Radiant Bake

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Mark Borthwick video for Berlin eyeglass frame maker Mykita. More info and an interview at Nowness.com.

Gilded

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High On Gold, 2012
(gold and black foil on wall, 40 x 28 in.)

Vincent Szarek.

Gilding the Lily, 2012 (fiberglass and glitter
on fake flower, 30 x 10 x 9 in.)

The Meaning of Life, 2010 (sequins on wall, 120 x 70 in.)

Wilson Peak (banquet), 2009
(urethane and glitter on fiberglass, 60 x 115 x 37 in.)

Black Cherries, 2011 (gold plated bronze
and urethane on fiberglass, 24 x 16 x 8 in.)

Prison Dreams, 2011 (chrome, aluminum, vinyl,
urethane and glitter on steel; weights)

(Bike by Jeffrey Schad, paint by Vincent Szarek)

http://vincentszarek.tumblr.com/

Image of the Day

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Cecilia Roth in the Spanish film Arrebato ("Rapture"), featured in Spanish Cinema of the Early Post-Franco Era (1975–83), a ten-film series opening tonight at Anthology Film Archives in New York. From the Times:

The flowering of film after [Franco's] death in 1975 . . . was something of a coming-out party for all things underground and repressed: drugs, raucous experimentation and, of course, sex. A gay sensibility flourished, not only in the films of Pedro Almodóvar, represented here by Pepi, Luci, Bom y Otras Chicas del Montón and Laberinto de Pasiones, but also in movies like Ventura Pons’s Ocaña, a 1978 documentary portrait of José Pérez Ocaña, an artist who walked around Barcelona in a peek-a-boo dress.

Info at anthologyfilmarchives.org.

Functionality and Aesthetics

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Ferdinand A. Porsche, designer of the 911, died yesterday at the age of 76. I'm really not a car person – in general I just don't care that much. But the 911 (and for that matter, the 912), transcend "car." They are some of the most beautifully designed objects ever made.







From Bruce Weber's obituary at the New York Times:

In 1963 the new model, originally designated the 901, was introduced at an auto show. (The designation was changed to 911 after the company learned that in France, Peugeot had a claim on three-numeral designations of passenger cars with a zero between two digits.) Slightly longer and narrower than the 356, more powerful, with a six-cylinder, rather than a four-cylinder, engine, the original 911 also had more legroom, more rear seat room and bigger doors for easier entrances and exits. Mr. Porsche also modified the body of the 356, rendering the signature sloping back end and extended hood into a sleeker silhouette. It was a remarkably simple design that helped create Mr. Porsche’s reputation as a designer who prized function above all.

“Design must be functional and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics, without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained,” he said.

Read the rest here.

Need vs. Want

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Ridiculously chic.

Alexander McQueen Military Tuxedo All-In-One,
$1885 at Alexander McQueen.
Want.

Best Foot Forward

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I am vaguely aware that this is probably the kind of shoe you seriously consider buying only when you already own far too many pairs of shoes, but I don't really care. What does that even mean, "too many pairs of shoes"?

Christian Louboutin Picks & Co Potpourri
Spiked Toe & Lace pump, $1495 at Bergdorf.

Mirror Mirror

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Snow White and the Huntsmen Trailer

(via Liberty Ross)

Exposed

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Félix-Jacques-Antoine Moulin, [Two Standing Female Nudes], ca. 1850

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Bill Brandt, Nude, Campden Hill, London, 1949

André Kertész, Distortion #6, 1932

Eugène Durieu, [Seated Female Nude], 1853-54
(Love this one.)

Brassaï, Nude, 1931-34

Thomas Eakins, [Thomas Eakins and John Laurie Wallace on a Beach], ca. 1883

Edward Weston, Nude on Sand, Oceano, 1936 (printed 1954)

All on view now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the exhibition Naked Before the Camera. From Roberta Smith's review in the New York Times:

The progress of the naked body through photography is the subject of [this] resonant and illuminating if sometimes fraught exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art....

Made mostly in Europe and the United States between 1850 and the present, the selection is rife with both unfamiliar names and old standbys — Nadar, Eakins, Muybridge, Brassaï, Mapplethorpe — and also with strange, unexpected and sometimes unsettling gems. (An 1860 image of a hermaphrodite, for example, from no less than Nadar.)...

Over all [the curator's] selections show how photographs of the body have intersected with the histories of painting, medicine, forensics, erotica, commerce, Surrealism and feminism, and how they hint at the advent of Conceptual, appropriation and performance art.

Through Sept. 9; more info here.

Cat Whisperer

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Frank Stefanko, The Lookout, 1974.

As if there weren't already enough reasons to love Patti Smith.



(Clip from the 2008 documentary Patti Smith: Dream of Life.)

via AnOther.

While we're on the topic, I just started reading this; a birthday present from one of my homegirls:

Image of the Day

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Experimental recording artist Laurie Spiegel in her NYC apartment, early 1970s.


Spiegel's 1972 track "Sediment" is featured in the film The Hunger Games (I haven't read or seen it).

She worked out “Sediment” using graph paper and a ruler to get the timing of the layers right.

“People who are in love with vintage analog now don’t understand what it was like to work with analog synths before computers, and before multitracks.”

While recording “Sediment” in her tenement apartment in Manhattan, Spiegel used a semi-modular Electrocomp 200. She recalled having to turn her refrigerator off to keep the analog synthesizer in tune.

“It was a five-room apartment running on a single 15-amp fuse,” she said. “When the refrigerator went on, half the oscillators dropped by a quarter tone…. I had to turn the refrigerator off, or it would ruin the take.”

[via Wired]

Watch the Sound

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She Builds Domes in Air is a 16mm film by Catherine Sullivan featuring Kristen McMenamy in Alexander McQueen (by Sarah Burton) SS2012 for AnOther Magazine. That was a mouthful but totally worth it.

Words and Verbs

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I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces “intelligence.”

—Susan Sontag, from the forthcoming book As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980, edited by David Rieff.

(via South Willard)

Mad to Live

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I'm still kind of shocked that anyone actually attempted this adaptation, and also surprised that it took so long. Whichever is correct, I'll definitely see it.



On the Road. Directed by Walter Salles
(The Motorcycle Diaries); out this summer.

Image of the Day

. Cover of the first Sunn O))) album The Grimm Robe Demos (1999, Hydra Head/Southern Lord). No reason, semi-random choice, just love the image.

Showing Out, Showing Out

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SHOWstudio's "NEWGEN/TEN" by Nick Knight, featuring Karlie Kloss and fashion direction by Kate Phelan, celebrates ten years of Topshop's sponsorship of the British Fashion Council's NEWGEN program. (Full credits here.)

Speaking of which – bonus:


Roxy Music "Love Is The Drug" from Siren (1975, EG)

Image of the Day

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Interior of artist Doug Aitken's house on the cover of yesterday's T Magazine.

Slideshow and totally amazing video/sound tour here.

Must be the Season

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Céline next-season inspirations poster, handed out at their FW2012 show.


Via Wallpaper* – click here for a slideshow of A/W 2012 fashion show invitations.

Something About April

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Adrian Younge presents Venice Dawn "Turn Down the Sound" from Something About April (2012, Wax Poetics).

Stream the whole album here.