Posts Tagged ‘Salvador Dali’
The Face of War*…
Claire Felicie photographed the faces of 20 Dutch Marines before, during, and after their tour of duty in Afghanistan. From first photo to third, only 12 months passed, but the extraordinary trials that her subjects experienced is written on their faces.
Read the story at Slate; see this series– “Here Are The Young Men” (after a Joy Division song)– and more of Felicie’s work on her site.
* Readers will know the title of this post as the title of a Salvador Dali painting…
The Face of War
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As we release the doves, we might recall that it was on this date in 1097, during the First Crusade, that Robert II, Count of Flanders and Adhemar of Le Puy led their Christian troop in a charge across the fortified bridge over the Orontes River, 12 miles from Antioch, opening the way for their advancing army, and setting the stage for The Siege of Antioch, which began the next day and ended on June 2, 1098.
The Levant Crusades finally ended in 1291, as the last of the Christian military orders was evicted from the region, and the King of Egypt captured Acre.
The Siege of Antioch, as depicted in a 15th-century miniature painting
Faux Logo…
Luis Gispert was photographing car interiors when he stumbled upon a kitschy white Cadillac Escalade, its seats upholstered in fake material from Takashi Murakami’s 2009 collaboration with Louis Vuitton. While the owner showed off his pimped-out ride, the wheels turned in Gispert’s head. “I figured there had to be so many cars with counterfeit interiors”…
This inspired a two-year “obsessive quest” to document a subculture of people crafting custom designs from counterfeit materials. Gispert attended car shows across the country and captured interiors bedazzled with logos, from a Burberry-upholstered BMW to a Gucci-themed Mercedes. Honing in on the culture itself brought Gispert to more-intimate spaces, like the home of a Florida-based drug dealer, whose bedroom was decorated with Versace’s signature Greek Key motif. Gispert’s photographic journey is the subject of an upcoming solo exhibition, Decepcion, at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York [open now]…
He spent a year capturing cars before turning his lens on the owners themselves—many of whom had closets filled with backpacks, sneakers, and jackets custom-made from fake designer materials. Gispert’s project evolved to incorporate portraits of men and women modeling counterfeit fashion, such as a DJ clad in a pleather MCM jumpsuit…
Designer customization was born in the early 1980s, when a haberdasher named Dapper Dan began selling one-of-a-kind Louis Vuitton boots and $8,000 custom Gucci jackets out of his boutique in Harlem. “He was likely cutting up actual Gucci bags and using the materials to make jackets and luxury car interiors,” said Gispert. Dapper Dan’s clientele consisted of drug dealers—until LL Cool J and Mike Tyson took the street trend mainstream…
Unlike Canal Street vendors, Gispert’s subjects aren’t trying to pass off their creations as authentic. “These people are appropriating the material, the actual logos and fabrics, but they’re not trying to mimic high fashion,” he explained. One photograph from the series features a woman wearing a Louis Vuitton dress that Gispert described as “some kind of nightgown, flamenco hybrid.” It looks nothing like Louis Vuitton couture, yet it’s splattered with the designer’s cult logo. “In a way these people are hijacking signs of wealth, bastardizing logos and turning them into something completely unique.”
Read the entire tale at The Daily Beast, and see a selection of Gispert’s arresting photos on his site.
As we reckon with the collision of High and Low, we might wish a fashionable Happy Birthday to Coco Chanel’s greatest rival, Elsa Schiaparelli; she was born in Rome on this date in 1890. Schiaparelli, who collaborated with artists including Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau, and Alberto Giacometti to dress socialites (like Daisy Fellowes) and celebrities (like Mae West) was frequently dismissed by Chanel as “that Italian artist who makes clothes.” While Schiaparelli is not as well remembered as Chanel, Schiaparelli made lasting contributions to fashion: she created wraparound dresses decades before Diane von Furstenberg and crumpled up rayon 50 years before Issey Miyake’s pleats and crinkles; she created the first evening-dress with a jacket and the first clothes with visible zippers. But her most fundamental contribution to couture was surely the sense of fun– of playfulness and “anything goes”– that she shared with her Dadaist and Surrealist friends.
Looking back…
…if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word: “dentistry.”
– P.J. O’Rourke, All the Trouble in the World
Still, nostalgia has its uses. The economy seems poised for another dip in the tank; the weather is delivering hotter, wetter warnings of the wages of climate disruption; health care costs are reaching escape velocity; education and infrastructure are (literally) crumbling, as state funding implodes… one could go on.
Instead, one turns one’s gaze to the past; one conjures up the remembered comforts of times gone by: “it didn’t use to be this way”… As P.J. O’Rouke suggests, it’s more often that not the flimsiest kind of illusion– out-of-context features of a whole-cloth past, selectively recalled (indeed, too often imagined), then amplified by the need for consolation.
Still, one does it– one “remembers”– because… well, because it’s what one does.
