3/20/10

THIS IS A PRESIDENT

recently there has been allot of vocal dissatisfaction with obama.
he's not doing enough, he's not doing it fast enough, he's not tough enough etc..... but one thing is for sure.
this man can speak!

listen to this speech.. this is the speech of a president. eloquence from the podium~ historic.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

3/18/10

TRANS AM

welcome to the mainstream. mammoth clothing line-
AMERICAN APPAREL is debuting a collection for girls with something extra.... so clever.

REVEALED OPENS TONIGHT


for all you lucky homoerotic enthusiasts,
REVEALED: THE TRADITION OF MALE HOMOEROTIC ART
opens tonight- 4:30pm to 8:30pm.

this exhibit is a milestone in homoerotic art & visibility. perhaps one of the first exhibitions to amass a collection of the great homoerotic artists of the 20&21st centuries.
Opening Reception:

Thursday, March 18
4:30 - 8:30PM
Lectures
3:00 - 4:15, preceding reception

Exhibition Hours:
Monday - Friday, 1-4 PM
and by Special Appointment

CCSU ART GALLERY
Central Connecticut State University Art Galleries
Maloney Hall, 2nd Floor

860.832-2633
ro-mimi.gallery@hotmail.com

Free Admission

Opening Reception:

Thursday, March 18
4:30 - 8:30PM
Lectures
3:00 - 4:15, preceding reception

Wine and Hors-d'oeuvres - Free Admission - Plenty of Free Parking

Exhibition Hours:
Monday - Friday, 1-4 PM
and by Special Appointment

Email the Gallery * 860.832-2633

Free Admission

here is the history by curator ROBERT DIAMOND~

Robert Mapplethorpe’s frank depiction of gay male sexuality both fascinated and shocked viewers when his retrospective exhibition, The Perfect Moment, opened around the U.S. from 1989 to 1990. In the past twenty years since that time, Mapplethorpe’s renown has grown, but taboos surrounding the exhibition of his work remain. However, such taboos may suggest a lack of context, for even Mapplethorpe’s most notorious photography belongs to the same homoerotic tradition as the artwork of Michelangelo, one of the most revered masters of Western Art.

DON HERRON. Mapplethorpe - Tub Shot, 1976, courtesy leslie/lohman gallery.

This exhibition, Revealed: The Tradition of Male Homoerotic Art, not only shows the similarities between Michelangelo and Mapplethorpe; it also asserts a homosexual presence in Western art from the Renaissance to the present day by showing unambig-uous images of male same-sex desire. While such “homoerotic” imagery (defying time-restrictive labels such as “gay art” or “queer art”) evolved over time from something secretive, suppressed, and suggested into something public, accessible, and explicit, its continuous presence affirms the importance of intentionally expressing homosexual desire in art.

Since the Renaissance, when sodomy was a crime for which artists could be arrested (as Botticelli, Da Vinci, and others were), recognition of the homosexual presence in art has been obfuscated by suppression, shame, and censorship. Michelangelo, who suffered all of these, nonetheless produced some of the most passionate love poetry by a man to a man and some of the most beautiful images of male sensuality. As with Mapplethorpe, four hundred fifty years later, the controversial nature of Michelangelo’s work provoked censorship: his homoerotic poetry was quickly edited in favor of an opposite-sex love interest, while the nudity of the magnificent David and many of the luxuriant Sistine Chapel figures was immediately covered. Centuries of suppression followed, as critics perfunctorily denied his homoerotic intent. Knowing that Michelangelo defied the conventions of his time may now offer a wider range of homoerotic interpretations of his civic and religious art, but his drawing Ganymede, included here as a reproduction, leaves no doubt as to its homoerotic intent.

