Get it Giiirl

So I've been thinking about "party girls". I guess the modern PG is takes her cues from Lindsay Lohan's wild image.

You know how when pics of you getting loose pop up on Facebook, you think "It would suck if my parents saw these." Imagine if pics of you getting dirrrty were available via Google Image Search. I realize that her parents are irrelevant at this point but still. Oh and since these are really unflattering and Lilo's my girl here are some of her looking cute and being an actress or something.

The term party girl is interesting to me because it has all these behavioral connotations like drinking and promiscuous sex, but it also implies that she's not a real person. She's just another part of the party. Drugs, alcohol, music, party girls. "You want a hit of this weed, man?" "Naw, but I will hit that party girl."

^These girls look like they're in high school. And not like The OC/Gossip Girl High School. Like real high school.

^And while these girls are pushing 30, I love they're frat boy sensibility. "By the end of the night imma have you drunk and throwin up!" Sexxxxxy.

Concerning "high school" on tv, the UK series Skins uses younger (or younger looking?) actors and it makes the risky behavior more shocking but it's actually more real. I mean in my experience when 16 year olds do hard drugs and engage in group sex they look 16.

Skins secret pary sélectionné dans TV et Jeunesse

This ones more stylized and poetic:

Skins The Uncut Party Trailer -

Fashion

So when I was like 7 I wanted to be a fashion designer. I made little clothes and everything but then I just stopped. Then at 12 I got really into watching fashion videos on on style.com. I was so fascinated. Back then it was only women's wear. Even now there are no videos of the men's shows. It's not like I wanted to wear the clothes. I don't think I ever thought about people actually bought and wore the things I was seeing. The videos would have Tim Blanks making clever comments about fashion history and the season's trends, Pat McGrath waxing poetic about the makeup and the hair guys going on about extensions and brushes and layers and movement and iconic women. Hair and makeup was always technical and vaguely narrative. Something like "We've blown out the hair and rolled it with a big brush and pinned it in a few places and applied some product but only at the roots to keep it a little messy like a 70's rock chick that's just rolled out if bed ready to go out." Then editors and buyers and models talk about the collection. Everyone loves it and you learn about what women want and how they feel. The Gucci woman does this. The Versace woman is all about that. The Prada woman enjoys experimenting with whatever. I became familiar with all these fashion people. They have suck interesting accents and they are SO into it. They obviously think about fashion all the time.

Then when men.style.com debuted I was all over it. But then I got bored with all the grown man clothes. The only designer I cared about was Dior Homme because it resemble young street style. Those collections were designed by Hedi Slimane who is kind of a legend these day for popularizing this whole thin youth obsessed new rock inspired aesthetic. They say he started skinny jeans.

I think I was responding to the way the skinny awkward bodies were flattered by the clothes. I remember always feeling awkward and uncomfortable in almost everything I wore. They were so form fitting and looked so comfortable.

Two years ago year I got into Raf Simons. This collection was the first bold statement of male androgyny I saw that didn't make me think of drag. It's not about accessories and it's not about sex.

Why is the illusion of one piece feminine? Why are exposed legs feminine? Why do the boots that bear no resemblance to any standard women's shoe seem feminine? It seems to be about vulnerability. The style is futuristic; the mood us vulnerable. The message: In the future a man can be vulnerable. Full collection here.

Then I saw this last year and I'm still not over it.

I mean it seems so feminine. Its almost a little black dress but like the little black dress it's based in minimalism. It is minimal and functional and in that way highly masculine. It is a streamlined jumpsuit. It is a like a wrestling singlet, designed with nothing to grab onto. Yet it has little lapels as if it is suiting. And the boots are pure form, perfect in their lack of detailing. Full collection here.


It is currently Paris Fashion Week for menswear and while I haven't been keeping up with all the shows, the Givenchy presentation was generating a buzz among my Internet fashion sources.

Full collection here.

I'm seeing so many unlikely influences. That white suit has a similar effect to the Pope in all white. The effect is cold and deathly. All white mimics all black. The second look combines a motorcycle jacket, formal wear, and gladiator sandals. Think about the materials: leather, fine cotton, gold. Why are gladiator sandals female footwear now? The third look is all about new styling. The sash over the wife beater is a sot frivolous accessory but it lends a foreign militia feel. Those are leggings under baggy shorts. The leggings are like extended compression shorts. The last look is amazing. The head wear is middle eastern but under a baseball cap it becomes a do rag. Think about how both symbolize violence to Conservative America. Also I'm pretty sure the shirt pulled back like that is a hood thing and it contradicts the covered head. Think about what is covered and what is revealed.

I love the idea of menswear that is unconcerned and unburdened by function. Like art.

My favorite fashion show and one of my favorite videos of all time.

