“Two Against One” from the album Rome, a collaboration between Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi, which came out last year. Featuring vocals by Jack White, it’s been supplied with a spectacularly hallucinatory video directed by Chris Milk and Anthony Francisco Schepperd. Just beautiful work.
Photo by Dese’Rae L. Stage
The powerfully enchanting Larkin Grimm, previously interviewed by Angeliska on the Coilhouse blog and featured in Issue Four of our print issue, has a new album coming out next month! You can read about what she’s been up to recently, and preview/download her song “Paradise And So Many Colors” at the Village Voice website.
Last year, the sartorial site StyleLikeU (oh good gracious, LOVE these ladies) posted a wonderful “Closet Feature” on Grimm. It’s as endearing a portrait of the woman as you’ll find anywhere:
Artist: Arlin Robins Category: Mythological Medium: Bronze
“We are presenting for sale a limited edition bronze sculpture of a centaur couple in love’s embrace. The sculpture is entitled UNBRIDLED LOVE. The statue is cast in bronze by the traditional lost wax method. Each sculpture is individually patinaed and will therefore appear slightly different from any other. The sculpture is newly cast upon order. Delivery time for this statue is three months. Each statue is hand detailed, numbered in a limited edition of 50, and signed by the artist. All image and production rights are retained by the artist. $4850″
“The Sinister Game of Paperface” by Richard A. Kirk
Artist and author Richard A. Kirk (who we’ve mentioned twice before on the blog) has just put a bunch of very reasonably priced prints of his recent work into his Etsy store. If you’re shopping for darkly whimsical holiday gifts for your more fae or macabre friends (or just for yourself!) you’ll definitely want to take a look at these intricate, elegant pieces.
Kirk’s phenomenal illustrated novella, The Lost Machine, is also worth checking out– a bleakly beautiful weird fiction story that features ghosts, witches, crows, and enchanted automata. Kirk’s prose is as delicate, finessed and strange as his drawings. Highly recommended.
“The Unaccountable Absence of the Wastrel” by Richard A. Kirk
Sometimes I forget just how wonderful a thing this Internet is. Were it not for the internet, how many of us would have been able to experience the glory of this footage from some unnamed talk show, circa 1984? What a tragedy it would have been to not behold this man, with his perfectly groomed moustache, bouncing mullet, and Detroit Pistons sweatshirt. What fairness would there have been in the world if only those lucky members of the studio audience that day were able to gaze upon his hirsute visage, twisting and contorting with emotion or, perhaps, the effort of trying to keep from shitting himself, as he belted out the smoothest grooves ever heard?
None, I say. The people there that day, spellbound, their mouths agape, no doubt told stories about that day, but unable to properly convey the sublime magic of those few, short minutes, their words were most likely met with disbelief and skepticism. And really, who could blame them? Such accounts must have seemed ludicrous, the product of feeble minds. Now, though, we can see and hear for ourselves, and we too can be put under that same, powerful spell.
Yes, it truly is amazing, this internet. I will not take it for granted again.
Photo via Cinebeats. (Source, anyone?)
“Reality is a dirty word for me, I know it isn’t for most people, but I am not interested. There’s too much of it about.” ~Ken Russell
Thanks for keepin’ it unreal, good sir. Thank you for everything.
From Sveta Dorosheva’s “More Book Illustrations” portfolio.
Sveta Dorosheva‘s fantastical art could be compared to a brilliant dream collaboration among noted artists, for whom the goal is a visionary book of enchanted tales. Imagine an artistic hybrid comprised of the intricately-lined illustrations of Harry Clarke or Aubrey Beardsley, the luxurious art deco magnificence of Romain de Tirtoff (Erté) fashion plates, and the beautiful-on-the-verge-of-grotesque visages drawn by the enigmatic Alastair.
But! In this imaginary scenario, the artists realize there is something… some je ne sais quois… missing from their efforts. They entice illustrator Sveta Dorosheva to join their endeavors: she flits in, and with a mischievous smile and a gleam of amusement in her eye, announces “yes, yes, this is all very beautiful… but let’s make it FUN!” Although comparisons to the above-mentioned artists may be obvious upon first glance, the sense of enchantment, whimsy, and joyful wit present in Dorosheva’s work ensures that one not only appreciates they are gazing upon something technically pleasing or beautifully rendered; one also genuinely delights –and even emotionally invests– in the engaging imagery as well.
Though born in Ukraine, Sveta Dorosheva currently resides in Israel with her husband and two sons. She has worked as as an interpreter, copywriter, designer (be certain to peek at her Incredible Hats or Fashionista portfolios!) , art director and creative director in advertising, and is currently pursuing her lifelong dream of academic training in art. Dorosheva recently spoke to Coilhouse about her lifelong love of fairy tales, and her inspired, imaginative new project, The Nenuphar Book, which will be published in Russia this autumn. See below the cut for her illuminating ruminations and a gallery selection of her extraordinary illustrations.
From Sveta Dorosheva’s “Weird and Wonderful: Fairy Tale Illustrations” portfolio.
No Friday Afternoon Movie today. Instead, we present Jon Lajoie’s hip hop tribute to not giving a fuck. It is absolutely vital that you watch this right now (with headphones if you’re at work as it’s full of dirty, work-inappropriate language). The FAM will return next week. Promise.
Yet another Doomsday has mercifully passed us by. Meanwhile, the horrors taking place around the globe stay their course. Corruption, scandal, and greed continue to rocket to the front pages of our newspapers.
Has there ever been a more dire need for magic?
In the shimmering hills that surround Los Angeles, art, wonder and the hope that only a spectacle can birth are being celebrated. The hard-working ghost of Harry Houdini is traveling the country via Houdini: Art & Magic, a comprehensive retrospective chronicling the life of an immigrant Rabbi’s son turned bonafide American showman. On a recent drive back from Malibu, the first stop on my long-overdue west coast vacation, street markers with stiff black flags trumpeting the arrival of Art & Magic at the Skirball Cultural Center had me jumping out of my passenger’s seat.
I had first seen the exhibit at the Jewish Museum in March before it closed at the end of the month. That same week, Houdini’s last living assistant, Dorothy Young, died in a retirement community in New Jersey at the age of 103, three days before what would’ve marked Houdini’s 137th birthday. The stars were aligning rapidly before me, and I, a sucker for synchronicity, could not churn out the review I wanted in time for the exhibit to end. I sat among pages of obsessive notes describing what I had seen at the museum, from Houdini’s diaries, to photographs of him with his beloved mother, and his performance trunk curling with worn and cracked brown leather. I swooned over the thin, almost romantic curl to his handwriting, lamented his untimely death, and dug up details from the obituaries of Dorothy, a woman who, at the age of 17, had been selected by the magician from a crowd at Coney Island, and kept her stalwart promise never to reveal his secrets.
Sometimes Mondays are an extra special pain-in-the-ass, so here’s an encore installment of BTC. Via the GreatDismals comes this sit-uplifting interaction between a cheeky young prankster, “Robin Cooper“, and an unflappable call-in gluteus maximus-mending spiritual master, Gilbert Deya.
BEHOLD. THE PATOOTIE-SAVING POWAH.
