Bettina Rheims Scooter LaForge Michael Schmidt Claudia Summers

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o
N 12
FALL 2014
Bettina Rheims
Scooter LaForge
Michael Schmidt
Claudia Summers
Christina Oxenberg
Jenna Torres
Luis Pedro de Castro
Duncan Hannah
Marcus Leatherdale
12
Omen Magazine
Omen is a visual online magazine, an international showcase for multimedium creativity. Paying homage to the strikingly visual in art, photography,
fashion and design, Omen also presents literature, music, hybrid and
interstitial forms. The magazine aspires to explore and expose a vast array
of artistically forceful and thought-provoking work, much of which is off the
commercial radar, and that often eludes simple and hierarchal classification.
Whether the artists are up-and-coming, widely recognized, or decidedly
underground, Omen focuses on the distinctive creativity of their work, the
unifying context being the power of art to inspire. To this end, the magazine
curates and juxtaposes a heterogeneous collection from sources and
contributors around the globe for a community that transcends geographic
parameters. Uniting the Omen audience is its enthusiasm for that which,
however renegade or variant in form, might be considered “beautiful.”
Marcus Leatherdale – Art Editor / AD
Jorge Serio – Fashion editor
James Caldwell – Graphic editor
Correspondents
Jorge Socarras – NYC Art Writer
Art Correspondents
Alexandra C Anderson – NYC
Martin Belk – London
Paul Bridgewater – NYC
Walt Cessna – NYC
Bunny Oliver – LA
Andrea Splisgar – Berlin
Fashion Correspondents
Kim Johnson – NYC
Jonathan Daniel Pryce – London
Michael Schmidt – LA
Rebecca Weinberg – NYC
Cover
Happy Skull
Scooter LaForge
Literary correspondents
Christina Oxenberg – NYC
Claudia Summers – NYC
www.theomenmag.com
© 2010-2014 theOMENmag. All Rights Reserved.
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Editor’s Note
photo: Pedro Matos
I am very excited to present the Twelfth Issue of Omen. After some months
of rethinking and redesigning the magazine, I feel confident that the final
result has been worth the wait and work. For our previous followers, the
new look of Omen should prove more pleasing overall, and the new format
much friendlier, as the magazine is now viewable on tablets and other
compatible devices. New visitors I hope will find the content of Omen 12
captivating enough to impel your anticipating future issues. To this end, I
have the pleasure of introducing and thanking Omen’s new Graphic Editor
James Caldwell, who has spearheaded the visual renaissance of Omen, and
is committed to propelling it forward in a manner that optimally displays our
featured artists.
Contents
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25
39
67
77
83
85
99
127
151
Bettina Rheims
Scooter LaForge
Michael Schmidt
Claudia Summers
Christina Oxenberg
Jenna Torres
Luis Pedro de Castro
Duncan Hannah
Marcus Leatherdale
All artists online
Since the first issue launched in 2010, Omen has presented a kaleidoscopic
array of work from over a hundred diverse artists spanning the visual arts,
written word, and music. If there’s one thing their work has shared in
common it is the capacity to draw the viewer/reader/listener into their own
vision. This then is what I would posit as the Omen mission: a continuous
reaching for that which makes us see beyond ourselves. Omen 12 bodes
well for this promise with a fantastic international lineup.
I am also pleased to welcome new contributor Alexandra C. Anderson, who
joins us as a New York City Art Correspondent as well as Claudia Summers’
new short story series. I am especially grateful to our ongoing contributors for
their patience during the interim preceding the new issue. My many thanks
to all who have participated in the realization of Omen 12, and to you who
read this for completing its realization. I look forward to our continuing journey
through future issues.
Marcus Leatherdale
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Héroïnes
Bettina
Rheims
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Written on the Skin
by Catherine Millet
According to Willem de Kooning, « flesh is what oil painting was invented for
». Now, while photography inherited many of the functions once performed
by painting (bearing witness to history, registering the physiognomy of each
new generation, satisfying curiosty about the exotic and the picturesque,
etc.), there is one that it seems to have neglected, namely, the representation
of flesh as we see it, in its enveloppe of skin.
And yet photography is considered the great medium for rendering surface
and appearance. Not that is has failed to take a close interest in nude bodies.
But, to the best of my knowledge, it has yet to approach the surface of the
human body a doggedly as the aggressive appetence of De Kooning or the
patient pictorial sedimentations of Lucian Freud. Apart from the occasional
spray of freckles or a vague scar seen here or there, photography nearly
always unifies skins, smoothes bodies, as if the grain of the skin was fated to
be absorbed in the grain of the photograph. Except that now Bettina rheims
has decided to go beyond this limitation of her medium and to compete with
painting in what is its very raison d’être. For these portraits of the women she
calls her Héroïnes – models from previous sessions or people she met – she
photographs women who moved her : beautiful, bedecked, moving, and with
their skin. Which means : with all those little blotches you sometimes get on
the surface, even when young, with all the irregularities of the complexion,
those beauty spots that are not always so beautiful and those little spots, the
granularity, the down, the hair on the forearms and legs, the blue, sometimes
slightly swollen veins and the eye’s rings, the wrinkles, when they have them,
the roughness of a heel, a scar, the trace of a scratch or what looks like the
fine groove left by the elastic of the panties. None of these imperfections is
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really offputting, even when underscored by make-up. For these are ordinary
flaws and if the beholder notices them it is because the bodies on which
they appear belong to women who are usually idealised. Rheim’s heroines
are actresses, models and dancers She decided not to call them « icons », a
word she finds too hackneyed, but that is really what they are, according to
our current aesthetic criteria : « icons of beauty ».
