TransverseAlchemy

Karel Teige: Пролеткульт and the Devětsil

2012-02-23T20:04:00.000+02:00

Born in Prague in December 1900, Karel Teige was an editor and graphic designer as well as the major figure of the Czech avant-garde movement "Devětsil". Founded in 1920 the Devětsil had a loose focus on the corresponding surrealist and cubist styles that were popular in western Europe at the time, but they also embraced the Russian "Proletkult" (Пролеткульт)- radically modifying existing artistic forms with a new, revolutionary working class aesthetic which drew its inspiration from the construction of the modern industrial society in Russia.

The Proletkult was born in the Bolshevik Revolutions of February and October 1917. Most artists in the movement were influenced to a great extent by the iconoclasm, technological orientation and revolutionary enthusiasm bound up in the thematic movements of the day: futurism and constuctivism. Despite a recognition of the classical arts, strong encouragement was given to the use of new techniques and forms in so-called "proletarian art," particularly the use of photography and collage.

But among those critical of the Proletkult and its ultimate vision of a new proletarian culture was the Soviet party leader Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin). At a public speech in May 1919 Lenin declared any notions of so-called "proletarian culture" to be "fantasies" which he opposed with "ruthless hostility."
More specifically, Lenin viewed it as "...an organization where futurists, idealists, and other undesirable bourgeois artists and intellectuals addled the minds of workers who needed basic education and culture."
(Lenin also may have had political misgivings about the organization as a potential power base for his rivals, ultra-radical "Left Communists" or the "Workers' Opposition" dissidents.)

Teige became the spokesman for Devětsil in 1921, developing a principle that "every new, fresh art is necessarily a reaction against the previous one". This new orientation was enhanced by his visits to Paris in 1922 and his interactions with the artists there, including Constantin Brancusi, Pierres Albert-Birot and Man Ray. He read voraciously and broadened his travels through the early 1920's to gain a first hand knowledge of the ongoing cubism, surrealism and Russian constructivism movements, visiting all the major Russian and European cities to foster personal relationships with the artists at their forefront.
Teige was published in the German expressionist journal Die Aktion, collaborated with Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius and gave lectures at the Bauhaus; while his influence in his own country was considerable, Teige was truly a part of the international modernist movement.

By 1924 Teige had embraced Russian constructivism, and that same year the "picture poem" was developed with Jaroslav Seifert. This quickly became a popular form among the Devětsil artists, and optical poetry developed into a new lexical standard. Picture poems involved the typographic arrangement of poems combined with collage and photomontage, and were easily mass produced and distributed: a combined set of properties which were regarded by the Devětsil as a new system based upon the visual and tactile rather than verbal character. Teige and Seifert held that this new nonverbal sign system would reawaken the senses so that in the future socialist society one could fully enjoy all sensory effects. Their envisioned society would abolish the division of labor and end art as a specific sphere of activity; art would comprise all human activities, even sports, gardening, or cooking.

Teige explained this transformation of language into visual art by relating it to the rise of photography, film and new developments in book printing and he incorporated all of these elements into his works. He soon asserted the loss of the autonomy of painting, replacing it with the poster and the picture poem, and as the medium evolved it became more complex: Teige began writing film scripts and using the dissolve technique as a way of poetically morphing objects into other objects.

The spring of 1927 saw a rise of a fairly forceful critical wave in the Czech press disclaiming Teige and the movement as obsolete and exhausted, but that autumn a new Devětsil forum appeared: the monthly magazine "ReD", whose name was coined as an abbreviated form of Revue Devětsil. This immediately marked the journal as a Marxist view of their new "cultural epoch": although he never became a member of the Communist Party Teige was a committed Marxist all his life. Published from 1927 to 1931, the content of the magazine was chiefly determined by Teige, and he edited and designed all three volumes. The introductory declaration of ReD emphasized both its continuity with the Devětsil program -shaped by Teige's concept of the tension between constructivism and poetism- and the prevailing interest in an universal modern creativity which could encompass all spheres of contemporary life.
Still, Devětsil gradually went into decline and the movement officially discontinued its activities in 1930 although ReD continued publication for a few more months. Political conflict had forced Teige to take more of a back seat in public life, but he maintained his work in the collages and picture poems.

In 1939 Czechoslovakia was invaded by Nazi Germany, and Hitler's stated goal was to eradicate Czech nationality through assimilation, deportation, and extermination of the Czech intelligentsia. Teige was forced into an internal exile, but he continued his work which by now had begun to develop an erotic edge in combination with his socialist political ideals. In "L'Enfant Terrible of the Czech Modernist Avant-Garde" (Eric Dluhosch / Rostislav Švácha: MIT Press 1999), Vojtěch Lahoda writes "...It may be said that Teige tried to realize in his collages the utopian idea of the metamorphosis of the new man - that is, a social and ideally conceived communist transformation of such a man - going hand in hand with an erotically conceived metamorphosis of landscape and architecture."

At the end of the war in 1948 Teige joined his countrymen in welcoming the Soviet army as liberators. Although he was first hailed as a progressive, the new Communist government soon proved that they were equally adept at silencing dissent and the connections between Devětsil and the now disavowed Proletkult were not forgotten. He had also loudly criticized Joseph Stalin's leadership of the USSR (CCCP) and he was soon denounced for not toeing the party line. Forbidden to publish or organize "artistic activities", he was labeled a 'Trotskyite degenerate,' his papers were destroyed by the secret police, and his published work was suppressed for decades. In 1951 he died of a heart attack, said to be a result of a ferocious Soviet press campaign against him.

Since the the "velvet revolution" of 1989 the legacy of Karel Teige has been revived not only in Prague, but also in Western Europe and the United States: he was among those powerful figures of modernism who believed that their beliefs could change the world, subverting moral and artistic values in the cause of what he hoped would be a better society and finally being crushed by those who - at first sight - also appeared to be working for a better society.

References:

NYU Grey Art Gallery
Czech Avant-Garde Art: Poetry for the 5 Senses - Esther Levinger
Photomontaged Dreams: Landscape and the female nude in Teige's collages -Mark Hearld
Karel Teige/1900-1951: L'Enfant Terrible of the Czech Modernist Avant-Garde - book review by Sue Bagust
ReD I/3, décembre 1927; Karel Teige: NYPL digital gallery

Spencer Tunick

2012-02-22T14:01:00.000+02:00

(Actually I like his work, but coming from a solid redneck background I simply couldn't resist poking some fun ;)

Philippe Halsman: Hello, Dali !

2012-02-09T17:10:00.000+02:00

Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) was born in Riga, Latvia. He studied engineering in Dresden before moving to Paris, where he set up his photographic studio in 1932. Halsman's bold, spontaneous style won him many admirers. His portraits of actors and authors appeared on book jackets and in magazines; he worked with fashion (especially hat designs), and filled commissions for private clients. By 1936, Halsman was known as one of the best portrait photographers in France.

The rhinoceros is manifested in several of Dali's paintings, notably in the 1950s when he painted many of his subjects as composed of rhinoceros horns. According to Dalí, the rhinoceros horn signifies divine geometry because it grows in a logarithmic spiral: he also linked the rhinoceros to themes of chastity and to the Virgin Mary.

Dali and Rhinoceros, 1956

Halsman met Dali on assignment in 1941, and over the next three decades they became partners on many projects, including a series of playful tableaux that had all the disturbing irrationality of dreams or a painting by Dali. Their most notable production was "Dali Atomicus", in which the artist, his canvas, furniture, cats, and water all appear suspended in air. Halsman reported that it took 28 attempts to be satisfied with the result.

Dali Atomicus, 1948 (silver-gelatin print)

Unlike many of Dalí’s other relationships his friendship with Halsman was quite stable, spanning more than three decades. In 1954 Dalí and Halsman collaborated in the production of Dalí’s Mustache, a book of portrait photographs of Dalí featuring 36 different views of the artist's distinctive mustache sculpted into odd and imaginative shapes as though it were its own personality.

Perhaps the most famous collaboration between the two was In Voluptas Mors, a surrealistic portrait of Dali beside a large skull which was in fact a tableau vivant composed of seven nudes. Halsman took three hours to arrange the models according to a sketch by Dali.

In Voluptas Mors, 1951

Leopard Skull, 1951

"When I was five years old I saw an insect that had been eaten by ants and of which nothing remained except the shell. Through the holes in its anatomy one could see the sky. Every time I wish to attain purity I look at the sky through flesh."

- Salvador Dalí

Dali Clockface, 1953

Veruschka- Body as Art

2012-02-02T19:18:00.000+02:00

Veruschka von Lehndorff was born on 14 May 1939 in Königsberg, East Prussia to Countess Gottliebe von Kalnein: her father was German Count von Lehndorff-Steinort, an army reserve officer executed when she was 5 for attempting to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the July 20 plot. After his death the remaining family members were interred in labor camps until the end of World War II: Veruschka later studied art in Hamburg and was discovered by the photographer Ugo Mulas at age 20, after which she became a full-time model.

In 1966 she did her first shoot wearing body paint, and it became a lifelong artistic pursuit. Most of the time she did her own make-up, hair and styling.

"The most successful ones were done like that, because I was in charge of it," she says. "With the photographer we created the whole thing on the spot. We cut up the clothes even, if it looked better."

A trip to Kenya with photographers Andy Warhol and Peter beard in 1970 was the start of her actual career in body painting: it was there that she first painted herself in black shoe polish to obscure her identity and photographed herself posed in the natural environment. Her aim was to try and blend into the environment as a foreign plant or animal.

While the work was often published and exhibited, it failed to gain a serious hold, possibly because of her "super model" status. But in 1985 Veruschka finally infiltrated the New York art scene, putting on a body-painting show in Tribeca. She worked with the photographer Holger Trulzsch, a former lover she first collaborated with in the early 1970s. They conceptualised Veruschka's time in fashion by painting outfits on her and transforming her into wild animals and archetypes such as film stars, dandies, gangsters and dirty old men. (She tells me she's often mistaken for a man, that in France they often say, 'Oui, monsieur.')

In the past three decades Veruschka has returned to the fashion world occasionally, including a trip to Australia in 2000 as a guest model at the Melbourne Fashion Festival.

A book of her work, Trans-Figurations was published by the New York Graphic Society, Boston, in 1986.

“When I was young I used to spend a lot of time in the woods behind my house, hiding among the trees and pretending I was one.”

Art of the Dead

2012-01-22T18:18:00.000+02:00

In the winter of 1964 Gert Chiarito was hosting "The Midnight Special", a late night show on Berkley's KPFA FM radio featuring impromptu live folk music. According to John Whiting:

"It was a sort of folk/pop/rock jam session in which she invited musicians in to play on air into the wee small hours... Gert spent lots of time in small informal venues, making notes on musicians she might invite onto the show. A couple of guitarists she heard at different gigs—a lead and a bass—struck her as a pair of musicians who might play really well together and so she suggested they come and work something out. It was all informal, nothing to be planned or rehearsed. They both showed up one Saturday night in 1964 when it was my turn on the board. In the event, they really clicked. If the air check that I made that night had been saved, it would be worth a bank manager’s ransom."

Those two musicians were Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia.

Garcia had played with Bob Weir and Ron McKernan in the Palo Alto group "Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions" through the early '60s, and in 1965 they became the "Warlocks". When Lesh joined as bass player they went through another name change, and the first show by the Grateful Dead was in San Jose California on December 4, 1965 at one of Ken Kesey's Acid Tests.

With the exception of Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (keyboards, harmonica, vocals) who died in 1973, the founding members of the Grateful Dead - Jerry Garcia (guitar, vocals), Bob Weir (guitar, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass, vocals), and Bill Kreutzmann (drums) stayed together for its entire 30 year history. In September 1967 Kreutzmann was joined by a second drummer, Mickey Hart. Several other musicians rotated through the band during its long history, and a number of them met untimely deaths due to drug and alcohol abuse. After Pigpen's death in March, 1973 from alcohol abuse Keith Godchaux took over on keyboards, but he was asked to leave in 1979 because of drug addictions: Godchaux died in a car wreck in 1980. Brent Mydland followed him, playing keyboards with the band for 11 years before he died from a narcotics overdose in 1990. When Jerry Garcia himself died of a heart attack in August 1995 it signaled the end of an incredible trip; because for a surprising number of people the Grateful Dead wasn't just a band, it was a lifestyle and something very nearly approaching the status of a cult.

