ART WEEK! Day six: Yayoi Kusama

Continuing a display of 7 artists whose work I admire.

Yayoi Kusama's Wikipedia page: LINK

Bomb magazine interview: LINK


The Screw, 1965


Infinity Room, Phallus Field, 1965


Ascension of Polkadots on the Trees, 2006




Self Obliteration, 1967

ART WEEK! Day five: Aubrey Beardsley

Continuing a display of 7 artists whose work I admire.

Aubrey Beardsley's Wikipedia page: LINK

Stuart Morgan review for Frieze magazine: LINK


The Dancer's Reward, 1893


The Stomach Dance, 1894


Black Cat 1894-95


Isolde, 1895

ART WEEK! Day four: Simon Periton

Continuing a display of 7 artists whose work I admire.

Website: http://www.simonperiton.com/

zingmagazine review: LINK


Alcove, 2003




Stairway to Heaven, 2004


Dogger, 2006


Addi, 2006

ART WEEK! Day three: John Miller

Continuing a display of 7 artists whose work I admire.

Jerry Saltz review: LINK

John Miller on Piero Manzoni's 'Merda d'artista': LINK


Dick Jane, 1992


Now We're Big Potatoes, 1992


Zoning, 2004


Phantom Existence, 2007

ART WEEK! Day two: Hayley Tompkins

Continuing a display of 7 artists whose work I admire.

Hayley Tompkins' page at Open Frequency: LINK

Brian Sholis review for Artforum: LINK


Untitled, 2001


Watercolour on Paper, Wall, 2003


Untitled, 2003


Advent II, 2008

ART WEEK! Day one: Hermann Nitsch

Right then. During the coming week I'll be fairly busy doing stuff, so therefore I'm giving over the next 7 days to a display of 7 artists whose work I admire. Each day will present a few images along with some writing about the artist.

Day one: Hermann Nitsch

There's a short article and interview here.


Action, 1962


Action, 1968


Six-day play in Prinzendorf, 1998


Theater of Orgies and Mysteries, Salzburg, 1990

Video of Nitsch performance on UbuWEb: LINK

Audio of Nitsch performance soundtrack from Mutant Sounds: LINK

post

Extract from Dennis Cooper, The Sluts:

To answer xtacyla's question, yeah, I'm Brian. You want to know why I changed? Because Brad broke my fucking heart. Brad crushed my soul and twisted my mind. I loved that beautiful, selfish, lying, manipulative, psychotic young prick. If there's any feeling left in me, I still love him. The hatred I feel when I rape and humiliate and torture and beat and dismember their beautiful young faces and bodies is as close as I can get to the fury of love I felt for Brad. The thing about Brad is that he was right - killing a boy who wants to die is an experience beyond any other in the world. I've had some of the most sexually intense, profound experiences that anyone has ever had, and I know the ugly truth of what life really means. Brad convinced me that he wanted me to kill him because it would mean he and I were both truly loved, and that I haven't achieved, and that's the only thing will stop me because I know that is what I need. I shouldn't say it's the only thing that will stop me because I now believe that he was lying to me, and that it will be nearly impossible to find that perfect love. What will stop me is killing Brad. I'm going to kill him. There's nothing you or he or anyone he knows can do about it. I'm going to do whatever it takes to find him and snuff out his exquisite and sadistic life, and in the meantime I'm going to get my rocks off by continuing my quest for the penultimate murder. If Brad has any humanity in him, he will give himself to me to save the lives of all the boys who are going to die until he's dead. Because I'm a highly intelligent, resourceful, and very wealthy guy, and the police will not be able to stop me. I've made sure of that, but go ahead and following my 'leads' if you want. So there you go, you losers. Oh, if it matters to you, Phillip Berringer is still alive and intact, but he is not the boy he used to be. I've spent most of the last 24 hours pounding his little ass with my thick 9 1/2" cock. I've buried most of my hand in his hot, cramped hips, and heard his anal muscle tear apart, and seen his bloody asshole gnaw toothlessly at my knuckles. He is running a high fever, and is very pale and sweaty and weak, but it just makes him look more beautiful. He doesn't fight me very much anymore, and I think he even enjoys the sex. If the deal with xtracutebill falls apart, I think I'm going to enjoy every endless second of killing him. Does anybody out there have any suggestions? Hopefully, it won't come to that. someoneone

dans

Very much looking forward to tomorrow, when I'll be off through to Edinburgh to attend the inaugural Cut Hands night at Henry's Cellar Bar. This is the flagship event for William Bennett's new Afro Noise project, and I'll be covering proceedings (with an exclusive interview!) for the next issue of Yuck 'n Yum.

The founding member of Whitehouse has recorded a new 50-minute mix for the CYRK collective that can be be downloaded here. Safe to say that the 'Afro Noise Mix 1' is an absolute treat.

exhibit

Extract from Gordon Burn, Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son: The story of the Yorkshire Ripper:

'In these models you will see the the awful results of men leading immoral lives before marriage,' a sign announces at the centre of a room whose walls are crowded with heavy glass-fronted cases of the kind usually associated with the Victorian taxidermist's art. Here, though, each case is an essay in the terrible frailty of human flesh, rather than a sentimental composition of brightly feathered songbirds or frollicking kittens: the chancred lips of a vagina ooze and fester beneath a grey cloud of pubic hair, which itself is surrounded by male sexual organs in varying degrees of rottenness and putrefaction, like half-eaten sausages, decorously framed in muslin. Four babies' faces are obliterated by the sort of green scabs and horrible running sores that are an insistent theme, filling the room with images of feculence and pus. A hand is thrust deep into a womb, its fingers closed around a deformed foetus. Diseased scrotums are shown in cross-section then billow and burst...
The centrepiece of this battered collection, however, is the bust of a woman, 'an allegorical sculpture in wax', originally inspired by one of the numerous pieces of religious statuary representing the Virgin suckling the infant Jesus. The head is inclined sweetly and enclosed in a muslin 'wimple', and the first and second fingers of the right hand gently offer the left nipple. The nipple, though, is discoloured and heavily encrusted and the bare, waxen white breasts are covered in burning venereal sores and hives.
To this piece, as to all the others, is affixed a faded card on which a homily has been penned in a fussy, Gothic script. 'Vice is a monster of so hideous a mien/That to be hated needs but to be seen' it says on the case illustrating 'French pox in the female'. 'Wise men see the evil and avoid it/But fools pass on and are punished', it says above the four mutilated children's heads. 'His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself. And he shall be holden with the cords of his sins', it says above the rotting penises. 'To thoughtless husbands, this case well deserves their attention. For how many are there who are good husbands and good fathers yet when in their cups fall into temptation and contract a complaint which destroys the happiness of the family' is the inscription pinned to the bust of the 'Madonna'.

splint

To the hospital this morning to have the splint removed, and although still not quite fully healed my fractured index metacarpal seems on the road to recovery.

son

Extract from Gordon Burn, Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son: The story of the Yorkshire Ripper:

Unlike his father, who was mostly either out or asleep but unignorable, Peter was nearly always in and yet nowhere to be found.
He'd left school in the summer of 1961, aged 15, and gone straight into the engineering works of Fairbank and Brearley in Church Street, Bingley, as an apprentice fitter. But, even as a 17-year-old, he was conspicuously shy: to most of the people who knew him then and found him perfectly pleasant, he seemed to be looking at the world the world from a distance, as if it was just so many images, flickering on a screen.
He tended to be so quiet at home that none of his family was ever sure whether he was in or out. He could enter a room or leave it without it registering with anybody that he'd been in or was gone. It was possible to walk into a room in which Peter was sitting and not even notice that he was there. 'I've walked into the house many a time and he's been just sat quiet in the kitchen without me realising for ages,' his sister, Maureen, says. 'Not reading or anything; just sort of sat there staring at space. Pete were one of these who could sit for hours on his own without getting restless, like some blokes can't; they've got to be either watching television or talking to somebody or going out for drinks with their mates. Pete were quite happy in his own company. He didn't get bored.'

