AN OBSCENE DIARY: THE VISUAL WORLD OF SAM STEWARD

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"An Obscene Diary The Visual World of Sam Steward" chronicles the extraordinary visual world of a talented and largely unknown, writer, artist, photographer, and sexual outlaw. The edition, limited to 1,000 copies presents a diverse and powerful collection of drawings, paintings, sculptures, decorative objects, illustrations and photographs that are remarkably varied in style, and often quite contradictory in mood and tone. Bound and slipcased, the collection presents more than 750 images, many of which are reproduced in color. This edition complements the forthcoming biography by Justin Spring, entitled "Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade" and presents a wealth of previously unpublished material, including a quantity of highly erotic and sexually explicit polaroids taken in the early 1950s.  www.antinouspress.com

Listen to HTRK's 'Eat Yr Heart'

HTRK’s Ghostly International debut 'Work (work, work)' is a flat-lined study of desire and submission, sentimentality and dysphoria. The London by way of Berlin and Melbourne art-rock duo (pronounced “Hate Rock”) finished the album’s production while grieving the sudden loss of founding member and bassist Sean Stewart to suicide in March ‘10. And while that tragedy has certainly found its way into the music’s bottomless sonic void, 'Work (work, work),' written from 2006-10 in Berlin and London, is about much more than abject darkness. Much, much more.

All Utopias Fell

Artist Michael Oatman's All Utopias Fell sits atop the rafters of the old transistor factory in North Adams, Massachusetts–now home to the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art.   Constructed from an old airstream trailer and parachutes as if it just dropped in from outer space. "...1970s-era ‘satellite’ that has crash-landed at MASS MoCA. This beautifully reflective, repurposed Airstream trailer – with large parachutes and active solar panels – is inspired by an earlier era of pulp aeronauts like Buck Rogers, Tom Swift and Tom Corbett: Space Cadet, as well as the works of Giotto, Jules Verne, NASA, and Chris Marker’s 1962 film La Jetée. Visitors will be allowed to climb a staircase and enter into the craft where they will encounter The Library of the Sun. Hybridizing a domestic space, a laboratory and a library, it has the feel of a hermitage, where the occupant will ‘be right back’, only it is 30 years later. www.massmoca.com

Text and Photography by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre

[RETROSPECTIVE] Brian Duffy

The first ever full-career retrospective of the legendary British photographer opens to the public on July 8th 2011, coinciding with the publication of Duffy – the first and only book of the photographer's work. Duffy infamously quit photography in 1979 when, at the height of his career, he took the majority of his photographic work into the back garden and set it on fire. Featuring more than 160 images painstakingly rediscovered by Duffy’s son after years of searching through archives and publications around the world, this exhibition has truly risen from the ashes. On view July 8 to August 28 at Idea Generation in London. www.gallery.ideageneration.co.uk

Falos y Vaginas

In honor of Eros, the University of Antioquia, Colombia hosts an exhibition, entitled Falos y Vaginas (Phallus and Vaginas) which explores organs of pleasure represented in painting, ceramics, sculpture and photography, in a historical review of eroticism and as well as an encounter with science.  Falos y Vaginas is on view until November Medellin's University of Antioquia Museum (MUUA) Calle 67 #53-108 TEL: (574) 263-0011

Basquiat + Le Book

Le Book, the international reference for the creative industry, announces the release of its 2011 New York edition, curated by Tamra Davis (director of the recently released film tribute to Basquiat, The Radiant Child), art direction by Shepard Fairey’s Studio Number One, and dressed by one of the most recognizable artists of the twentieth century, graffiti artist and neo-expressionist painter, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 – 1988). www.lebook.com

Hungarian Rhapsody

Martin Munkacsi, Carole Lombard, Hollywood, 1937

Brassaï, Robert Capa, André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy and Martin Munkácsi each left Hungary to make their names in Germany, France and the USA, and are now known for the profound changes they brought about in photojournalism, as well as abstract, fashion and art photography. Others, such as Károly Escher, Rudolf Balogh and Jószef Pécsi remained in Hungary producing high-quality and innovatory photography. A display of approximately two hundred photographs ranging in date from c.1914–c.1989 will explore stylistic developments in photography and chart key historical events. These striking images will reveal the achievements of Hungarian photographers who left such an enduring legacy to international photography. Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts on the occasion of the Hungarian Presidency of the EU 2011. On view from June 30 to October 2 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. www.royalacademy.org.uk

Contemporary Magic: A Tarot Deck Art Project

"The Tarot deck is many things: revered diviner of knowledge, feared revealer of hidden secrets, and critiqued promoter of quackish myth. Regardless of one's take on Tarot card reading, it is certain that the history and imagery of these mysterious cards is ripe territory for contemporary artists to come up with their own interpretations of the 78 personas that make up the standard Tarot deck. And that is exactly what my divine colleague Stacy Engman set about doing as she assembled a group of some of today’s most dynamic artists and asked them to submit a new work based on a tarot card personally assigned by her. The resulting images are just as whimsical as the readings that emerge from an actual reading of the cards. The amazing group of artists included in the project created cards in a range of media (photography, painting and collage) and each infused an additional sense of allure and magic into this already heavily charged lam of mystery. Not only may viewers enjoy the actual works in the exhibition of the original cards, but they may also take them home in this unique catalogue in the form of a deck of Tarot cards in and of itself!" On view at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, PA until August 7th –www.warhol.org

A Celebration of the Poet Anna Akhmatova

If you happen to be in New Delhi on Wednesday, the Russian Cultural Center of Science and Culture jointly with the Literary Club “Parichay Sahitya Parishad” is holding a literary evening dedicated to the birth anniversary of the 20th century Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.  "She wrote with apparent simplicity and naturalness and her rhyming was classical compared to such radical contemporary writers as Marina Tsvetaeva and Vladimir Mayakovsky." June 23, 2011, 5:30 p.m RCSC, 24, Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi, India