Check out Dev Hynes's New Musical Endeavor, "Blood Orange"

Dev Hynes is an international man of mystery as well as the busiest musician on the planet. As if his extensive work as Lightspeed Champion and with Test Icicles or co-writing with Theophilus London and Solange Knowles or a note-for-note cover of Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star album weren't enough, Hynes is launching a new project: Blood Orange. To begin, Blood Orange is releasing a brand new 7" single, "Dinner" b/w "Bad Girls" on April 26th. Both tracks were recorded with and co-produced by Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear for release on his Terrible Records label. Blood Orange finds Hynes delving deeper into the fringes of '80s American musical culture, crossing elements of melancholy synthetic pop balladry with a twangy noir, composing songs exploring the harsh realities of romantic pursuits: longing, suspicion, jealousy, self-doubt and loneliness, to name but a few. This release will be followed by a full-length album which was recorded in Los Angeles with producer Ariel Reichstaid (Cass McCombs/Glasser) and will be released in the late summer on Domino.

Anton Corbijn - Inwards & Onwards

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Anthony Kiedis, West Palm Beach, 2003

Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn has been a pivotal force in the visual landscape of music for the last three decades. Corbijn is the creative director for Depeche Mode, has taken some of the earliest photographs of the band Joy Division, as well as directed numerous music videos, including one for Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box.  Foam, Amsterdam, presents Anton Corbijn's most recent photographic project, in which he photographs of a few of his favourite artists, including Gerhard Richter, Alexander McQueen, Richard Prince, Iggy Pop, Anselm Kiefer, Damien Hirst, Tom Waits, Peter Doig, Bruce Springsteen, Lucian Freud and Karel Appel.

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Alexander McQueen, London, 2007

"Anton Corbijn is interested in how artists struggle with the creative process: the pain and the drama of the act of creation. His monumental black-and-white portraits blend austerity and aesthetics and attract attention because of the deliberate and exacting way they capture the character of the person being portrayed. The work shows Corbijn's concentrated gaze, his feeling for wonder and his ability to empathise with another. "

On view from June 23 to September 1 - www.foam.org

Ecce Homo: The Jewelry of Chris Habana

spring/summer 2011

If Jesus Christ were to be crucified today, Pontius Pilate would get his crown of thorns from jewelry maker Christ Habana. Custom made crown of thorns - he'd probably make a concession for the lord and savior. With a small, creeping trend in religious iconography popping up Chris Habana's eponymous label stays clear of the eternal flaw of most gothic inspired jewelry lines: taking it all way too seriously.

spring/summer 2011

There is a definitive, down to earth sensibility in all of Habana's creations. Spending his life in the Philippines and New York City, the 34 year old designer had a childhood "...rooted in fantasy and sci-fi...." and later "reveled in the 90s gay counter-culture..." - thusly merging the two worlds when Habana debuted his line in 2004. Habana's autumn/winter collection, entitled "Weird N' Kinky," is, well, weird and kinky.

www.chrishabana.com

Mick Jagger: Young in the 60s

Mick Jagger, 1966. Photograph by Gered Mankowitz

Portraits of Mick Jagger taken in the 1960s will be on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London from 3 May until 27 November 2011. Documenting the singer’s early rise to become one of the most influential singer-songwriters of the era, the display will coincide with the publication of Mick Jagger: The Photobook by Thames & Hudson.  www.mickjagger.com

I Love You When You Smile

Continuing with the great tradition of photographer duos, Rita Sousa and Ivano Salonia, who are "partners both in [their] professional and private life," started a website called I Love You When You Smile, a collection of their work created together. The images they capture are real and honest, almost like a lifestyle diary, mixing both fashion editorial and portraiture. I Love You When You Smile is based in Amsterdam. www.iloveyouwhenyousmile.com

Deconstructing Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up

Blow Up

Want to see a naked, nubile Jane Birkin in a threesome? Antonioni's film 1966 film Blow Up captured the zeitgeist of 1960s London with a bear trap. Its famous cover, with the lead character, a fashion photographer played by the venerable David Hemmings, lurching over the rail thin, German model Veruschka, is emblematic of an entire decade of cinema.  Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Blow Up, inspired by a book written by the Argentinian novelist Julio Cortázar, as well as the real life of iconic fashion photographer David Bailey, tells the the story of a fashion photographer who inadvertently stumbles into a murder.

