“Gunned Down,” 1957
 
The paintings of Nakamura Hiroshi follow a tragic narrative.Trained as in political realism to do reportage painting, his work became highly stylized and surreal as he covered Japanese anti-military activism. There was a mass mobilization in the 1950s, particularly among Japanese students and unions, against the expansion of U.S. military presence, including massive bases. The painting you see above depicts the death of a woman who was fatally shot by an American soldier as she collected used bullet casings. The one below shows a protest against the extension of an airstrip over land confiscated from poor farmers. 

Hiroshi covered the protest movement diligently and loyally, even as a commercial failure who couldn’t afford canvases. His painting, “The Base,” now considered a masterpiece, was actually done on cheap wood, the grain of which gives the piece an ominous depth. However, as the conservative government took power and made major concessions to the Americans, Hiroshi began to despair. His paintings took on apocalyptic themes, with explosive imagery and lots of red, a reference to the firebombings that destroyed his hometown when he was twelve. Though the political inspiration for his work never won out, he lived to see it lauded by the critics, and went on to produce surreal work on a developed Japan.
 

“Sunagawa #5,” 1955
 

“Sunagawa #5” (detail)
 

“The Base,” 1957
 
More after the jump…

 
In 1979 XTC released their third album, Drums and Wires, which featured what would prove to be their second-most successful single, the Colin Moulding-penned “Making Plans for Nigel” (“Senses Working Overtime,” which came out three years later, charted slightly better). The content of the song sketched a familiar tale of a couple desirous that their son Nigel pursue a “future in a British steel” over any individualistic ambitions Nigel may have carved out for himself. The title phrase is so creepy that the song succeeds on little more than sarcastic repetitions of phrases like “Nigel is happy in his work.”

The first 20,000 pressings of the single came in a very special and very ambitious cover that folded out into a fully playable gameboard of Chutes and Ladders (or Snakes and Ladders, if you prefer) with the gameplay adapted to details of Nigel’s miserable life. Ingeniously, the gameboard was reproduced twice, one to be played by Nigel and the other to be played by his parents. The details of the game flesh out the narrative of Nigel with the purchase of a scooter, job interviews, a holiday in Spain, and an engagement to “a very nice girl,” to the point that it becomes something more like a short-story or an hour-long TV drama.

According to the back cover, the illustrations were by Steve Shotter and the sleeve by Cooke Key. I take that to mean that Key did the general concept and execution of the cover.

Here’s the full game board, cobbled together using separate scans of the different game areas—the different parts aren’t aligned perfectly, but they still read fine and you can still play the game successfully. Click on the image for a larger view.
 

 
The game was advertised in the September 6-19, 1979 issue of Smash Hits:
 

 
... and the October 4 issue featured a little item in which Andy Partridge explained the rules of the game (click for a larger view) under the title “Making Rules for Nigel”:
 

 
Here are the rules of the game written out, complete with additional information on Nigel and his overbearing parents.
 

Rules:
Use two markers such as stones, pennies, buttons, etc. Decide who is to be Nigel and who is to be his parents.
If you have no dice use the spinner with a match through the centre.
The highest throw starts first. You then proceed along the course until you land on either a picture space, or an up or down space.
To finish the game you must land on 70 exactly. If you overthrow, you must go backwards by the remainder of numbers from 70.

Nigel:
5 parents insist you spend your pocket money on a suit for Sundays. Back 3 spaces (yawn).
9 You sell Dad’s old bike without him being told. Bit of money for the pictures. Have another throw (ting ting).
16 Parents phone up for job in bank and Dad drives you to the interview. No escaping. Miss a turn (zzzzz).
24 Your girlfriend offers to take you on holiday to Spain for a week. She’ll pay for everything. Move on 4 spaces (olé).
30 Mum and Dad decorate your room one day while you’re out. Mum rips up all your pop posters. Go back to 22.
39 Dad asks your advice on something (about time they listened to you - a good sign). Go on 2 spaces.
44 Big argument with parents. They refuse to keep you anymore, unless you accept the job they’ve found for you in the steel factory. Go back to 36 (swear).
56 Parents decide to go on holiday to Butlins without you (great eh!). Go on 4 spaces.
63 You fall in love with a girl who expects nothing of you other than to be yourself (how nice). Throw again.
66 You get in a real low mood and you need money to repair your scooter. The factory gates seem to loom nearer (gloom). Go back to 50.

