F

Flavorwire

Fashion

Yoko Ono’s Fashion Line Is Really… Something!

By Marina Galperina on

Artist, performer, and socialite extraordinaire Yoko Ono recently premiered her 52-piece menswear collection, which is currently available at New York’s Opening Ceremony, and will eventually hit stores in Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo. Based on drawings she gave to John Lennon as a wedding present in 1969, “Fashions for Men” features bold cuts, bright neons, and hand-shaped appliques in one mystifying mishmosh parade of club wear. “I was inspired to create ‘Fashions for Men,’ amazed at how my man was looking so great,” Ono has said. “I felt it was a pity if we could not make clothes emphasizing his very sexy bod. So I made this whole series with love for his hot bod and gave it to him as a wedding present. You can imagine how he went wild and fell in love with me even more.”

As you might expect after reading that, the resulting collection is quite risqué. It leaves us in awe and with so many questions! Like… Do we really need a couture jock strap? Why are there reception desk bells hanging off of the lovely transparent bra thingy? That sweatshirt drawing print: Are those balls or a butt? Check out some fashionable specimens highlighted at Four Pins, and help us decide. … Read More

Photography

Haunting Photos of Israeli Watchtowers in Palestine

By Marina Galperina on

As a Palestinian born in Gaza, artist Taysir Batniji is not authorized to return to the West Bank. Taking cue from Bernd and Hilla Becher who documented disappearing German architecture in Europe during the 1980s, she created a series of photographs of Israeli military towers in Occupied Palestine. It has the same bleak, black and white garishness and the same almost clinical sterility of style, with two major differences. 1) The towers in Palestine are still being used for monitoring the population and 2) Batniji did not physically take the photographs, because she cannot go back. Instead, a Palestinian photographer produced the shots for her.

Some are flawed, blurry, badly framed as individual works. Some of the towers look to be in ruins, some are splattered with paint or are adjacent to the wall of protest graffiti, some are framed in barbed wired fences. As a whole, the series weighs heavy with the nature of architectural arms of control, of one political power establishing authority through these functional totems, ominous both in its military capability and its oppressive symbology. Now on view at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum at the Light from the Middle East exhibit, the series was recently profiled at We Make Money Not Art. See some of the works in the slideshow below.  … Read More

Photography

Casual Photos of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed Partying

By Marina Galperina on

Resist the urge to Photoshop yourself into these images. If your coworker or roommate notices that you’ve sloppily pasted yourself amongst these very, very cool partying rock stars, they will think you spend entirely too much time on the Internet looking at vintage photographs of very, very cool partying rock stars. Taken by Mick Rock and highlighted by the Retronaut, these snap hots of David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop, encircled by a scene comrades and admiring randoms, are very endearing and casual. See David Bowie’s immaculate, graceful poise shine through in every picture. See Lou Reed with a furrowed half-grin and permanent indoor sunglasses that do little to hide his I’m-a-little-too-awesome-for-this glare. See Iggy Pop rubbing his nose. What’s wrong with your nose, Iggy Pop? Enjoy these photos in our slideshow, and if you can afford it, purchase limited-edition prints of your favorite shots here. … Read More

Art

A Survey of the World’s Biggest Artworks

By Marina Galperina on

Perhaps you heard that Christo recently revived his plan to build the biggest artwork of all time? Before the passing of his partner in love and art Jeanne-Claude, the duo began to scheme about a work of massive magnitude. Constructed from 410,000 variously-hued oil barrels, the proposed beast would tower around 492 feet high and glow golden in the sunlight. And now, it might actually be happening in, where else, but Abu Dhabi. That will make all those orange-draped bridges, umbrella-dabbed fields, and purple-wrapped islands look pretty wimpy, won’t it? On that ambitious note, we’ve hauled in a few artworks known for their size. Not all of them are particularly aesthetically appealing, but damn, they’re big! But is bigger necessarily better? You decide. Spoiler: We’re a little biased. … Read More

Photography

Cool Photos of DIY Soccer Balls Made by Children in Africa

By Marina Galperina on

Soccer, football, futbol — it’s the world’s most popular sport, played everywhere, from the limelight stadiums of the World Cup to the small villages of Malawi. And you know what? To hell with the World Cup! Photographer Jessica Hilltout has traveled to spots in Mozambique, Benin, Madagascar, and South Africa, where she documented “football in its purest form” in her project AMEN. These are actual makeshift soccer balls, made by the kids who just love to play.

“The aim of AMEN was to shine the light on all those in the shadow of the World Cup, far from the big stadiums and the corporate carnival-nature of the event,” the photographer explains. “I just followed my gut and felt my way through villages in search of all those little details that speak of Africa’s great football passion.” Spotted by Kottke, see these crafty constructions in our slideshow. … Read More

Photography

Photos of Very Old, Very Loved Teddy Bears

By Marina Galperina on

Some of us have a secret. It’s a deep, dark secret, worn down to threads, tattered, with its ears half-torn and its beaded eyes dull with decades of abandonment. It’s a secret stuffed into a dusty corner of our parents’ attic, and when we come home for the holidays, we dig out this childhood relic and cradle it so dear, whispering, “Oh, Teddy, I’m so sorry. I still love you, but then life and puberty and witchhouse and everything happened and…” What? No? No, you’re weird.

