“Why am I floating around London like this?”
More “art horror”
The Good Samaritan by Luca Giordano
Saturn devouring his son by Rubens
Totally unrelated curiosum
The Sceptical Chymist
Category Archives: visual culture
Billboard photos #2: There is a “hole” in the model’s head
Model on Roberto Cavalli poster. Taken not far from Bodega Sochaux in Antwerp on 09/04/2008 at 18:51:58.
There is a “hole” in the model’s head due to the billboard reflection.
Billboard photos #1
Spotted these by Suit Supply and Diesel while coming back from a OLT gig. Suit Supply photography probably by Carli Hermès. The photos were taken from street billboards.
Why this curious and debased love?
From Waloli, our reporter in Tokyo
Waloli: Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first American over-the-counter publication of Russian-born author Nabokov‘s Lolita. When Nabokov’s “dirty book” hit the streets of the USA, it sold 100,000 copies in three weeks, an immediate success that would allow the 60-year-old scholar and novelist the freedom to resign from teaching.
Pretty much everything about that book has been said, but I think many of you have not seen this interview conducted by Pierre Berton and Lionel Trilling for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation now at YouTube[1][2].
The interview was filmed on November 26, 1958 at The Rockefeller Center studios in New York City. It was Nabokov’s first television interview. The subject was Lolita, covering some of the questions addressed in Nabokov’s 1958 afterword. Most answers were read from index cards.
- “Let´s get out the more specific point: Why did you choose this rather odd, and, something that has never been done before, this curious and debased love?”
Nabokov:
- “Well, on the whole, it flooded me all kinds of interesting possibilities I am not so much interested in the philosophy of the book, as I am in weaving the thing in a certain way, in those intergradation and interweavings of certain themes and subthemes, for instance the systematic line of Mr. Quilty, whom Humbert will kill, does kill …”
The Lolita or nymphet trope has since entered popular consciousness and never left it, especially in Japan, where it evolved into the Gothic Lolita. Most recently British art critic James Putnam curated “Viva Lolita” which featured work from Turkish artist Nazif Topçuoğlu [3]. Here[4] are three of Topçuoğlu’s photos at Wurzelstock[5].
The Lolita trope, in all its manifestations, from Balthus to Trevor Brown, is IoEA #32.
Thank you Waloli, back to the studio.
Introducing Barry Burman (1943-2001)
![[3]](http://ponyxpress.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/07.jpg){kind=link}
Salome by British artist Barry Burman (1943-2001)[1] via Trevor Brown[2] . Trevor notes Burman’s work as a personal inspiration after reading Peter Webb‘s The Erotic Arts and makes a comparison to the work of Graham Ovenden. Burman committed suicide in 2001.
![[1]](http://www.pileup.com/babyart/blog-images/burman.jpg){kind=link}
Notes of the previous days:
Valter of Surreal Documents has written the first post in a series devoted to Stefan Jaworzyn‘s exploitation film fanzine Shock Xpress. These posts will present to you YouTube videos of the films featured in the three books which collect the fanzine’s best articles. He starts with biographical information on Jaworzyn.[4]
The previous thematic outing of Valter was centered around Exotica by Toop[5].
Web 2.0 is slowly becoming a reality. WordPress, Flickr, YouTube, Last.fm, Del.icio.us, LibraryThing and Facebook made me realize that. I need an API-driven platform that can integrate the aforementioned, with my wiki as backbone. Things such as Spinlets which let you create “mashups“. Something as easy to use as the defunct Hypercard, which was my first hypertext experience, in the pre-internet days. It would allow Amazon.com integration for my Wiki too.
On the difference between nakedness and nudity .
I am sceptical that Leiber and Stoller wrote “Hound Dog“. They probably heard it in an African American Vernacular English version in a juke joint (I heard a version not so long ago which went “you ain’t looking for a woman, you just looking for a ho“), bowdlerized it and released it in a version palatable to the WASP crowd. Cfr. Elvis‘s “One Night (song)” and Cole Porter‘s “I Get a Kick Out of You“. The latter had its drug reference “I get no kick from cocaine,” changed to “I get perfume from Spain,” for radio airplay, the earlier was first titled “One Night of Sin.”
