These “transparent” boxes are part of a series titled “Trompe L’Oeil; Petite Maison” by Elise Victoria Windsor. Her goal is to combine a physical object (which she addresses as being a sculpture), and layering over a photograph to create a ghost-like effect when its placed to background. This project is similar to Cayetano Ferrer’s “Invisible Mail Packages.”

Photos © Elise Victoria Louise Windsor

Via L'Acte Gratuit

I’ve been keeping an eye on David Walker’s artwork updates through Facebook. And last year and in 2010, I had featured some of his colorfully dimensional spray-paint murals. Within this post, I have included his latest creations which were splashed on canvases and building walls—a few, like the second one down is for a solo exhibition in Paris, France.

Artwork © David Walker

Magazine Feature: “Postcard from Cannes — Day 1 and 2.”

Coverage by Martyn Conterio.

The rain, the pouring rain, when will it stop? The world famous Croisette has seen a deluge of wandering bodies and torrential downpours. This is not the image of a permanently sunny Cannes one has imagined.

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(Film still of "The Great Gatsby" © Warner Bros. Entertainment.)

The rain, the pouring rain, when will it stop? The world famous Croisette has seen a deluge of wandering bodies and torrential downpours. This is not the image of a permanently sunny Cannes one has imagined. I’m told the Mediterranean is out yonder, somewhere beyond the mist and drizzle. Alas, many of the gathered folk aren’t here to worship the sun but the light on the screen.

Day 1

Cannes was launched this year in peculiar fashion with Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, “The Great Gatsby.” Already released in the USA and elsewhere by the time the film opened this year’s 66th Festival de Cannes, does it mark alack of ambition and invention from the head honchos? The connection seems to be that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Gatsby whilst holidaying very close to Cannes, and the festival bosses love Baz Luhrmann.

Left to right: Joel Edgerton, Carey Mulligan, Leonardo Dicaprio, and Tobey Maguire in “The Great Gatsby.”

Of course the Australian’s latest production flies in the face of subtlety and flips it the bird. We’ve known for a long time that the director does not know the meaning of a quiet shot or understated moments; his work has now taken on a further pompous grandiosity and unwillingness to deliver anything but an epic or epicness. It reeks of self-importance. The major issue with “The Great Gatsby”—a flawless literary work turned problematic motion picture—is length. This is an affliction that the novel does not suffer. Gatsby (film) is far too long for such a slender tale told. It runs out of steam and oomph mid-way through and never recovers. As it staggers like a drunk towards the finish and all is pretty much lost. It goes through the motions and we’re left with little that is profound (unlike the novel). Luhrmann attempts to conceal the lack of true energy by throwing glitter bombs at the audience —in uninspired 3D—and all manner of thrill-ride zooms through heavily CG backdrops. It makes for a poor distraction only buoyed by the committed performances of Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton.

Is there a more tiresome film-maker working today than Baz Luhrmann? Don’t answer that. There are other candidates for the pot, but the Australian helmer of spectacular-spectaculars just doesn’t know when enough is enough. He has become a sort of David Lean to the MTV generation (a creakily dated fellow, but an apt one). “The Great Gatsby” film is less a collective orgastic experience and like a dinner party whose guests give a big headache. The inner life and meaning of “The Great Gatsby” cannot simply be replicated for the cinema. It’s too… mysterious. Luhrmann is anything but.

“Heli” (2013, directed by Amat Escalante).

Amat Escalante’s latest picture “Heli” provoked walkouts and general unease. It is the story of a young man taking a morally good but foolish course of action, one which has extreme consequences for him and his family. Here is packed to the rafters with unpleasant imagery, including two scenes of barbaric treatment towards dogs. One is shot point blank and a puppy has its neck snapped by a police officer. We’re also treated to a scene of a teenager having his pubic hair set alight and, in another sequence, being forced to roll in his own vomit. All this unpleasantness is tough to watch, of course, but what is Escalante trying to tell us beyond “bad things happen and not much gets done about it?” There’s the vague whiff of attention-seeking art house posturing going on. Escalante’s Mexico is a land of fatalistic malaise where drug cartels massacre thousands, and headless corpses take pride of place on the prime time news as an everyday occurrence. Innocent people get caught up in the monster’s jaws. Many critics wondered where this year’s controversy would spring from, given that Lars von Trier and other Les Enfants Terribles are absent from Cannes. Escalanate stepped up to the plate and hit a home run.

