Destiny, Dali & Disney

[youtube width=”636″ height=”480″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRShLb49EhI[/youtube]

“68 years ago Disney has asked Dali to draw a cartoon film which would be an embodiment of idea of surrealism, but turned out it was so unusual to the ordinary spectator that display have closed and have not given to publicity already till 2003.” Thanks to Kelly for the hook up.

Posted in Art, Film. | 1 Comment |

Jean-Pierre Yvaral

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The Op Art work by Jean-Pierre Yvaral, the son of Victor Vasarely, three posters from Paris, 2000. This was from one of his final exhibitions whilst he was still alive as he died in 2002. One of the posters is signed.

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Posted in Art, Poster / flyer. | 2 Comments |

Mike Hinge

Mike Hinge was an illustrator, typographer and graphic designer, born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1931. Early in his illustration career he worked for the largest ad agency in New Zealand before moving to Los Angeles, where he attended the Art Center of the College of Design. In 1966 he moved to Manhattan, where he worked as an art director for several ad agencies. His graphic designs were notable, and his colorful and psychedelic illustrations appeared on numerous science fiction paperback books and magazines during the 1970s, including Analog, Mediascene, Heavy Metal, Fantastic, and Amazing.

Hinge also did design work for 2001: A Space Odyssey and produced illustrations for mainstream publications like Time magazine, including covers featuring Richard Nixon and Emperor Hirohito. He was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist in 1973, plus nominated for 6 Locus awards in the ’70’s. His designs for typefaces and graphics won him several awards and were exhibited, including a show at the Brooklyn Museum. A book about his art The Mike Hinge Experience was published in 1973 and he featured in the 1982 artists anthology The New Visions. He died of a heart attack in 2003 and still remains relatively unknown outside of the sci-fi community, for more info check out Ivan Richards’ Onyx Cube blog for many examples of his original artwork.

Posted in Art, Design, Poster / flyer. | 4 Comments |

Moebius’ Transe Forme films

[flv width=”312″ height=”255″]http://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/GAL-BANDEANNONCE.flv[/flv] [flv width=”312″ height=”255″]http://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/MO-DESSLIVE-STELETATAN-1-MUSIQUE.flv[/flv]

The Moebius exhibition in Paris ends this weekend at the Foundation Cartier. I sadly didn’t make it back there but hope it will come to the UK some day. Here are a selection of the films featured on the exhibition site.

[flv width=”312″ height=”255″]http://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/E-CARD-2011.flv[/flv] [flv width=”312″ height=”255″]http://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/MO-DESSLIVE-MAJOR-5.flv[/flv]

Posted in Art, Books, Comics, Design, Event. | No Comments |

Originals #5 • Brendan McCarthy – Dream Tree

Brendan McCarthy‘Dream Tree’ illustration, 2008

(41.5 x 29.5 mm, pen and whiteout on paper).

Unpublished illustration for a story concept by Brendan McCarthy – ‘The Fabulous Dreamtrees’.

“The Dreamtree (is) a phantasmagorical tree whose fruit is the source of all dreams. Eat the fruit and experience the dream of yourself. It is the precious thing you will carry back to the waking world.”

Swimini Purpose, 2005.

Posted in Art, Originals. | 1 Comment |

Unintended Calculations mural & gallery show, Vancouver

A couple of friends of mine, Remi/Rough and Augustine Kofie, are involved in a huge mural and gallery show in Vancouver right now, alongside artists Jerry ‘Joker’ Inscoe and Scott Sueme. They’ve just spent the past week painting two huge murals on the Moda Hotel and their four man show opened at the weekend at Becker Galleries for the rest of March.

Moda Hotel 1Moda Hotel 2Here are a few examples of work from the show (sorry but I’m a big Kofie fan).

Photos from the mural painting here, Remi’s photos of the gallery show here, official show website here (where they used a piece of a Kofie piece I own to illustrate him).

Posted in Art, Event. | 1 Comment |

Christian Marclay’s ‘The Clock’

I saw about 90 minutes of this last night at the Hayward Gallery on the Southbank. They were screening the entire 24 hour film for free but for one day only so, by the time you read this, it will be over I’m afraid. Marclay’s piece is made from hundreds of snippets of films with the constant being a clock, or time keeping device, present in each scene. The piece starts at 6pm and every clip corresponds to the actual time you are watching it which creates a vortex in which you are hyper aware of each passing minute.

