Nude Man Forsblom & Jay Johnson @ Gagosian Opening For Richard Avedon In New York

New York’s spriteliest interior designer, Brock Forsblom, became so inspired at the opening of Richard Avedon: Murals & Portraits last Friday night, he stripped naked to pose in front of the Warhol gang. He in turn inspired hundreds of photographs taken by the mob-scene crowd, which included fellow interior designer Jay Johnson, twin brother to Warhol’s former partner Jed Johnson, and one of the original Avedon subjects. In these large-scale murals and the smaller, related portraits of the 1960s and 1970s, Avedon sought to depict the spirit of the times, a spirit that clearly lives on.

See the exhibition at Gagosian’s West 21st St. Gallery, New York. On view through July 27. photographs by Temo Callahan

Contains Nudity

Opening today in Los Angeles, an exhibition entitled Contains Nudity, is a retrospective of the nude fashion photography of Dazed & Confused Magazine co-founder Rankin. It includes some models with such household names as Kate Moss, Helena Christensen, Erin O’Connor, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Yasmin Le Bon and the former Mrs Seal, Heidi Klum. It will run for six weeks,until May 26th at the Rankin Gallery which is located at 8070 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, California.

Thomas Ruff's Nudes

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In 2003 Ruff produced the first nudes, culling images from internet pornography, then digitally processing them—enlarging them as far as possible—so as to cloud the crude clarity of the original images. For a new exhibition, currently on view at the Gagosian Davies Street Gallery in London, Ruff has created a series of unique monumental works, enlarged to an imposing scale while, conversely, the rawness and carnality of the original images is blurred to an innuendo. Images such as nudes dr02 (2011) become painterly illustrations of vague desire in which anonymous women sport and pose, their erotic power modified by a muted palette and hazed resolution, while in nudes ar09 (2011) the fetishistic power of the female subject is all but reduced to lush formal qualities—a cascade of thick blonde hair, the curve of pink thighs, the glossy black of a stiletto heel. Thomas Ruff  'Nudes' is on view at the Gagosian, until April 21, 2012.

American Ecstasy

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"It’s hard to imagine now, but in 1982 when I started working on porn movies, we shot real 35mm film on big movie cameras.  Home video cassette players had barely been invented.  There were no DVD’s, no home computers, no Internet.  People went out to downtown movie theaters and watched sex movies on the silver screen." American Ecstasy is the photographic memoir of Barbara Nitke who over 12 years shot publicity stills during the golden age of porn. "My images reveal the contradictions inherent in the business – great beauty, tinged with sadness, punctuated by surreal silliness." Nitke is currently raising funds to publish a book of "....seventy color plates, a selection of my written stories of life on the movie sets, and short excerpts from tape recorded interviews [she] conducted with the porn stars at the time." There are currently 11 days left to complete funding for the publishing of American Ecstasy.

Universe of Desire Opens @ the Museum of Sex In New York

“Universe of Desire,” an exhibition about human desire as seen through the lens of digital behaviors, opens at the Museum of Sex on February 8th. Type. Swipe. Search. Upload. Download. Post. Stream. These are the new verbs of desire. Our most intimate thoughts, fantasies, and urges are now transmitted via electronic devices to rapt audiences all over the world. These transmissions—from sexts to private webcam feeds—are anonymous yet personal, individual yet collective, everywhere and nowhere, and they are contributing to the largest sexual record to date. In short, desire has gone viral. The exhibition “Universe of Desire,” opening at the Museum of Sex on February 8th, examines human desire as seen through the lens of digital behaviors. Museum of Sex, 233 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

Lips of Blood: The Cinema of Jean Rollin

Revered by enthusiasts of fantasy and horror films, but largely overlooked by the critical mainstream, French filmmaker Jean Rollin (1938-2010) is finally being given the recognition he deserves. His surreal, dreamlike films are grounded in traditional gothic imagery but are flavored with 1970s-era eroticism, resulting in a body of work that is as eerie as it is outrageous. Though constrained by low budgets, Rollin managed to drench his films in atmosphere and used them as unvarnished expressions of his own personal fears and desires. As Tim Lucas of Video Watchdog has written, Rollin’s films represent “the very heart and soul of ‘le fantastique’—its flamboyance, its melodrama, its sense of the impossible made possible. They do not scare us; they were designed to delight us, to arouse our imagination, to move us.” For the first time, the films have been carefully mastered in HD from the original 35mm negatives and will be released with an array of special features, including interviews with Rollin and his collaborators, documentaries, and trailers. Available here.

