Jezebel
art in australia
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Art
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Black Mark!
We daresay artist Alex Sandwell Kliszynski can justify his creepy human Barbie porn star art by invoking societal objectification or something, but we'd like to see BlackBook scribe Ben Barna's excuse for this bit of art criticism, titled "Dolls for Boys." Quoth he: "When I was younger, playing with Barbie dolls was a big faux-pas. No matter how fascinated I was by their boundlessly bendable legs, you just didn’t do it (even though I did it). Finally, artist Alex Sandwell Kliszynski has created a series of dolls I can play with." Ew. [BlackBook]
art in australia
Wooden Legs
Mario Philippona is a sculptor, who, according to InventorSpot, "loves the female form." This is why he creates shelves, tables and bookcases out of wood — but designed to look like ladies' legs or breasts. Philippona calls his pieces "erotica with a wink." Perhaps because the women have high heels, yet no heads? It's called objectification, dude. Which is dehumanization. Which, in this case, is sexist, not sexy. (Click for more pictures.) [InventorSpot]
Oldies But Goodies
We bespectacled ladies can vouch for the enduring truth of an artifact from the October 1965 issue of Play Girl "Men DO MAKE Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses! The new vamp eye-frame by Harlequin for the woman who understands the importance of the gentle art of flirtation. With a vivaciously upswept front, the vamp captures the very essence of femininity. The beveling adds subtle interest to the elegant simplicity of the frame and the gently styled temples with their new up-to-the-minute curves add a distinguished softness." (Click the pic to see more images!) [Modern Mechanix]
Who Hasn't Gotten Drunk and Bought a Wood-Mite-Infested Folk-Art Mermaid?
Mystery writer Laura Lippmann waxes on the dangers of collecting obsessions. In her case, inexplicable ones. Having had to block eBay on our laptops, we can relate. [Wall Street Journal]
Love 4ever
When Is A Bad Tattoo A Dealbreaker?
Latin scholars are engaged in a vigorous debate over whether Ashley Alexandra Dupre's "Tutela Valui" tattoo, spotted last weekend when the ex-Spitzer hooker made a rare appearance on the secluded Jersey Shore, is so dumb as to be a tattoo dealbreaker. "One California professor translated it as 'I have been highly proficient in support' - which he further simplifies to 'I have been an expert escort,'" notes the Daily News. Which brings me to the obvious but as yet undiscussed here topic of love and tattoos. As in: when is a tattoo so bad you have to reeeeally like someone to get over it? July's Marie Claire features a story by a woman who met a dude whose body art was almost a bonerkiller. ("It had something to do with his interest in the medieval artist Hieronymus Bosch. And there was a mention of total respect for the tattoo artist. Oh, and, These designs are exactly what brain synapses look like...") As you might expect, the writer gets over it, because there are only a handful of tattoo types you can really use as an excuse to dump someone in this town, and they are, according to my roommate, who spent 11 years living in Philly where getting tattooed is really one of the only things to actually do. More »
Appealing/Appalling
Good morning! This 1944 pamphlet called White Art in the Meat Food Business is subtitled: A Practical Handbook for Butcher, Pork Stores, Restaurants, Hotels and Delicatessens on How to Make Lasting and Transferable White Art Decorations out of Bacon Fat Back for Window Displays, Ornaments on Meat Food Cold Buffets and for Exhibits and Advertising Purposes. [BoingBoing]
rag trade
Designer Divas Naomi Campbell And Sharon Stone Get Spanked
- Naomi Campbell has finally been charged for her April freakout at London's Heathrow airport. “Campbell is accused of three counts of assaulting a constable, one count of disorderly conduct likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress and one count of using threatening, abusive words or behavior to cabin crew, according to reports.” Her court date is set for June 20th; does anyone think that maybe a stint in juvie could set her straight? [The Guardian]
- Christian Dior cosmetics spokesmodel Sharon Stone continues to pay for her ridiculous remarks regarding last week's earthquake in China: Dior is pulling all ads starring the Hollywood wackadoo "from all of the department stores and from all of China". Karma, baby! [NY Times]
- Andre Leon Talley is returning to the Savannah College of Art and Design to speak at the school's May 31 commencement ceremony. Think he'll wear the "floor-length red satin robe and silver crown accented with red 'rubies'" this time around? [Paris Parfait]
freudian slips
Is The Relationship Between Male Artist And Female Subject Always A Destructive One?
Lucien Freud's painting of Sue Tilley, called "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping," has sold for £17.2 million — reportedly the highest payday for a living artist in history. For Kira Cochrane at the Guardian, the portrait brings up a bunch of issues about the relationship of artist to subject, specifically when the artist is male and the "muse" is female. Cochrane references radical feminist artists the Guerilla Girls, who asked on a poster in 1989, "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?" and found that 85% of the nudes at the Met were women, while only 5% of artists represented in the museum were women. It's one thing to discuss the power dynamics between an artist and a muse with whom he is sexually or romantically involved, but what about women who act merely as models, like Tilley? What are the power dynamics implicit in that relationship? More »
critical mass
It's A Bird! It's A Plane! No, It's Anna Wintour's Dress
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute's annual gala: Oh, it happened all right. And though you now know who made it into the the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly category of "fashion's Oscars," we know you're just dying to know what the media themselves had to say about the yearly orgy of fashion and fame. (At the very last you're dying to know what hoity-toity critic-types had to say about Anna Wintour's Princess Amadala outfit, right? Right.) The best of the press' bon mots, after the jump. More »
fine lines
From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: City of Angels
Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick rereads 'From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler', E.L. Konigsburg's 1967 novel about extremely unaccompanied minors run amok at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her back.
