Black Lust

Jean Villiot's Black Lust
Jean Villiot's Black Lust

"One of those bizarre works of fiction and fact whose haunting details live with the reader forever. This diabolic novel is an encyclopedia of venery, a kaleidoscope of perversions, a jungle of horrors. Historic realism appealing only to people with mature, shock-proof tastes -the love and hate of a white woman for a black Mohammedan chief forms the overtone of this historic novel whose background paints the native tribes in the Valley of the Nile before the turn of this century." Jean de Valliot was actually the failed pornography writer Georges Grassal de Choffat, or Hugues Rebell, depending on who you ask.  Black Lust was published in 1931 and only 2000 copies were printed "for private collectors." In my library is edition no. 1967.

Flower Myth

Left: Klee in 1911, by Alexander Eliasberg Right: Flower Myth (1918), Watercolor on pastel foundation on fabric & newsprint mounted on board

Paul Klee in His Studio

"I cannot be grasped in the here and now. For I reside just as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough." Paul Klee

Stolen Youth: In Memory of Maria Shneider

Maria Shneider
Maria Shneider with Pistol
Maria Shneider

Maria Shneider, who was paid $4,000 dollars to star opposite Marlon Brandon in Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, has died at the age of 58; she will be buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Artist: Devendra Banhart

Artist Devendra Banhart picks up where native cave painters left off 20,000 years ago.  There is a shamanistic catharsis in the pure forms, lines, and colors against stark simple backgrounds that give Banhart's art an almost talismanic quality.  I should also say that there is a common misconception that cave art is primitive - the Lascaux cave drawings, for instance, (which were discovered in 1940 by four teenagers and their dog in southwestern France), upon closer observation, are actually incredibly complex.  For example, they have found evidence of mathematical star charts, dimensional perspective not seen in art for centuries and  intricate spiritual iconography.  Inside Banhart's art one can find the same cosmic complexity. Banhart's art is a return to the id - as if there was ever a magic tab to dissolve on your tongue to return you there. Banhart has been more widely recognized in other mediums, but his art has touched hallowed museum walls.  In 2004 Banhart exhibited exclusively next to the art of Paul Klee, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  Banhart has also had many solo shows in galleries around the world. The newest revelation is that Banhart has bought some tattoo supplies and has started tattooing his friends and family. Banhart's tattoos are brilliant little mementos that don't stray too far from the style of his artwork.  They hover moderately within the confines of traditional tattooing - albeit, with a lot less shading.  His tattoos are currently an altruistic enterprise, and he has graciously offered to give me one the next time I stop through his neck of the woods.  Coming up in March Banhart will be having a show in Milano along with Adam Tullie of Cavern Collection and bonkers conceptual artist Keegan McHargue.  More info about the show here.

Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre

Images Kill: Toilet Paper Magazine

"Toilet Paper is a new magazine directed by Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari. Following in the wake of Cattelan’s cult publication ‘Permanent Food’, Toilet Paper is a new generation magazine that combines commercial photography, twisted narratives and surrealistic imagery to create a series of powerful visual tableaux." You can buy an issue here.  www.toiletpapermagazine.com

COVHERlab "PIECES" ss 2011

New Covherlab collection by designer Marco Grisolia." From the press release: "Sartorial ties and embraces, open, allowed to decant with hems kept raw and an obsessive succession of paneled sections declined in different chromatic solutions, in various weights, textures and rigidity that doubling the main piece with gauze, georgette, micro net and chiffon, opaque it with glaze and, thanks to the superficial cut outs, build a silent dialogue of “chiaroscuro” and layered geometries.

Discovered: 'Black Mirror' Roger Gilbert-Lecomte

"Dark: two perfectly identical human mouths kiss each other to death." R.G-L

"[He] is one of the rare poets of this century to cultivate such a form of violent, tortuous, oppressive lyricism, a lyricism made up pf the screams of a man being flayed alive...," writes Antonin Artaud in a review, and reprinted as an introduction to Black Mirror, a selection of discovered writings by little known, anti-surrealist poet Roger Gilbert-Lecomte.  With a life mired by tragedy and drug addiction (he died from tetanus as he was prone to shooting up morphine through a pair of dirty trousers), Lecompte managed to leave behind a dark and incendiary selection of writings, collected in the book Black Mirror: The Selected Poems of Roger Gilbet-Lecomte.

If You Don’t like the Picture, Blame the Ass

Tijuana Donkey Show

For over a century, millions of Americans have put on sombreros and posed for tourist photographs on top of donkeys in the border city of Tijuana, Mexico. For almost as long, one of the greatest urban legends in all of California history has been the Tijuana donkey show, the much-rumored, often-referenced, but never proven south of the border sex show that is perpetually re-invented in American high school locker rooms. The Donkey Show explores the border’s intersection of myth and reality through a blend of over 200 rare tourist photographs, vintage nightlife ephemera, and pop songs born of American myths of Tijuana. The exhibition is guest curated by cultural anthropologist and graphic design historian Jim Heimann and author and music critic Josh Kun.  On view at the Santa Monica Museum of Art until April 16th, 2011. www.smmoa.org

Chasing Mirrors Through A Haze

'Graham Nash, NYC' © Graham Nash, Date Unknown

Sir Graham Nash was not only a prolific singer-songwriter, as the proverbial "and," in the band Crosby, Stills, and Nash,  he was also a brilliant photographer who, for the last five decades, has captured beautiful, haunting imagery of his own life with his camera.  Nash was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, England in 1942 at the tail end of World War 2. In the early 1960s Nash inadvertently entered the musical phenomenon known as the British Invasion with the band The Hollies.  In 1968, upon a visit to Los Angeles, Nash would meet David Crosby in Laurel Canyon and the rest was, as you say, history.  Looking through Graham Nash's photography I am reminded of thefragility of a true artist - an artist that seems entirely unaffected by his fame.  In the miasma of chaos and casualty, Nash is constantly asking himself questions, what with the common denominator reliant on self portraiture, his photographs seem more of a personal odyssey; a forty days and forty nights trek through the barren desert of queries about our own mortality.  Through the love and terror of a universe that does not answer back, there is a sense of acquiescence and peace in the not knowing, that gives Nash's images a tremendous aura of existential tranquility.  Last night, Graham Nash's song 'Simple Man,' from his first solo album Songs for Beginners (1971), came on the shuffle at around midnight, at random, from my vast library of music. Its a sad tale of love, woe, and heartbreak, written by someone way more than just a simple man - Sir Graham Nash - who turns 69 today. Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper / Images by Graham Nash

Our Future is in the Air

Adolph de Meyer 'Dance Study' 1912 - Alfred Steiglitz Collection

Adolph de Meyer - who would become Vogue magazine's first official fashion photographer, 1913 - photographed the dancer Ninjinsky and other members of Sergei Diaghilev's troupe when l'Apres Midi d'Un Faune was presented in Paris in 1912. It has been suggested that the above photograph, the only nude by de Meyer, has some connection to the Russian ballet, but if so, remains mysterious.

It has been commonly remarked that the 20th century didn't really begin until 1910. The above photograph and a selection of other  incredible photographs from the 1910s are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for the exhibit "Our Future Is In The Air": Photographs from the 1910s. On view till April 10, 2011.