Category Archives: art

Trevor Brown’s fantasy land

Following on my previous post on Venetian Snares where I mentioned Trevor Brown, some more about the latter:

Artwork by Trevor Brown

My Alphabet (1999) – Trevor Brown
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Li’l Miss Sticky Kiss (2004) – Trevor Brown
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Though presently living in Japan, Trevor Brown is an British artist whose work explores paraphilias, such as pedophilia, BDSM, and other fetish themes, with unusual wit.

Important career motivating friendships include French artist Romain Slocombe (the pioneer of “medical art”) and William Bennett (leader of the notorious electronic-noise band Whitehouse.

Trevor Brown’s art has been featured in Adam Parfrey’s Apocalypse Culture II, and in Jim Goad’s ANSWER Me! zine, as well as a variety of other publications. His work has been featured as cover art for a number of bands, including Deicide, Whitehouse, GG Allin, Kayo Dot, and Venetian Snares.

He is often compared with Mark Ryden in that he is known for child-like characters in various states of distress. However themes in his work extend to car crashes, (reminiscent of J.G. Ballard’s Crash), abattoirs, and Japanese pornography. His art is close in spirit to the Young British Artists such as Damien Hirst or Jake and Dinos Chapman. —[1]

Trevor Brown illustraded CDs by Merzbow, Venetian Snares and Whitehouse (here, here, here and here).

Articles: Trevor Brown interviews Masami Akita – Trevor Brown on Japanese bondage, Kinbiken and Chimou Nureki

Mihály Zichy’s romantic styled intricate pencil drawings

Artwork by Mihály Zichy (1827 – 1906)

See also Il Giornale and Wikipedia entries.

Groovy Glamour International

Supplement to Glamour International n. 16, April 1991

Cover illustration probably by Leone Frollo.

See a collection of Glamour International covers at the excellent Numagazine vintage erotica site (to which I am not affiliated) and my page on a similar Italian publisher Glittering Images.

Each issue of Italian erotica magazine Glamour is 12×12 inch, has a color wraparound cover, and is mostly in color. The focus is international eroticism, from classic cheesecake and bondage to the latest work by top artists.

Black women and jungle girls for example includes work by filmmaker Federico Fellini, and huge double-page spreads by Scozzari, Cadelo, Steranko, Frollo, Dave Stevens, Saudelli, Frazetta, and a fine cover and illustration by Chichoni. Girls and horror films of the 1950s, and Bill Ward. See all available at Amazon here: Alberto Becattini

Some Google galleries here, here and here.

Also check Numagazine’s review of Psychopathia Sexualis in Italian sinema. Mine is here.

And to conclude I want to let you in on a little secret: the best Italian — and perhaps the best worldwide — erotic photography is by Carlo Mollino. The proof is here.

Arts pricing and public funding

Have you ever liked a work of art (and here and here) very much but felt that the community, museum or government that had commissioned it paid too much for it?

This exactly what happened to me when I learned about the 750,000 euros the Flemish people paid for the 2006 water sculpture Diepe Fontein which reflects the façade of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts when full.

A fraction of the money spent (I cannot remember the exact details but if I remember well the proportion was about 10%) was used for the actual production of the piece. The majority of the money went to Spanish contemporary artist Cristina Iglesias (1956, San Sebastián, Spain) who was primarily rewarded for her intellectual property.

This article by Prof. Paul Ilegems (born 1946, curator of the Friet-museum in Antwerp) has the best description of the work. It mentions that the idea to invite Iglesias to design this work was by architect Hilde Daems, together with Paul Robbrecht and Marie-José Van Hee who had been at that time responsible for the re-design of the Leopold De Waelplaats. Ilegems mentions how the work is huftervrij, which is a Dutch term that translates as shitheadproof and denotes vandal proof. Vandalism is a big problem in public space art and it has been of recent interest in Antwerpen. Cel Crabeels’s article on the destruction of Dan Graham’s public space artwork Funhouse for Children (1998) on the Antwerp Sint – Jansplein documents this.

