My Dad was a huge opera buff and Wagner was usually playing in the background at my house growing up.    I think when I had nightmares Die Walkure was like the background music.     At the time I thought it was annoying, but now I think fondly back to those days when my Dad would blare Beethoven or Wagner and sit around talking about Nietzsche.    My sister and I were dragged to the opera and just hated it at the time, does any 10 year old like opera?     After high school I found myself listening to classical music quite a bit, especially the Italian composers like Vivaldi and Verdi.     I also listen to a lot of Bach and have turned Nova onto it.   Very soothing, kids love it.   (Baby Bach is a great kid relaxer) 
One of my favorite opera's is La Boheme.   It's so tragic and beautiful.        A few years back I discovered Maria Callas.   Her signature operas were Tosca and Norma, although she performed La Boheme as well. (source for these images is the Maria Callas website)
She was the Audrey Hepburn of Opera.   A mezzo-soprano with incredible talent, a voice to die for and great style.     They just don't make em like they used to.     A true Diva. 
   Unfortunately the great love of her life, Aristotle Onassis left her for Jackie O (hard to compete with that).    He broke her heart and her spirit.   She was never quite the same after that.
Maria Callas official site 

Maria Callas  (December 2, 1923 - September 16, 1977) was an American-born Greek soprano and perhaps the most renowned opera singer of the 1950s. She combined an impressive bel canto technique with great dramatic gifts. An extremely versatile singer, her repertoire ranged from classical opera seria to the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini, and further, to the works of Verdi and Puccini, and in her early career, the music dramas of Wagner. Her remarkable musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed La Divina. (wikipedia source)


    
 

A little future pop, a little afro punk.   Most notable is that she is an original standing out from the crowd.     Janelle Monae 's album METROPOLIS is out now.     Janelle makes you focus on the talent first, the style follows, and it's her experimentation with fashion, conceptual imagery and visual fantasy makes her one to watch.
  I love that she is a mixture of glam, pop, rockabilly and future pop.   It is so nice to see originality in a genre so watered down with bottle blonds, boy bands and girls that show toooo much skin.  Next year at this time I'm sure she will have a few magazine covers under her belt.   Check her out.

Janelle Monae site
Janelle Monáe, Girl from Another Planet

Open your minds, earthlings, and prepare to be launched headfirst into an alternate universe. A place where robots fall in love with humans. Where your tour guide into this alternate realm is a demure lil thang with a bold set of pipes. "I'm an alien from outer space," declares Janelle Monáe on the first song of her debut album, Metropolis: The Chase Suite (Special Edition). Yes, Toto, we are no longer in Kansas anymore. Or even planet Earth.   Janelle images from her website, last paragraph from her website.

I normally don't take fashion photographers as artists too seriously but I do make acceptions.    Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin and Chris Von Wangenheim are some of my favorites.  (and ofcourse, among the living Mr. Steven Meisel)  The funny thing is their work was all done around the same time.     Guess I love that 1970's look.   One of my favorite models of that era was Lisa Taylor who is in Vogue this month  at 56 and still looking amazing.  Here she is in a DIOR ad shot in 1976 with a Doberman, this image is pretty iconic and you have probably seen it.     Two of my favorite inspirations, crime and fashion came together in Chris's imagery.    The look of Chris's visuals served as the photography inspiration for the film  The Eyes of Laura Mars".  The styling, the makeup, hair, energy.   One of my favorite Faye Dunaway movies.     I'll never be glamourous enough to wear gouchos and heels on a shoot and throw an ElCamino into a ring of fire, but she knew how to make it look fabulous.

Chris von Wangenheim produced a body of work which has continued to fascinate, intrigue and influence the photography world. Combining a dark world of sexuality, violence, and vouyerism in all their perverse implications, with an extreme visual elegance, he achieved a starling synthesis of glamour and terror which is unique to his work.

He was born in 1942 in Germany. In 1965 he migrated to New York to learn photography. One year after he had set up his own studio and began working for Harper's Bazaar.By 1970 he was photographing for Italian Vogue and by 1971 for French Vogue. In 1972 he became 'contributing editor' of American Vogue.