Their finery is on a par with the presence of their epidermis in all its uneven
reality. Tulle, voile satin, lace and pleats, beads and sequins all bespeak
expensive dresses, haute couture dresses, but as if these dresses wer taken
from a trunk found in an attic. They are crumpled, somewhat tired, seemingly
thrown on any old how – but in fact in keeping with their artful reinterpretation
by Jean Colonna – and this makes some of these « héroïnes » look like
young girls caught dressing up in mother’s clothes. The dress worn by Rona
Hartner is tightened around her bust with a strip of sticking plaster, just like
the one tied into an elegant bow around her waist. Eva Ionesco’s shoulder
straps are maintained with sailor-tape that shines as much as her oily skin.
But even in these situations, these beauties, displayed without flattery,
or who, when veiled, seem more got up than really dressed up, still have
sufficient grace in their gestures and expressions, sufficient sophistication
in their postures (the poses of Irina Lazareanu and Natasa Vojnovic recall
the Virgin at Golgotha), in their choice of accessories and even in the way in
which their hair is tousled, to offer a marked contrast with the setting. This
simply comprises a concrete wall and floor crudely daubed with grey and
a big stone that serves as a primitive pedestal for the model or, when she
nestles up against it or kisses it, as an impassive partner.
Rheims explains this setting by referring to a photograph of Giacometti’s
studio. She also says that she found the set-up used for this series of
portraits in ancient representation of Melancholy – « a woman alone, sitting
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on a cork ». To pursue this line of thought, what was it that Giacometti
built up in his Spartan studio, if not figures continuously done and undone,
simultaneously shaped and worn by the artist’s fingers ? And what is
preying on the minds of those beautiful allegories of Melancholy, if not the
uncertainty that hangs over human existence ? And something of this doubt
that lives in the gaze of all these heroines – compounded with gravity in one
case, slipping towards sadness in another, or expressing expectation or
questioning (only one of them is smiling) – is communicated to the person
contemplating them. The viewer is disoriented. Having fairly quickly if more
or less clearly recognised theses creatures as symbols of beauty, he will
be annoyed at letting imself be distracted by the scores of littles flaws that
compromise their perfection – all the more so because, if he concentrates
on this finely detailed mode of vision, he will lose sight of the body as a
sculptural whole. This effect is reinforced by the make-up, which, rather than
underscoring the features, tends to « blur » them.
The vision, like that of an overly red knee, of an incongruous bandage on
the toes or fingers, or of ill-fitting clothing, inspire unease here when such
things would hardly have been noticed on a more banal figure. In fact, a more
provocative style of presentation – which the artist chaining the bodies to the
roch, say, or disfiguring the models – would have been easier to interpret in
terms, say, of a dramatic conflict between Beauty and Evil that would strike
pity or fear into viewer. But these images never edge towards the tragic or the
morbid, nor slip into anything perverse or trashy. On the contrary they manage
quite remarkably to sustain an extreme and utterly new kind of tension
between idealism and prosaicism. Seeing them, we are inclined to picture
these women in their finery as the kind of fantasy figures they could easily
have been, and at the same time we are drawn in by the stunning precision
with which, for the first time perharps, they are bodied forth before us.
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Are we alwas aware of what it is that a portrait demands from the artist’s
relations to his model, of this factor that no doubt contributes as much to
the quality of the photos as the relation between director and actor does
to a performance of film ? So, all praise here to the artist who managed to
earn the trust of her models, and get them to reveal themselves, and to the
models who let down their defences, let themselves be stripped of the codes
of representation that usually protect them. These women, most of whom are
professionally used to putting on different identities, here resume their own in
front of Rheim’s lens.
Moreover – and this is what is so touching – they resume that identity no in
order to affirm their own carnal seduction but, on the contrary, to expose
the fragility of that flesh and even – dare I say it ? – it’s fatal subjection to
processes of corruption, however benign at this stage.
The relation between the artist and her models result in photographic works,
each of wich bears a title – the name of the model concerned. Speaking of
a photograph of a woman taken by David Octavius Hill in the 1840’s, Walter
Benjamin observes that there is in the subject’s face « something that can
never be reduced to silence, and that insistently calls on us the name of the
person who lived there, who is still real there, and who will never entirely be
absorbed into art ». But what if the art of the photographer was, precisely, to
make the irreducible « something » visible ?
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Collection
Scooter
LaForge
By Walt Cessna
Scooter LaForge is the rare artist whose appeal ranges from the trend seeking
streets to the lofty echilons of fine art. His neo-surrealist/cartoon abstract
paintings have earned him the respect of esteemed collectors worldwide while
his wildly popular line of custom silk screened & hand painted tee-shirts are
worn by a wide and varied range of all age hipsters willing to worship at the
house of LaForge working it on the runway known as life.
Recent collaborations with David Dalrymple, Klye Brincefield of StudMuffin NYC
for CONVERSE and a long running exclusive with the legendary Patricia Field all
provide several options for lovers of the ever growing LaForge brand. AWESOME!!!
