Video by William Zoe FitzGerald Bettie’s inspirational 21st century counterpart: Darenzia

The post Bye Bye Bettie Page appeared first on Jewcy.

Well, pop-surrealism has been gradually gaining mainstream acceptance. Mark Ryden sold a painting for a million dollars. His Tokyo gallery exhibited one of his massive canvases at the convention center (oh holy of holies) this year. Juxtapoz became the best selling art magazine in America. And during the election, Shepard Fairey’s Obama portrait was so damn recognizable he got a MAD cover in his honor. At Art Basel, Pop Surrealism owned Friday night. The evening began Scion Party at the Raleigh Hotel. Scion does touring pop-surrealist/graffiti art shows, giving the profits to charity. This year, the theme was self-portraits, and included Ron English’s disturbingly realistic tribute to Uncle Sam.

After we had drunk our champagne and grabbed our swag bags, we went to GenArt’s Vanguard Art Fair, the first art fair devoted exclusively to New Contemporary. Curated by Francesco LoCastro, a linchpin of the Miami art scene, Vanguard had a baffling array of sponsors. Think yogurt, cars, Citibank, and Bombay Sapphire vodka. Yogurt is a surprisingly good party food.
GenArt pulls off the super-luxe Babylon effect generally reserved for films about the death of disco. Models in vintage swimsuits bathed in a giant pool of gin. The chiseled shoulders of Venus Williams floated portrait-bust style over armies of handlers. There were graffiti light sabers and Todd Oldman, synchronized swimming, and that guy from Top Design. Seven damn fine galleries hung their work- including M Modern, Thinkspace, Yves Laroche and Mark Murphy, who was kind enough to hang a painting of mine. A Colin Christian statue towered over socialites like a pagan idol.

Post GenArt, Shepard Fairey took over the Shore Club. The night was enlivened when pickup-douche Mystery showed up, furry-vested posse in tow. Alas, Mystery’s charms were lost on Anna, the FSU art student in town with Carrie Ann Baade. However, she did steal his hat.
The next day, We went to Aqua Wynwood. If Wynwood last year was hot and desolate, this year it lived up to its hype. The massive warehouse that held Aqua Wynwood allowed for far more wall space than was available at Aqua’s South Beach sister. The Shooting Gallery boasted a Shepard Fairey Obama that took up one entire wall. Plus, Travis Louie painted yours truly. Jonathan Levine’s booth was devoted entirely to giant, aquatic Ray Caeser prints and dreamy Xiaoqing Ding.
Outside, a Dutch graffiti artist had made magic all over the walls. As you wandered around Wynwood, Fairey had thrown up art all over the neighborhood, sometimes right next to superman Obamas.
Post Wynwood, nearly every pop-surrealist painter in Miami converged on an overpriced German restaurant. We drew all over the placemats. Now, Basel is done. It’s time for a tally.
Total Fairs Visited: Six. Basel, Bridge, Aqua, Aqua Wynwood, Fountain, Vanguard. Best Fair: Vanguard. With Aqua Wynwood a close second. Total parties attended: Eight
Line That Most Embodies What America Hates About the Art World: "Also cooking? The Station, a fully functioning meth lab that has the whole art world tweaking"- from Basel’s internal newspaper.
Did Depression 2.0 Destroy Everything: No.

The post Blogging Basel – VIPop Surrealism appeared first on Jewcy.

We got in at 9 in the morning on Thursday. At the airport, the TSA demanded to X-ray my see-through neck scarf, and our hotel was a crack den out of central casting. We weren’t sure if the pattern in the bathroom was wallpaper or mold. (No wonder it was so cheap.)

Dodging ticket scalpers, I made my way to the convention center to see if bloggers are established enough to get press passes for Art Basel proper. We are. After presenting an assignment letter and bringing up my first Blogging Basel post on the iPhone, security led me through an elaborate maze of press services, where they gave me an unflattering plastic ID and a swag bag of truly impressive heft.