Photo of protesters at Cannes. Image © Martyn Conterio.

Day 2

The second day began under heavy skies and lashing rain. Then it stopped suddenly and Lloyd Kaufman’s Troma outfit held a weirdy beardy protest, known as Occupy Cannes, outside the Grand Palais people were having a good old time making a nuisance of themselves to the bemusement and occasional interest of other festival-goers. One rotund gentleman with green hair ran naked down the Croisette and another shouted about independent cinema being destroyed by the big studios.

“The Bling Ring” (2013, directed by Sofia Coppola).

Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring” opened this year’s “Un Certain Regard“section. For those who dismiss her work as vacuous and self-obsessed then there’s nothing here that will change one’s mind. (It must be expressed sincerely that I’m not a fan, but willing to give any director a chance.) Lo and behold, it turns out Coppola’s latest movie is genuinely amusing with actress Emma Watson putting in a sterling, no, make that solid gold, performance as a teenage burglar—one of a gang—that once terrorised the Hollywood hills and homes of A- listers. Shot by the late Harris Savides, who gets a dedicated even before the super-charged and funky title sequence roars to life, “The Bling Ring” is about taking celebrity obsession to entirely new heights. Not only do followers want to know the ins and outs of their fave celebs life—but these kids break into their homes. Supreme narcissism is not the reserve of the rich and famous.
“I want to rob,” says one character in a beguiling statement of intent that could also become a “new cool” slogan. “The Bling Ring” is hella fun, chill, dope, sick and all the other buzz words the charmingly idiotic leads use. Coppola continues to find a place in the filmmaking world beneath the shadow of her mighty father, but she has demonstrated that maybe there’s an ounce of talent lurking within her too.

“Fruitvale Station” was the second feature of the day and based on the real-life tale of police brutality in Oakland, California. Oscar, a twenty-two year old male, was shot by the police on a train platform after an altercation. Ryan Cooglar’s film is worthy and preachy and underwhelming despite based on a terrible incident.

“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (1964, starring the gorgeous Catherine Deneuve).

And last but definitely not least, Jacques Demy’s magnificent tale of doomed love, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” screened in the “Cannes Classics” slot on a suitably rainy Thursday evening. In attendance was Michel Legrand (who got a standing ovation), Cannes Juror Christoph Waltz who was there purely for the pleasure of the movie and along with Demy’s widow Agnes Varda, looking frail and with a rather jazzy haircut, and son Mathieu Demy, an actor and film-maker too. (Do check out his debut, “Americano,” it’s very good.) The restoration of The “Umbrellas of Cherbour”g is a sparkling beauty (like star Catherine Deneuve), and it shines brightly off the screen (especially given the new restoration). What else is there to possibly say? It is the cinematic equivalent of luxurious confectionery. The evening was made of pure joy.

Credits:
Film stills © of respective movie studios

Photographer Winfried Werner loves to take photos of wildlife and natural landscapes in Kiel, Germany. Some of his portfolio pictures include digital manipulation, but for this post, I have only displayed images that are real without photomontage.

Photos © Winfried Werner

Via 500

Photo of Andy Warhol. © Warhol

Magazine Feature: “Warhol: Blow Jobs & Factory Hipsters” by Christopher Smail.

Andy Warhol encapsulated the mass culture and kitschy pop art movement of the 50s and 60s with his infamous prints of Coca Cola bottles and Campbell soup cans. The man behind the art remains a great enigma though. It’s ironic that Warhol went to such great lengths to emphasize the shallowness of his own work, but when it came to his own personality, he was a deeply fascinating and complex human being.

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(Photo © respective owner)

Photo of Andy Warhol (1986) by/© Robert Mapplethorpe.

Andy Warhol encapsulated the mass culture and kitschy pop art movement of the 50s and 60s with his infamous prints of Coca Cola bottles and Campbell soup cans. The man behind the art remains a great enigma though. It’s ironic that Warhol went to such great lengths to emphasize the shallowness of his own work, but when it came to his own personality, he was a deeply fascinating and complex human being.