For centuries after Michelangelo, the sensual male nude remained the best means of expressing homosexual desire in art. However, artists often set their ever-inventive expressions of that desire in some kind of conventional framework that resisted solely erotic interpretations.
The trend of making merely suggestive work began to change in the late 19th century when the coining of the term “homosexual” provided a concrete identity around which a community could slowly form. However, artists typically created their most overtly homoerotic imagery in secret. To protect their reputations, they made private works exclusively for friends in an underground homosexual community. Thus over a half-century of striking but obscured artistic output emerged. Fashion photographer George Platt Lynes (1907-55), whose exquisite and elegant photography is featured prominently in this exhibition, helped pioneer the representation of the male nude as explicitly erotic. The famous Precisionist Charles Demuth (1883-1935); the avant-garde writer Jean Cocteau (1889-1963); the Magic Realist artists and one-time lovers Jared French (1905-88) and Paul Cadmus (1904-99); and the Russian-American artists Pavel Tchelitchew (1898-1957) and Andrey Avinoff (1884-1949) all privately created some of the first known artistic images of men having sex. While illustrations portraying homosexual sex acts exist from most periods of history, few purely artistic depictions of homosexual sex exist before these 20th century examples.
JAMES BIDGOOD. Apache, mid-1960s. courtesy clampart gallery

Meanwhile, “beefcake” photography in physique magazines served, more popularly, the same emerging gay community. Soon dispensing with the guise of physical fitness, beefcake had a whole new life by the 1960s, when mailing images of full frontal male nudity became legal. Artists such as Tom of Finland (1920-91) exploited the new possibilities with highly sexualized, hypermasculine drawings, while others such as James Bidgood (b. 1933), Arthur Tress (b. 1940), and Duane Michals (b. 1932) used the medium of photography to express new gay themes in the era of sexual liberation and gay pride. Their work begins to record a whole gamut of gay experiences, ranging from the social and sexual to the emotional and contemplative.

However, repression still largely defined the mainstream artists of the 1960s Pop Art era. Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and his lover Jasper Johns avoided portraying immediately recognizable homosexual themes – or even acknowledging the nature of their relationship. Andy Warhol (1928-87) achieved fame as the leader of a new kind of art scene at the Factory. However, his fame was rarely associated with his homoerotic production. Critics and viewers spent decades trying to desexualize Warhol, but the Sex Parts of 1978, exhibited here, offer one of the best examples of his dynamic exploration of homosexual subject matter at the height of his career.

Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-89), a brilliant photographer, created such explicit works that they unleashed a national controversy. His growing notoriety as an artist unabashedly exploring themes of gay sadomasochism and leather culture in the 1970s, culminated in 1989, when the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., canceled his retrospective show, The Perfect Moment. This proved the “perfect moment” for the mainstream public to look directly at gay sexuality. The flawless aestheticism of his black and white photographs demanded that critics and the public confront an openly gay artist and unequivocal homoerotic art for the first time.


RICK CASTRO. Tony Ward as Biker Babe, 1997. © Rick Castro, courtesy antebellum gallery

The gay pride movement after 1969, the public face of AIDS in the 1980s, and Mapplethorpe’s exhibition all helped reverse the secrecy in which prominent homosexual artists had previously worked. On the heels of a newly liberated generation of fashion designers and photographers (note Bruce Weber’s billboard for Calvin Klein underwear in Times Square in 1982), the professional prominence of Herb Ritts (1952-2002) and David LaChapelle (b. 1969) helped occasion a cross-over of homoerotic imagery into mainstream visual culture. Meanwhile, Rick Castro (b. 1958) brought the S&M sex that Mapplethorpe had spotlighted into his “fetish fashion,” a genre that has become de rigueur with some editorial stylists. Finally, an underground form of sexuality, both gay and deviant, moved into public consciousness.

MIKEL MARTON. Beefcake 1,2008. (Photograph) © Mikel Marton

Mikel Màrton, an emerging young artist, represents a new freedom of direction for the 21st century. Combining elements of the traditional male nude with elements of self-assertive queer art and the rarely explored sexual allure of stereo-typically “feminine” men, his art represents an affirmation of eroticism and gay pride and masterfully pulls from a variety of iconic sources to achieve something fresh, colorful, and vivacious.

This exhibition demonstrates the privilege that gay art and artists have earned to be “revealed”. Revealed in their tantalizing sensuality and naked beauty. Revealed as having sexual desire and showing a commitment to using their creative and artistic powers to express their desire. Revealed as having a long-standing artistic history and as contributing to visual culture. Revealed as having suffered suppression and censorship. Revealed as mattering.

