photo by Lance Loud, courtesy of Kristian Hoffman
Another pristine wonder from mid-70’s Dutch TV ! It’s DM patron saint Brian Eno miming his lil’ heart out to the rockin’ non -LP single “Seven Deadly Finns”. Makes my day, how about yours?
I found this by accident yesterday. Strange isn’t it? Ron Raffaelli, the rock and erotica photographer shot this peculiar portrait of a naked Jimmy Page with his guts hanging out, at Page’s specific request. The blonde in the shot is Miss Cynderella, one time member of the GTOS and briefly the wife of John Cale (before he caught her fucking Kevin Ayers, but I digress).
Raffaelli recollects:
“After touring with the band I became very close to them, and on a long flight from London to New York, Jimmy Page told me about a recurring dream he had. In this dream Jimmy falls from the concert stage into the flailing arms of a sea of screaming fans. he is stripped of his clothes and forced to have sex with many beautiful groupies.
Dream? Sounds more like his waking life back then, but this was 1969, maybe the legendary Led Zeppelin debauchery hadn’t gotten into full swing yet? Via Dark Elf:
Thus it came to be that in December of 1969, Raffaelli set up a photo shoot at his studio for Jimmy to turn his dream fantasy into a fully realised photographic image.
“I had an assistant go down to the butcher and get these entrails,“recalls the photographer, “and they smelled like crazy! So I insisted they be kept in a can out on the back porch of my studio for the early morning shooting, and we weren’t going to bring them in until we had to because of the smell. Page came in with this model, some groupie that was hanging on to him at the moment.
I don’t remember her name, it was ‘Moonbeam’ or something… [the model is Cindy Wells, aka Miss Cynderella, from the GTOs] and I had the private set ready so there was no one there but him and me and this model. They stripped down and I got them all posed and everything and I said ‘ok, I am going to bring in the…uh..entrails,’ and by now the sun had come up and and it was heating them up so they were warm . I put them on him and got it all posed, but I’m looking through the camera and I’m thinking, ‘it just looks like I poured those entrails on his stomach, it doesn’t look like there’s a gash or anything.’ It just didn’t look convincing. And he’s laying there and she’s laying there and the stuff is beginning to get ripe and I’m thinking, ‘I’ve gotta think quick.’ So I run out to the kitchen and look in the refridgerator and there was my answer. I had a nice jar of strawberry preserves!
“I quick grabbed a long spoon and mixed ‘em up and they had the right redness and consistency, with little specks and everything. it had the right look to it like it might be the inside of a turned-out open wound. So I took these cold, cold preserves- and I give Jimmy a lot of credit, he must really have wanted the picture- and put them all around the entrails on his stomach. And I know from the expression on his face and the contortions that his body was going through that this was not a comfortable situation!
“I originally shot it in Black & white and gave Page a 16X20 print, and I also shot color at the same time that I just developed and rolled up into a ball and stuck into a drawer and hadn’t looked at until I decided to put it up on my website this year.
My agent met Jimmy in New York last year and explained that we have this material and that we were intending to sell it and he didn’t have any objections to it. It’s bizarre, but I would never consider it a controversial picture by any means, it’s just bizarre and reflects a bizarre state of mind that he was in at the time. I’m sure he looks back at it and goes, ‘Oh my God, what was I thinking?!’”
I’ll bet he does!
How I wish this was in my own home… Or maybe a smaller version? No, one this big!
Sculpture in steel wool by Ukrainian artist Nataliya Slinko. Now on display at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, along with the “Baby Marx” exhibit I blogged about recently.
Via Neatorama
The Legend of Leigh Bowery is a brilliant documentary about a brilliant man.
Directed by Charles Atlas, the film covers Bowery’s life and times from his suburban beginnings in Sunshine, Australia, to his fame on London’s club scene in the 1980s and his success as one of the most influential and daring fashion designers in the past thirty years.
The Legend of Leigh Bowery has incredible archive footage and excellent contributions from Michael Clark, Sue Tilley, Michael Bracewell, Richard Torry, Donald Urquhart, Damien Hirst, Boy George and Leigh’s wife, Nicola Bowery.
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Watch the rest of ‘The Legend of Leigh Bowery’, after the jump…
“Faces” from Vimeo user Arturo. This is totally badass. Tons of potential here.
Real-time face substitution. Made with Kyle McDonald’s ofxFacetracker + Jason Saragih’s facetracker library, a C/C++ API for real time generic non-rigid face alignment and tracking.
Inspired by Kevin Atkinson’s image clone code.
I like when he goes from being Michael Jackson to Dali to Obama at the end. That’s the best part.