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The film, which stars David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, and Sarah Miles, is a real-time paced glimpse into an otherwise drab London at the apex of the Swinging Sixties.  It was time when photographers were considered rock stars; groupies and all, doing whatever it takes to get their picture taken.  Using film stills and actual photographs in the film, a new book has come out this month on Steidl that re-examines Blow Up in a retrospective, socio-cultural context. Antonioni's Blow-Up, as the book is called, by Philippe Garner and David Alan, promises a "fresh and stimulating study of Antonioni’s masterpiece."

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You can find the book on Colette's e-shop. www.colette.fr

My Blue Love: Edith Piaf's Love Letters to Louis Gérardin

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"My blue love, our first separation ... darling, I think I can say that never has a man taken me as much, and I believe I'm making love for the first time." Edith Piaf's "blue love" was a 13-time French speed racing champion bicyclist named Louis Gérardin. The letters were written in 1951 and 1952 during a feaverish, little known, love affair – shortly after her true love, the boxer Marcel Cerdan, died tragically in a plane crash. The letters are intimate, full of sexual ravings and pleas for Gérardin to leave his wife. Before Gérardin could leave his wife Piaf had already married another man. In 2009, 54 of the letters were sold at Christies in Paris for 59,000 euros.  The letters will now will be published in the book entitled My Blue Love – out on April 30 in France.

Le Surréalisme, c’est moi!

Even today, Salvador Dalí’s creative output as an artist, his experimental films, and his unmistakable style of painting exert an inspiring fascination on artists up to the present day. By the early 1930s, Dalí had found his medium and his distinctive painting style. The world of the unconscious and of dreams, melting watches and endless, expansive landscapes, bathed in a cool sunshine, are his recognisable motifs.

Salvador Dalí, Flores surrealistas, 1938

Dalí’s virtuoso technique allowed him to paint his pictures in a style reminiscent, at the same time, of the old masters and the photo-realism of today. A new exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien presents Salvador Dalí together with works by Louise Bourgeois, Glenn Brown, Markus Schinwald and Francesco Vezzoli.

www.kunsthallewien.com

Icon of 1940s Fashion: Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman is stunning when when she appears on the silver screen in the 1942 classic Casablanca, and the same in Hitchcock's 1946 masterpiece Notorious. Bergman was not only an icon of the silver screen, but an icon of fashion in a decade when the world was at war. In the 1940s the fashion houses of an occupied France were struggling with limited resources, a fabric shortage, and the rise of competing American fashion houses. In 1940s style was an experiment in sartorial renunciation - an "expression of circumstances" as opposed to frivolity. In 1947 Christian Dior introduced the New Look collection - a ‘make do and mend’ approach to fashion that didn't comprise "ideals of beauty, femininity and luxury." Ingrid Bergman was a life long fan of Dior - her fitted suits,  pencil skirts, subtle accessories, and a slightly androgynous charm helped define the era.

A new book, Forties Fashion:From Siren Suits to the New Look, Jonathan Walford, founder of the Fashion History Museum of Canada, "is an essential sourcebook" of 1940s fashion; "a glorious celebration of everything from practical attire for air raids to street and anti-fashion."  Around 250 illustrations reveal the wide range of fashions and styles that emerged throughout the Second World War, in Europe, North America, Australasia and Japan. Including period advertisements, images of real clothes, and first-hand accounts from contemporary publications.

www.thamesandhudson.com

Watch the Music Video for Teams vs. Star Slinger "Close to Me"

Knoxville, Tennessee's Teams and UK's Star Slinger have released a collaborative LP on the Mexican Summer label. The album with its all its delightful crackle includes "six blog-rockin’, booty-shakin’ rippers, culled from vinyl-sourced samples of R&B and modern soul classics and reworked, twerked, and shimmied into the matrix of hip hop rhythms, sunshine, and classy, electro-clipped states of mind." A new music video, directed by Jordan Kim, for the track "Close to Me" is brilliant.

