You cannot deconstruct unless you know how to construct. - Alexander McQueen

archive for the 'Books' department

Lady in Concrete

Wednesday, March 11th, 2015

I had just read about the newly restored Hollyhock House when I did my afternoon gambol to style.com and read Tim Blanks mention it in his write-up on Rick Owens’ Fall 2015 collection. Am I reading the Internet’s mind, or is it reading mine? Or are we ONE???


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Rick Owens Fall 2015

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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mayan Revival Hollyhock House in L.A.

On to other Fall 2015 memory game matches. So as soon as I saw Gareth Pugh’s show-closing Britannia…

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…my mind went here:

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Kevin O’Neill’s Britannia in latex from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: 2009

I would not have questioned it if this look from Marko Mitanovski’s latest was buried deep within Charles Fréger’s Wilder Mann photo stream:

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Marko Mitanovski Fall 2015, detail.

Wilder Mann, photos by Charles Fréger:


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Please, Someone, Snicker at Le Monde in My Place

Thursday, February 5th, 2015

I would do it myself, but Jonah Kinigstein’s exhibit at the Society of Illustrators is a) in New York, and b) on for two more days (ending on February 7th).

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The show is entitled “The Emperor’s New Clothes: The Tower of Babel in the ‘Art’ World”, after the forthcoming book on Fantagraphic’s FU Press imprint, which collects some of Kinigstein’s cartoons that lampoon the modern art world. I’ve been told by Fantagraphics that it’ll be a very limited run and likely be available in a month or so.

A good and short reading companion to the exhibit - if you can get there in time to see it thanks to this very short notice - would be Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word, an essay which elaborates on one of Kinigstein’s themes: the uselessness of modern art without the accompanying narrative or theory from critics and curators so that you, the plebe, can “get it”.

Via The Epoch Times

In Praise of Shadows: An Imaginary Course Syllabus

Monday, October 7th, 2013

The thump of that party bus called summer feels long gone with fall’s forced entry into the Pacific Northwest last week (complete with tornado). Cooler and darker days are here to stay; pre-Halloween days good for ghost stories and tales of the supernatural. What follows is the syllabus for an imaginary course on the horror short story that you never asked to take.

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The stunning Anna Falchi as She in Cemetery Man, based on Tiziano Sclavi’s novel, Dellamorte Dellamore. Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) broods in the background.

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Gun, with Occasional Nick Cave

Tuesday, August 27th, 2013

Most of us will agree that getting a song stuck in your head is annoying at best. The one currently on mental replay for me is “Red Right Hand” off of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ 1994 album, Let Love In. This is made tolerable by, a) serving as mood music for Jonathan Lethem’s Gun, with Occasional Music, which I’m only now getting around to reading (this should serve as a department heading as it is a constant state of affairs around here); and b) it’s simply a fantastic song:

“Red Right Hand” has set the mood for a variety of movies and tv shows, including Hellboy and The X-Files. Recently it has resurfaced as the theme tune for Jack Irish, a very enjoyable Australian noir tv series adapted from the novels by Peter Temple and starring Guy Pearce.

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Creating, the Cave way. An insert from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ 1994 album, Let Love In

I’ll reserve final judgment on Lethem’s Gun since I’m not done, but with the airtight noir narration, snorting lines of make, babyheads and an evolved kangaroo tough it’s a pretty fun read so far. Apparently, the babyheads are inspired by children in the Strugatsky brothers’ The Ugly Swans, which is waiting patiently on the bookshelf to be filed under, “Only Now Getting Around To Reading It”.

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Jonathan Lethem’s Gun, with Occasional Music, 1994.

Part Nouveau and the Bleeding Cool Swipe File

Friday, February 22nd, 2013

Came across Part Nouveau via Hint, which aims to give credit where credit’s due. Lilah Ramzi, a graduate student of fashion history, created the site in an effort to identify, “…anything within the creative field that borrows, reappropriates or is directly inspired by a work which preceded it”.

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From “Arsenic and Old Lace”, which compares Edward Steichen’s photo of Gloria Swanson and Paolo Roversi’s photo of Tilda Swinton for Acne Paper magazine.