Via The Daily What
Rolland “Rolly” Crump is a Disney legend. Originally working as an assistant animator under Uncle Walt himself in the early 1950s, Crump performed “in betweener” work on Disney classics like Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, 101 Dalmations, and Sleeping Beauty.
In 1959 Crump joined Walt Disney Imagineering, becoming one of Walt Disney’s key designers for Disneyland. He worked on the Haunted Mansion, the Enchanted Tiki Room and the Adventureland Bazaar. Crump served as key designer on the Disney pavilions featured at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair, including “It’s A Small World.” When that attraction was given a permanent home at Disneyland, Crump added the iconic puppet children clock at the entrance. He was also one of the lead designers on a Disneyland attraction that was shelved after Disney’s death, The Museum of The Weird.
During his long and illustrious career, Crump contributed to the designs for Walt Disney World, Busch Gardens and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus World, before returning to Disney to project design “The Land” and “Wonders of Life” pavilions at EPCOT Center. Now in his 80s and still going strong, in 2004 Crump was given a Disney Legends Award.
But back in 1960, Rolly Crump made a series of whimsical and delightful posters depicting Beatniks and their predilection for drugs. Made for poster pioneer Howard Morseburg’s Esoteric Poster Company, Crump worked for Morseburg until 1964, also turning out posters satirizing Communism, Cuba and the Soviet Union. Some of these posters were discovered again and are for sale via Crump’s Zazzle store.
Thank you Taylor Jessen!
The Keene Supremes, $45.00
I’m digging these Supremes and Tiny Tim candles by Los Angeles-based artist and rock photographer, Vicki Berndt. They’re available for purchase on Vicki’s website or over at her Etsy page.
The Coronation of Tiny Tim Candle, $15.00
She once wrote:
“In my best moments I think ‘Life has passed me by’ and I am content.”
The outside world didn’t clutter Agnes Martin’s mind. When she died at ninety-two it was said that she hadn’t read a newspaper for fifty years - her vision was focussed solely on her art.
“To progress in life you must give up the things you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you do like. The things that are acceptable to your mind.”
Giving up the things you do not like is always easier when your life is insulated by money, but that kind of insulation didn’t come until Martin was in her late forties. Born in Maklin, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1912, her father died when she was two, leaving her mother with five children to bring up. In such difficult circumstances, Agnes didn’t have the opportunity to develop her artistic interests, but she was fully aware of the beauty that surrounded her, which inspired her belief she had the talent to paint it.
When she was twenty-four, Agnes traveled to New York, where her visits to the museums and galleries convinced her to be an artist. It took time, for twenty years Martin worked as a teacher, painted every day and burnt her pictures every night, until she was ready. She moved to New Mexico, where food and rent were cheap. Her decision was to paint until her savings ran out, then to starve. She was lucky, the legendary art dealer, Betty Parsons, whose gallery had been the focus for the Abstract Expressionist movement, saw her work in New Mexico in 1957. It led to Martin’s first major show in 1958. It was the start of her successful career that lasted until her death in 2004.
Martin’s work was spiritual and she once described her paintings as being “not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind.”
“When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection.”
This rare interview with Agnes Martin was recorded at her studio in Taos, New Mexico, by Chuck Smith and Sono Kuwayama, in November 1997, and is quite a revealing and inspirational film.
With thanks to Surbhi Goel
He couldn’t play the bass, but he certainly could paint. The trouble is, Stuart Sutcliffe never lived long enough to fulfill the destiny his talents promised, tragically dying at the age of twenty-one from a brain haemorrhage.
As The Beatles original bass player, and John Lennon’s best mate, Sutcliffe’s legend has grown over these past fifty years, and this documentary Stuart Sutcliffe: The Lost Beatle examines the short life and long myth of the man who quit the Fab Four to follow his own star.
Told via interviews with an impressive array of Sutcliffe’s family and friends—and through uniquely descriptive quotes from his letters—this hour-long documentary reveals a lot of intimate detail about Sutcliffe’s transition from promising art-school student in Liverpool (and best friend of John Lennon) to reluctant musician (pressed into service by Lennon) to determined painter within the German avant-garde scene. A lot of Stu’s story, as Beatles fans know, is set in Hamburg, during and after the days the group was a house band in the city’s red-light district. Familiar tales of friction between Sutcliffe and Paul McCartney abound. But these are offset by a tremendous amount of fresh insight and detail offered by such important Beatles-saga figures as rocker Tony Sheridan, Klaus Voormann and—most crucially—Astrid Kirchherr, the photographer who influenced the Beatles’ look and who became Sutcliffe’s lover until his death.
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Jimmie Nicol: The Beatle Who Never Was
More on Stuart Sutcliffe, after the jump…
