If you’re in or near San Francisco you still have a few days to catch Sonny Smith‘s extremely fun looking show 100 Records at Gallery 16. My first reaction to this was “Hey ! That’s a total Mingering Mike
thx Sakae Yoshimoto !
Deep down, all that (even nominally straight) men really want to do is kill everything that moves and then fly away on a badass wyvern with all of the naked barbarian maidens in sight, likely while “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin plays in the background. This was the great revelation that drove Frank Frazetta, god rest his soul, to the top of the world of fantasy art. His style has been imitated by every fantasy book cover artist and prison punk trying to draw some art to trade for cigarettes since. For his work perfectly captured the pure essence of the teenage male libido in as unvarnished of a form as “Dirty Dancing” did for the teenage female libido. Jah bless.
More:
(Feuilliton: RIP Frank Frazetta)
(Coilhouse: RIP Frank Frazetta)
Note: Badass wyvern. I just wanted to type that again.
designed by Egidio Bonfante for the Olivetti Valentine - 1970
designed by Giovanni Pintori - 1949
designed by Ettore Sottsass for the Olivetti Tekne 3 - 1964
Loads of delightful images here.
Graphic Design for Olivetti
William Burroughs, with the great illustrator Ralph Steadman, shooting one of Steadman’s prints, a portrait of William Shakespeare.
Via 3am Magazine and HTML Giant.
Attention New Yorkers, don’t miss Return to the Pleasure Dome, a benefit concert event for Anthology Film Archives with a Life Achievement Honor for Kenneth Anger.
Featuring Technicolor Skull (Kenneth Anger and Brian Butler), Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, The Virgins, Moby & other special guests.
Wednesday, May 19, 8:30p.m at the Hiro Ballroom, New York City, $99 via Ticketweb
Video: Kenneth Anger’s 42-second long film, Death. Part of the OneDreamRush project.
After seeing the below trailer, I’m excited to see director Tamra Davis’s documentary portrait of painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child. The other day I found a photo I took of him at a New York nightclub opening in 1986 in a box in my garage. He’s just glaring at the camera, like he’s pissed off, but he looks cool doing it. The same roll had photos of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring.
A friend of the graffiti/Neo-expressionist painter, director Tamra Davis paints her own portrait of the artist, who died at age 27, and offers an indictment of celebrity culture.
Davis met Basquiat while she was attending film school and working as a gallery assistant in Los Angeles. In 1985, she filmed an interview of Basquiat, which comprises the centerpiece of this film, along with rare footage of him painting.
“I saw anger in him but I also saw this whole other side of him, very intelligent, funny, filled with life, smiles, dances and super-flirty, super-charming,” said Davis. “That was the person who, I felt, people were getting it wrong.”
Davis said being around Basquiat there was “always so much happening, let’s do this, let’s go here, let’s see how far we can push this, what would happen if I did this, let’s go as fast as we can, let’s fly to Paris, let’s go out to dinner to the fanciest restaurant and order the best wine. Pushing the limit the furthest, so being around him was really fun but also crazy.”
The documentary, which will have its theatrical release later this year, is a collage of period footage, including the interview with Basquiat and new interviews with his friends/colleagues, such as Julian Schnabel, Larry Gagosian, Fab 5 Freddy, Glenn O’Brien and others.
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child: Director Tamra Davis Paints a Portrait of the Artist (WSJ)
HUGE robot baby alert! From Sociedad Estatal para Exposiciones Internacionales:
Miguelín is a 6.5 meters tall baby, electronically animated. It breathes, blinks and dreams with the cities that we will leave to future generations will smiling visitors as they walk into “Sons”, the last of rooms that integrate the pavilion, which is managed by the Spanish Agency for International Exhibitions (SEEI) [...]
The baby’s “Mother” is film director Isabel Coixet who has pointed out that with this collaboration she has wanted to stay accurate to the Expo Shanghai’s Theme, “Better city, better life”. Also that Miguelín is a reminder that tells us that “all our actions have direct consequences on our children’s future and that we have to react to this”, said the filmmaker in an encounter with the Spanish Press at the Instituto Cervantes in Beijing.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Creepy: Giant Babybot With Giant Head
(via Everlasting Blort)
The image above, “The Scallop Divers of Enceladus,” is from an exhibition in London that asks artists to imagine the world of 2050, with some very unexpected results. I want this screen-printed on the hood of my car.
“An exhibition in London right now asks artists to imagine the world of 2050, and the answers are weirder than you could possibly imagine. Just check out this print, “The Scallop Divers Of Enceladus.”
The Life In 2050 exhibition is taking place right now as part of the Sci-Fi London Film Festival. Organized by design studio Transmission, the exhibition brings together 22 artists, showcasing their visions of the world 40 years from now.
The image to the left comes from awesome artist Tom Muller, and the print is for sale. Here are a few other images we love.”
Dangerous Minds pal Rod Stanley sent me this item, from Dazed Digital, about photographer Ruth Bayer’s new self-published book of her pictures of people getting high on amyl nitrate, appropriately titled Poppers:
Dazed Digital: Why did you want to do this poppers project?
Ruth Bayer: I spent a couple years in San Francisco, and used to go to a lot of clubs. There was a fair amount of poppers use going on, and I became fascinated with the visual effect it had on the user. I decided to try to capture that. I started the project by photographing friends and acquaintances, but the majority of shots came from one Saturday night at a club called “Duckie”, at the Vauxhall Tavern in south London. The club organiser offered me a small room upstairs (the landlord’s bathroom, actually), which I turned into a studio. There was a constant stream of volunteers, and we could have carried on all night. Each shoot only lasted a minute or two.
DD: How did the room smell afterwards?
Ruth Bayer: Well it’s sold as ‘room odoriser’, and it certainly did that! It was a small bathroom. But I think I’d built-up a tolerance because people were coming in saying, “God, how can you breathe in here?” I’m glad no one lit a match, put it that way.
DD: What do you think is interesting about the visual effect of the drug?
Ruth Bayer: It makes people look very sexy – a lot of it is to do with the dilated eyes and increased sensual awareness the chemical causes.
Read the entire interview (includes gallery) at Dazed Digital
