Alexander McQueen S/S 1999 - Creating an art piece

Johan Linton

John Baldessari

Marc Jacobs

Marc Jacobs. By Glenn O'Brien. Interview Magazine June / July 2008. Excerpted text:

"His collaborations with Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami, and Richard Prince have shaken things up in both the fashion and art worlds. Not to mention advertising that looks like art and boutiques that feel like clubs. Andy Warhol used to talk about the best art being business art. And it would be hard to find someone who has done more to apply to an artist's thinking of running a creative big business than Marc Jacobs." (Glenn O'Brien)

"It's not my fault! I just have interests outside the superficial world of fashion." (Marc Jacobs)

"Whether you like it or not, there's a validity to it. For all the critics who made fun of the installation of a Vuitton shop within Takashi's MOCA exhibition...I saw it like Martin Kippenberger's subway grate, you know? It challenged this sort of categorizing. Like, what is the art here? Is it what's on the bag? Is it the action of buying the bag - that's the art? Is it watching the people buying the art? Because it's installed in an exhibition in a museum, it it some kind of conceptual performance piece? It operates on so many levels that it's hard to categorize." (Marc Jacobs)

"I started to thinking in romantic terms, and I always thought back to the time of Schiaparelli and Chanel and Cocteau, when all these creative people seemed to be doing things together. They where influenced by Pablo Picasso or Salvador Dali, and fashion and art had a chance, you know?" (Marc Jacobs)

"And what I wanted to do, in the same way as Serge [Gainsbourg] had done, was deface it. The way that Duchamp had done with L.H.O.O.Q., by putting this moustache on [the Mona Lisa] and making it something hipper, a little bit anarchic, and just cooler." (Marc Jacobs)

Happy Holidays

Chairlift

If you’ve ever considered purchasing an iPod nano-chromatic, chances are you’ve heard 'Bruises', Brooklyn-based trio Chairlift’s ubiquitous choral-pop ditty about placing strawberries on a loved one’s wounds and the star of its very own Apple commercial. But if all you've heard is 'Bruises', you might have the wrong impression; you might think that the band is somehow a band caught up in the preciousness of its own delicate hooks and looping vocals. You'd be missing the rest of Chairlift's album, Does You Inspire You, a portal into the band’s imaginative psyche - where sonic shapes float under a haze of reverb and sanguine synth lines dance over decadent lyrical harmonies – as well as their myriad of musical and fashion collaborations. Last week I spoke to Chairlift’s vocalist Caroline Polacheck, ahead of their Australian tour in January, about:

iPod appeal
“We thought that ’Bruises’ being picked for the iPod commercial was great. Our music made it into the hands of people who would have never, ever found our myspace or album otherwise. It put songs like ‘Planet Health’ into the hands of 13 year old girls and ‘Territory’ into the hands 50 year old virgins undergoing open heart surgery. I like any publicity that takes us out of that very picky, very elitist scene.”

Writing soundtracks to haunted houses
“When Aaron and I started Chairlift we were experimenting with electronic loops and ambient soundscapes that were really murky. We made a series of recordings that were intended to be soundtracks for haunted houses. We were really obsessed with making music that would be scary in a film, but not in a way that jumped out at you like squishing guts or screaming, more music that would make you tense or set up an environment for really slow, terrifying things to happen.”

A collective energy in Brooklyn
“Ever since moving to Brooklyn I’ve been into the idea of light pop, surreal pop, as opposed to militant lo-fi. When I was living in Colorado I was listening to music that was way harder, like noise music or metal. Working and playing alongside bands like Grizzly Bear, Yeasayer, Mgmt, Black Dice, Boy Crisis, Telepathe has been really inspiring. They’re a bunch of people that we really connect with and have formed a school with. We all exchange notes and ideas, but we all have our own sound. We're all growing up and evolving together.”

Churches as recording studios
"When we signed to Columbia Records we were asked if we wanted to reissue Does You Inspire You. We went into the studio with Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear. And by studio, I mean church - we camped out in a church in Brooklyn for two days and two nights and recorded ‘Dixie Gyspy’, which is one of two extra tracks on the re-release. There is a supernatural and mysterious element to the song so it’s kind of fitting that it was recorded where it was."

Birth control and a sci-fi world
“A lot of my lyrics fixate on birth control and the pharmaceutical, like in ‘Planet Health’ there’s a bit that goes ‘Our intercourse was well protected/we made love each others eyes/I'm feeling great tonight.’ It’s a topic that is on the one hand extremely hotly tuned because of all the abortion stuff that is talked about in politics, but it’s also something that has been normalized and sanitized. Something that is as spiritual as reproduction and making babies being seen as objective scares the hell out of me. And not in a way that I’m not pro-choice. It’s more that I feel that we’re living in a world that is very sci-fi.”

