C.U.N.T.'s First Birthday

Despair

Alex Prager is one of the four artists featured in MOMA's exhibiton of New Photography for 2010. A self-taught photographer from Los Angeles, Prager is known for her fabulously kitsch and deliciously cinematic portraits, and this selection of highly-saturated photos from her 2008 series 'A Big Valley' are no exception.







Also, have a look at her wonderful short film Despair, starring the beautiful Bryce Dallas Howard:

She's Got A Thing For Bodily Fluids

www.sandykim.com

Sandy Kim is a pretty new American photographer with major talent. She enjoys photographing her friends in San Francisco and New York and pissing out windows with her boyfriend Colby of the band Girls.

She's also got an awesome blog: http://lovebryan.com/sandy/
-M



PS: I'm obsessed with this atm:

John Kenn's post-it drawings.

John Kenn is a Danish artist who writes and directs children's tv shows. In his spare time he draws monsters on post it notes and blogs them here. These drawings are really, really good.







-Rebecca

Last Night In Pictures.

GI Joe Wounded in Flames and Fleeing the Giant Nude Monster

A very, very long time ago, we started this blog as a dashboard for good shit we liked, and I am really into this guy so I simply must share him with you.

Les Krims is an American conceptualist photographer who, tragically, has largely been considered a failure, but he did some fucking good stuff back in the 70s and 80s, before getting caught up in a whole load of political nonsense. Have a look at some of the pictures from his 1975 series Fictocryptokrimsographs:





Krims’ work caused a fair bit of scandal at the time too, such as his series The Incredible Case of the Stack O’ Wheat Murders (1972), which parodied forensic photography. Each picture featured a stack of pancakes and blood was simulated using chocolate syrup. Krims originally included a can of Hershey’s chocolate syrup with the original print portfolio, as well as "enough pancake mix to make one complete Stack O' Wheats". A particular anti-rape activist, Nikki Craft, was so outraged by Krims’ exhibit that she tore up a bunch of his photos and poured chocolate syrup over the remains.



Also, in 1971, a young boy was kidnapped in Memphis, Tennessee, and the kidnappers demanded Krims’ photographs currently on exhibit in Memphis be removed before the boy is returned. The pictures were taken down and the boy was released, unharmed. Holy moly.




Here’s a song I like a lot right now.
- M

Running Scared

Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte has a huge chunk of my heart. Not only did he conquer most of Europe in the early 19th century, but the man could wear the shit out of a cape. I do not know whether it's the uniform, the intense you-so-want-me stare or the fact that he's on a fricking bucking horse, but there is something almost too HAWT about Napoleon Bonaparte. When not wearing a FIERCE hat or posing for portraits on the battlefield, Napoleon was writing super-hot letters to his lady-love, Josephine de Beauharnais, which will make you squeal like a little girl-"I awake all filled with you. Your image and the intoxicating pleasures of last night, allow my senses no rest..." (see more here: http://www.napoleonguide.com/lovelett.htm) They do not make men like they used to.

Despite the fact that he divorced Jospephine in 1810 to marry some no good tramp, his final words before succumbing to stomach cancer were '"France, armée, tête d'armée, Joséphine."("France, army, head of the army, Joséphine.") If all this wasn't seductive enough, uber-babe Marlon Brando played Bonaparte in 1954's 'Desiree". Although Brando falls flat as the dictator, the movie is worth watching if only to see Bonaparte's trademark high-waisted white silk pants in action.

I also like to think the first two minutes of this clip are exactly what would happen if i ever met Napoleon in person.

Interestingly, while searching around for photos of Napoleon's iconic hat, I learned that "Napoleon's hat" is also a sex position. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Napoleon's%20Hat

Napoleon's influence on romance knows no bounds.

Anatomy as Art.

The human anatomy is a subject which fascinates me to no end. One of my most highly prized possessions is my beautifully illustrated atlas. I remember when I first bought it, having relatively little knowledge of the inner workings of the human body and how they might look, that I would open one of the two heavy tomes at random and just take in all the shapes. The craggy fissures of the skull, the light fluidity of the clavicle… to me it all still seems amazingly intricate, like a lovingly adorned work of art.

Of course, artists have always been moved by the human body. Usually they have been more inspired by the outside of it, the hillocks and valleys the skin forms; stretched tight or loosely draped over the secrets within the body.

Sometimes, however, the brilliant amongst us been enthused by bone, muscle and organ. It’s these works of art that I really feel a connection with that’s more than skin deep. It’s engrossing subject matter not only because it is both ephemeral ( people so quickly die – the body so rapidly withers) and permanent (haven’t all humans been the same inside? – and won’t all humans to come be?), but because the sheer beauty of all our insides is obvious.

One kind of artist that’s really studied and dealt with the guts and gore of Homo Sapiens is, not surpisingly (not to me at least) the fashion designer. In a funny way, one could posit that what our clothes are to our skin, our skin is to our insides. Always original, humorous and playful, the fashionista’s take on anatomy proves that a preoccupation with the fact that a person is just a skin-bag full of bones and guts needn’t be macabre. The focus is never on death, but on child-like curiosity to find out, especially that which is taboo. And if that’s not the point of art, what is?













Leonidas is a guest blogger for SLT. If you want to know what he thinks about stuff, visit his own semi-derelict blog at http://fucksanta.blogspot.com