In the mid-1980s Grace Jones’s body became the flesh canvas upon which Keith Haring created some of his most striking images. In the process, Haring contributed to Jones’s reputation as an innovator of cutting edge style and fashion. She wore Haring’s body paint in the video for her song I’m Not Perfect and in live performance at New York City’s Paradise Garage.

Body painting was a natural extension of the ephemeral nature of Haring’s art. Like subway graffiti and street art, it isn’t intended to last.

I remember the days before Haring became famous, when his “Radiant Baby” graffiti was as ubiquitous on the streets of New York as the smell of urine and the sound of ghetto blasters. For awhile, Haring was New York.

In the above photo we see Haring preparing Jones for her role in the 1986 movie Vamp, in which she portrays Katrina the Queen of The Vampires.

The music in this clip from Vamp is by Jonathan Elias who produced Jones’s Bulletproof Heart album.

 
for more photos pull up to the bumper

 
One of the true tests of innovative sequential/evolving visual art is whether it hits you as a fantastic story that a little kid could describe…”Then the van had eyes and then it ate the worm…” This thing does it.

Although the anonymous, hyper-proficient Bologna-based artist Blu has nothing near the global profile of Banksy, s/he’s shown and worked in as many regions, including the wall at the West Bank. S/he’s also been able to work stop-motion animation into his/her ouvre, and the ten-minute video below is the latest fruit.

It seems absolutely relentless and almost epic in its scope. Enjoy.
 

BIG BAG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

 
via Reckon

 
Word from a Fab Five Freddy tweet and a post on his own MySpace blog is that New York hip-hop futurist Rammellzee has passed away at age 50 from as-yet-unrevealed causes. (@149st features a great, fact-filled interview with the man.) Emerging as a teen graffiti artist in the mid-‘70s, bombing the A-train from its last stop in his Far Rockaway, Queens hometown, Rammell ended up like many of his talented peers—a multidisciplinary creative icon submerged in the nascent metropolitan hip-hop scene.  He first surfaced as a persona to the world in amazing fashion, dressed in trenchcoat and wielding a sawed-off shotgun as he MC’ed for the Rock Steady Crew in the Amphitheatre scene of hip-hop’s famous first film, 1982’s Wild Style.