In a certain way, there’s nothing less “rock ‘n roll” than the Swiss poster design of the mid-twentieth century. The International Typographic Style and its design analogue, while frequently alluring, are stiff and unspontaneous, rife with right angles, straight lines, spare layouts, and immaculately kerned letters. They appeal to the part of the mind that cries out for order.

Both the post-punk and post-rock movements took a step or two away from the overtly rage-derived music of the Sex Pistols or X-Ray Spex, finding solace in “cooler” and oftentimes more robotic music that cloaked its emotionalism in tempered musical styles. This isn’t to say that there’s no emotion in Joy Division, Radiohead, Gang of Four, or Tortoise, merely that those groups and their ilk are more interested in seeking out the boundaries of form rather than letting their “wet,” subjective feelings take center stage.

In her book Exploring Typography, Tova Rabinowitz has this to say about the Swiss font-heads of decades past:
 

Around 1945, two former Bauhaus students, Théo Ballmer and Max Bill of Switzerland, recognized that increasing globalization with creating a need for a visual language that would be suitable for international communication. The style they developed—which was based on a clear arrangement of elements, photography, abstract designs, and sans-serif typefaces—came to be called the International Typographic Style (also called Swiss International Style). ... Any elements that might be confusing to an international audience were excluded. Unemotional layouts were composed that relied heavily on mathematical modular grids and a hierarchical organization of information. All elements were selected and sized to create direct and informative layouts. The calm objectivity of the International Typographic Style gained popularity, especially among corporate interests, and was dominant in America and Europe throughout the 1950s. International Typographic Style typefaces were sans serifs, based on geometric shapes. Helvetica, designed by Max Miedinger in 1952 ... became one of the most widely used typefaces in history. Univers, designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1957, gained immense popularity because of its extensive range of type styles.

For such reasons one might argue that Swiss modernism and post-punk/post-rock are natural partners. Not long ago the good people of Bleep.com unveiled two breathtaking posters celebrating the landmarks of post-punk and post-rock. For each genre “Dorothy” generated an incredible poster of 42 postage stamps, each celebrating a different album. Both posters are 4 colour print with silver foil and measure 80x60 centimeters. The post-punk poster features seminal albums such as Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats, The Teardrop Explodes’ Kilimanjaro, The Cure’s Pornography, and The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy. Meanwhile, the post-rock album celebrates Slint’s Spiderland, Stereolab’s Dots and Loops, Mogwai’s Young Team, Radiohead’s Kid A, and Tortoise’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die. In every case the album is represented by a spare, “Swiss”-inspired visual motif and lists the name of the artist, the album title, the running time, the label, and the release date—thus proving that the International Typographic Style is an efficient method of transmitting information.

Both posters cost $45.50 but the post-punk one is temporarily out of stock; however they are “expected soon.”
 
Catch the posters after the jump…........
 

‘Rally Round the Fag’ one of ten vintage gay pulp novels starring the popular character “Jackie Holmes” from ‘The Man from C.A.M.P.’ series. Artwork by the great Robert Bonfils,1967.
 
Gay pulp novels have been around since the 1930s when the sale of paperback books proliferated. Historically, lesbian pulp was much more popular than novels featuring the exploits of gay men—and that is, of course, because the lesbian pulp was widely purchased by straight dudes. The popularity of the novels continued to rise during 1940s though, as noted in the book Where Thy Dark Eye Glances: Queering Edgar Allan Poe edited by pulp historian Steve Berman, the very first true “gay pulp” novel was published in 1952 by author George Viereck. Viereck, a former propaganda tool of the Nazis during WWII authored the 195 page Men into Beasts that used homosexual prison culture as a part of its storyline—something Viereck had observed first hand while he was locked up.