4 random disco videos

affliction

The plan tonight was to attend this evening's performance at the Generator. Now though, I 'm really not so sure. This could be blamed on any number of things: the broken bone in my hand which is still ever so sore, my working a 12-hour shift yesterday, the fact I was out at the pub last night with my housemates, or of course on that elephant in the room, that eternal scourge of my body, my brain and my bladder, namely the disease. None of which is to say I won't make it out later; let's just wait and see, shall we?

magus

As noted in a previous post, the legendary American film-maker Kenneth Anger will be appearing in person to give a talk at the DCA on August 19th.

I got my ticket earlier tonight and I'm very excited indeed. This really does look like the last chance to see the great man in the flesh, because according to his Wikipedia page he's been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Apparently he's predicted his own death will occur "on Halloween night 2008" so it's really not an event to be missed.

horror horror

Further to the weekend's post, I'm readying myself for a binge on all kinds of horror in the coming weeks. In addition to the Collapse magazine, I'm excited to have ordered the following second-hand books:



H.P. Lovecraft: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (to replace the copy I lost some time ago).



Gordon Burn: Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son



Dennis Cooper: The Sluts

...so once I've got the Lovecraft picture framed up, then my study ought to have taken on an appropriate air of tenebrous gloom.

concept horror

The new edition of Collapse magazine looks to be very interesting, and a copy should be winging its way to my door any day now:

"Collapse Volume IV: 'Concept Horror' is an investigation into the philosophical, existential, aesthetic, religious and political dimensions of horror. Its task is not to promote theories of horror, but to uncover the horrors that may lie in wait for those who pursue rational thought beyond the bounds of the reasonable."

The introduction can be downloaded here as a PDF file.

world invaders

So the CBS may be dead, but the international network lives on in the form of Robots for Robots. This handy map shows members dotted about all over the world, including me basking in sunshine by the side of the Tay.

idealism 2

Extract from Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent:

The Chief Inspector, steady-eyed, nodded briefly his comprehension, and opened the door. Mrs Verloc, behind the counter, might have heard but did not see his departure, pursued by the aggressive clatter of the bell. She sat at her post of duty behind the counter. She sat rigidly erect in the chair with two dirty pink pieces of paper lying spread out at her feet. The palms of her hands were pressed convulsively to her face, with the tips of the fingers contracted against the forehead, as though the skin had been a mask which she was ready to tear off violently. The perfect immobility of her pose expressed the agitation of rage and despair, all the potential violence of tragic passions, better than any shallow display of shrieks, with the beating of a distracted head against the walls, could have done. Chief Inspector Heat, crossing the shop at his busy, swinging pace, gave her only a cursory glance. And when the cracked bell ceased to tremble on its curved ribbon of steel nothing stirred near Mrs Verloc, as if her attitude had the locking power of a spell. Even the butterfly-shaped gas flames posed on the ends of the suspended T-bracket burned without a quiver. In that shop of shady wares fitted with deal shelves painted a dull brown, which seemed to devour the sheen of the light, the gold circlet of the wedding ring on Mrs Verloc's left hand glittered exceedingly with the untarnished glory of a piece from some splendid treasure of jewels, dropped in a dust-bin.

sense

I do enjoy a good conspiracy theory, the more outré the better. The internet harbours a fair few such theses, but the one on this site is on a grander scale than most. It takes in mad cow disease, the royal family, the X-files and much more besides.

"Although the age difference between William and myself was extreme, I took the position that we are going to be married for 50 years. It doesn't matter that much. My anthropological position was that the peak for sexual appetite in the male is 17, while that for the female is 34. I suspected that this was because we females could not be easily drawn from the water. We probably also didn't like transforming from standing on our toes in the water, to standing on our feet on dry land. So eventually it became necessary to invent high-heeled shoes. But I still think we would all like to return to our baths."

dead air

Music is for the most part best understood as a great homogenous lump of rancid lard. This form of mass entertainment is created by a handful of multinational corporate behemoths whose ideology is spread through an ever-changing parade of dancing ventriloquist's dummies. The packaging is of course at its most brazenly wrong-headed in its labeling of goods marked 'indie', a genre dominated by major labels and TV contracts out to sell high street fashions. So where to turn for an alternative? What might be genuinely independent and self-sufficient?

