New research has uncovered the origins of Earnst Haeckel, the turn-of-the-century German biologist/artist revered to this day by both scientists and designers alike for his awe-inspiring biological engravings (if you’re unfamiliar with Haeckel, click here immediately). His surprising origin: greeting card designer! Historian John Holbo elaborates:
Ernst Haeckel’s 1904 “Kunstformen der Natur” [Artforms of Nature] is a classic of biological illustration. What is less generally known is that the artist started as a Christmas card designer. The book was originally simply an album of holiday designs.
“All the sweet things that the Squiddies/Twittering in the dewy spray/Wish each other in the springtime/I wish you this happy day.”
During the Victorian era Christmas was indeed regarded as a ‘happy’ day, but one of uncanny terror; accordingly, cards and ornamentation featured strange creatures with too many tentacles. But then Santa Claus became popular, and many of these older designs ‘fell out of fashion’.
Commercially marooned, unable to draw anything except tentacles and congeries of pustules/bubbles, Haeckel wandered into natural ‘science’ – almost as an afterthought – when he discovered that the stuff he had been drawing actually existed, give or take a tentacle. Isn’t that interesting?
Issue 02 is real! And it’s out in just a few days! Yes – it’s finally happening, and this is your first sneak peek. You’re looking at the inside cover, featuring badass beauty warrior queen Margaret Cho. We won’t reveal the s0oper se3krit, ultra-faboo cover cover for a few more days, but we can tell you three things about it. Number one, it was shot exclusively for Coilhouse, so you’ve never seen it before. Number two, there are many more pigeons in it. Many, many more. And number three, while Margaret’s not on the outside cover, the person on the cover is one of her most notorious partners in crime. Who can it be, now? You’ll find out very soon!
Expect a full post announcing the contents Issue 02 soon. Get your dollars ready. This will be a great New Year’s gift, and a great gift for slackers who like to give their Christmas gift after the holiday has passed. (Uh… that’s our clever way of saying we won’t have it stocked in time for it to arrive on the 25th.)
Everyone who worked on this feels that Coilhouse Issue 02 has gone above and beyond what was accomplished with Issue 01. While 01 will always remain special (and “special,” considering the typos) to us, with this issue we really progressed to the next level in every area, from the depth of content, to overall cohesiveness, to the graphic design. The difference between Issue 01 and Issue 02 is a bit like the difference between the pilot episode and the first real episode of a series. You’ll see what we mean. Just you wait!
1. You can’t go wrong with intestine hair on a bug-eyed, lumpy-necked carapacial giraffe. Especially on that powder-soft, baby-pink background. It’s like someone crossed this painting of Shirley Temple with this painting by Brom. Well-done. The mask here was crafted by Manuel Albarran. Photographer unknown. Larger image here.
2. Found this image on Flickr one night while doing research for a photoshoot. I know this is completely fake, but hey: I am tagging this post “Architecture,” just on account of this epic masterpiece of engineering. Anyone who can identify the source of this image gets a free can of Aquanet Extra Super Hold when they order Issue 02.
3. My favorite image from Japanese artist/designer Nagi Noda’s “Hair Hats” project, which we blogged about a few months ago. Tragically, between that blog post and this one, the talented Nagi Noda passed away at the young age of 35. Perhaps this is a sad way to end a fluffy and fun post, but I’ve been wanting to mention this for some time – may as well be this post, which I hope brings much merriment. Nagi, you’ll be missed.
Welcome back to All Tomorrows, dear reader, where we weekly comb possible futures from science fiction’s glorious deviant age (circa mid-’60s to mid-’80s). This time, we’ve got the late Michael G. (for Greatrex, best sci-fi middle name ever) Coney’s 1982 novel Cat Karina, as strange a tomorrow as you’re likely to see.
At some unspecified (by our time scale, at least) point in the future, humanity’s starfaring civilization has collapsed, leaving True Humans and “Specialists” (human animal-hybrids originally engineered for colonization) in an uneasy peace. On top of it all, the entire damn planet’s converted en masse to an alien religion called the Kikihuahua Examples, forbidding metal working, fire and killing. In all this, a young “felina” named Karina gets tied in with an immortal race of sorceresses, the Dedos, trying to manipulate possible futures to release their alien god from a reality bomb prison laid by clones of Hitler.
Got that?
The result of all the above could have, should have been a complete and utter mess. Instead, Coney pulls off a future shock fairy tale (and parable) for the ages. More about why vegetarian bat aliens will doom us all, after the jump.
This glorious galleria of gilded gays was created by Spanish photographer David Arnal. The two images here are part of a bigger set of polaroids; see the rest of them here, and some more here (scroll down). I also admire Arnal for this cyberpunk goodness (here is the other one from that series), depicting Spain’s house music legend, Rebeka Brown.
I’m not sure about the identity of the gentleman in these images, but the lady in the center above is most definitely model and musician Polly Fey, #4 from the Coilhouse List of Alien Beauty. The shiny headpieces are the handiwork of metal couture designer Manuel Albarran. What a killer combination of talents! I love the polaroids, how gritty and poorly-scanned they are. What a wonderfully unexpected choice for this kind of shoot, those washed-out cyans and golds. Bravo.
