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Francis Bacon

Francis

Excited to view his new exhibition at the Met.

Britain’s bad-boy painter.

Self-taught, controversial, and revered, Francis Bacon was one of the most talented figurative painters of the 20th century. This year, a major traveling retrospective marks the centenary of his birth.

He left home at 16. Banished by his father after being caught wearing his mother’s clothes, Bacon drifted between London, Berlin, and Paris for the next several years — surviving as a gambler and hustler.

Bacon got his start as a designer. He first gained notoriety for his modernist furniture and rugs, but quickly abandoned that career to focus on painting surreal, fragmented subjects, based on found photographs and reproductions.

He immortalized his fellow barflies. From the ’60s onward, Bacon painted twisted visions of his inner circle of drinking pals, including his lover George Dyer, who he first met when Dyer burglarized Bacon’s pad.

View work from Bacon’s traveling retrospective (and visit the exhibition in New York), read three classic interviews, watch video of the artist from the BBC archives, and buy the exhibition catalogue.

Via Paul Laster from FlavourPill

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Outdoor Advertising

Global similarities in creative is hardily surprising, therefore don’t be surprised that tactics for one country often cross over rather nicely. File under similarities [Paris/New York ].

The image on the left is from a NYC bus shelter ad and the one on the right is from a Parisian bus shelter ad. Its interesting to note how global ad culture really is evolving as one. Despite the differences in products and possibly advertising companies, the tactics are relatively similar. Advertising spans all cultures as the dissemination industry no capitalist nation can do without and is thus more or less a global product.

Via publicadcampaign

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James Marsh, Man on Wire

Don’t wobble when you reach the top. This new doc might well strike a chord for the audience, especially those desperately eager to establish ‘why’ and ‘how’ do you go about walking the wire across the 1970’s construction site of the Twin Towers. This was one of the most defining stunts every accomplished by a French climber.

Synopsis: August 7, 1974. A young French man named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire suspended between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. He danced on this wire for an hour with no safety net before he was arrested for what has become to be known as the “artistic crime of the century”.

“Man on Wire” is the perfect example of matching doc director to doc subject. French tightrope walker and juggler Philippe Petit became world-famous when he walked between the two World Trade Center towers, then under construction, on August 7, 1974 — a completely illegal if fantastic act that involved complex preparation and shook up New York City’s police department. (He had to cross back and forth several times to avoid the cops.) Petit had already achieved artistic notoriety for his feats at famous sites like Notre Dame in Paris, but to traverse the air space between what were then the world’s two tallest buildings? It’s not only his unbeatable skill, though, that makes Petit an ideal subject for a doc: He is a ball of fire, a fascinating egomaniac who engages you completely with his energy and confidence. Petit has written several books, including To Reach the Clouds, which recounts the feat in downtown Manhattan.

The full interview with British director James Marsh.

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Smoke without fire

It was in 1966 that Yves Saint Laurent’s introduced his first “le smoking” – a classic three-button dinner jacket, worn with a frilled white silk blouse, tied with a black ribbon at the neck, and mannish trousers featuring a satin side-stripe.

The look – at once androgynous, mysterious and alluring – was immortalized by the late Helmut Newton in 1975, with his black and white photograph of a model in the rue Aubriot in Paris, wearing that season’s “le smoking”, with her hair slicked back and right hand clutching a cigarette. It became one of YSL’s most recognizable signatures.