Most therapists have knowledge of psychology but too many of them are at a loss when it comes to philosophy. Most culturati look to philosophy and sociobiology rather than psychology for an answer to “meaning of life.” Contemporary therapists who wish to cater for a sophisticated crowd should watch I Heart Huckabees, read about existential humanism and existential therapy, and study Emmy van Deurzen and others on the Passion Paradox.
See also, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic
Saw Demonlover, my second and hopefully last film of Assayas. The previous one was Irma Vep … just as terrible. The only redeeming element Demonlover was the introduction of the concept of Hellfire Club. Even the SY soundtrack is barely audible. Glad I got to see Chloë Sevigny, aka miss Brown Bunny.
The Fold is a new web-based film series written by husband-and-wife writing team, Ray Sawhill and Polly Frost. It will be viewable at http://www.thefold.tv as from now. It is an erotically-based science fiction series.
Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dies
Gratuitous nudity #8
Lest I be accused of too much theory, it is time for some gratuitous nudity, number 8 in our series[1].
Source: [Bxzzines]
This picture, taken from an unknown issue of Paris-Tabou, comes our way via Bxzzines[2], the blog on French obscure magazines.
This particular photo depicts a nude female embraced by a robot. The title is “L’amour en l’an 2000”, love in the year 2000. If we consider the robot as dressed, we can categorize this picture as belonging to the nude female/dressed male trope, should this notion to be far-fetched, it can still qualify to shed light on the sex and science fiction trope.
Paris Tabou was a French pin-up magazine published from September 1949 until 1953. Possibly taking its name from the Tabou Club, it published pin-up girls and stories by such authors as Boris Vian, who contributed L’Amour est aveugle, published in its first issue in 1949). Illustrators included the Italian Gino Boccasile.
Do not be surprised if it turns up at the excellent blog PonyXpress[3], the author of which has just favorited it at my Flickr stream[4].
Message on the general economy to Tony
Message to Tony:
Hi Tony, sorry, I lost your email address. And while I am not interested in your offer, I was very much interested by your questions regarding the general economy of Georges Bataille and the link you provided to Complementarity: Anti-Epistemology after Bohr and Derrida.
While I am familiar with Bataille’s thought, I cannot claim to be an expert on him, my infatuation with him is purely instinctual. The current blogosphere expert is Valter from Surreal Documents. He’s helped me many times regarding Bataille, the last time when I had questions regarding Against Architecture[1].
I did decide to check up on Bataille’s general economy, and found that the theory is propounded most systematically in The Accursed Share.
While I was checking, I came across Radical Passivity, both a book by Thomas Carl Wall and a colloquium by Benda Hofmeyr, as well as some interesting looking work by Dutch academic Joost de Bloois, author of the doctoral thesis L’economie generale: Derrida sur les traces de Bataille (Utrecht, 2003).
Also, while researching, I found some appealing visuals.
- Exhibit A: a rather nice and understated but at the same time menacing cover[2] of The Trial of Gilles de Rais, the blotches of blood stains are very Rorschach.
- Exhibit B is the poster to the colloquium[3], which depicts a pixelated version of Death by a Thousand Cuts, the image Bataille is most readily associated with. The only image I can think of outside of the gruesome three of the blogosphere, of which I am also glad I see it censored [4] for obvious reasons.
- Exhibit C: A nice cover of a work by Joost de Bloois[5].
Valter, if you are reading this, and if you find the time to comment, what is the most current interpretation of Bataille general economy?
Icon of Erotic Art #31
It is time for Icon of erotic art #31
Truck Babies (1999) by Patricia Piccinini
Truck Babies (1999) by Patricia Piccinini presents a pair of infant trucks. It is Icon of Erotic Art #31.
“The Truck Babies are infantile not miniature; they have big cheeks and fat bottoms, little wheels and lovely big eyes. They are what I imagined to be the offspring of the big trucks that I saw on the road. I examined the relationship between babies and fully-grown animals and people and applied these developmental changes backwards to the trucks.” [1]
The eroticism of this work is not obvious, but derives from the fact that most procreation is derived from the sexual act. It is my basic tenet that the sexual act is not necessarily “natural“, my favorite quote in this regard is from Leonardo da Vinci:
- “The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.”
