Tyrants and Art
Culture thrives on conflict and antagonism, not social harmony – a point made rather memorably by a certain Harry Lime, says philosopher John Gray. "In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, … Continue reading
Live Like a Poet!
By Rosanna Warren Posted by Ann Kjellberg On April 13, 1904, Pablo Picasso and his friend the Catalan painter Sebastià Junyer Vidal travelled from Barcelona to Paris and installed themselves in Montmartre in the studio just vacated by the Basque ceramicist and sculptor Paco Durrio. Junyer Vidal paid the rent. Called “La Maison du Trappeur” … Continue reading
New Biography Says van Gogh Did Not Kill Himself
ROBIN POGREBIN A new biography of Vincent van Gogh and a “60 Minutes” report on it scheduled for Sunday night call into question the long-accepted notion — central to the myth of the troubled artist — that he committed suicide. In the book, “Van Gogh: The Life,” due out next week, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writers … Continue reading
What Is Propofol?
How Could It Have Killed Michael Jackson? The King of Pop’s doctor, Conrad Murray, is on trial for involuntary manslaughter, but could propofol alone have caused MJ’s death? Harvard anesthesiologist Beverly Philip explains what gives this drug such lethal potential Katherine Harmon What killed the king?: As testimony continues in the case against Michael Jackson’s … Continue reading
Classic Nude Portraits
Archive Photos Curves ahead! These revealing photographs of models, actors, musicians, and athletes were culled from Vanity Fair’s glossy archives—our “best undressed,” you might say. This fashionable season, it’s our ode to those who might look great in clothes—but look even better in the buff. By Vanity Fair Photograph by Patrick Demarchelier. Photograph by Nick … Continue reading
Portrait of Decline
Willem de Kooning at the MoMA. Ariella Budick Willem de Kooning’s 1952-53 painting "Woman V" The Museum of Modern Art’s generous, even prodigal De Kooning retrospective is the most ambitious show New York has seen in a long time – a lavish, knotty and definitive tribute to a tricky and alloyed genius. Not everything here … Continue reading
Top Chef, Old Master
Michelle Legro They called him “fat boy,” this seventeen-year old apprentice in the studio of Florentine painter Verrocchio who would receive care packages from his step-father, a pastry chef. The bastard son of a Florentine notary and a lady of Vinci, the boy’s doting step-father gave him a taste for marzipans and sugars from a … Continue reading
One More Reason (Some) Americans Don’t Care About Kate Bush
Ann Powers Evening Standard/Getty Images Kate Bush in 1978. Although the success she enjoyed in the U.K. didn’t translate stateside, her influence is palpable on both sides of the pond. When I was nineteen, I found two Kate Bush albums in a bin at my Catholic church’s annual rummage sale, alongside the debut from Siouxsie … Continue reading
Lunch With Angelina Jolie
Or: a lesson in how to avoid attracting attention in public. Matthew Garrahan Angelina Jolie Watching Angelina Jolie stride through a restaurant is to be given a lesson in how to avoid attracting attention in public. She looks ahead impassively, her back is straight and she walks at speed so that she will have moved … Continue reading
Emma Watson’s New Day
by Amanda Foreman | photographed by Mario Testino It’s the pixie-cut hair and flawless skin that give her away. Emma Watson is dressed unobtrusively in a cotton flower-print French Connection dress and beige sandals, but she is unmistakable. Fans have accosted her five times in the past half hour alone. Today is the actress’s twenty-first … Continue reading
ARE ARTISTS LIARS?