Juergen Teller in New York

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Presented in three parts, an upcoming exhibition at Lehman Maupin Gallery in New York, highlights three recent series, demonstrating Teller’s dynamic and diverse oeuvre. Featuring the controversial photographs of Kristen McMenamy and seductive portraits of Vivienne Westwood, juxtaposed with intimate portraits of his family and close friends, this exhibition displays an amalgam of subjects and personalities. The exhibition starts with Teller’s controversial series of photographs featuring Kristen McMenamy, shot in the home of Carlos Mollino. Drawing inspiration from the eccentric architect, Teller recalls Mollino’s fascination with the erotic, capturing McMenamy in provocative poses. Although the series garnered controversy for its alleged “pornographic” nature, it demonstrates Teller’s skilled storytelling and fearless approach to his medium. On view from February 10 to March 17, 2012 at the Lehman Maupin Gallery, 201 Chrystie Street, New York.

Tom Poulton. The Secret Art of an English Gentleman

Thomas Leycester Poulton was an English magazine and medical book illustrator, born in 1897. Upon his death in 1963 it was discovered he was also a prolific and imaginative erotic artist who produced hundreds of sketches and finished drawings of women proudly and exuberantly displaying themselves in ways shocking to conservative post-war Britain. The archive remained hidden until the 1990s, when a collector of erotic artifacts passed it on to a fellow collector willing to share it with the world. Though Tom Poulton's work tells us much about English society between 1948 and 1963, there is a universal quality to these images of joyous, uninhibited sexuality that transcends time and place. A new edition of Tom Poulton: The Secret Art of an English Gentleman published by Taschen, the first of which was released by Taschen, will be available this March.

LES AMIES DE PLACE BLANCHE

Originally published in 1983, Les Amies de Place Blanche, rereleased by Dewi Lewis Publishing, focuses on the transsexual community living around the Place Blanche district of Paris in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The book established Christer Strömholm’s reputation as one of the leading photographers of the twentieth century. ‘This is a book about insecurity. A portrayal of those living a different life in that big city of Paris, of people who endured the roughness of the streets. This is a book about humiliation, about the smell of whores and night life in cafés. This is a book about the quest for self-identity, about the right to live, about the right to own and control one’s own body. This is also a book about friendship, an account of the life we lived in the place Blanche and place Pigalle neighbourhood. Its market, its boulevard and the small hotels we resided in. These are pictures from another time. A time when de Gaulle was president and France was at war against Algeria. These are pictures of people whose lives I shared and whom I think I understood. These are pictures of women – biologically born as men – that we call ‘transsexuals’. As for me, I call them ‘my friends of place Blanche’. This friendship started here, in the early 60s and it has been going on for 22 years.’ – Christer Strömholm, 1983. The book includes the original essays by Strömholm and publisher Johan Ehrenberg as well as newly commissioned texts by Jackie and Nana, two of the women who feature in many photographs in the book. The introduction is by Hélène Hazera, a leading French journalist, actress, director, and television producer who is also a transsexual. Available now in the UK and in the US next month.

War, Sex, Love

Illustration by Alberto Vargas

This timely exhibition, Love and War, drawn entirely from the Kinsey Institute’s art and library collections, features visual material from the American Civil War to the 21st century. Many of the items represent popular culture in America during World War II, as Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues spent those years traveling around the country collecting a variety of research material as well as data for their study of human sexual behavior. Cartoons, propaganda leaflets, postcards, photographs, magazines, pin-up calendars, drawings, prints, and a variety of novelty objects are featured, as well as a selection of contemporary images by Garrie Maguire, Len Prince, Herbert Ascherman, and other photographers whose work addresses war in the modern age. Love and War is on view at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, through April 6, 2012, Bloomington, Indiana.

Oliviero Toscani Launches New Calender

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Italian shock photographer Oliviero Toscani has released a new calendar at an unveiling in Florence, Italy -- a calendar featuring 12 penis close-ups in an ad for a group of companies that make naturally-tanned leather. The flamboyant photographer launched the calendar at an event in Florence also attended by famously well-endowed Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi, who said that people should "de-dramatise" sex and put an end to "bigotry". Toscani last year focused on women's genitalia for a calendar for the same Vera Pelle consortium, which brought censure from Italy's advertising watchdog.  Toscani is best known for his controversial ad campaigns for the Italian clothes maker Benetton, which itself courted controversy last year with a series of photo montages of rival world leaders kissing each other.