Allen Jones: the pop artist whose transgressions went too far
"Jones explains the situation, as he sees it. 'For artists of my generation, coming on stream in the Sixties, whatever you did you had to reckon with American gestural abstraction. The problem with figurative art at the time was that it had run out of steam, but the polemic was that you couldn't do it any more, which seemed absurd after 4,000 years of people making representations of each other. To me the Pop movement was incontrovertibly a swing of the pendulum back towards representation. The problem wasn't with representation, it was the age–old one – with the language. And the language had run out of steam. Using urban imagery as source material revitalised figurative painting, without a doubt. And recently the main thrust of the avant–garde from Basquiat and Schnabel up to Koons and company has been figuration with a vengeance.'"
(Andrew Lambirth 1 November 2014, The Spectator)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Do Look Now: A playful meditation on sexual pleasures
"From academic and cinephile Helen Yeates comes this 16–minute mash–up of sexual and erotic scenes that creatively pushed the sensual boundaries of cinema, challenging audiences over the last four decades.
An ironic intercutting of arousing and transgressive scenes, Do Look Now creates a provocative interplay of love, sex, desire, humour, nostalgic yearning and cultural memory.
Part postmodern pastiche, part cut–up passion project, Yeates's creation explores the contours of female eroticism and sexual politics, playing with the way context can lend fresh meaning and nuance to sexual depictions."
(Brisbane International Film Festival, 2012)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Pink Flamingos: a provocative celebration of otherness
"'Pink Flamingos was an antihippie movie made for hippies who would be punks in two years. It's a pothead movie. I wrote it on pot.' – John Waters"
(Jeff Jackson, DreamlandNews)
Fig.1 John Waters (1972). trailer for "Pink Flamingos".
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Les Enfants Terribles: Illustrator Robert Williams
"This alternative art movement found its most congealing participant in one of America's most opprobrious and maligned underground artists, the painter, Robert Williams. It was this artist to brought the term 'lowbrow' into the fine arts lexicon, with his ground breaking book of 1979, The Lowbrow Art of Robert Williams. It was from this point, that the seminal elements of West Coast Outlaw culture slowly started to aggregate."
(Robert Williams)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
MTV Buzz: avant-garde television
"Buzz is a long forgotten MTV experiment from 1990. In 1988, Mark Pellington developed an idea for a non–linear collage program he called "Buzz". Created in partnership with MTV Europe producer/director Jon Klein, Buzz was an ambitious 13–part global series commissioned by MTV and channel 4 (UK). It was hailed by critics as ground–breaking, adventurous television. This is episode 1 of the 4 episodes that have managed to survive on an old VHS tape to be digitized for your edification in this modern, digital age."
(Black Flag Party, YouTube Channel)
Fig.1 Buzz Episode 01 Segment 01
Fig.2 Buzz Episode 01 Segment 02
Fig.3 Buzz Episode 01 Segment 03
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