Humans are natural-born storytellers, so lying is in our blood. Ian Leslie considers how this comes out in our art … Shortly before his death, Marlon Brando was working on a series of instructional videos about acting, to be called “Lying for a Living”. On the surviving footage, Brando can be seen dispensing gnomic advice … Continue reading
Photographer Elliott Erwitt
on His Lifetime Achievements Elliott Erwitt has a new iPad app, a new book, a new award, and a very old cuckoo clock. The legendary photographer shares his thoughts on all of these things—plus what he considers to be his greatest and most memorable achievements—in a discussion with VF.com’s Erica Singleton. By Erica Singleton Photographs … Continue reading
Diplo on Island Parties in Trinidad and Tobago
A travel diary from Diplo, the musician and D.J., as he ventures through the Caribbean paradise during its famous party season. He shares his personal photographs and a travel-journal entry about how to survive Carnival, what the Justin Bieber of the islands is like onstage, and the sex-war paradox of soca-music dancing. By Diplo Photographs … Continue reading
The Best Street Photographer You’ve Never Heard Of
Vivian Maier/John Maloof Collection Four years ago, a Chicago real estate agent stumbled upon a box of negatives. Little did he know that he’d discovered Vivian Maier. — By Alex Kotlowitz. Photographs by Vivian Maier/John Maloof Collection IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO TAKE measure of Vivian Maier’s photos without taking stock of her story. She was by … Continue reading
The Dream Life of Penélope Cruz
Jason Gay | photographed by Mario Testino BORN IDENTITY “It is a revolutionary experience,” says Cruz of motherhood. “It transforms you completely.” Dolce & Gabbana lace cap-sleeved dress. Photographed by Mario Testino REIGN IN SPAIN Cruz is the first Spanish-born actress to be nominated for an Academy Award, the first to win, now the first … Continue reading
Pissed-Off Painters Take Revenge
Rachel Somerstein The Gold Scab (detail) Photo: Molly Eyres Sandra Three—The Killer Critic R. B. Kitaj LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art paints over Italian street artist Blu’s mural Photo: Casey Caplowe Poster of MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch Photo: LA RAW Early last December, Italian street artist Blu painted a mural for LA’s Museum of Contemporary … Continue reading
Angelina Jolie’s First Modeling Pics At 15
Kim – Jim & Kim Morning Show on Fresh …Angelina Jolie was a 15-year old model. And absolutely gorgeous…even as a teenager. … Read More>> … More>> … More>> … More>> … More>>
Rosie the Riveting
Krista Smith and Mark Seliger spotlight Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, star of Transformers: Dark of the Moon. By Krista Smith• Photographs by Mark Seliger … Born in Devon, England, Huntington-Whiteley got her start in fashion at an agency while she was still in high school. After a year as an intern, spent mainly getting coffee, she was … Continue reading
Meet Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen
by Sarah Mower | photographed by Bruce Weber They may be only five feet one apiece, but the Olsen twins are much bigger than you’d think. This is the year they’ve jointly jumped hurdle after hurdle toward winning credibility for The Row. First there was their impressively wearable blush-tinted spring collection, which they wrested from … Continue reading
Angelina Jolie Throughout the Years in Vogue
Angelina Jolie is no stranger to the pages of Vogue. The actress was first featured on the cover of the magazine in April 2002, and now many years (and many children) later she’s back looking more stunning than ever. See her evolution throughout the years—from brooding bad girl who snagged an Oscar to international human … Continue reading
Sendak, picturing mortality
He’s "a little crotchety with the world," but savors memories of a mural now in Phila. By Amy S. Rosenberg, Inquirer Staff Writer A detail of the mural Maurice Sendak created for a Manhattan family. Its new home is the Rosenbach… ‘I’m not feeling great," Maurice Sendak is saying. "I’ve been rather sick, to … Continue reading
Buster Keaton
Geoff Nicholson “The world is the totality of facts, not of things.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus The famous occasion, Los Angeles 1929: after a party in Buster Keaton’s Beverly Hills villa, Buster persuades Louise Brooks and Bill Collier (who’s also sometimes known as Buster) to drive with him to Culver City, to the MGM … Continue reading
Lady Gaga Just Looks Horny . . . These People Really Are
David Moye Contributor Lady Gaga may have shocked the world recently when she appeared in public with what looked like horns sticking out of her face and shoulders, but she’s actually just horning in on an existing — and, so far, very underground — trend. Gaga recently appeared in Harper’s Bazaar magazine looking as if … Continue reading
Picasso’s Erotic Code
A major new exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery tracks the affair between Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter, who became his mistress at 17, bore him a child, and committed suicide after his death, 50 years after they met. John Richardson tells the love story behind Walter’s encoded appearances in some of the 20th century’s most important … Continue reading
Modern Martyr
The brief, bohemian transit of Amedeo Modigliani. By MAUREEN MULLARKEY A Life by Meryle Secrest Knopf, 416 pp., $35 I want a short life but a full one. Amedeo Modigliani got his wish. In 1920, at age 35, he died, toothless, of tubercular meningitis in a Parisian pauper’s hospital. It was a sordid end to … Continue reading
“The sleeping giant of philanthropy”
How artist-endowed foundations are growing in number and financial strength By András Szántó Solid foundations: (left to right) Joan Mitchell, Keith Haring and Willem de Kooning The economic crunch notwithstanding, artists today are more prosperous than ever. For those who are successful, affluence can lead to generosity. Many artists donate works to worthy causes and … Continue reading
Dalí and the Jews
Did the Surrealist Painter’s ‘Aliyah’ Series Show a Love for Israel? By Jillian Steinhauer At the thought of Salvador Dalí, many people envision the artist’s famously eccentric face — his wide, cartoonish eyes and the wiry mustache that seemed to defy gravity. Or perhaps his best-known canvas springs to mind, that all-too-familiar scene of watches … Continue reading
Mathematical artist
Why hyperbolic space is awesome Celeste Biever, physical science and space news editor Dried apples, ghostly skirts, beads and twisted balloons are just some of the tools Vi Hart uses to explore hyperbolic space, a Pringle-like geometry where angles in a triangle add up to less than 180 degrees and the parallel postulate of Euclidean … Continue reading
On Tour . . . with the Beatles!
