A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
They’ve got fencing masks, white undies and white socks so, really, who needs the swords? From Isaac y Manu, a series by Gorka Postigo who I’m pleased to say makes a feature of white underwear in other shoots such as this one. Via Homotography.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The men with swords archive
Autumn and winter is all about layering so here’s some suggestions from ‘Inflate‘, a Dazed & Confused feature. Styling by Robbie Spencer, photography by Anthony Maule. Via Homotography.
The lady may be dead but the art here is very much alive. The second great video of the week comes via the always essential Homotography, a short piece by director Roy Raz whose film features a pair of tattooed lesbians, a tennis match involving meat (or something), boys stripping out of their underwear to indulge in some peculiar—and for all we know, metaphysical—sexual congress, an elderly lady dancing round a piano, and a gang of luscious hunks who soap a car before sponging down their own bodies.
Do we have to worry about What It All Means? Of course we don’t, although the usual crowd of bewildered YouTube commenters struggle with comprehension like medieval rustics attempting to decipher so many signs and wonders. Think of it as the kind of thing Wes Anderson might create if someone dosed him with psychotropic chemicals that also turned him gay.
More important for me is the utterly fantastic song which Roy Raz uses, a number entitled In This Shirt by a ten-piece British group, The Irrepressibles, whose name I recognised but whose music I hadn’t heard until this. Lead singer Jamie McDermott’s voice is very reminiscent of Antony Hegarty which is no bad thing, although McDermott is probably weary of the comparison. Our musical culture would be greatly improved by more people taking their lead from Antony. The Irrepressibles’ site has a Soundcloud page where you can hear other songs from their recent Mirror, Mirror album, the CD of which is now on my shopping list. They also have a couple of videos showing their live performances which look rather spectacular. 2010 is turning out to be a good year for British music; when that music comes with cute guys attached it’s an added bonus.
Update: Roy Raz’s film is now also on Vimeo with other of his works.
The Fool.
I’d like this photo series by young British photographer Jak Flash even if it didn’t feature attractive men; the eye candy is icing on a thaumaturgic cake. The Major Arcana takes the Trumps of the Tarot as its inspiration and manages to reinterpret the symbolism whilst retaining the hieratic nature of the traditional images. Of his reworking, the photographer says:
I developed my own themes based around things like geometric shapes so that I could encode my images with meaning. The images link to each other and can be read to some extent almost as a progressive story, or commentary. Various signifiers are used throughout the images such as cubes, triangles and spheres to help communicate my ideas. Cubes for example are a representation of the material world and triangles show transition. In an image such as The Hanged Man we see two men firmly seated on a large cube, whilst above their heads another cube breaks apart around them. … The Lovers image is an interpretation of the fall of man from Eden. The man represents mankind in his fall after taking the fruit of Knowledge, whilst being denied eternal life. (More.)
The Major Arcana is available in book form at Blurb. Via Homotography, doing all the leg work once again.
top left: The Lovers; top right: Justice.
bottom left: The Wheel of Fortune; bottom right: The Sun.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Sapphire Museum of Magic and Occultism
• Strange Attractor Salon
• The art of Pamela Colman Smith, 1878–1951
• Layered Orders: Crowley’s Thoth Deck and the Tarot
• In the Shadow of the Sun by Derek Jarman
• The Major Arcana
If someone hasn’t already named these things mantlers you know it’s only a matter of time. The photo on the left is Johan by Michelle Martinoli from a series she calls Body Sculptures. On the right is Jeremy by Jamie Luca, part of a set at Homotography.