Born in the psychedelic movement of the Haight Ashbury district (San Francisco, California) and forming their unique style while playing for Ken Kesey's "Acid Tests", the band became famous for their street party atmosphere. Their live shows, driven by an improvisational approach to music, made the Grateful Dead different from most other touring bands. By the 1970s a number of fans had begun following the band on tour in order to see multiple shows; due to the band's varied song selection and the improvisational nature of their playing, no two Grateful Dead concerts were exactly the same. A community began to develop around these tours, and the "Deadheads" started various micro-businesses to support themselves, mostly focused around arts and crafts or portable kitchens.Figures are elusive, but at least one estimate placed the Deadhead community at "a half million members" in 2002: seven years after the death of Garcia.

The band had a definite influence on many underground artists of the era, although it may be an overstatement to suggest that they had much impact on the broader world of visual art. Nonetheless, there are certain iconic images associated with the band which are still widely recognized, and it's difficult not to attribute the popularity of tie-dyed clothing directly to Deadheads.

Probably the most immediately recognizable logo is the Steal Your Face Skull which originally graced the cover of their 1976 double live album. The grinning skull with a lightening bolt splitting the red and blue frontal bone was designed by Owsley Stanley and rendered by Bob Thomas: ironically the album was relatively unsuccessful due to poor sound quality and an unpopular music selection, but the cover art was a huge success and basically became the unofficial band logo.

The Skull and Roses design was composed by Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse based on an illustration for the 1913 edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam drawn by Edmund Joseph Sullivan: even earlier antecedents include the custom of exhibiting the relic skulls of Christian martyrs decorated with roses on their feast days. The artwork originally appeared on a poster for the September 16 and 17, 1966 Dead shows at the Avalon Ballroom and was later used as the cover for the album Grateful Dead. The album is sometimes referred to as Skull and Roses (or Bertha).

The two dancing terrapins first appeared on the cover of the 1977 album Terrapin Station, which was also drawn by Kelley and Mouse. The Dancing Bears, which were a reference to Owsley "Bear" Stanley, came out as part of the back cover art on History of the Grateful Dead, Volume One (Bear's Choice) (1973) and were drawn by Bob Thomas. The fuzzy, smiling teddy bears were a sharp contrast to the band's usual death motif and was widely embraced by a younger fan base who came of age in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

Like most popular bands the Grateful Dead spawned huge amounts of fan art along with an unprecedented amount of marketing goods. A combination of their longevity as a touring group, their unique community and their psychedelic background provided fertile fields for creative hippies. On April 24, 2008 Bob Weir and Mickey Hart announced that University of California Santa Cruz's McHenry Library would be the permanent home of the Grateful Dead's complete archival history from 1965 up to the present. The archive includes correspondence, photographs, fliers, posters, and several other forms of memorabilia and records of the band along with unreleased videos of interviews and TV appearances, stage backdrops and other props from the band's concerts. The first large-scale exhibition of materials from the Grateful Dead Archive was mounted at the New-York Historical Society in 2010. The archive itself is reported to be opening to the public in the Spring of 2012.

References & further info:

Stigma and the Inappropriately Stereotyped: The Deadhead Professional by Rebecca G. Adams University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Free (huge) archive of Grateful Dead live recordings
Grateful Dead Archive at UCSC
Official Grateful Dead Website

Konstantin Bogaevsky, Crimean Landscapes

2012-01-02T17:27:00.000+02:00

Konstantin Fyodorovich Bogaevsky (Константин Фёдорович Богаевский),
January 1872- February 1943

Born in the Crimean port city of Theodosia (Feodosiya, now Ukraine), Bogaevsky began his career as an artist studying under the famous Russian/Armenian painter Ivan Aivazovsky. Widely known for his highly detailed seascapes and imaginative use of light, Aivazovsky instilled an interest in landscape painting early on and in 1891 Konstantin was accepted at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. There he came under the tutelage of Arkhip Kuindzhi, whose style was also influenced by Aivazovsky: but Kuindzhi had a solid working class background and frequently fell out with the academics (he was fired from the academy in 1897 for support of student's protests). Bogaevsky apparently shared at least some of his mentor's philosophies, and was himself discharged from the Academy for a "lack of talent".

Last Beams, 1903

The Genoa Fortress, 1907

Southern Country Cave, 1908

After St. Petersburg Bogaevsky traveled across Europe, studying the styles and direction of contemporary art. The majority of his early work had been classical Crimean landscapes influenced by the more traditional Renaissance painters such as Durer and Mantegna, but while in Italy and France he became acquainted with works of Claude Lorrain, whom he proclaimed as his true teacher.

Memoirs of Mantenie, 1910

Mountain St.Georgia, 1911


Evening Sun, 1912

Landscape with the Lock, 1912

His first exhibition took place in Moscow in 1898, but by 1900 he had returned to Theodosia and adopted a symbolist style which he continued to apply to landscape painting. The main theme of his works became a fictional land known to his friends as "Bogaevia" that he claimed to see in his dreams. Bogaevsky gained significant popularity after Maximilian Voloshin published a series of essays highly praising the symbolism of his work. In 1906 he exhibited his paintings in the Paris Exposition de l`Art Russe organized by Sergei Diaghilev, and was active with Diaghilev's magazine Mir iskusstva as well as the Union of Russian Artists.

Cloud, 1920's

The Crimean Landscape, 1930

Old Harbour, 1931

In 1912 Bogaevsky befriended novelist and writer Alexander Grin, and became a regular in the Koktebel group of Intelligentsia which included Maximilian Voloshin, Marina Tsvetaeva and Osip Mandelstam. After the 1917 October Revolution Bogaevsky fell into obscurity, although the Soviets never prosecuted him: his 1932 painting "Port of an Imaginable City" was even praised as Socialist Realism painting of the DnieproGES.

Mountain Landscape, 1940

Mountain Landscape, early 1940's

Konstantin Bogaevsky was killed in Theodosia during an Allied bombing raid on February 17, 1943.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Bogaevsky

http://topainters.com/artists/14-symbolist-landscape-painter-konstantin-bogaevsky.html

http://www.tanais.info/art/en/bogaevsky.html

Landscapes

2011-12-26T10:28:00.000+02:00

Elmer Batters: Gettin' leggy

2011-12-18T17:43:00.000+02:00

Elmer Batters (November 24, 1919 – June 25, 1997) was a pioneer fetish photographer who specialized in capturing artful images of women with an emphasis on stockings, legs, and feet. Batters started out publishing his photographs himself, but since the late 1960s his work has been featured in magazines such as Leg-O-Rama, Nylon Doubletake, and Black Silk Stockings, to name but a few.

One of Batters' favorite models was a Rubenesque woman named Caruschka. Little is known about the model's life, but Batters was smitten with her as were his fans. "When I say Caruschka was my favorite model," Batters once wrote, "I don't just mean me. No girl in the history of my leg art business has attracted so many admirers as she. Kinda hard to believe these days; I know she is a little heavier than the fashion. Caruschka has charisma though; she still shines through. She also has a beautiful set of full shapely legs, firm and thrusting tits, and delicate, high-arch feet. But are these things what make us love a woman? I think not. I think love or even sexual attraction comes from the sparkle in a girl's eyes, the lift of her eyebrow, and the way her lips curl into that provocative smirk that hooks a man's soul like a hapless mackerel. This is Caruscha's strength. Her face seduces me even now--these 25 years later as it has seduced thousands of you."

Near the end of his life, Batters was rediscovered by German publisher Benedikt Taschen who produced three books of his work, including "From the Tip of the Toes to the Top of the Hose" and "Legs That Dance to Elmer's Tune".
Today, original photographic prints by Batters fetch up to $1500 among art collectors.

Dōmo arigatō, Mr. Roboto...

2011-11-27T20:53:00.000+02:00


Although his first prototype was an immediate hit with the ladies, the lack of cheap Taiwanese microprocessors in the 1920's forced Salvadore Dali to give up his career in robotics to pursue the more mundane path of a whacked out artist.

When Fritz Lang released Metropolis in 1927, he introduced the worlds first truly sexy evil robot babe on an unsuspecting society. The mad (?) scientist Rotwang actually invented a machine-man, ya see, but since this chick Maria was stirring up the workers like a damned socialist he and his evil rich cohort decided to give the machine-man her face. And tits. After the transsexual robot (who obviously has some major issues by now - hey, who wouldn't ?) pretty much fools everybody into thinking it's a hooker by dancing in an oriental themed whorehouse, anarchy ensues. But Maria saves the babies and gets her guy in the end. The robot is burned at the stake for witchcraft. Or for being a transsexual. Or for dancing badly. Take your pick.

1935 saw something completely different as the California Pacific International Exposition opened for a two year run in San Diego's Balboa Park. From the San Diego History Center:

"Of the five expositions held in the United States in the 1930's, the one in San Diego was the most distinct in appearance... While the antiseptic newness and extraordinary lighting of 1930's buildings provided a vision of change, in San Diego the fairytale Spanish-Colonial city, created for the 1915-16 fair, struck the spellbinding note. "

Featuring such breathtaking exhibits as the Palace of Better Housing, the Palace of Food and Beverages, the Palace of Education, the Palace of Water and Transportation and Queen Zorine of the Nudists, California wowed the crowds.

A colony of about fifty nudists read books, played handball and ate vegetables in Zoro Garden, at the northern tip of Gold Gulch (something like a Palace of the Wild West). Chief of Police George Sears saw that the women wore brassieres and G-strings, but he was apparently somewhat lax in enforcing that rule. The "Zoro" in Zoro Garden was the name of a bogus sun-god whose full name was supposed to be Zoroaster, the name of a Persian prophet btw- not the swashbuckling Mexican Hero.

Back in the Palace of Science "Alpha", a 2,000 lb. chrome-plated steel giant, received visitors. He answered questions, blinked his eyes, sat down, stood up, smoked cigarettes and fired a pistol on command . When Alpha was asked if he loved his wife, he replied ungallantly, "I've a heart of steel. I don't love nobody and nobody loves me." Typically he then took his pistol and smokes to go check out Zorine and her nudists.

get you some big man...

Robots hit the spotlight in various '50s sci-fi and horror films, usually symbolizing technology created for the good of mankind running amok - a lesson for children of all ages to forget that science gobbledegook and get their asses back to work on the farm.

For some strange reason women seemed not to fear the huge vibrating machines....

But robots weren't real picky, and sometimes interbred with Bigfoot.

By the 70's though things had turned around. Sure, they could still get screwed up and try to destroy earth, but now robots were being viewed more as an in-home convenience. No time to walk spot, do the dishes or zip up your dress? Science has an answer.

not sure what those cameras are zooming in on...

When the good Doctor and Time Lord introduced the world to the Daleks in 1963 we just knew it was only a matter of time until the evil salt shakers tried to make their name in the world of porn. I mean, come on- the thing is armed with a fucking toilet plunger and what else does one do with a toilet plunger (well, besides its literal use of course)?
They started with a good plan: after Katy Manning left the show in 1973 she quickly went over to the dark side, doing a Playboy shoot with Dalek #3 (the buff one). Playboy took a pass since she wasn't actually willing to show anything and judging by the British styles at the time they weren't quite sure she was actually a "she". But an Australian magazine with the uniquely creative title Girl Illustrated jumped all over them after the editor's toaster began mysteriously chanting "exterminate" for several nights in a row.

Disappointed by Hugh Hefner's failure to recognize good art, the Daleks reportedly launched a full scale attack on the Playboy mansion but were distracted at the last minute by a platoon of bunnies armed with toilet brushes.

It took them over 30 years to reprogram themselves but finally they got moving again in 2005 with Dr. Loo and the Filthy Phaleks. Sparing no expense they hired an all-star cast, including the UK's "number one porn queen" Alicia Rhodes. The film was directed by Gorgeous Gee, produced by Desperate Dee and featured McKenzie Lee. Jamie Bee was "best boy". I'm not making this shit up folks.

