“Masquerade Ball” oil on canvas, by Jared Joslin

Jared Joslin’s paintings are gilded portals to the sensual past. Exploring his work, we encounter thriving pockets of nocturnal Weimar nightlife, Dust Bowl era carnivals, and glittering pre-code Hollywood nightclubs. Jared has said that what fuels his vision is “the feeling that you don’t necessarily fit within your own time. You’re drawn to the past in ways you can’t quite understand, but feel the pull of it and want to take on [its] dreams.” His creations truly do seem timeless, and they are dreamy indeed.

Just in time for Jared’s current solo show, “Stop, Look, and Glisten”, Coilhouse is proud to to present Part One of an in-depth interview with this remarkable painter and longtime friend. Part Two of our feature will be more lavishly presented in the impending sixth issue of Coilhouse Magazine. (Hooray, yes, it’s coming soon!)

Comrades, should you be in the Midwest between now and June 18th, be sure to stop by Firecat Projects in Chicago, Illinois. These pieces are a marvel to see in person.

The “Stop, Look, and Glisten” reception is tomorrow evening, (Friday the 27th). More info here.

Set the tone for us, good sir. What music are you listening to? Cocktails? Is your wife (fellow artist, oft-featured friend and correspondent of the ‘Haus) Jessica nearby? What art are you working on, currently? And she?
It’s an unusually beautiful evening for Chicago. The windows are open and a lovely breeze is circulating. Fad Gadget is playing in the studio and I can hear it a tiny bit from the kitchen where I’m working. Jessica is making a good amount of ruckus, drilling holes to inset small brass balls into the horns of a circus goat. She is in the final stages of completing work for her solo show at La Luz de Jesus Gallery next month. Cocktails…yes indeed! How did you know? A lovely Sazerac Rye Manhattan is keeping my blood thin and my gears well lubed. Lately I’ve been working in the studio on some new ideas and approaches, mainly experimenting with watercolors. Currently on the easel is a watercolor painting of myself in Pierrot attire nestling against a costumed lady at a masquerade ball…

Sometimes you just have to take a break and watch as a man in a purple suit and a luminous, gold tie does an extended magic trick to the smooth, sultry tones of Sting. The man in the aforementioned suit is Shawn Farquhar, and the trick performed won the World Championship and Grand Prix of Close Up Magic in Beijing, China in 2009, — the “Olympics of Magic” according to the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques (International Federation of Magic Societies) or FISM. And while I am no great fan of Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner’s work, the trick is pretty mesmerizing. It’s either that or I’ve just been blinded by that tie.

Via The Daily What

A dear and lovely chum from New York, singer Robert Conroy, has just alerted us to some splendid news! The Boy Friend (1971), one of Ken Russell’s most elegantly outrageous gems, was recently released to DVD as part of the Warner Archive Collection. It’s a remastered disc of the 136-minute UK version, and it’s… oh, if you haven’t seen it before, just watch a wee bit, see what you think:

Some background info, courtesy of the YouTube clip:

Working at the height of his formidable powers, Ken Russell braids a whole new layer of story onto the hit stage musical that made Julie Andrews a star and opens it up to some astonishing flights of fancy. Wrapping a narrative frame around the original – a seaside theatrical company mounts a production of the ’20s musical spoof The Boy Friend – allows Russell, in turn, to explore and parody the conventions of ’30s musicals with elaborate fantasy sequences, slapstick, and sentiment. RESTORED DIRECTOR’S CUT/ROADSHOW presentation with Intermission and Entr’Acte, as Ken Russell intended the film to be seen. SPECIAL FEATURES: vintage “behind the scenes” making-of featurette about the film and theatrical trailer.

With Antonia Ellis! Twiggy! Tommy Tune! An uncredited appearance by Glenda Jackson! And… Mister Boogalow?! (Aka Vladek Sheybal, a tragically under-appreciated gem of screen and stage.)

As Robert puts it, The Boy Friend “looks like how Bowie’s Aladdin Sane or Roxy Music’s debut LP sounds!” Swoon…

Buy it here.

Photos from Not Just A Label. Link via Aja de Coudreaux.

