Tadanori Yokoo is one of the world’s foremost graphic designers, considered to be in the same league as Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast. He is also often compared to Andy Warhol and Peter Max.

Yukio Mishima said of him in 1968:

“Tadanori Yokoo’s works reveal all of the unbearable things which we Japanese have inside ourselves and they make people angry and frightened. He makes explosions with the frightening resemblance which lies between the vulgarity of billboards advertising variety shows during festivals at the shrine devoted to the war dead and the red containers of Coca Cola in American Pop Art, things which are in us but which we do not want to see.”

 

 
In the sixties, Yokoo made some amazing animated pop psychedelic shorts (with insane soundtracks), here’s “Kachi Kachi Yama” from 1965:
 

 
After the jump, two more great animated shorts by Tadanori Yokoo…

Dylan, Warhol and Elvis, photo by Nat Finkelstein

Famous visitors and “beautiful people” with “star potential” who visited Andy Wahol’s Factory studio in the 1960s were often shot for Warhol’s “screen tests,” his silent “parodies” of the Hollywood studio system. No one was really auditioning for anything, it was just an excuse to run a single reel of 16mm film through his Bolex camera and engage someone in a staring contest with it, one they normally lost (after a minute or so of trying to look “cool,” the mask was normally dropped and the simple portraits become quite revealing). The two and a half minute reels were then slowed down and printed.

Some of the more notable subjects included Italian model Benedetta Barzini, model/actrress Marisa Berenson, poet Ted Berrigan, Salvador Dalí, Donovan, Marcel Duchamp, Mama Cass, Allen Ginsberg, Beck’s mother, Bibbe Hansen, Baby Jane Holzer, Dennis Hopper, actress Sally Kirkland, Nico, Yoko Ono, Lou Reed, photographer Francesco Scavullo, Edie Sedgwick, Susan Sontag, artist Paul Thek, Viva and Mary Woronov

When Dylan stopped by the tin-foil covered Factory, he is alleged to have taken an immediate dislike to Warhol and the “phonies” of his entourage. It has long been suspected that the spitting lyrics of “Like a Rolling Stone,” in part, describe Dylan’s feelings about Warhol—was he “the diplomat on the chrome horse”?—and how he felt about the artist’s perceived exploitation of Edie Sedgwick, who Dylan was at one point romantically involved with (and who was his muse for some of Blonde on Blonde).

After the screen test was shot, Dylan grabbed a large silkscreen (as “payment”) that Warhol was going to give him anyway and headed for the door (before allegedly strapping the canvas to the roof of a station wagon). Such was his dislike of the artist that he later traded the piece to his manager, Albert Grossman, for a couch. That silkscreen, “Double Elvis,” is now part of the permanent collection at MOMA.

Here’s Factory photographer Nat Finkelstein’s account of what happened:

“Andy gave Bobby a great double image of Elvis. Bobby gave Andy short shrift. Shooting and plundering finished, the Dylan gang headed for the door, me and my Nikon on their heels. They left as they had entered…‘Bobby the Waif’ emerging as ‘Robert the Triumphant’. They departed having tied the Elvis image to the top of their station wagon, like a deer poached out of season. Much later, Bobby told me he’d traded the Elvis (now worth millions) to his manager Albert Grossman for a couch!”

 
While the 1987 BBC documentary The Confessions Of Robert Crumb lacks the intensity and insight of Terry Zwigoff’s masterful Crumb it is still an invaluable introduction to one of the world’s most fascinating and enigmatic artists. Fans of Crumb will find it short on revelations but initiates should be charmed.

Love him or loathe him, there is no denying that Crumb was way ahead of his time when it came to toppling sacred cows and shattering taboos. Discovering his comix as a teenager in the late Sixties was one of those formative events that fucked me up for life…in a good way.

Kinkade’s D.U.I. mugshot gets the Kinkade treatment

Shlockmeister artist Thomas Kinkade, self-proclaimed “Painter Of Light,” has died at the age of 54 of natural causes.

Dying at 54 doesn’t seem natural to me. Heart attack? Maybe. Despite his sanctimonious veneer, Kinkade was a boozehound with anger issues and a fat fuck so it is possible his heart attacked him.

Hugely popular among Christians, many of his paintings depict religious themes that border on self-parody, Kinkade claimed to be a devout Christian, but his behavior often mimicked that of another deeply religious celebrity, Mel Gibson.