Favorite Food: Sushi Favorite Cartoon: Space Ghost
Favorite Treat: Watermelon Favorite Place: The Forest
Favorite Time of day: 8am Favorite Movie: Desperately Seeking Susan
Favorite Destination: Tahiti w Gazelle Favorite Ice Cream: Peanut Butter Cup
Favorite Cause: HUMAN AND ANIMAL RIGHTS
Favorite Color: Beige
Represented by Munch Gallery – NYC
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Collection
Michael
Schmidt
by Walt Cessna
All Photos courtesy of the Michael Schmidt Collection
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Michael Schmidt is truly one of the last rock stars of American fashion and
one of the few designers who actually hand crafts each of his incredible
designs. Invoking the legacy of 60’s legend Paco Rabane, Schmidt’s first
styles were painstakingly made by hand assembling soda can pop tabs into
short, shimmering mini dresses. It completely fits that he started around
the same time Stephen Sprouse was coming to notoriety. Like Sprouse,
Schmidt absorbed everything he could from the worlds of rock n roll and
nightlife, which in turn inspired his aesthetic. Schmidt is a designer who may
stay true to his roots, but consistently evolves into new mediums, techniques
and embellishment. The young man who turned soda can tabs and safety
pins into couture is the older, wiser man who creates the first 3D dress and
debuts it on the ultimate visual icon Dita Von Teese. Schmidt has dressed all
the major stars, but remains the same laid back, grungy yet glam guy that
I first met in the Michael Todd Room at The Palladium zipping around on a
skateboard. The ladies on his arm have always been an inspiration, from Lisa
E. (Edelstein) in the 80’s to Dita now, Schmidt has always been a designer
smart enough to realize that it takes a fierce diva to carry off his usually one
of a kind designs. Unlike some of his contemporaries, he prefers to atelier
to the red carpet and for the most part lets his creations take center stage.
Likely one of the reasons that 30 years into his design career he has never
wavered from his personal style nor made trendy attempts at main stream
design. When you see Debby Harry rocking one of his delicate yet dangerous
designs you are immediately struck by the perfect marriage between a
powerful performer and an equally strong visual. His creations work best on
women who embrace their personal style, who wear leather like silk, chain
mail like chiffon and 3D dresses as if they were an everyday thing. The words
simple and basic traded for intricate and beyonder, Schmidt takes his sweet
time and pays lavish attention with each piece, ensuring that a masterpiece
of design is in the making. And inherently, he continuously succeeds.
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What was your very first fashion inspiration or moment?
Watching TV as a kid in the 70’s, I loved Bob Mackie’s creations for Cher.
She would make her entrance in a simple wrap and then fling it off with
a flourish to expose some insane beaded fantasy, and I would lose it
every time. Together Bob and Cher perfected the art of the Reveal. I don’t
understand why more drag entertainers don’t use that classic burlesque trick.
How did your nightclub life in the 80’s inspire your designs?
Clubs like Boy Bar, Danceteria, Area and Palladium were the hothouses when
I arrived in NYC and dressing up was how we distinguished ourselves. We had
no money, of course, so we had to be inventive and I learned to make materials
from things you wouldn’t typically associate with clothing. Then of course I
had my own club in the 90’s called SqueezeBox!, and that crowd provided
inspiration for a lot of the designers and photographers of that period.
From soda can tabs to 3D you have been ahead of your time,
where might you go next?
4D!
Which do you find more inspiring; street style, the runway, both?
Street style is always the best fashion show. An individual’s presentation
is an exposition of their unique life experience, a chronicle of their life. A
designer’s collection, on the other hand, is a limited set of linear ideas
which must remain true to their brand. I don’t pay a great deal of attention
to runway presentations because I don’t work seasonally, unless I’m
collaborating with a designer. The entertainment industry isn’t bound by the
same strictures as the fashion industry.
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photo: Albert Watson
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photo: Albert Watson
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photo: Scott Nathan
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photo: Bob Gruen
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photo: Mark Seliger
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photo: David Lachapelle
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photo: David Lachapelle
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photo: Alix Malka
photo: Steven LaNassa
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Burden Of
Memories
Claudia
Summers
photo: Marcus Leatherdale
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The air was thick with murk that Juliette couldn’t push through; it seemed
impenetrable. Juliette sat down with her coffee and lit a cigarette. She’d overslept
and was now late for work. She didn’t care. It had been a late night shooting dope
and coke. She sipped the black coffee. Blue and dark purple morning glories
crawled up her window and blew gently in the wind. Delicate petals trembled,
soaking up the sun, but the light streaming in hurt her eyes and gave the flowers
an acid intensity. Outside, she heard a couple fighting. The male’s harsh, deep
voice punched through the window. Juliette crossed the room to close the heavy
curtains. She sat back down and dragged on her cigarette. Juliette knew the slave
would wait for her in the dungeon. Simple humiliation and degradation was her
bread and butter. Smiling, she imagined him exquisitely tortured, wondering
if she would bother to show. Prostrate, his knees pressed hard into the wooden
floor; eventually, he would shift his legs and knees trying to find a modicum of
comfort. But his history would shackle him. He would not dare stand. The cool
air would cause his naked body to shiver and his penis to shrink; the longer he
waited, the greater his discomfort and anticipation would grow. Pain he would
offer her as devotion. Juliette laughed. That dance would never be enough. That
was the joke. It was never enough. She dragged deep on her cigarette and thought
of striking him: perfect, precise words and a well placed whipped red welt across
his back. Blue smoke curled and folded in on itself and then faded to nothing.
Juliette’s hand slightly shook as she stubbed out the cigarette. She took a last sip
of coffee. Soon, she had to get straight.
She called Paula to say she’d be at the dungeon soon. Juliette added, “I want the
slave naked and kneeling when I arrive. He’ll wait.” Paula told her she already
had several other bookings for the day, and that David had just booked an
appointment for late in the afternoon. Harsh yellow light from the bare bulb in
the kitchen ceiling struck Juliette’s eyes as she hung up the phone.
A glass of water was drawn from the faucet and she went back into her bedroom.
From the nightstand she pulled out a spoon, a needle, and glassine envelopes of
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heroin. She fixed it, cooked it, and tied off. A vein was found, and she watched
the blood flower in the needle. Time slowed and there was nothing but the blood
languidly swirling. Everything became quiet, and as the stillness beckoned, she
injected the heroin. Her heartbeat slowed, and then entranced to ancient music,
her molecules and blood sang a song she had never found on her own. An endless
night illuminated with the points of thousands of stars filled her eyes. She didn’t
move for a few minutes. She only lived for this moment.
