Month: October 2016

Christine and the Queens, “Here”

Christine and the Queens, “Here”, Featuring Booba

Letissier studied theatre at École normale supérieure de Lyon (ENS Lyon), moving to Paris in 2010, where she concluded her studies. When she visited London in 2010, she was inspired by the work of local drag queen musicians, including Russella, who accompanied her in one of her early concerts. They then became her “Queens” as a backing band.

She dedicated many of her creations to them and to all transgender individuals, describing her genre as “freakpop”. She adopted the name Christine and the Queens releasing her debut EP Miséricorde independently followed by another EP in 2012 called Mac Abbey with the minor hits “Narcissus is Back” and “Cripple”.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Tamas Gaspar

Tamas Gaspar, “Gulliver”

Based in Budapest, Hungary, Tamás Gáspár is a professional illustrator working in the publishing and entertainment industry. His works range from cartoon and caricature style creations through to intricate and beautifully drawn illustrations for books, editorials, magazines and multi media projects. His many clients include Radical Publishing, Kolibri, Digital Reality and Men’s Health Magazine.

Albrecht Durer

Albrecht Durer, The Men’s Bathhouse”, Woodcut, 1496, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Men’s Bath is an unusual print for its time since this is the only graphic image that was made for sale of naked men in such a scene.  Even more odd is the fact that these men are depicted naked in public, in a city that religiously regulated clothing down to the number of pearls allowed to be on any garment and where all the inhabitants needed to be fully covered.

It is believed that the figure with only a risqué codpiece covering his genitals and playing the flute is Dürer himself because he is bearded.  The two men in the foreground are believed to be the very sexually permissive  Paümgartner brothers, Stephen and Lucas, who Dürer depicted in the Paümgartner Altar.

Stephen King: “The Clown’s Grin Widened”

Halloween: First Chapter: The Clown

“Want your boat, Georgie?” Pennywise asked. “I only repeat myself because you really do not seem that eager.” He held it up, smiling. He was wearing a baggy silk suit with great big orange buttons. A bright tie, electric-blue, flopped down his front, and on his hands were big white gloves, like the kind Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck always wore.

“Yes, sure,” George said, looking into the storm drain.

“And a balloon? I’ve got red and green and yellow and blue…”

“Do they float?”

The clown’s grin widened. “Oh yes, indeed they do. They float! And there’s cotton candy…”.  George reached.The clown seized his arm.

And George saw the clown’s face change.What he saw then was terrible enough to make his worst imaginings of the thing in the cellar look like sweet dreams; what he saw destroyed his sanity in one clawing stroke.

”They float,‘” the thing in the drain crooned in a clotted, chuckling voice.

It held George’s arm in its thick and wormy grip, it pulled George toward that terrible darkness where the water rushed and roared and bellowed as it bore its cargo of storm debris toward the sea. George craned his neck away from that final blackness and began to scream into the rain, to scream mindlessly into the white autumn sky which curved above Derry on that day in the fall of 1957. His screams were shrill and piercing, and all up and down Witcham Street people came to their windows or bolted out onto their porches

.”They float,” it growled, “they float, Georgie, and when you’re down here with me, you’ll float, too–”.

-Stephen King, It

Jean Michel Basquiat

Jean Michel Basquiat, “Fallen Angel”, Acrylic and Oilstick on Canvas, 1981

Dominated by the figure of a large angel, rendered in staccatoed red, yellow and black lines, floating against a luminous blue background, “Fallen Angel” is a supreme example of Basquiat’s early artistic output. Paramount to the painting is the rapacious creativity and unrepentant vigor contained within each brushstroke.

The vivacious tonal qualities of the work represent a radical fusion of street drawing onto the Modernist canvas. The colors are not those of easel painting, obtained while learning a craft and constantly worked on. They are lively, swift colors of the street, both vibrant and fading, affixed and opposing. The unsophisticated, complex layers of paint and line contain an unrestrained primitivism that eschews high artistic conventions.