The 50s was not a good time for the gay community, much in part to the gay-hating U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy who in addition to his suspicions that commies, pinkos and reds had managed to weasel their way into government positions, was also convinced that it was swarming with homosexuals, probably commie, pinko homosexuals, too. Known as the “Lavender Scare,” the State Department fired back at McCarthy’s delusional accusations saying that there were no communists on the government payroll. McCarthy sent his right-wing buddies to turn up the heat on the State Department claims which would result in the acknowledgment that 91 employees had been identified as “gay” and were fired under the guise that they were a huge “security risk.” When the news hit the papers and television, the public, as well as Congress, demanded a full investigation.

During this hysteria, a committee of the U.S. Senate launched the ridiculous sounding investigation “Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in the Government”.
Upon the conclusion of what is best described as a gay witch hunt, the committee was unable to identify any American citizen who might have sold out the good-old U.S. of A. This didn’t stop the committee from publishing a post-operative paper which “conclusively” established that a gay man or a lesbian possessed “weak moral character” and that the inclusion of only one homosexual can “pollute a government office.” After Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected he signed the executive order 10450 which added “sexual perversion” to a long list of personality traits that could prevent a person from holding a job with the federal government which led to thousands of people losing their livelihoods.

Once the swinging 60s rolled around the U.S. post office could no longer refuse to deliver books that featured homosexuality, which, according to research conducted by the University of Massachusetts Press led to a veritable “explosion” of gay pulp novels.

Now that I’ve shared a bit of the rich history surrounding gay pulp fiction, let’s take a look at some of the more hysterical, tongue-in-cheek covers that created such a stir back in the 50s and 60s, shall we? Yes, we shall. Some are pretty NSFW.
 

1968.
 

1967.
 
More after the jump…

Raquel Welch by Terry O’Neill.
 
In 1970, movie star Raquel Welch starred in her very own TV variety extravaganza Raquel! which was intended to showcase her talents as a singer. Raquel! featured Welch performing a selection of classic pop songs in different locales and hamming it up alongside the old-school talents of Bob Hope and John Wayne, and young buck Tom Jones.

In just over a decade, Welch had gone from cocktail waitress to A-list movie star. She first made her mark as a scientist in The Fantastic Voyage then knocked teenage boys (and dads) for six as a cavewoman dressed in a fur bikini in One Million Years B.C. The media made her name synonymous with the term “sex symbol.” But she was more than just a celluloid beauty, she could act. Welch co-starred with Frank Sinatra in Lady in Cement, proved her mettle by refusing to go nude in 100 Rifles , and confounded critics by starring in Gore Vidal’s tale of a transsexual Myra Breckenridge. Despite all this, Welch was still hailed by Playboy (who else?) as the “world’s most desirable woman.”

Billed as a “multi-million dollar” extravaganza Raquel! seemingly spared no expense (though it reputedly cost nearer the $350,000 mark).  There was a luxurious wardrobe by Bob Mackie with spacesuits by Paco Rabanne, some pop art and space-age set designs and a variety of exotic locations. Welch clocked-up her air miles performing songs to camera in London, Paris (where she sang “California Dreamin’” in view of the Eiffel Tower), Acapulco, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Yucatan, and Big Sur. Though Welch has a passable singing voice—one perhaps better suited to being heard in an elevator—Raquel! was a major success pulling in 58% in the Nielsen ratings. It’s a fine camp confection that has some strange and memorable moments—Welch and Hope (in Davy Crockett hat) singing the Beatles’ “Rocky Raccoon” being just one. 
 
Take a look after the jump…

 
The question is often asked by our dear readers as to why some images are pixelated on social media? “We all got nipples,” they might comment on a post or “I’ve seen nudies before” they might add. Well, yes, of course. But social media is not really that open or user-friendly and never has been. We all might be grown-up about things that may shock or trigger others, but it only takes one turd in the pool for swimming to be canceled or one Mrs. Carmody for an account to get shut down.

Artist provocateur Giulia aka @scientwehst knows this only too well as she has had her artworks pulled and her accounts shut down after some busybody was offended by her erotic collage. I believe being offended is good for the soul. If you are offended then you’re learning something new and increasing your intellectual scope rather than narrowing it down to a rather grotty clogged artery that is on the verge of causing fatal cardiac arrest.