Chris von Wangenheim worked for many mayor advertising companies such as Revlon, Clairol, Christian Dior and Helena Rubinstein. He also contributed to magazines like Esquire, Oui, Playboy, and Interview.

His career was cut short in 1981 by an early accidental death.


Staley Wise gallery
all images and bio courtesy of Staley Wise gallery

Rapper, "clothing designer",  and Hermes bag- toting rock star extraordinaire Pharrell WIlliams is ready for his new role.    Contemporary art collector.     Thank god Pharrell is setting an example for his peers.   Much like Jay Z and other blue chip rappers like Nas, Pharrell (arrogant as he may be) has just elevated the game.    He has great style, he's hot, can actually sing, make block rockin beats..... and has good taste in art.
Thats all it really boils down to.   GOOD TASTE- and yes, hard to get and impossible to buy.  You are usually born with it, or in the case of most celebrities, you just pay a stylist to have it for you..

Pharrell's collection has a long way to go, he's not the Eli Broad of rap-YET- but he's off to a good start with anchor pieces by Keith Haring and ubiquitous street artist KAWS.    I have another post about KAWS in my blog from a few months ago if you want to follow up.   Aside from the fact that art is beautiful and inspiring to have around, it's also valuable stuff.    In today's economy art is more valuable than most stocks.   As witnessed here, the new status symbol.  Art is in.
I hope more musicians go to MOSS for one of a kind design pieces, Regen and other great  galleries to spend their windfalls instead of JACOB the Jeweler.    Bling does't age quite as well as the Baldessari or KOONS.    .

FYI: if you are interested in starting to collect contemporary art,  the top galleries are listed in our links on this site to firmiliarize yourself with the artists.    There are also tons of great galleries on the lower east side and Chelsea in NYC and Chung King Road,  Silverlake, Bergamont Station and Venice in LA etc. where you can buy great affordable pieces.    Collect art and support the arts-it's a great way to support creativity.

Images of  Pharrell by Alasdair McLellan      layout courtesy of Fashion rocks.

Not so horrifying in person.

The amazingly talented Kembra Pfahler is gorgeous sans her costumes.     With a long art and performance career that has spanned 18 years. Ms. Pfahler has cracked eggs on her crotch in concert (see video below), sewn up her vagina  to make a statement about gender, and been an artist and downtown fixture on the scene for almost two decades.    I was lucky enough to photograph her band for Details years ago and have been a huge fan ever since.   Kembra's new album, Actresstocracy is out this fall.   Kembra performed at ART BASEL Miami last year and the 2008 Whitney Biennial.   I'm so excited that she is getting the recognition she deserves.   An incredible artist and performer.


Image above from Kembra's album cover.   The songs on the first album are hard rockin with driving quitars set to hilarious lyrics.     Honky Tonk Biscuit Queen and Born to Bake are funny as shit.
Here is a bio from the Whitney biennial.  Image a still from her performance "Actresstocracy" on Independent Film Channel. (VFAIR)


Kembra Pfahler is the woman behind The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, a theatrical rock group that links a hideous monster aesthetic to a dark, hysterical feminine archetype. Named in honor of cult horror film heroine Karen Black, Pfahler's band performs heavy-bottomed punk-metal songs amid elaborate hand-constructed sets where she engages an animalistic, fetishistic practice of acting out transgressive physical feats. Pfahler's stage persona has been described as a dominant "lady devil" who relishes destroying notions of female beauty rooted in purity and innocence. Wearing a teased black bouffant wig with blacked-out teeth, black stiletto boots, and black underwear, her nude body painted blue, pink, or yellow, Pfahler heads a team of ladies appointed in similar campy glamour while male band members including her ex-husband, Samoa, maintain masculine rockabilly stylings. Pfahler and Samoa formed The Voluptuous Horror in 1990 after ten years of making Super 8 horror films and visual and performance art that they felt would benefit from a musical soundtrack, looking to Viennese Actionists Hermann Nitsch, Otto Mühl, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler as original influences. Rebelling against a degraded, polluted world, Pfahler developed an "anti-naturalism" platform on which to promote VHOKB reflecting their desire to reveal the attraction of repulsion.