***
For thirty minutes, the slave had been naked and kneeling in the dungeon when
Juliette arrived. He was a regular. Juliette went to the closet and flipped through
her outfits, pulling out a black latex corset dress. She powdered the inside of it
so it would move smoothly over her body. She slipped into it and yelled into the
next room, “Paula, come lace me up.” She fell into the crimson upholstered chair
and closed her eyes. Slow, deep conscious breath fanned the dope artifice; warm
tendrils radiated from her belly, wrapped around liver, heart, spine, and reached
deep into her brain. She felt enveloped, connected, and didn’t want to move.
Reluctantly, her heavy eyelids slowly lifted, deadened blue irises gazed at the
cattle prod hung on the red wall in front of her. She breathed deeply and slowly
exhaled. She had to get ready.
A pair of sheer black silk stockings was draped over the table at her side. She put
the stockings on and attached them to the garter. She leaned over the side of the
chair and searched through the rows of shoes and boots Juliette extracted her
favorite steel-tip black stilettos.
“He has been waiting for over thirty minutes at this point,” Paula said as she
came through the door.
“I don’t care,” Juliette said.
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“Stand up. Turn around if you want me to lace you up.”
“Besides,” Juliette said as she stood and turned, “He’s lucky I’m coming in this
early. I should have had you collect his money at the door and not even allowed
him into the dungeon. He’s pathetic. I know I could get away with that at least
once.”
“You probably could have,” Paula laughed. “There, you’re laced.”
Juliette leaned her hand against the crimson chair and slipped the six-inch
stilettos on. It was hard to adjust the latex; she pulled wrinkles out and released
them with a snap. The black, sleek rubber fused like a second skin. Her hands ran
over the smooth latex; fractured by seams, it cleaved to her body. The latex felt
good. She stood tall and smiled at Paula, “I’m ready.”
When Juliette entered the dungeon, the white slave was prostrate, forehead
pressed into the cold wooden floor. Corpulent flesh pooled around his body,
trembling slightly from excitement and from the length of prostration, but he did
not move. Trained well, he knew better than to move or talk, unless told to. But
his breath betrayed him. Wet, thick phlegm rattled in his chest. Revulsion curled
in her belly as she walked around him. “To hear you breathe disgusts me.”
He whimpered, “I’m sorry, Mistress Juliette.”
She stopped midstride. Viscerally, she could feel his breath in her belly. It felt hot
and malignant. Time folded—memories rushed forward, and then pushed her
back. The moment fractured, sharp and distinct:
In the hot back seat of a blue car his fingers grope and violate her. Mouth against her ears,
his hot tongue licking and burrowing, her father whispers, “No one will believe you.”
Lavender lilacs press against the car window. The wind shimmers the pastel, delicate buds.
He hooks his thumb into the top of her pants. Her hand grabs the edge of the seat and her
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nails dig deep into the torn blue vinyl. His oily breath slides over her skin. Soundlessly, her
throat tightens. Her eyes slide to the window. A branch scraps across the window dragging
the pale violet blooms. His thumb drags across her groin as he pulls her pants down and
moans low. She can almost smell the lilacs through the closed window.
Juliette heard an almost imperceptible moan from the slave as he struggled to
maintain his obedient pose. She whipped around and her vision narrowed on
him with laser precision. A man was on the floor. He wanted something from
her. She wanted to hurt him. His neediness repulsed her. Her spine stretched
in micro increments and a nebula formed from rage exploded. “Did I give you
permission to make a sound? Lay your palm out flat. Now.” She stepped closer.
She breathed the gases and fumes and raised her foot; with exaggerated care
she rested it, dead center, in the palm of his hand. “Not one whimper.” With
deliberate slowness, she twisted the steel tip of the stiletto heel into his palm,
and feeling his pleasure travel up her leg, she dug in deeper.
***
The day was long. Already, she’d seen five clients. Juliette kicked off her shoes,
sunk deep into the crimson chair, and folded her long legs underneath her.
She had a few minutes before David, her next client, arrived. She was tired and
starting to feel dope sick. Juliette’s thin arms dangled off the red velvet arm
of the chair, her fingers curled with the fragility of an orchid. Underneath the
deteriorated arm makeup, blue shadows trailed along veins. Blood moved like
shimmery electrical current through her. Restless, Juliette quickly stood up. Her
eyes desperately circled the room. It felt like a prison. She needed heroin. After
David, she could leave.
***
Paula led him into the dungeon and left. David stood for a few minutes gathering
his thoughts and feelings, and then undressed. With military precision, he
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folded his clothes and carefully placed them on the dressing table, straight
and contained. David remembered the first time he saw Juliette. He was afraid
to reveal his naked body; he was tired of incorrect assumptions and stupid
questions. None of the women he had met before Juliette had understood what
he was looking for. There was literal understanding, but he had discovered
that wasn’t enough. He wasn’t looking for a dominatrix. The day he met her,
Juliette wouldn’t talk to him until he was naked and kneeling. David knew
that submission was part of the game. He hadn’t had high hopes for the next
hour. She had walked into the room and sat down on the ornate chair. She was
carefully contained. She asked him a few questions about what he was looking
for and then stood, silently looking down at him.