Giulia thinks “Social-media society is not a public, democratic space,” and we should stop treating it as such.

These white-tech bros dictate in their swivel chairs what we can share and how we can manage our platforms. They create a facade of openness, while exploiting us and profiting from our data and content. We are not protected because social-media has been privatized. Social media companies serve as an arm to our government’s agendas… Our government is also inherently sexist… Sexism still thrives in social media society… Let’s all connect the dots.

Giulia is a 27-year-old artist from Florida, who currently resides in Brooklyn. Growing up she felt uncomfortable about her body image. She wanted to be tall and skinny coz that’s what magazines and TV and movies and adverts sold as the perfect female form. This anxiety carried on into her twenties until one day, “about 2–3 years ago, [..] I started to say, ‘fuck this shit! I will never have this type of body, and I’m going to embrace the softness that is me’.” Her view now is “fuck a beauty standard: just be you.”

Out of this rethinking, Giulia started making collages in which she placed architectural pictures of various buildings, churches, and interiors over images lifted from porn and glamour mags. The results were provocative, some might say shocking yet certainly powerful and erotically charged. Sex it seems is everywhere but especially in our minds.

Follow Giulia on @scientwehst.
 

 

 
More of artist provocateur Giulia’s pin-ups, after the jump…
 

An illustration by Gōjin Ishihara published in the 1972 children’s book, ‘Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters.’
 
Japanese artist Gōjin Ishihara had a very long and impressive career during which he was often affectionately referred to as “Japan’s Norman Rockwell.” His preferred medium was India Ink—which is commonly used in comic book art though Ishihara would thin it before he used it, making it more difficult to manipulate.

Born in the Shimane region of Honshu Island in 1923, Ishihara was getting paid for his illustrations while he was still quite young, perhaps as young as ten (though it is difficult to pinpoint more precisely). After completing school, he traveled to Mongolia where he held several jobs including a gig painting movie cards for silent films. At the age of 21, Ishihara was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army during which time he was nearly killed by friendly fire. The experience led Ishihara to develop a disdain for authority after being drilled in the army to believe he and his peers should be prepared to die while serving the divine figure that was Emperor Hirohito. Following his horrific time in the service, Ishihara returned to Japan where he enrolled at Nihon University where he was exposed to the artwork of Norman Rockwell which would strongly influence his artistic style. His career as an artist soon took flight and Ishihara’s illustrations would be widely published on the covers of pulp novels and magazines. In 1972 a large number of his drawings appeared in the book Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters which was marketed to children. The terrifying illustrations featured depictions of cannibalism, torture and other mayhemic situations involving netherworld ghouls and giant murderous cats.

Later on, Ishihara would create erotic illustrations under the name “Hayashi Gekkō” for gay publications and novels which are as hardcore as his illustrations from his children’s book. I can’t show you any of them here on DM, but you can see them in all their highly NSFW glory here. Ishihara continued to work throughout the 1990s including the creation of various mind-boggling illustrations for the first issue of adult magazine series The Seikimatsu Club in 1996. For their debut issue, the magazine took on the Manson family murders with the help of Ishihara’s immense talents. The transfixing and outré illustrations he created for the magazine at the age of 73 include a disturbing black and white collage, featuring, among others, Charles Manson, Rev. Jim Jones, Uriel from the Unarius Academy of Science (who was known in Japan due to her appearance on the cover a popular underground music CD comp of the early 90s), Aleister Crowley, “King of the Witches” Alex Sanders, Anton LaVey in a fucked up threesome with two women wearing goat and pig heads, Father Yod the leader of the Source Family cult, some hooded Klan members being crucified, Shoko Asahara the blind founder of the Japanese doomsday cult group Aum Shinrikyo.