Ms. Rhodes plays Dr. Louise Flangebatter, who is traveling through time and space in her luxury time toilet The TURDIS when she meets up with damsel in distress Quimberly Dickmore. They travel together with house shag-bot Kay Nine to the planet Skrotum Four where they come face to face with the Lady Sodomi and her army of deadly oversexed Phaleks.

Dr. Loo aboard the Turdis.

Fast on the heels of this soon to be epic porn fail -I mean literally days after- they attempted to corner the soft-porn market with Abducted by the Daleks. Three apparently human females of East European descent -I say "apparently" because the acting infers that they may actually be the Daleks themselves wearing human suits- get lost in the woods where they inexplicably misplace their tacky disco dresses and have to simulate softcore lesbian petting to survive. A serial killer is loose in the woods, but before he can strike they get abducted by our kinky metal friends who duct tape them to a wall and shoot death rays at their platform shoes whilst farting voluminous amounts of fog.

I won't ruin the ending for you, but if you're sick enough to watch the video I will tell you that it does end. Don't claw your brain out.
Tip of the day- Dr. Loo was bad. Really bad.
But compared to this it's Oscar material.

The movie was actually so bad that they took their name off and retitled it "Abducted by the Daloids", but the damage was done. An anticipated sequel to Dr. Loo never got off the drawing boards and the Daleks were relegated back to playing second string to Dr. Who and doing commercials for real salt shakers.

Other robots tried to follow the Daleks into the Porn business, with mixed results.

Robby the Robot was born in the MGM props department sometime in the mid '50s, and made his acting debut in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. Fitting to his era, Robby had real class. An accomplished actor, he had the ability to play both evil and good robots with a typical steely resolve. He enjoyed a film career spanning over a half century and including many top TV series such as Lost in Space.

In 2004 Robby the Robot was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame.

You want some deep philosophical summary for this post ? I ain't got one. Honestly I have no idea how my mind got on this track to begin with. But once I started I had to see the thing through so there it is.

Hey, appreciate your toaster.

Bulgaria Post-Socialism, Part II: Panelki / Nudes

2011-11-13T20:12:00.000+02:00

The Microraion (Bulgarian / Russian: микрорайо́н), or "microdistrict" was a primary structural element of residential construction in the Soviet Union and is still used in some post-Soviet states.
The history of microdistricts as an urban planning concept dates to a high rate of urbanization in the 1920s, as residential complexes allowed for more careful and efficient planning of the rapid spatial expansion. These complexes were also seen as an opportunity to build a collective society, an environment suitable and necessary for the new way of life.
Typically, a microraion is a compact neighborhood with residential dwellings, schools, shops, entertainment facilities and green spaces.

In larger cities microraions are grouped into urban zones, and the concept was backed up with a reorganization of the Soviet construction industry. Panel block apartment buildings (Panelki) became widespread as they allowed for rapid construction, reduced cost and maximized the use of available land. In the collective Soviet society apartments were generally provided to residents at no cost so inexpensive construction was vital: the unadorned concrete exteriors and basic rectangular shapes are often lambasted as soulless and bleak, and construction itself was regularly sub-par. But the design worked.

Panelki in East Europe come in multiple configurations, but two are typical: a high rise of 7 to 20 floors and a longer design that generally has 5 floors or less. In larger buildings the ground floor usually features a variety of small shops or "magazines" which open onto the street. Although some later constructions are independent, most fall within the microraion plan and have two or more identical blocks around a central courtyard or green space: larger complexes may include a soccer field or school. The apartments themselves vary greatly, but it was common in Soviet times for two families to share a relatively large apartment with a central cooking area. Today these apartments have generally been converted into single family units and are quite spacious compared to newer urban constructions. Besides the bedrooms, toilet, kitchen and shower/wash room apartments almost universally include at least one small balcony and most have individual cellars for each apartment.

Unlike government-built housing estates in places like the United States and United Kingdom, panelki in eastern Europe are home to a mix of social classes, and there is little social stigma associated with living in them. Many apartments are well-appointed inside; in larger cities they were the first targets for upgraded telecommunication networks, as they typically combine a high concentration of people with easy access to underground and in-house spaces for cables.
Many flats are now the property of their inhabitants and whole buildings are managed by syndicates of flat owners. And many buildings have been renovated, often with the support of local governments.

Veteran's Day

2011-11-11T22:45:00.001+02:00

Gratitude to honorable soldiers, living and fallen.
To those who have started war from greed; from blind ambition and from perceived "heavenly righteousness", and to those who take arms against innocents: may some honorable warrior stand in your blood.

¡ Felíz Día de los Muertos !

2011-10-31T19:16:00.001+02:00

The Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) is a gathering to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died. In Mexico it is a national holiday (November 1st and 2nd) in connection with the Catholic holidays of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. Traditions include building altars honoring the deceased using sugar skulls, marigolds and the favorite foods and beverages of the departed, and visiting graves with these as gifts.

The festival originally fell in the ninth month of the Aztec calendar -about the beginning of August- and was celebrated for an entire month. The festivities were dedicated to the goddess Mictecacihuatl. In most regions of Mexico November 1 honors children and infants, whereas deceased adults are honored on November 2. This is indicated by generally referring to November 1 mainly as Día de los Inocentes ("Day of the Innocents") or Día de los Angelitos ("Day of the Little Angels") and November 2 as Día de los Muertos.

Jose Guadalupe Posada: (1852–1913) was a Mexican cartoonist, illustrator and artist born in Aguascalientes. His received an education from his older brother Cirilo, a country schoolteacher, and went to work as a teenager for Trinidad Pedroso who taught him lithography and engraving. In 1871 he took a job as the political cartoonist for a local newspaper which soon closed, reputedly because one of Posada's cartoons had offended a powerful local politician.

Posada's best known works are his calaveras, which often assume various costumes, such as the "Calavera Revolucionaria" and the "Calavera de la Catrina", which was meant to satirize the life of the upper classes during the reign of Porfirio Díaz: most of his imagery was meant to make a religious or satirical point. Since his death, however, his images have become associated with Día de los Muertos.

Largely forgotten by the end of his life, Posada's engravings were brought to a wider audience in the 1920s by the French artist Jean Charlot, who encountered them while visiting Diego Rivera. While Posada died in poverty, his images are well known today as examples of folk art.

Santa Muerte, also known as Santisima Muerte, literally translates to "Holy Death" or "Saint Death." She generally appears as a skeletal figure, clad in a long robe and carrying a scythe and a globe.
Most historians say its roots lie with Aztec spiritual rituals that mixed with Catholicism during Spanish colonial rule.
Santa Muerte has developed a large following in the last quarter century among Mexicans who had become disillusioned with the dominant church and, in particular, the ability of established Catholic saints to deliver them from poverty. The Catholic church has stated that some groups have begun revering Santa Muerte more than Jesus Christ and declared it a cult. Many followers of Santa Muerte live on the margin of the law or outside it entirely, and the church has strongly emphasized the connection between Santa Muerte and criminal gangs.\

Ephemeral Arts Part 1: Peter Donnelly, Sand Painting

2011-10-17T11:44:00.000+03:00

There are of course many, many schools of art and design ranging from abstract expression to photo-realism, and the form vs. function debate has continued for centuries at least. But something I want to focus on here is a slightly different philosophical dichotomy, that of the ephemeral versus the concrete.

Many artists working in traditional media such as painting, jewelry or sculpture create work with an express intent of that work becoming historical. And in fact the very value of the work is determined by this factor as those working with precious metals and gemstones can attest: these materials are valuable not only for their decorative qualities and scarcity but also -and perhaps primarily- for their qualities of longevity.

Yet artists also create simply for the joy of the creative process, and in this vein they often produce works which are ephemeral in nature: retaining no intrinsic concrete monetary value, but providing a brief glimpse of pure and unbridled creativity. Indeed, the actual concentration and physical issues involved in the creation of artifacts (What's my budget? Will that part break if somebody bumps it? How do I ship it?) often inhibit the creative process.

So, I'm going to look at some folks who simply create for the joy of creation.

New Zealand artist Peter Donnelly is a poet and expressionist, and has been publicly embracing the concept of "ephemeralism" for over a decade below the New Brighton pier in Christchurch. Eighteen kilometers of beach stretch along this area of the coast, and Donnelly uses the sand as his medium: creating large elaborate patterns in the brief period between tides.

Working without measures or even the ability to clearly see the entirety of his work from ground level, the natural time constraints turn his process of creation into a rhythmic dance. His tools are a simple rake and a pole. Donnelly claims that he doesn't work for the audience that regularly gathers on the pier above to watch his performance, although he welcomes their participation: an upturned hat lays nearby to collect coins tossed down by the viewers but otherwise he's unpaid.

He describes himself as a "symbolist".

In 2006, Valerie Reid produced the short film "Sand Dancer" documenting Peter Donnelly's philosophy and art.

hey, Google...

2011-10-12T23:44:00.003+03:00

Why don't you tear up some more shit under the auspices of giving us a "better platform" then leave it half finished for months?
Because, you know, we LOVE it when you break all of our toys then go play somewhere else with no excuses.

Bangbang

2011-10-11T13:52:00.000+03:00

Just some firearms related wierdness.

Gotta love naked midgets with AK47's.

Introducing the Ladybirds

2011-10-02T12:51:00.001+03:00

Before "Amanda" fused porn and metal in Rockbitch, catching Europe with their pants down- there were the Ladybirds.

The origins of the Ladybirds is vague at best. Although most sources claim they "hailed from New Jersey" there isn't any verification. Other unverified sources claim they were a UK band. According to an interview with burlesque queen "Satan's Angel" by Martin Hoyem in American Ethnography the band was started by San Francisco promoter Davey Rosenberg, who later started a second topless band The Hummingbirds once The Ladybirds went on tour. In March 1973 a topless all girl band known as the Ladybirds appeared at The Granary in Bristol, UK- although the article claims the band was Swedish it's possible that it was the same American band during a European tour. Alternatively we're looking at two (or more) separate topless all-girl bands with the same name and playing at the same time... well, it was the '60s.

To confuse things further, a fully dressed group called the Ladybirds opened for the Stones in 1965- apparently not the same group. With all the acid floating around, one would think girls could come up with an original band name ?

At any rate, they were definitely gigging in Las Vegas and Hollywood in the mid to late '60s: when
"The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield" was released in 1968 it included a clip of the band playing at the Blue Bunny club in Hollywood.

That same year there's a reference to them opening for the Yardbirds (September 8 1968- Fjordvilla club Paramount, Roskilde, Denmark)

Whoever they were- and wherever they came from, they were definitely some perky ladies.

"This photo shows the “Lady Bird’s” San Francisco’s first topless female band. They performed at Tipsy’s where the Big Al’s sign now hangs. When they first started out they were “air” musicians. After a few mishaps with the background tape recording they finally learned to really play their instruments"- Dick Boyd: Broadway North Beach, The Golden Years - A Saloon Keeper's Tales

Above: shots from a Bergen, Norway performance in 1968

From "The Wild Wild World of Jayne Mansfield", 1968

References:

The LADYBIRDS : Thursday 22nd March 1973 at the Granary (Bristol, UK)

'trippindiculous- more psychedelia

2011-09-14T18:30:00.000+03:00

Some vintage, mostly modern. Just some recent eyecandy I've come across...

Thomas Hart Benton- The Iconography of America

2011-09-08T16:50:00.000+03:00

Thomas Hart Benton (April 15, 1889 – January 19, 1975) was born in Neosho, Missouri, into an influential family of politicians and powerbrokers. As a result of his father's political career, Benton spent his childhood shuttling between Washington D.C. and Missouri, but he rebelled against his grooming for a future political career and decided to develop his interest in art. As a teenager, he worked as a cartoonist for the Joplin American newspaper.
In 1907 Benton enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago, but left for Paris in 1909 to continue his education at the Académie Julian. In Paris Benton met Diego Rivera and Stanton Macdonald-Wright, an advocate of Synchromism; a movement based on the idea that color and sound are similar phenomena and that the colors in a painting can be orchestrated in the same harmonious way that a composer arranges notes in a symphony.

