Heart of stone | Marina Warner on the sculpture of Peter Randall-Page.
Category: {art}
Art
Eno’s Luminous Opera House panorama
I’m a bit late with this one but better late than never. Brian Eno’s illuminated transformation of the Sydney Opera House, part of the city’s Luminous Festival, was widely publicised last month but I never got round to checking it out properly. This week Thom drew my attention (thanks Thom!) to this panorama by photographer Peter Murphy whose marvellous view inside one of Yayoi Kusama’s mirror rooms I linked to in March. Looking on Murphy’s site I see he has another Kusama panorama showing a view inside Phalli’s Field (or Floor Show). And while we’re on the subject of Ms Kusama, she currently has a room at London’s Hayward Gallery as part of their Walking in My Mind series by different artists. You can see a reaction to that here.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The panoramas archive
Michelangelo (by Michelangelo): Self-portrait discovered hidden in his final painting
Sipho Mabona’s origami insects
Praying Mantis (2008).
Folded from a single sheet. Amazing. Lots more insects and other constructions on her Flickr page.And while we’re on the subject, Between the Folds is a documentary about origami artists currently doing the rounds of film festivals. Via Design Observer.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Kitchen insects
• Elizabeth Goluch’s precious metal insects
• Laura Zindel’s ceramics
• The art of Philippe Wolfers, 1858–1929
• Robert Lang’s origami insects
• Lalique’s dragonflies
• Lucien Gaillard
The art of Oliver Frey
It’s inevitable when writing about gay art and artists that Oliver Frey’s name will turn up eventually, so here’s the requisite post. Frey is often better known in gay circles under the nom de plume he used in the 1980s, “Zack”, when he was a very prolific illustrator and comic artist for the few gay mags being published in Britain. As Oliver Frey he was already well-known as an accomplished professional illustrator, who was for a time an artist on Look and Learn’s long-running science-fiction adventure strip The Trigan Empire. His professional work makes him probably the most widely-seen of all gay-porn artists as a result of the comic-strip pages he drew for the beginning of the 1978 Superman film.
His career as a comic artist honed his skill at dealing with figures and telling a story which is one of the reasons his gay strips are still highly valued today. Those strips tend to be completely pornographic right from the start so I’ll spare the delicate sensibilities of some of the readers here and link you to some collections of his Zack work instead. In the meantime, I’d love to know where the picture of the boy with the sword (above) comes from originally. It’s a lot more finished than his Zack drawings and is paired on this page with a similar picture of serpent-twined tribal youths which hints at some kind of Burroughs-esque Wild Boys scenario. If anyone knows the answer, please leave a comment. As it is, it makes a good addition to the Men with swords archive, as does the piece of fluff below.
Update: As noted in the comments, original art by Oliver Frey/Zack is now available for purchase here.
Oliver Frey links:
• Zack Art | official site.
• Arrumako’s Gay Blog | A substantial collection of complete strips and sundry illustrations.
• Daddy’s Here | More single illustrations and some magazine scans including an interview with the artist.
• Gay Erotic Art Links | Another page with further links elsewhere.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive
• The men with swords archive