The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black fashion their props and sets from low-tech, readily accessible materials under the rubric of Pfahler's theory of Availablism, creating structural items and costumes such as ladybug and flower head uniforms as visual accompaniments to their songs. For Chopsley (1996), an oversize animal trap controlled by a female band member snaps open and shut on Pfahler as she sings about a "rabid bikini model." In a 2006 performance at New York's Deitch Projects, The Sound of Magic, band members danced with Mylar-covered boards shaped like giant razor blades and shark heads before a backdrop of starkly striped paintings. Members Pfahler, Samoa, Adam Cardone, Magal, Adam Pfahler, Dave Weston, and Karen Black Girls Bijoux Altamirano, Alice Moy, Anne Hanavan, Jackie Rivera, Laure Leber, and Armen Ra writhe and jump throughout these ritualized ceremonies-cum-rock shows.

Recently Pfahler has directed her interests in bodily transformation to curatorial practice. In Womanizer (2007), also at Deitch Projects, she co-curated a show that demonstrated an "evolution beyond gender" by showing works by women seeking to explode the dualism inherent to male/female opposition. Pfahler exhibited a suite of photographs in which, dressed only in thigh-high lace-up boots and blue body paint, she mimes fornicating with a skeleton symbolizing her recently deceased boyfriend. Conflating horror, death, and female sexuality, Pfahler and VHOKB tantalize the viewer by exemplifying an abhorrent sublime, terrible as it is irresistible. TRINIE DALTON

TMobile, Tony Hawk and Mr. Brainwash throw a dam good party.........

The stars of skateboarding were out last night as Tmobile launched their Tony Hawk sidekick.    Haven't seen a party like this in a while.  PS- Did I mention that skateboarders are the coolest nicest athletes in the world.
  Christian Hasoi, Tony Hawk and Tony Alva all under the same roof was a treat.    The ginormous ramp was the main attraction as skaters strutted their stuff all night.  
  The supreme crew was in the house, Stone Temple Pilots performed forEVA (can we discuss the "droogs" like Clockwork Orange  styling?).  
Also in attendance were musicians Incubus's Brandon Boyd and foxy Brett  Anderson from the Donna's.     


check out the Donna's site.  Not only have they been making hard rockin head bangin tracks  for the last ten years, they are hotter than ever.   Brett loves art and we love her for that.

The Donna's site

Anyone there knows there were a few ce-webrities and publicity hounding reality stars from the Hills (that were friend-less) that really aren't even worth mentioning.


The history of skateboarding rooms were so fun, all the vintage boards a treat to oogle..The fashion statement for the evening was captured best by Cory and Abraham with their  overly large Stash facial hair.    Cory even has a comb for his.


Mr. Brainwash did a great job designing the space with his Banksy like-pop art.     My favorite piece was the Fahrenheit 451 like installation at the opening of the event.   25 feet high and over thousands of books piled up with a small laptop on top. 
Made an important statement about the web generation.


Needless to say it was a cool shindig.   .

SUBWAY:
France 1985

Luc Besson's masterpiece set in the seedy Parisian Metro.     Crime, Revenge and a sexy love story.       Starring the enigmatic, cooler than skool  Chirstopher Lambert.


I think this was Christopher Lambert's first film, if not, it put him on the map.     Unfortunately he went on to do Highlander, Greystroke and ended up in action star oblivion, but he was the coolest-bluest hero here.

Subway also stars, Isabelle Adjani, Jean Reno and the French star Richard Bohringer (diva).    COOL and blue.









One of my favorite American films around this time was MANHUNTER.    Michael Mann's masterpiece that really started William Petersen's career.    (CSI)   When he finally showed up 20 years later on CSI, I thought to myself its about fucking time. He was so great in this.      Truly one of the best serial killer movies ever.     When the song,  In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly comes on in a murder scene where he rips a girls eyes out- you just want to scream.   Highly recommend.    

Michael Mann stuck with that visual color(blue) for a long time and it came to define many of his films.      Check out Heat with Deniro.   Also for you TV fans. The old Miami Vice episodes.    