Field Workers

Haying

Cut the Line

Benton moved to New York City in 1913 and resumed painting. During World War I he served in the U.S. Navy as a camoufleur, drawing camouflaged ships that came into Norfolk harbor to ensure that U.S. ship painters were correctly applying the camouflage schemes, aid in identifying U.S. ships that might later be lost and to record the ship camouflage of other Allied navies. He also made drawings and illustrations of shipyard work and life; the requirement for realistic documentation strongly affected his later style.

Boom Town

Engineer's Dream

In the Ozarks

Life in the City

In his personal work, Benton declared himself an "enemy of modernism" and began the naturalistic and representational work today known as Regionalism; an academic realism depicting American urban and rural scenes. Benton was active in leftist politics and strongly influenced by the works of the Spanish artist El Greco. He expanded the scale of his Regionalist works, culminating in his America Today murals at the New School for Social Research in 1930-31. These now hang in the lobby of the AXA building at 1290 Sixth Avenue in New York City.

Weighing Cotton

Strike, Fall River

During the Great Depression Benton broke through to the mainstream: in 1932 he won a commission to paint the murals of Indiana life that were the state's contribution to the 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago, Illinois. The Indiana Murals stirred controversy; he painted everyday people but he included a portrayal of the state's history that included some aspects which people did not want publicized, such as Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members in full regalia. On December 24, 1934, Benton was featured on one of the earliest color covers of Time magazine

Over the Mountain

Palisades

People of Chilmark

Poker Night

In 1935, after "alienating" both the left-leaning community of artists with his disregard for politics -and the larger New York-Paris art world with what was considered a "folksy" style- Benton left the artistic debates of New York for Missouri where he was commissioned to create a mural for the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City. A Social History of Missouri is perhaps Benton’s greatest work: as with his earlier murals, there was controversy over his portrayal of history: he included subjects of slavery, the Missouri outlaw Jesse James and political boss Tom Pendergast. But with his return to Missouri, Benton fully embraced the Regionalist art movement. He settled in Kansas City and accepted a teaching job at the Kansas City Art Institute: Kansas City afforded Benton greater access to rural America, which was changing rapidly. His sympathy was with the working class and the small farmers unable to gain material advantage despite the Industrial Revolution, and often show the melancholy, desperation and beauty of small-town life. Benton was dismissed from the Art Institute in 1941 after he called the typical art museum, "a graveyard run by a pretty boy with delicate wrists and a swing in his gait;" and made further references to the excessive influence of homosexuals in the art world.

Life in the West

Missouri State Capitol

After Many Days Persephone

Susanna and the Elders Retribution

During World War II Benton created a widely distributed series titled The Year of Peril, which portrayed the threat to American ideals by fascism and Nazism. Following the war Regionalism fell from favor, eclipsed by the rise of Abstract Expressionism: Benton remained active for another 30 years, but his work portrayed less social commentary and focused more on bucolic images of pre-industrial farmlands. Benton died in 1975 at work in his studio, just as he completed his final mural, The Sources of Country Music, for the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee.

Back Him Up- Buy War Bonds

The Source of Country Music

Bulgaria Post-Socialism, Part I: The Monuments

2011-08-23T21:17:00.004+03:00

Memorial Hall for the Bulgarian Socialist Workers; Concrete, Georgi Stoilov, 1981: Kazanlak

Hadji Dimitar was the leader of a small group of Bulgarian rebels, mortally wounded on July 30, 1868 while fighting the Turks on Buzludzha Peak near Kazanlak.

In 1891, a group of socialists lead by Dimitar Blagoev met on the same peak to plan for Bulgaria’s future, resulting in the birth of the Bulgarian Socialist Party.

In 1961 a monument was built to commemorate Hadji Dimitar's act of heroism: a marble figure of Dimiter is outlined against the green background of firs, cedars and pines.

In 1974 construction began on another monument to commemorate Blagoev's contribution to his country: designed by Georgi Stoilov, it took the equivalent of €14,186,000 ($20,387,292) and seven years to complete.

They didn't plant any pine trees.

Work on the monument was undertaken by units of the Bulgarian Army, and it consistedof a domed hall and a 70 foot tall pillar topped with an embedded red glass window in the shape of a star. The ceremonial hall is 42 meters in diameter and 14.5 meters high, decorated with 550 square meters of mosaics evoking the struggles of the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party and the construction of socialist society. In the balcony around the hall were 14 mosaics reflecting home life.
Layout of the monument took 18 months and involved over 60 artists, including Dimitar Kirov , Velichko Minekov and Valentin Starchev. The three staircases were decorated with combinations of white glass made by the Czech sculptor Stanislav Libenski.

For 8 years, from its opening in 1981 to the collapse of the government in 1990 the Memorial House hosted local party meetings, government functions and even annual youth discos.

After the government’s fall from power in 1989 the site was abandoned and left open to vandalism. All salvageable metal has since been removed by scrappers, and locals -allegedly spurred by rumors that the great red star in the pillar was actually made from rubies- shot it out. Their hopes for riches crumbled with the broken glass.

Even though almost all of the artwork has been removed or destroyed, the concrete structure still stands against the elements. There are no plans to renovate the building or surrounding area. Today it is popularly known as the "Kazanlak UFO".

"Aloysha" Monument to the Red Army; Granite, Kotsev, Topalov and Zankov, 1957: Plovdiv

Generally believed to be named after Alexei Skurlatov, a 22-year old Russian signaler who was among the first Soviet soldiers to enter Bulgaria in 1944, Alyosha stands vigil at the peak of the 300 meter Bunarjik hill in Plovdiv.

Begun in 1954 and officially opened three years later, the 10.5 meter (34 foot) granite statue was created by Bulgarian sculptures Radoslavov Kotsev, Topalov and Zankov. Around the base of the monument is a platform with a panoramic view of Plovdiv and the Rhodope Mountains.

“When one of my father's friends saw the monument 13 years later, he said, ”Alyosha! Brother!“ and wrote his name on the statue with chalk . Since then people have called it Alyosha,” explained Alexei Skurlatov’s daughter.

The monument has not been without controversy: after the collapse of the Soviet Union it was smeared with black paint and on one occasion hundreds gathered at the foot of the hill calling for it to be torn down. In the early 1990s the mayor of Plovdiv wanted to dynamite the monument, but as it would be necessary to evacuate a third of the city’s population the idea was rejected: as an alternative he attempted to have it covered with a gigantic Coca-Cola can, probably with some schemes of advertising profits.

Yet to many Alyosha still seems to convey a message:

“He turns to the East, with his back to those he fought against during WW2. He's a symbol of peace. His gun faces downwards – he doesn’t want war,” according to one Plovdiv Regional Governor.

Monument to Bulgarian-Soviet Relations; Concrete, Kamen Goranov, 1978: Varna

Built on Turna Tepe hill, where the Russian forces launched their successful attack on Varna during the Russian-Turkish War of 1828, the monument to the Bulgarian-Soviet friendship was constructed over a period of 7 months with the help of 27,000 volunteers. It comprises some 10,000 tons of concrete and app. 1,000 tons of steel.

Today the eternal flame has disappeared, and the original massive bronze letters of an inscription reading “Friendship for centuries throughout centuries” has been pried from the walls by metal thieves and most likely sold for scrap. The internal chamber of the monument which once housed local Communist party gatherings was recently being used as storage for old tires.

Founders of the Bulgarian State Memorial Complex; Concrete, Georgi Geshev, Blagoi Atanasov, 1981: Shumen

On the Ilchov Hill just outside of Shumen, the monument is dramatically visible within a radius of 30 kilometers (18 miles). A masterpiece of cubist art by a team of sculptors (Krum Damyanov and Ivan Slavov), architects (Georgi Gechev and Blagoi Atanasov), artists (Vlasislav Paskalev and Simeon Venov) and the engineer Preslav Hadjov, it stands 52 meters (170 feet) high at its peak.

The monument has little to do with Socialist propaganda (other than being funded with Rubles) instead focusing on the foundations of Bulgarian culture: built in honor of the anniversary of the establishment of the Bulgarian state, it depicts key moments in the history of the First Bulgarian Empire.

The architectural space consists of 8 units set at angles of 45°, 60° and 90° which result in the formation of two semi-halls resembling a spiral, a historical symbol of prosperity. The figure of a lion created from 2,000 individual granite slabs with a combined weight of 1,000 tons crowns the monument: behind its tail a stylized butterfly suggests the association with the metamorphoses in Bulgarian history.

The complex interior hosts statues of the Bulgarian Tsars Asparukh, Tervel, Krum, Omurtag, Boris I and Simeon I as well as the largest triptych mosaic in Europe.
The mosaic includes two elements; figures depicting rulers, men of letters, boyars and warriors are combined with type in runic letters, Glagolitic alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet.
In the first panel, “The Victors” warriors acclaim the Khan dressed in crimson; the second panel depicts the acceptance of Christianity and a third represents the brothers Cyril and Methodius with their disciples.

Defenders of Stara Zagora Memorial Complex; Concrete, Boris Davidkov, Blagoi Valkov, 1977: Stara Zagora

In the April Uprising of 1876, ethnic Bulgarians began a bloody rebellion against the Ottoman Empire sparking horrendous massacres by detachments of regular and irregular Ottoman troops (bashi-bazouks). The insurrection was suppressed within a month, and Eugene Schuyler -an American scholar, explorer and diplomat- reported after arriving in Bulgaria two months later an estimated 15,000 civilians were murdered. From Batak he wrote:

"...On every side were human bones, skulls, ribs, and even complete skeletons, heads of girls still adorned with braids of long hair, bones of children, skeletons still encased in clothing. Here was a house the floor of which was white with the ashes and charred bones of thirty persons burned alive there. Here was the spot where the village notable Trandafil was spitted on a pike and then roasted, and where he is now buried; there was a foul hole full of decomposing bodies; here a mill dam filled with swollen corpses; here the school house, where 200 women and children had taken refuge there were burned alive, and here the church and churchyard, where fully a thousand half-decayed forms were still to be seen, filling the enclosure in a heap several feet high, arms, feet, and heads protruding from the stones which had vainly been thrown there to hide them, and poisoning all the air...Since my visit, by orders of the Mutessarif, the Kaimakam of Tatar Bazardjik was sent to Batak, with some lime to aid in the decomposition of the bodies, and to prevent a pestilence...Ahmed Aga, who commanded at the massacre, has been decorated and promoted to the rank of Yuz-bashi..."

When the details became known in Europe the strongest reaction came from Russia, who declared war on the Ottomans on 24 April 1877. On July 31 of the same year a Turkish battalion of several thousand soldiers attacked the town of Stara Zagora, which was defended only by a small Russian detachment and Bulgarian volunteers.

The Russian troops fought under 5 flags which they had brought from their homeland; the last banner to fall was the flag of Samara, which was reportedly snatched from the grasp of a dying carrier by Lieutenant-Colonel P. P. Kalitin and carried forward until he himself was brought down by Turkish rifles. After a fierce 6 hour battle the remnants of the defenders were forced to surrender, the city was razed and an estimated 14,500 Bulgarians were massacred.

Eventually the Russians and their allies emerged victorious, with Russia accepting a truce offered by the Ottoman Empire on January 31, 1878. After almost five centuries of Ottoman domination (1396–1878), the Bulgarian state was reestablished as the Principality of Bulgaria, covering the land between the Danube River and the Balkan Mountains.

In 1977, one hundred years after these memorable events, the Memorial Complex was inaugurated on the same location as the defenders’ command post. The 50-meter (164 foot) tall concrete structure was designed to resemble the banner of Samara, with a window representing the cross and a ceramic mosaic in black, dark green and gold.
An ossuary was built into the foundation, and bronze statues of six Bulgarian volunteers and a Russian officer keep eternal watch from an adjacent rampart.

1300 Years Monument; Marble, Alexander Barov, Atanas Agura, Vladimir Romenski, 1981: Sofia

Slowly rotting behind a graffiti covered construction fence in Yuzhen Park in the center of Bulgaria's capital city Sofia, the monument was built to commemorate the 1,300th anniversary of the foundation of the Bulgarian State, part of a major nationwide building program to celebrate the event. Poor planning forced the architects and designers to rush the construction in order to meet the required date, and the monument was completed in only 8 months.