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Cocktail Culture and Cthulhu

Sunday, July 31st, 2011

Was on a Lovecraft pilgrimage in Providence, RI today when, summoned by air conditioning, I drifted in to the Rhode Island School of Design’s Museum of Art and overheard that today is free day. So the elevator breezes me up to the third floor, the doors open, and to my left there are blown-up 1954 René Bouché illustrations for Vogue and on the wall ahead are cycling movie clips of stylish people drinking. Whoa. Ok. It’s the museum’s “Cocktail Culture” exhibit. It’s outstanding, and tomorrow’s the last day (10am-5pm).

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Red silk dress with cartridge pleats from the “Cocktail Culture” exhibit at the RISD Museum of Art. Designed by Norman Norell and Anthony Traina (under the Traina-Norell label), ca. 1949. From InStyle’s great slideshow of the highlights. The exhibit ends tomorrow (July 31st).

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The First Kingdom

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

Don’t judge a book by its cover. That’s what we’re told. This applies to comics as well, as the cover artist is often not the illustrator. But while visiting the Comicshop in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighborhood last weekend I judged a book by it’s cover. Covers. Digging through boxes of deeply-discounted books (the Comicshop is moving after 30+ years in their current location, so a big sale) I found singles of Jack Katz’s The First Kingdom. Not being familiar with this book, I was blown away by one cover after another. Flipping through some of the richest art I’ve ever seen I knew my judgment was sound, that this surely would be a rewarding read. And so it is.

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Jack Katz’s The First Kingdom Book 12, published by Bud Plant, Inc., 1980.

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Waggish

Monday, July 26th, 2010

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It is becoming more frequent that I hit roadblocks in my reading. I want to read things that haven’t been translated into English, and, at this moment, it’s Dmitry Galkovsky’s The Infinite Deadlock . I want to read his thoughts on V. V. Rozanov, and it looks like I’m not the only one looking for an English translation. Can minds be sophisticated if they’re chained to one language? Looks like I can’t read The Infinite Deadlock, but I can read Waggish. Good stuff.

Hipster Priest: A Quietus Interview With Alan Moore

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Bumped into a great interview with writer Alan Moore (but aren’t they all, though?) on The Quietus, which is coincidental because I am currently swimming upstream through Moore’s Dodgem Logic #3. It arrived by slow boat two days ago:

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Wraparound cover art for Dodgem Logic #3 (April/May 2010), drawn by Moore himself.

My reaction to The Quietus article’s title - referring to Moore as a hipster - was knee-jerkishly negative until I read through the interview and now understand the connotation: Moore as autodidact and not Fauxhemian (I prefer “Doucheoisie”):

[Hipsterism] used to be a fashion statement, but it was information as a fashion statement which is probably going to do you more good than the clothing you wear. I got an incredible education starting from the point at which I was thrown out of school. Now, I could probably hold my own intellectually with most people who have had university or college educations. And indeed some of them will have done courses on my books. So, despite the fact my ‘education’ ended at 16, I had hipsterism, which was wanting to be hip, and that led me to read this incredibly diverse array of books on science, mysticism, science fiction, literature, art… I would find out about these movements that I had heard about, and it’s given me a pretty comprehensive education. Now I am an autodidact, which is a great word… I learned it myself.

“Information as a fashion statement”? Can self-education be fashionable if it can’t be commodified; if it can’t be worn, drunk or tattooed on? (Interestingly, Moore is listed as a “Notable Autodidact” in the Wikipedia entry for “Autodidacticism”.)

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Look at THIS fucking hipster. Photo of Alan Moore from “Hipster Priest: A Quietus Interview With Alan Moore”.

Ape and Essence

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

“Ends are ape-chosen; only the means are man’s.”

I love this line. It’s from Aldous Huxley’s Ape and Essence, which I’m reading now:

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Ape and Essence, Aldous Huxley’s lesser-known dystopian sci-fi novel published in 1948.

In Ape and Essence Huxley anticipates the central theme (or rather the central warning) of a book I just finished called, The Dying Self by Charles M. Fair. The Dying Self (1969) is as uplifting as the title suggests and is a loud reaction to the spirit of the times. However, Fair’s hypothesis is interesting, his references are encyclopedic and he uses some creative language. Some choice phrases: “gray intermediate mass”, “Man the Anxious Amorph” and “formal time zero”. Good stuff.