Actress, musician, and photographer Sasha Grey certainly didn’t take the traditional path to fame. Best known as one of the adult-film industry’s biggest banner names, Grey made a huge splash in the porn world almost immediately after filming her first scenes at the age of 18. Five years later, Grey has officially stepped away from the X-rated side of on-camera appearances, focusing instead on traditional acting, modeling, experimental music (with her band aTelecine), and photography. Along the way, she starred in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, picked up a recurring role on Entourage, posed for Terry Richardson, featured in videos by the Smashing Pumpkins and the Roots, and modeled for American Apparel.
In our exclusive interactive video interview, Grey discusses her debut photo book, Neü Sex&, her upcoming “black metal” film, the idea of porn as performance art, and what art form she wants to tackle next.
Celebrities must get tired of photo shoots really fast. They’ve always got to sit on some swing and pretend to laugh, scowl while an industrial fan blows in their face, or lounge on a fancy Victorian sofa and feign disinterest. And it’s not just the furniture and facial expressions that are boring; eventually, these photos also aid in making their public image go stale. It’s no surprise, then, that so many of them have produced some darker images in collaboration with edgier photographers. Despite how inevitable they may be, the content of many of these violent, twisted, and morbid images have us squirming in our seats a little — should we feel fascinated, repulsed, or offended? After the jump, help us decide with some recent and notorious photos that we can’t get out of our brains.
Taschen and Phaidon. Two art publishing houses with two very distinct reputations. So don’t you think it’s high time for a face-off between the two? Good! Let’s begin with the Collector’s Edition wars.
Benedikt Taschen turned 50 this past February and his debaucherous party was written up in The New Yorker a few days ago. The cult lowbrow publisher never fails to shock and titillate, and his aim to create lasting, limited-edition books has made him a hero to many. On Taschen’s website, Benedikt writes that he “sensed early on that books could open doors to different worlds, and that a world full of artists and free-minded spirits was the world I wanted to be part of.”
The venerable Phaidon Press is now in its 88th year, and it launched by printing a large format Van Gogh monograph in 1936, which sold out within two days of publication. On its website, Nigel Spivey, a lecturer in classical art at Cambridge, writes that Phaidon is named after Plato’s middle-period dialogues on the immortality of the soul. “By means of beauty, beautiful things become beautiful,” Socrates says to Phaidon and company. Which is one way of putting it, we suppose.
The gloves are off, and the niceties have been done away with. Let’s brawl!
If only Terry had shopped is glasses onto Gaga, then this Freaky Friday moment would have been a lot more believable. According to the New York Post, the pair were working together on a “raunchy” new ad campaign for Supreme, an NYC-based clothing and skateboard line. Click through to see the original photo, along with a slightly racy behind-the-scenes video from the shoot.
On November 5, the fifth annual NY Art Book Fair opens at P.S.1 in New York. Presented by Printed Matter, the weekend-long fair brings together 200 international presses, booksellers, antiquarian dealers, artists, and publishers, and offers special project rooms, exhibitions, screenings, book signings, and performances.
Of the many presses that will be involved in the fair, we’ve compiled a list of ten exciting publishers that you have most likely not heard of, but should know about. They produce art books, limited artist editions, zines, comics, posters, chapbooks, original web books, freely accessible online archives, and exhibitions. Some focus on emerging artists and street art, while others reprint the long-lost work of established artists. And if you have the opportunity to come to the fair, you can take in some of the special projects such as the Zine-Trade-Meet-Up or Goteblüd’s exhibition of more than six hundred Riot Grrrl zines, with a working photocopy station.
Today at Flavorpill, we questioned the necessity of Glee star Lea Michele posing in her underwear for a creepster photographer like Terry Richardson in GQ. We eyed these beautiful chandeliers made from old bike parts. We listened to Mark Ronson’s cover of Arcade Fire’s “We Used to Wait.” We were confused by the Beast’s striped horns in this Thai rip-off of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast — which incidentally made this list of the top 10 animated children’s movies of all time. We realized that most of the TV shows we grew up watching would make appropriate names for emo bands now. We added Apple’s new MacBook Air — which Steve Jobs described as, “What would happen if a MacBook and an iPad hooked up.” — to our wish list. We got a preview of The Situation’s upcoming book, an excerpt from a chapter entitled “Creeping in da Club and Elsewheres.” And finally, we were able to visualize what a cubicle full of Twinkies would look like thanks to this photo. Do you think there’s any chance that it’s real?
Vice‘s annual photo issue is on stands now (this year’s theme: “Still Lifes”), and it contains eye candy from the likes of Spike Jonze, Tim Barber, Ryan McGinley, Catherine Opie, and Terry Richardson. To help celebrate its release, the magazine is staging a week-long exhibition of work by one of its favorite lensmen, pro skateboarder Jerry Hsu. Preview a few of his photos from The Torture Never Stops after the jump, and click here to explore all of the work featured in the new issue.
Yesterday Terry Richardson posted some pictures from his photo shoot with a mullet-ed Kanye West and his model girlfriend, Amber Rose. While Hipster Runoff recently speculated that Kanye and Amber are no longer together, these images are pretty intimate — there’s even some head licking involved. Analyze their body language after the jump and decide for yourself whether Kanye and Amber are still Facebook official or if it’s complicated.
Thanks to our friends at Fader, we recently discovered a new blog worth bookmarking: The Unknown Hipster. New York-based Parisian illustrator and author Jean-Phillipe Delhomme is taking back the term for bearded lovelies everywhere (sorry Gawker, but The Unknown Fauxhemian just doesn’t have the same ring to it), posting suggested cultural outings, musings on spirituality, and even some pieces of original artwork, like the self-portrait you see here. We’re charmed, and have but one complaint — we wish he’d update a lot more often. Click through for more of his lovely illustrations, complete with a cameo by Terry Richardson.
