1000 Bodies

Imagine yourself in a photo studio, alone and completely naked with a black mask in one hand and a remote camera trigger in the other. You get one shot, and the result is up to you. Do you dare?
1000 Bodies Project

Regarding this particular photo, the model says:
It doesn’t matter to me if my name is used. I’m not promoting myself, but I do promote Bay Area Intactivists. So thank you if you should mention BAI (Bay Area Intactivists). At our BAI info booth Castro and Folsom street fairs in San Francisco, I have shown my in-progress foreskin restoration to the interested public. It’s fun and rewarding to see jaws drop in amazement upon seeing half my glans covered with grown skin. Then I pull back to show the marked improvement in skin tone of the glans that’s covered whereas the exposed portion still has age spots and is dryer rougher looking. It’s even more fun and rewarding to know they leave with hope and empowerment for change. My Circumcision Index I rate it at CI 4.

Dash Snow

Snow began taking photographs as a teenager, he said, as a record of places he might not remember the next day.

Like photographers Nan Goldin, Larry Clark and Ryan McGinley his photos depict scenes of a sex, drug taking, violence and art-world pretense with candor, documenting the decadent lifestyle of a group of young New York City artists and their social circle.

Some of Snow's later collage-based work was characterized by his practice of using his own semen as a material applied to or splashed across newspaper photographs of police officers and other authority figures.

Snow died on the evening of July 13, 2009, at Lafayette House, a hotel in lower Manhattan. His grandmother Marie-Christophe de Menil was quoted as saying that he died of a drug overdose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_Snow

Pompeii, how I love you

Art would never reach this height again until the Renaissance.

Giulio Romano

It's not every day that you learn about your new favorite Renaissance painter, and that is exactly what happened to me the other day. I was reading a discussion about Art vs. Porn. The article listed 10 artists from the 20th century, and as I went through the different comments, someone mentioned that all the listed artwork was pretty tame, and they compared it to a painting by Giulio Romano, Jupiter and Olympia. I clicked the link and I was really surprised about what came up:

Jupiter and Olympia

The image is obviously explicit, and being immersed in the American culture, I've sort of learned to separate sexuality from art, so seeing a painting that so masterfully depicts:

* Explicit sex
* An erection
* A voyeur
* An uncircumcised penis

It pretty much goes against a lot of assumptions that you see in some scenes, ahem, deviantArt!

Add to it the quality of the drawing and painting. The pose of the female, the coloring and construction of the muscles, obviously made me think of Michelangelo. But the mood was something totally different, something that I had never seen.

Of course the next step is Google. And I was really in for a treat, not so much on the erotic side of things, but in the art that I was about to find.

"Giulio Romano (c. 1499 – November 1, 1546) was an Italian painter and architect. A prominent pupil of Raphael, his stylistic deviations from high Renaissance classicism help define the 16th-century style known as Mannerism." (This and more here: http://www.all-art.org/DICTIONARY_of_Art/g/giulio1.htm)

Donna al Bagno

I recommend looking up his artwork. Now, regarding his more erotic side, there was a book published in the renaissance that included engravings based on paintings that Romano was doing as a commission. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Modi

Another interesting article about I Modi: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2010/dec/10/shakespeare-dirty-pictures (Are these Shakespeare's dirty pictures?)

Finally, just an FYI: I LOVE the Italian Renaissance: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Botticelli, a triad of incredible masters. And with them, Giulio Romano, definitively a master.

Gustave Doré

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Dor%C3%A9

 January 6, 1832 – January 23, 1883) was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor. Prolific artist. Some of his most reknowned illustrations were his work on The Divine Comedy.

Mary Woronov

A few years back I was walking through the isles of Barnes & Noble and I found a book that got my attention. "Wake for the angels". I do love angels, which is why I stopped to look at it in the first place. But then I was captured by the paintings that illustrated the book: fluid bodies that look about to burst in flames or to disintegrate or to materialize outside the book. A strong dose of pesimism or realism. Stories with a strange mix of sarcasm, nostalgia, sadness. It was not really so much about angels, as it was about Los Angeles. I walked out with the book in my hand.

I was never too sure who the author was. At that time I had not been painting for a long while, and yet I found the paintings so inspiring. I loved the stories, and I loved just browsing through the pages, knowing that there was a sensibility there that I could not completely figure out but I could certainly enjoy.

Yesterday I wanted to look up the author of the book and see if she had anything else. Well, was that a surprise... You'll see. During the last two years I've been very interested in Andy Warhol, reading his books (Philosophy of Andy Warhol, Popism), books about him, a collection of his nudes... Watching "Factory Girl"... Anyway, absorbing everything I can about him. During the last couple of weeks I have also been in a very Lou Reed mood, listening to Lou and Metallica's new album, Lulu. Watching "Far away so close", in which Lou Reed has an important role. Listening to Nico.

So, was it surprising to learn that Mary Woronov, author of the book, also happened to be an important figure in the Andy Warhol scene!

American actress, artist and writer. "Mary Woronov first made headlines in the early 1960s as a Warhol superstar. She danced with Exploding Plastic Inevitable, Warhol's multimedia presentation of the Velvet Underground.

Woronov's notable appearances include in the 1975 cult film Death Race 2000 and 1979's Rock 'n' Roll High School (and the 1991 sequel Rock 'n' Roll High School Forever), but her breakthrough role was in the 1982 cult film Eating Raoul. " [Wikipedia]



Affair, by Mary Woronov



Demon, by Mary Woronov

They took George into the woods and tortured him for hours, by Mary Woronov

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Woronov

http://www.maryworonov.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Wake-Angels-Mary-Woronov/dp/1885203004

Joel-Peter Witkin

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