And so, Dear Readers, three “seed crystals”– three blasts from the past– that can, your correspondent hopes, help one (as they’ve helped him) spin stories that amuse, even as they help us find our way past the challenges that are the stuff of our days…
First, from the ever-informative Brain Pickings, “7 Must-See What’s My Line Episodes“:
The premise of the show was simple: In each episode, a contestant would appear in front of a panel of blindfolded culture pundits — with few exceptions, a regular lineup of columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, actress Arlene Francis, Random House founder Bennett Cerf, and a fourth guest panelist — who would try to guess his or her “line” of work or, in the case of famous “mystery guests,” the person’s identity, by asking exactly 10 yes-or-no questions. A contestant won if he or she presented the panel with 10 “no” answers.
Over the 17-year run of the show, nearly every iconic cultural luminary of the era, from presidents to pop stars, appeared as a mystery guest…
Indeed, over it’s 17 year run through the 50s and early 60s, WML was basically the only media property that could “have” any celebrity or cultural figure. (Sullivan could out-book WML on the entertainment front, but only there.) This was perhaps largely due to the involvement of Random House founder Bennett Cerf who, through his deep connections in the journalism and media world, was but a Kevin-Bacon’s-breath away from essentially any public figure. In any case, no one said “no” to WML.
BP has curated seven of the very best examples of this pull: Alfred Hitchcock, Lucille Ball, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jean Desmond (a girdle tester), Walt Disney, host John Daly (in an early example of meta-comedy), and…
See them all here.
Second, for somewhat younger readers, from our old friend The Selvedge Yard, a look back at The Rolling Stones when they were still “The Rolling Stones.” TSY muses on the theme of this missive:
When I’m feeling roadworn, forlorn, or the subject of scorn– nothing takes me to my happy place faster than great old pics of guitar porn. I came across the below Stones’ porn pic sifting through the internets and became mesmerized by the artfully haphazard array of axes. You can almost smell the sweat, smoke and stale beer as you gaze at the overturned cans, ash, and listing guitars.
The late ’60s – early ’70s was an epic time for the Rolling Stones, and Rock & Roll as a whole. It was a time I largely missed (being born in 1970), but feel like I experienced, partially at least, vicariously through my mom. She was a music junkie, went to Woodstock, worshipped Janis Joplin.
The Stones' Guitars
Berlin, 1965
Many more here.
And finally, for younger readers still, a glance back at the 80s and one of that decade’s indelible icons: from Walyou, “16 Cool Mr. T Themed Designs.”
For those who grew up on the A-Team TV Show or are big fans of Rocky, Mr. T will always be a memorable personality which is simply larger than life. Although you do not see him as much in TV or movies these days, he is still a personality to be reckoned with.
This collection of 16 Mr. T designs includes various pieces of art, design, products and more which prove that Mr T is still popular today, and if you don’t agree…then I pity the fool.
Mr T Cookie Jar
Mr. T Infographic
See the rest here.
As we stroll down memory lane, we might recall that it was on this date in 1905 that Ty Cobb, “The Georgia Peach” made his major league debut; playing for the Detroit Tigers, he doubled off the New York Highlanders’s (later Yankees) Jack Chesbro, who had won a record 41 games the previous season.
The eyes of the beholders…
Readers will know Etsy, the successful online “market for handmade things,” where the mission is “to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.”
Now, thanks to reader PL, readers can discover Regretsy— a site that focuses on a sub-set of the postings on Etsy; as Regretsy’s motto explains: “Handmade? It looks like you made it with your feet.”
For example:
or…
Regretsy is quick to be clear about where it stands:
Don’t get us wrong. We like crafts.
We just don’t like these crafts.
Yes, we know these people put their hearts into it. We know it took hours and hours. We know how mean it is to laugh at their creations. And we regret being the only web site on the internet that makes fun of things.
But what can we do? We’re immature.
Besides, art is totally subjective. Who cares what we think? I barely care and I’m writing this.
Listen, if you like something you see here, don’t argue with us, go and buy it. Seriously. Click on any photo and you’ll be taken to the seller’s store (if a photo is not linked, the store is closed, or we are unable to find the seller). We’re only too glad to have made the introduction.
Otherwise, we’re just going to sit here and look at the amputee kitten paintings and vulva earrings and laugh so hard that we pee in our reusable Pokemon pads.
Etsy, for its part, has been very gracious: “If it brings in more traffic to the shop and helps make sales, then all the better.” And in fact, many of the items featured on Regretsy have found new owners.
For our parts, lest we rush too quickly to any judgments, we might recall the thoughts of several close observers of beauty and the arts:
Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last ditch stand of the artist.
– Marshall McLuhanIt is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.
– Salvador DaliTaste is the enemy of creativity.
– Pablo Picasso
As we reach for those knitting needles, we might ponder bobbing our hair in commemoration of the incomparable Louise Brooks, fabled actress (Pandora’s Box and other Pabst greats) and author of Lulu in Hollywood; she was born this day in 1906.
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