The incredible blog 50 Watts recently published a collection of illustrations by artist Nikolai Lutohin. Will at 50 Watts writes:
Milena and Vlada, the duo behind Yugodrom—a new blog focused on “graphic aesthetics from ex Yugoslavia”—have been unearthing gems from seventies and eighties issues of the science magazine Galaksija.
They wrote to me suggesting that the “surrealistic, sci-fi-sh, serigraphic and absolutely amazing” illustrations of Nikolai Lutohin would be suitable for 50 Watts, and I am inclined to agree. The Russian artist Lutohin was born in Yugoslavia and did many illustrations for Galaksija. I’ve included ten below.
I also love the magazine’s covers and for this post selected a handful from the 136 covers inYugodrom’s flickr set. See more of my favorite covers in a companion post on But Does it Float.
The YUGODROM Tumblr is a treasure trove of beautiful covers, adverts, logos, typography and fashion from the former Yugoslav republics. In addition to much of the retro sci-fi goodness, there is some sexy (sometimes in a creepy way) photography mixed in.
There is a strange charm to these portraits by Tom Mead. They do not dazzle you with an abundance of complexity, nor do they belie any movement or sense of place. In fact, they seem to tell the story of some non-place, a nowhere void populated by well dressed but decidedly sinister individuals, something accentuated by the stark, black backgrounds which, in this case, work for the pieces instead of coming off as lazy. This void is mirrored in their eyes, inky pools that appear to be empty sockets, devoid of any visual equipment whatsoever — though they still manage to stare. “Edward Gorey doing The Fantastic Mr. Fox” was the first description that entered my head when I saw these, but that’s not quite right. Maybe if The Fantastic Mr. Fox had been the book written by HP Lovecraft instead of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
Details abound in the works of Joe Fenton. Amidst the twisting, mouth-tipped flora are dozens of tiny figures. Their heads are simply eyeballs or animal skulls or something almost like a brain crossed with a Piranha Plant. All nude, some are lithe and sensuous, others cherubic. Look closer still and you begin to see a second set of figures, tiny imps with horns or wings sprouting from their spherical forms. There’s an aura of mysticism throughout his work, as if the pieces illustrate some esoteric religion. Visually dense, his work manages to just avoid overwhelming the viewer and turning each piece into a tangle of lines. It’s worth visiting his site, so as too look at these at a much higher resolution than our pages allow. There’s a video, below, of Fenton working on his painting The Lullaby, giving a brief glimpse into the amount of work that goes into one of these.
Please give a warm welcome to our newest guest blogger, Caroline E. Willis! Caroline describes herself as “a writer and occasionally an archaeologist.” She also has a highly entertaining blog “about dressing up and hitting people with latex.” Needless to say, we like Caroline a lot. -Mer
“Sentimental” by Kathie Olivas, 2009, oil on canvas, 30”x40”. (Via)
“Most of us can agree on the artistic value of a Monet or Titian, but this work is for a daring audience, an audience open to exploring the strange beauty and the ecstasy inherent in our culture’s aversions.”
~Carrie Ann Baade
Guest Curator of the Cute & Creepy exhibition, FSU Museum of Fine Arts.
Drive past enough hazy bayous and bent oaks, sacrifice enough November butterflies on the altar of your windshield, and you’ll find something creepy in the heart of Florida. Carrie Ann Baade has collected the works of 25 fellow artists- works of beautiful, grotesque, adorable art- for the Cute & Creepy exhibition that’s currently taking Tallahassee by storm.
Over two-thousand people attended the opening- four times more than any other opening at the museum thus far, and some strange lure continues to draw unprecedented numbers to this show- a lure as hard to define as the subject of the show itself. Cute & Creepy is an exploration of boundaries, but the artworks on display do not so much “cross the line” as seem unaware that any boundaries exist. Each object is wholly itself; it is the viewers for whom categorization fails.
Toddlerpede 2.0” by Jon Beinart. 2011, mixed media sculpture, approximately 36”x36”x36”. Photo by Caroline E. Willis.
Somewhere, in a parallel dimension, this is basically a true story and it is not the most mind-meltingly horrible thing you’ve ever seen because somewhere, in a parallel dimension, human anatomy is exactly like this.
A captivatingly atemporal silver gelatin print from 1995:
“Hall of Thirty-Three Bays” by Hiroshi Sugimoto
(Our 400px column width definitely ain’t doing the composition any favors; it’s worth taking the time to view this stunning image as large as possible.)
