erotica
September 28th 2007 05:00
MATURE CONTENT
"Create your own visual style ... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others." Orson Welles
... auteur | provocateur | stylist | visionary
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Style of Eye - September 2007
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castles
September 26th 2007 00:22
So many castles are in ruins. But it adds character to them. Like a crinkly old man showing his battle scars and spinning yarns. Then there are the modern castles built by people with too much money and too much power and not enough taste. And the castles look ‘orrible.
I enjoyed the Gormenghast books by Mervyn Peake as an adolescent (although I never finished them). That castle was an imaginative feat in itself. I would dream of exploring it, becoming lost, entering some alternate universe, and having wild, hair-raising adventures. Castles are good for those kinds of mischief.
I’d love to visit the famous Bran castle that was once visited by Vlad the Impaler. The story goes that he stayed a few nights in the Romanian castle, which gave inspiration to author Bram Stoker, who concocted his brilliant novel Dracula around the idea of a bloodthirsty count holed up in a castle.
Some spectacular homes there, huh?! Perhaps a little drafty in the winter, but hey, one makes those concessions when you've got the lay down your arms, fuck off best weekender in town! Excuse my French. Actually they've built some fine examples too. I guess my three favourites here would be Kruezenstein, Castel del Monte and the Spanish castle second from bottom. Mind you that red isle "cervena" is pretty impressive. But, hey they're all magnificent in their own defiant way.
Image of Dolwyddelan Castle courtesy of Wales Directory
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Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: architecture
record covers II
September 23rd 2007 23:25
Of course for every sensational record cover there’s one that just looks wrong. There can be the intentionally wrong, and then there’s the wrong wrong, y’know, just bad concept, bad photography, bad artwork, bad lettering, etc. But I’m certainly not here to dwell on the terrible record covers.
But enough of the auto-fellatio, let’s get back to the matter at hand: record covers. Not silly little CD covers, where everything has been scrunched and condensed and compressed and shrunken, but the good ol’ fashioned 12”s of fun. That's where the protein lies.
Like movie posters I tend to gravitate toward the older ones (generally from the 70s and 80s), where there's less of the modern digital manipulation of images and more of the cut and paste, illustration and straight photography approach. Covers where the concept is king.
As a teenager I was impressed by the self-effacing Polaroid manipulation of the Peter Gabriel cover (an amazing album too). The Meatloaf album seemed to be in every record collection of every house I visited. Grace Jones' cut out face stared back at you with such masculine authority. H. R. Giger's acupuncture of Deborah Harry's face was cool, yet a little disturbing, while David Sylvian just simmered in his arty shadow. And as for Tom, well, that cover just summed up Mr Waits to a tee.
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Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: graphics
movie posters II
September 21st 2007 04:33
Graphic designers don’t use illustration nearly as much as they used to. Too often the movie posters of today use plain head shots all in a pretty row. It’s damn bloody boring. Still, I’d be a hypocrite if I continued to moan, because I do like the use of faces in movie posters, but it all depends on the context.
So with no further adieu I’d like to turn the twenty-four mini spotlights up, ring the foyer bell and usher you all into the auditorium for a little perusal of my second original movie poster exhibition. I’m sure you’ll find something in the gallery that raises your eyebrow, piques your interest, tickles your fancy, even rubs you up the right way.
You might even jot down a few titles and be heading for the video store to line up a weekend’s viewing or three. I mean let's face it, that's what movie posters are meant to do: lure you in and make you wanna see that movie!
Now where’s that bag of popcorn? I know I have some somewhere in that silly large pantry of mine.
Now there's some seriously funkysexycool poster designs up there ... What are my ultimate faves? Hmmmm, probably Escape From New York, Flesh Gordon, Taxi Driver, Star Wars and Wizards. But I must say that poster to Dune, when Mexican maverick director Alexandro Jodorowsky was attached to direct (and H.R. Giger was the production designer!) is compelling.
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Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: graphics
abstract art
September 17th 2007 00:46
I lost respect for the system following that disastrous year (the last year of internal assessment at my high school). I ended up having to sit exams at the local university designed to fail you. I passed and gave the system the finger. But my passion for producing art had been irreparably damaged.
My father is an artist – a new renaissance man he was once described as by another artist friend - so I’ve always had art surrounding me during my childhood and adolescence. Both my younger brothers, and also my much younger half sister, have spent time making art, although these days the three brothers make original music as opposed to throwing paint against a canvas, and my sis is pursuing fashion design.
As much as I love realism, I really love abstract art. I love the idea that you can formulate your own ideas and concepts from some one else’s use of line and curve, colour and texture, light and darkness. I do love traditional landscape and portraiture, but there’s something intrinsically more interesting to me about art that can’t easily be defined.
The artist expresses themselves and the viewers interpret the expression. The more abstract and enigmatic the art, the more the viewer gets to interpret.
But enough of the art wank, here are some examples of abstract art that grabbed my eye, took my fancy, fuelled my thoughts.
I love all these examples of abstract art ... very hard to pick favourites, but if I had to point the oily finger I'd say; the Augustine, the Danckeart, the Ilachinski, the Stepanoff, and the Pollack. Appreciation of art is in the eye of the beholder. My style of eye couldn't be more subjective.
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Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: art
tattoos
September 12th 2007 01:36
I’ve always been fascinated by tattoos. Novelist Angela Carter had a quote that said something along the lines of “Tattooing is the first of the apocalyptic arts, for its materials are flesh and blood.” It ended up being inspiration to a supernatural Gothic erotic thriller that I wrote a few years back
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Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: art
bikinis
September 6th 2007 02:37
The official history of the bikini, under that name, begins in the summer of 1946, just one year after the end of World War II. During that summer two French designers almost simultaneously created and marketed the bikini swimsuit. Barely leading the charge, Jacques Heim, a fashion designer and beach shop owner in the French resort town of Cannes, introduced his swimsuit creation, the “Atome,” early in the summer of 1946. The swimsuit was named the Atome because of its miniscule size (as compared to the then smallest known particle of matter, the atom). Heim sent skywriters high above the Cannes sky, with the simple, yet striking message “the world’s smallest bathing suit
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Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: fashion
birds
September 4th 2007 02:30
Mind you, birds don’t have the gift of abstract thought, so it’s not as if they’re up there swooping and gliding, thinking “Damn, this is cool fun, I pity those poor pathetic people down on the ground who’ll never get to experience what I am doing
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Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: nature
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