I like to reference a lot of films from this period for my own work, the stylized color, moody lighting, and saturated feel  are pretty compelling.   I love anything about serial killers.     Im working on a project with non fictional references set in southern Florida so these films and the early Miami Vice episodes are a good visual reference.    All this makes me want to run out and shoot some tungsten film- oh yeah, I guess you can do it nowadays with photoshop-God I love computers.
   


 
 
 

Jane Birkin :  effortless chic


Jane Birkin is probably one of the sexiest women on the planet.       A sensation in France, a namesake handbag, a really cool daughter.   Jane Birkin did it right.     The only other woman who could pull off this dress is Kate Moss.   And frankly, Jane has a lot more class.
















































A little backround,    In 1969 she and Serge Gainsbourg released the song "Je t'aime... moi non plus" ("I love you... me neither" or, less literally, "love-hate relationship"), written by Gainsbourg and featuring both of them singing, which caused a scandal for its sexual explicitness. 
The song's fame is a result of its salacious lyrics (sung in French) against a background of female moaning and groaning, culminating in an orgasm at the song's conclusion.

Birkin took a break from acting in 1971-72, but returned as Brigitte Bardot's lover in Don Juan (or if Don Juan were a woman) in 1973.  How hot is that.    Haven't seen it but I'm sure it is smokin.

In 1975, she appeared in Gainsbourg's first film, also entitled Je t'aime... moi non plus, which created a stir for it's frank examination of sexual ambiguity. For this performance she was nominated for a Best Actress César Award.

Her daughter is indie actress and stylish  Balenciaga muse, Charlotte Gainsbourg.  (Also, one the coolest fashionista's out there)    The bag is the BIRKIN ofcourse

(Jane-Serge image from Vanity Fair, information sources, web, wikipedia, vanity fair)

NYC based art icon Marilyn Minter  collaborates with edgy skate brand Supreme to create limited edition skate decks. 
 

Marilyn has been a part of the New York art scene since the 1970s, though her career has been anything but a smooth ride. She made a series of now-celebrated photographic studies of her drug-addicted mother while still a student in Florida, and in the early '80s she explored Pop-derived images that often had a sexual undercurrent. Then, at the end of that decade she painted herself straight into fevered and often bitter controversy when she began using imagery taken from porn magazines. Her infamy was exacerbated in 1990 when she produced her own TV ad, 100 Food Porn, which ran during late-night mainstream television shows. The 1990s and the early years of this decade saw her gradually refining her style and imagery so that, while still suggesting pornography, her photographs and paintings seem equally to breathe the atmosphere of high fashion (a world that she claims to know nothing about) and glamour. Her painting technique is equally startling, employing many layers of translucent enamel paint on metal to produce an incandescent, almost hallucinatory finish. Her work came to the attention of entirely new audiences last year, when Creative Time commissioned a series of giant billboards from her that were hung in Chelsea and, a few months later, she was included in the Whitney Biennial. Now, in the summer of 2007, she's suddenly everywhere. She is guest designer for the current issue of Francis Ford Coppola's magazine Zoetrope All-Story, and her work is featured on the cover and in the centerfold of the current issue of the art publication Parkett, for whom she produced an editioned photograph of Pamela Anderson that immediately sold out. She shot the campaign images for Tom Ford's new fragrance, Tom Ford for Men, which will be launched in September, and Gregory R. Miller & Co. has just published a lavish $60 monograph of her work.  Marilyn was also part of the artist Tshirt series for The Gap that launched this spring along with Jeff Koons.    Source:  Article by Robert Ayers. 
Artinfo.
Robert Ayers interview with Minter

All paintings by Marilyn Minter, photograph of woman in mirror is her mother from her controversial series.       below Portrait of Marilyn by Evan Kafka

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Back in the day, Kaws would break into bus shelters steal the ads, paint on them and put them back before anyone knew what had hit them.    It was his gorilla tactics and fine art application to street marketing that got him where he is today.    Beautiful collectible toys, clothing, limited edition fine art and edgy collaborations are all in a days work for this talented young artist.     When I found out KAWS had customized my Stussy ad I was stoked.  Kaws works in so many mediums, has stayed true to his vision and just happens to be a very nice guy.   Stussy lovely is the gorgeous Denise.   All other images courtesy of Kaws.   

Thanks babe.
Kaws website