybe NSFW-ish…
Here’s something you don’t see everyday, Jennifer Rubell‘s art exhibit titled “Nutcrackers” which features 18 full-size female mannequins who are, uh, molded to crack walnuts or something between their thighs.
Inspired by nutcrackers depicting female figures - and in particular one found on the internet of Hillary Clinton - these interactive sculptures embody the two polar stereotypes of female power: the idealized, sexualized nude female form; and the too-powerful, nut-busting überwoman. The work also serves as a prompt to action, encouraging the viewer to transgress the traditional viewer-artwork boundary and complete the work by participating in it.
Watch one of Jennifer Rubell’s nut crackin’ mannequins in action below:
Via Geekologie
A simply stunning B&W masterpiece directed by Yoann Lemoine for Woodkid’s (who is synonymous with Yoann Lemoine, btw) “Run Boy Run.”
Every childhood fantasy is right here, folks. Good stuff indeed.
Via Boooooooom!
This image of a “solar eclipse proposal” is making rounds on the Internet today with the quote below.
A man in Japan effectively used the solar eclipse to propose to his girlfriend.
I couldn’t find the original source for it, I just kept getting led back to Japanese Tumblrs.
I hope it’s real. It’s really lovely.
Via Like Cool
Photography, says Scot Sothern, wasn’t so much an interest, when he was growing-up, as something he was born into. His father owned a photographic studio, for portraits of weddings and baptisms; and Scot’s earliest memory is tied to a photograph.
‘My first clear memory correspond to a photograph and because of that I’m not sure if it’s a memory I would even have if not for the photograph to ring the memory bell in my head.
‘My father was a photographer with a wedding and portrait studio in the Missouri Ozarks and back in the fifties when I was about four years old cowboys were all the rage for boy tots like myself and portraits of little boys dressed in cowboy drag became de rigueur. I remember we were out on a farm and my dad wanted to set me on a rail fence, I guess the way cowboys were supposed to do. Anyway, it was too high and I didn’t trust my balance and freaked out when my dad set me there and so he had to take me down and let me stand in front of the fence instead. I remember him being irritated that I was acting like a pussy.’
Last year, Scot released Lowlife, a collection of his photographs and writing of his experiences amongst prostitutes in the 1980s:
’When I pulled off the freeway into San Diego, I had a single twenty dollar bill in my wallet. My car, a 1973 Toyota station wagon, rattled my teeth and died in idle. At stops I had to divide my right foot: heel on the brake, toes revving the accelerator. I had barely enough gas to get back to Los Angeles.
‘On El Cajon Boulevard I drove slowly and studied the street walkers. In their eyes I could see desperation-induced madness, premature death. In my eyes they could see my craving for the nasty little secret I kept from friends and family. I could give my twenty dollars to any one of these women. I could buy a quick sex fix and she could buy enough crack to put a smile on her face for an hour or so.
‘In the passenger seat, belted and buckled, frail and beautiful, my four-year-old son, Dashiell, slept curled around his best friend, a pillow-sized stuffed facsimile of Hulk Hogan. It was Sunday night and my weekend with my little boy was over.
‘When we arrived at his mother’s house, Dash awoke. He cried and clung tightly, arms around my neck. He didn’t want me to go. His mother Sylvia, my ex-wife, was happy to see me go, but first she wanted money. I made lame excuses. She called me a jerk and pried our son from my embrace. I took my twenty dollars and drove back to El Cajon Boulevard.’
More from Scot Sothern, after the jump…
I don’t really care that much about LEGOs, but this “Legolize It!” weed-themed exhibition showing at the Known Gallery in Los Angeles May 26 - June 9, looks like a can’t miss art show.
In the wake of increasing raids on Medical Marijuana dispensaries by local, state and federal drug enforcement agencies, the LAgo brand’s brand-new, flagship storefront is set to open on May 26, 2012 at Known Gallery located at 441 North Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. The LAgo brand, as a perpetual “harvest” of healing power, has been especially commodified to meet the addictions of anyone who has ever wanted to experience the transaction of purchasing medical marijuana – or fine art – at a legal business organization. Synthetic starter-plants, seedlings, clones and a totally huge selection of intoxicating, fake plastic buds- all built with LEGO bricks to resemble some of the finest strains of medicinal marijuana ever grown- will be on display and available for limited purchase.
The LEGO grow room is the best. Genius!
Known Gallery
441 North Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036
info@knowngallery.com
Via GeekOSystem