Following that triumph, Ishihara would pass away in 1997 leaving a large legacy of fantasy/horror artwork. Books containing Isihara’s artwork are hard to come by and when and if you do they will put a large dent in your wallet as I’ve seen them listed for several hundred dollars each. If you’re looking for a more modest investment, Ishihara’s artwork is featured in the 2015 book Illustrations of The Strange, Mysterious And Bizarre For Kids of The Showa Era along with other masters of the realm of Japanese illustration such as the eye-popping sci-fi work of Shigeru Komatsuzaki.

Most of the images that I’ve posted below are pretty NSFW.
 

Another one of Ishihara’s illustrations from the ‘Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters.’ More follow.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

‘Stairs Prague.’
 
The artist Shinji Ogawa draws incredibly detailed and accurate representations of cities, buildings, landscapes, and people. His drawings may look like old photographs, they may even look like photo-shopped images, but they are in fact illustrations rendered in pencil and ink.

Ogawa’s intention is not to show how technically brilliant he is an artist but to create an alternate reality where well-known landmarks are often duplicated, replaced, or substituted with other buildings to create “a parallel universe.”

“In these works, identical objects are repeated many times, which never happens in reality,” he says. “It’s like a young person who will never meet himself when he’s older and that’s a paradox. It is forbidden for identical objects to exist and if they do the world of singularities that God created for his own game will be finished. I call this series Perfect World because such perfection duality is a paradox.”

Ogawa’s work suggests the idea that what we see is only one small aspect of reality, one “layer” of what is visible.

“One day I visited Shinshu district in Japan’s Nagano prefecture and the reality of the landscape overwhelmed me,” says Ogawa. “When I stood in a place surrounded by two mountains, I lost myself because there was too much information. The landscape consists of many layers and our perception of the landscape changes in unpredictable ways all the time. The landscape has no limit.”

Ogawa was born in Yamaguchi, Japan, in 1959. He studied art at the Mie University, graduating in 1983. Since then, he has exhibited his distinctive drawings in galleries and museums across Japan and Europe. He describes his work as “meta aesthetic” by which he hopes the viewer will “recognize that there are many tiny, mysterious matters in ordinary life and people can make themselves sublime by paying attention to them.”

See more Ogawa’s work here.
 

‘Rue Eau-de-Robec.’
 

‘Colisseum.’
 
See more of Ogawa’s incredible work, after the jump…

 
A few weeks ago I signed up for a new membership at the Cinematheque in Cleveland, and I’ve been attending movies there at a far higher rate than I was before. One of the previews I ended up seeing several times was the utterly infectious trailer for Jean-Luc Godard‘s La Chinoise, which was until very recently unavailable on DVD and a new digital restoration of which has been making the rounds of the art-house circuit this year.

A bizarre adaptation of Dostoevsky’s novel The Demons, La Chinoise puts five French-speaking radicals in a tidy Paris apartment decked out in appealing primary colors and festooned with slogans, as they push forward their Maoist agenda. This movie came out a year before the widespread unrest in Paris 1968, and not unusually Godard had his finger on the pulse of something. Godard’s wife, Anne Wiazemsky, plays the most radical (i.e. most bomb-throwing) character, and the final act of the movie centers around a lengthy debate on a moving train about the utility of political violence with an actual professor named Francis Jeanson who had been tried for treason for his radical activities in connection with the Algerian War. Jeanson argues against political violence in La Chinoise, while Godard piped in his own retorts into Wiazemsky’s earpiece during the take.
 

 
The movie La Chinoise is diverting, but in all honesty it tested my ability to stay out of REM state. The movie poses the as-yet-unasked question of what would happen if Wes Anderson directed a script by Yvonne Rainer, whose movies (I find them compulsively watchable) sometimes include characters reading political tracts aloud as dialogue. (To be fair, it’s a testament to Godard’s prodigious gifts that he could plausibly anticipate both Anderson and Rainer.)