The clock montage 650

It is hypnotic, fascinating and frequently funny, even though there is no plot, central character or conclusion in sight. The soundtrack creates amazing tension and release moments too, as you can imagine. If a clock is featured in a film it’s usually signaling someone waiting or something about to happen, a race against time or some sort of horror about to awaken. The approach to the hour becomes the equivalent of a major plot event and something that you’re willing to happen faster than it ever will. I saw the section before midnight and on the hour there was a large montage of clocks striking terror into the heart accompanied by suitably demonic music, all ended by a hilarious clip of a grandfather clock opening to reveal a zombie woman which was so perfectly timed the whole audience burst out laughing.

Most people won’t be able to sit through the whole thing and you don’t need to to ‘get’ it but there’s much more to the piece than the basic premise. Certain images become a recurring motif ; lighting candles or ringing phones for instance, and footage from several films repeatedly crops up giving it a certain continuity. I was surprised at how watchable it was, despite having no ending in sight. Waiting for a bus on Waterloo Bridge sometime after 1am, I looked across the river to the see the giant clock near Enbankment Station, as if starring in my own personal version of the film. Recommended viewing even if you can only catch a small portion of it.

Posted in Art, Event, Film. | No Comments |

Ashley Wood vs Gundam

A match made in heaven, not sure exactly what he’s doing with them yet but an official announcement was made last week that Ashley Wood has partnered with Bandai, the makers of Gundam figures, to do something. Here’s a first look at a painting he did earlier this week – beautiful

gzakuvpoint1

Posted in Art, Robots. | No Comments |

Norman Rockwell’s America

The Connoisseur (1962 - Norman Rockwell)I just went to see Norman Rockwell’s America at the East Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. Utterly stunning. It’s only on for another month and they have original paintings, studies and prints as well as over 350 framed covers of the Saturday Evening Post that he did. If you’ve been thinking of giving it a go, make the effort, you won’t see another collection like this in the UK again for a while I think. They even had the original of this April Fools painting below.

april-fool-girl-and-shopkeeper

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Originals #3 • Kid Acne – TTC LP Illustration (Full)

TTC LP Inner full

Kid Acne‘TTC – C’eci N’Est Pas Un Disque’ LP inside cover illustration (full piece), 2001-2

(640 x 380 mm, pen and pencil on paper).

The full piece was created using photocopies of two A3 illustrations depicting the crowd characters. These were then joined and the club background added in thinner pen. The DJs were also added at this stage to complete the scene.

Posted in Art, Originals. | 2 Comments |

Originals #2 • Kid Acne – TTC LP Illustration piece

TTC LP illo (Right) 650

Kid Acne‘TTC – C’eci N’Est Pas Un Disque’ LP inside cover illustration (right hand side), 2001-2 (420 x 297mm, pen and pencil on paper).


Originally one half of a crowd scene to go on the inside of a gatefold cover for TTC’s first LP. The label couldn’t afford a gatefold sleeve so it was printed on the inside of a single sleeve, the left half is thought to be lost.

Posted in Art, Originals. | No Comments |

3D comics

Biz 3D ZoneFurther to the post about 3D I did last week, I’ve dug out some of the comics I was talking about. Best find was ‘Bizarre 3D Zone’ which is almost Zap Comix in 3D form, including a strip by Robert Williams which works extremely well visually. There were a few underground comics in the the 60’s and 70’s using 3D it seems but not all of them work because the printing is so bad the red/green division can’t be seen too easily.

A company called Blackthorne Publishing spearheaded the 3D comics surge in the late 80’s, buying up licenses to lots of kids shows like Transformers, GI Joe and Star Wars. Their most successful line was, bizarrely, the California Raisins (!?) but they bit off more than the could chew when they acquired the rights to print Michael Jackson’s ‘Moonwalker’ in 3D. The film didn’t do the business expected and their comic flopped, costing them the company. Most of their titles only ran for 1 or 2 issues and the projected Star Wars line (surely a golden ticket?) only made it to issue 3 before the company folded.