It was my first time at proper Art Basel. Last year, I confined myself to the fairs my friends could sneak me into. So I had never seen the Babylon of Wealth that existed in the convention center. Reader, picture with me the expensively tanned dowagers, the be-suited men, the free champagne. The TV crews, the Picassos, the Cindy Sherman self-portraits as big as walls. 50% of the art industry, like the T-shirt industry, seemed to consist of portraits of Barack Obama. I didn’t feel classy enough. Not at all.

My aide in Going Places I Don’t Belong was Jennifer Wright, an exceedingly pretty young journalist who I texted as soon as I landed in Miami. She was working for AskMelissa.com, and had just had her snazzy 20s ensemble complimented by Rachel Zoe. She appears all willowy in a polka dot silk dress, and whisks me off to the UBS Lounge to sit with my social betters. Even inside the UBS Lounge there are alternate, more elite lounges with free buffets and Dom Perignon, guarded by security. While 68% of Christie’s last auction went unsold, Basel was packed shoulder to shoulder opening night.

Post-Basel, I went to meet my good angel, the art star Travis Louie, at Aqua Art Fair. While the entirety of Aqua would fit into Mary Boone’s Art Basel booth, it’s still a stunning fair. In a blue, tiled hotel that looks like a swimming pool, girls in pushup bras are doling out Campari, and Travis, whose daguerreotypes-of-monsters style has exploded in the last year, is being mobbed by well-wishers.

Travis guides Fred and me around the fair (collecting a larger and larger entourage along the way). At one New York gallery, he finds two original Colette Calasciones in the back room. Calascione’s one of my favorite artists. Her buttery, oh-so-tight oil paintings are of the sort of beautiful vintagey ladies that are just off enough to bring back Baroque.

Also met Chris Crites, who paints mug shots and hardened 60s stag-mag models on paper bags. They’re tightly rendered, and the colours appealingly juicy, which only contrasts with the profoundly disturbing subjects.

At Cerasoli LeBasse gallery, I met the beautiful Freddi Cerasoli, graffiti artist and curator. Ceraseli talks a bit about the ingrained misogyny of the street art scene before sharing her favorite tip for tagging. "Dress really nice, like you’re going to a party. And bring a guy. That way, if a cop sees you, you can pretend you and him are snogging." Beau Basse, the gallery’s other owner, is displaying a bunch of works on paper from artists that he discovered (a nice change from the endlessly recycled ten people you see in so many pop surrealist galleries).

Me, Fred and Travis go to La Sandwhicherie, the one non-price gouging place to eat on Collins. It’s a sandwich shop behind a gas station. As the night rolls on, we start to run into everyone. First, Eric White and a Nike rep join us. Then, we walk over to a tiny Cuban place that’s transformed into pop surrealist land, with Niagara, Carrie Ann Baade, Justin Giarla, Van Arno and friends spilling across six tables.

Somehow, afterwards, everyone knows to go to Essex.

Art Basel week is part summer camp, part high school reunion for every art scene ever.

Tomorrow: Has Wynwood finally lived up to its rep? Plus- parties!

The post Blogging Basel: Summer Camp for Art Stars appeared first on Jewcy.

I’m an artist.  And for December, South Beach is the Mecca of my people, Basel the hajj.  For four days, the world’s best curators, collectors, and art dealers (not to mention cokeheads, social climbers, and the entire population of hipster Manhattan) erect a temporary city to sell their best work and cement their connections.   Centering on Art Basel proper at Miami’s convention center (an affair so chichi that you have to shell out fifty bucks just to window shop), Basel sprawls out into dozens of fairs, anti-fairs, and installations.  The deco hotels on Collins Ave (South Beach’s main drag) have galleries squatting in every room. Curators hang their best work on the walls and bed, and catch naps in the bathtubs.

Across the bridge, in sun-baked Wynwood (which is desolate in the way that "up-and-coming neighborhoods" are right before the real estate vultures pounce), the hoity-toity Collins fairs do their edgy spin-offs.  You can find galleries from China and Chelsea, street artists tracing shadows.  

