for the love of Jean Paul Gaultier

To be perfectly honest, it wasn't until I visited The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts this summer to view The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk exhibit that I truly appreciated and understood the mastery that is JP Gaultier. It was always the Galliano and McQueen shows that stole my easily distracted attention, gripping onto it until anti-Semitism, depression and/or addiction leading to suicide, got in the way of eternal genius (RIP McQueen).


Having seen the Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty exhibit at the MET in NYC post viewing The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier at the MMFA in Montreal - I would say they were comparable in excellence. Both provided imaginative interactivity for the viewer to engage and become a part of the fashion/art (interchangeable) collection. Not only as a viewer was I able to experience and praise the dedication of craftmanship and pure genius behind each collection, but also identity with be enthralled by the passionate emotion behind the complexity of obstacles and struggle of beauty that goes hand-in-hand with being a prodigy (more so directed to the Savage Beauty exhibit, obviously... which I saw more recently = more fresh in my mind).


Please excuse the camera-phone images that don't nearly justify the beauty on the other side of the lens, but regardless, the exhibit was a sensation.

The mannequins had projected images of realistic human facial features and expressions, as they blinked, winked, starred, laughed and spoke, lip-syncing to voice recorders playing in the background - which I'd estimate for every ten clips of French, maybe one of English would play - my one and only grievance.

The infamous cone bra created for Madonna's 1990 Blonde Ambition Tour.

The following themes were the focus of the exhibition:

The Boudoir.

Skin deep.

Punk CanCan. 

Urban Jungle.

Metropolis.

“I think the way people dress today is a form of artistic expression. Saint Laurent, for instance, has made great art. Art lies in the way the whole outfit is put together. Take Jean Paul Gaultier. What he does is really art,” said Andy Warhol (Mondo Uomo, 1984).

x

You need someone you can believe in

AMAZING.

I'll do graffiti if you sing to me in French

BANKSY IN TORONTO


British graffiti artist Banksy made a stop over in Toronto this week leaving behind remnants of his legacy - a wise promotional ploy, setting the city of Toronto abuzz coinciding with the release of his new film, Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Photos by Gary Smithson via. Show and Tell Gallery 




If I'm not too exhausted after the days work, it is my plan to see this film tonight.

Pervasive Influence | Contact 2010, Photography Reframed

'Pervasive Influence' is the theme for the 14th annual CONTACT festival, which includes 200 shows on view for the month of May in Toronto.

Douglas Coupland, Prows, 2010, Courtesy of the artist and Clark & Faria, Toronto via scotiabankcontactphoto.com

The theme was inspired by Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan - commemorating the 30th anniversary of his death. 


McLuhan's "intellectually revered media analyses" and insights into his description of the photograph as "the brothel without walls" and "dreams money can buy" became the starting point to further address the online sex trade and the commercialization of the human body. 


More info and a listing of exhibition places is HERE - which I will be referencing, as I would love to check out AT LEAST one or two over the next month. Anyone want to join?


HERE is the top 10 to see according to Canadianart.com.

In the daylight anywhere feels like home

It was awhile back that I flaunted my new love for Matt & Kim after seeing them perform @ Reverb, and Daylight is resurfacing yet again. This time for the use of a stop motion short video my very best friend SMT has created, with the help of Isabel, Caitlin and I, for her final project for Ideas & Images in her second year @ George Brown for graphic design. There are 685 images in this mother. She's immensely talented and we are planning to collaborate on many projects in the years to come. I'm so proud of your talent and accomplishments SMT! 

http://sarahtalunay.com/daylight.mov

Watch, enjoy and bookmark her site for future reference. She's going to explode... not literally.

Ben Tour

Canadian Artist Ben Tour 

via. I ♥ Illustration blog (My inspiration for my next blog I ♥ 'I ♥ Illustration blog' blog). 

Lose yourself in lines dissecting

The work of Los Angeles artist, Aili Schmeltz is fantastic.

Initially, it was the name Aili that stole my attention and desire to click - the unique, rare Finnish name is the same which my lovely sister just happens to go by. I was pleasantly surprised to find the art did not disappoint, either.

Bling - 2008
styrofoam, spray foam, enamel paint, wood
34" x 21 " x 22" 

Scrolling through the 3D mixed media installations, I recalled past instances in which I attempted to create perceptive sculpture in fine art studio classes, and this is why my appreciation is great. It's not easy in the least to create something with profound conception, that is equally visually interesting as it is aesthetically pleasing. Yet to some, it looks like a pile of garbage - likely the same people who dismiss modern art without even slight consideration. 

via More New Math 

Right!?

In studio practice, Aili draws her inspiration from natural events and her most recent work is fueled by her love/hate relationship with Los Angeles, where she lives and works. 

"I am especially interested in how the landscape and weather systems are altered by the human hand, the driving social attitudes that guide those decisions and the aftermath of those alterations in terms of natural hybridization and human lifestyle shifts. This process of research began with an interest in the history of the midwestern suburban landscape and culture from my youth, where the middle class idea of “the good life” fueled a massive overhaul of the American landscape that would drastically alter how we live for generations to come."

I was mostly impressed with Aili's 2009 La Fuente de la Vida Project: Disco 1 through 5. The vivid neon colours are incredibly captivating and the sporadic patterning + linear composition is music to my eyes. 

La Fuente de la Vida Project: Disco 1 - 2009

vinyl paint and ink on paper 

96" x 72"

La Fuente de la Vida Project: Disco 2 - 2009
vinyl paint and ink on paper
96" x 72"

La Fuente de la Vida Project: Disco 3 - 2009
vinyl paint and ink on paper
96" x 72"

La Fuente de la Vida Project: Disco 4 - 2009
vinyl paint and ink on paper
72" x 96"

La Fuente de la Vida Project: Disco 5 - 2009
vinyl paint and ink on paper
72" x 96"

I think m

I'm seeing the future account of a toxic waste disaster and its glowing after effects, leading to hell on Earth. Not too far-fetched. 