A quote that also comes to mind is one by Susan Sontag:
- “Human sexuality is, quite apart from Christian repressions, a highly questionable phenomenon, and belongs, at least potentially, among the extreme rather than the ordinary experiences of humanity. Tamed as it may be, sexuality remains one of the demonic forces in human consciousness – pushing us at intervals close to taboo and dangerous desires, which range from the impulse to commit sudden arbitrary violence upon another person to the voluptuous yearning for the extinction of one’s consciousness, for death itself.” –Susan Sontag in the The Pornographic Imagination
The sexual act requires humans to gain intimacy to body parts which are “naturally” abhorred by humans, body parts which involve excrementation for example.
The sex drive, to which near all human animals fall prey, has often propelled us to engage in the sexual act with non-human animals. I surmise that the depictions of human-animal hybrids featured in bestiaries so popular in the Middle Ages (only second in popularity to the Bible), is derived from the fear that human-animal copulation would result in offspring.
It is within the context of these bestiaries that the work of Piccinini should be viewed. The uncanniness of Truck Babies is derived from a fear of ascribing animal qualities to machines, machines having become the nearest equivalent to domestic animals in the post-industrial age.
Truck Babies also provides me with an opportunity to announce the death of American science fiction writer Thomas M. Disch (1940 – 2008), author of Camp Concentration, The Brave Little Toaster and 334. The oblique link between Truck Babies and Disch is the anthropomorphism evident in Truck Babies and The Brave Little Toaster.
The Miraculous Milk of the Virgin (IoEA#28)
It’s time for icon of erotic art #28.
“The Miraculous Milk of the Virgin”[1] is a photograph by Bettina Rheims published in her collection I.N.R.I.. The photo was taken in March 1997 and exhibited at the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont.
Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont[2] is a French art gallery located in Paris. Currently at the gallery is an exhibition by Bettina Rheims, Just like a woman[3], from May 30 – July 16 2008. The exhibition is illuminated by texts by Serge Bramly.
“The Miraculous Milk of the Virgin” is icon of erotic art number 28.
The photo is an obvious reference to the lactation miracles, also called Maria lactans (German page).
Unidentified “Maria lactans” painting depicting St. Bernard of Clairvaux?
From the blog “The hanged man” comes this comment:
Before they were suppressed by the decorous reforms of Trent, these images supported an astonishing range of piety. The medieval craving for physical contact with the divine took satisfaction in reports of lactation miracles.
While St. Bernard of Clairvaux knelt in prayer, a statue of Maria Lactans came to life and bestowed three drops of milk on his lips. St. Gertrude the Great nursed the Baby Jesus and Blessed Angela of Foligno nursed at Christ’s side. Lidwina of Schiedam saw Mary and her attendant virgins fill the sky with floods of their milk. In legend, suckling the Virgin or living saints brought healing and blessings.
Religious allegories celebrated lactation. Mary was the maiden in the garden who gave suck to the unicorn-Christ, the innocent victim hunted by men. Ecclesia, Sophia, Caritas, and sundry Virtues were shown as nursing mothers.[4]
Poking around on Google, I found the image above [5], can anyone ID?
A related IoEA was the Roman Charity one.
Rietveld @ 120
Gerrit Rietveld (June 24, 1888–June 26, 1964) was a Dutch furniture designer and architect.
Leunsteul van Rietveld. Circa 1918. Published in De Stijl, second year, number 11 (September 1919). Photographer unknown, so copyright expired on 1-1-1990.
Rietveld designed the Red and Blue Chair in 1917, but changed its colors to the familiar style in 1918 after he became influenced by the ‘De Stijl‘ movement
Picture of a replicum of the Red and Blue Chair designed by Gerrit Rietveld. Picture taken by Wikipedia user Ellywa, with permission of the owner of the chair.
See also Dutch design, modernist design.