wait.in.the.water

Artist and title unknown. (via sawaru)

Thu, 27 May 2010 00:42:13 +0100

Artist and title unknown.

(via sawaru)

The Big Caption - [A complement to the Boston Globe's Big Picture] Editorial photography, Typography and Humour

Wed, 26 May 2010 19:25:06 +0100

The Big Caption - [A complement to the Boston Globe's Big Picture] Editorial photography, Typography and Humour

How to Create a Beautiful Picture 6: Tights in Shimotakaido,...

Tue, 25 May 2010 18:07:19 +0100

How to Create a Beautiful Picture 6: Tights in Shimotakaido, gelatin silver print, 1987, Daido Moraiyama.

Taut and architechtural erotic photography from Moraiyama, whose works - in a similar but tamer manner to Diane Arbus - dramatically expose an urban underbelly.

Rainbow, Linza Feldman. Feldman is an artist from St....

Wed, 19 May 2010 12:02:50 +0100

Rainbow, Linza Feldman.

Feldman is an artist from St. Petersburg, Russia with a portfolio full of well-crafted graphic design work. Above is my favourite of the works on her Behance portfolio. The voyeuristic perspective, erotic anonymity and gradual geometric dissolution are just perfect.

Body Sculpture, 1972, Hans Breder Surrealist, conceptual...

Tue, 18 May 2010 17:51:38 +0100

Body Sculpture, 1972, Hans Breder

Surrealist, conceptual photographer, and founder of the first university course in ‘intermedia’, it seems that Hans Brede has also experimented with the kind of erotic dismorphia that Hans Bellmer became noted for.

Wikipedia: ‘…the areas such as those between drawing and poetry, or between painting and theater could be described as intermedia. With repeated occurrences, these new genres between genres could develop their own names (e.g. visual poetry or performance art.)’

Untitled illustration by Hans Bellmer Hans Bellmer’s...

Tue, 18 May 2010 13:56:54 +0100

Untitled illustration by Hans Bellmer

Hans Bellmer’s contorted, conjoined mannequin sculptures and slow, tense photographs of the same were the inclusion that gripped me tightest at the Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design exhibition I saw at the V&A in 2007; they packed enough sex, anger and promise that he has occupied a place amongst my favourite surrealists since.

This illustration pairs his unmistakable flair for subverted human form with a beautiful segment of skin, stone and colour which calls to mind another master of form (albeit through sheer grace rather than erotic force): Henry Moore.

Lepus, Denise Nestor Nestor is a graphic designer working in...

Tue, 04 May 2010 08:21:21 +0100

Lepus, Denise Nestor

Nestor is a graphic designer working in Dublin, and trades in a soft, feminine and decorative style that sidesteps ‘pretty’ and is all the more effective for it.

via (hushaby) and (yayeveryday)

Alberto Mieglo - best known for his wipe-clean illustration work...

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:07:59 +0100

Alberto Mieglo - best known for his wipe-clean illustration work which is at once surgically detailed and brimming with character - in his ‘Pinkman’ guise, proving that he animates just as well.

For me, it felt as if the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2010...

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 13:48:58 +0100

For me, it felt as if the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2010 at the Photographers Gallery was staged dispassionately and unintuitively, with the effect that Sophie Ristelhueber’s broody prizewinning politicised works seemed neutered at first. On the second circuit of the gallery their impact is clear - her mid-eastern pictures use judiciously overt digital manipulation and are, to a casual, ignorant visitor like me, attractive through the editorial flair they display.

However, my personal show highlight was the wryly selected downbeat-and-at-heel shopfront photographs by ‘chronicler of the overlooked’, Zoe Leonard.

Free and definitely demands a visit before the exhibition ends on 18th April.

May Picture, etching 734x272 mm, 1949, Ernst Fuchs via...

