Style Of Eye

Style of Eye

E-mail Subscription

Receive an e-mail notification of new posts on this site:

[ more ]

"Create your own visual style ... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others." Orson Welles ... auteur | provocateur | stylist | visionary

Even the terriable pains that have burn me & scarred my soul it was worth it for having been allowed to walked where I've walked. Which was to hell on earth Heaven on earth back again, into, under, far in between, through it, in it over and above it. --- Gia (in her own words) At t...

click title to read more

Life & Deathenergy & Peaceif I stoped todayit was fun --- Gia (in her own words) Gia Carangi was the first supermodel. She was also very likely the first female celebrity to die of AIDS. She was drop dead gorgeous, pun unintended. She enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame and success. S...

click title to read more

Paul Newman was not only a fantastic actor, but he was also a great human being. But thats been said a thousand times. His devotion as a husband was the stuff of Hollywood legend. He made a pretty darn good salad dressing. He wasnt too shabby behind the wheel of a racing car. And he was a fabulous...

click title to read more

It might sound a little unusual, but I received my most formative sexual education from within the pages of Penthouse magazine, Bob Gucciones International Magazine for Men, which was founded in England in 1965, but came to prominence once it was launched in America in 1969. It went on to become th...

click title to read more

I know, I know, its been too long between exhibitions. I have no excuse. Well, actually I do. I was partying my ass off, as you do over the silly season. But I shouldnt have neglected my blog for so long. I do apologise. The Raoulmeister is back! And the heat is on! So, to make up for it, Im g...

click title to read more

Im not gonna beat around the bush (although it is a favourite naughty pastime of mine), Im a sucker for a pretty face. My lovers visage is as beautiful as the Mediterranean sun that beats down upon my brow and glistens on her warm lagoon-wet skin, but Ive already posted a pic of her, so Im goin...

click title to read more

"My body is so important to me... my face, my arms, my legs, my hands, my eyes, everything. I use everything I have." Monica Bellucci is without a doubt one of the very sexiest woman ever to slink across the silver screen. But not just in the movies, she also commands every page of every fashion ...

click title to read more

Monica Bellucci is one of the most sensational-looking women on the planet. In fact she never looks less than stunning. She's the epitome of elegance and poise, sultryness and sassiness. The camera adores her. She embraces fashion with the savvy and sensibility of a designer. She is style personifie...

click title to read more

Flags are generally pretty boring. Certainly National flags are. There are exceptions to the rule, but the usual striped colours are dull to look at. I guess they need to be easily recognised from a distance. Personally the Jolly Roger has always been my pick o the bunch, but its a rogue naval fla...

click title to read more

Theres something about horror movie posters that tickles the hairs on my spine. Perhaps not quite as much as those exploitation movie posters, but still they provide me with a smile and maybe a dangerous glint in my eye. Ive picked posters from back in the day, nothing from the here and now....

click title to read more

A femme fatale is an alluring and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetypal character of literature and art. Her ability to entrance and hypnotize her male victim was i...

click title to read more

Im back with my favourite post material: movie posters. But this time Ive streamlined the selection (to be precise Ive ruffled the edges). Yes, Im a dirty rough trade pervert at the best of times, despite my professed love of the clean and smooth aesthetic. As much as I like my slick and polishe...

click title to read more

If you dont know any French the word derriere means behind or backside. Its a euphemism, or affectionate slang for a womans bottom, her bum, butt or ass (or as its spelt in Great Britain and down under; arse). In the U.S. they sometimes refer to it as fanny, which confuses the Brits and the Anti...

click title to read more

I love my shlockntrash, and I love mixing it with my art culture. I get a perverse sense of pleasure slumming with the high brow, lying in the gutter and gazing at the stars. Cinema brings that kind of dynamic and diverse thrill. I've said it before and I'll say it again, time moves pretty fas...

click title to read more

It was my Orble first birthday last month and I plumb forgot to celebrate! How absent-minded of me indeed! It happens a lot in this ridiculously fast-moving society we live in; important events pass us by simply because were too caught up in the unnecessary stress of the day-to-day grind. So I ...