I miss New York. Not the New York somewhere over to my left. A New York before The Squid & The Whale brought divorce to the Museum of Natural History. A New York before nannies got groped; a New York before private-school girls intertwangled lustily on beds in some benighted plan to rule the school. It was a New York that had room for a notepad-toting minor to spy unaccompanied on people through dumbwaiters; a boy to wander Chinatown having adventures with a cricket; teenagers to contend with a genie in a mystery at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Not a world where children playact adult dramas, or unhappily contend with the chaos adults leave in their wake. It's a New York that keeps adults perpetually at shoulder-level, briefcases and purses jostling, while the children, front-and-center in the frame, get up to whatever children get up to.
second bananas
Cindy Sherman's Un-Famous Ex-Boyfriend Finds That Being A "Wife" Is The Pits
There's a documentary premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival called Guest of Cindy Sherman, directed by Sherman's ex-boyfriend and fellow artist, Paul Hasegawa-Overacker (aka Paul H-O). Anyway, the documentary is all about Paul H-O's inability to deal with living with what he refers to as "Cindy World." Cindy's World is a place where H-O's "identity went into hibernation or was subsumed by this much greater force... In the old days there were these things called Rolodexes with little cards. Mine had like 10 cards, and hers had 1,000. And, you know, Salman Rushdie would be in hers. Her world was a lot bigger and more powerful than mine." At some point in the film, H-O also says: "I know what it feels like to be a wife that no one pays attention to." Salon writer Joy Press points out that "for centuries women have gotten used to being the second fiddle," and H-O responds, "I acknowledge my inferiority to the greater body. But then, I got tired of it." More »
rag trade
Anna Wintour: 1; Rachel Zoe: 0
- OMG: Rachel Zoe has been disinvited from the Anna Wintour-hosted Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Gala, taking place Monday night in New York. This is what you get when you tempt the gods and proclaim yourself more important than Vogue. [Fashion Week Daily]
- Also, Wintour has instructed Vogue staffers that they may only wear white, silver, or other "pale shades." Just like the colors of faces that she likes to see on her magazine's cover! [Fashion Week Daily]
- French Vogue editor-in-chief Carine Roitfeld and designer/Chanel creative director "Krazy" Karl Lagerfeld were both named to the Time 100 List, as influential members of the fashion community. Something about the way they both made fashion about "the street" or something. [Vogue UK]
- Gisele Bundchen is still the top-paid model, according to Forbes. Heidi Klum is the second. Take that, Moss. [Sassybella]
Avant Garde Assholes
Excellent essayist and Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum weighs in on the Aliza Shvarts controversy and decides that our favorite art agitator isn't actually all that original, especially when compared to a batty Brit named Mary Toft. "Many artists, including photographer Cindy Sherman and multimedia artist Judy Chicago, have incorporated menstrual blood into their work. As for those maybe-miscarriages and their role in performance art, hoax or some combination thereof, Shvarts has nothing on 18th century Englishwoman Mary Toft. In 1726, Toft became a sensation when she managed to convince the public and much of the medical community that she was repeatedly giving birth to rabbits." [LAT]
updates
Yale Renders Aliza Shvarts' Art Installation Impotent
As much as some of us want the little performance artist who could bleed from her vagina, Aliza Shvarts, to just go away, we feel obliged to offer you an update on the controversy. The senior art exhibition went up yesterday, without Aliza's piece (which she claims may use blood from self-induced miscarriages), and without much fanfare. Only people with Yale IDs were allowed to see the show. According to the Yale Daily News, "In interviews with the gallery-goers, nearly all said they were aware of the controversy surrounding Shvarts's project, but had come for other reasons." More »
period pieces?
One Thing Is Certain: Right Now, Yale University & Aliza Shvarts '08 Are 100% Annoying
I seem to be the only one of the Jezebels online and — lucky for me! — now we're hearing that Aliza Shvarts is disputing Yale University's claim that her performance piece was a work of fiction. Reports the Yale Daily News:
Shvarts stood by her project, calling the University's statement "ultimately inaccurate."...But Shvarts reiterated Thursday that she repeatedly used a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself. At the end of her menstrual cycle, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, she said. She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant. "No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen," Shvarts said, "because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties."Oh, Christ. Anyway, interested (and still-awake) readers can learn more here. I, for one, have had about enough of this youngster and am going to exercise my right to control my body and go to bed.
University Calls Art Project A Fiction; Shvarts '08 Disputes Yale's Claim [Yale Daily News]
updates
Yale: Abortion Art Piece Was "Creative Fiction"
So it turns out that Aliza Shvarts, the Yale student who said she impregnated herself only to abort her embryos using "herbal" methods several times over for an art project, totally pulled one over on everyone. (Well, everyone except Moe.) She didn't really get pregnant a bunch of times, and she didn't really give herself abortions. According to a statement issued by Yale spokesperson Helaine S. Klasky, the entire stunt — Shvarts' press release, visual presentation, and narrative materials — was all part of Shvarts' real art project: Proving people are gullible weenies. More »
Graphic Design
Porn posters used to be so arty and cool. (If only sex actually looked this awesomely in real life.) This gallery of old adult film one-sheets is totally inspiring. [Vintage Ads]
