Making its US debut at New York City’s Fred Torres Collaborations later this month, Earth Laughs In Flowers, a new series of 10 large-scale photographs by David LaChapelle, is shockingly devoid of celebrities. Rather, these painterly images take their inspiration from the floral still life paintings of the 1600s — think Jan Brueghel — and playfully subvert the tradition, modernizing the scene a bit with the inclusion of discarded cigarette butts, cellphones, Starbucks cups, and Barbie dolls. Click through now to preview the colorful, chaotic works which “explore contemporary vanity, vice, the transience of earthly possessions and, ultimately, the fragility of humanity,” and be sure to see them in person beginning on February 23rd.
Today is Édouard Manet’s 180th birthday, so we’ve decided to pay homage to one of his most scandalous accomplishments — the presentation of Olympia at the 1865 Paris Salon. The controversy! The uproar! Oh, that “shocking,” “vulgar,” “immoral” reclining nude! It wasn’t as if society hadn’t seen a nude in art before; it was the way she was presented — not as some floaty goddess, but a real, confident, vampy naked gal, seemingly in the middle of a commanding crotch grab, perhaps even a high class prostitute. And so, let’s take a semi-random survey of the reclining nude in art history, from Manet’s Olympia inspirations — Titian’s 1538 Venus and Giorgione’s 1510 Sleeping Venus — to sleeping, lying, horizontally leaning nudes in contemporary visual culture. See all that flesh change along with aesthetic movements and trends and commercial motivations. Observe the body language. Naturally, we’ve left huge gaps, so feel free to fill in our jagged little timeline with your suggestions and favorites in the comment section.
Visual culture compulsively self-regurgitates itself… In other words, everything is a remix. We’ve rounded up the most déjà vu-inspiring works from contemporary artists who have painted, sculpted and shot homages to their predecessors. From Banksy’s Warhol to Ron English’s double Magritte to something other than a shark pickled in formaldehyde in David Černý’s Damien Hirst redux, here are some adoring tributes, biting rebuttals and unsettling homages to art history’s greatest and most famous. Partially NSFW!
Long before and since his death on June 25, 2009, Michael Jackson, the self-styled “King of Pop,” was a muse to a wide group of contemporary artists — ranging from Andy Warhol, who was dubbed the “Pope of Pop Art,” and his neo-pop art protégés, Jeff Koons and David LaChapelle, to the hip-hop championing Kehinde Wiley and celebrated street artist KAWS. Now, nearly two years after his untimely death at age 50, Flavorpill pays tribute to the award winning singer/songwriters life through the works of art he inspired.
The fact that Jeremy Kost — who has been documenting New York’s downtown scene on Polaroid film for over a decade now — is only now publishing his first monograph is a lot less surprising when you consider that he didn’t look at photography as his “career” until David LaChapelle told him that he should. As the story goes, Kost found himself sitting in a hotel room at the Four Seasons with the famed photographer and Pam Anderson (they had all been celebrating Amanda Lepore’s birthday). LaChapelle looked through some of Kost’s photos, and told him that they were really good. That’s when, as they say, a flash went off.
Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ got attacked yet again last weekend, as offended Catholic extremists stormed the Avignon museum and destroyed the photographic image of a plastic crucifix in a glass of the artist’s urine… by beating Jesus’s head with a hammer. Hasn’t the poor chap been through enough? On the heels of this most recent art attack, let’s take a look at some of this Christerrific art that raised eyebrows and stirred up angry hoopla.
Today at Flavorpill, we watched a clip of Justin Timberlake as a singing booger in an upcoming episode of The Cleveland Show. We were surprised to learn that Lauren Conrad knows who Banksy is. We almost fell asleep while reading through this year’s Bonnaroo lineup. We found out that Lady Gaga spent 72 hours in the egg pre-Grammys (“It was time for me to really prepare and think about the meaning of the song”). We discovered why the yellow hues in some of Van Gogh’s paintings have mysteriously turned to brown. We wondered what the old books in our library reveal about our past. We heard the David LaChapelle is suing Rihanna because he says that her video for “S&M” rips off his “composition, total concept, feel, tone, mood, theme, colors, props, settings, decors, wardrobe and lighting” — but we’re not convinced of the visual similarities. And finally, we considered buying an old tube station to live in. For just $290,000, you could have an apartment that has its own ticketing office, lobby, plant area, and a toilet!
What do Michael Jackson, Courtney Love, and Kanye West have in common? Other than being notorious for what they did or didn’t do, the photographer David LaChapelle, of course. Renowned for his outrageous fashion photos and editorial portraits for magazines, videos for pop and rock stars, and crunk-dance-film Rize, LaChapelle is a top-billing commercial photographer who’s rapidly gaining credibility in the art world. LaChapelle’s latest works, which are both big productions and labors of love, show Michael Jackson as a martyr, Pope Benedict XVI as a greedy ruler with a bevy of bound teenage boys at his feet, and an exposed Naomi Campbell in the role of Botticelli’s Venus are on view in the final days of a solo show at New York’s Paul Kasmin Gallery.
While many folks think modern and contemporary art — or at least the prices paid for it — is ridiculous, there are some artists who hope that you will laugh along with the absurdity and irony implied by their work. Humor was a prominent trait in the work of the Dadaist, Surrealists, Pop Art artists, and Fluxists, and it’s still prevalent in the work of the pluralist practitioners active today. The New York exhibition Knock Knock: Who’s There? That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore, on view at the Upper East Side’s Armand Bartos Fine Art through April 9 and Chelsea’s Fred Torres Collaborations through April 24, assembles a playful mix of historical and contemporary artworks, which are certain to leave you in stitches.
A photographer of magical people and mystical places, David Benjamin Sherry makes darkroom images in a digital age.
Raised by hippies in Woodstock, Sherry attended raves and assisted David LaChapelle in his teens, then earned degrees from RISD and Yale, while establishing himself in NYC’s downtown art scene. His psychedelic mix of fashion and fantasy has made him an international favorite in magazines and galleries.