Part of what made me weird as a kid was the Hans Christian Andersen‘s Fairy Tales tome I kept bedside, right next to Roadside Picnic and The History of Metals [don’t ask]. My favorite was Rusalochka [The Little Mermaid] – a heartbreaking tale of impossible inter-species love between a human fish and a prince. Failure despite the best of efforts is the concept that makes The Little Mermaid the powerful, unforgettable piece that it is. While most children’s books pollute young brains with happy endings and ever afters, this is a love story made more beautiful by its futility.
Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid is a perfect tragedy – a concept mercilessly extinguished by the bubbly Disney animated film of the same name. Where is the star-crossed romance? Where are the spooky supernatural themes? Sure, here is Ursula the octo-witch, but the mysticism ends there. Instead of heartbreak and doom we get talking lobsters, horny priests and penis castles. Fortunately, there is also Rusalochka, the haunting 1968 Soyuzmultfilm animation. It follows Andersen’s story without too much sugar coating and puts melancholy back in its rightful place. The colors are muted, the characters are elegantly drawn and the music, composed by Aleksandr Lokshin, ranges between ethereal and somber. Watch all three parts below [with subtitles!].
Awww. Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. Bless you, Saint Henson. This is one of very few holiday movies I can sit through without wanting to commit Santacide. Sure, it’s as saccharine sweet, maudlin, and sentimental as anything else you’ll see this time of year, but hey, they’re muppets. Somehow that makes it okay. And you just gotta love a Christmas special where the main characters can get that exited about sliding around on a garbage bag stapled to a frozen pile of shit.
You know what might possibly be even better than Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas?
Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas BLOOPERS:
“Hubba WHA” and a big warm fuzzy good morning to you.
(A couple of musical numbers from Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band and the River Bottom Nightmare Band under the cut.)
When the controversy regarding Amanda Palmer’s belly first hit, I was confused. Amanda Palmer’s record label, metal powerhouse Roadrunner, had told her they wanted to cut shots from her new music video that focused on what they deemed to be the singer’s offensively large belly. I watched this video, and I kept waiting for that one shot. I was waiting to see a jiggling closeup, or a spray of sweat flying from a glistening roll of flesh – just something that would make me say, “well, at least I can see where these A&R dudes were coming from, even if I don’t agree with them.” I waited, and waited, and waited, bopping my head to the tune. And then the video was over. There was nothing sinister; just a soft, healthy belly underneath a sexy open shirt that’s mostly obscured by the microphone stand, as can be seen below:
So yeah. Some dude from the label was like, “I’m a guy, Amanda. I understand what people like.” Uh-huh. What’s brilliant about this is the fact that the video and story are now huge, fueling the success of Amanda’s new solo album, which Roadrunner had deemed a commercial failure. The controversy (“Bellygate”) was featured everywhere from Pitchfork to Bitch Magazine to The freakin’ Guardian, and a fan-made Rebellyon rages on.
Mer, left, and Amanda Palmer, right, performing together at “Fuck the Back Row” in Brooklyn
But this post isn’t just about Amanda Palmer and her belly. It’s also to let you guys know that those of you who live in the Bay Area have a unique opportunity to see our dear Mer perform on stage with Amanda Palmer tonight (December 15th) at Bimbo’s. Mer will be playing both violin and theremin, making me want to drop everything and fly to San Francisco right now. For those of you who are going: enjoy the show, you lucky bastards.
Bettie Mae Page (April 22, 1923 – December 11, 2008)
In her own gentle, playful way, she was a revolutionary. Maybe she never meant to be when she started modeling, yet there’s no denying Bettie Page’s impact, resonance, or relevance, even half a century later.
In her portraits, we recognize the purity and uncomplicated joy of nudity. We are encouraged by her bearing, her beauty, her humor, her sweetness (yes, even in those Klaw photos… especially in those!) to regard sensuality as one of life’s purest gifts, rather than something immoral or wrong.
It isn’t just her beautiful body or her iconic style that continues to captivate us all these years later. It’s her spirit. When we look into her face, her eyes seem to tell us that it’s going to be all right; we can relinquish our shame.
It is her smile that sets us free.
(Several portraits and quotes from Bettie Page after the jump. Under the circumstances, I really wish I didn’t have to say this, but…NSFW.)
Diesel has quite a history of pushing the fashion ad boundaries, with mixed results. There was the creepy fat guy ads. The “let’s see how many ads we can get banned” phase (that one was banned). The flower ejaculate ad. And the global warming is fun campaign. They’ve even seriously pissed off dentists. Now, they’ve started a self-described “Dark” effort (here’s 1, 2 recent print examples). This effort includes the below four-minute web video “Pete The Meat Puppet.” The ad agency responsible for this edgy craziness is Sweden’s Farfar, who sport the spiffy tagline “the original in time-bandit advertising.” (How clever! [I don’t get it.]) It’s certainly well-produced, but well, sorry Farfar. It’s not funny, and it’s not weird or dark enough to be interesting. If you’re going get all non-selly with your advertising Diesel, you better leave me with something remarkably memorable. Pete’s stupid story continues here on Diesel’s website, if you’re for some reason intrigued. It features “beat the meat” and “sirloins” of my mother jokes. I didn’t make it through it.