The tentative recognition of homoerotic intent in both traditional and contemporary artwork reflects a mainstream rejection of homo sexuality, or the part of the homosexual identity that is intrinsically sexual. This is the same insidious homophobia that manifests itself in violence, bigotry, and civil-rights discrimination. As relatively recent studies documenting the history, development, and cross-fertilization of homoerotic art continue, this emerging area of scholarship will increasingly serve as a positive counterbalance to the more traditional approach to gender and sexuality in art history and art appreciation among our diverse society.

If this exhibition reveals more parts of the male anatomy than are usually seen in public exhibitions, it also reveals a need for recognition of and freedom of expression for homosexual artists. I hope the celebratory nature of this exhibition offers much to savor and reflect on long after leaving the exhibition space.

Robert Diamond
Curator

3/17/10

ANTEBELLUM IN GQ GERMANY



JOHN PALATINUS: TOMORROW'S MAN & ANTEBELLUM gallery received an honorable mention in the summer edition of GQ STYLE-GERMANY.
if you haven't seen tomorrow's man exhibit you are in luck, we've extended the show until march 27th.

it that wasn't exciting enough we are also sharing the issue with our pal TONY WARD... what are the chances?!


3/16/10

JAKE SPERM COMES ALL OVER


if you're anywhere around the hollywood area on saturday night, be alert, because you will get sprayed!

ANTEBELLUM presents
~ JAKE SPERM COMES ALL OVER~

viewing party for the art of JACOB SEMANS
(and official closing party for tomorrow's man exhibit)

please join~
jacob semans & his special guest stars
(live performance by milton)
for a unique event @ antebellum gallery

MARCH 20TH, 2010

6-8PM

no host bar

ANTEBELLUM
1643 N LAS PALMAS AVE
HOLLYWOOD, CA 90028
323 856-0667
www.antebellum.us.ms
antebellum@earthlink.net

EARTHQUAKE 2010


i don't want to be an alarmist or anything, BUT.........

within the last 90 days the world has experienced 5 large earthquakes-

JAN 12TH- HATI- catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake, with an epicentre near the town of Léogâne, approximately 16 miles west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. The earthquake occurred at 16:53 local time (21:53 UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. By 24 January, at least 52 aftershocks measuring 4.5 or greater had been recorded.

JAN 15TH- OKLAHOMA- Back-to-back earthquakes registering magnitudes first of 4.0, then 3.8 had Oklahoma County residents from Arcadia to Midwest City to downtown Oklahoma City worried as the ground shook and rattled buildings.
While geologists say any quake below a 5.0 is considered a “small earthquake,” and results in little damage or danger, Midwest City Police Chief Brandon Clabes said his office has been flooded with hundreds of calls from people who are wondering if they are in danger after the strongest recorded Oklahoma earthquake in the last 12 years.

FEB 26TH- OKINAWA- a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck off Japan in the Pacific Ocean, the U.S. Geological Survey reports.
The epicenter is the Ryukyu Islands, about 50 miles off Naha, in Okinawa. The quake was 6.2 miles deep, relatively shallow.

FEB 27TH- CHILE- occurred off the coast of the Maule Region of Chile on February 27, 2010, at 03:34 local time (06:34 UTC), rating a magnitude of 8.8 on the moment magnitude scale and lasting 90 seconds.

MARCH 8TH- TURKEY- an earthquake in Turkey killed at least 51 people. The magnitude-6.0 earthquake hit at 4:32 a.m. local time in Elazig Province in eastern Turkey, about 340 miles east of the capital, Ankara.


MARCH 9TH- HAWAII- a 4.4 Quake Shakes American Islands. A quake situated 13 miles southwest of the census-designated place of Laupahoehoe, or 20 miles west-northwest of Hilo hit Hawaii. The movement was over 19 feet below the earth’s surface, making it a light earthquake.

MARCH 14TH- INDONESIA- a 6.4 Quake Rocks Indonesia. The quake happened off the coast of the Sumatra islands, and struck just before 8:00 am local time.

MARCH 14TH- TOKYO- Another Big (6.6) Quake Affects Island. This is the second big earthquake that has rocked the Pacific area.