Just what you’ve always wanted: a sequined urinal dress fashioned after Duchamp’s Fountain.

It’ll set you back a mere $2,592.00 (before shipping). The ultimate pomo Lemon Party ensemble, brought to us by The Rodnik Band‘s Philip Colbert, the same sparkly Pop Art piss-taker who has gifted our world with the Warholian soup can frock, the Mondrian Twin Set, and the Lichensteinian Brush Strokes dress, among other pieces.

R. Kelly approved, I. P. Freeley sanctioned, and so meta-ironic, it’ll make ya shit.

Photo: Allan Amato. Clothes: Plastik Wrap. Models: Zoetica Ebb and Ulorin Vex. Hair: Adriana Mireles.

via Haute Macabre:

After months of excruciating antici…pation, decease Zoetica Ebb and Plastik Wrap have released a preview of their collaborative effort.

Titled GHST RDR, health the tailored top and square skirt combo is inspired by strict riding jackets of the Victorian era, clinic Anime and the dark punk aesthetic. Classic tailoring and details such as pleats, draping and structured sleeves are vivified with modern materials and adjustable straps.

The mini collection, made entirely in Canada, will be available for custom orders at PlastikArmy.com on May 9th.

To his children everything seemed fine: chasing them around the house when he came home from work, helping them with their homework, acting out the books he read them before bed as always. His wife, on the other hand, had noticed an ever so slight change in Bill. Those nights spent reading in the living room after the children had been put to bed, in quiet co-habitation, punctuated by short bursts of conversation, a brief exchange over a particular news story or a bit of neighborhood gossip — the usual discussions that make up the mundane nights of married life — they were different. Now there was something else.

It was the silence. It had always been there, but now that silence had a strange quality, a cold weight to it. It had a density Agnes could feel pressing in on her. These moments were fleeting, but often she would look up when they occurred, only to find Bill staring off into space, at some point far outside the walls of their house. When asked if everything was alright, he would assure her that it was, flashing his goofy grin at her to drive the point home and send her back to her book.

But everything was not alright. Bill had endured the smirks and the sniggering for too long now, and it was wearing on him, eroding a great rut in his spirit. Who were these people to sneer at him? All he wanted was to make them gay and the best way he knew to do that was to clothe them in the most resplendent fabrics he could find, which he also knew, as should any fool with half a brain, came from the rainbow. What was so funny about that? What was the goddamn joke?

Maybe, he thought late at night, his wife sleeping soundly beside him, maybe they didn’t deserve to be gay. Maybe, he thought, gritting his teeth until they ached and his gums bled, maybe they didn’t deserve to be gilded in the fruits of his labor, those hours spent toiling on that fucking rainbow. Maybe, he thought, his fists clenched, a white hot fire burning in his brain right behind his eyes, maybe they don’t fucking deserve to be here on this beautiful, gay Earth at all.

And maybe he was going to do something about that.

Via Vintage Ads

Coilhouse is delighted to welcome writer and dancer Sarah Hassan into the Coilhouse family. Her premiere piece for us is a 3000 word feature about Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes. This is definitely one of the most informative, inspiring, infectious posts you’ll read here this month, so settle in, and enjoy! ~Mer

Dancers in the original Le sacre du printemps production.

The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris seems an unlikely venue for a riot. Yet almost one hundred years ago, on May 29^th, 1913, fist-fights broke out in an audience made up of socialites, musicians, and artists. The institution in question was one that by today’s standards seems chaste and predictable: the ballet.

The premiere of Le sacre du printemps by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes has become the stuff of legend. Against Nicholas Roerich’s backdrop of a primitive Russia, the radical score by Igor Stravinsky came alive to the choreography of Vaslav Nijinsky, the danseur noble darling – and object of Diaghilev’s affection – whose unsurpassed defiance of gravity on Europe’s great stages had been leaving balletomane’s breathless. Now, the dancer whose roles included a lovesick puppet, a sprightly rose, and a predatory golden slave presented a complicated tableau of sacred ritual. With balled-up fists and downward glances, his dancers jumped and stomped their pigeon-toed feet in time with the violins as if trying to conjure up the ghosts of pagan tribesmen. The heavy woolen dresses painted with folk patterns on the peasant girls were in place of the frothy tulle skirts of nighttime sylphs and bejeweled torsos of slinking odalisques expected from a program a’la Russes.

