Thomas Ruff

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Thomas Ruff (b. 1958), known for his deadpan portraits and gorgeous views of the night sky and architecture, is one of Germany's leading contemporary artist/photographers. Among his work is an exploration of the internet, that parallel visual universe teeming with sexuality of every flavor and variety. He gathers from that virtual playground erotic and often pornographic photographs that he subsequently manipulates in his computer, making beautiful--and disturbing--artwork from visual material that, for better or worse, is probably more abundant than any other type of image in our world today. The pictures, which are graphic and abstract at the same time, are accompanied by an excerpt from a forthcoming novel by controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq, whose work is similarly influenced by the sex industry. Reviewing the series in the Village Voice, Jerry Saltz wrote: "Ruff may think these images are analytic or objective, but they're also sweetly, luxuriantly visual...Sex slips into something ravishingly, optically comfortable, and these everyday, off-world images morph into parapaintings from the Planet Love."

[Excerpt] An Interview with Bruce LaBruce

Bruce LaBruce is a filmmaker, an artist, and a pornographer, and underneath the blood soaked sheets and layers of half rotting flesh of the undead he is one of the greatest auteurs and romantics of the last few decades. I was able to ask Bruce a few questions and we talked about important topics such as his childhood in rural Canada, the alternative gay movement, sex in art, and a few of his current and upcoming projects, including his film L.A. Zombie Hardcore, a documentary on the artist himself entitled The Advocate for Fagdom by French filmmaker Angelique Bosio, and a short film involving two female to male transexuals which will premier at the Berlin Porn Festival this October.

You wrote a memoir called the reluctant pornographer – what does pornography mean to you? Well, lately I've been saying, which has sort of gotten me in trouble, because lately I've been calling myself a pornographer and saying I express solidarity with pornographers – that all pornography is art, really, because its a form of creative expression, its the mediation of reality, its made by people who use the tools of cinema, or making art, so why shouldn't it be considered art as well? There's good art and there's bad art and there's good pornography and there's bad pornography, but its all sort of an artistic expression as far as I'm concerned.

How important is sexuality in art or expressing sexuality through art? For me personally, sex has always been an engine behind my work, both in terms of representing and in terms of making it, on a personal level, but I think the sexual and the creative drives are very much linked, but on the other hand I know people who are relatively, or fairly, or completely a-sexual who have very strong artistic drives, so I don't think that's necessarily the case for everyone. Certainly with the gay movement was always based on that kind of sexual engine as well, which for me is yet another reason why, for me, the assimilation movement, which tends to be more domesticated and kind of based on ideals of monogamy borrowed from straight culture - it kind of dissipates the energy of the gay movement in my opinion. Yeah, sex is so ubiquitous in pop culture and advertising that its kind of hard to ignore it as an artist.

Do you think its more ubiquitous now than it has been? Well, I think that whats been happening in the last ten to fifteen years is that violence supplanted sex as the main driving force of popular fetish and popular advertising and certainly the media news sells violence and death in a very titillating kind of sexualized way - which is kind of creepy.

Full article and interview coming soon.....

Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre

Mags of Yore: Escapade Magazine

Escapade Magazine

Escape magazine, featuring beautiful kitsch photography of voluptuous women, never reached the iconic status associated with Playboy, but in it's own right held an integral role in the annals of naughty magazines.  With articles and essays written by William S. Burroughs  and Jack Kerouac Escapade magazine is a good vintage publication to collect.  Find vintage copies of Escapade Magazine here.