6 ms·

A portrait of the artists as a pair of young wastrels

30 points by prismatic 9y ago

DonHopkins 9y ago
Lucian Freud painted the verbally indescribable Leigh Bowery! http://www.artcritical.com/2014/04/30/phoebe-hoban-on-lucian-freud/ http://www.artcritical.com/2014/04/30/phoebe-hoban-on-lucian... In the first portrait, Leigh Bowery (Seated) 1990, his figure overwhelms a red armchair. Indeed, Freud kept enlarging the canvas with new strips in order to contain him. And yet, as large as he was, Bowery had an almost dancerly grace. Even in a seemingly straightforward pose like that of Naked Man, Back View (1991–92), where only the model’s back is shown as he sits on a low ottoman, Freud managed to capture a sense of both the baroque and the Buddha-like embedded in Bowery’s presence. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/01/the-night-i-put-leigh-bowery-on-the-catwalk-iain-r-webb https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/01/the-nig... Subject: Leigh Bowery (1961- 94), a man of gargantuan scale physically and culturally, a transvestite performance artist, fetishist designer, leader of the band Minty and theatrical giver of birth. Distinguishing features: Bowery is a character out of Renaissance art - perhaps Silenus, the companion of Dionysus. His flesh is a magnificent ruin, at once damaged and riotously alive. Who knew skin was so particoloured? To count the hues of even one of his feet is impossible: purple, grey, yellow, brown, the paint creamy, calloused, bulging. In a velvet chair tilted down towards us on the raked stage of the wooden studio floor, his mass looms up and dwarfs us. Walk close your eyes are probably the height of his penis. Bowery's violet-domed, wrinkly tube hangs between thighs marked with sinister spots or cuts his knees are massive. Bowery is a painted monument who quietly contemplates his existence inside this flesh. Leigh Bowery - Wigstock 1994, unexpectedly giving birth on stage to the first baby born at Wigstock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3yVBhVrltU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3yVBhVrltU Leigh Bowrey (Take Me To The Club by Mannequin): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsLLrjnew84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsLLrjnew84
- garethsprice 9y ago
  He did etchings of Bowery too... some of my favorite works of art. Leigh Bowery was rarely seen publicly out of his fantastical outfits, so the etchings of him as a large naked man are especially striking and show his humanity. If you like Leigh Bowery, one of his recent spiritual descendants is Daniel Lismore.
  - DonHopkins 9y ago
    Wow, thank you for that tip about Daniel Lismore! I also really love Klaus Nomi's work too, of course. While I was exploring Leigh Bowery's work on youtube, I ran across VJ ladypat, who made a mesmerizing video to Leigh Bowery's charming lullaby "Useless Man" (N-fucking-SFW!!!): A RMX BY ADAM SKY OF THE SEMINAL MINTY / LEIGH BOWERY TRACK 'USELESS MAN'. VIDEO BY LADYPAT. 2005: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfC5OtT-Dzc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfC5OtT-Dzc Ladypat also did some other beautiful videos with feedback and cellular automata effects that I like, for a beloved eccentric local celebrity in Brighton named Boogaloo Stu, who's quite a unique character himself: Boogaloo Stu "Bazooka": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBDZ-KZsAzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBDZ-KZsAzo Boogaloo Stu "Magic Soul": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmEs1PTPNVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmEs1PTPNVk Puppet Paramour and Sock Puppet Side Show - Boogaloo Stu, Dip Your Toe - Brighton Fringe 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by-GH0J4ZV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by-GH0J4ZV8
gumby 9y ago
Another HN find: accidentally clicking to be disappointed by an article on a subject I'm not particularly interested in which then sucked me in and delighted me. I'm struck by the 1974 photo of these two reprobates: by today's standards they appear quite formally dressed and put together. (My wife was a huge fan of both Bacon and Freud and would have loved this article. It's why I read it, out of a sense of nostalgia, but it turned out to be great on its own merits)
- toyg 9y ago
  > these two reprobates: by today's standards they appear quite formally dressed Bacon was an actual aristocrat and Freud the descendant of central-European "Jewish royalty"; of course they knew how to dress.
  - gumby 9y ago
    In that photo they are wearing distinctively downmarket clothes: middle class overcoats and the like, yet still more formal than today. I was simply commenting on how sartorial standards have changed. In the 60s and 70s I dressed up to get on a plane. Yes, as a little boy too young to wear long pants I still wore a dress jacket. Watching "The Magic Christian" in particular is pretty interesting in this regard: at the end there is an...amazing... scene contrasting dressed up middle class businessmen with the hippies. By today's standards those radical hippy dress is pretty staid.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      >In that photo they are wearing distinctively downmarket clothes: middle class overcoats and the like Middle class? Compared to what? Royal cloaks and tunics? They look like normally fine overcoats, the kind that can cost anything from $200 to several thousand dollars depending on the marker. The distinctively British obsession with class and royalty never ceases to amaze me (especially since it's rarely actual upper class people that take joy in bringing others down as "middle class" -- not to mention that in Britain middle class is leveled at people making much more money than most commenting sneeringly at the "middle class" make, as if those sneering identify with royalty themselves).
zbyszek 9y ago
The photographer, Harry Diamond, (himself the subject of a Freud painting -- http://pictify.saatchigallery.com/462766/interior-in-paddington-1981-freud http://pictify.saatchigallery.com/462766/interior-in-padding...) was still a Soho habitué many years later when I had the pleasure of meeting him. I recommend his work, too.
garethsprice 9y ago
Not sure what this has to do with tech but it was a great article on two of my favorite artists. Happy to find it here.