BOY MAN DUDE

Enough about women and the issues they face in this male dominated society. I'm so over it. They just need to grow some balls. I want to talk about man things now. I'm faaaaeerrrddd up!

Some pictures by Jesse Burke:

These images are from the Humble Arts Foundation website where he had a solo show. CLICK HERE
Jesse Burke's website: CLICK HERE

Coincidentally Mr. Burke shot the accompanying portrait of that Mary Boone article.





Also coincidentally Boone poses in front of a painting(the abstraction on the right) by Brice Marden* whose daughter Mirabelle co-owns the recently closed Rivington Arms Gallery which represented Matthew Cerletty, a painter I really like.

"Selfish Grandma" what the fuck??? SO GOOD.



Paddy Johnson reviews boy art:

This came to mind recently when viewing Dirk Skreber's exhibition at Friedric Petzel Gallery in Chelsea. Featuring two vagina-shaped crashed cars impaled on penile poles and bare-breasted paintings of super heroes, the show is the closest thing I’ve seen to pornography lately. I hoped there was more to it than appeared, until I read the press release, which described Skreber’s sculptures as “begging ambivalence.” In other words, they are to be read at face value. One might conclude the vehicle’s fastidiously clean surfaces mean to sanitize the sexual references, which might have some merit were it not such an obvious appeal to a notoriously conservative collectors’ market.

Though accomplished, Skreber’s paintings are similarly empty. Resembling a TV with poor signal, the artist uses foam and tape to create horizontal lines running through the work. In theory, this slows the immediate recognition of the comic book character identities, but so what? The mere act of appropriation neither erases the original misogynistic content, nor distances the artist from its original interpretation. In sum, we’re left with a sanitized vagina car-wrap and a bunch of topless, semi-nameless women. Add to this the voyeuristic mirrors covering the gallery pillars and it’s simply impossible to ignore Skreber’s implied violence and objectification of the female body.

Full review HERE. More images HERE.

How weird is it that they both use demolished cars. I like this better.

Cai Guo-Qiang:

Apparently these sculptures titled "Innoportune" may or may not be political as in they may or may not reference car bombings in the Middle East. So mysterious. And pretty.

Oh, and this happened:

Career Woman!

Still on the topic of female art photographers, the photographers Amy Elkins and Cara Phillips started Women in Photography to bring together...women in photography. They have bi-monthly online exhibitions. Website HERE.

My favorite artist that they featured is Birthe Piontek. Here are some images from her series Sub Rosa.

Amy Elkins came to talk to one of my classes last year and she said that one of the reasons for starting WIP was the reaction to and conversations surrounding an article published in the New York Times about "Gallerinas" or women who work lower level jobs at galleries.

But in a world in which art, fashion, celebrity and money commingle, gallerinas know that their looks — or, at least, their look — can make a difference. Yancey Richardson, the owner of an eponymous Chelsea art gallery, notes that she employs front desk assistants who can answer questions from the public and clients, and also attack a rigorous list of tasks. “You can’t just hire people who are decorative,” she said, “but you can find someone with all those necessary skills and who is beautiful.” Her latest desk assistant is Marla Leigh Caplan, 30, a blue-eyed soft-spoken photographer from Elkhorn, Neb., who studied philosophy at Vassar, has a Master of Fine Arts degree, and worked at three other galleries. As Ms. Caplan learned, her appearance can matter more than her résumé, never mind her thesis on Heidegger. When she interviewed for one job, she recalled, the director shook her hand and, before she said a word, he proclaimed: “Look at her! She’s perfect!”

Full Article HERE

I went to go see a Mickalene Thomas show at the Lehmann Maupin gallery and it was a pretty dazzling experience. It was a huge space with beautiful hardwood floors and the women who worked there were completly gorgeous and absolutely flawless. I asked the woman at the front desk for a price list and then time slowed down and for a few moments there was a complete failure of communication.

Me: Hi. Can I see a price list?
Her: jgkhkdlfgjhlkfgjhkldfghjfgjklgjhkgjh
Me: What?
Her:I'd be happy to help you with anything you have questions about.
Me: Ok... Can I see a price list?
Her:I'd be happy to help you with anything you have questions about.
Me...
Her: Are you interested in a specific piece...?
Me: ...Ooooh...uh...yeah...the large one over there?
Her: That one's 40,000
Jocelyn: Wow
Me:kthanxbye

So awkward. I just wanted to gawk at the prices at my own pace and not in the context of a conversation. I mean obviously I was not going to buy this

Naughty girls (need love too) 2009
Rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel on panel

36'' x 120''

even though I kind of really wanted to. In person the gloss of enamel paint and the textured layering of the rhinestones gave many of the works a sculptural effect. Beyonce probs has this in her living room right now.