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:12:54 +0000

May Picture, etching 734x272 mm, 1949, Ernst Fuchs

via iheartmyart

Penny Davenport via file magazine

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:05:16 +0000

Penny Davenport

via file magazine

‘That moment’, oil on canvas, Adrian Ghenie Just...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:37:58 +0000

‘That moment’, oil on canvas, Adrian Ghenie

Just like the work of Michaël Borremans that I discovered a few weeks ago, I find Adrian Ghenie’s scenes strangely erotic and always able to generate a conflicting range of emotions. Although the tableaux imply little movement, to me they all seem to foreshadow or follow a dramatic event.

Literature vs traffic, installation, Luzinterruptus The Spanish...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:24:32 +0000

Literature vs traffic, installation, Luzinterruptus

The Spanish art collective’s February 17th public installation saw them distribute 2000 books with lights interleaved amongst the pages across the roads and sidewalks of Water St, New York in the gentrified Dumbo district. The books were scattered in such a way that pedestrians could navigate their path through them undisturbed or interact with the books if they wished.

I’d have loved to leave work on the 17th and find myself an island in a starfield of story fragments.

via hookedblog

Thinking Cap, Corey Corcoran

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:43:58 +0000

Thinking Cap, Corey Corcoran

Prolific paperback novel illustrator Bob Abbett’s gorgeous...

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:32:55 +0000

Prolific paperback novel illustrator Bob Abbett’s gorgeous illustrations for Irving Wallace’s 1964 unintentionally pulp PolitComic “The Man” are the perfect visual accompaniment to a premise that, until relatively recently, might have seemed most appropriate between the covers of quick-fix literature:

In the bizarre event - possible even in fiction only through the confluence of extreme political circumstances and reactionary affirmative action - a black man should become U.S President, would the challenges of racism, intrigue and public backlash from minority communities and the mainstream alike prove too much to overcome?

By all accounts, the book is hardly crammed with blade-sharp insight, but it doesn’t stop me from desperately wanting a copy.

Apple, by Yehrin Tong It seems like I’m in the mood for...

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:45:08 +0000

Apple, by Yehrin Tong

It seems like I’m in the mood for geometrically torturous illustrations, tessellations and typography at the moment, so here’s another….

Via itsnicethat

Experimental typography by Ashleigh Barron inspired by...

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:13:20 +0000

Experimental typography by Ashleigh Barron inspired by ‘Digital’, the last song ever performed live by Joy Division before the suicide of the band’s singer Ian Curtis.

‘A’ by Sarah A King of the Evening Tweed graphic...

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:57:32 +0000

‘A’ by Sarah A King of the Evening Tweed graphic design collective.

This is the third work I have come across organically by an artist involved with Nobrow magazine in some way since I leafed through their small press publications at the Alternative Press Fair earlier this month… The biannual illustration anthology is on its second issue, and definitely looks like one to watch.

Holger Lippmann, Schorfheide (3), 2008 via iheartmyart

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:39:00 +0000

Holger Lippmann, Schorfheide (3), 2008

via iheartmyart

Last tribe member, oil on paper, Marshall Arisman. Henry...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:23:00 +0000

Last tribe member, oil on paper, Marshall Arisman.

Henry Sutton’s recent Guardian feature on unreliable narrators in literature was a parade of my favourite authors and novels, and is definitely worth a read. Bret Easton Ellis was rightly among their number, and I made a note to excavate my copy of American Psycho and re-read the final chapter on an evening where weather, bank balance or hangover made my bedroom an attractive option.

On picking up my battered European edition tonight, I was struck by how powerful and appropriate the cover artwork is - just as I was when I first finished the book and performed the familiar closing ritual of savouring the story’s last word, thumbing despondently through the literary desert of empty pages that languish at the back of many trade paperbacks and, finally, turning the whole book over to look at the cover and title a last time before the story is put back to sleep on a shelf.

The commission must have been an easy one to make: Marshall Arisman specialises in distorted, tortured figures wracked with the darkest emotions and succumbing to violent transformation or scenes of carnage and their aftermath.