I saw that preview probably five times and as a result, the featured song, “Mao Mao,” sung by Claude Channes and written by Channes, Gérard Guégan, and Gérard Hugé, would always get relentlessly lodged in my head for days afterward. Part of the song’s charm is the French pronunciation of “Mao”—at least in this song—with two strong syllables, “Ma-Oh,” whereas in English it’s a one-syllable word. The decision to end every line in the verse with “MA OH MA OH” and the infectious chorus apparently sung by children (or at least recorded to give that effect) makes this one hell of a song.
 

 
Not surprisingly, the song is about .... uh, Chairman Mao, supreme leader of China for a generation, known then in English as Mao Tse-Tung and today universally as Mao Zedong. It’s tempting to try to figure out whether the song is pro- or anti-Mao….. it’s a fool’s errand. The lyrics make references to both “renouncing” and “following” Mao and the song should most clearly be seen as the taking up of Mao as a pop subject. One might say that it’s postmodern in the sense that the status of Mao’s pluses and minuses take a back seat to his incomparable there-ness—as the leader of Communist China during the Vietnam War and having recently overseen the Cultural Revolution, Mao was there to be discussed, debated, apprehended no matter what.

La Chinoise is worth a look but what remains is the song (which does appear in the movie). I’ve seldom found a ditty about a brutal dictator as engaging as Channes’ masterpiece, and I had to pass it on to the faithful Dangerous Minds readership. Here are the lyrics in French and an English translation, followed by the trailer, which is a must-see for those who like odd, catchy songs.
 

Le Vietnam brûle et moi je hurle Mao Mao
Johnson rigole et moi je vole Mao Mao
Le napalm coule et moi je roule Mao Mao
Les villes crèvent et moi je rêve Mao Mao
Les putains crient et moi je ris Mao Mao
Le riz est fou et moi je joue Mao Mao

C’est le petit livre rouge
Qui fait que tout enfin bouge

L’impérialisme dicte partout sa loi
La révolution n’est pas un dîner
La bombe A est un tigre en papier
Les masses sont les véritables héros
Les Ricains tuent et moi je mue Mao Mao
Les fous sont rois et moi je bois Mao Mao
Les bombes tonnent et moi je sonne Mao Mao
Les bébés fuient et moi je fuis Mao Mao
Les Russes mangent et moi je danse Mao Mao
Giap dénonce, je renonce Mao Mao

C’est le petit livre rouge
Qui fait que tout enfin bouge

La base de l’armée, c’est le soldat
Le vrai pouvoir est au bout du fusil
Les monstres seront tous anéantis
L’ennemi ne périt pas de lui-même
Mao Mao
Mao Mao
Mao Mao

========

Vietnam burns and me I spurn Mao Mao
Johnson giggles and me I wiggle Mao Mao
Napalm runs and me I gun Mao Mao
Cities die and me I cry Mao Mao
Whores cry and me I sigh Mao Mao
The rice is mad and me a cad

It’s the Little Red Book
That makes it all move

Imperialism lays down the law
Revolution is not a party
The A-bomb is a paper tiger
The masses are the real heroes
The Yanks kill and me I read Mao Mao
The jester is king and me I sing Mao Mao
The bombs go off and me I scoff Mao Mao
Girls run and me I follow Mao Mao
The Russians eat and me I dance Mao Mao
I denounce and I renounce Mao Mao

It’s the Little Red Book
That makes it all move

A risqué painting by George Barbier depicting the inside of an opulent opium den.
 
George Barbier was one of the most celebrated and in-demand artists of post-WWI France. He was part of a group of elite and rebellious artists who hailed from the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he had been a student for two years. Barbier would produce works of art ranging from elegant and often erotic Art Deco-style paintings, jewelry designs for Cartier, and even costumes that were used in Parisian theater, ballet, and films. He dressed Rudolph Valentino in the 1924 film Monsieur Beaucaire and Josephine Baker during her time performing at the Casino de Paris, which would sadly turn out to be one of Barbier’s last collaborations. The multi-talented Frenchman would pass away at the rather young age of 50 in 1932, and his huge body of work was quickly forgotten.