Almost immediately after the inauguration the monument began to collapse: the steel is poor quality, tiles were smaller than the ones specified and the joints were never properly sealed. After the collapse of the government in the early '90s maintenance of the memorial was completely abandoned by the authorities.

As the heavy tiles continued to peel away from the structure it became a public hazard; in preparation for a visit by Pope John Paul II in 2002 a steel security fence was erected, practically the only improvement implemented in the two decades since its construction despite -or possibly due to- long standing political disagreements on the merits of demolition vs. restoration. Ironically the fence has become something of an attraction in itself, serving as a canvas for the numerous graffiti artists in the area.

Intended as a centerpiece of the capital only 20 some years ago, today Lonely Planet lists the 1300 Years Monument as the 40th most important thing to see in Sofia -after "Kokolandia" playground and the Maleeva tennis courts. The monument itself is now hidden behind gigantic commercial billboards, perhaps with the hope that it will someday disappear on its own.

Memorial Complex and Monument to the Soviet Army; Marble, Granite and Bronze, Mitov Danko, Vasilyov Ivan, Luben Neykov, Kapitanov Boris,1954: Sofia

Conceived by the Bulgarian Communist Party Council of Ministers in 1949 to symbolize "the gratitude of the Bulgarian people to the Russian soldiers", construction for the landmark monument in downtown Sofia began on July 5, 1952: the 1954 opening was attended by Soviet Marshal Sergei Biryuzov.

The 37 meter tall central monument was designed by a team led by sculptor Ivan Funev and depicts a soldier of the Soviet army surrounded by male and female workers. The pedestal is surrounded with bronze bas-reliefs; the inscription, "the Soviet Army, liberator of grateful Bulgarian people" was originally installed using massive brass letters but these were stolen for scrap sometime in the 1990's (funding was later raised to carve the inscription into the granite itself). The entrance of the complex is framed with two sculptures and paved with granite, surrounded by large bronze oak wreaths.

Although the monument is maintained by the municipality, it is a traditional gathering place for young people (a large skateboard ramp is located adjacent to it) and perhaps naturally subject to continuous vandalism. Traditionally the graffiti has consisted of various anti-Soviet themes with no particular complexity or depth; however on June 17, 2011 the relief on the western side of the monument was crudely painted to depict heroes of American comic books: Superman, Joker, Captain America and others -along with Ronald McDonald and Santa Claus. The flag was painted with American stars and stripes and the inscription "In keeping with the times" was scrawled below.

Picked up by the media, this particular event quickly went viral and stirred an -until recently dormant- hornets nest both in Sofia and internationally: several anti-communism groups wishing the monument to be demolished were roused along with their conservationist counterparts, and an old debate over which parts of history should be relegated to the past was reignited. Along with this came the usual art vs. vandalism debates, a dialogue on free speech, and heavy condemnation from Russian itself. On "Facebook" over 1700 people (at 19:30 the following Monday evening) were against cleaning the monument. Prosecutors nonetheless initiated an investigation for hooliganism against an unknown perpetrator, while the municipality reported that it found "a cheap company" to clean up the graffiti: which in fact was done by volunteer activists of a Russian organization.

Today more than one hundred monuments built between 1945 and 1989 remain standing in Bulgaria, most of them unrecognized by the government and essentially ownerless. In most cases it is difficult to find information about their designers and history. Once a symbol of pride, most of these communist era monuments are neglected and ransacked due to lack of funding and a general apathy. To quote from the photo essay by Nikola Mihov:

"Regardless of whether they were built to commemorate the Soviet Army or the struggle against Ottoman rule, they all share one and the same fate: to be a silent symbol of the forgotten past."

A further issue is founded in Bulgaria's uncomfortable relationship with its past: as mentioned in a recent article on the Soviet Army Memorial in Sofia, "why should one keep monuments that were erected by a political regime, which committed crimes against its own people and/or was subservient to a foreign oppressor? Who erects and keeps monuments of their occupiers?"

Yet many of these pieces are artistic triumphs in their own right. Demolishing them to make room for new fast food joints, parking lots and strip malls in a country with some of the highest poverty rates in Europe seems to simply be trading the icons of one foreign oppressor for another. The "hooligans" who painted the Sofia monument certainly presented a very valid point.
Today I read an article which mentioned a new trend, "Communist Tourism": Romania is reportedly working on a "red circuit" tour to include traces of the communist dictatorship in the country and highlight places strongly associated with its communist past.

So who knows what the future holds for these decaying symbols...

References:
Communist Political Monuments in Bulgaria
Forget Your Past - Communist Era Monuments in Bulgaria, 2009 - 2011
The Challenges of Abandoned Architecture : Buzludzha Monument / Gueorguy Stoilov
The Soviet Army Monument in Sofia: Keep It but Explain It! -Novinite news, January 27, 2011

TIKI BAR !

2011-08-16T20:19:00.010+03:00

Hey, it's National Rum Day in the USA. Figgered this was fitting ;)

The first tiki bar was "Don the Beachcomber", opened in Los Angeles in 1933 by Ernest Gantt (aka "Donn Beach"). Gantt, a Texas native, had left home in 1926 and traveled around the world on his own, scouring many of the islands of the Caribbean and the South Pacific. A former bootlegger during Prohibition he moved to Hollywood in the 1930s.
The bar served a wide variety of exotic rum drinks (including the popular "Sumatra Kula" and "Zombie cocktail") as well as Cantonese food, and displayed artifacts that Gantt had collected on earlier trips through the tropics.

Sumatra Kula:

1/2oz lime juice

1/2oz grapefruit juice

1/2oz orange juice

1 1/2 oz light Puerto Rican rum

1/4oz honey melted with 1/4oz water

put in blender adding 3oz crushed ice

blend for five seconds

Gantt devised a menu of exotic rum based cocktails that complemented the theme of his new tropical establishment. Gantt referred to his newly created rum based libations as his “Rum Rhapsodies”. Rum was cheap and readily available in the years after Prohibition, and Gantt had sampled many varieties of it during his travels. Rum came in many varieties; light and dark, aged and unaged, strong, stronger and stronger still, and created layers of nuanced flavours when expertly mixed with each other, and with tropical ingredients like fresh fruit juices, almond, vanilla & cinnamon syrups, and ingredients like absinthe and bitters. Gantt’s new cocktails were innovative, flavourful and sophisticated, and they were an instant hit with his customers.

1950's version of The Zombie:

3/4 oz. fresh lime juice
1/2 oz. grapefruit juice
1 1/2 oz. unsweetened pineapple juice
1/4 oz. Falernum
1 1/4 oz. Puerto Rican gold rum
1 oz. Jamaican dark rum
1 oz. 151 proof Demerara rum
3/4 oz. Maraschino liqueur
1/4 tsp. Grenadine
2 dashes Angostura bitters
6 drops Pernod

Put all ingredients in a blender with ice, and blend for 5 seconds. Pour into a glass and garnish with a mint sprig.

Howard Hughes was a regular at the Hollywood Don the Beachcomber: a story persists that Hughes struck and killed a pedestrian one night while driving home after consuming too many Zombies at the bar .

Original "Don the Beachcomber"

When Gantt was sent to World War II, Don the Beachcomber flourished under his ex-wife's management, expanding into a chain of 160 restaurants.On his return to the States he opened "Waikiki Beach" in Hawaii which soon became a landmark, and famously featured a myna bird trained to shout "Give me a beer, stupid!"

The other canonical bar is Trader Vic's, the first of which was created by Victor Bergeron in Oakland, California, in 1936. The quintessential tiki cocktail the "Mai Tai" was concocted at the original Trader Vic's in 1944.

Bergeron expanded the business to eventually include branches all over the world, as well as marketing cocktail mixes and other products for retail sale. Members of the Bergeron family still have a hand in the operations of at least one branch.

The original Oakland location is gone, but there is still a Trader Vic's located a few miles away in Emeryville, California.

Original Trader Vic's Mai Tai

2 ounces of 17-year old J. Wray & Nephew Rum over shaved ice.
Add juice from one fresh lime.
1/2 ounce Holland DeKuyper Orange Curacao.
1/4 ounce Trader Vic's Rock Candy Syrup.
1/2 ounce French Garier Orgeat Syrup
Shake vigorously.
Add a sprig of fresh mint

The mai tai is considered to be the quintessential tiki cocktail. A protracted feud between Donn Beach and Trader Vic erupted when both claimed to have invented it.

The Original "Trader Vic's"

Most, if not all, tiki-themed establishments served at least some of their cocktails in ceramic mugs depicting tikis, also known as tiki mugs. The styles and sizes varied widely but generally the signature drink was served in it and it served as a take-home souvenir of the bar. Today the tiki mug is a highly prized find and is considered to be as much a symbol of the Tiki culture as a tiki itself.

Awesome Tiki Mug Collection

Today, Trader Vic's is the only major restaurant chain still in operation. However, a new Don The Beachcomber was opened in Huntington Beach, California in 2009—having taken over Sam's Seafood Restaurant/Kona. Sam's was also a long lived tiki-themed restaurant that dated back to the 1940s. It was sold in 2007 and the name was changed to Kona for a short period before the current owner of the Don The Beachcomber corporate name took it over. The opening of the Don The Beachcomber in Huntington Beach in 2009 marks the first appearance of the tiki brand eatery on the mainland United States in over 30 years.

The original Tiki bars flourished for about 30 years, but fell out of vogue in the modernist revolution of the '70s. In the 1990s, the Tiki culture was revived by a new generation of fans and new tiki bars were founded all over the world, often looking to Trader Vic's and Don the Beachcomber for inspiration. With the resurgence of tiki culture, a resurgence in the interest of the original exotic cocktails has grown as well. Jeff "Beachbum" Berry released several drink books containing the recipes for many of the signature drinks from long lost tiki restaurants and bars, as well as classic tiki cocktails from Trader Vic's and Don the Beachcombers.

I can't do a post on Tiki without a nod to Ciral's House of Tiki, one of my favorite haunts back in Chicago. Sad to hear it closed, but I don't remember much from my nights there anyway... place was open 'till 4:00 am and I don't think Ted ever served me a drink that wasn't at least 50% pure rum.
Ciral's was located just north of Jimmy's and the Hyde Park Metra stop on 55th Street. "Neighborhood locals as well as University of Chicago students and professors alike were lured to "The Tiki" for bamboozelment until the wee hours, 5am on Saturday night and 4am all other nights. Friday night was primetime at Ciral's."

At night, Ciral's was easily spotted via its "enormous, brightly multicolored neon "House of Tiki" sign (along with several beer signs) which made it look more like a 50's diner by day". I never had enough balls to try the food -usually showed up late and the clientele after midnight mostly consisted of crackheads and hookers drinking draft beer- but I heard it wasn't bad if you got in early.

Why Nixon ?

2011-08-06T17:33:00.007+03:00

...honestly, I dunno. He crossed my mind for some reason, then I stumbled across an article about him in a tabloid I peruse on occasion. Topper was a strangely out of place rendition of Ohio (CSN&Y); all completely random, all within a space of about 8 hrs -and creepily enough- within days of the 37th anniversary of his resignation (August 9 1974).
If the fucker shows up in my dreams it's gonna be ugly, I tell you. Ugly.
Now I'm gonna go dig out my copy of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and see what Thompson used for banishing demons...

Sources report that the hippie was later traded to Khrushchev for a washing machine.

""Isn't it better to talk about the relative merits of washing machines than the relative strength of rockets? Isn't this the kind of competition you want?"
-Remarks to Soviet premier Nikita Krushchev during the Kitchen Debate (24 July 1959)

Clockwise from top: Practicing his goosestep on the beach in CA.; Reading the Wall Street Journal to economic adviser Checkers; Sausage Fest in Uruguay; Getting ready to sow the seeds of revolution in CA.

"Archie is sitting here with his hippie son-in-law, married to the screwball daughter. The son-in-law apparently goes both ways. This guy. He's obviously queer — wears an ascot — but not offensively so. Very clever. Uses nice language. Shows pictures of his parents. And so Arch goes down to the bar. Sees his best friend, who used to play professional football. Virile, strong, this and that. Then the fairy comes into the bar...you know what happened to the Greeks? Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo. We all know that. So was Socrates."

