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Art

The Most Uncomfortable Portrayals of Celebrities in Art [NSFW]

By Chloe Pantazi on

Celebrities are voracious connoisseurs of art (even Beyoncé loves art history), and are among the few people in this world who can actually afford to collect it, so it makes sense that celebrities often appear as the subjects of artworks. Of course, that’s not to say they always inspire flattering portraits. The recent $1.9 million sale of artist John Currin’s 1991 nude portrait of Golden Girl Bea Arthur has inspired Flavorwire to round up the most awkward portrayals of celebrities in art, from politicians in the buff and doused in urine to installation art, sculpture, and a certain former president’s wet and wild self-portrait. … Read More

Pop Culture

The Fascinating Last Photographs of Famous People

By Alison Nastasi on

This week marks the 32nd anniversary of Rolling Stone’s famous cover featuring a portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, photographed by Annie Leibovitz. It was the last professional photo captured of the iconic musician, who was killed hours later outside his apartment in New York City. We’re discounting the chilling image fan Paul Goresh took of Lennon and Chapman that fateful morning.

“What is interesting is she said she’d take her top off and I said, ‘Leave everything on’ — not really preconceiving the picture at all,” Leibovitz told the magazine. “Then he curled up next to her and it was very, very strong. You couldn’t help but feel that he was cold and he looked like he was clinging on to her. I think it was amazing to look at the first Polaroid and they were both very excited. John said, ‘You’ve captured our relationship exactly. Promise me it’ll be on the cover.’ I looked him in the eye and we shook on it.”

Leibovitz had only planned to photograph Lennon, but the image of the couple turned out to be one of her most famous portraits and would define one of the most talked about relationships in pop culture history. We scouted for other fascinating photographs that perhaps offer some insight into the final days of famous people. See more photos after the jump. … Read More

Pop Culture

Famous Musicians’ Fascinating Self-Portraits

By Tom Hawking on

We were interested to see that a series of self-portraits by David Bowie had sold at auction for £6,500 earlier this week. The self-portraits in question date from the 1990s, a decade during which Bowie’s painting efforts were apparently particularly prolific, but he studied art in high school and has always moonlighted as a painter. He’s not the only one, of course — many musicians also pursue other artistic avenues, from Nick Zinner with his photography to Captain Beefheart and his weird, abstract paintings. We thought it’d be interesting to look at other musical self-portraits, so we’ve pulled together a gallery of such paintings after the jump. They’re rather fascinating insights into how some of our musicians see themselves — so if you’ve ever wanted to see Paul Simonon as a skeleton, or Nick Cave’s, um, equipment, then click on through. … Read More

Music

25 Photos of Glamorous Musicians Doing Regular Stuff

By Tom Hawking on

From a young Iggy Pop vacuuming his apartment to a costumed Lady Gaga making eggs, here’s a photo roundup of our most endearingly flamboyant musicians doing incongruously domestic… Read More

Art

Beyond the Banana: 10 Other Great Album Covers Designed by Warhol

By Paul Laster on

Andy Warhol was at the height of his Pop Art fame when created the cover art for The Velvet Underground & Nico’s debut album in 1967. The first edition of the iconic cover had a yellow banana-skin sticker that peeled off to suggestively reveal a reddish banana. While his skill for crafting clever covers would be sought-after right up to his death in 1987, few people realize that he had been actively engaged in making record cover art since 1949. Employing the illustrative line technique of his early drawings to make covers for such jazz greats as Thelonius Monk and Count Basie and the splashy silkscreen style of his late portrait paintings on covers for Paul Anka, John Lennon, and The Rolling Stones, Warhol created some 60 amazing record covers over 40 years. Click though to view a selection our 10 favorites below. … Read More

Photography

David Gahr’s Dramatic Black-and-White Photos of ’60s and ’70s Musicians

By Tom Hawking on

A few weeks back, we shared some great photos of musicians from the 1960s and ’70s. If you enjoyed those, you’ll also appreciate these shots of some of the era’s luminaries by the late New York photographer David Gahr. Gahr’s work appeared in Time and Rolling Stone, among others, and his career spanned five decades, from his earliest work in the late ’50s until his death in 2008. His photos are the subject of a new exhibition at Morrison Hotel in Soho from October 26 through November 11 (you can check the gallery website for opening hours if you’re in the city). Either way, check out some of the photos from the exhibition after the jump, along with archival commentary from the photographer himself. … Read More

Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Alison Nastasi on

Today at Flavorpill, we read up on Stevie Nicks’ beef with Nicki Minaj. We explored the Northeast’s most haunted hotels. We chatted about our favorite photographers-turned-directors. We bragged a little bit on TechCrunch. We watched Brad Pitt play hard to get for Chanel. We streamed Ben… Read More

Events

Photo Highlights From the 2012 Global Citizen Festival

By Emily Temple on

Yesterday, over 60,000 people gathered at Central Park for the Global Citizen Festival, a massive outdoor concert thrown by the Global Poverty Project, an organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty across the world. Festival-goers were treated to performances from K’naan, Band of Horses, The Black Keys, Foo Fighters, and Neil Young & Crazy Horse, with a surprise appearance by John Legend, who sang just one song: John Lennon’s “Imagine,” in addition to presentations from speakers like Olivia Wilde, Katie Couric and Jeffrey Sachs and short films about the issue of the day. It was a fantastic festival for a very worthy cause. Our intrepid photographer, Gabriela Arp, documented the day — click through to check out her photographs, and if you were there, share your experience in the comments! … Read More

Books

Video of the Day: How Books Make Us Feel, Written in Giant Book Sculptures

By Judy Berman on

Among all the great things about books, one of the best is how they inspire us. They make us grow and fight and cry. John Lennon’s letters will almost certainly make us “imagine.” Hachette Australia has beautifully illustrated books’ impact in a new video where a warehouse is filled with book sculptures, and each title is stacked in such a way to spell out how it might make readers feel. As a special bonus — and because, as far as we can tell, every celebration of Australian culture is required to somehow include him — Nick Cave’s Tender Prey spells out “ROCK” in the background. … Read More

Music

25 Great Songwriters on the Art of Songwriting

By Tom Hawking on

Thomas Edison’s famous and oft-abused quote about genius being 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration is one of the great truisms of our time. But is it actually, y’know, true? How creativity actually works — in terms of the nuts and bolts of actually getting things down on the page/tape/canvas/etc. — is perhaps the most mysterious aspect of art, a process that’s both romanticized and often misunderstood. And in view of this, we thought it might be interesting to see what some of our favorite songwriters had to say about how they approach the process of writing. Click through to read opinions from Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Björk, Patti Smith and a whole heap more. We hope they provide some measure of inspiration, interest, or insight. … Read More