“King’s Folly” an object by Ivan Venkov

Ivan Venkov created his elegant jeweled bijou, in homage to Joris-Karl Huysman’s novel, À rebours (aka ‘Against Nature’), in which Des Esseintes, who was a gentleman of refined sensibility, an exquisite arbiter of taste, came into possession of a tortoise whose shell he had embedded with jewels to create an ornamental pet.

The detail of Venkov’s art object elaborates on the style of Fabergé eggs which exult in opulent intricacy. The truncated rear of the deer is fitted with a jeweled mechanism and a system of crystal cabinetry with an ambiguous orifice, which presumably acts as the insertion point for a key or a coin. The integration of the machine into the organic flesh of the animal alludes to a parasitic invasion – but one that completes the motion of the running deer as a mechanical windup with a symbiotic consumption of energy.

“King’s Folly” an object by Ivan Venkov

“King’s Folly” an object by Ivan Venkov

“King’s Folly” an object by Ivan Venkov

“King’s Folly” an object by Ivan Venkov

“King’s Folly” an object by Ivan Venkov

“King’s Folly” an object by Ivan Venkov

View more Ivan Venkov’s art and more images here.

Elizabeth Taylor Wearing a Chador at the Shah Cheragh Shrine, Shiraz , 1976: © Firooz Zahedi - Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York

© Firooz Zahedi - Dressed as an Odalisque II, 1976, Printed 2011 C-print 48 x 36 in/ 121.9 x 91.4 cm, Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery

The muse of many artists, including Warhol, the late actress Elizabeth Taylor reveals a more candid side in an exhibit of photographs by Firooz Zahedi, in which she returns to the glamorous age of Cleopatra. A show with over 40 photographs from the actress’s travels to Iran in 1976, is on loan from LACMA, and can be seen at Leila Heller’s new downtown gallery till October 29th.

Firooz Zahedi had left Iran as a child, but together with Taylor, he returned to his country to photograph the culture made exotic once more through the lens of a visitor. Together they traveled to Persepolis, the once destroyed ancient Persian capital, to Shiraz, and to the tile-decked town of Isfahan, where Taylor, after visits to the bazaars, purchased the costumes for her transformation to an oriental odalisque.

Elizabeth Taylor in Persepolis with view of the Tent City in the background. © Firooz Zahedi Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York

Before her death last March, Elizabeth Taylor said to her close friend Firooz, “Seeing these photographs brings back fond memories of my visit to Iran, a country blessed with a rich and colorful culture that dates back many centuries.” Zahedi, who now lives in Los Angeles, started his career in New York during the mid-1970s working with Andy Warhol and Interview.

Elizabeth Tayolor's BVLGARI Emerald Suite being auctioned at Christie's, New York

The BVLGARI Emerald Suite, a suite of emerald and diamond jewelry, were gifts from Richard Burton from 1962-1967. The necklace alone is estimated at $1,000,000 – 1,500,000. Elizabeth Taylor began her work against AIDS in the early 1980s and in October 1991, Taylor established The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF). A portion of the monies generated by exhibition admissions, events and select publications related to the sales will be donated to her AIDS Foundation.

© Firooz Zahedi, Dressed as an Odalisque I, 1976, printed 2011, Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery

Elizabeth Taylor at Tomb of Saadi - Shiraz © Firooz Zahedi Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York

Elizabeth Taylor Seated in a Meditation Room - Shiraz © Firooz Zahedi Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York

Elizabeth Taylor Smoking a hookah at the Tea House © Firooz Zahedi Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York

Elizabeth Taylor in Chador at the Shah Chirag Shrine -Shiraz © Firooz Zahedi Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York

More information:
Elizabeth Taylor Foundation
Christies Auction of Liz Taylor jewels
Leila Heller Gallery Chelsea: 568 West 25th Street New York City

Glasstress: © Jaume Plensa, Glassman, 2004

Glasstress is an arts project that sponsors and exhibits artists, architects, designers working in the medium of glass – The exhibition in Venice was conceived by Adriano Berengo of the Berengo Centre for Contemporary Art and Glass, and produced by Venice Projects and the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) of New York, who will be hosting the exhibition at a future date.

Works were exhibited by artists Jaume Plensa, Vik Muniz, Nabil Nahas, Kiki Smith, Doug and Mike Starn, Pharrell Williams, Zaha Hadid (whose work was not completed in time) and Erwin Wurm among many others. Plensa’s glass body above with its blood red fluid is a reminder of the flow of gravity after death.