-Reference to the sitcom "All in the Family": on audio tapes from 1971 as presented in "All the Philosopher King's Men" by James Warren in Harper's Magazine (February 2000)

Dancin' with a loose Yorkie

"...You don't have Nixon to kick around any more..."
-Press conference after losing the election for Governor of California, (7 November 1962)

Beer Bong Nixon

" ...people have got to know whether or not their president's a crook. Well I am not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."
-At a press conference in 1973

Above left: Watering the roof, a favorite Sunday pastime.
right: Honoring Native Americans who were really wishing they could still scalp white people.

"You know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags. Neither in a public way. You know what happened to the popes? They were layin' the nuns; that's been goin' on for years, centuries. But the Catholic Church went to hell three or four centuries ago. It was homosexual, and it had to be cleaned out. That's what's happened to Britain. It happened earlier to France.

Let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn, they root 'em out. They don't let 'em around at all. I don't know what they do with them. Look at this country. You think the Russians allow dope?"
-Tapes from 1971 as presented in "All the Philosopher King's Men" by James Warren in Harper's Magazine (February 2000)

Deciphering Elvis

"You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana are Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists."
-Statement (26 May 1971) as quoted in Newsweek (27 May 2004)

Nixon hated Rock and Roll.

"So few of those who engage in espionage — are Negroes. ... In fact, very few of them become Communists. If they do, they like, they get into Angela Davis — they're more the capitalist type. And they throw bombs and this and that. But the Negroes. — have you ever noticed? ... Any Negro spies?"
-Nixon, Haldeman, and Ziegler, 4:03 P.M., Oval Office Conversation #537-4; cassette #876 (5 July 1971)

Nixon mined coal just like you.

"I have the greatest affection for them [Negroes] but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs..."
-Tapes from 1971 as presented in "All the Philosopher King's Men" by James Warren in Harper's Magazine (February 2000)

Cringe moment for Sammy

Yo-yo fail on the stage of the Grand ole' Opry

"Well, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."
- Interview with David Frost (19 May 1977)

Often credited with opening Chinese relations, he was still skeptical about Dim Sum.

"I'm not for women, frankly, in any job. I don't want any of them around. Thank God we don't have any in the Cabinet."
- As quoted in The Rehnquist Choice (2001) by John Dean

Nixon: "I still think we ought to take the North Vietnamese dikes out now. Will that drown people?"

Kissinger: "About two hundred thousand people."

Nixon: "No, no, no, I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?"

Kissinger: "That, I think, would just be too much."

Nixon: "The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?...I just want you to think big Henry, for Christsakes."
-In conversation with Henry Kissinger regarding Vietnam, as quoted in Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. (2002) by Daniel Ellsberg

Preparing to ship failed astronauts to Siberia

"I may not know much, but I do know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad."
-Lyndon B. Johnson, when asked why he had not replied to a speech by then-Vice President Nixon. Quoted in Merle Miller, Lyndon, An Oral Biography (1980), p. 542

Scarfin' some poi in Hawaii, Nixon once again demonstrates that he doesn't hate ALL minorities.

"If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin." -Hunter S Thompson, He Was a Crook, 1 May 1994

Masters of Monochrome: Part V- Jeanloup Sieff

2011-07-05T17:21:00.002+03:00

Born in Paris in 1933, Jeanloup Sieff began experimenting with photography from the age of 14, when he received a Photax camera as a birthday present. World War 2 had only recently ended, and he began photographing the streets of Paris: beginning his exploration of the medium in much the same way as many of his contemporaries. In 1953 he enrolled at the Vevey School of Photography in Switzerland, and within a year he was working as a freelance reporter. By 1956 he was shooting for French fashion magazines and in 1958 he began work for the Magnum agency.

By the mid 1960s Sieff had worked for such agencies as Esquire, Glamour, Vogue and Harpers Bazaar and as his work was increasingly based in the United States he moved to New York city. Sieff was always trying new ways of shooting women's fashion, focusing his lens more on the models themselves rather than simply documenting the clothing.

Sieff also took unusual portraits of writers, actors and actresses, becoming famous for his images of dancers such as Claire Motte, Rudolf Nureyev and Carolyn Carlson. Fascinated by their long and lean bodies, Sieff tried to capture with his camera the daily struggles dancers go through at different stages of preparation.

Jeanloup Sieff's work is unmistakable. The clean modern elegance of his images is combined with a cool sensuality influenced by the "new wave" film-makers of the 50s. A personal erotic vocabulary in his nudes and fashion photography is evident; long bare backs, delicate curves and lingerie. Sieff's landscapes are almost surreal with rocks and grasses isolated in desolate terrain's, in contrast to his portraits which convey real human warmth.

Sieff was awarded the National Photography Grand Prix in 1992 and was named as a Knight of the Legion of Honour the same year. Jeanloup Sieff died in Paris, September 20, 2000 at the age of 66. His daughter, Sonia Sieff, is also a well known photographer.

References:
Jenloup Sieff Official Site

Masters of Monochrome: Part IV- Frantisek Drtikol

2011-06-23T17:40:00.003+03:00

František Drtikol (March 1883, January 1961) was born and raised in the Central Bohemian city of Příbram, in what is now the Czech Republic. Příbram was primarily a mining town, but by the end of the 19th century it had developed a reputation for its artisans and craftsmen as the miners and their families augmented their income with traditional skills like woodcarving and metalwork.

In 1901 Drtikol moved to Munich to study drawing and photography. The Art Nouveau movement was at its height: a movement defined by a desire to end all associations with classical themes and to combine both the fine and applied arts even to utilitarian objects, it also encompassed a philosophy that art itself should be a way of life. The great cities of Europe were being swept up in a wave of new design as everything from architecture to furniture adopted flowing curves and organic embellishments, and artists themselves were encouraged to adapt to multiple disciplines. Munich was a vibrant center of the movement, and by choosing to study photography -a relatively new medium combining science and art, technology and intuition- František Drtikol embraced it.

After four years of studies in Munich Drtikol returned to Prague for a brief period of apprenticeship with another photographer, then in 1910 he opened his own studio where he quickly developed a reputation as a portrait photographer. His clients included many of the most notable public figures of the day including then Czechoslovakian President Tomáš Masaryk, composer Leos Janacek and almost every artist living in or near Prague. Within a decade his studio was famous throughout Europe.But while portraiture was the means by which he supported his studio and made a comfortable living, Drtikol made his creative reputation through his nude studies. If his portraiture was elegant and refined, his nude studies were daring and inventive and the epitome of avant garde.

By the early 1920's Art Nouveau had been upstaged by Art Deco. Deco's linear symmetry was a distinct departure from the flowing asymmetry and organic curves of the Nouveau movement; it embraced influences from Cubism and Modernism, and drew its inspirations from ancient Egyptian and Aztec forms and introduced contemporaneous concepts of 'streamlining,'emphasizing reiteration of shape and form.
Also, while Art Nouveau had philosophical intentions, Art Deco was purely decorative. Drtikol was among the first photographers to incorporate the elements of Deco into his work, contrasting the suppleness and flexibility of the female body against solid and unyielding geometric forms while emphasizing the strength in both forms, human and geometric. It's never clear whether the geometry is echoing the body, or the body is echoing the geometry: the implied motion of the body is, perhaps, the characteristic that most distinguishes one form from the other.

"I let the beauty of the line itself make an impact, without embellishment, by suppressing everything that is secondary."

But retaining some of the Nouveau philosophy he still incorporated anything that could strengthen his compositions; besides the inclusion of Art Deco forms he borrowed the lighting techniques developed for the new moving pictures and integrated elements of expressive dance. He synthesized the modern and the classical, and the results were startling. Drtikol's approach essentially transformed the genre: most artists working in nude studies had concentrated on the body, but for Drtikol the nude became only one element of the piece: it had to work in coordination with the other elements of the composition.

Eventually Drtikol decided that even the human body wasn't malleable enough, and in 1930 he began to eliminate live models from his work, cutting forms out of stiff paper and shaping his compositions around those. Around this same time Drtikol became intrigued by Buddhism thought and practices and with the combined shift in his philosophy and the freedom that came from abandoning live models his work took on a more spiritual and ephemeral quality. Many critics also feel the work became more erotic as it became more abstract. Drtikol himself remarked that for the first time he was truly happy with his photography. In the 1920s and 1930s, Drtikol received significant awards at international photo salons.

That happiness lasted a mere five years: in 1935 Drtikol abruptly and without explanation stopped shooting photographs. The worldwide economic depression of that era and perhaps a spiritual movement towards a less material existence may have had an influence in his decision to close his Prague studio and sell all his prints, negatives and glass plates but for some reason he decided to begin painting again. In 1945 Drtikol taught photography at The State School of Graphic Arts in Prague, but resigned after one year: although he occasionally gave lectures Drtikol never again took up the camera. He gradually drifted into obscurity and his work fell out of fashion: by the 1950's František Drtikol was essentially a hermit.
František Drtikol died in Prague on January 13, 1961. He is buried in the cemetery of Příbram, his hometown.

References:
http://www.skjstudio.com/drtikol/index.html
http://weimarart.blogspot.com/2010/10/nudes-of-drtikol.html

Masters of Monochrome: Part III- Edward Weston

2011-05-31T17:38:00.101+03:00

Edward Weston and Margarethe Mather, 1922- (by Imogen Cunningham)

Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958) was born in Highland Park, Illinois, the second child and only son of Edward Burbank Weston, an obstetrician, and Alice Jeanette Brett, a Shakespearean actress. His mother died when he was five and he was raised mainly by his sister Mary: nine years older than Edward, they developed a very close bond that was one of the few steady relationships in his life.

As a young man Weston had little interest in books and he never finished high school. At 16 he received a Kodak Bulls-Eye box camera as a gift from his father, which he quickly became proficient with while photographing his aunt's farm and various parks around his home in Chicago. He developed his own film and prints, and at 17 (1903) his early photographs were exhibited at the Chicago Art Institute.
May had married in 1897, and in 1904 she moved with her family to California leaving Edward isolated in Chicago. He earned a living by taking a job at a local department store but he continued to spend most of his free time taking photos, and in 1906 he submitted his work to the magazine Camera and Darkroom who published a full-page reproduction of his picture Spring, Chicago. This is the first known publication of any of his photographs.

That same year he moved to California in order to be nearer to May. He worked for a brief time as a railroad surveyor, but he wanted more professional training in photography and after a fairly unproductive year he returned to Illinois in to enroll in the Illinois School of Photography for a nine-month course.Weston finished all of the class work in six months, but the school refused to give him a diploma unless he paid for the full class; he refused and moved back to California in the spring of 1908.

Back on the west coast he briefly worked at the George Steckel's studio in Los Angeles retouching negatives, but he soon moved to the more established studio of Louis Mojonier where he spent the next several years learning the more practical aspects of the business.
Sometime in the summer of 1908 Weston was introduced to his sister's best friend, Flora May Chandler. Flora was a second cousin to Harry Chandler, the head of "the single most powerful family in Southern California." Although Flora was not as wealthy as her cousins, Weston realized that she had enough money to allow him to start working full-time as a photographer and they were married in January 1909.

In 1911 Weston opened "The Little Studio", in Tropico California (now a neighborhood in Glendale) and spent the next three years working alone, making portraits of children and friends. Even with these mundane subjects he was highly particular about his work and he began to attract notice, winning prizes in national competitions as well as producing photographs and articles for magazines such as Photo-Era and American Photography.

Sometime in the fall of 1913 Los Angeles photographer Margrethe Mather visited Weston's studio because of his growing reputation, and within a few months they had developed an intense relationship. Mather was part of the growing bohemian cultural scene in Los Angeles; outgoing, artistic and flamboyant she presented a stark contrast to Weston's home life. He found her lifestyle irresistible and her photographic vision intriguing.
Mather became his studio assistant, and they worked together for the next decade making individual and jointly signed portraits of such luminaries as Carl Sandburg and Max Eastman.
Weston later described Mather as "the first important person in my life, and perhaps even now, though personal contact has gone, the most important."