But, as with so much of life, the official beat is less important than the parties.  With no bookstores, but a diet named after it, South Beach is a place of aggressive hawt.  Think steroidy men and honey skinned, slim-thighed girls.  When I sat at the beach in ’07, I realized how pasty and plump New Yorkers are by comparison. At the parties last year, I wore sequins till dawn and ran into schoolmates while stumbling stoned down 3AM Collins.  Given the local fauna, I might as well have been in Olympus.

Of course, that was ’07.  In ’08, the economy’s wrecked, and the art world is wondering whether rich folk will still buy into our scene’s sustaining insanity- that fancy wall coverings are worth high sums.

For the next four days, I’ll be your guide to Basel’s depraved and somewhat Byzantine art scene.  Will the collectors shell out?  Will the parties be worth crashing?  Will all this excess actually lead to some of us artists making a more middle class living in the next year?  Will any galleries burn down?

Let’s see what happens.

The post Blogging Basel: Art Excess During Depression 2.0 appeared first on Jewcy.

I learned to draw in a Parisian bookstore. My pen and ink technique comes from hours spent copying Alice in Wonderland and A Tart's Progess. I soon fell in love with the feel of making ink lines- the crackle of the paper, the scratch of the pen nib, the sensual pleasure in drawing a curve.

Back in New York I came across the subject most dear to my heart—artifice. As a model, I work in an industry where girls turn their bodies into art objects. It's a beauty doubly poignant because it's so short-lived. Most girls won't last past thirty. My time as a burlesque dancer showed me plain women emerging from the club's dressing room as goddesses. Through paint, feathers and pasties, they made themselves gorgeous. It's beauty as a garment, a shell, a mask.

In the two time periods I draw from most in my work—Victorian England and Rococo France—people tried to make their entire public lives as artificial as a burlesque dancer's face. My characters, bewigged aristocrats and corseted ladies, are creatures of the polished surface. They're molded by ornament—their corsets and cage skirts—and sometimes trapped inside.

But as with any mask, there's a face underneath. And the face in my work is smirking. For any mask, or mask like society, has a weakness. If you want to crack it, you only have to laugh. Thus, my characters have arched brows and sarcastic smiles. They want to let you in on a secret. It's all terribly silly, isn't it?

See more of Molly's work on her website. 

The post Molly Crabapple appeared first on Jewcy.

The post The Meaning of Nipple Paint appeared first on Jewcy.

I shot with Aaron Hawks a few years ago in San Francisco. I posed in a torturous corset, alternately sprinkled in flour and dowsed in ice water, in Hawk’s freezing cold loft. It was the most brutal shoot I’ve ever done- and I’m insanely proud of the results. Hawks shoots with film, in room sized sets he constructs himself. His work, darkly fetishistic, is objectifying in the best sense of the word- turning the human body into grist for his disturbing visions. I’ve never been good at high-art thinky thoughts, so I’ll let this man’s work speak for itself. Check it out.

The post Photographic Noir appeared first on Jewcy.

For not always rational reasons, digital art feels like cheating to me. Your eyes ache but your hands don't dirty. There's no final object, no wrangling with coloured mud.

Yet, Jason Levesque is one of my favorite artists, digital or otherwise. His work has appeared on the covers of computer design magazines and in international, high art glossies. Dan Savage even had to defend his Dig cover once. Jason's work is a tribute to the eroticism of biology, in all it's wierd, decaying, mucous-ey glory.

If you never thought that scarecrow guts or jellyfish were sexy, think again.

The post All that Creeps and Drips appeared first on Jewcy.

Sooner or later you will meet Mr. Sleazy— probably sooner! He’s got a fast line to convince you and an even faster technique to get your clothes off and get you onto his casing couch. Strange as it may seem, a few of these characters will let you just sat on your back, nude, while they try on your clothes. Your panties, warm with the heat of your body, or your sweater of an expensive, and usually a furry nature, are hot items to them…

That happens at my portfolio reviews ever time.

The post Hollywood Angora appeared first on Jewcy.

The post Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles appeared first on Jewcy.