Parents:
5 Nigel spends his pocket money on a scooter. Back 3 spaces (vroom).
9 You find cigarettes in Nigel’s coat. You confiscate them (chuckle). Have another throw.
16 Nigel ill on day of job interview. He doesn’t particularly want to go anyway (drat!). Miss a turn.
24 A friend of the wife’s says she can get Nigel a job in her factory (respectable like). Move on 4 spaces.
30 Nigel brings home weird hippy girl for tea (too far out for the boy). Go back to 22.
39 You spot Nigel parting his hair (a good sign). Go on 2 spaces.
44 Big argument with Nigel. He refuses to accept the job you’ve found for him in the steel factory. Back to 26 (cuss).
56 Nigel agrees to take a Saturday job in a supermarket. Go on 4 spaces (stack stack).
63 Nigel announces his engagement to a very nice girl, who makes him take a nightshift job to save for their mortgage (poor Nigel). Throw again.
66 Wake up to find a note from Nigel. “Dear Mum and Dad, I’ve gone to sea. No factories for me (gasp).” Go back to 50.

Continues after the jump…

“Finding Rocky”
 
You’ve only got two more days to do it, but if you’re reading this in Nice, France, and would like to see paintings by the muscular star of Rhinestone, Over the Top, and Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot, then hurry on over to the Galerie Contemporaine du Musée de Nice, which is currently mounting an exhibition of Stallone’s work called “Real Love: Paintings 1975-2015.” The show has been on since May 15 and ends May 30.

Look, I think Stallone gets a bad rap for being a dumb guy, he’s clearly a formidable fellow and more intelligent than it might at first appear. One of the things he’s gotten flak for in Hollywood is his apparent need to mess with the scripts of his movies (check out his voluminous screenwriting credits). That may make him an egomaniac or worse, but the criticism that he wants to write all of his movies isn’t consistent with his occasional depiction as an idiot.

I’m no art critic and I have little way of differentiating good art from bad. But… let’s see—subjects including boxing gloves, Rocky, Joan Crawford, some of it in a loosely abstract expressionist style and other parts vaguely conceptual (one of his paintings, “Backlash,” is half-painting, half-mirror)... I submit that if I told you that Stallone was a painter, this is exactly the type of stuff you’d expect out of him. He’s no better or no worse than Ronnie Wood, which is not necessarily a compliment.
 

“Behind the Mind”
 

“The Arena”
 

“Untitled (Michael Jackson)”
 
More after the jump…

 
French artist Julien Knez has whipped up a handful of delightful VHS covers for popular post-DVD-era TV series and movies like The Walking Dead or The Wolf of Wall Street. Anyone who was around in the early 1980s, when VHS tapes were first widely introduced to the market and cable TV dramatically expanded its audience will remember cheesy-ass covers just like these.

On his Instagram feed Timeless VHS, Knez has uploaded several of the lovingly re-created what-if VHS covers. As evidenced by the bottom picture in this post, Knez actually made these in real life, rather than just as Photoshop mockups. Unfortunately, he’s only done nine of the gorgeous covers, and hasn’t uploaded any since early April. We’d love to see more! 

Knez has done a truly remarkable job recreating the “magic” of a bulky, plastic VHS cassette cover that spent most of its time on a shelf in a store with a name like “Super Video Palace.” VHS distribution was a pretty bottom-up business (Hollywood had initially regarded home video as a threat to its movie theater business, and only belatedly embraced VHS as a second, thriving channel of distribution), and the puzzling array of companies represented in these covers (“Regal Video, Inc.”) is a spot-on evocation of the wild and woolly world of home video during that era.

Wired points out that the Gravity cover was inspired by the original VHS cover for the 1979 James Bond movie Moonraker, just as Interstellar apes the cover for the sultry 1980 classic starring Vanity known as La Bete d’Amour, and Game of Thrones is a reworking of the cover of 1983’s Yor, the Hunter from the Future.
 

 

 
More VHS covers after the jump…...

 
A few days ago VICE ran an interesting interview with Chris Stein of Blondie on the subject of his close friendship with the masterful Swiss artist H.R. Giger. Stein was heavily involved with Debbie Harry’s first solo album, KooKoo, for which Giger supplied the incredibly memorable cover art, with Harry’s face seemingly punctured by several large acupuncture needles.
 