As I mentioned before, the main gripe I have with the work of art is not necessarily the price of it, but the fact that only a small fraction of the cost was for the actual production of the work. I specifically want to compare Diepe Fontein to another 2006 work of art, even if the work I am referring to was ‘only’ an ephemeral performance by a French company who is called Royale de Luxe. They produce the best piece of street theatre I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing: The Sultan’s Elephant. Its performance cost the Antwerp municipality 800,000 euros but the majority of it went to the actual performance (which lasted three days and were extravagant and deeply moving), not just a concept. I saw grown men and women weep with joy and awe. Watch it here if they did not come to your town last summer.

Gymnosperm plants, a genus comprised solely of the Welwitschia mirabilis

Unidentified illustration of the Welwitschia mirabilis

I want to quickly share this find with you. The Welwitschia mirabilis is a Gymnosperm (“naked seeds“) plant which is quite literally sui generis: of its own kind. The plant reminds of the Komodo dragon.

via thrillingwonder

See also: this, the Google gallery and the Wikipedia entry. Check also the same blog’s post on lenticular clouds.

Women moving snakily

Gabriel Ferrier (1847-1914), ‘Salammbô’ (ca. 1881), (Dijkstra, 1986, p.308).

Of particular interest is the [fin de siècle’s] imagery of women and serpents. A plethora of images were produced including Snake Queen(s), The Scene of The Serpent, Egyptian Fantasy, and Serpentine Dancers. At a more generic level, images of Sensuality, Sin, Vice, Lust and so on were popular, frequently featuring women moving snakily, caressing or being caressed (usually ecstatically) by snakes, or with snakes forming part of their anatomy: commonly legs, thighs and loins, or hair. These images sit against the backdrop of a general flourishing of artistic works and surprisingly immodest stories in popular magazines about women’s ‘natural’ tendency to rapidly degenerate to a bestial past and engage in intimate relationships with animals generally (snakes in particular), given half a chance.– Sue Austin, Desire, Fascination, and the Other: Some Thoughts on Jung’s Interest in Rider Haggard’s ‘She’

See also: H. R. Haggard, author of She (1887) and Salammbô, Gustave Flaubert’s 1862 fantasy novel.

Jahsonic @ Flickr:

I’ve uploaded part of the images from Jahsonic.com to my Flickr account. I was extremely delighted to find that user Limbic from Belgrade, Yugoslavia offered me a Pro Flickr account as a present. So far I’ve uploaded these three sets: numbers, a and b. More to come.

Flaubert’s hatred for the bourgeois was at times almost maniacal

Yesterday I acquired Bohemian Versus Bourgeois at Demian bookstore, Antwerpen. It appears to be one of the earliest books on alienation in modern art, taking a sociological approach. Colin Wilson has done the same with a psychological approach in 1956 with The Outsider.

Bohemian Versus Bourgeois: French society and the French man of letters in the nineteenth century (1964) – César Graña [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

It’s in this book that one finds references to the group of French artists les bousingots, which is rendered bousignots in the index. Web references to this groups include: “Hugnet, Georges, 1906-1974. Bousignots, excentriques et isolés du romanisme, typed manuscript with handwritten corrections together with signed typed letter 1954 Oct. from L. Mollion of Radiodiffusion Français”. The book itself references Théophile Lavallée’s Histoire de Paris depuis le temps des Gaulois jusqu’en 1850 published by J. Hetzel, Paris, 1852. [Feb 2007]

César Graña bio

César Graña (1919 – 1986) was a Peruvian anthropologist who received his Ph.D. of sociology from the University of California. In 1942, he came to the United States.