In the summer of 1920 Weston met Roubaix de l'Abrie Richey ("Robo") and Tina Modotti, both of whom were part of a growing Los Angeles cultural scene. Weston and Modotti were immediately attracted to each other and they soon began an affair although Modotti and Robo were already in a long term relationship. The same year Weston began photographing nude models for the first time; his first models were his wife Flora and their children, but soon thereafter he took at least three nude studies of Mather and Tina Modotti became his primary model for the next several years.

In 1922 Weston visited his sister who had moved to Middletown, Ohio. While there he photographed the Armco steel mill, and these images signaled a transition from the soft-focus pictorialism of the past to a new, cleaner-edge style in his work. He recognized the change himself and later recorded in his notes:
"The Middletown visit was something to remember…most of all in importance was my photographing of 'Armco'…That day I made great photographs, even Stieglitz thought they were important!"

At that time New York City was the cultural center for photography as an art form in America, and from Ohio Weston continued east to spend most of October and early November there. While there he met the artist Charles Sheeler, photographers Clarence H. White and Gertrude Kasebier and finally Alfred Stieglitz himself.

Soon after Weston's return to California Robo -who had continued to be friends with Weston despite the affair with Modotti- moved to Mexico and set up a studio there to create batiks. He arranged for a joint exhibition of his work and photographs by Weston, Mather and a few others and in early 1923 Modotti left by train to be with him, but he contracted smallpox and died shortly before she arrived. Modotti was grief stricken, but she decided to stay and carry out the exhibition. The show was a success, and, due in no small part to his nude studies of her, it firmly established Weston's artistic reputation.
After the show closed Modotti returned to California and made plans with Weston to return to Mexico together. In July Weston, his son Chandler and Modotti left California for Mexico City and within a month of their arrival he had arranged for an exhibition of his work at the Aztec Land Gallery. The show opened to glowing press reviews, and his reputation in Mexico increased the longer he stayed. He had a steady stream of local socialites asking him to take their portraits, but at the same time he began a correspondence with Miriam Learner, a woman he had known for several years.

He and Chandler returned to San Francisco at the end of 1924, and he started a new series of nudes with Lerner but the relationship didn't last long and he returned to Mexico less than a year later, this time with his son Brett. Modotti had arranged a joint show of their photographs and it opened the week he returned; six of his prints were purchased for the State Museum.
In May 1926 Weston signed a contract with writer Anita Brenner for $1,000 to photograph folk art for a book she was writing. In June he, Modotti and Brett started traveling around the country in search of lesser known native arts and crafts and it took him until November of that year to complete the work.
By the time they returned from the trip their relationship had crumbled, and within less than two weeks he and Brett returned to California. He never traveled to Mexico again.

In 1929 he moved to a cottage in Carmel, and it was there that he finally found the solitude and the inspiration that he was seeking. That same year Weston met photographer Sonya Noskowiak at a party and by the end of the month they were living together.
Intrigued by the many kinds and shapes of kelp he found on the beaches near Carmel, in 1930 Weston began taking close-ups of vegetables and fruits. He made a variety of photographs of cabbage, kale, onions, bananas, and finally, his most iconic image, peppers. In August of that year Noskowiak brought him several green peppers, and over a four-day period he shot at least thirty different negatives. Of these, Pepper No. 30, is among the all-time masterpieces of photography.

In 1932, The Art of Edward Weston was published, the first book devoted exclusively to Weston's work.
During the same time a small group of photographers in the San Francisco area led by Van Dyke and Ansel Adams began informally meeting to discuss their common interest and aesthetics. Inspired by Weston's show at the De Young Museum the previous year, they approached the museum with the idea of mounting a group exhibition of their work. They named themselves Group f/64, and in November, 1932, an exhibition of 80 of their prints opened at the museum. The show was a critical success.
In 1933 Weston bought a 4 × 5 Graflex camera, which was much smaller and lighter than the large view camera he had used previously: the smaller camera allowed him to interact more with his models, and the nudes he took during this period began to resemble some of the contorted roots and vegetables he had taken the year before.

In early 1934 Weston he met Charis Wilson and they entered into an intense relationship. He was still living with Noskowiak at that time but within two weeks he asked her to move out, declaring that for him other women were "as inevitable as the tides".
On March 22, 1937, Weston was awarded a Guggenheim grant, the first ever given to a photographer. The award was $2,000 for one year, a significant amount of money at that time. He purchased a new car and along with Charis set out on his dream trip to go and photograph whatever he wanted. Over the next twelve months they made seventeen trips and covered 16,697 miles according to Wilson's detailed log, shooting 1,260 negatives. A year later Weston commissioned his son Neil to build a small home in the Carmel Highlands on property owned by Wilson's father. They named the place "Wildcat Hill" because of the many domestic cats that soon occupied the grounds. Wilson set up a writing studio in what was intended to be a small garage behind the house, and she spent several months writing and editing stories from their travels.

When the United States entered World War II Point Lobos was closed to the public for several years. Weston continued to work on images centered on Wildcat Hill, including shots of the many cats that lived there. He treated them with the same serious intent that he applied to all of his other subjects, and Charis assembled the results into their most unusual publication, The Cats of Wildcat Hill, which was finally published in 1947.

A few years later Weston began to experience the first symptoms of Parkinson's disease, a debilitating ailment that gradually stole his strength and his ability to photograph. He withdrew from Wilson, who at the same time began to become more involved in local politics and the Carmel cultural scene. While working on a major retrospective exhibition for the Museum of Modern Art, he and Wilson separated; Weston returned to Glendale since the land for their cabin at Wildcat Hill still belonged to Wilson's father, but within a few months she moved out and arranged to sell the property to him.

By late 1948 he was no longer physically able to use a large view camera. That year he took his last photographs, at Point Lobos: his final negative was an image he called, "Rocks and Pebbles, 1948".
Although diminished in his capacity, Weston never stopped being a photographer. He worked with his sons Cole, Brett, and Brett's wife Dody Warren to catalog his images and oversee the publication and printing of his work.
Weston died at his home on Wildcat Hill on New Year’s Day, 1958. His sons scattered his ashes into the Pacific Ocean at an area then known as Pebbly Beach on Point Lobos: the beach was later renamed Weston Beach. He had $300 in his bank account at the time of his death.

References:

Edward Weston Official Site

Masters of Monochrome: Part II- Man Ray

2011-05-28T10:13:00.004+03:00

Emmanuel Radnitzky (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Russian immigrant parents. In 1897 the family moved to Brooklyn, New York and in early 1912 they changed their surname to Ray in reaction to a prevaling ethnic and religious discrimination; Emmanuel, who had been nicknamed "Manny" as a child, changed his first name to Man at the same time.
Man Ray's father was a garment factory worker and ran a small tailoring business on the side which involved everyone in the family at some level. Despite his later attempts to disassociate himself from his family background, this left an enduring mark on his art and various props such as tailor's dummies, flat irons, sewing machines and other items relating to this period appear at practically every stage of his work.

His early education at Boys' High School provided him with a foundation in drafting and other basic art techniques: at the same time he was a frequent visitor to local art museums where he studied the Old Masters. After graduation from high school he was offered a scholarship to study architecture but chose to pursue a career as an artist instead.

Above Left: Object Intended to be Destroyed, 1923 Right: Gift, 1921

As a young man he was also a regular visitor to Alfred Stieglitz's 291 gallery, where he was exposed to current art trends and earned an early appreciation for photography.
In 1915 he met the French artist Marcel Duchamp, and he soon abandoned conventional painting to immerse himself in the radical Dada "anti-art" movement. Following Duchamp's lead he began making "objects", and developed unique mechanical and photographic methods of making images.
In 1920 Ray helped Duchamp create one of the earliest examples of kinetic art, Rotary Glass Plates composed of glass plates turned by a motor. That same year he founded the Société Anonyme along with Duchamp and Katherine Dreier, an itinerant collection which in effect was the first museum of modern art in the U.S., and worked with Duchamp on New York Dada in 1920.

Yet Man Ray felt that the experimentation of the Dada movement was lost in the chaotic society of New York, writing “Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival.”

Above: Alice Prin (Kiki de Montparnasse)

In 1921 Man Ray moved to Paris and quickly associated with the Parisian Dada and Surrealist circles of artists and writers. He settled in the Montparnasse quarter, met and fell in love with Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin), an artists' model and celebrated character in Paris bohemian circles who became the subject of some of his most famous photographic images. In 1929 he began a love affair with the Surrealist photographer Elizabeth "Lee" Miller. Inspired by the liberation promoted by these groups, he experimented with many media but particularly with photography: he began to produce photograms by placing objects directly on light-sensitive paper, which he called rayographs and in 1922 a book of his collected rayographs, Les Champs délicieux (“The Delightful Fields”) was published with an introduction by the influential Dada artist Tristan Tzara. In 1929 Man Ray also began experimenting with solarization, which renders part of a photographic image negative and part positive by exposing a print or negative to a flash of light during development. He was one of the first artists to use the process for aesthetic purposes.

Man Ray directed a number of influential avant-garde short films such as Le Retour à la Raison (2 mins, 1923); Emak-Bakia (16 mins, 1926); L'Étoile de Mer (15 mins, 1928); and Les Mystères du Château de Dé (20 mins, 1929). He also assisted Marcel Duchamp with the cinematography of his film Anemic Cinema (1926), and personally manned the camera on Fernand Léger's Ballet Mécanique (1924). Man Ray also appeared in René Clair's film Entr'acte (1924), in a brief scene playing chess with Duchamp.

Above: Lee Miller

During this time he also pursued fashion and portrait photography, and created a virtually complete photographic record of the celebrities of Parisian cultural life during the 1920s and '30s. Many of his photographs were published in magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Vu, and Vogue. He continued his experiments with photography through the genre of portraiture. He also continued to produce ready-mades: one, a metronome with a photograph of an eye fixed to the pendulum, was called Object to Be Destroyed (1923)- which it was by anti-Dada rioters in 1957.

When the Brussels-based art magazine Varits was unable to pay a printers' bill in 1929 it was suggested that they publish an erotic edition to raise working capital; Louis Aragon approached Man Ray for some photographs to include in the volume, and was presented with a sheaf of closely cropped pornographic prints featuring a couple widely assumed to be Kiki Montparnesse and Man Ray himself. The edition was entitled simply 1929, and some 500 copies featuring four of the photos were printed. Most of them were promptly seized by French Customs, but the few copies that got through were soon on sale clandestinely in Paris at greatly inflated prices. (1929, by Benjamin Pret, Aragon and Man Ray is currently published by Alyscamps Press, Paris & London, ISBN 1897722 885).

Above: Merrit Oppenheim

In 1963 he published his autobiography, Self-Portrait, which was republished in 1999.

In an interview with Jacqueline Goddard some years later she described how she walked with him around Montparnasse cemetery on a rainy night not long after Lee Miller left him, listening to his threats of murder and suicide as a pistol clinked in his raincoat pocket; she saw Kiki begging in the Montparnasse cafes where she once reigned as queen, supposedly to pay the gas and light bills but actually to buy cocaine; she visited him in his last home, on rue Ferou, and watched as, unnoticed by the invalid Ray or his near-blind wife Juliet, the dealers and admirers slipped his more portable prints and objets under their fashionably flowing overcoats.

In 1940 Man Ray escaped the German occupation of Paris by moving to Los Angeles. A few days after arriving in California he met dancer and model Juliet Browner; they began living together almost immediately, and were married in 1946 in a double wedding along with their friends Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. But he always considered Montparnasse his home and he returned in 1951.

Man Ray died in Paris on November 18, 1976 of a lung infection, and was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris. His epitaph reads: unconcerned, but not indifferent. When Juliet Browner died in 1991, she was interred in the same tomb. Her epitaph reads, together again.

At a time when photography in the United States and Europe was focused on skilled technique, Man Ray took the medium into the sphere of true surrealism: utilizing his techniques of solarization and photograms to go beyond the constraints of merely recording scenes and effectively creating a new form of imagery.

References:

Man Ray Short Films Collection
The Man Ray Trust
Man Ray Laid Bare: Tate Magazine, issue 3

Masters of Monochrome: Part I- Helmut Newton

2011-05-23T16:49:00.006+03:00

As you may have noticed by now, this blog covers a lot of random shit and basically serves as a sort of notepad for the various tracks my mind wanders off on.