What luck that Bob Bonis, who managed the Beatles in the mid-60s and organized their historic U.S. tours, had the foresight to bring along a Leica M3 camera. The resulting images, never published during his lifetime, shed intimate new light on John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s Stateside invasion. Text by Alex Bonis• Photographs by Bob … Continue reading
Charice’s Timeless Beauty
Andy Swift The world’s most talented girl is featured in a new exhibit, launched by the “Allure” section of The Philippine Star, celebrating National Women’s Month — and I couldn’t think of anyone more deserving. … Read More>>
Charice May Be Collaborating With Justin Bieber!
Andy Swift Can you imagine what these two international superstars would produce? My guess: The most adorable single ever. I know you’re bummed that Charice has yet to make her highly anticipated return to Glee, but I’ve got some news that MIGHT just take your mind off Sunshine Corazon’s tragic absence: Charice, 18, wants to … Continue reading
Miley Cyrus Fills Out
She’s Gone From Gaunt To Bloated In Just A Few Months! Is Her Wild Lifestyle To Blame? The actress and singer seems to have puffed up recently, is her out of control behavior having an effect on her physical appearance? Miley Cyrus has always been seemingly pin thin, though healthy looking, but not of recent! … Continue reading
From Head to Hand
Edmund de Waal on making art. By Edmund de Waal Edmund de WaalWhen I was a child there was a truism that anyone could make something (a rabbit hutch, say) or mend something (a bicycle) if they had a classical education. It was felt that using intellectual tools—parsing a bit of Latin history, constructing an … Continue reading
Torrid Life, Transcendent Art
It’s awfully hard to revise the romantic myth of Modigliani. By Christopher Benfey The romantic myth of the artist dies hard. Van Gogh in Arles, Gauguin in Tahiti, Caravaggio boozing and brawling in the mean streets of Rome! Wouldn’t we much rather hear about the impulsive escapades of the bad boys of art than follow … Continue reading
The artists who crossed the line
An art group that stages orgies, throws cats at cashiers and has Banksy as a fan has enraged the Russian authorities By Shaun Walker REUTERS The most controversial of all was Voina’s ‘Palace Revolution’ when members overturned seven police cars On a chilly Moscow morning last November, 10 plainclothes policemen broke into the Moscow apartment … Continue reading
The Doctors and the Divine
What do we learn when we diagnose genius? By Stefany Anne Golberg In her Histoire de Ma Vie, the author George Sand describes an encounter with Frédéric Chopin upon returning one night from a trip to Palma. Chopin was playing a melody on the piano, in the grip of a strange delirium. “He saw himself … Continue reading
Lady Gaga: Born What Way?