I really love this Berlin Study 2, too. It just as a certain je ne sais quoi, non? ha.

Berlin Study 2 - 2009
gouache and ink on paper
18" x 24"

untitled (2010) helvetica on screen

After researching the Mudd Club era this morning, I came back later in the day lusting for more details. I'm infatuated with atypical-type legends of underground/emerging art scenes who knowingly or not, created waves of artistic revolution, reinventing originality and designing new forms of perception. As Diane von Furstenburg so mildly comments regarding her impact on forever changing pop culture alongside Warhol in FASHION's March 2010 issue:

"You can't tell history while you're living it. It's only when you look back, and even then you don't say, 'Oh, look at what I have done.' You just live it."

Just thought I'd throw that in there since I just finished reading over the glossy pages and it feels fitting, as well as, part inspirational, part redundant. If I could hang with an underground arty avant-gard crowd forever changing the face of pop culture history - don't you think I would just do that and live it myself? Isn't that why I go to small indie concerts at Reverb on Queen W. and attend parties like "The Rager" at Sneaky Dees, duh. Or I think I'll just settle with finding my place in this universe and balance the act with some soul and artistic expression.

Speaking of artistic expression... while fulfilling my lust for everything Mudd-related, I veered down the avenue of artist Keith Haring, you know the one who curated the rotating gallery for the club... since you're following my blog so diligently... @smtwtfs. 

  

untitled (1982) marker ink and acrylic on found canvas

untitled (1987) acrylic on canvas

untitled (1990) sumi ink on board

Turns out, I'm far from alone in enjoying the work of Haring. Keith Haring is everywhere - literally! From Swiss water bottle brand SIGG's special limited-edition collectors' series (released in July 09), to Jeremy Scott/Schott collaboration result: 'The Perfecto' motorcycle jacket with all-over b&w Keith Haring inspired design, to Kanye's head at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

 

SIGG "Celebrate America" special limited-edition collectors' series

'The Perfecto' by Jeremy Scott and Schott.

Kanye West @ 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

I guess no one cared too much about his hair after his appalling antics of the evening.  

At the beginning of this year, Keith Haring Journals was inducted into Penguin Classics as a Deluxe Edition with 90 b&w images of his art, Polaroids (never-before-published) and "a remarkable glimpse of a man who, in his quest to become an artist, instead became an icon." That was so unsubtle and lame, I couldn't resist. Still, I'd be interested in flipping through the pages, wouldn't you? 

Strange Love

It's 2:30 AM and I'm having far too much fun creating sets on Polyvore. The fact that I came across Delfina Delettrez (heir to the Fendi empire) jewellery for the first time while doing so delights me even more so, because it's abnormally incredible and incredibly abnormal! I want this hand clenching my wrist indefinitely - unfortunately, it costs more than four months rent... HA! DIY project brewing in my mind!

This piece (above) has a price tag of $21, 307.00. I wonder how many Haitians that money could feed?

Purely unusual and fabulous. Check out more of the collection (and outrageous price tags) here. 

"I want to be a living work of art."

My Image Theory class met at the AGO last night for our first and only field trip of the course. If it's not too obvious to state, this is my favourite course that I am taking in my Image Arts, specialization in New Media certificate program @ Rye high. My professor Rhonda Abrams is the interesting and inspiring art teacher I wish I had first year studying art @ Western U., rather than the misogynist SOB that I did have!!! Freshman art school bitterness aside... the trip was recreational yet meditative. Our assignment involved selecting an artwork and taking a fictitious leap into the imagination of the artist and creating a background theory as to why he chose to create the piece, alongside a sketch of the artwork.

I chose: The Marchesa Casati, Augustus John, 1919, oil on canvas.

Always captivated by this painting when visiting the AGO, I dragged my friend Drew on a mad hunt to track it down. I wrote a ridiculous account of beauty and seduction, intriguing Augustus John to paint this femme fatale. I decided to do some background research on her true identity, later that night. 


"She was the most scandalous woman of her day," according to marchesacasati.com. "The Marchesa Luisa Casati was Europe's most notorious celebrity, and its most eccentric. For the first three decades of the twentieth century she astounded the continent. She travelled to Venice, Rome, Capri and Paris-collecting palaces and a menagerie of exotic animals. Nude servents gilded in gold leaf attended her. Bizarre wax mannequins sat as quests at her dining table. She wore live snakes as jewellery, and she was infamous for her evening strolls, naked beneath her furs, parading cheetahs on diamond-studded leashes." 


I came across a compelling blog (fascinatingpeople.wordpress.com) in which Toronto writer, Lorette C. Luzajic vividly encapsulates the essence of Luisa Casati as madly eccentric, immortalized through her many, many artistic representations (supposedly ranking third EVER behind Cleopatra and Virgin Mary). 

"The Marchesa has been criticized for the bottomless well of her vanity. Would she have been so outrageous if she attracted no attention? Furthermore, she had hundreds of portraits made of herself in ink and oil and photograph. Her motivation, hardly original, yet clear as a bell, was simply this famous statement: “I want to be a living work of art.” Luisa wished to make herself immortal, and so she made herself memorable, with portraits that would bring her to life centuries after her passing." 

...

"The Marchesa was a patroness extraordinaire who valued the arts above all else, even, I believe, above her own image. I am certain that the meaning of her vanity was rooted in her absolute devotion to the creativity of the human imagination," suggested Luzajic.

Written by Shakespeare on her tomb, in 1957: “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.” 

Eccentricity in the name of art, is there a better method to madness? I think not.