Her New Religion

Wearing Larry Gagosian and billionaire art patron Eli Broad's credit cards as charms from a rosary like Chanel necklace, and decked out in other shiny designer accessories, the subject in the painting, entitled Her New Religion, by artist Anna Halldin Maule, is a brilliant psychological statement on the blatant and shocking materialism of the art world. The subject, wearing nothing save for a pair of tiny pink lace panties, in a pose similar to the praying saints of classical paintings, almost denounces the art world as a religion where money is god and billionaire patrons are like sugar-daddy saints. Anna Halldin Maule, a painter who originally hails from Sweden and now lives in Hawaii with her husband and creative partner, uses techniques of the the old masters to paint incredibly life like portraits that explore the themes of materialism and money with glossy, erotic overtones.  After the jump watch the whole process of her working with the model, capturing the perfect pose, and the meticulous brushstroke by brushstroke process of her amazing painting technique. www.halldinmaule.com

Obscenity

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Bruce LaBruce's gallery exhibition Obscenity opens February 16 at La Fresh Gallery in Madrid. Obscenity will offer a variety of images - some gentle, some romantic, some spiritual, some grotesque – that attempt to refine and redefine the nature of the fetish and the taboo, to sanctify this imagery and position it more closely to godliness. The lives of the saints are full of ecstatic acts of sublimated sexuality that are expressed in the most startlingly sexual and perverse ways. OBSCENITY presents a series of portraits that illustrate this most holy convergence of the sacred and the profane. Obscenity will be on view from February 16 to April 4, La Fresh Gallery, Conde de Aranda, 528001 - Madrid, Spain. 

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.

Till The World Explodes

Photograph by Bill Ray, Hell Angels

You say, Babe, Don’t ever leave me. Never. I mapped our lives. Rocking chairs, Metronomes, Silver lake, Wrinkled kisses. A cottage, A jungle Overthrown with vines. Or perhaps, We’ll die. Ride our motorcycles Off a cliff In Utah. Arms trapped, Our stars Side by side On the sidewalk Till the world explodes.

Till the World Explodes, by Nina Ljeti

Nymphomaniac

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Lars Von Trier announces a new film entitled Nymphomaniac, to star Charlotte Gainsbourg, "the light and poetic story of a woman’s erotic journey from birth to the age of 50 as told by the main character, the self-diagnosed nymphomaniac, Joe." The film will be in 8 chapters. Filming will begin this summer and there will be a softcore and hardcore version of the film.

Made For Love

All I Need, 2011, oil on linen, 14” x 20”

Allegra LaViola Gallery in New York presents Sarah Kurz: Made For Love. In her first solo exhibition, Sarah Kurz turns her attention to a traditional subject: the portrait. Much as John Singer Sargent painted beautiful women and scenery of his day while exploring the ability of paint to convey light and texture, Kurz also chooses these as her focus. The women of Kurz’s paintings are a combination of myth and reality—they close their eyes to us and seem to dream of someone else, or gaze into a distance beyond our field of vision. When they do confront us, as in Tight Fit, their look reveals only more mystery. Sarah Kurz: Made For Love is on view until March 11.

Warhol: Fame & Misfortune

Andy Warhol: Fame and Misfortune -an exhibition exclusive to the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio - assembles over 150 objects in all media, drawn from the rich collections of the Andy Warhol Museum in the artist’s hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Looking at Warhol’s lifelong obsession with both fame and disaster, the works included in this broad survey juxtapose icons of popular culture, legendary entertainers, art world luminaries, and world leaders, with images of suicides, automobile accidents, skulls, and an electric chair. This diverse range of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and films spans the three prolific decades of Warhol’s career, beginning in the mid-1950s and continuing through 1986, the year prior to his death. Andy Warhol: Fame and Misfortune is on view until May 20.