click title to read more

Gia Carangi - session two	Gia Carangi - session one	Paul Newman
Penthouse covers	magnificent monochrome	faces III
Monica Bellucci - sesso dea	Monica Bellucci - sofisticata signora	flags
movie posters VI - horror!	femme fatales	movie posters V - exploitation!
derrières	movie posters IV	... my favourite things

Gia Carangi - session two

May 11th 2009 00:31

MATURE CONTENT

[ Link ]

Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: fashion

Email this Post to a Friend

Gia Carangi - session one

May 8th 2009 05:05

“Life & Death/energy & Peace/if I stoped today/it was fun” --- Gia (in her own words)

Gia Carangi was the first supermodel. She was also very likely the first female celebrity to die of AIDS. She was drop dead gorgeous, pun unintended. She enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame and success. She was a charismatic pansexual figure on the New York underground disco circuit and featured on the covers of all the influential fashion magazines. She was the darling of numerous respected fashion and art photographers. She died tragically in 1986 after becoming infected with HIV through her reckless use of intravenous drug-taking. She was 26-years-old.

Gia Marie Carangi was of Italian, Irish, and Welsh heritage. She began modeling at the age of 17 after moving from Philadelphia to New York City. She quickly rose to prominence and became popular among the eminent fashion photographers such as Francesco Scavullo, Arthur Elgort, Richard Avedon, and Chris von Wangenheim. She was the first model to make a name for herslef presenting unusual poses, facial expressions and gestures. She was credited by many at the upper echelons of fashion to have created a new style of modeling, emulated by models since then to the present. By 1978 she was fast becoming the hottest model in the world.

In October 1978, Gia did her first major shoot with top fashion photographer Chris von Wangenheim. Wangenheim had her pose nude behind a chain-link fence with makeup assistant Sandy Linter. Gia immediately became infatuated with Linter. They were lovers, but the relationship was never stable enough to last.

Gia was a regular at Studio 54 and the Mudd Club. She usually only used cocaine in clubs, but later began to develop a heroin addiction. This drug abuse was compounded after Gia's agent, Wilhelmina Cooper, died of lung cancer. Gia was devastated. Scavullo recalled a fashion shoot in the Caribbean when "She was crying, she couldn't find her drugs. I literally had to lay her down on her bed until she fell asleep."

By 1980 Gia began having violent temper tantrums, walking out of photo shoots, and even falling asleep in front of the camera. In the November 1980 issue of Vogue, Gia's track marks from heroin can be easily seen. For three weeks, she was signed with Eileen Ford, but the fashion house mogul soon dropped her.

In 1981, Carangi enrolled in a 21-day detox program, and started dating a college student, Elyssa Golden. The Carangi family, along with her mother, had suspected that Golden had a drug problem. Carangi soon began using again. She moved out of her mother's house and in with some friends, once again entering a detox program, but her attempt to quit drugs was shattered when she received news that her close friend, fashion photographer Chris von Wangenheim, had died in a car accident.

Curiously, early in her modeling career Cindy Crawford was nicknamed “Baby Gia” due to her resemblance.

The resemblence Cindy Crawford had to Gia is quite apparent. Her European heritage served her very well in the fashion industry. But her reckless disregard to her body and soul destroyed her. It is difficult to select my favourite pictures, but stand-outs are the red one-piece swimming costume, the patterned singlet, and the two with her in a black dress; one leaning to her left against a green railing (and hanging loose), the other to her right against a glass balcony wall, smoking the cigarette, and that close-up visage, thirteen down from the top of the main selection. It was considered by many that she had the best tits in the industry. Yup.

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: fashion

Email this Post to a Friend

Paul Newman

February 20th 2009 06:33

Paul Newman was not only a fantastic actor, but he was also a great human being. But that’s been said a thousand times. His devotion as a husband was the stuff of Hollywood legend. He made a pretty darn good salad dressing. He wasn’t too shabby behind the wheel of a racing car. And he was a fabulous humanitarian.

The camera loved him too.

Paul Leonard Newman was born in 1925 and died last year of lung cancer. At 83 he lived a long life for someone who smoked heavily for a considerable part of it. He is survived by his second wife Joanne Woodward and five daughters (his only son died of a drug overdose in 1978). His marriage to Joanne lasted nearly fifty years. No other Hollywood couple can make that kind of claim.