The work of Tokyo/NYC-based artist and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto reflects a lifelong fascination with infinity and eternity. He has “spoken of his work as an expression of ‘time exposed’, or photographs serving as a time capsule for a series of events in time. His work also focuses on transience of life, and the conflict between life and death.” (via)
The story behind this particular image: these are the fiercely protected, rarely viewed 1001 statues of the Sanjusangendo, a 390-foot-long wooden temple in Kyoto containing thirty-three bays, also known as Sea of Buddha. Sugimoto was determined to show the statues as they were meant to be viewed during the Heian Perod (794-1185). It took seven years for Sugimoto to get permission to enter the “Hall of Thirty-Three Bays” with his camera equipment and capture the eight-hundred-year-old Armed Merciful Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara figures just as the early morning sunlight hit them, simultaneously illuminating one-thousand-and-one haloes. The resulting imagery is both ancient and somehow futuristic, infinite and immediate.
In the alien world of Raymond Lemstra everyone wears masks, and yet, no one does. Here we have strange artifacts, the masks of some long forgotten Martian tribe or, perhaps, another dimension altogether. They have life to them, though, these bizarre visages, as if they were not fashioned from wood but were, instead, impressions of actual faces, like death masks. Indeed, his figures reinforce this feeling, their faces cuboid and frozen. One gets the feeling that the people underneath this ornamental headgear aren’t obscuring their features or hiding their identities, but merely accentuating them.
This week’s installment of BTC comes to us courtesy of the ineffable cinematic WTF-fest that is The Forbidden Zone. Take it away, Susu…
Directed by Richard Elfman, TFZ stars real life ex-lovers Hervé Villechaize and Susan Tyrrell (who steals the show with the above number, which she wrote the lyrics for herself!) along with various members of the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. TFZ also features the first full-length film score by Richard’s younger brother, Danny Elfman, along with Warhol Superstar Viva, B-movie maniac Joe Spinell, performance art duo the Kipper Kids, and the pioneering street dance troupe, The Lockers.
Made on a shoestring over the course of three years in the early eighties, TFZ is “basically a filmed version of what we were doing on stage with the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo,” Richard Elfman said when Coilhouse interviewed him last year. “As the group was becoming less ‘theatrical’ and more rock based, I wanted to preserve on film the essence of what we had been doing on stage.” Elfman’s final cut is reflective all of the funniest, weirdest, most brazen and poignant attributes of ‘Boingo.
You can read all about this subterranean cult classic in Issue Six of the magazine, which will probably sell out of our web store pretty soon, so don’t put off buying your copy if you want to learn more about the on and offscreen adventures of Queen Doris, King Fausto, Squeezit Henderson the Chicken Boy, Frenchy and Renee.
This week’s BTC is dedicated to two darlings: firstly, to our brave and steadfast Circulation Director, Gretta Sherwood, who will be mailing off thousands of copies of the magazine over the coming weeks, and secondly, to Wiley Wiggins, who got Coilhouse a quote from Queen Doris herself for the magazine article. Gret and Wiley are both celebrating birthdays this week! Big love and gratitude to each of you beauties.
“Canon 60d, Canon digital rebel, Canon 5dII, shot as slow as 1 shot every 15 seconds and as fast as 6.5fps frames per second. Canon 90mm Tilt shift lens and a 17-35mm lens. Mumford Stepper Table and Time-machine for motion control.” (Via Ariana Osborne, thanks!)
This epic twenty-minute tilt shift video was shot at the gargantuan Burning Man festival earlier this year by James Cole, with additional motion-controlled time-lapse by Jason Phipps and Byron Mason. It’s a particularly vibrant window through which to observe the surreal bustle of Black Rock City. Whether you’re pro or anti-dubstep/techno, the accompanying music, provided by Elite Force and the DISTRIKT , feels wompingly apt. Fantastic editing.
Director Brian Fairbairn and concept writer Karl Eccleston present a short film in fake (and uncannily Dawson’s Creek-accented) English:
Via The Daily What, who says “If you understand this video, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is, you’ve gone insane. The good news is, you’re gonna splaish mabeleen furgo mistation.”
It’s extra fun to watch with YouTube’s Beta CC Translator option on (and, as many folks online are noting, would make for a fab double feature with Adriano Celentano’s Prisencolinensinainciusol).