The sadomasochist, MTV award nominated video for ‘Evident Utenstil’
“Getting nominated for an MTV award was kind of an honour but also a joke. Like, cool, we’re up there with Rhianna and Lady Gaga. I didn’t feel like we belonged there. The song ‘Evident Utensil’ is about the struggle it takes to put a plan into action. So, when it came to the video, we thought, let’s set up this torture garden in the middle of the woods where people have to go through this obstacle course of torture stuff to get their stuff made. It ended up being this really fun romp – a mix between innocent glee and the really weird sadomasochistic. In the end they mostly used footage of us lip-synching, close ups of us lying down in the grass singing. But if you look closely you will see people getting whipped and hung and dragged through ditches. “

Living with an 80s dominatrix and New York fashion
“That sadomasochistic side came from a couple of things. I’ve been living with this artist who used to be a dominatrix in the 80s and her work is feminist sadomasochistic punk paintings. My room is full of whips and chains. I think it’s also kind of a joke about New York too, because right now in fashion it’s totally laughable how punk and bondage have become normal. You’ll see a woman walking her dog, holding her Starbucks cup, and she’s wearing spikes all over her body. Like, really? There are no dungeons in Manhattan as far as I know. “

Modelling wares from the Marc by Marc Jacobs Fall 2009 collection
“I’ve always been a fan of Marc Jacobs, so when we were approached by Saks Fifth Avenue to model clothes from his Fall 2009 collection in a series of video advertisements we jumped at the opportunity. You know, Marc Jacobs sound tracked his Fall 2008 runway show with Sonic Youth, so he is a man of good taste and we were flattered when we found out he was a fan of our music. Music and fashion intersect in a lot of ways. And I got to keep the clothes. Sweet deal.”

Daul Kim

“I'm usually very miserable, so I reward myself with a fur coat every year.” - Daul Kim (31 May 1989 - 19 November 2009)

Rest In Peace.

Une Femme douce (A Gentle Woman)

A poster created by the Czechoslovakian artist Olga Vyle alová-Polá ková for the movie Une Femme douce, directed by Robert Bresson in 1969.

Harriet Casdin-Silver

Harriet Casdin-Silver began her artistic career in the 1960s as a painter and quickly moved into multi-media and technological images. In 1968, she made her first hologram, becoming one of the first artists to work in the holography media.

Blank Girl

Dum Dum Girls b-side, featuring Brandon Welchez of Crocodiles.

Visual hybrids

Cynthia Greig's series REPRESENTATIONS "combines photography and drawing to explore the concept of photographic truth". 3-dimensional house hold objects are painted with white, then drawn on with charcoal or graphite. No digital manipulation is involved. Fast food never looked so good.

Love /lʌv/ [luhv] , loved, lov⋅ing.

Evolver

Evolver is an architectural artefact constructed on the panoramic surrounding next to Lake Stelli in Zermatt, Switzerland, at an altitude of 8,320 feet.

Punishment

The Broken Column Frida Kahlo (1944)

Leather corset Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci (2009)

On Love

"...They say obese women are the most sex-thirsty, which I believe, but any word with an x in it is sexy. Take axe.

A vampire’s sex-thirst consists of brilliantly lit white caverns where 105 degree stalactites are slowly dripping onto the points of 105 degree stalagmites. But how does a person to whom each building under construction… they’re going to get us… no one notices… the crane swings and who sees it but the tiny construction men, the earth the size of a marble from the moon. And you, president of Allied Ice, with an icepick in your office and a piece of tripe in every orifice—what would they think if they saw you like this? On Blank Point, love doesn’t cross your mind much. But I have this assignment, and I intend to really do the best I can with it. Does Love know how to drive? It’s not born with the ability, but can easily be taught, as they say about parrots. Love is a forty parrot diamond ring that pulls down its pants while its parents rot. I know a lot about this subject because I wrote an essay on it once.

It’s true that love is everything to a human being. Love is the water that Jesus walked upon, but when the 'water' fails and one falls into being a hermit, it is still love into which one falls.

The reason some people equate love and death is that they don’t live on the equator. It’s because love is so objectless that they must call it an abstraction and death is the name for abstractions. In other words, it makes you want to play dumb. If you do though, you eventually get caught and have to start again somewhere else, obliged to fall in and out of it for as long as you survive, like a spy. Nothing wrong with that, though. One could say caterpillars are in time what honeybees are in space.

This has been the prelude. Now you pass your hand over your face, and in that split-second you relax your gazing features completely as if you were asleep with your eyes open..."

Extract from: Richard Hell THE VOIDOID 1973 novelina

Dan Tobin Smith

2 Or 3 Choses Que Je Sais D'elle

Tacoma

Psychedelic Yellow Pages

Israeli graphic artist Asher Kalderon designed this phone book in 1974.

Damo Suzuki / Can

Damo Suzuki of Can describes himself:

"Damo Suzuki – a nomad and a 21st century traveller, hippie but not really hippie, metaphysical transporter and human being."

Herbert Bayer

Mathieu Lehanneur

Industrial designer Mathieu Lehanneur's myriad of projects each tackle their briefing in an innovative, fresh and ecological manner.

Vacuous Numb

Vacuous Numb, a film by Fly 16X9, directed by Gray Scott. Featuring Ann Demeulemeester.

Trust Fun launches Fashematical

Trust Fun's output, which includes psychedelic scarves and witty Fashion themed equations, never fails to delight. Their newly launched zine Fashematical is no exception.

Mr. Jonathan Zawada explains: "To commemorate my 50th fashematics equation (I think I’m actually up to 55 or so, but who’s really counting?), with the help of IzRock Pressings, I created this zine of my favourite looks from the Spring/Summer 2010 runway shows.

"Fashematical is a collection of illustrations reinterpreting the stars of the catwalk as part of either a horde of zombies or an army of robots, hell-bent on taking planet Earth for themselves. Featuring clothes by Prada, Bernhard Willhelm, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Chanel and more…"

Romance Was Born Concept Store

Romance Was Born has opened a concept store at 2A Glenmore Rd, Paddington. It's called Pearl’s Dream and is open for a couple of months until January 31st.

Images via Dan Boud at Boudist.