“Stand up,” she had said. Slowly, Juliette circled him. The air sharpened. She
moved with economy of movement. Her breath was even. He heard the whisper
of leather and the soft drag of her heel on the floor. Juliette’s eyes traveled over
David’s raised dark red scars; they ran parallel and perpendicular. His entire
body was covered. She noted that his little finger on the right hand curved
permanently like a broken branch. As she closed the circumference around him,
she murmured, low and under her breath, “Hieroglyphic … was it written by man
or … ” David knew she didn’t want an answer. Juliette hadn’t even known she
had spoken out loud. She faced him. Her light blue eyes searched and probed. He
felt nailed to the floor, and for the briefest of moments, so brief he questioned
whether it happened, he saw his reflection in her eyes.
the head of the table and gazed down at him. His scars mocked her. Once, she
had dreamed she was covered in them. The healed wounds had come alive,
constricting and choking her; she awoke trying to scream, but no sound came
out.
Juliette picked up the rope and began binding his hands together. Each loop of
the rope was hypnotic. She felt herself sinking into the moment. She walked
over to the other end of the table and gently picked up his feet. She bound the
ankles together, then pulled the legs tight and straight and secured them to the
O-ring under the table. Her concentration was complete. She was aware that
each movement she made was more than what it was. She blindfolded him,
filled his ears with plugs and gagged him. She did it impersonally. Each action
of imprisonment was slow and deliberate. Juliette breathed deeply and looked
down at David. She picked up a corner of the latex and watched as a piece of
dust floated. Her head turned and she watched as the air slowly thickened. She
looked at her hand. She didn’t recognize it. The hand wasn’t hers. It was just an
instrument repeating history. She wrapped the latex tightly around him and
then secured it. David was totally bound and constricted in a dark cocoon. There
was no movement; as always, he was still. She backed away and sat down for a
few minutes. It was part of the ritual. He believed she left the room at this time,
but she never did. She didn’t understand it, but she could feel the presence of
something that comforted her when she sat with him; somehow, she could feel
shadows of light. It was her secret. Finally, she stood up and walked back over to
the table. She picked up the bamboo cane and raised her arm.
***
Juliette now entered the dungeon. The candles were the only light in the room.
The flames twisted and the walls beat like a womb. Juliette was silent; she never
spoke during David’s hour. It was a precise ritual replicated religiously. Centered
in the dungeon was the bondage table, the edges of a dusty, black latex sheet
hanging off it. David already lay naked and supine. Juliette walked around to
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David, wrapped tight in ropes and latex, blindfolded, gagged, hearing muted, starts
dropping into a void. All he can hear is the rhythm of his blood; he knows there are voices
in the darkness, but for now they are silent. The stickiness and heat underneath the latex
start choking him and he is grateful he cannot scream. The edges of his scars feel sharp and
he feels sweat pooling. Within the cocoon, he smells the earth of the hot green jungle, the
stained wooden cages, the metallic blood, the decaying wounds, the fear-saturated air and
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all of the shit, piss, and rage of the Hanoi Hilton. He tries to breathe quietly and push the
memories away. Blood pumping and pounding in his ears forces him to take a panicked
breath. The specter of Joe rushes within inches of his face, their lips touch and he tastes
the salt of Joe’s dead eyes. David tries to lick away the taste on his lips, but remembers
he’s gagged. Joe came back to New York, but he had died in Vietnam, even before he was
a prisoner. Out of the darkness, David sees the smooth silk stocking legs of his mother
disappear down a cracked sidewalk. David wants to cry. He sinks deeper into the ropes
and latex; suddenly he is turning in a circle, his face lifts to catch falling snowflakes. He
can feel their cold outline. His skin warms the ice and they melt in rivulets running down
his cheeks. His head turns to look at the winter horizon and his eyelash brushes against the
mud he lies in. Inches from his face, his hand rest dirty and bloody. An insect sucks on the
blood of a wound. His fingers twisted and broken, he marvels at the cycle of life.
sky that barely illuminated the monsters in the dark, he shot her. As she fell into
the dark river, the coconut flew through the air and rolled until it landed at his
feet. He saw the soft, brown eyes of his baby sister. He had been her big brother
hero. The dead Vietnamese child’s hair fanned and drifted gently in the dark
water, framing half a face haloed by the dying orange light. The other half was
gone. Pete had pulled him away from the river. They never talked about it. Pete
died in the Hilton. That day there was just silence in the prison as David smelled
the sweet, thick perfume of orchids. The sun and humidity burned the perfume
and by the afternoon he smelled Pete’s body. Pete had died quietly and alone in
his cage. Laughter rolled across the jungle and Pete’s hand rested heavy on his
shoulder as he led him away from the river. David absorbed the chaos. He quit
fighting the pain. Juliette struck hard across his heart and he welcomed it.
Juliette whipped the bamboo cane down hard against David’s torso. Lost in
memories, David involuntarily jackknifed; his shoulders burned as he twisted
and his joints and spine stretched. The latex stretched tighter across his face and
body and he felt its heat and wetness; a hand pushed him down, trying to drown
him. He braced himself. After watching David trying to escape the pain, Juliette
walked around the table and looked down at his bound feet. She felt his tight
binding on her ankles. The rope burned her skin and cut deep. She reached out
and gently traced the soles of his feet with her finger. He couldn’t feel it through
the latex, but she felt it in her foot. It felt like a ghost. She involuntarily took a
step back. A warm wind caresses David’s feet and he remembers the clear blue
night a guard covered his bloody feet with grass. The guard thought he was
asleep. Under the cover of darkness, kindness was risked. Juliette raised her arm
and brought the cane down where she had just touched. Within the cocoon
David fought the pain and remembered it was the same guard who had beat him
that day.
Juliette felt a shift in David and stopped in mid-strike. The struggle in the cocoon
ceased. The outer shell thinned and became translucent. She stepped closer
and watched white wings strain against the cocoon and its bindings. When she
leaned in closer, the ropes began to disintegrate and the wings gently unfurled
breaking through the shell. She could feel something trying to lift her, but she
was too heavy. Juliette shut her eyes, shook her head and took a breath. When
she opened her eyes, David wrapped in latex and ropes lay in front of her. She lay
down the cane.