Newman began his Hollywood movie career in 1954 and he continued acting up until 2007 (another claim few Hollywood actors can stake). He won one Academy Award for The Colour of Money, although he should’ve won it for numerous other films such as The Hustler, one of my favourite movies. His most famous roles were “cowboys”; Hud, Eddie Felson (The Hustler, The Colour of Money), Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy, Gondorff (The Sting), and in a rusty kind of way, Frank Galvin (The Verdict).

It was Newman’s ruggedly handsome face with his piercing blue eyes that made women fall weak at the knees and men muttering envy under their breath. Yet, he charmed us all, time and time again. In latter years when asked why he never fell prey to all the starlets who would throw themselves at his feet, Newman responded, “Why go out for hamburger when you’ve got steak at home?” A golden answer from a golden man.

Paul Newman, may your blue eyes twinkle forever on that big silver screen in the sky.

Paul Newman Dennis Hopper photograph 1964

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward Leo Fuchs photograph

Miss ya Paul! My favourite pic here is the "steak and kidney" profile shot. I love all the black and white photographs, especially the ones taken by Leo Fuchs. My other favourites would be two of Paul as Cool Hand Luke (shirt off, star of David necklace) and Paul as Butch Cassidy, he wears that hat and threads so well. The arty chain-link fence pic shot by Dennis Hopper is superb. I also love the pics of him with wife Joanne Woodward, they exude a true love.

Vote

Comments (3)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: photography

Email this Post to a Friend

Penthouse covers

February 11th 2009 05:05

It might sound a little unusual, but I received my most formative sexual education from within the pages of Penthouse magazine, Bob Guccione’s International Magazine for Men, which was founded in England in 1965, but came to prominence once it was launched in America in 1969. It went on to become the preeminent hardened softcore American sex magazine of the 70s, riding the crest between the creamy, coy softcore of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine and the sleazy, over-lit, hardcore of Larry Flynt’s Hustler magazine.

Penthouse first American issue Sept 1969

The inaugural U.S. edition September 1969

Whereas Hefner was a journalist, Guccione was a photographer (and Flynt was an opportunist filthmonger). Hefner’s Playmate’s were frequently blonde and the pictorials often looked the same. Guccione’s Pets were often brunettes (mmmmm) and the pictorials were far more erotically adventurous. Playboy might have enjoyed a wider social limelight, especially with Hefner’s Playboy Mansion, but Penthouse possessed a more complex sense of mischief (Caligula being one such venture) and was altogether more alluring.

However, despite the sensational pictorials, it was Penthouse Forum that provided me with so much insight into the adult world of seduction and sexual behaviour. As a budding adolescent I learned all the lingo from those dirty-minded and explicit letters to the Forum editor (years later I came to realise that most of them were fake, but hey, they read good).

Venus on the half-shell

I recently discovered a site that had pics of Penthouse covers, a reasonably comprehensive gallery from 1969 through to present day (though some faves were missing). Looking at the covers I was suddenly transported back to my father’s art studio (where he had his collection stashed). All these memories came spurting, er, gushing, er … flooding back. I realised from looking at the stylish images of erotic femininity on the covers of so many of these issues, and comparing them to the current covers of Penthouse from the last decade or so that I’d seen in shops or wherever, that they simply don’t shoot them like they used to.

Hot Summer, but no nude cigar

Never did find out if her cuffs matched her collar

There is definitely a period where Penthouse magazine was easily the sexiest magazine on the shelves. I’m talking about the allure of the cover here, not necessarily the pictorials inside, and often the woman portrayed on the cover wasn’t featured in a pictorial on the inside (but on numerous occasions reader’s – or should that be viewer’s – demand decided the woman on the cover would end up in a pictorial on a later issue.

Bowler hats never looked so cum hither

I perused the monthly covers of all the issues of Penthouse from 1969 into the 90s, and it became apparent that the aesthetics of the fashion (clothes, hair, makeup) and photographic techniques (composition, lighting, props) changed considerably. I lost interest in the late 80s. The very best covers were from the mid-70s to the mid-80s. The women were voluptuous, the colours were sexy, the poses were erotic … and there was bush. Call me old-fashioned, but I dig bush. Not necessarily big bush, but I think a pubic mound on a woman is a direct erotic statement. It says "I am woman", not "I am girl". But the pubic hair debate is another kettle of fish I guess …

So without further adieu, here is my selection of some of the very best covers that graced Penthouse magazine chronologically from 1969 to 1987; the Lush Years, as I like to fondly them.