30 points by prismatic 9y ago

Lucian Freud painted the verbally indescribable Leigh Bowery! http://www.artcritical.com/2014/04/30/phoebe-hoban-on-lucian-freud/ http://www.artcritical.com/2014/04/30/phoebe-hoban-on-lucian... In the first portrait, Leigh Bowery (Seated) 1990, his figure overwhelms a red armchair. Indeed, Freud kept enlarging the canvas with new strips in order to contain him. And yet, as large as he was, Bowery had an almost dancerly grace. Even in a seemingly straightforward pose like that of Naked Man, Back View (1991–92), where only the model’s back is shown as he sits on a low ottoman, Freud managed to capture a sense of both the baroque and the Buddha-like embedded in Bowery’s presence. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/01/the-night-i-put-leigh-bowery-on-the-catwalk-iain-r-webb https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/01/the-nig... Subject: Leigh Bowery (1961- 94), a man of gargantuan scale physically and culturally, a transvestite performance artist, fetishist designer, leader of the band Minty and theatrical giver of birth. Distinguishing features: Bowery is a character out of Renaissance art - perhaps Silenus, the companion of Dionysus. His flesh is a magnificent ruin, at once damaged and riotously alive. Who knew skin was so particoloured? To count the hues of even one of his feet is impossible: purple, grey, yellow, brown, the paint creamy, calloused, bulging. In a velvet chair tilted down towards us on the raked stage of the wooden studio floor, his mass looms up and dwarfs us. Walk close your eyes are probably the height of his penis. Bowery's violet-domed, wrinkly tube hangs between thighs marked with sinister spots or cuts his knees are massive. Bowery is a painted monument who quietly contemplates his existence inside this flesh. Leigh Bowery - Wigstock 1994, unexpectedly giving birth on stage to the first baby born at Wigstock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3yVBhVrltU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3yVBhVrltU Leigh Bowrey (Take Me To The Club by Mannequin): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsLLrjnew84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsLLrjnew84

garethsprice 9y ago
He did etchings of Bowery too... some of my favorite works of art. Leigh Bowery was rarely seen publicly out of his fantastical outfits, so the etchings of him as a large naked man are especially striking and show his humanity. If you like Leigh Bowery, one of his recent spiritual descendants is Daniel Lismore.
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  Wow, thank you for that tip about Daniel Lismore! I also really love Klaus Nomi's work too, of course. While I was exploring Leigh Bowery's work on youtube, I ran across VJ ladypat, who made a mesmerizing video to Leigh Bowery's charming lullaby "Useless Man" (N-fucking-SFW!!!): A RMX BY ADAM SKY OF THE SEMINAL MINTY / LEIGH BOWERY TRACK 'USELESS MAN'. VIDEO BY LADYPAT. 2005: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfC5OtT-Dzc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfC5OtT-Dzc Ladypat also did some other beautiful videos with feedback and cellular automata effects that I like, for a beloved eccentric local celebrity in Brighton named Boogaloo Stu, who's quite a unique character himself: Boogaloo Stu "Bazooka": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBDZ-KZsAzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBDZ-KZsAzo Boogaloo Stu "Magic Soul": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmEs1PTPNVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmEs1PTPNVk Puppet Paramour and Sock Puppet Side Show - Boogaloo Stu, Dip Your Toe - Brighton Fringe 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by-GH0J4ZV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by-GH0J4ZV8

gumby 9y ago

Another HN find: accidentally clicking to be disappointed by an article on a subject I'm not particularly interested in which then sucked me in and delighted me. I'm struck by the 1974 photo of these two reprobates: by today's standards they appear quite formally dressed and put together. (My wife was a huge fan of both Bacon and Freud and would have loved this article. It's why I read it, out of a sense of nostalgia, but it turned out to be great on its own merits)

toyg 9y ago
> these two reprobates: by today's standards they appear quite formally dressed Bacon was an actual aristocrat and Freud the descendant of central-European "Jewish royalty"; of course they knew how to dress.
- gumby 9y ago
  In that photo they are wearing distinctively downmarket clothes: middle class overcoats and the like, yet still more formal than today. I was simply commenting on how sartorial standards have changed. In the 60s and 70s I dressed up to get on a plane. Yes, as a little boy too young to wear long pants I still wore a dress jacket. Watching "The Magic Christian" in particular is pretty interesting in this regard: at the end there is an...amazing... scene contrasting dressed up middle class businessmen with the hippies. By today's standards those radical hippy dress is pretty staid.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >In that photo they are wearing distinctively downmarket clothes: middle class overcoats and the like Middle class? Compared to what? Royal cloaks and tunics? They look like normally fine overcoats, the kind that can cost anything from $200 to several thousand dollars depending on the marker. The distinctively British obsession with class and royalty never ceases to amaze me (especially since it's rarely actual upper class people that take joy in bringing others down as "middle class" -- not to mention that in Britain middle class is leveled at people making much more money than most commenting sneeringly at the "middle class" make, as if those sneering identify with royalty themselves).

zbyszek 9y ago

The photographer, Harry Diamond, (himself the subject of a Freud painting -- http://pictify.saatchigallery.com/462766/interior-in-paddington-1981-freud http://pictify.saatchigallery.com/462766/interior-in-padding...) was still a Soho habitué many years later when I had the pleasure of meeting him. I recommend his work, too.

garethsprice 9y ago

Not sure what this has to do with tech but it was a great article on two of my favorite artists. Happy to find it here.