Published in Metropolitan Review – Fall 2014
The blows beat down with no rhythm. A scream pierced his mind and the smell
of fear and death rushed in. She fell in the river. It was just a coconut. She was
just a kid. He thought it was a grenade. He shot her. Against an orange twilight
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When in
Doubt…
Double the
Dosage
Christina
Oxenberg
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Mating
by Christina Oxenberg
She was holding two filled plastic cups of beer. She stared at him as if in a trance.
With her narrow face, and her wide dark almond eyes, long lashes casting
shadows, her eyelids were half closed, as if perhaps she was deep in thought.
While it’s true the mates did get lucky after the disastrous July 4th fireworks
cruise, the collateral damage from that night was a girl named Nelly.
Pirate Bob looked around for an escape route.
Saturday night, exactly one week later Nelly was primped and awaiting. Nelly
was on the early side to arrive at the bar. She knocked back some shots and
then bought herself a beer, and a second one, and took up her position. She was
waiting for him.
The mates, Boat Boys, you’ll spot them in the evenings, traveling in pods. Surging
into bars or looping around town in bicycle gangs, hunting for the choicest place
to perch, in pursuit of fun.
The band was taking a break when Pirate Bob and his buddies arrived. Somehow
Nelly missed him as he got himself a drink and sauntered outside, to linger on
the sidewalk, in an optimal position from where he could leisurely catch up with
whomever meanwhile dragnet the incoming krill.
This being around midnight, in Key West, the clock had struck play time.
Pirate Bob was lighting a cigarette when Nelly first saw him. With a beer in each
hand she made her way over to him, the man of her dreams.
Exhaling a stream of gray smoke it was too late when Pirate Bob’s vision
crystallized on the blonde in front of him. As the smoke cleared he saw she
was tall, slim, and her long blonde hair cascaded in wavy clumps. And then he
realized he knew her, and he froze.
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“Svor you,” Nelly said, and pressed one of her beer cups against him, her tanned
arm pecking forward, the beer sloshing to the edge. The liquid splashed onto his
shirt.
“No thanks Nelly.”
“Thish svor you,” she said, again ramming the spare beer at him, so that much of
it tipped onto his shorts.
She stared dreamily as meanwhile the object of her affection was gingerly
taking steps away, so she followed, and her every thrust was met with a rupture
in the matrix. She was grappling, lost in quicksand. She saw a man who to her
was perfection. Ever since their one night together she had daydreamed of him,
endlessly. She had married him, raised their kids.
Once more she pressed the beer on him, most of what was left in it spilled on his
feet.
“Can I call you a cab?” Pirate Bob said.
But she shook her head and with a couple of practiced spins Pirate Bob vanished
into the crowd. Later he explained, “Nelly’s a good girl, but she is road kill.”
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Short Break
by Christina Oxenberg
One night I went hunting for some place to dance.
First stop was Virgilio’s, a small club in a narrow alley. Half indoors and with a
star-tickler of a kapok tree in the half outdoors side, Virgilio’s is a local’s choice.
Plus, Alex the bartender is always at the ready with my favorite bottled water. But
the band was taking a break, so I paid for my water and split.
I stopped in at the fabled Green Parrot, a low slung clapboard structure with
rafters hung with beads and bras. The music, while fiercely performed by a methfueled violinist, was impossible to dance to. The song finished and the fiddler
said, “I’m gonna take a short break. Don’t go nowhere.”
I went next door to Bobalu’s, a bar like a gas station spilling onto the sidewalk,
a flapping tarp overhead, a four piece band of lumpy men with straggly hair
belting out a marvelous beat. Bobalu’s dance floor is a sloping patch of cement
and one wrong step can jettison one, but I gave it a go. At the end of the song the
band said, “We’re going to take a short break, we’ll be back in a few days.”
I set off down Duval, to the wild end, where stagnant diesel and cigar fumes
never dissipate and the lurching crowd seldom disperses. At the corner of
Caroline sits a building of three stories, making it a skyscraper. Ground floor is
The Bull, second floor is The Whistle, and under the stars is the top floor, with
the Garden of Eden. This place is ‘clothing optional’. I climbed the stairs and a
glance through the entrance revealed titties wobbling and wieners hanging out;
meanwhile my bottle of water was confiscated.
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The Garden of Eden is an uncovered roof surrounded by a low wall and potted
plants, and crowded with dancing bodies. Some clad, some not, many in half-way
stages. Two men with blonde afros and dark glasses struggled out of clothes, and
then naked, except for bandanas and sunglasses they spun around, helicoptering
their tootsie rolls. A big girl in nothing but pink leggings impossibly
circumnavigating an ass jutting behind her like the flatbed of a pickup truck,
twisted to the techno, entertaining an enormous fellow who watched her,
languidly leaning against a potted plant. A torrential rain descended and
everyone was kicked out.
The rain was mostly over as I wended to my car. I passed a man with a sack of
beer and his friend with a bowler hat and a guitar in a bag on his back. Sack o’
Beer said, “I noticed you earlier at Bobalu’s, you were dancing up a storm. Have a
beer.”
Bowler Hat unzipped his guitar and serenaded with songs he claimed he’d
composed the day before; they were lovely. Soon we had quite a gathering of
others also winding down from the upsurge of the night, and in no particular
hurry to go home.
Sack o’ Beer offered a hand, “Shall we?”