I love 'em all, even though some of my other favourites I couldn't include because I couldn't find scanned images of them. Yes, I'm old school, but damn, these covers arer undeniably sexy, and frequently downright erotic. Playboy covers were never this good. Even Euro-styled mag Oui couldn't compete. Bob Guccione had an eye for the seriously alluring. Bless his cotton socks. Oh, and my very, very favourites amongst these? Scroll your cursor over pics: July 1971, July 1975, November 1977, August 1979, June 1982, April 1984, July 1985 ... sheesh, I can't stop myself, I even broke my Rule of 24, heh, heh.

Vote

Comments (4)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: photography

Email this Post to a Friend

magnificent monochrome

January 30th 2009 06:54

I know, I know, it’s been too long between exhibitions. I have no excuse. Well, actually I do. I was partying my ass off, as you do over the silly season. But I shouldn’t have neglected my blog for so long. I do apologise. The Raoulmeister is back! And the heat is on!

So, to make up for it, I’m gonna shut the fuck up, and let these sensational images speak volumes in magnificent black and white, because at the end of the day, as gorgeous as colour is, monochrome separates the gentlemen from the lads, the ladies from the ladettes … if you get my drift.

It's a melange of styles and content, I know, but I'm still recovering from the intensely hedonistic pursuits of the silly season ... not to mention being caught up in this Australian heatwave that is sweeping through the Eastern states. I guess the sensuality of the period is reflected in the images I've selected. My favourites? I love the Lauren Bentley nude and the fashiontastic pose of Moran Atias. I love the Bill Brandt and Tina Modotti pictures. But my absolute favourite is the man leaping with the birds flying overhead, now that is something else indeed. Hey, Happy New Year!

Vote

Comments (2)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: photography

Email this Post to a Friend

faces III

October 28th 2008 01:45

I’m not gonna beat around the bush (although it is a favourite naughty pastime of mine), I’m a sucker for a pretty face. My lover’s visage is as beautiful as the Mediterranean sun that beats down upon my brow and glistens on her warm lagoon-wet skin, but I’ve already posted a pic of her, so I’m going to indulge in other women today.

Yes, no men allowed. As handsome as so many are, this post in the faces series is strictly for the ladies, the women, the feminine contours of the female face. The high cheekbones, the luscious lips, the alluring eyes, the sleek arch of the eyebrow, the smooth aquiline nose, the subtle curvature of the ear, the sumptuous nape of the neck; all these attribute to the beauty that is the face of a beautiful woman

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (6)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: photography

Email this Post to a Friend

Monica Bellucci - sesso dea

September 30th 2008 06:07

"My body is so important to me... my face, my arms, my legs, my hands, my eyes, everything. I use everything I have."

Monica Bellucci is without a doubt one of the very sexiest woman ever to slink across the silver screen. But not just in the movies, she also commands every page of every fashion or lifestyle magazine she has ever been spread across. She oozes sex appeal. She has a classic hourglass figure and she radiates an unbridled sensuality

[ Click here to read more ]

129

Vote

Comments (10)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: photography

Email this Post to a Friend

Monica Bellucci - sofisticata signora

September 30th 2008 05:35

110

Vote

Comments (6)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: fashion

Email this Post to a Friend

flags

September 24th 2008 04:46

If it’s not two or three bands of colours, then it’s a scattering of stars, or a coat of arms, or a mascot of some description. Where’s the real artistry? They’re nothing to write home about. I suppose there’s some clause on some ancient papyrus that states the “rules of a national flag’s design”. But as I said, there are exceptions to the rule. But not many

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: graphics

Email this Post to a Friend

movie posters VI - horror!

September 11th 2008 01:17

There’s something about horror movie posters that tickles the hairs on my spine. Perhaps not quite as much as those exploitation movie posters, but still they provide me with a smile and maybe a dangerous glint in my eye.

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: graphics

Email this Post to a Friend

2 Posts

2 Posts

1 Posts

68 Posts dating from July 2007

Email Subscription

Receive e-mail notifications of new posts on this blog: