Louis Vuitton waffle maker
If you’re a charter member of the 1% (or just want to be cheeky) might I suggest the Louis Vuitton waffle maker by Andrew Lewicki?
Via Booooooom!
If you’re a charter member of the 1% (or just want to be cheeky) might I suggest the Louis Vuitton waffle maker by Andrew Lewicki?
Via Booooooom!
The Composites is an ongoing project by Brian Joseph Davis where images are “created using a commercially available law enforcement composite sketch software and descriptions of literary characters.”
Above is the composite sketch of Dracula, from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula.
The description from the book:
A tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache…His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead…His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking…For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed. The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin…The blue eyes transformed with fury. (Multiple suggestions)
“In my dreams I see strange men.” ~ Cami Parker
The Little Sticky Legs blog posted portraits of alien abductees photographed by Steven Hirsch.
“They took my memory away.” ~ Jeffery
“I’ve got to meet numerous types of beings.” ~ Cynthia
“This thing is just hovering in the air.” ~ Steve
More portraits of alien abductees after the jump…
Experimental film maker Gerard Courant has taken Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and sped up it (or compressed it as he prefers to call it) into a four minute movie.
The French title of Godard’s debut film is À bout de souffle which translates to English as “out of breath.” Courant’s compression is most likely a play on the title.
What I find interesting about the compression is the way it brings Godard’s style and the American noir films he was inspired by to the foreground. The nervous energy of the film, the pans and tracking shots, cigarettes smoked, automobiles in motion, zooms, jump-cuts, and close-ups, all create an angular yet fluid motion that seems driven by forces of destiny - the movie is tumbling into a dark void of betrayal and its opposite - yin and yanging to the beat beat beat of a heart in the throes of atrial tachycardia. No time to catch your breath - you’re breathless.
Fucking with Godard’s masterpiece is very Godardian.
If, as Godard claims, “cinema is truth at 24 frames per second” what is cinema at 524 frames per second?
It is strange to think that some the most important works of art from the past 100 years have been lost, erased, destroyed, stolen, censored, or allowed to rot, and can now no longer be seen.
The Gallery of Lost Art is a virtual exhibition that reconstructs the stories behind the disappearances of some of the world’s best known and influential works of art. It’s the biggest virtual exhibition of its kind, and is curated by Jennifer Mundy, and is produced by the Tate in association with Channel 4 television. The virtual Gallery has been beautifully designed by digital studio ISO, and the site will be kept live for 12 months, before it is lost.
Amongst those currently on exhibition at the Gallery of Lost Art are:
Lucian Freud Portrait of Francis Bacon (1952)
This small painting was stolen in at exhibition in Germany on May 27th, 1988. It is considered one of Freud’s best early works, and although there was a police investigation and a hefty reward (300,000DM) the portrait has never been recovered.
Tracey Emin: Everyone I have Ever Slept With 1963-1995
Made in 1995, when Tracey Emin was still relatively unknown, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 is a tent covered with the names of all the people Emin had slept with, including lovers, friends, family members and foetus 1, foetus 2. Inspired by an exhibition of Tibetan nomadic culture, which included examples of their tents, which are used by Tibetan monks for meditation, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 made Emin an over-night sensation and one of the most controversial artists working in Britain at that time. The work was bought by Charles Saatchi, who kept it (along with hundreds of other art works), in a warehouse in London’s east end. In 2004, a fire destroyed this warehouse and most of Saatchi’s collection - including 40 paintings by Patrick Heron.
The Gallery of Lost Art - see the exhibition here, before it is gone.
More Lost Art from Kahlo, Sutherland and Duchamp, after the jump…
This is raw video of an interview from the early ‘90s with Devo co-founder Jerry Casale that was intended to be used in a documentary on the band that was, as far as I know, never completed. But the footage as it is still serves as a wonderful history of Devo and an entry into the brilliant mind of Casale.
The fact that you can’t hear the questions being asked of Casale doesn’t diminish the interview in the least. It’s full of fascinating insights and anecdotes detailing the genesis, rise and continued success of one of rock ‘n’ roll’s truly visionary bands. Casale delivers all of this with wit and sharply observed truths about the art and business of pop music.
Spud-boy Casale is one very intelligent potato and this video should be mandatory viewing in high school art classes (if they still exist).
Unfortunately, there’s about six minutes missing from the interview that contains some musical content that was disallowed by Youtube for licensing reasons. If that situation changes, I will update this article.
Gerard Courant’s Cinematon is a 175 hour long film comprised of 2,627 portraits (cinematons), each made from exactly one reel of three minute and 25 second 8mm silent film. They were shot between 1978 and 2012. Courant’s subjects vary from his close personal friends to artists in various fields, including actors, painters, film makers, as well as public figures known and not-so well-known.