Sad to say that from today the CBS will no longer provide this service. A 24-hour internet radio station beaming out all sorts of strange and beautiful electronic disco nourishment, the brainchild of one Ferenc van der Sluijs, it will live on in the hearts and minds of everyone who ever bothered to tune in. Insofar as it spread arcane information and a greater understanding of forgotten music histories, it can only have been a force for good in the world. The Cybernetic Broadcasting System: you will be missed.

documents

After leaving it lying dormant for many months, I've just uploaded a bunch of photos onto my Flickr account.

glitterati

Angela de la Cruz, Super Clutter XXL (Pink and Brown)

To the the DCA this evening for the opening of Altered States of Paint, which despite having a bloody awful title actually contains some interesting work. The big news, though, is that as part of the supporting film program none other than the legendary underground film-maker Kenneth Anger will be giving a talk! In Dundee of all places! I'm still getting to grips with this information. Could it really happen?

Earlier today, following a link on Dennis Cooper's blog, I encountered for the first time the work of another precociously gifted American film-maker with a camp aesthetic. Have a look at this from Ryan Trecartin; you really should be impressed. At least a little bit, anyway.

The Lost Border

Franz Falckenhaus is an alias of the prolific Dutch producer Danny Wolfers, and he has made his new album The Lost Border available for free download here. Eleven melancholic tracks steeped in Cold War paranoia and gloom, it comes highly recommended.

model

Sasha Grey may have chosen to eke out her living in an industry populated by all kinds of slime, but that's not to say she can't be admired. She can certainly get the better of Tyra Banks, who really ought to feel ashamed.

verify

Further to last night's Bobby O post, check out this vintage Face magazine feature from 1987. It confirms the homophobia story, but also contains some nice quotes from the great man himself.

"I regard each record I make as worthless and useless just like anybody else’s" says Bobby O with some venom. "Anybody who thinks that their music is something special is worshipping a false doctrine. There is nothing that any artist can say that is really of any importance because anything other than God’s word is laced with the evil and has to be regarded as sin tainted."

Bobby O

Bobby O on the right.

Bobby Orlando is an enigma. He appeared on the music scene at the start of the 80s and seemingly from nowhere crafted an incredible run of hit records that swept through the amyl-soaked netherworld of Hi-NRG disco. He produced tracks for the actor Divine, the pop act The Pet Shop Boys and hundreds (if not thousands) of others. Then he faded away as quickly as he had arrived.

There's not much anyone knows about his personal life and over the years this has lent him a degree of mythic status. Although most of his music seems aimed squarely at a gay audience, Orlando himself is said to have held very homophobic attitudes. One widespread rumour has it that he refused to move into an apartment whose previous tenants included a gay couple, though as far as I'm aware this has never been verified anywhere.

Even a brief glance through his list of aliases reveals an arch wit. From his Wikipedia entry, the names include...
"This is House, Joy Toy, Dressed To Kill, Band Of South, Dynasty featuring Dexter D, Darlene Down, The Fem-Spies, Gangsters of House, Girls Have Fun, Zwei Maenner, Something Anything, Gomez Presley, Gringo Lopez, Patty Phillipe, Malibu, Lilly & the Pink, Miss Tammi Dee, New Breed, Mc Fritz and the P-Rockers, Charlene Davis, Claus V, Ronnie Goes to Liverpool, The Bang Gang, Bubba and The Jack Attack, Fascination, Free Enterprise, Sandra Ford, Future Generation, Citrus, The College Boys, Condo, The Bigalows, Free Expression, Lola, Lifestyle, I Spies, Johny Bankcheck, Latin 1, Kinski Music, Gina Desire, and Beachfront..."

When acting svengali for his manufactured girl group The Flirts he would simply change the band's lineup for each record, which to me shows the sensibility of a conceptual artist at work.

Today Bobby Orlando's sound can be heard through an array of second-rate imitators, and a select few who have found new ways to interpret his legacy. As for the man himself, one imagines he earns a respectable lving from sample royalties (Felix Da Housecat, Soulwax and an avalanche more) while he studies to become a teacher (?)... though that could just be a rumour.