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the cacographer
nyx loves bones and beautiful clothes, wunderkamma and aeroplanes. she has chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. she's a sculptor, couturier, writer, illustrator.
she blogs about art, aesthetics, politics, the theory and politics of aesthetics, and living (aesthetically) with a disability.
richard corman, madonna, 1982, “i shot madonna” in out magazine.
my photo of the day is vintage madonna by richard corman. he took this the year before her first album came out, before she got famous, etc., etc., bet you know the rest.
the best thing about this photograph? it’s the eyebrows. look at her eyebrows. fantastically wing-like, utterly un-plucked eyebrows. they’re amazing. where is a vogue editor when you need one? everybody should be copying this (i say this despite my own obsessively tweezed and arching brows. i just don’t have that great flared outer edge she does. so ok, maybe not everybody).
what makes them stand out particularly – and particularly beautifully – is how perfect and classical her makeup is, how it frames her brows as a deliberate absence of interference. the conscious groom-don’t-remove of body hair may be my favourite kind of ‘fuck you’ to the feminine norm. it’s like trimming your underarm hair instead of shaving it all off; or keeping your bush perfectly intact (including those curls which cross the sacred bikini line) and colouring it a vile shade of fuschia. it says ‘i have a very strong (optional: and feminine) aesthetic, and an exceptional personal grooming routine, but i don’t actually want to look like a prepubescent aryan with big tits. i choose to diversify and explore the full range of aesthetic options my body provides, not just the ones sanctioned by almighty vogue, elle and the holy bazaar.’
of course, there are ways to do this by or despite a wholistic dipilatory approach, too, but i’m just sayin’. some of your options include the artful retention of bodily hair.
and i do wish more people would try out these eybrows. they’re fucking fantastic. you could pull them off, i know you could. post pictures after, won’t you?
‘i bake pies and wake the dead. i live a very sheltered life.’
if you’ve yet to hear about pushing daisies, listen now. it’s gorgeous, it’s hilarious, and it’s really worth watching. i find the constant presence of a narrator a bit hard to handle, but other than that it’s pretty delightful all ’round.
what you notice first is, of course, how aesthetically stunning it is. it’s like a technicolor disney fairytale, but with great persnickety dialogue and far fewer songs (i do like disney, in small doses and for its visual appeal, but i can’t stand all the singing). you can definitely see the dead like me similarities in the super-quick and consistently hilarious dialogue and soft-core morgue humour, but daisies is much cuter, both visually and character-wise. the first bit i like (the cute visuals) but the second is a little bit disappointing if you have seen dead like me and were anywhere near as enchanted with the main character (george) as i was (she’s pretty much my ideal of misanthropic sarcasm. i think we’d be great friends).
still. pushing daisies is definitely worth a look. the dialogue is fast and smart and funny in a manner that’s just dark enough to balance out the super-sweet-pastel-50s style of the aesthetics. i also love kristen cheonoweth - she’s one of those rare, rare people whose voice perfectly matches their physique, and i really appreciate that in an individual. and my favourite visual elements of the show? chuck’s crazy-beautiful of 50s style sundresses, the vintage cars, and the aunt’s wardrobe of impeccably matched eyepatches. i love the distant echo of twin peaks in that last one…
to this paternal quote i owe my current obsession with things that sparkle and twirl, and go pink in the night (he stuck by his word, too – it was years before i could put together a decently rosy section of wardrobe).
ps: i always mean to say this, but if you want to know where any of the images come from, do ask – in general i’m fairly obsessive when it comes to provenance (though sometimes i slip up and forget) so it’s likely i can tell you precisely where i got it. it just looks too messy to list every i use in a collage like this.
so, this is my list of enchantments for the week – what about your sweet readerly selves? had any thrilling visual encounters over the past seven days? i’m so looking forward to your links and pictures in the comments!
inspirational blurry lines between realism and artistic license from australian artist bec winnel. the lack of eyelashes is what i love, here. like the weary-lidded eyes of some marble renaissance madonna.
daisy lowe’s 21st birthday dress, 2010.
a party dress to be diy-ed (because who doesn’t want a dress with a skirt/tutu comprised entirely of false flowers?!)
yayoi kusama, dots obsession (installation shot), haus der kunst, 2007.
and an installation of violently pink lanterns and mirrors, because at present i am involved in an intense love affair with bright and brilliant colour. (this is pretty much a visual revolution for me. i tend to go in for black and white, with maybe a little gray when i want to shake things up.)