The Los Angeles Times has reported that some of Kinkade’s former colleagues, employees, and even collectors of his work say that he has a long history of cursing and heckling other artists and performers. The Times further reported that he openly groped a woman’s breasts at a South Bend, Indiana sales event, and mentioned his proclivity for ritual territory marking through urination, once relieving himself on a Winnie the Pooh figure at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim while saying “This one’s for you, Walt.” In a letter to licensed gallery owners acknowledging he may have behaved badly during a stressful time when he overindulged in food and drink.

In 2006 John Dandois, Media Arts Group executive, recounted a story that on one occasion (“about six years ago”) Kinkade became drunk at a Siegfried & Roy magic show in Las Vegas and began shouting “Codpiece! Codpiece!” at the performers. Eventually he was calmed by his mother. Dandois also said of Kinkade, “Thom would be fine, he would be drinking, and then all of a sudden, you couldn’t tell where the boundary was, and then he became very incoherent, and he would start cursing and doing a lot of weird stuff like touching himself.” On 11 June 2010, Kinkade was arrested in Carmel, California on suspicion of driving while under the influence of alcohol.”

Well before Kinkade became a multi-millionaire selling his kitsch paintings, he worked as a background artist on Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta’s animated film Fire And Ice. In a 2008 New York magazine interview, Bakshi took an affectionate swipe at his old employee:

That son of a bitch! Kinkade was the coolest. If Kinkade wasn’t a painter, he’d be one of those cult leaders. Kinkade came into my office with James Gurney when I was looking for background artists [for Fire and Ice]. He’s a good painter, and he did a spiel. He made all these deals. How he went out and did what he did is beyond my understanding now. He’s very, very talented, and he’s very, very much of a hustler. Those two things are in conflict. Is he talented? Oh yeah. Will he paint anything to make money? Oh yeah. Does he have any sort of moralistic view? No. He doesn’t care about anything. He’s as cheesy as they come.”

Kinkade (far right) working on Fire And Ice. Photo via James Gurney.
 

 
Here’s a fascinating documentary on the making of Fire And Ice. Featuring art spun from the darker side of Thomas Kinkade.
 

 
Japanese kids’ interpretations of Henry Rollins through B&W drawings. They all gave him weird lookin’ feet! 

See more drawings and amusing captions at Hello Henry.

 
More after the jump…

 
I love this image by photographer Ryan McGinley for new his exhibition Animals consisting of portraits of live animals with nude models.

The show will run from May 2 through June 2, 2012 at Team Gallery in NYC.

Via The World’s Best Ever

 
From the folks who brought you Bodies: The Exhibition, comes a new grotesquely beautiful attraction called Animals Inside Out. It’s currently showing at the National History Museum of London with over 100 plasticized animal specimens.

What is plastination, you ask?

Plastination is a revolutionary method of preservation invented by Dr Gunther von Hagens in 1977. It involves extracting all water and fatty tissues from the specimen and replacing them with polymers in a vacuum. The plastination process stops the decay of dead bodies and prepares specimens for scientific and medical education. It is an odourless form of preservation and lasts a long time.

This gets a “yay” and “yuck” from me all at the same time.
 

 

 

 
Via Daily What

 
A rather haunting—notice all those gas masks littered on the floor—mural of The Simpsons having a grand old time inside a building at the Chernobyl disaster site. The mural is by French street artist Combo.
 
Via Juxtapoz and KMFW

 
Self-taught Detroit-based sculptor Bob Causey aka Bobby C creates these incredibly realistic life-sized and scaled down busts. In an online interview with The Armchair Empire, Bobby C discusses how long it takes to make one, “Upward to 6 months for the proto, I can get my end done fast but It seems to take everyone else a bit longer for the clothes.”

You can view the finished Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) bust here. Apparently this sculpture was a wacky Christmas gift for someone named “Wendy.”
 
Bobby C Sculptures
 

 
Via reddit

 
i09 writer Ron Miller uploaded these fantastic photos of 70s Cosplay costumes.

They have a slightly Kenntheth Anger-ish feel to them. Well, Ken Anger meets a Star Trek convention, maybe…

Do yourself a favor and go to i09 to check out Ron Miller‘s mega-upload of 70s Cosplay photos.