For his MuchLoved series, photographer Mark Nixon has shot minimalistic portraits of some well-loved stuffed toys and collected their stories. Spotted by Laughing Squid and on view now at the Mark Nixon / STUDIO in Dublin, Ireland, here are some of plush friends loved a little too well. I mean, seriously, some of them are missing limbs and have their woolen little guts spilling out. That’s, uh, some lovin’ right there. … Read More

Art

Photographs of Nude Dancers Like You’ve Never Seen Them Before

By Marina Galperina on

How do you capture pure dance? Strip the dancers of those distracting clothes. Slow down time. Japanese photographer Shinichi Maruyama shot his dancer models in the middle of graceful, complicated maneuvers. He captured the paths of their thrusting limbs and swaying torsos as a series of shapely blurs and fleshy swirls. They are like 3D canvases covered in hurried brush-strokes, like abstract living sculptures. For stationary images, they are very charged. Pretty great, huh? Don’t dismay. With a properly unlit warehouse, some umptz umptz umptz, and a lot of glowsticks, you could get a similar effect. It won’t be as aesthetically sophisticated, but it will be similar. Check out the series recently profiled by Designboom in our slideshow. Umptz umptz umptz. … Read More

Art

10 Artworks That Don’t Really “Exist”

By Marina Galperina on

Last week, the Museum of Modern Art made a very important purchase, acquiring 4 minutes and 3 seconds of… nothing, just “three folded sheets of almost blank onionskin paper” — notation for conceptual artist John Cage’s 4’33″, a piece of music with no musical notes whatsoever. A silent orchestra. A conductor with a stopwatch. Instead of strings and horns, the audience experiences the sounds of waiting, of their own murmur, or — as in the open-air auditorium in Woodstock, where the piece premiered in the ’50s — of the rain, the shuddering of trees, the wind, and the piano player closing and opening the instrument that was never played. Subtle? Hokey? Radical? Here’s to work that doesn’t actually “exist” in a traditional sense, but makes its audience think, sense and feel. Calling all knee-jerking “This isn’t art!” trolls: I hope you’re ready. Here are 10 more silent, blank, absent and amazing works of art. … Read More

Art

Infuriatingly Useless Luxury Objects by Jeremy Hutchison

By Marina Galperina on

Ooh, what’s this? A nice lookin’ Moleskine notebook. Let’s crack it open. Wait, whaaaa? Where’s the… that side… with the part that opens? Damn you, Jeremy Hutchison!!! “True luxury has no function,” the artist explains. “It is not something to be used or understood. It is a feeling: beyond sense, beyond logic, beyond utility. It is an ethic of perfect dysfunctionality.” 

Hutchison’s new exhibit at Paradise Row in London opens next month, unrolling a full series “dysfunctional luxuries” sure to elicit grunts of deep dissatisfaction from within your soul. You may have seen the trumpet that won’t trumpet before when we previously discussed Hutchison’s practice: The artist commissions various factories in China, India, Turkey, and Pakistan to make “incorrect” objects, conceived from “deliberate miscommunication.”

For his newest show, he’s gone all out. Introducing project Erratum, complete with a “high fashion” shoot, an edgy trailer and, of course, a range of purchasable, limited-edition items. Check out the product descriptions for poetic partial Chinglish, painful abstractions and possible mantras: “Classic design: a simple black rounded rectangle. The design of the circular black. Classic, simple rectangular, Classic design, simple rectangle, rounded black. simple rectangular, Classic design, circular black.” Sounds… frustrating. As spotted by Happy Famous Artists, browse some bits below. … Read More

Art

10 Intense Photos of Georgia O’Keeffe for Her Birthday

By Marina Galperina on

Last year, we celebrated Georgia O’Keeffe’s 124th Birthday with by highlighting the work of “misunderstood artists” and discussed the sensual overtones of her flower pieces, sensual overtones she has always vehemently denied. Today, on what would have been her 125th birthday, we are rounding up a few of the most iconic photographs of the artist, many of them taken by her husband Alfred Stieglitz in the 1910s. O’Keeffe’s biographer Benita Eisler described their relationship as “a system of deals and trade-offs, tacitly agreed to and carried out, for the most part, without the exchange of a word.” It was also particularly prolific, with Stieglitz shooting over 350 portraits of the artist. She was a captivating, expressive muse. As time progressed, O’Keeffe’s strong, powerful features do not fade — they become accented and framed with sings of age, with the artist looking serious even in a rather silly polaroid by Andy Warhol in the 1970s. Flip through the photo album in our slideshow for poise, intensity and the occasional animal skull prop. … Read More