Among the problems Nabokov’s Lolita poses for the book designer, probably the thorniest is the popular misconception of the title character. She’s chronically miscast as a teenage sexpot—just witness the dozens of soft-core covers over the years. “We are talking about a novel which has child rape at its core,” says John Bertram, an architect and blogger who, three years ago, sponsored a Lolita cover competition asking designers to do better.
Now the contest is being turned into a book, due out in June and coedited by Yuri Leving, with essays on historical cover treatments along with new versions by 60 well-known designers, two-thirds of them women: Barbara deWilde, Jessica Helfand, Peter Mendelsund, and Jennifer Daniel, to name a few. They don’t shy away from frank sexuality, but they add layers of darkness and complication. And like Jamie Keenan’s cover—a claustrophobic room that morphs into a girl in her underwear—they provoke without asking readers to abdicate their responsibility.
(via Recovering Lolita — Imprint-The Online Community for Graphic Designers)
(via bohemea)
(via theladyf)
Sunny Morning - Eight Legs (1997), oil on canvas | artwork by Lucian Freud
(via analmouse)
Well thank you kindly!:]
The Freud’s portrait is self-portrait of the man himself. If you’re not familiar with work of Lucian Freud I highly recommend you to do so!
I find his brute yet realistic style to be very similar to my own preferences regarding painting.
Also, you can see all my personal work under “MY ART STUFF”. Guess I should better organise those tags, sorry for the confusion…
peace:]
This is for you hardcore Nick Cave fans when you’ve got some time to kill. This is a fairly notorious lecture, which he calls “The Secret Life Of The Love Song,” in which he argues that any so-called “love song” which does not acknowledge the dark side of love, the possessiveness and fear and cruelty and manipulation implicit in all relationships, is a dishonest song and perhaps more aptly called a hate song. He has a great deal to say about relationships and songwriting, actually, and he provides some musical accompaniment to his lecture. Trust me, you’ll want to listen to this.
Addendum: This is from the import-only Two Lectures CD, which is looooong out of print by now. I’ve seen used copies go for as high as eighty bucks. So if you’ve got a copy, make sure you hang onto it, okay?
self- portrait
acrylic on cardboard.
…so thats my face right there.
Moebius, Starwatcher II, 1985
“This is truly a magical drawing. It is not perfect—the legs aren’t quite right—but in this case, it doesn’t seem to matter. The face is wonderfully evocative. I can see how someone could fall in love with a face like this. The question that is always asked when it comes to the Starwatcher series is, is the character male or female? The answer is, I don’t know. Maybe it is a man, strong and masculine, yet sensitive and soft like a woman.
A strange energy seem to emanate from the horizon. It happened quite naturally, almost by accident. When I was drawing this picture, I was trying to achieve a certain kind of feeling, so I just let myself be carried by the flow, and this was the result. I gratefully accepted it, almost like a gift. Things like this don’t always happen in art, but when it does, that’s what makes it worthwhile.
The character is sitting by a monument, waiting for a big vessel to take off. There is the book, which is by Jack Vance. The can is a can of paint. You press a button and all the colors come out. The costume is a blend of western and futuristic, Inside the box is a crystal, and it’s a present from a child who lives on this planet, And there is a message in that cube, which says, ‘don’t take all this too seriously!’”
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