MARCH 16TH- LOS ANGELES- An 4.4 earthquake east of downtown Los Angeles rippled across Southern California before dawn Tuesday, jolting millions of people awake and putting first-responders on alert. There are no reports of damage, injuries or power outages linked to the temblor. Nearly an hour after the quake, the California Highway Patrol got reports of a buckled 10-foot stretch of concrete in a center lane of southbound Interstate 5 south of downtown in the Downey area.

the quakes i listed here are of higher magnitude which have the potential to cause greater damage.
if i don't already have your attention here is just a partial list of the earthquakes of 2010-

Magnitude 6.7 OFFSHORE BIO-BIO, CHILE March 16, 2010
Magnitude 6.5 NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN March 14, 2010
Magnitude 6.9 LIBERTADOR O HIGGINS, CHILE March 11, 2010
Magnitude 6.1 EASTERN TURKEY March 08, 2010
Magnitude 6.8 SOUTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA March 05, 2010
Magnitude 6.6 OFFSHORE BIO-BIO, CHILE March 05, 2010
Magnitude 8.8 OFFSHORE MAULE, CHILE February 27, 2010
Magnitude 7.0 RYUKYU ISLANDS, JAPAN February 26, 2010
Magnitude 6.9 CHINA-RUSSIA-NORTH KOREA BORDER REGION February 18, 2010
Magnitude 3.8 ILLINOIS February 10, 2010
Magnitude 5.9 OFFSHORE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA February 04, 2010
Magnitude 6.2 BOUGAINVILLE REGION, PAPUA NEW GUINEA February 01, 2010
Magnitude 5.9 HAITI REGION January 20, 2010
Magnitude 4.0 OKLAHOMA January 15, 2010
Magnitude 7.0 HAITI REGION January 12, 2010
Magnitude 6.5 OFFSHORE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA January 10, 2010
Magnitude 4.1 SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CALIFORNIA January 07, 2010
Magnitude 6.8 SOLOMON ISLANDS January 05, 2010
Magnitude 7.1 SOLOMON ISLANDS January 03, 2010
Magnitude 6.6 SOLOMON ISLANDS January 03, 2010

Chile Earthquake 2010 Caught on Video - Click here for this week’s top video clips

3/15/10

THE GHOST WRITER


ROMAN POLANKI'S new film THE GHOST WRITER is an example of an excellent film with a great plot, great story, suspense, tension & irony. a throw back to old time filmmaking, told in a modern setting without any SGI!

based on the book THE GHOST by robert harris, polanski starts off subtle, building gradually with each scene, the suspense continuously building, like a steady dam, with the climax of the film ready to burst at the seams.

ewan mcgregor is perfectly cast as a modern day jimmy steward/cary grant-like protagonist with kim cattrall, (very well acted) as his eve-marie saint-ish. bold and aloof, and equally breathy and sexy. in fact all the characters in the film are fully played out, just broad enough to give hints of under-layers, but not giving the whole thing away.

i also really loved the way polanski combines famous figures into each character~

ewan mcgregor as the ghost= jimmy stewart + cary grant

pierce bronson as adam lang= tony blair + ronald reagan

olivia williams as ruth lang= nancy Reagan + mary lincoln, with a little lucrezia borgia

kim catrelle as amelia bly= eve-marie saint + grace kelly

tom wilkenson as paul emmett= dick cheney & karl rove

also look for the great cameo of a condoleezza rice-type character towards the end.

the art direction & locations of filming so modern & austere, lonely and foreboding, a nod to hitchcock without any rip-off.,..
a true gem.. this film will get better with age.
because of the current media attention to polanki's private problems of 30-some years ago, (and american's hypocrisy to all things sex) i'm sure the american response will be luke warm, but for the person that loves films and filmmaking,
this one is for you.

here's a great interview with ewan mcgregor who let's dumbo journalist george stephanopoulos, (former white house communications director) have it with wit and intelligence-

3/14/10

SUNDAY @ ANTEBELLUM

it's sunday, first day of daylight savings, we just finished our JOCK- STRETCH CLASS @ antebellum and i'm relaxing, having tea in the tea garden.
there is the most amazing orange butterfly that landed on my bowl of burnt orange gourds on the mirrored- disco bar top.
it looks like a still-life, but it is REAL. spring is coming early to antebellum.. pure magic!

TRAVEL ATMOSPHERE VISITS ANTEBELLUM

LAUREN LUNSTRUM from TRAVEL ATMOSPHERE paid a visit to antebellum yesterday and did a great review. lauren is like the next generation of huell houser type reporting. enthusiastic and thorough. please check it out.