so i hope you’ll forgive me the flying post – i plan to come back and write about brooks properly (once i have more time and, more importantly, more research) but i discovered her work on one of my usual internet jaunts, and couldn’t resist the lure of an immediate post.
romaine brooks, peter, a young english girl, 1923-4.
there is more information here, for anybody in a hurry (i plan to scope out the archives myself, at a later date, and report back), but for the moment, let me just say that ‘the epitome of elegance’ really does seem an appropriate tagline, from what i’ve seen thus far of brook’s work.
romaine brooks, una troubridge, 1924.
i came across this painting first, quite by accident, at sublimefemme unbound (the topic was monocles – and really, why wouldn’t it be? also, i must now look up this troubridge character. she looks fascinating). i rarely find painters i love quite this much at first glance.
turn of the century women artists are hard to track down (i should know, i’ve tried often enough). any suggestions on other female painters of the era worth looking up?
i honestly can’t figure out the context of this work (or, perhaps, its purpose), not least because the biography section of the site comes up with a blank page (always unhelpful). but whatever hur’s work ‘is’, it is undoubtedly beautiful, which i do appreciate in and of itself. i love the textures, but most of all i am enchanted by the blending of wearable and interior art – i’m fascinated by the confusion of the wearable/non-wearable divide.
and those 3-dimensional wallpapers are pretty damn stunning. again, i’m not sure whether this is the purpose of the work, but i’m taking what i can get and running with it (though ‘nomadic wonderland’? ‘nomadic’ is one of those generic ‘ethnic’ reference words which i’m really not sure can ever be applied ’well’ to an object or collection thereof. it’s like calling something ‘tribal’; so generic it actually means nothing, but evocative of some romanticised ‘primative’, and thus culturally appropriatory none the less).
unfortunately the website is enough to drive a person crazy – particularly if one happens not to be possessed of the world’s speediest internet connection – waiting for every picture to load really kills the visual impact. i know the theiving of images is a big concern for a lot of artists, and ostensibly flash prevents this – or at least makes it a little more complex – but i have to admit it’s not an argument that holds much water, to my mind. the price for making people sit around and tap their fingers whilst waiting for your work to load is just too high; i’m pretty sure i stumbled across hur’s site on 3 separate occasions before i actually made it far enough through the frustration to see any beautiful photographs.
plus. why refuse free press? or: for more information refer to this article by asia-pacific artist hazel dooney. it has some rather compelling arguments for making your images as thievable as possible (and simply watermarking obsessively).
what do you reckon? better to control your images absolutely, or let people use them and just make sure anyone who sees it knows it’s yours?
today i have a bit of a reader request. the idea is this: that those who see this post leave a beautiful picture (or collection thereof!) of their own in the comments, or a link to a picture roundup of their own.
without a doubt i spend most of my time on the internet looking for beautiful, fascinating, or inspiring images. in fact i find so many each week that i’ve decided, instead of posting willy-nilly, to pull together my favourites every friday and post a weekly ‘photographic roundup’. images are pretty much the reason i started using the internet. i have thousands on my computer, and i organise them more obsessively than i do anything else in my life. i’m not sure whether it’s the art history background or my own special brand of crazy, but i get terribly upset when i can’t figure out who made an image, where i sourced it from originally, etc., etc.. i have so many fantastic visual pieces on my computer that it seems a shame to let them just gather digital dust. i feel like they should go back out into netspace for others to look and wonder at.
in the same vein i would love to see what other poeple have stumbled over and wondered at this week, and to create in the comments a sort of digital exquisite corpse. the beautiful thing about this is that everybody wanders the net differently, seeks out different things, uses different searchwords; i’m fascinated by the bredth possible in an image collection put together by different people and the things they find lovely.
still from alejandro, by lady gaga and steven klein, 2010, via fatshionista
(i love this photograph. it is, incidentally, not a photograph at all, but rather a still from lady gaga’s video for alejandro, depicting the artist with one of the actor/dancers in the clip. it’s such a fantastic image, though. this incredibly intimate pose, but with assigned gender-roles thoroughly reversed. i know people make a fuss about the fact that the men in this clip wear heels a lot, but (as i will likely get around to exploring further in another article) i don’t think clothes actually count for that much subversion on their own. it’s the body language that makes this subversive, not the garments; the publicisation, in a popular forum, of a queer reimagining of nominally heterosexual sex. plus it’s just beautiful. i don’t find much of klein’s work particularly engaging, but i have to admit, i love this video. and i think the madonna comparisons really fail to take into account such blatently queer moments as this. fatshionista, by the by, has quite an interesting comparison between alejandro and madonna’s express yourself on her blog.)