Among the many directors that Courant has filmed are Samuel Fuller, Terry Gilliam, Jean-Luc Godard and Wim Wenders, to name just a few.
I’ve chosen a handful of my favorites to share with you. They can seen after the jump. Approximately 900 cinematons can be viewed here.
The entire collection of cinematons has been screened only twice and as a whole is the longest film ever made. I love many of these little vignettes because they’re so naked and at times you do feel as if you’re peering into the soul of the people on film. The natural lighting and silence contributes to their purity.
Of the cinematons I’ve seen, #264 is among the ones that delighted me the most, for obvious reasons. The subject is Galaxie Barbouth, the daughter of French actor Joel Barbouth, and she’s absoulutely wonderful. I believe this is Courant’s favorite.
Samuel Fuller, Sandrine Bonnaire, Derek Jarman, Terry Gilliam and Julie Delpy after the jump…
The war against advertising has recently taken an interesting turn, with 26 artists from 8 countries, traveling across the UK for 5 days, subverting billboard advertising.
Called Brandalism, or “Taking the piss with a point”, it is a clever mix of vandalism, graffiti and art, and is a direct attack on the corporate branding which has become such a blight on our landscape.
‘Following on from the guerilla art traditions of the 20th Century and taking inspiration from the Dadaists, Situationists and Street Art movements, the Brandalism project will see the largest reclamation of outdoor advertising space in UK history as artists challenge the authority and legitimacy of the advertising industry. We are tired of being shouted at by adverts on every street corner so we decided to get together with some friends from around the world and start to take them back, one billboard at a time…....’
Brandalist work includes a reworked Manchester United soccer player, Wayne Rooney lifting the rewards of looting; health warnings placed on car adverts; knife crime underlining trainer wars; campaigns against the London Olympics reclamation of land. These are powerful and thought-provoking works that engage directly with their audience, which seek “to confront the ad industry and take back our visual landscapes.” Below is a selection of some of the artists’ work taken from the Brandalism site. I say, more power to them.
Find out more about Brandalism and the artists here.
More works of Brandalism, after the jump…
With thanks to Scheme Comix
Jane Curtin, Al Franken, Tom Davis and Gilda Radner.
Comedian and writer Tom Davis of Saturday Night Live fame has died of throat and neck cancer at the age of 59.
Davis, along with his partner Al Franken, was responsible for some of the funniest and weirdest routines during SNL’s glory days, including the hugely popular running skit The Coneheads, which Davis said was inspired by one of the many LSD trips he took as a teenager in the late-1960s and early ‘70s. It should come as no surprise that Davis was into psychedelics. His humor was often laced with the kind of down-the-rabbit hole surrealism that arises from seeing things through a lysergic lens. Having Jerry Garcia as a friend also provided him with access to all kinds of cool shit, including an introduction to Stanley Owsley.
Davis retired from being a performer in the mid-1990s - although he briefly returned to SNL as a writer in 2003 - and focused on the writing of his memoirs, Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL From Someone Who Was There, and a book he was co-authoring on Owsley. Davis, an unrepentant psychonaut to the end, continued to embrace life even as he was leaving it. I hope his last trip was/is a good one.
I wake up in the morning, delighted to be waking up, read, write, feed the birds, watch sports on TV, accepting the fact that in the foreseeable future I will be a dead person. I want to remind you that dead people are people too.”
Here’s a fun clip of Davis as Keith Richards and Franken as Mick Jagger doing “Under My Thumb” at Stockton State College in New Jersey, 1983.
Working in striking black and white, British photographer Pennie Smith has captured some great moments in rock ‘n’ roll history. Among her subjects are The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Jam, The Smiths, to name a few. But she is probably best known for the iconic photo of Paul Simonon smashing his guitar to The Palladium stage during a show in New York City in 1979. The shot distills the power, energy, fury and excitement of rock ‘n’ roll in one image captured at the speed of light.
I could argue that this is the greatest rock ‘n’ roll photo of all time and I’m sure it would be a very lively discussion. These things are highly subjective. I remember first seeing this photo on the cover of London Calling the day the record came out. And I, like many folks back then and now, found the image as exhilarating as the album itself and a perfect example of form being an extension of content. Simonon is stamping out the flames of a city on fire with the only weapon he has: his guitar.
Like Bob Gruen, Smith is less concerned with technique than capturing a moment that communicates something essential about what is being photographed. In this case, Smith was also so close to the action she was in jeopardy of becoming a part of it:
“I remember thinking something was wrong, realising Paul was going to crack - and waited. The shot is out of focus because I ducked - he was closer than it looks”
Here’s a short but sweet film on Pennie Smith. (I have no idea from what larger documentary this clip has been excerpted from and would appreciate feedback from our readers who might know.)
The narration in the video begins in French but the rest is in English.