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 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?
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.
in fact this article has many trigger-warnings. it involves rape, rapists, rape-methodology, and rape-supportive culture. however. it involves these things because it is a discussion of some new – pretty revolutionary – research being done on the topic of undetected, unincarcerated rapists. if you can handle the triggers, it’s well worth reading. not least because it doesn’t leave you with the same sick inevitable feeling one tends to get reading pretty much everything people write about rape. in fact…this article actually finishes with some pretty awesome points on how undetected rape could be combatted in a very every-day manner (and again, this is sort of revolutionary; if only because this is rape we’re talking about, and we’re doing so in a culture which supports it, so communicating Things That Can Be Done To Change This is a pretty big deal).
so again. if you can…you should read this. it’s interesting. and more than that, it’s not only relevant, it’s positive and maybe even helpful:
how fucked, frankly, is this? although i do think that fostering assertiveness and negotiation skills in girls and young women is important it is not, at all, the root of the problem. until we discuss consent in schools, and change attitudes about the availability of (predominantly) female bodies, and the male ‘right to sex’ – not to mention step up and make rape a real and vitally serious crime, not just something society pretends to frown on in public and in writing, while condoning gender-based violence through action, policy, and media – this is going to be a problem.
women do not need, in addition to the myriad of pre-existing tag-lines, to be told that violence and rape are their fault because – though they were taught how in school – they just didn’t say ‘no’ assertively enough.
point of fact: one ‘no’, however softly said, ought to be enough.