We danced
Purchase Christina’s books on Amazon:
Christina Oxenberg on Amazon
OMEN 82
A Woman’s
Touch
Jenna Torres
Music Links
www.youtube.com/watch?v=acFeOC8UERE
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wzs_Skc_op8
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We Are
Ecosexuals
Luis Pedro
de Castro
“WE ARE THE ECOSEXUALS. The Earth is our lover. We are madly,
passionately, and fiercly in love. We are grateful for this relationship each
and every day. In order to create a more mutual and sustainable relationship
with the Earth. we collaborate with nature. We treat the Earth with kindness,
respect and affection.” – ECOSEX MANIFESTO
“In Barcelona we married the rocks. We married the rocks because rocks are
the sexy, strong beings that structure the Earth. The Silver Wedding to the
Rocks is where Fluxus, meets Punk, meets Post Porn, meets Love Art Lab.
We would also like to thank all of the wonderful performers who performed
for the wedding all of the collaborators and photographers were fabulous and
we could not have had the wedding without you.”
Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens
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Luis Pedro de Castro was born in Guimarães, Portugal in 1981. While
studying photography in Barcelona, he dedicated himself to the portrayal of
gender fluid interpretations in post porn theory and performance. He began
manipulating his photographs using digital software to achieve an aesthetic
inspired by Renaissance painting and as a way to create visual consistency
from photos taken with multiple cameras that he borrows from friends.
“In life when we look at sexuality as a dirty deviant behavior, it’s a reflection
on our own cultural and emotional barriers. As we keep growing and evolving
we realize those constructs are flawed and preconceived. It’s an opportunity
that allows us to enhance our lives with more than carnal delight, and
transcend from pornography to the divine.
Most of my pictures are a combination of sexuality and raw colors mixed with
a total lack of respect for photography rules, meaning that the pictures I take
correspond to an intimate, chaotic, and in my perspective, more natural look
at individuals. “
Luis Pedro de Castro (aka) Strangelfreak
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Collection
Duncan
Hannah
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Duncan Hannah
by Jorge Socarras
The American art scene of the 1970s was dominated by pop, photorealism,
minimalism and conceptualism, e.g., Warhol silkscreens, Chuck Close
portraits, Lichtenstein still lifes, Joseph Kosuth word pieces. Representational
painting was largely skewed, hyperrealized, or eschewed altogether.
Amid these currents, young artist Duncan Hannah pressed on with his
own defiantly unfashionable painterly vision. He painted images that were
unassuming enough – a nude, a country scene, a ship - rendering them
with a subtly idealized, quietly anachronistic air that might make the most
iconoclastic conceptualist look twice. Hannah’s wasn’t merely “old-school”
representationalism per se; it was a reflection on what that vanishing
world entailed, what it conjured to mind. At a point when art was so selfconsciously concerned with being “contemporary,” Hannah’s work resisted
facile categorization.
possibility. Their ostensible simplicity and innocence belie the painter’s deft
hand and discipline. Hannah is an artist who has logically and methodically
worked out his romanticism, creating a world that invites the viewer to recall
it, however fictitiously. Myself, fortunate enough to be acquainted with the
artist in the real world, I took advantage of addressing him directly.
Forty years later, Duncan Hannah’s vast body of work continues to gracefully
elude. Still more easily likened to Edward Hopper or Henry Lamb than to
many of his contemporaries, he has persisted in his signature style through
the decades, with the perhaps surprising result that Hannah’s works, by
virtue of their temporal eccentricity, have achieved their own classic, onestyle-fits-all timelessness. Much of his oeuvre has a strong Anglophile bent,
depicting scenes and figures in an idyllic British past between the great
wars. (Indeed a viewer might never guess that the artist is a Minneapolisborn, longtime New Yorker.) Ultimately, however, whether rooted in decades
past or the elusive present, Hannah’s painted images belong to the realm of
time imagined, if not regained. An English estate, a semi-clad nymph, a 20th
century celebrity, a sports car on a country road, the vestiges of a smalltown cinema – all remain forever out of reach, still shimmering with innate
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Q&A
JS: You’ve tenaciously pursued your artistic vision since you were a
young painter. Did you have a sense at the time that if you persisted, you
would succeed in establishing yourself, or was it more a matter of creative
compulsion?
DH: I graduated from Parsons in 1975, when the Soho scene was dominated
by conceptualism, minimalism, etc. The magazines were proclaiming that
painting was dead - bad timing for me. There were a few guiding lights in
the galleries: Hockney, Kitaj, Rivers, etc. I already had a well of passions that
would not be ignored, and was turned on by the process of painting pictures,
so I waved my ragged banner and persevered, not knowing what the outcome would be.
JS: You have an affinity for the painters of the Camden Town Group. What
drew you as a young painter to a relatively obscure painting movement rather
than to the iconic artists of the 70s?
DH: There was a Sickert music hall painting in the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis that I loved growing up. I always kept my eye on him, even
though he died in 1942. That brand of painterly representation, informed
by French post-impressionism, seemed to me the best of all worlds. Juicy
paint, modern life, full-bodied color, a whiff of the sinister - like a more exotic
Ashcan School.
JS: How did your peers view your work back then?
DH: The early 80s was a time of anything-goes pluralism. To be a young
painter with an eccentric repertoire was seen through the all-pervasive lens
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of irony, so I caught a wave produced by the New York, Italian and German
Neo-Expressionists. The fact that my paintings were slightly crude fit in with
the Do-It-Yourself aesthetic of the time.
JS: Regarding the Anglophile element to your work, did that aesthetic current
precede your painting and inform it, or did the two perhaps evolve mutually?
DH: Growing up with Sherlock Holmes, the Beatles, British cinema, the
general explosion of Swinging London definitely shaped my sensibility, so
when I began to cobble myself into an artist, these ingredients naturally
predominated.
