Kate and Laura Mulleavy are a pair of 21st-century alchemists, only they work with textiles instead of base metals (though they’ve been known to work with those, too). The founders of Rodarte are also gifted artists, whose primary medium has them bridging the gap between fine art and fashion. They have work in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with solo shows at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Now, they’ve brought their sister-act to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which has just unveiled its newest addition to the early Italian Renaissance wing of the museum: Rodarte’s Fra Angelico Collection, a series of nine flowing gowns that look like they could exist as part of a 15th-century fresco, just as easily as they could be worn on a red carpet. Read More »
Bashir Sultani uses a salt shaker to make art, documenting his creative process in a series of intriguing YouTube videos. Subjects of the artist’s portraits range from pop-culture icons such as Lady Gaga, Charlie Sheen, and President Obama to legendary figures like Kurt Cobain, Bruce Lee, and Albert Einstein. Check out Sultani’s fascinating time-lapse videos after the jump.
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Otherwise known as the Fifth Beatle, Sir George Martin produced every one of the Beatles’ albums except their last, Let it Be (1970). Having worked closely with the Fab Four for so many years, it should come as no surprise that the English pop-culture knight has amassed scores of outtakes, unreleased recordings, and master tapes from the Beatles’ sessions at Abbey Road Studios. Pairing rare highlights with ubiquitous Beatles tunes, Sir George and his son Giles Martin have put together a sonic odyssey that serves as the musical backdrop for Cirque du Soleil‘s mesmerizing tribute to the Beatles: Love.
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Dish Network and Blockbuster have taken advantage of Netflix’s recent blunder by announcing a new DVD and streaming service. For an additional $10 a month, existing Dish customers will have access to thousands of movies, TV shows, games, and streaming videos. In what’s simply called the Blockbuster Movie Pass, premium movie channels are also slated to become part of the package, and Blockbuster promises an accompanying app so people can watch movies through their Facebook accounts. Now, after watching the last season of The Sopranos, you might finally feel like playing Mafia Wars. [via /Film]
Anyone who’s come of age since the late ’60s remembers Fred Rogers, a kindly, soft-spoken icon of children’s television who passed away in 2003. The educator and minister hosted Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, the third longest-running show on PBS. Even if some of us never watched the series, we all remember the opening sequence, in which the eponymous narrator hangs up his coat before putting on comfy shoes and a sweater (which now hangs in the Smithsonian). This nostalgic video features every Mister Rogers intro ever recorded, from 1967 all the way up through the 21st century, with its beloved storyteller singing the now-famous song he wrote himself, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”
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In The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses, Dr. Paul Koudounaris gives us an intimate understanding of the sites where bones of dead people are placed together en masse. What may seem like a gory theme for a book and photo series is actually a beautiful treatment of the culturally touchy subject of death. Armed with a PhD in Art History from UCLA, Dr. Paul K begins his odyssey with a "A Dialogue with Death," moving into the spiritual and ethnic significance of places holding multiple human remains. “These sites were intended as statements of hope and beauty,” he writes, “and it was important to me that I find a means through photographs and the writing of history to convey that: these sites represent death only in so far as death itself affirms life.”
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PETA recently announced plans to launch an adult website in December. The proposed online porn hub appears to be inspired by an extended ad campaign, with nude celebrities like Todd Oldham, Christy Turlington, Pamela Anderson, and others saying they’d “rather go naked than wear fur.” The organization — which has already worked with porn professionals such as Sasha Grey, Ron Jeremy, and Jenna Jameson — hopes to use “peta.xxx” to promote its message advocating animal rights and veganism, with naughty pictures and videos to help get the point across. As to whether PETA’s X-rated website will be objectifying women, PETA told the Telegraph: “Our demonstrators, the models, all chose to participate in our campaigns … It’s not a very feminist thing to do to turn to women and tell them whether or not they can use their voices, their bodies to express their voice.” [via Huffington Post]
We’ve all wondered how Shakespeare’s works would translate into modern English. Now, the Internet’s official humor site has published a list of some of the Bard’s greatest quips, updated for the 21st century. For instance, when the Duke of Gloucester says in Henry VI, Part I: “I’ll note you in my book of memory,” what he’s really saying is: “Don’t expect me to call the day after.” Likewise, when Dick the butcher declares in Henry VI, Part II: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” what he means is: “Let’s kill all the lawyers. Really.” [via Huffington Post]
While Google Maps with Street View has been known to photograph things that are out of the ordinary, Google Books isn’t something you’d think capable of doing the same. The Art of Google Books by Krissy Wilson aims to “recognize book digitization as re-photography, and to value the signs of use that accompany these texts as worthy of documentation and study.” Check out some of the inadvertent artwork from Google Books, including crinkled pages, library-book checkout stamps, marginalia, and more.
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If you’ve ever wanted to combine the joy of playing video games with the not-so-joyous task of doing laundry, Lee Wei Chen has the perfect appliance for you. The Kingston University design student has put a washing machine and arcade game together, creating something of a retro-chic console that asks for quarters to start both the game and the laundry. How much washing you do is entirely dependent upon your gaming ability, so if you’re lacking in sufficient hand/eye coordination, you’ll need to keep feeding the machine quarters. Chen explains the reasoning behind his hybrid design: “I realized that the skills I had developed in the virtual world were useless in the real world. I wanted to make them more useful.”
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