Of course I have an inordinate amount of photography here, and I often wonder if it's just going to become another one of those countless photography blogs... but that seems to be what piques my interest these days so I'm just gonna roll with it.

I've done this to some extent already with my random articles on Bellocq, Brassai and Alfred Cheney Johnston, but in that same vein -at least until I get bored with the topic or something shinier flits by my peripheral vision- I'm going to start looking in relative depth at some of the more "classic" (i.e., famous) photographers that I particularly like, particularly (but not exclusively) at their erotic works.

So forgive me if the chaos becomes slightly ordered for awhile. I'll get over it.

"I am like a lot of people.One sits on the beach, or on a café terrace and one looks around,mostly at women. And if I have really nothing to do I start spinning a tale for myself which is one of the most pleasant ways of spending a half hour. This time of year is the best, there are very few people left on the beach. Somehow it happens that every season there is a woman that -- last year there was one, she was German. I spun a tale around her. It was interesting. I never saw her face until the last day, but she had the most extraordinarily beautiful body. I knew she was German because she was reading a book, something like Learning French. Her body was just unbelievable but then I saw her face - Some guy picked her up the last day, which amused me too, and only then I saw her. She had the most uninteresting, the most boring face, with a fleeing chin. She wasn't even ugly, had she been ugly it would have been more interesting. If you wanted to make love to her you would really have to put a bag over her head. To me this is all very European, I don't spin this kind of tale in America." - Helmut Newton in an interview with Frank Horvat, Monte Carlo, October 1986

Helmut Neustädter (October 31, 1920 – January 23, 2004) was born in Berlin to a German-Jewish factory owner and an American mother. Due to a passion for photography which started as early as twelve, he dropped out of school at 16 to pursue an apprenticeship with the German photographer Yva (Elsie Neulander Simon).
The increasingly oppressive Nazi regime took control of his father's button factory, and his father was briefly interned in a concentration camp. By the advent of 'Kristallnacht' the family was compelled to leave Germany; Neustädter's parents fled to Chile, and he himself left Germany in December 1938. At Trieste he boarded the 'Conte Rosso' (along with about 200 other civilians escaping the Nazis) intending to journey to China, but on his arrival in Singapore he took a reporting job for the Straits Times and began working as a portrait photographer.
Unfortunately, once German hostilities progressed Neustädter found himself interned by the British authorities in Singapore; he was sent to Australia on board the Queen Mary, arriving in Sydney in September 1940 where he spent the next two years in the Tatura internment camp. On his release in 1942 he briefly worked as a fruit picker in northern Victoria, but soon enlisted with the Australian Army and worked as a truck driver for the remainder of the war.

Helmut Neustädter became an Australian citizen in 1945 and the following year he changed his name to Helmut Newton. Opening a studio in Melbourne's fashionable Flinders Lane, he began working in fashion and theater photography through the affluent early post-war years: in 1948 he married actress June Browne who later became a successful photographer in her own rights under the pseudonym Alice Springs (after Alice Springs, the central Australian town). Newton shared his first joint exhibition in May 1953 with Wolfgang Sievers, a fellow German refugee. The exhibition of 'New Visions in Photography' was displayed at the Federal Hotel in Collins Street and was probably the first glimpse of the 'New Objectivity' photography movement in Australia.
Newton later went into partnership with Henry Talbot, another German Jew who had also been interned at Tatura, and his association with Talbot continued even after he left Australia for London.

In January 1956 Newton's growing reputation as a fashion photographer secured him a commission for a special Australian supplement of the British Vogue magazine. He left for London in February 1957 on a 12-month contract, but he wound up breaking it when he was sternly informed by the editor -after taking a model onto the streets during an early assignment- that "... ladies, Helmut, do not lean against lampposts."
He immediately went to Paris where he began working for French and German magazines, but returned to Melbourne in March 1959 with a new contract from the Australian offices of Vogue.

Above: Selected images from Big Nudes: Paris, Editions du Regard, 1981

Newton returned to Paris in 1961 and continued work as a fashion photographer. His shots appeared regularly in magazines including French Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and by now he had established a particular style marked by erotic stylized scenes, often using sado-masochistic and fetishistic subtexts.
In 1970 at the age of 50 he suffered a heart attack which significantly slowed his work, but his notoriety continued to increase; most notably with his 1980 "Big Nudes" series, which marked the pinnacle of his erotic-urban style. But Newton also had a growing reputation for his portraiture, and was becoming highly sought after by the elite of the era.

Above: "Exposed" : Nastassja Kinski & James Toback, Playboy Magazine, May 1983

Newton and Benedict Taschen with
one of the first copies of Sumo, 1999

Newton shot a number of pictorials for Playboy including sets of Nastassja Kinski and Kristine DeBell. Original prints of the photographs from his August 1976 pictorial of DeBell, "200 Motels, or How I Spent My Summer Vacation" were sold at auctions of Playboy archives by Bonhams in 2002 for $21,075, and another set by Christies in December 2003 for $26,290. All Newton's exhibitions were curated by his wife June; she also edited his books, including: White Women (1976), Sleepless Nights (1978), Big Nudes (1978), World Without Men (1984) and the massive Sumo (1999), a 464 page book which left the press at 20 x 27.5 inches and weighs some 66lbs. Sumo was published in a signed, limited edition of 10,000 copies and included its own custom designed coffee table in the package: the original publishing price was £625 and copies are currently selling at £9000 (app. $14,515 USD)

Below: "200 Motels, or How I Spent My Summer Vacation", Kristine DeBell, Playboy Magazine, August 1976

In his later life Helmut Newton lived between Monte Carlo and his "Chateau Marmont" in Los Angeles, California. Celebrating 51 years of marriage in 1999, their joint exhibition and book, Us And Them, included Alice's photo of him wearing nothing but black stockings and his personal portrait of her lying on a hospital bed following a major operation, wearing a catheter and a huge metal zipper running up her stomach.
On January 23, 2004 his car accelerated out of control and hit a wall in the driveway of Chateau Marmont. Helmut Newton died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. His ashes are buried next to Marlene Dietrich at the Städtischer Friedhof III in Berlin.

Newton was fond of his hometown of Berlin, and in October 2003 he donated an extensive photo collection to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, establishing the Helmut Newton Foundation. The foundation's mission is the conservation, protection and presentation of the oeuvre of Helmut Newton and Alice Springs.

References:

Frank Horvat Interview with Helmut Newton
The Helmut Newton Foundation

Jamie Baldridge Photography: more beautiful weirdness.

2011-05-16T12:53:00.002+03:00

Born in 1975 "in a very small town in the Deep South" of the United States, Jamie Baldridge's images retell the fables from "101 Fairy Tales" a childhood storybook he once discovered in his grandmother's attic, along with other recognizable iconography from mythology and religious dogma acquired through his early studies in theology and creative writing at Louisiana State University. In 2005 he received a MFA in photography from the same University.

In his interpretations of these stories implanted in his subconscious, the characters emerge at once in settings that are both surreal and visceral. Baldridge adapts a digital work flow to his photography, rendering up to 20 negatives together with 3D modeling software to create individual collages with the depth and lustre of paintings.

Jamie Baldridge currently resides in Lafayette, LA where he is professor of photography at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His work and writings can be found in many collections, including The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The Rare Books collections of the Library of Congress, Cornell University, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, The University of Colorado at Boulder, The Rhode Island Institute of Technology, and McNeese University’s Abercrombie Collection. The Everywhere Chronicles, his first book, has just been released by 21st Editions.

A Quiet Regency Study

Annunciation

Balancing Gibraltar

The Perils of Lepidoptery

Ellevenses

The Socrates Safe Co.

Visitation

Vox Dei, 3rd Movement

References:
Fogged Clarity Arts Review
The Vault Gallery
Modernbook Gallery
The fantastic fantasy world of Jamie Baldridge by Ella Wredenfors: Citylife Magazine, November 2008
ARTBOOM
Jamie Baldridge Home

just sayin'...

2011-05-08T13:10:00.007+03:00

from the Broward-Palm Beach New Times article "Why Obama was wrong" on releasing the Bin Laden death photos. Which, as an occasional freelance journalist, I agree with to a certain extent. But the other 90% of me simply keeps humming "...ding dong the witch is dead...".

Now it's time to send his flying monkeys to hell. Because I always hated those fucking monkeys too.
Congratulations to the President, the intelligence sources at the C.I.A. (never thought I'd say that) and especially to the United States Navy S.E.A.L.S.

The Art of Rock -Part I: 1960's Fillmore and Avalon Concert Posters

2011-05-01T18:03:00.005+03:00

Putting the psychedelic back into this blog.

The Fillmore Auditorium & Fillmore West:
San Francisco’s Fillmore West had its beginnings in 1912 as the Majestic Hall, an Italianate-style dance hall at the southwest corner of Fillmore and Geary. Wednesday night socials and masquerade balls were the usual fare, which were held on the second and third floors. In the Thirties the Fillmore was primarily a dance hall (with names such as The Get Acquainted Society and the Ambassador Dance Hall); in the Forties it was a roller rink and in the Fifties Charles Sullivan booked some of the biggest names in black music such as James Brown, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Ike & Tina Turner.

In the early 1960s transplanted New Yorker Bill Graham was invited to attend a free concert in Golden Gate Park where he met the radical theater group The San Francisco Mime Troupe. When Mime Troupe leader Ronny Davis was arrested on obscenity charges Graham organized a benefit concert to cover the legal fees. The concert was a success, and Graham saw a business opportunity: he approached Charles Sullivan who still owned the master lease on the Fillmore Auditorium.
The Second Mime Troupe appeals concert was held at the Fillmore on December 10, 1965 using Sullivan's dance hall permit for the show. Graham later secured a contract from Sullivan for the open dates at the Fillmore Auditorium in 1966.

Due to a deteriorating neighborhood and the modest capacity of the hall Graham moved the venue in July 1968 from the original building to the Carousel Ballroom at 10 South Van Ness Avenue and renamed it the Fillmore West in contrast with his Fillmore East auditorium in the East Village in New York City.
The original Fillmore location became a venue called The Elite Club, and punk promoter Paul Rat booked punk rock shows at the venue for several years. It was later reopened under Graham's management in the mid-1980s but it was damaged and closed by the Loma Prieta earthquake of October 1989. Graham died in a helicopter crash in 1991, but according to his wishes the original Fillmore was re-opened on April 27, 1994, and has once again become a San Francisco hot spot. Live Nation has recently begun a campaign to expand the Fillmore "brand" by changing the names of a number of established clubs it owns around the U.S.

The Avalon Ballroom:
The building that housed the Avalon Ballroom was built in 1911 and was originally called the Colin Traver Academy of Dance. The Avalon as we knew it was founded in 1966 by Robert E. Cohen and Chet Helms along with Family Dog Productions, which had offices on Van Ness. The Avalon occupied the two top floors of the multi-story building: an L-shaped, second-floor balcony surrounded the first-floor along the south and western walls, and the dance area was in front of the elevated stage in the northeast corner where musicians performed. The Avalon was not as large as the Winterland or The Fillmore, but it still had a capacity of up to 500.

Family Dog

Family Dog had a hippie commune a block away from the Avalon at 1812 Bush Street, frequented by Helms and his friends. To spread the word about its live events the group hand-picked a small army of graphic artists to design promotional posters and handbills. The most influential of this group became known as the San Francisco Five, comprised of Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscosco, Stanley Mouse and Wes Wilson. They would go on to produce some of the most iconic and memorable imagery in the history of rock and roll.

Bands were frequently booked to perform at the Avalon on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. In the 1960s two bands typically performed two sets each beginning at about nine o'clock. The Grateful Dead recorded their two live albums -Vintage Dead and Historic Dead- here in the autumn of 1966.
The Avalon lost its lease in November 1968 and the space was converted to a movie theater. In 2003 Steve Shirley (aka Morning Spring Rain) of the Hog Farm commune restored and re-opened the Avalon Ballroom as part of the Regency Center, a music hall and special-events space.

References:

The Fillmore current home

the Family Dog

The Avalon Ballroom

Stanley Mouse Studios
Victor Moscoso
Rick Griffin Ink
Wes Wilson