Nicholas Roerich’s Costumes for Le Sacre Du Printemps.

The production, presenting a ‘new type of savagery,’ caused a literal aesthetic outrage among the haute Parisian audience. Backstage, as the birth of modern dance unfolded, Nijinsky screamed the tempo counts in Russian to dancers who couldn’t hear over the booing, while Stravinsky held him by his coattails lest the crazed choreographer topple into the orchestra. Diaghilev attempted to placate the uproar by turning the house lights on and off. Yet despite its unsuccessful reception, Le sacre du printemps was performed six times, and Diaghilev declared the opening night scandal to be ‘exactly what he wanted.’ It was clear that the ballet was no longer safe.

Thirty-two years after Le sacre’s premiere, Nijinsky, having succumbed to insanity, leapt for a photographer’s camera in a Swiss asylum. The image captured the aging dancer smartly dressed in a suit suspended in the air, proof of his once otherworldly powers. Yet, one can only wonder if the height Nijinsky was attempting to recapture was not his own, but that of the sacrificial virgin he created, dying from her own mad dance in a flash of beastly glory.

The banner at the Victoria & Albert Museum for Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes.

All the hoopla generated by Darren Aronofsky’s psycho-sexual melodrama Black Swan made it easy to believe that ballet had been once again recovered from the ashes of its own antiquity. With Jennifer Homan’s attempt to condense 400 years of history with her book, Apollo’s Angels, the ballet’s ability to survive in an age where anything goes and everything changes came into question – the blood-stained tutu of Natalie Portman’s Nina Sawyer notwithstanding. Madness is, by Aronofsky’s account, the cost of greatness. This idea is artistic old-hat, retold through ballet by Moira Shearer’s exceptional Victoria Page in The Red Shoes – a movie loosely based on Diaghilev and his company – and all the gory details of Swan, from broken toes, bone-thin frames, and endless retching struck a resonant, less glamorous chord. The curtain was pulled back to reveal an art that demands perfection as you claw your way to the top while clawing yourself apart. Ballet, according to Black Swan, is more an arena for the cruel and calculated and less the foundation for beauty, innovation and fantasy.

Oh, how the days of Diaghilev would beg to differ.

Love, love, love, LOVE, LOVE these ladies. Holy moly. So much love.

Originally featured on NOWNESS, this sweet, sharp short by filmmaker Lina Plioplyte is an inspiring glimpse into the lives of senior sartorialists– all of whom photographer Ari Seth Cohen has featured on his Advanced Style blog over the past couple of years.

Cohen’s mission is as follows: to document “men and woman over 50 who are stylish, creative and vital” and to offer “proof from the wise and silver-haired set that personal style advances with age.” For younger clothes horses who view our wardrobe as a medium for artistic self-expression, the short also offers an uplifting peek into one possible future.

The Idiosyncratic Fashionistas! Filmed/photographed by Ari Seth Cohen.

Cohen, speaking with NOWNESS about the Advanced Style ethos:

Walking around New York taking photographs, I noticed how many young girls are appropriating style from older women: leopard print, fur, turbans and hats. In general, the older women wear these things naturally, with more confidence. With the blog I not only want to show that older women are vital and creative, but also to show people [they need not be] afraid of aging—and personal style is a great way to showcase this. […] What is important to me is self-expression and what might inspire others.

(Via Sarah Masear, thanks!)

From Japan with love: Sexy Sheep, Fucking Poodles, Pink Cow. Don’t let Katy Perry ruin latex. Take it back. [via 3XL]

See also:

• Inflatable Rubber Alien Egg
• Destruction of Mankind: Kawaii Edition
• Kariwanz

Stunning X-Ray images of corsets from 1908 by Dr. Ludovic O’Followell, via hypnerotomachi(n)a and billie jane. Many more images from the book (some NSWF) can be found at the Wikimedia Commons. Could this have been the inspiration for Helmut Newton’s gorgeous X-ray fashion photography from the late 70s?