Installation View at Glasstress Venice 2011

© Pharrell Williams - Glasstress

© Patricia Urquiola Glasstress 2011

© Luke Jerram, E Coli - Glasstress: 2011

Luke Jerram’s glass Escherichia coli, (commonly abbreviated E. coli), is a ‘Gram-negative rod-shaped bacterium that is commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms (endotherms)’.

© Luke Jerram - Glasstress: 2011

© Javier Perez Glasstress

© Javier Perez Glasstress

Glasstress: © Maria Roosen

Glasstress: © Marya Kazoun

http://www.glasstress.org

Dress, The Horn of Plenty, autumn/winter 2009–10 Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø / Art + Commerce

It is important to look at death because it is a part of life. It is a sad thing, melancholic but romantic at the same time. It is the end of a cycle – everything has to end. The cycle of life is positive because it gives room for new things: Alexander McQueen

What could be more important on a day that began with a news blitz that Obama had nabbed Osama? Well, fashion of course… It was the Metropolitan Museum’s launch of the Alexander McQueen retrospective, Savage Beauty that crowds flocked to preview.

Stella McCartney at The Metropolitan Museum, NYC, 2011 photo: Kisa Lala

The show is an arcade of McQueen’s enchanting and voluptuous grotesqueries, highlighting his brilliant imagination and passion for exotic fabrics and exquisite tailoring. “Beauty can come from the strangest of places, even the most disgusting of places,” said McQueen, revealing the many flavours of inspirations behind his genius.

Andrew Bolton the Curator of the Costume Institute said, “My thesis started with a tattoo on McQueen’s upper right arm, “Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.” A quote from a soliloquy in Midsummer Night’s Dream in which Helena ponders the transforming power of love.

Sarah Burton, McQueen’s protegee, who now steers the fashion house since the designer’s suicide last year, refused to hold court on the Royal dress, but was there to pay tribute instead to her mentor.

“When I think of him, I think of red roses,” began Stella McCartney, talking about the parallel career she had with her friend Lee (McQueen) in learning dress-making. “As designers we had very different approaches. So many things we shared and some things we totally disagreed on.” She went on to add that their camaraderie was “cheeky, filthy in the best sense of the word,” and that she was thrilled to see the show at the Met, which was a “far journey from the East End of London,” referring to McQueen’s under-privileged past, and perhaps dismissing it’s latent influence on the designer’s creativity.

Bill Cunningham photographing at Savage Beauty - Alexander McQueen retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph Kisa Lala

Alexander McQueen (British, 1969-2010) Ensemble, The Girl Who Lived in the Tree, autumn/winter 2008–9 Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø / Art + Commerce

The exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum’s second-floor Cantor Galleries, features approximately 100 ensembles and 70 accessories from McQueen’s prolific 19-year career, referencing the exaggerated silhouettes that influenced him from the 1860s, 1880s, 1890s, and 1950s.

Savage Beauty curator Andrew Bolton at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph Kisa Lala

Alexander McQueen (British, 1969-2010) Ensemble, Plato’s Atlantis, spring/summer 2010 Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø / Art + Commerce

The show samples from McQueen’s Couture shows, Highland Rape (Fall 1995-96), Number 13 (spring 1999), VOSS (spring 2001), Irere (spring 2003), Plato’s Atlantis (spring 2010), and Angels and Demons (autumn/winter 2010-11).

Alexander McQueen (British, 1969-2010) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph Kisa Lala

Alexander McQueen (British, 1969-2010) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph Kisa Lala

The show is divided into themes: “The Romantic Mind” examines his tailoring and patternmaking skills. “Romantic Gothic” highlights McQueen’s historicism, and the Victorian Gothic, life and death. “Romantic Nationalism” looks at McQueen’s patriotic impulses, his Scottish heritage. “Romantic Exoticism” explores the influence of other cultures on the designer’s imagination. “Romantic Primitivism” captures McQueen’s idea of the “noble savage,” while “Romantic Naturalism” considers his interest in nature.

Alexander McQueen (British, 1969-2010) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph Kisa Lala

Alexander McQueen (British, 1969-2010) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph Kisa Lala

Alexander McQueen (British, 1969-2010) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph Kisa Lala

Hamish Bowles at Barneys 2011 - Photo: Dale Posner

Daphne Guinness at Barneys in Alexander McQueen before the Met Gala, 2011 - Photo: Dale Posner

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty – May 4 – July 31, 2011 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art – 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028-0198

Illustration by Ernst Haeckel, German naturalist, philosopher, physician, and artist.