naomi watts for vanity fair italy, may 2010, via outsapop
so to begin with, this may be one of my favourite commercial/cinematic dance sequences to date. it’s from rob marshal’s nine, a film which is utterly sexist, but graced by stunning visuals, beautiful costumes, some gorgeous dance and song sequences, and judi dench playing a charming costumier (this last alone would have added significant points, but combined with the others…well, it was worth watching once, at least). this clip features fergie (yes, of dubious black eyed peas fame), and though she and the other dancers seem to have gotten the bottom of the barrel, costume wise (look up marion cotillard’s wardrobe, for example, and you’ll see what i mean), the choreography is gorgeous. i love tactile dance pieces, though they don’t come along terribly often; the percussive element alone is great (though a little more common – think of stomp, or tap dogs), but the use of sand is better. sound obscure? you really ought to watch the clip.
still from nine, directed and produced by Rob Marshall, 2009.
i also discovered, today, a pretty fantastic blog. it’s called the seventeen magazine project and, as implied, it’s about, well, seventeen magazine (which is, for those neither in the know – good for you – or inclined to look it up – why would you bother? – one of those awful glossy rag-mags aimed at mutilating the aesthetic sensibilities, self-worth, and world view of teenaged girls). the seventeen magazine project…’embraces’ all this. it is the undertaking of one pennsylvanian highschool student to live, for an entire month, by the precepts of the june/july issue of seventeen. by following this doctrine she hopes to ‘shed some light on the modern teenage experience’. it’s pretty hilarious. or at least, i enjoyed reading it. it even includes pie-charts on, say, the number of current male ‘heart-throbs’ (does that really have a hyphon? is it one word? do i ditch the second ‘t’?) with some kind of vampire affiliation (for the record, that’s most of them).
still from nine, directed and produced by Rob Marshall, 2009 (because i refuse to post a picture of a seventeen cover instead).
less impressive by far is this post. to begin with i feel compelled to state the obvious: ‘ftm’ and ‘butch’ are not synonymous. they are two separate identities. in some people they do coexist; in some they are melded together to form a complex whole. but not all those who are ftm are butch, and not all who are butch are ftm. to assume that ftm and butch are always part of the same continuum (a continuum in which, it is inferred, butch is, shall we say, a ‘softer’ version) is to violently undermine, and do great disservice to, both. for a start, it creates a hierarchy (already present, in myriad forms, in both the lesbian and trans communities, but something i think we should be actively fighting, rather than perpetuating or condoning), whereby a female-to-male trans identity is superior to that of lesbian butch, and more than that, is perceived as some kind of ‘end point’ for all female-bodied people with more masculine identities.
it also assumes that all ftm persons are inherently ‘masculine,’ which entirely disavows a capacity for personal gender identity, and – more importantly, i think – merely reaffirms the idea that our biological bodies (even if we alter them) must match our actions. in other words, sex and gender must correlate. boy bodies must coincide with boy behaviours, female bodies with male identities must enact masculine traits. i take serious issue with this. i also think it is, on any genuine, considered queer theoretical inspection, ridiculous.
in addition to these points, the article utterly negates the ways in which these identities, and elements of them, are constantly evolving, melding, breaking and reforming in communities and individuals, a process which allows men to be femme, trans persons to be genderqueer, femmes to be masculine, etc.. when you place identities on a sliding scale, instead of appreciating each as having the potential to be a new and disparate concept of its own, you not only bind them together in inescapable hierarchy; you disallow the wonder of interference, cross-pollination, blending; not only in individuals, but in whole subcultures, and the theoretical realms they so often spawn.
i would really, really love a pair of these shoes by noritaka tatehana. they’re like pieces of art. they are pieces of art. i would put them on my mantlepiece (when i have a mantlepiece of my very own); i’d stare at them adoringly; perhaps, every once in a while, when i felt like being particularly amazonian, i’d take them out to see a particularly spectacular work of avant-garde dance or fashion.
i am looking forward so very much to seeing what he does next.