www.mexicansummer.com

[INFLUENCERS] The Psychomagic of Alejandro Jodorowsky

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Film still from El Topo

With gallons of blood, dwarves, and maimed circus performers, weirdness is almost always guaranteed. Your money's worth? Not so much if you're not ready for the holy mountain that is Alejandro Jodorowsky.  A gunfighter on a violent quest for enlightenment, a feverish search for a mythical holy mountain, and a man serving as his armless mother's arms, carrying out vengeful murders on her behalf, all summarize, albeit briefly, the trifecta of Chilean filmmaker and artist Alejandro Jodorowsky's surreal and mystical cinematic masterpieces: El Topo, Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre. Or maybe they're a summary of all the alter-egos of the man himself, the cult legend, the auteur of weird.

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Film still from El Topo

Most people have probably never heard his name before - much less seen his films, but Jodoorsky has had a massive influence on the avant garde, as well as impact on mainstream culture, for almost 30 years.  And thankfully, these days his name has been rising to the surface a lot more. With a high definition version of El Topo, slated for release on April 26, and various premiers of his films, lectures, and collaborations Jodoworsky seems to be getting his rightly due.

In March, Jodowosky started production on a film version of his autobiography The Dance of Reality. To date he has published over 23 novels in the field of psychomagic - which aims to heal wounds of the soul using the Tarot and various forms of holistic mysticism.  He has even spent fifteen years recreating the Tarot of Marseilles - cards that have been de rigueur to the practice of Tarot reading since the 15th century; the cards most are familiar with.  In the end it seems as though Alejandro Jodorowsky is satisfied in the role as shaman and he professes that his main goal is mainly "to spread consciousness." But no matter the course of the artist's multiple identities, Jodorowsky will always be an artist and whatever the medium may be he will continue to have a tremendous influence and voice each time culture sheds its fickle skin.

Visit Alejandro Jodorowsky's official site

Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre

Ones to Watch: Trevor Powers of Youth Lagoon

Meet Trevor Powers, a 22 year old singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist from from Boise, Idaho.  His voice and lyrics speak for itself in decibles beyond the music.  There is a certain trouble in this young man's heart that he seems to be working out with his music, and through the reverberating echoes of his voice his songs scratch on the very frosted windows of all the unanswerable questions of the universe - all with a raw, lo-fi romanticism. In that frailty and rawness Powers kind of reminds me of the romantic poet John Keats, and Power's first album a sort of post-modern, 21st century Ode to Solitude. Powers' debut album, The Year of Hibernation, is expected to drop May 11th on Juno Beach Records. The album is comprised of eight beautiful, nostalgic and angst laden arrangements.  

Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics & Devotion

Reliquary With the Man of Sorrows

Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics & Devotion in Medieval Europe, on view this June at the British Museum, brings together for the first time some of the finest sacred treasures of the medieval age. It features over 150 objects from more than 40 institutions including the Vatican, European church treasuries, museums from the USA and Europe and the British Museum’s own pre-eminent collection. It was during the medieval period that the use of relics in devotional practice first developed and became a central part of Christian worship. For many, the relics of Christ and the saints – objects associated with them, such as body parts or possessions – continue to provide a bridge between heaven and earth today. Relics were usually set into ornate containers of silver and gold known as reliquaries, opulently decorated by the finest craftsmen of the age. They had spiritual and symbolic value that reflected the importance of their sacred contents. The earliest items date from the late Roman period and trace the evolution of the cult of the saints from the 4th century to the peak of relic veneration in late medieval Europe. Relics featured in the exhibition include three thorns thought to be from the Crown of Thorns, fragments of the True Cross, the foot of St Blaise, the breast milk of the Virgin Mary, the hair of St John the Evangelist, and the Mandylion of Edessa (one of the earliest known likenesses of Jesus). Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics & Devotion in Medieval Europe - June 23 – October 9 2011 - www.britishmuseum.org