Apparently some galleries don't display price lists so they can tailor the price based on the client. Sssssmoooooootttthhhh.

So I read this article on Mary Boone in W Magazine last year. Article HERE. Some interesting bits from the article:

And if you think sexism doesn’t exist in the art world, she asks, why is it that virtually every story written about her in the past 30 years has fixated on her (sexy, sky-high, expensive) shoes?

" ...with her skin tanned from two weeks spent hiking, doing yoga and eating vegan at the Ashram retreat near Santa Monica.

"Meet the new Mary Boone. The dealer who epitomized the hard-charging excesses of the Eighties art market, whose dragon-lady reputation made her a convenient scapegoat for its devastating crash, now improbably says that her mission in life is “helping other people.” Today the pint-size (five feet one, 105 pounds) pit bull of yore donates her thick, tar black hair to Locks of Love..."

Together Boone and her artists redirected the art world’s gaze. Rejecting the Minimalist and conceptual-laden Seventies, they re-energized painting with bold, heavily figurative canvases and made neo-Expressionism the dominant aesthetic. Boone became the queen of SoHo. It was a mantle she did not wear lightly. Boone gained a reputation as aggressive, manipulative and combative. When the crash finally hit, in 1990, she was vilified for tackily hyping her artists in the media, turning them into commodities with stratospheric prices and waiting lists for their work. Whatever her role in overheating the market, she stuck by her suddenly struggling artists during the Nineties chill.

Anyway I thought she sounded awesome so I visited her upper east side gallery under the guise of viewing the Patricia Coffie (recent SVA grad, represent!) show which was pretty sweet.

"Daydreams" 2008

My sister once told me this story about how she was walking down the street in NYC and some crazy yelled at her and probably said "C'mere woman!" but it sounded "Career Woman!" My sister studied economics in college and this whole Gallerina thing reminded me of this article I read in W about hot women being hired as Marketing Executives to use their hot bodies to facilitate financial deals. A few quotes from the article:

“Guys who have a load of money [invested] in these big funds are often pigheaded, type A male personalities,” says one male marketer by way of explaining the estrogen predominance in his field. “They want a hot chick with a nice ass and nice boobs who is going to come in and sell the fund to them. I have a friend in the industry who is drop-dead gorgeous, and even she knows that’s the only reason she has her job.”

Says the curvy blond, “Just last night I had dinner with a potential investor, and he e-mailed me 20 minutes after we left, saying, ‘Great spending time with you tonight. Let’s do it again soon.’ That’s not, like, a professional follow-up note. But,” she adds, “he was nice and cute, so I wrote back. Some guys flirt a lot, and you have to be very careful, because some of them get dirty. You can never get your reputation back.” Another lithe exec complains about men who repeatedly arrange evening meetings without ever actually investing in the funds. “It’s a gray area: We know it’s business, and the men know it’s business, but there is also the allure of attractive, young girls taking them out,” she says.
Such stories are part of the reason intelligent, ambitious women in the hedge fund world are still struggling to be taken seriously. “Marketing is the ghetto where they put the women,” says one woman who heads up her own hedge fund. Adds Levin, “The marketers don’t like that stereotype, but there is a lot of validity to it.” Says the aforementioned male marketer, “I have never, ever seen an ugly person in this role.”

Though they usually don’t receive a cut of a fund’s profits, they are compensated well (marketing directors can make up to $2 million including bonus, while lower-level execs can make between $200,000 and $500,000). And, according to one investor who’s been wooed by hedge fund hotties, there’s another upside to the job: “It’s an easy access point to a rich husband,” he says. “These girls don’t talk to anyone worth less than $50 million.”

So that guy yelling at my sister was probably some pervy investor. Seriously though I'm totally becoming a "Marketing Excecutive". What do cougars invest in?

© Phillip-Lorca diCorcia

© Phillip-Lorca diCorcia

Can we talk about these pictures? Can we talk about how much I love Phillip-Lorca diCorcia's work? Can we talk about how these were commissioned for W magazine? Can we talk about the evil geniuses that must work for their photo department? Can we talk about how the top photo basically describes working in retail? Can we talk about how hard I had to hack the html to rip these off THIS amazing website? Can we talk about how I don't know what the rules are for using images from the internet? We have much to discuss.

Shall we begin?

So I've started his blog mostly because I'm bored and because these days I compulsively link to things in my Facebook statuses. Right now I'm slumming it living in my hometown in Tennessse so until September I'll mostly be discussing abstract concepts and things I experience online. BTW this blog is totally legit complete with the hot profile pic I took when I was trying to be the next face of Sean John and the beautiful banner I made from a photo of an installation that I stole from someone elses blog but photoshopped so its totes FAIR USE.