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Art

Disgusting, Gorgeous Renaissance-Style Mutant Portraits

By Marina Galperina on

Denver-based painter Christian Rex van Minnen takes classic Dutch portraiture and sends into another dimension. See stout busts and regal profiles explode into a mess of festering flesh, incandescent abscesses, transparent sacs of puss, and — what’s that? — forest mushrooms? With facial features completely engulfed by a strange globs of growths, parts of plants, shells, tendrils, alien organs, tattoos, meat, and type, van Minnen is like a modern version of 16th-century artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo, but way… way stranger. Featured in the current issue of Hi-Fructose magazine, check out a few of these outstanding portraits in our slideshow. … Read More

Art

Gorgeous Bugs Made from Trash, Vintage Junk, and Books

By Marina Galperina on

Just look at these Frankenstein-ed “bugs” from British artist Mark Oliver! The creepy crawly little sculptures are immaculate. The artist defines The Litter Bug as “a creature whose instinctual and physical qualities have adapted so uniquely to the modern urban environment that it has rendered itself, by nature of camouflage, virtually invisible in its normal habitat.” Spotted by Designboom, check out a few examples of the genus of carabid and terrestrial detritus. What do you think Darwin would have made of these steampunk beauties?  … Read More

Art

Crazy Mexican B-Horror Movie Postcards

By Marina Galperina on

John Cozzoli grew up in Brooklyn, but his immense, intense collection couldn’t reach farther out. He isn’t just hoarding B-horror movie memorabilia from the 1940s through the ’60s. He’s packing a particular flavor. Cozzoli’s blog Zombos’ Closet — profiled by Collector’s Weekly and spotted by Nerdcore — is a treasure trove of Mexican lobby cards and press books that promoted the adventures of werewolves, mummies, sex-crazed monsters, el luchadores from space, and what have you. Free from the uptight American censorship guidelines of the time, the Mexican ads are replete with exaggerated colors, campy smuttiness, pulpy gore… pure B-movie-a-go-go. Enjoy a curated peek at the goods in our slideshow, and then dive straight into his vast archive. … Read More

Photography

Dash Snow’s Grimy New York [NSFW]

By Marina Galperina on

Dash Snow “met a junkie’s end but did so in a $325-a-night hotel room with an antique marble hearth,” wrote The New York Times in 2009, playing bombastically into the myth of the New York photographer. It’s quite a myth. As a young teen, he was sent away to a Georgia boarding school for children with “oppositional defiant disorder,” he ran away to New York and proceeded to wild out through the streets and party lofts of the city. He first started taking photographs to remember where he’s been in the morning and eventually, gained notoriety and fame. Each Polaroid is a raw, autobiographical, decisive moment. Collectively, they represent an environment of excess and pedestrian vice, and yet, they’re quite compelling. See a few grimy, tattered photographs collected by American Suburb X in our slideshow. … Read More

Art

10 Internet Art Memes That Won’t Go Away

By Marina Galperina on

What’s in a meme? That which we call #BeastJesus, by any other meme would look as terrifying, and yet, the moment that sweet old lady had taken upon herself to restore the precious Ecce Homo painting, she transformed it into the Unholy-Mother-of-God-WTF-Is-Wrong-With-His-Faaace?!! Instant Internet classic, born of good intentions, paving its way straight into our nightmares. But wait… There’s more! Here are 10 art history and contemporary art-inspired memes that we love to hate and hate to love. … Read More

Design

Communist Tablecloths and Other Crazy Soviet Fabric Patterns

By Marina Galperina on

Ever heard of “communist tablecloths”? These amazing patterns were popular at the dawn of the Soviet Union, circa the 1920s and 1930s, and onward, as textile production became incredibly complex. We’re pretty entranced, not just with the amount of detail in these fabrics but, more so, with the clever way that delightfully propagandist imagery of revving tractors, smoke-pumping factory pipes, and babushka-clad women taking a sickle to wheat are woven in between opulent florals and pretty, constructivist squiggles. Spotted at English Russia, here are a few of the craziest patterns we’d love to get our hands on. … Read More

Art

Expressive Picasso Artworks That Don’t Need Color

By Marina Galperina on

Would Pablo Picasso’s Weeping Woman look more somber if every surface of her body wasn’t garlanded with festive colors? Would his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter look less sensual if her curves were monochromatic instead of pale fleshy pink? Opening tomorrow at the Guggenheim, Picasso Black and White focuses on the legendary artist’s work in black, white, and gray — with the occasional hint of yellow or blue. Organized chronologically along the Guggenheim’s spiraling ramps, the show runs through January 23rd and features 118 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from 1904 to 1971, including six pieces on public view for the first time. From his devastating reflections on the atrocities of war to his opulent meditations on the female form and its various details, preview some highlights from the exhibition in our slideshow.  … Read More

Photography

Vintage “Beefcake” Photographs from the 1950s

By Marina Galperina on

We’ve posted quite a few vintage pin-up gals here before, but there has definitely been a dangerous deficit in male representation. It’s not only women that are visually, blatantly heralded for their physical form, after all. Throughout history — from Rudolph Valentino to Elvis to… whoever the Mr. Hot Stuff de jour is presently — famous and anonymous men of certain “type” have been popularly depicted in some miscellaneous activity that involved flexing and stretching. On that note, via These Americans comes another great selection of vintage eye candy, replete in oiled-up muscles, brawn-strutting pin-up poses and abstract compositions. It’s cheesy. It’s shameless. It’s… Beefcake! Behold the archival photos that you may have found in a men’s “fitness” magazine circa the 1950s, if you so fancy. … Read More

Art

Terrifying Puppets Inspired by ’80s Pop Culture Icons

By Marina Galperina on

Oh my god! Run! Mick Jagger’s giant lips are about to engulf you! What? Oh. False alarm. These are just caricatures of foam and latex, puppets used in an old satirical television show Spitting Image circa the mid 1980s. You may not have heard about because it was famous in England, mostly, save for that one Genesis video. Spotted by Nerdcore and profiled by Dead 2 Rights, the photographs of these amazing and bizarre puppets were featured in a 1984 book Spitting Images shot by John Lawrence Jones. Look inside for a Jesus-esque Bruce Springsteen, a demented Jack Nicholson, a near-psychedelic Pee-wee Herman and many more. Yikes. Also, wow! … Read More

Photography

Fascinating Photographs of West Virginia Serpent Handlers

By Marina Galperina on

Hunter Barnes is not your average photographer. He immerses himself completely in his environment. Whether he’s shooting the Tamil Tigers in a Sri Lankan village, the Bloods in East St. Louis, or the residents of the Lapwai Idaho Reservation, he lives with his subjects for a long time before even bringing out his camera equipment. It’s no wonder that his descriptions of a small church community in the mountains of West Virginia make it sound like he found God himself. He intros this fascinating, humble photo essay talking of a “light” that “felt so pure” and of a “clear path” felt by the people of the community. See them dangle live snakes, perform baptisms, and lead congregations in their services, as shot in analog black and white for his newest series, A Testimony of Serpent Handling. … Read More