 
Stein was very fond of Giger, who died about a year ago, calling him “a really sweet guy.” Stein said that he owns a throne that Giger designed: “It’s one of a very few in the country. The seat cushion rotted completely at one point and he gave me a second seat cushion, which is starting to rot. It was made from foam rubber.”

I was poking around on Stein’s own website dedicated to Blondie information when I spied a reference to “Gigerstein,” identified as follows: “Chris’ custom GIGERSTEIN guitar, designed with the help of H. R. Giger and Chris himself.” Sure enough, click on the link and you arrive at the web page for Lieber Guitars, which indeed has plenty of information and pics about this remarkable guitar.

According to the page,
 

The asymmetrical bio-mechanical body is hand carved in wood. It is adorned with carbon graphite, assorted biological materials and bronze castings.

The neck and six-fingered “peg-hand” comprise unidirectional carbon graphite fiber. A unique construction feature is the integral molding of the neck and fingerboard.

 
The Lieber Guitars page that highlights the instrument is a little vague on who actually designed this guitar. It would be enough for it to be “based on” the incredibly distinctive artworks of Giger, but if Giger had a hand in the design of the guitar itself, well, then that’s even better. Two consecutive sentences flesh out the details here: “After [Thomas] Lieber’s careful study of Giger’s artworks, the concept of using an Alien’s hand for the peg-head was realized and several body depictions were rendered.” Okay, so Lieber was on his own, it seems. But then we read on: “In an artistic meeting, Giger, Chris and Lieber hammered out the final modifications and details and the result is truly a work of art.” So it was mainly Lieber’s design but Giger definitely, according to the guitar maker, was involved in the process of creating this singular guitar.

More information as well as these pictures can be found at the Lieber Instruments website.
 

 

 
More looks at Gigerstein after the jump…

 
Superheroes capture our imagination because, for the most part, they are ordinary people who have been granted some particular power and must reconcile the responsibility of that power with the fact that, at heart, they are human beings with regular human faults and complexities.

Indonesian photographer Edy Hardjo has made it his mission to demonstrate this reconcilliation between superpower and ordinary human behavior. Hardjo’s work uses humor to show us that, in spite of their given better-than-human abilities, superheroes are just regular schmucks like the rest of us. Hardjo’s photographs give us an insight into the mundane worlds of The Avengers, Wolverine, Spiderman, Batman and other characters from the Marvel and DC universes.

Hardjo utilizes 1/6-scale figures and Photoshop to produce hilarious and sometimes risque insights into the the everyday life of a superhero.

These are some of our favorites:
 

 

 
More after the jump…

Frida And Her Ducks, 1948-49
 
Recently, the New York Botanical Gardens recreated parts of the extensive tropical gardens from Frida Kahlo’s famous “Casa Azul” home in Mexico. It’s the first solo NYC presentation of her work in 25 years, and fans are thrilled to see her art in such an immersive, lush setting. In conjunction with the show, Throckmorton Fine Art is showing a rare collection of photos from Frida until September 12th, many of which are set in the beautiful the gardens of the Blue House.

Though many of the photos appear to be candid snapshots, the images are textured with story. For example, Frida’s hand-painted “plaster bodice”—a cast she wore after one of her many surgeries—contains the hammer and sickle (a pretty explicit nod to her belief in revolutionary communism), but below that is a fetal image, a tragic reference to her failed attempt to have a child due to the bus accident in her youth that left her in constant pain. There are sweeter moments too. While her tumultuous relationship with her husband Diego Rivera produced some warm moments in front of the camera, it is with her many pets that you see Frida at her most gentle and caring.
 

Frida Wearing Plaster Corset, Which She Decorated With Hammer And Sickle (And Unborn Baby), Coyoacán, 1951
 

Frida With Michoacán Gourd On Head, 1933
 

Frida Winking, 1933
 
More after the jump…

John Carpenters’ They Live Blu-Ray cover art (UK), 2014
 
In the early 80’s it was rumored that the UK had the largest number of VHS players per household, than anywhere else in the world. This interesting and perhaps plausible factoid (since the first home video recorder, The Telcan hit the UK consumer market in 1963), comes straight from the mouth of UK born illustrator, film poster designer and VHS aficionado, Tom Hodge, aka “The Dude Designs.”
 

