The Wolf in Me
This amazing image is by Caitlin Hackett.Check out this cool video of Madeleine Mathis painting a wolf, layer by layer, bones, then muscle, then skin, then fur:
Le LoupThe origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?
- Katherine Hamnett
I quite like this shoot, “Tokyo Hardcore,” for V Magazine (via HauteMacabre)
See more images there.Tags: animal circus, art, fashion fetish, weird/neat/morbid
Alexander McQueen
I like a lot of the pieces from Alexander McQueen’s last, Pre-Fall 2010 collection. Check them out below (pictures via HauteMacabre):
I love this Giger-esque dress on the left. It’s so wearable, too.You can see closeups of some of the pieces here. I love that deconstructed-sweater material.
Tags: fashion fetish
Hello Daddy, hello Mom, I’m your cherry bomb
Floria Sigismondi is a photographer and filmmaker who combines the morbid with the beautiful in hyper-[sur]real, vividly colored images. She explores the impact of science and biotechnology on the modern body and human experience. She is immensely talented, has a unique artistic vision, and really gets around. She’s created music videos for a variety of artists, including the old-time circus-themed video for “Hurt” by Christina Aguilera (which I think is great despite not being able to stand the music), “Blue Orchid” by The White Stripes, “Untitled #1″ by Sigur Ros, and “The Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson. I would love to have her book Immune. The upcoming movie The Runways, featuring Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie (heh), is her first feature film.
Christina’s Jean Harlow-inspired makeup and styling in this video bears a close resemblance to this picture by Darla Teagarden for Louise Black.
Beautiful and very sad.Tags: art, fashion fetish, film freak
Poetry Corner: Angel of Flight
Angel of flight and sleigh bells, do you know paralysis,
that ether house where your arms and legs are cement?
You are as still as a yardstick. You have a doll’s kiss.
The brain whirls in a fit. The brain is not evident.
I have gone to that same place without a germ or a stroke.
A little solo act—the lady with the brain that broke.In this fashion I have become a tree.
I have become a vase you can pick up or drop at will,
inanimate at last. What unusual luck! My body
passively resisting. Part of the leftovers. Part of the kill.
Angel of flight, you soarer, you flapper, you floater,
you gull that grows out of my back in the dreams I prefer,stay near. But give me the totem. Give me the shut eye
where I stand in stone shoes as the world’s bicycle goes by.
- Anne SextonTags: art, poetry corner
Edo-Period Japanese Pregnancy Dolls
These are very cool pregnancy dolls from 19th-century Japan that were used to educate people in obstetrics at carnival shows.
It’s like modern-day creepy installation art. Very realistic, detailed, and articulated.
You can see more over at PinkTentacle.
Tags: nerdrum factoids, old-time thingamajig, weird/neat/morbid
Takashi Miike’s “Imprint”
This is Takashi Miike’s segment in Masters of Horror, an hour-long surreal horror film called “Imprint.” It takes place (vaguely) in 19th-century Japan, but is spoken in English, and it’s very ahistorical in a way; it’s much more about a modern aesthetic interpretation of those times that the story takes place in. It’s based on a traditional Japanese ghost story. An older American man travels to an island, home to a brothel, in search of his long-lost love, Komomo, who he promised he would take away one day. Once there, he meets a disfigured-but-beautiful prostitute who tells him the story of (and lies about) her life and Komomo.
This movie has such beautiful visual imagery. As Miike is known for, it combines eroticism and beauty, the grotesque and the macabre; cringing torture scenes and the incredible, intense cruelty of characters towards each other; and fantastic cinematography, visual concepts, and imagination. Totally perverse. Gorgeous girls, inflicted upon with the most horrible things, rope-bondage, all the while that eerie stillness and somehow elegant, serene quality that sets Miike so apart from other horror movie makers. I don’t know if the story or dialogue is that great, but it should have a big influence just for its visual element. I love how all the other prostitutes were contrasted with the main girl by their hair (huge, stylized wigs with hair pins) and clothes being red while hers are blue. I really wanted to find some good pictures, but I couldn’t, really. I particularly liked the role of the main girl (unnamed), she was so alluring, and I loved her voice. And yet she became kind of repulsive later on; beauty and repulsion are constantly mixed in the female figures in this movie. One of the negative things is that I thought the man’s performance was kind of amateurish, rather one-sided, and his voice wasn’t really suited for this, it didn’t fit in at all. He was kind of more like an amateur stage actor or something, if you know what I mean. The “twist” is kind of just bizarre and reminds me a bit of a Twilight Zone episode or some such thing; the voice acting for the “hand” is really bad (you’ll see what I’m talking about if you watch it).