César Graña’s best known work was based on the sociology of art. He wrote Bohemia vs. Bourgeois: French Society and the French Man of Letters in the Nineteenth Century, which was published in 1964, this work is also known as Modernity and its Discontents. In 1989, he released Meaning and Authenticity. On Bohemia: The Code of the Self Exiled was published in 1990. In 1994, Fact and Symbol was published and it was nominated for a National Book Award. Graña died on August 24, 1986 in a car crash. —[1]

An excerpt from cultural relativist Roger Sandall’s The Culture Cult:

In his 1964 study Bohemian Versus Bourgeois César Graña shows how [the bohemians] claimed a more natural sympathy with other cultures than the bourgeoisie could possibly possess. They regarded the lives of the French commercial and professional classes as utterly degrading. Graña describes Stendhal’s horror of the lowness and meanness of the middle-class, and how “anyone who acquired a routine social obligation or worked at a profession received from Flaubert either casual scorn or mocking sorrow”. This same contempt for the routine world of paid employment was pushed to an extreme by Baudelaire, whose attitude—“to be a useful person has always appeared to me to be something particularly horrible”—expressed pure aristocratic disdain.

Flaubert’s hatred for the bourgeois was at times almost maniacal. After completing his second novel Salammbo in 1862 he wrote that “It will: 1) annoy the bourgeois; 2) unnerve and shock sensitive people; 3) anger the archaeologists; 4) be unintelligible to the ladies; 5) earn me a reputation as a pederast and a cannibal. Let us hope so.” While research into sexual behavior is a normal part of anthropological inquiry, it was a personal interest in erotic experience—romantically justified as self-fulfilment—which drove literary bohemia on its escapades. — Roger Sandall via http://www.culturecult.com/culturecult/bohemia.htm [Jun 2006]

See also: Flaubert – Stendhal – Baudelaire – bohemia – bourgeois – genre theory

His unpleasant relations with her so affected his health

And some Goltzius to bid you good night:

Icarus, from The Disgracers, engraving, 1588

At the age of twenty-one Goltzius (1558 – 1617), Dutch painter and engraver, married a widow somewhat advanced in years, whose money enabled him to establish at Haarlem an independent business; but his unpleasant relations with her so affected his health that he found it advisable in 1590 to make a tour through Germany to Italy, where he acquired an intense admiration for the works of Michelangelo, which led him to surpass that master in the grotesqueness and extravagance of his designs. He returned to Haarlem considerably improved in health, and laboured there at his art till his death.

The monster appeared in Buenos Aires on August 26

Via Celeste comes this:

Description of a Monster Born of a Ewe (Translation of August 1708 Work)

“The monster which is shown in the figure appeared in Buenos Aires on August 26. The contrast of three resemblances which it had, that of a child, a horse, and a calf, surprised all who saw it. I asked the person who showed it to me if I could examine it in order to describe it faithfully, but he never allowed me to do this. I examined it from quite close and drew its principal traits without his noticing. As soon as I returned to my room, having all the information about the monster vividly in my memory, it furnished what was missing from the drawing. I completed it and represented it in its natural color.”[2]

Louis Éconches Feuillée (sometimes spelled Feuillet) (1660-1732) was a French member of the Order of the Minims, explorer, astronomer, geographer, and botanist.

Kierkegaardian and arcimboldesque

André Martins de Barros more here, Barros is also the artist who did the flyer I first encountered on Ian McCormick’s grotesque page.

Found when Googling for Arcimboldesque, this anomymous etching c.1700, mid-Italian map, sourced here

The Moviegoer is a 1961 Kierkegaardian philosophical novel by Walker Percy. The writer of this page holds that High Fidelity, Garden State, The Graduate, The Truman Show, American Beauty, Harold and Maude, Adaptation and Sideways are similarly themed.

I quote from The Moviegoer:

“Today is my thirtieth birthday and I sit on the ocean wave in the schoolyard and wait for Kate and think of nothing. Now in the thirty-first year of my dark pilgrimage on this earth and knowing less than I ever knew before, having learned only to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies – my only talent – smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle, and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall – on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire.”

More info over at Kierkegaard and Arcimboldo.