A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Gay
Beach Day.
Two new archive additions for the price of one today via artist and photographer Felix D’Eon. These are from his Flickr pages but there’s more work on his website, from sketches to scenes of dreamy homoerotica.
Man with Sword.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive
• The recurrent pose archive
• The men with swords archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Felix D’Eon
Premature (2003).
It’s difficult to avoid the word “dreamlike” when looking at Anthony Goicolea‘s carefully-staged tableaux, all of which use the artist himself as their subject, redressed and multiplied by Photoshop into an army of clones. The artist-as-model isn’t a new thing—Cindy Sherman has been doing this for years—but the possibilities of digital manipulation still seem rather under-explored in the contemporary art world; whether that’s down to a lack of the necessary aptitude on the part of artists or simply avoidance of a medium more commonly associated with advertising and illustration is hard to say.
Lila.
I’d intended to feature Philip Shadbolt’s paintings earlier but his site was offline last time I looked. The hiatus was a temporary one which means that the beautiful men, beatific gods and kaleidoscopic mandalas of his Earth and Spirit galleries are available for viewing again. One of these paintings is very aptly used as the cover art of Thom Ayres’ Arcanta CD, Book of Mirrors, Thom being better known to some of us as our witty and incorrigible host at Planet Fabulon. For more Shadboltiana, see the interior design at myhotel, Brighton.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Sadao Hasegawa, 1945–1999
• The art of Matthew Stradling
I mentioned Ang Lee’s forthcoming film, Taking Woodstock, last week and this poster by Mojo makes a decent fist of capturing some of the West Coast psychedelic style. I thought at first that the rainbow hues were garish in the wrong way, the San Francisco poster artists used bold colours but limited their palette since many of them were working for screenprinting. But since this film concerns the story of a gay man, Elliot Tiber, and his attempt to provide a home for the Woodstock festival in 1969—and since the rainbow flag is now a gay symbol—it makes sense even if the overall impression is of colour clash. I like the subtle touch of making the poster look worn, something I’ve done myself on a recent book cover design which is also styled as a cinema poster. I’ll be posting that here in due course.
That’s the film promotion; the posters for the original event can be seen at Woodstock posters. The pencil sketch on the left is an elaborate Art Nouveau-styled design intended for the festival before the original choice of venue was refused. The sheet in the centre looks like a hasty promo piece for the new venue while the poster on the right is the final version with the famous dove graphic by Arnold Skolnick. That dove came to symbolise the whole event, hence its appearance on the Taking Woodstock one-sheet.
Taking Woodstock opens in the US on August 15th, 2009, the 40th anniversary of the festival.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Over the rainbow
• Dutch psychedelia
• Family Dog postcards