Sunday, December 12, 2010

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Turned To The Devil By Akmal Shaukat



Seeking knowledge...to his being equated with the Serpent in Genesis encouraging mankind to partake of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

To encourage individuality and freedom of thought, and the quest to raise one's self up despite resistance, through means such as magic and initiative.

To remove any means by which they are controlled or repressed by others and follow the herd, and reject non-governmental authoritarianism.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Love Marilyn Minter By Akmal Shaukat





Her photographs and works often include sexuality and erotic imagery.

Marilyn Minter has been considering representations and ramifications of glamour for the last thirty years, but it is worth considering just what is connoted by the word. Minter, it seems, defines this concept by the book, or at least intuitively leans toward its etymological truth, which aligns glamour with magic spells and illusory attractiveness—never with fictional ideas that propose glamour as some kind of natural condition. All of which is to say that Minter has been plumbing the depths of (al)chemical beauty (and its breakdowns) for a very long time.

In one of her earliest series of work, a group of black-and-white photographs from the late 1960s, Minter went right to the source—her own mother. Snapping pictures of her aging, substance-abusing, bedridden parent, Minter captured the queasy day-to-day undoings and recastings of physical appearance. Obsessed with tasks of pruning and priming, Minter’s mother, clad in nightgown and propped with pillows, refused to let even a stray eyebrow lay seed. The photographs, at once gorgeous and grotesque, made nearly everyone who saw them so uncomfortable that the artist hid them away in a drawer for the next three decades

In conjunction with her practice of photography, Minter makes paintings (enamel on metal), showing a special interest in Photo-Realist methods of representation. Culling imagery from cooking shows, porn videos, and beauty advertisements, the artist posits a visual continuity between seemingly disjunctive sensual experiences. By intentionally conflating the pleasures of cuisine and cunnilingus, Minter renders straightforward yet ambiguous images that shore up the constructed nature of their meanings.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: Kanye West



As fatiguing as it is invigorating, as cold-blooded as it is heart-rending, as haphazardly splattered as it is meticulously sculpted, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an extraordinarily complex 70-minute set of songs. Listening to it... is a laborious process. [...] The 13 tracks... sometimes fuse them together simultaneously. Consequently, the sonic and emotional layers are often difficult to pry apart and enumerate. As the ego and ambition swells, so does the appeal, the repulsiveness, and – most importantly – the ingenuity. Whether loved or loathed, fully enjoyed or merely admired, this album should be regarded as a deeply fascinating accomplishment.