Lesbian Romance Tuesday

Fabulous new Chanel ad that I thought we might all enjoy looking at.

Karl Lagerfeld, 2009

It apparently references the famous love affair between famous historical lady-lovers Violet Trefusis and Vita Sackville-West, which is nice.

Juxtaposing Your Week

Include Me Out

Been looking at this blog, Seven Days, for a bit; it's the home page for the work of illustrator Cristiana Couceiro. Couceiro lives, works and is inspired by Lisbon, Portugal. Obviously she is a fan of vintage photographs too, with hopeful images of the past yanked out of context and into collages yielding a suggestion of the past and of meaningful symbols, but essentially just modern enough to not denote anything in particular. The pieces also look a lot like a particular strain of old Penguin paperback covers, do you know the ones I mean? The ones that look like these, basically (especially the one below, labelled It's Not For You to Choose). Same colour palette and use of pale coloured circles, sometimes the font is the same too. Hence an added expectation that the text and the symbols in these pieces will mean something, but still they have only the feel of old pieces of functional graphic design; time and nostalgia turns it all neatly into art.

It's Not For You to Choose

These pieces do continue to make me feel like I'm missing something. Maybe I am? I don't know much about the artist. Maybe these are books covers, I just don't know the books. (Also Couceiro does some conventional illustration, magazines and advertising etc.) The titles seem designed to be confusing too; unless there's another connection I'm missing the titles seem entirely divorced from the content. I also wonder what percentage of the images here are found, and how much made new? Some of the photographs do seem newly posed, modern models in old fashioned dress. It's all really working for me, anyhow. Collage is fun. I would love to see her sketchbooks/scrapbooks.

You've Hit the Button One Hundred Times Before

You Are Everything I Cannot See

Who Can Doubt it Now

When Your Feet Are Living the Ground

Feeling Like a Tape Recorder

To Stay Here Would Be Just Fine

I Find it Hard to Explain How I Got Here

I think I got the Couceiro tip from This Girl Called Automatic Win. Lass has good taste in art (and links, and recaps, and long hilarious soul-searching sessions).

80s Skaters

These are my new bezzie mates. They are polite and hygienic young men.

Team Alva

Darin Bendall is a designer, artist, animator who lives in Tokyo but is from somewhere in the States, I think? I'm not really into his style so much, but he did contribute animation for the fantastic video for Chinese Translation by M Ward, a video which has a touch of simple genius about it, much like the song.

Anyway, this post is not about the work of Darin Bendall, it's about the fantastic images of 80s/90s skate magazines he has on his site. As the man says: "When I was back in Oklahoma I acquired a small stack of skate magazines from the 80s and early 90s I though I'd share. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do, cause this shit just makes me want to run straight out and duct tape up a bunch of Converse, do bonelesses all day long and then come home and draw skulls. These are all from Thrashers circa 1986-1990. Skate or die..."

I just admire anyone who managed to look cool during the 80s. Also I feel like I can steal a few zine ideas from these. Especially the fork guy further down. Those who know me will remember that I enjoy incorporating cutlery into my work. Ah, for a hardcore zinester like myself, everything is inspiration!

Young Rick Howard

Jeff looks so sad!

Frigid lien

T.g.

Halftime!

Street Style

Eddie Reategui

Henry Gutierrez

Aaaron 'Fingers' Murray

More skate scans here. Thrasher magazine (still running) here.

Found It

Aha, so I looked back at my copy of Lucky Man, and now I have the name of the cover artist. The dude is Ghostshrimp, aka. Dan James, and I don't know much about him since he's in one of those mysterious creative collectives who have flowery manifestos and lofty goals, but you can't actually work out how many of them there are, and what they actually do. Ghostshrimp are a dozen people and a few dogs, and they live in a magical place called Camp Ghostwood. Look, here is an extract from their "Secret Mission":

"GHOSTSHRIMP IS AN INDEPENDANT ORGANIZATION. WE ARE MADE UP OF GHOSTSCOUTS. WE EXIST FOR TWO REASONS OF COMPLETELY EQUAL IMPORTANANCE [sic]. ONE: WE ARE INSPIRED BY OTHERS AND WE INSPIRE OTHERS. TWO: WE PASS OUR TIME DOING THE COOLEST THINGS WE CAN IMAGINE.
OUR CURRENT HEADQUARTERS IS 1000 FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL ON MYSTERY MOUNTAIN. WE CALL IT CAMP GHOSTWOOD. CAMP GHOSTWOOD IS HAND MADE BY GHOSTSCOUTS."

I have limited patience for that stuff. Anyhow, clients include Subpop, The New Yorker, Fantagraphics, Top Shelf, The new York Times, and Ben Tanzer, and plenty of others. Ghostshrimp have a very nifty website, which you should check out if these pictures appeal to you at all. They have dozens of images up there, and the illustrations are often so busy they really benefit from a fuller view than I can offer here.

"Peppermint" Skate Zine (France), Magazine Cover

"You Know The Verse" Tour Poster

"Nice Knawing You", Seattle Metropolitan Magazine

"Three Friends", Rockpile Magazine

"The Stranger", Shake Book Review

Nickelodeon Magazine, Comicbook Cover

DJ Whale, Samix

Laughing Squid, Promotional Postcard

Audio Biograffiti, Album Booklet

B.W.Hamby, Book jacket

Joe Public Films

Edited to add: Tim actually met Ghostshrimp at the Stumptowm Comicon in Portland last year. Tim bought a book from Mr.Shrimp, The Octopi and the Ocean, which I have borrowed. Looks pretty good so far.

Chris Ware For The New Yorker

I have to say, I know that Chris Ware is great and intellectual and critically acclaimed, a shining beacon for the legitimacy of the graphic novel form, but I find him a bit creepy. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth is just fucking depressing, and his drawings have such an undercurrent of creep that I'm not really enjoying myself at all. I mean, I like stories of quiet, desperate lives as much as the next girl, as long as they stop short of actually making me want to top myself, while at the same time thoroughly freaking me out.

Having said that, Quimby the Mouse is pretty cool, as long as it keeps basic and retro and I don't start to feel sorry for the poor cat (cat's head?). His covers are also amazingly designed, all 50s and intricate. And I do like these four alternate covers for the New Yorker from 2006:

That first one especially, the colours are just beautiful. I suspect they're all part of a bitingly cynical commentary on the modern Thanksgiving, and most of the imagery is about loneliness and alienation. I choose to ignore this.

House and Garden

I found a couple of completely gorgeous covers from house and garden, both from 1919. Something about the incredibly crisp style and muted but rich colours - a bit like stained glass? Or the look of the world viewed through the bottom of an extremely expensive bottle of port? They don't look too dated at all. I think this style of magazine cover is clearly due for a resurgence.

April 1919

August 1919