In Bizarre 3D Zone there are a few singular page strips that crop up that are quite bizarre indeed, some don’t even work in the conventional 3D way as they are simply only either the green or red. But in amongst the other separated images they give an odd effect and you realise that this is the ultimate in psychedelic comics as it’s playing with your perceptions of the page. I can only imagine what it was doing to hippies on acid way back when.
Zone 3Robt WilliamsZone 6

3D Art Book by Tristan Eaton

Last year I had an inexplicable yearning to buy more comics again after largely dipping out of the medium for a few years (save for the weekly dose of 2000ad thrill power and a few others). I also started to dig in the 50p-£1 boxes for older things I read as a kid or just liked the look of. Along the way I picked up a number of 3D comics from the boom in the late 80’s as well as a couple for more recently. When they work they’re great but frequently the writing never matches up to the standard of the imagery. There’s a whole blog post to be had out of some of those but that’s for another time.

This week I’ve been experimeting with 3D analyphs on a project – converting a 2D image into 3D when you look at it with those red and blue glasses. It’s not that hard, fun, if not a bit frustrating, and involves a bit of guesswork. I’ve managed to make one successful image so far but I can’t post it yet as I’ll get in trouble if it’s available to all at this stage.

BOOK_PICBut what should turn up on Jim Mahfood‘s Facebook stream today? News of a new book by Tristan Eaton (he designed the Dunny & Munny figures for Kidrobot) full of 3D images by a ton of different artists.  Four years in the making, the 224 page book, published this Spring by Prestel, features a little bit of his work and a lot of Tristan-curated images from 100 artists across a multitude of disciplines: graffiti, illustration, contemporary art, graphic design, etc.

Check some images that I found online at animalnewyork.com and you can pre-order the book here.

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The full artist list (with the ones I’m excited to see in bold): DRIAN JOHNSON, ANDREW BELL, ANTHONY AUSGANG, ASKEW, BASK, BILL MCMULLEN, BLOKT, BOOKS, BUFF MONSTER, CALMA, CASEY RYDER, CATALINA ESTRADA, CEY ADAMS, CHRIS MARS, CRAOLA, D*FACE, DABS & MYLA, DALEK, DAVE COOPER, DAVE KINSEY, DAVE NEEDHAM, DAVID FLORES, DEMO, DR. REVOLT, DARREN ROMANELLI, EBOY, EDATRON, ERIK FOSS, ERIC WHITE, ERIC HAZE, ESAO ANDREWS, FILTH, FLORENCIA ZAVALA, GARY BASEMAN, GARY TAXALI, GLENN BARR, GOMEZ BUENO, ISABEL SAMARAS, JAMES JEAN, JEFF SOTO, JEREMY FISH, JEREMY MADL, JERRY ABSTRACT, JIM HOUSER, JIM MAHFOOD, JOE SORREN, JON BURGERMAN, JULIE WEST, JUNKO MIZUNO, KANO, KATHY STAICO SCHORR, KENZO MINAMI, KEVIN BOURGEOIS, KEVIN SKINNER, KID ACNE, KOBIE SOLOMON, KRISTIAN OLSON, LAURA BARNHARD, LOGAN HICKS, MARK BODE, MARK DEAN VECA, MARK JAMES, MARK RYDEN, MATT CAMPBELL, MATT EATON, MAYA HAYUK, MICHAEL DE FEO, MISHKA, MINT AND SERF, MISS VAN, MORNING BREATH, MR JAGO, MYSTERIOUS AL, NATHAN FOX, NATHAN JUREVICIUS, PETE FOWLER, POSE MSK, RAY ZONE, RENATA PALUBINSKAS, RICH JACOBS, RON ENGLISH, ROSTARR, SHEPARD FAIREY, SKET ONE, STANLEY CHOW, STASH, STEPHEN BLISS, TARA MCPHERSON, TES ONE, TODD SCHORR, TOKIDOKI, TOM THEWES, TRAVIS LOUIE, TRAVIS MILLARD, TRISTAN EATON, TRUSTOCORP, UNKL, UPSO, AND WINSTON SMITH.

Posted in Art, Books, Comics, Design. | No Comments |

Moebius exhibition in Paris

Moebius poster I was in Paris last Friday, playing at La Machine, but upon waiting for the Eurostar the next day I saw a poster for a Moebius Exhibition at the Foundation Cartier. Gutted not have known this was on earlier as I could have seen it before I left. The link above takes you to the exhibition site with a wealth of info, images, beautiful videos of Moebius drawing and mouth-watering merchandise, check the pencil sets below.

Moebius pencils 2Moebius pencils 1