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Flavorwire

Photography

Beautiful, Pensive Photos of Dogs

By Tom Hawking on

Art that anthropomorphizes animals is nothing new, but British photographer Martin Usborne puts an interesting spin on the idea, using photographs of animals to explore very human emotions. Flavorwire featured Usborne’s photos of dogs in cars back in 2010, and his new project I’m Fine explores similar territory — as per the artist’s own statement, “canines are used … to reflect that unspoken, instinctive side of our nature. In my own experience it is dogs… that have the ability to communicate certain feelings most directly even though they have no words.” Check out a selection of images from I’m Fine after the jump, and see more of Usborne’s work at his website. … Read More

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Los Angeles

Flavorpill Guide to the Week’s Top 10 LA Events

By Tanja M. Laden on

There’s so much going on in the City of Angels, it can be hard to keep track of it all. Thanks to the new Flavorpill, we’re inviting the entire community to make suggestions with its gorgeous city-based culture guide — an open platform where our very own editors and curators meet and mingle with artists, gadabouts, and other tipsters for a limitless variety of both ongoing and one-off recommendations. With this in mind, please enjoy our weekly list of hand-picked event suggestions here on Flavorwire, and in the meantime, be sure to check out the new Flavorpill. We’ll see you there.

… Read More

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New York

Flavorpill Guide to This Week’s Top 10 New York Events

By Mindy Bond on

For our (unconscionably high) rent money, the best thing about living in NYC is its endless supply of fun, odd, and inspired cultural events — especially during the summer months. But with so many options, it can be hard to know where to even begin. To help you make sense of it all, Flavorpill Deputy Editor Mindy Bond shares the very best of what’s on offer this week. It’s just a taste of what you can find on the new Flavorpill, so if you like what you see, be sure to sign up.  … Read More

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San Francisco

Flavorpill Guide to the Week’s Top 10 SF Events

By Bonnie Chan on

San Francisco is home to a breathtaking diversity of cultural events. Between our fair city’s world-class museums, restaurants, bars, art galleries, music scene, festivals, and clubs, between all that is weird and quirky and purely San Franciscan, there’s something going down, somewhere, every single day of the year. Check out our Flavorpill social discovery engine, where you can create and share events with friends, and follow our carefully curated editors’ picks. Below, you’ll find Flavorpill’s top picks for this week — just a little bit of help as you set out into this beautiful wide world of SF’s happenings.  … Read More

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Music

Will We Ever Get to Hear M.I.A.’s ‘Matangi’?

By Tom Hawking on

This morning saw the latest chapter in the saga of M.I.A.’s much-delayed fourth album Matangi, a record that was originally supposed to be out in December last year, but has been pushed back several times since. As reported in the Guardian, she told BBC1′s Zane Lowe that her label Interscope still hasn’t approved the release: “I keep finishing the record, handing it in, finishing the record, handing it in … I was literally just gonna start making records and putting them out from the bedroom straight on the internet. This is my last stab [at a traditional release].” Quite why the album keeps getting delayed is anyone’s guess — there’s clearly something going on beneath the surface here, but exactly what is difficult to say, because no one at Interscope is talking. … Read More

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Art

Beyond James Turrell: 10 More Great Artists Who Use Light as a Medium

By Reid Singer on

I don’t remember the last time I was as excited by a museum show as I am about James Turrell’s, which opens in at the Guggenheim Museum in New York next week. At least as an art appreciator, Turrell has been like a grandfather to me. Before I encountered his work for the first time, I didn’t really know what installation art was, and even though I admired the way some artists negotiated the phenomenon of light, it had not occurred to me that light art — more specifically, art that buttressed and captured light, often for its own sake, in a grandly hypnotizing way — could be someone’s life’s work. … Read More

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Celebrity

Is Crowd-Funding the New Test of Celebrity Popularity?

By Jason Bailey on

A thing isn’t a thing until James Franco has put his multitasking paws all over it, so it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that the actor/director/writer/grad student/performance artist/visual artist/soap opera stunt performer is the latest celebrity to decide his adoring fans should fund his passion project. Said project is a trio of feature films based on stories from the book Palo Alto — a collection penned by, huh, who’da thunk it, James Franco. Surprisingly, he won’t direct the films, instead turning them over to young filmmakers he admires. Any profits will be donated to the non-profit organization Art of Elysium. Franco and crew are funding the project through Indiegogo, and the price tag is half a million bucks. … Read More

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Books

The 50 Books Everyone Needs to Read, 1963-2013

By Emily Temple on

The thing about reading is this: it takes a long time. There are innumerable books in the world, and many more good ones than can be read by any mortal in a lifetime. It’s hard to choose — especially if you’re a slow reader. So, to go along with the list of the best albums from 1963-2013, here you will find a single must-read book from each of the last 50… Read More

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Media

‘Vice’ Removes Controversial Female Writer Suicide Spread: Is the Sophomoric Publication Finally Growing Up?

By Tyler Coates on

An editorial fashion spread tells a story using images, not words. It’s the photographer’s job to tell that story: what she intended, what she hoped to convey. In Vice’s latest spread, female writers like Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Dorothy Parker stare down their own pending demise at their own hands. The story is pretty clear: the editors of Vice were more interested in getting attention at any cost than paying respectful tribute to women writers who committed suicide, and editorial taste came second to the lazy grab for page views. Following an overwhelmingly negative response across the Internet, the editors of Vice removed the feature. … Read More

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Music

How Kanye West’s ‘Yeezus’ Tears Down 30 Years of Hip Hop Orthodoxy

By Tom Hawking on

Ever since Kanye West’s Yeezus was announced, the general consensus has been that it’s a “producer’s record,” a label that really reflects the prejudices of whoever’s saying it — if you’re one of those who believe West’s a moneyed charlatan, there’s a whole roster of producers you can deflect credit to. But it would be contrarian to argue that West remains anything besides firmly in charge here. As with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, it’s like he decided on the sounds he wanted for Yeezus and then drafted the producers best equipped to help realize his vision. … Read More

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