King of New York DVD/Blu-Ray cover art for Arrow, 2012
 
Like so many of us, Hodge’s obsession with cinema began thanks to easy access to VHS (Video Home System) tapes and frequent visits to his local “video van man.” Much like the movies themselves, the glorious cover art that continues to entice VHS collectors from all over the world, was quickly burned into his psyche. In 1995 Hodge began his formal education with graphic design and visual communication before launching his career as a professional designer in 2000. Since then, Hodge has designed dozens of DVD and Blu-Ray covers as well as salacious film posters for titles put out by Arrow Films, Scream Factory, and Magnet, among others. His art is seemingly possessed by the spirit of the seedy underbelly of vintage grindhouse, horror and exploitation cinema.
 

Brian De Palma’s Obsession DVD/Blu-Ray cover art, 2011
 
If you also love all things VHS with a passion as Mr. Hodge, Yale University’s film archive would make you weep. The Ivy League school boasts a collection of almost 5,000 titles; 2,700 of them on VHS. Of particular interest in Yale’s archival is the fact that it is primarily comprised of horror films, thanks due in part to the “direct to video” marketing tactic used by fringe filmmakers in order to circumvent the Hollywood machine. What is also significant about both Yale and Hodge’s cultural curation of VHS, is that there are an endless number of VHS titles that simply cannot be found (or never will be released) on DVD or Blu-Ray. In other words, the only way to see many of the films that reside in Hodge’s or Yale’s archives requires that you pull your VCR out of storage, and view it on old-school magnetic tapes. 
 

Jason Eisner’s Hobo with a Shotgun. Movie poster for Magnet, 2011
 
Recently, Hodge put together an archival of his own that is chronicled in his book, VHS Video Cover Art: 1980’s to Early 1990’s. Nearly half of the VHS films featured in the book are straight from Hodge’s own collection. Although many of the titles in Hodge’s book may be more recognizable to a UK video junkie, any child of the 80’s will undoubtedly recall many of the hundreds of images of VHS tapes (front and back mind you, squeee!) within the books covers.
 

From Parts Unknown (Fight Like a Girl) film poster, 2014
 

Chocolate, Strawberry, Vanilla (Australia) film poster, 2013
 
More after the jump…

Vincent Van Gogh
 
Some years ago the inventive German photographer Matthias Schaller who specializes in what he calls the “indirect portrait” was in the studio of Cy Twombly and happened to glance at the painter’s palette, smeared with pigments of various hues, but mainly a shade of red fairly close to the color of blood. It occurred to Schaller that the palette is arguably as identifiable to an artist as the artist’s work itself, even if created purely by accident. As he puts it, “The palette is an abstract landscape of the painter’s artistic production.”

Schaller has created a series of marvelous photographs of the palettes of famous artists, each of which measures at roughly 190 x 150 cm. The collection, called “Das Meisterstück” (The Masterpiece), has appeared as an exhibition and is available in book form as well—for more information write an email to thepalettebook@gmail.com.

These are all utterly fascinating to gaze at; my favorites are those of Bacon and Kokoschka. They’re all pretty wonderful.
 

Pablo Picasso
 

Claude Monet
 

Salvador Dalí
 
See the palettes of Matisse, Manet, Kandinsky, Kahlo, Bacon and many more after the jump…

 
If you’ve ever so much as glanced at any Beetle Bailey strip involving General Halftrack leering at his secretary, the buxom Miss Buxley, you won’t be all too surprised that Mort Walker, the creator of the comic, at some point dashed off a few strips that, ah, were not intended for publication in a family-oriented newspaper.

The strips are pretty harmless, but they are unmistakably about boners and fellatio. So there’s that.

These comics appeared in a Swedish book about Beetle Bailey. Apparently the Swedes dig Beetle Bailey, where he is called “Knasen.” According to Google Translate, “Fräckisarna som stannade på skiss-stadiet” refers to something that is “cheeky” that “stayed at the sketch stage,” and “Varning för Snusk” means “warning for smut,” which is hilarious.

Varning för Snusk! You have been warned.
 

 
More smutty ‘Beetle Bailey’ after the jump…