Born into affluence, Barbier’s parents were import/export merchants that resided in Nantes, France. As a youth, Barbier demonstrated his artistic proficiency and would often pass the time in the town’s museum replicating the artwork that hung on the walls. Before he became a student at École des Beaux-Arts, it is said that Barbier spent a few years hanging around London where he became intimately acquainted with the work of influential British artists such as William Blake, illustrator Gustave Doré, and Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley’s early contributions to the world of Art Deco made a deep impact on Barbier who owned some of Beardsley’s hand-written letters as well as illustrations done by the Brighton-born artist for various works by Edgar Allan Poe.

After breaking out at the age of 29 following his first exhibition of his work in 1911 in Paris, he would not only contribute prolifically to the Art Deco movement but would also become one of the most highly respected costume designers in Paris thanks to his extensive work with the Ballets Russes. When I use the word prolific to describe Barbier’s work, it’s almost an understatement. In his relatively short life as an artist, Barbier illustrated over 1000 books. In a rather sad twist to Barbier’s remarkable existence, the artist’s personal effects such as correspondence or photographs virtually disappeared after he died. You see, after arriving in Paris Barbier spent much of his time socializing in gay-friendly circles and his well-to-do family didn’t approve of his lifestyle or his work which often reflected his open-minded approach to sexuality.

As you might imagine, there are many books about George Barbier containing examples of his exquisite artwork such as George Barbier: The Birth of Art Deco and George Barbier: Master of Art Deco, which he most certainly was. A large selection of Barbier’s NSFW erotically inclined Art Deco illustrations and paintings follow. 
 

 

 
More after the jump…

A collection of tiny hand-made doll heads in jars by artist Polina Verbitskaya.
 
Ukrainian Artist Polina Verbitskaya is a self-described illustrator, dollmaker and “body artist” who lives and works in Kiev. Of all the oddities I found in Verbitskaya Etsy shop, I was instantly drawn to her macabre pendants made from little glass jars, each with a tiny hand-made doll head inside. Verbitskaya fills the jars with clear resin to make it appear as if the disembodied doll heads are floating in formaldehyde. Fantastic.

If these creepy charms don’t bring out your inner ghoul—I don’t know what will. Each single doll-head-in-a-jar necklace will run you $30 plus shipping from the Ukraine. I’ve posted images of Verbitskaya’s sinister doll-head jewelry below.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
The writer and director Cameron Crowe recently tweeted an impressive piece of pop culture history. It was a photograph of the correspondence between Francis Coppola and John Lennon, in regard of the former-Beatle hanging out with the famed director in the Philippines and maybe writing/contributing some music for Coppola’s movie Apocalypse Now.

The pair had obviously met at some point and an idea had been suggested. What exactly this idea was, and how far or how seriously it was taken, well, we just don’t know. What seems apparent is that Coppola was feeling a tad lonely working and living 24/7 on location and the “rarified air” of the Philippines was having its own effect.

The letter starts off like a typical fan letter but Coppola probably lost Lennon at the line where he says he is living inside a volcano.

March 24, 1977

Mr. John Lennon
Lennon Music
1307 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10019

Dear John:

We’ve never met but, of course, I’ve always enjoyed your work.

I am presently in the Philippines making “APOCALYPSE NOW”. I’ve been here eight months, expect to be here another several months. I live inside a volcano, which is a jungle paradise, where there are beautiful mineral springs; and thought of ever you were in the Far East or if ever you would enjoy spending a little time talking about things in general and some distant future projects that I have in mind, please, I would love to cook dinner for you and just talk, listen to music and talk about movies.

If coming to the Far East is difficult, then someday in the future, either in Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York, I would like to meet you.

Sincerely,

Francis Coppola

 

Coppola feeling the pressure during ‘Apocalypse Now.’ After the jump Lennon’s letter of reply ...