Kashima Echo
Tags: animals, distorted bodies, doll-like, dollflesh, exposed anatomy, femininity, flora, flowers, illustrations, pastel, visceral
Mia Calderone
Ghostly, sinuous, beautifully illustrated apparitions with elongated, eerie, torturously expressive wraith-like hands figure prominently in Mia Calderone‘s exquisite and highly personal ink drawings. Her influences and inspirations include Catholicism, medieval illuminated Bibles, Art Nouveau (particularly Alphonse Mucha and Aubrey Beardsley), and contemporary artists Takato Yamamoto and Laura Laine.
Tags: articulate hands, black and white, dark fairy tales, emotive, exposed anatomy, expressive, femininity, flowers in hair, ghostly, hair, inky, intricate line drawings, neo-victorian, sexuality, twins/doppelgangers/doubles, victorian
Film Review: Sleeping Beauty
I saw this a few weeks ago, so this is kind of late, but here goes anyway. There’s “spoilers,” just FYI.
Sleeping Beauty (2011) is an Australian movie directed by Julia Leigh, starring Emily Browning and Rachael Blake. It’s about a young college student named Lucy who joins a high-end erotic waitressing service that caters to the wealthy, in order to make ends meet, and further agrees to be one of the “sleeping beauties,” so to speak, who form a more specialized subset of the girls. For each engagement she is driven to the madam/Clara’s house, where she takes a powerful sedative in a cup of tea that induces a very heavy, undisturbable, deathlike sleep for a short period, and while she’s out like the eponymous Sleeping Beauty, some client who has paid for the privilege, usually an older man, gets into bed with her and can do whatever they like with her unconscious body, short of actual penetration, for the duration of an hour. She is promised that when she wakes up, she will not remember a single thing, and for her it will be as if it never happened.
Tags: cryptic, death and the maiden, femininity, film reviews, hauntingly beautiful, minimalist, modern fairy tales, sexuality, trailers
New Realism: The Art of Korin Faught
Taking cues from classical art (she is a self-confessed devotee of the Dutch master Vermeer), Korin Faught paints beautiful, realistic, and surreal portraits of women, in white dresses and Dutch caps, often in groups or interactions of enigmatic/symbolic meaning; a striking blend of the modern and the traditional, a balance between a crisp and precise style, and an expressive and sharply imaginative quality. I love the whiteness contrasted with the touch of melancholy to the atmosphere and the vague sense of twisted foreboding.
Tags: (twists on) traditional art, classicism, femininity, korin faught, mystical, photorealism, puritanical, realism, religious imagery, religious symbolism, sexuality, symbolism, twins/doppelgangers/doubles, virtuoso, white
Ray Caesar – “A Gentle Kind of Cruelty”
Ray Caesar (see my previous post on him here) is currently exhibiting a solo show at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, entitled A Gentle Kind of Cruelty.
Images from the show below via Blood Milk, Hi-Fructose, and Arrested Motion. I love the beautiful detail shots taken by JL Schnabel of Blood Milk, which show the true marvelousness and beauty of Caesar’s work as it would appear close-up in person.
Tags: 1940s, 1950s, art shows, colorful, cute/creepy little girls, doll-like, dollflesh, femininity, hauntingly beautiful, historically inspired, innocence/menace, interiors, lolita-esque, monsteresque, neo-victorian, pop surrealism, ray caesar, retro, sexuality, victorian
The Drawings of Mako
Gorgeously delicate line drawings featuring macabre/erotic depictions of languid maidens tangled up in choking undergrowth, deadly flora, murderous branches, their hearts and anatomies (literally) exposed, from Japanese artist Mako.
Tags: anatomical-themed, black and white, death and the maiden, dolls, erotic, femininity, intricate line drawings, nature, skeleton, strings, surreal
The Propriety of Women: Riikka Sormunen
Riika Sormunen is a Finnish artist and illustrator based in Canada. Reminiscent of both Edward Gorey and Gustav Klimt, her works have an oddball, morbid sense of playfulness, and loose, childlike, highly stylized and expressive figures in surreal, flattened landscapes. Her use of color is bold, sophisticated, and brilliant. Drawing from the Victorian era and the stuff of fairy tales, and sometimes depicting women from the middle of the 20th century, Riikka’s paintings constantly subvert conventions and sexual mores in a quirky, ironic, frank, and personal way. Her style has a wide range and has evolved over time; the constant is that it is refreshingly different and exudes individuality.
Riikka Sormunen’s Website
Riikka Sormunen on DeviantArt
Tags: colorful, femininity, illustrations, modern fairy tales, retro, riikka sormunen, sexuality, swan, victorian, whimsical
Dolls and Gals: The Art of Caryn Drexl
Caryn Drexl is a remarkable and original experimental photographer based in Palm Coast, Florida. Her photography is conceptual and expressive, and explores themes of innocence, femininity, motherhood, and sexuality. It also has a vintage aspect/aesthetic. Teacups, baby dolls, divested braids of hair (and hair in general), things in models’ mouths are all motifs. Many of her photographs feature her as the subject.
Tea TimeTags: 1920s, caryn drexl, dolls, femininity, hair, teacups, victorian, vintage
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