He was more myth than man, heightened by the grungy glamour of The Factory scene in New York City alongside muses Edie Sedgwick and Candy Darling.

Photo of Edie Sedgwick. © respective owner.

Everybody knows the screen prints, but not everyone is familiar with Warhol’s work as a film director. Picking up the camera in the early 60s, Warhol would go on to inspire a generation of experimental filmmakers like Stan Brakhage with his minimalist black and white works of film art. Warhol’s early experiments were basic screen tests of his factory hipsters kissing and sleeping. Like his paintings and prints were meant to be taken at surface value, even the titles offer no artistic indulgences but simply reflect the mundane acts that are being performed: “Sleep and Kitchen,” for example. His films strip away the layers of conventional narrative, like flakes of peeled white paint reflect a decade drowning in the mundane activities of TV and consumerism.

Actor DeVeren Bookwalter in “Blow Job” (1964). Film still © Warhol.

One of Warhol’s most influential underground movies is his short film “Blow Job.” With a running time of about 40 minutes, it takes the form of a single shot for its entire duration. The camera stays on the face of DeVeren Bookwalter as he receives the sexual act in question. Bookwalter was an accomplished theatre actor and director in his day, and “Blow Job” remains one of his few screen credits. During the film his face changes from angelic tones with white light moving across the surface to demented, pools of black shadow taking over his eyes and cheekbones, as this New York hustler looks up to God and beyond. The best word to describe it is hypnotic. Warhol draws us in to his microscopic world by freeing the audience from the rules of traditional cinema. Bookwalter’s head bobs in and out of frame but Warhol doesn’t re-adjust, it’s like a piece of performance art where mistakes are to be expected. The viewer becomes the voyeur in the Hitchcock fashion, as there’s no music or camera movement to cushion the blow, we’re invited to do nothing else but to gaze upon the erotic display. The fact that we never actually see the person delivering the blow job, only adds to the film’s mesmerizing power.

One of the many smooching scenes in “Kiss” (1963). Photo © Warhol.

In “Kiss,” the camera is given more to do as a string of images of young naked couples pecking each other’s faces, which are edited together in a 35 minute block. It’s got a definite air of an art installation that pervades a lot of Warhol’s early work. It’s a raw and unflinching piece that once again breaks the rules of mainstream cinema through its lack of narrative, music and dialogue. A mixture of long shots, close-ups, low and high angle frames provide some uncharacteristic variety to Warhol’s cinematic repertoire. In 1964, he made the infamous “Empire,” a highly experimental work lasting for over 8 hours and consisting of nothing more than a static shot of the Empire State Building at night. The captured footage is grainy, full of scratches and flickers of reflected light. It’s an important piece of modern art and underground cinema, if you can stomach the full-length running time. It’s so sparse and minimalist that the fact that it’s supposed to alienate the audience is a given, a film that’s all about form, where the structure of cinema takes precedent over content. There’s an objectivity to Warhol’s style and it’s particularly in evidence in “Empire.” Where the majority of auteur directors put so much of themselves into their films, Warhol takes a step back and watches from afar.

Most of Oriana Fenwick’s pencil drawings have been made for editorial articles in magazines like DWELL, Sneakers, CUT, and more.

Artwork © Oriana Fenwick

Via Behance Network

Pantonio’s graffiti art is identified for its black-spray-painted characters with expressive white highlights that look like horse hair and muscle tissue.

See also: “Big Foot and Friends” and “Every Man Dies—Not Every Man Lives.”

Artwork and photos © Pantonio

Via Fecal Face

Using digital pens, James R. Eads has produced these colorful and rhythmic Goghish-style images. The famous sky spirals of “The Starry Night” are bluntly visible in a number of his work. And besides being skillful with digital art, Eads also has a noteworthy collection of traditional paintings on NY metro cards (see bottom of post).

Top: Digital illustrations. Bottom: Gouache paintings on NYC metro cards.

Artwork © James R. Eads

Via James R Eads on Tumblr

I recently spoke with Oliver Delgado to find out if these were genuine photographs or digital montages. He commented that “all images are real. I only adjusted levels in Lightroom.”

Photos © Oliver Delgado

“Steady As She Goes” is the title of this 3D printed sculpture by Luca Ionescu from Like Minded Studio.

Photos © Andy Lewis

Via Behance Network