David Hajdu Like everything Lady Gaga does, the hype campaign for her new single, “Born This Way,” has been so grandiosely theatrical that it seems, simultaneously, like genius and a joke. Ever since the summer, she has been teasing concert audiences and interviewers about the record with the subtlety of a grindhouse mare, establishing … Continue reading
Photog’s Descent Into the Underworld
By Rachel Somerstein Photo: Dana Lixenberg Photographer Taryn Simon has spent the better part of the past decade crisscrossing the US in search of rarely documented, illicit, and sometimes brutal subjects. Her straightforward images capture everything from wrongly imprisoned men exonerated by DNA evidence to confiscated counterfeit watches to a mentally retarded tiger kept illegally … Continue reading
Graffiti Robot Paints Rainbows in Seconds
By Oliva Solon, Wired UK Swedish street artist Akay has created a robotic device that automatically creates spray-painted rainbows. Robo-Rainbow is one of Akay’s “instruments of mass destruction” — a project that finds complicated technical solutions to create simple acts of vandalism. The device, which is pulled behind a bicycle, features a long, extendable metal … Continue reading
From Sketch to Still, a Visual History of Alice in Wonderland’s Costumes
by Marnie Hanel In the opening of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, the heroine argues with her mother about—what else?—clothes. Scolded for not wearing a corset, Alice says, “Who’s to say what is proper? What if it was agreed that proper was wearing a codfish on your head? Would you wear it?… To me, a … Continue reading
We’re a Belieber
By Dana Mathews Photographs by Art Streiber With 17 screaming fans cast as extras, this truly was the photo shoot heard ’round the world (or, most certainly, Beverly Hills). Justin Bieber came to our Los Angeles set donning hipster glasses and an infectious smile; the night before, he’d had dinner at the Smiths’ residence, where … Continue reading
Is George Clooney helping?
By Joshua Keating George Clooney’s "anti-genocide paparazzi" seems to be dominating nearly every transmission coming out of south Sudan this week. Clooney, along with the Enough Project, Harvard researchers, and some of his wealthier Hollywood friends, have hired satellites to monitor troop movements along the north-south border, particularly the oil-rich region of Abyei. Clooney, active … Continue reading
New Magnum Fund Pays Out for Deep Photo Stories
By Pete Brook The Magnum Foundation has launched a new initiative called the Emergency Fund to offer support for photographers working on thoughtful, long-form stories around the world. This new resource is a bright spot on a bleak horizon, as traditional media financing for documentary projects dries up. While the fund is not able to … Continue reading
Germany’s Mega-Forgery Scandal Gets Even Bigger
Copying the Expressionists By Sven Röbel and Michael Sontheimer Photo Gallery: 7 Photos Sven Röbel / DER SPIEGEL It was already thought to be the biggest art forgery scandal in Germany since World War II. Now, documents show that Wolfgang Beltracchi may have been copying early 20th century expressionists since the mid-1980s. He may even … Continue reading
Miley Cyrus Bong-smoking video
Miley who turned 18 last month has been caught on camera puffing on a huge pipe in the days after celebrating her birthday. Video was leaked on the web. Smoke contained hallucinogenic and controversial, but legal, psychoactive salvia. Although the salvia plant is legal in California, it was banned in Delaware in 2006 following the … Continue reading
Lady Gaga Invests in New York City Restaurant
Juli Weiner W Magazine is reporting that Lady Gaga and her parents, Baron and Baroness Gaga, have signed on as silent partners at the Upper West Side American restaurant Vince and Eddie’s. “When she’s in town she likes to come here with her friends because it’s very homey and private. She’ll come here on her … Continue reading
The Party Goes On
Though China’s world-renowned contemporary artist Ai Weiwei was put under house arrest in Beijing, a "party" he had planned to mark the impending demolition of his studio in Shanghai went on without him… … on Oct. 19, Ai, who is known for being critical of Beijing, received a notice from the local government that his … Continue reading
World renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei put under house arrest
By Christina Larson China’s authoritarianism is at times ruthless and at times, well… confused. A case in point is the decision to put Ai Weiwei, arguably China’s best known artist (a co-designer of the "Bird’s Nest" Olympic Stadium who also has current exhibit at the Tate Modern in London) under house arrest. Ai has been … Continue reading
How Annie got shot
By John Gapper Leibovitz with her portrait of Demi Moore At work, Richard Petty runs a clinic around the corner from London’s Harley Street where he specialises in treating men with sexual and prostate conditions. For relaxation, he collects photographs of women. Petty is not interested in any photos, only ones of recognisable figures with … Continue reading
Miley Cyrus, B.o.B., and Hayley Williams Added To EMA Lineup!
The former teen sensation, now megastar artist Miley Cyrus will be bringing sassy southern charm to Madrid with her first ever performance at the EMAs. Also confirmed is Billboard number one artist B.o.B – who also hails from a US Southern City, Atlanta, who will be making his EMA debut performing ‘Airplanes’ with Paramore Lead … Continue reading
Gyrovague's Raves 