Proteus by David Lebrun, is an animated meditation based on the illustrations of biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) and an exploration of the visions of 19th century painters, graphic artists, photographers and scientific illustrators.

In the 19th century the unexplored oceans presented as much of a futuristic frontier as inter-planetary expeditions of today, and Heckel’s drawings offer visions of an alternate organic universe of complex geometries – organisms with fantastic architectural features that seem to evolve, replicate and reproduce structures of great beauty with purported anatomical accuracy.

Illustration by Ernst Haeckel. Radiolarian, From the film Proteus, by David Lebrun

These kaleidoscopic realities, which could equally translate into 3D CGI, suggest to me the kernels for alternate architectural spaces.

Illustrations by Ernst Haeckel.

Haeckel and Colleague - Scientist and Artist

Blossiming at the intersection of art and science, the creature in Heckel’s more than four thousand renderings, depicted with infinite variations, is the radiolarian, a one-celled organism considered one of the earliest forms of life. The film-maker David Lebrun who has worked with bringing motion to European, Mayan and Tibetan signs and symbols, animates Heckel’s artwork adding a dynamic element to these jewel-like snowflakes. Lebrun also weaves in mythology, poetry and cultural history to make this film more than just a meditative and ambient portrait.

Illustration by Ernst Haeckel. Radiolarian, From the film Proteus, by David Lebrun

By Michelle Cheung

Derrick Cruz of Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons

“Like paradoxical black sheep and prodigal son” wrote Anatole Broyard in his autobiographical tale, “Kafka Was the Rage,” as he described the outcasts and rejects, who lived in Greenwich village after the Second World War. When Derrick Cruz read these words more than five years ago, he knew right away that it would help name and shape the story for his accessories brand.  Broyard’s words captured Cruz’s repatriation to New York as an adult.  “Like paradoxical black sheep and prodigal sons,” he said, “we all come here [to New York] kind of outcasts, being rejected, seeking something new, seeking redemption of some sort. When I saw that line, I knew that was going to be the name and, aesthetically, it became more about archetypes that, in my head, were both wise and stubborn at the same time.”

Black Bighorn

Five years later, Cruz has made Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons a much-coveted jewelry and lifestyle accessories brand. Inspired by his Native American heritage and aesthetic inclinations for funerary and alchemical imageries, Cruz’s work looks deeply into the soul of the past and passes it on for our modern world.  He tells stories through objects that teeter between art and craft. In his words, “It’s artful craft with the goal of blurring the line of kitsch, craft, and art, in order to create a sense of wonder. The main goal being is what does it say? Why does it feel like it has an energy of its own?” As we possess one of his creations, he gifts us a catalyst to add on to each handcrafted story that he has initiated.

The book box, for example, has been an early theme that Cruz has used repeatedly in his repertoire. Concealing a chain of curated charms, the book is sometimes used as packaging. To him, it is a literal representation of his desire to tell and inspire a story through his work.  He explained, “I wanted the packaging to immediately emote here’s the story that you need to read or you need to add to or you need to make. That’s why, in the packaging of the book, you open it up and the necklace is inside. It’s your story now, the moment you put it on.”

Abandoned Comb Amulet

Cruz continues to push his narrative with each new piece he conceives. In “A New Hive,” he starts a conversation about bee extinction. He created the “Abandoned Comb Amulet” described as a honeycomb necklace encased in hexagonal sugar-glass pyramid filled with New York rooftop honey. In this piece, Cruz has made his story more interactive by giving the owner the responsibility to make a choice. “You have to make the decision—do you love this as an object or what’s inside more?” said Cruz. He then added, “The story is that we make the decision everyday with the way we treat the environment. The reason bees are disappearing is because we decided that we could tear through our environment to get certain things at whatever expense necessary. So, that was the story there. You have to make the decision yourself in this tiny little world. Do I love this beautiful thing or do I break it to get the gold?”

Cruz’s stories are enchanting, hypnotizing, complex, involved, and truly personal. It wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to say that any of his creations is like a fine book, a rare and prized possession that, if not old, has an old soul. It is perched quietly on your bookshelf for nobody else but you to treasure and enjoy. Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons’s storytelling pieces, according to Cruz, are evolving and getting better. When asked what is to come, Cruz replied with excitement. “I’m thinking about the universe now,” he said. “I’m thinking Carl Sagan; I’m rewatching Cosmos. I think I’ve got something but I can’t let that out of the bag yet.”

Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons showroom and workshop in NYC