The “Madam of the House” did kind of remind me of “Mother” in Memoirs of a Geisha, haha. And the girl’s appearance/disfigurement reminds me a bit of Yotsuya Kaidan, one of my favorite ghost stories.
I don’t really separate elements of a movie from each other, like in an adding/subtracting machine, as a lot of people talk about movies or books or things, but in those terms, “Imprint” is worth it just for the visual aspect. I mean, it’s very interesting, it’s imaginative and has some ability to get under your skin. That imagination drives it. It’s obviously very dark and unconventional, like any other Miike film. I think he gets categorized as a “B movie” director a lot of the time, but for me his work has a lot of beauty, I couldn’t ever see it as somehow bad or low-quality. I’d give it like a 7 out of 10.
This isn’t terribly related, but if you like this sort of thing and similar Asian horror movies – I really liked the segment “Box” in Three Extremes.
Tags: film freak, weird/neat/morbid
Tara McPherson + Other Stuff
I picked up a copy of Lost Constellations: The Art of Tara McPherson yesterday when I saw it under “Arty Comics” at my university bookstore. It’s true that oeuvres with a Pop Surreal aesthetic, featuring cartoony cute alternative girls with motifs of hearts, bubbles, etc., are all too common nowadays, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still charmed by every single one I see, and impelled to look at it more closely. I’ve noticed Tara McPherson’s work before, but this time around I just felt an urge to pick it up and buy it and take it home with me.
Lovelorn or love-vicious space-girls and hollow spaces where hearts should be are at the heart of Tara’s work. Her paintings and illustrations are sweet, surreal, and occasionally almost mystical with a mysterious symbolism. They often come in series. Below are some of my favorite pieces from the book as well as others that aren’t in it.
My copy…Visit her Website. I like the simple design and easy navigation.
While at the bookstore, I also saw this intriguing book, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by mystery writer Shirley Jackson, from 1962. This was a very slim volume with an eye-catching new cover. Though I didn’t pick it up then, I hunted it down in the labyrinth that is my campus library today and started it. So far, pretty good, and promising. I’m reading a first-edition, I think, which is a lot thicker; since many of the books in the library system are quite old instead of updated editions. Sometimes categorized/marketed as “children’s literature” (this one is), it seems rather too dark and neurotic for that, and the language, even if it could have been read by children at the time, is still almost fifty years old.
I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain and dying. I would then help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs. Donell while she lay there.
I was also tempted to get the new version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland illustrated by Camille Rose Garcia. Though I don’t particularly like the book, I would love to have this edition just for Camille’s illustrations and since it seems so lovely.
You can see more in the little video below:
Speaking of Alice in Wonderland…
The luscious Ulorin Vex in a latex Queen of Hearts-themed fetish outfit by Jane Doe Latex in a shoot for the current issue of Bizarre Magazine.There’s a short video from behind the scenes of the shoot.
Tags: art, bookworm lolly, fashion fetish, weird/neat/morbid
Irregular Choice
Irregular Choice is a brand that sells cute, offbeat shoes with interesting and fresh fabrics, designs, and inspirations, often retro-inspired. Though they are rather pricey (I would never spend more than $60 for a pair of shoess!), and I don’t always like the prints they have on their shoes or think their shapes are very flattering (as with most shoe styles that are popular nowadays), they’re still definitely worth checking out. The following are some Irregular Choice choices that I thought were particularly noteworthy.
Tags: fashion fetish
Syn Emergence
This is quite interesting and needs to be seen. A visual/aural trip. This is how I imagine the creation of the universe, and also oddly somehow the connections made in a brain.I love this short film by Man Ray, Emak-Bakia, from 1926. It’s Dada/Surrealist, highly experimental, and very fascinating. One of my favorite, favorite things about it is the beautiful violin-and-cello-driven soundtrack. It’s absolutely amazing.
16 minutes long.
Watch Part 2 here.Along a similar line is Fernand Leger’s Ballet Mechanique from 1924, which can be viewed here. This version has the original, rather annoying (and intentionally so) soundtrack.
Both these films can be found on an interesting collection, Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s, from Kino.
Tags: art, brain sounds, film freak, old-time thingamajig
Spring Blossom Eye Makeup
Check out this amazing and creative makeup tutorial by Anna, inspired by the beauty of spring blossoms, over at Doe Deere Blogazine:
Tags: fashion fetish