JS: David Hockney once gave you some artistic advice. Did you immediately
consider the value of what he suggested, and did you put it to practice?
DH: Yes. When I got out of art school in 1975, Hockney came over for
a studio visit. He suggested I get rid of my gimmicks, and trust that my
personality and subliminal intent would shine through. I needn’t put things
“in quotes.” He also said that if I worked hard enough, I would discover my
true self naturally, rather than picking something that would align myself with
the zeitgeist. I took it to heart, and set about, through trial and error, what the
perimeters of my oeuvre might be.
JS: The first half of the last century fostered a great surge of artistic
bohemianism. Does the fact that many of your paintings evoke that period
say something about your own bohemian predilections?
DH: I’ve always been smitten by the romanticism of La Vie Boheme. When
the current of international art began to deal with Picasso and company in
the mid-century, there was a fantastic tributary of figurative painting going
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on in England, Italy and Germany. I chose the lesser-known artists as my
forefathers. The road less travelled. More intimate, more human.
JS: Even the abstract expressionists had figurative origins. Have you ever
been compelled to experiment in a more abstract direction, or perhaps had
abstract episodes?
DH: I love many of the abstract expressionists, and emulated them in a rather
middling fashion when I was at Bard in the early 70s. Later I wondered if I
might morph into something nonrepresentational as I developed, as Matisse
and Mondrian did, but my muse hasn’t lead me there yet. I am working on a
series of oils done from my collages at the moment, which are perhaps 75%
abstract. This may be the doorway I need.
JS: There’s such wide diversity in your subject matter. Yet, whether it’s a
nude or a car, you manage to unite them aesthetically. Is there a conscious
consistency in how you approach your subjects, or is it a question of your
style inevitably revealing itself?
DH: After I’ve selected the source materiel, the rest of the process is about
creating a painting that’s well crafted, in harmony, so that the chords that are
rung ring true. I even paint them upside down, to emphasize the painterly
qualities rather than the illustrational content. Each painting must show how
one feels about painting itself, about color, about execution. I think it is this
that ties my body of work together, regardless of the promiscuous subject
matter.
JS: Some people might see your work as nostalgic? Do you see it as such,
and if not, what differentiates your treatment of time and idealization from the
purely nostalgic?
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DH: I dislike the word nostalgia. It feels soft. It gives the viewer permission
to dismiss the work as irrelevant - whereas writers and filmmakers often use
the past as subject matter. The past is another world ripe for exploration. As
Faulkner said, “The past is never dead; it’s not even past.”
JS: You’ve painted many female nudes and semi-nudes, as well as young
women playing peek-a-boo with the viewer. However classical, glamorous, or
playful, they are most consistently beautiful, perhaps unattainable. Is there a
Pygmalion factor to how you depict women?
DH: Beauty is a subjective thing. I’ve found the quest for beauty is complex.
What is it that instills desire in oneself? What are the elements that create
a visual poetry? What speaks to you in that lyrical way? The painting of the
nude is a noble tradition, easy to do poorly, difficult to do well.
JS: There’s often a sense of innate narrative in your work, of a story on the
brink of unfolding. How do you imbue otherwise static images with this
sense?
DH: I think about an implied narrative a lot. How to provoke a viewer’s
imagination, so it becomes a kind of collaboration. If you give too much
information, it can inhibit what the viewer brings to it. To transcend a simple
genre painting to something with the atmosphere of mystery is an ineffable
thing. If one succeeds, there is a timelessness to it. For me, too much
contemporary art is engaging only for a couple of minutes, due to its overly
specific nature.
Better to leave it open to interpretation. More life that way. More generous.
JS: You collect and paint vintage Penguin book volumes – I believe you’ve
even invented a few titles. This is arguably your biggest leap in subject
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matter, and in some ways your most minimalist and pop work. Why and how
did you decide to approach this as subject matter?
DH: I love book jackets, and Penguin classics reign supreme. I painted one
for my own amusement; it felt right, so over the years I painted perhaps a
hundred more, giving TLC to the the grimy creases, the dog ears, the coffee
stains, the foxing. I suppose they have to do with the arc of time.
JS: You have been exhibiting since 1981, are in numerous collections, and
are a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient. Where do you go from here?
DH: The business of being an artist is not a sprint, but rather an endurance
run. One goes in and out of style. It’s important to try to pay as little attention
to that as possible, and remember why one was impelled to become an
artist in the first place. Not to get sidetracked into the competitive nature of
the increasingly bizarre circus that is today’s art world. I trust that my work
will lead me where I need to go.
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Adivasi
Marcus
Leatherdale
Adivasi: Photographs of Tribal India
by John Wood, Photographic historian and critic
That Marcus Leatherdale’s photographic portrait of tribal India is of the
greatest possible documentary importance is unquestionable, but it
should be equally obvious that it is great art. Leatherdale’s photographs
are transformed through his craft and vision from social documents into
objects of aesthetic contemplation, in other words, into art. Occasionally one
encounters an individual with naïve notions about the distinction between
art and documentation. In the hands of an artist there is no distinction; in the
hands of an artist they are perfectly integrated.
Represented by Bernarducci.Meisel.Gallery – NYC
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Artists
Bettina Rheims
www.bettinarheims.com
Scooter Laforge
www.scooterlaforge.com
Michael Schmidt
www.michaelschmidtstudios.com
Claudia Summers
[email protected]
Christina Oxenberg
www.wooldomination.com
Jenna Torres
www.jennatorres.com
Luis Pedro de Castro
www.strangefreak.blogspot.com
Annie Sprinkle
www.anniesprinkle.org
Duncan Hannah
www.duncanhannah.blogspot.com
Marcus Leatherdale
www.marcusleatherdale.com
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