the dead can dance

Halloween 2011: The excuse to wear a latex dress

2011-11-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

Christian the "Snake Charmer"

Rick, my handsome devil

Style Inspiration: Renée Perle

2011-11-11T16:08:00.000-08:00

Renée Perle & Jacques Henri Lartigue

"Tall, slim, a long neck, a shining lock of hair caressing her mouth. I see the reflection of Renee’s beauty in women’s eyes and men’s glances... Beside her, other women look like farm girls." -Lartigue’s Diary: Paris, March 10, 1930

"Jacques Henri Lartigue, who immortalized her in his pictures, had another term: angel. The revered photographer met his muse in 1930 on the Rue de la Pompe. He thought she was Mexican, but he guessed wrong; Perle was Romanian, and a model once employed by the French dressmaker Doeuillet. "She is beautiful," Lartigue told his diary. "The small mouth with the full painted lips! The ebony black eyes. From under her fur coat comes a warmth of perfume. The head looks petite on her long neck." The pair spent two years together, cavorting as if on eternal vacation in Cannes, Juan-les-Pins, and Biarritz, with Lartigue's camera always at the ready. In the "shadowless heaven" of his photographs, glamorous women, including his first and second wives, Bibi and Florette, abound, but Perle's lacquered hair, slender silhouette, modern T-shirts, armfuls of bangles, and talonlike nails shone the brightest. "Around her," Lartigue wrote, "I see a halo of magic." -Laird Borrelli

"It is blood that moves the body..."

2011-11-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

"I believe that words uttered in passion contain a greater living truth than do those words which express thoughts rationally conceived. It is blood that moves the body. Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things." -Natsume Sōseki

(Photo Unknown)

"The Bay"

2011-08-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

"The Bay" by Metronomy

"Too Funky"

2011-07-20T21:23:00.000-07:00

"On Notes"

2011-06-22T16:16:00.001-07:00

(Click to enlarge image)

Lovely Ladies

2011-06-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

Nicola Samorì

2011-06-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

"The term Baroque, which in contemporary art, is closely connected to the term Neo-Baroque, which concerns itself with the reappearing of baroque tendencies. The neo-baroque sensibility that has flourished since the beginning of the new century. After decades that have often been labelled Post-modernism and were dominated primarily by minimalistic and conceptual aesthetics, the neo-baroque sensibility has infiltrated different artistic practices ever since.

Its decorated imagery is aggressively overwhelming and beautiful."

J.V.
2009, olio su tavola, 55 x 52 cm

La Storia
2009, olio su rame, 100 x 100 cm

Simonia (J.R.S.R.)
2009, oil on linen, 200 x 150 cm

Buen Retiro
2010, olio su lino, 200 x 150 cm

GMC
2010, oil on wood, 27 x 19 cm

Larvatorum
2010, oil on copper, 70 x 50 x 5 cm

Hans Holbein – écorché (estasi)
2010, oil on copper, 100 x 100 cm

XIII
2010, olio su carta, 54 x 36 cm

Nicola Samori

Overpowered

2011-06-03T16:27:00.001-07:00

La Prisonnière: Dream sequence

2011-06-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

Royal T

2011-05-30T15:47:00.001-07:00

Stuck in my head from last night with Michael V.

Lolita Book Covers

2011-05-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

1957 DK Hans Reitzel, Copenhagen

1958 NL Oisterwijk, The Hague

1959 BRD Rowohlt, Hamburg

1962 BRA Boa Leitura, Sao Paulo

1964 US LP Spoken Arts, New York

1965 SV Aldus-Bonnier (Delfinbok), Stockholm

1969 GB Transworld (Corgi), London

1973 UK Transworld (Corgi Books), London

1994 BRA Companhia das Letras, São Paulo

1995 FR Gallimard (folio), Paris

2005 CHI Yiwen Press, Shanghai

2005 FR Gallimard (folio), Paris

2006 GB Penguin (Red Classics), London

La Tarente

2011-05-30T11:54:00.000-07:00

Editions De La Tarente; 1950's French pulp fiction book covers

Paper Dancer

2011-05-23T18:09:00.000-07:00

Photograph by Cecil Beaton

Paper Wigs

2011-05-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

"The Bay Holiday Windows"
Paper wigs handmade by Nikki Salk & Amy Flurry at Paper-Cut-Project.com

Black Eyed Susan (2010)

2011-05-23T14:21:00.000-07:00

Prosper Mérimée’s Carmen

2011-05-23T14:00:00.000-07:00

A Beardsley derivations in the form of some illustrations by Hans Henning Voigt (1887–1969), better known as Alastair. An artist who more than anyone carried the Beardsley style and the fin de siècle ethos into the 20th century.

These illustrations here are a selection of the twelve pieces for a 1920 edition of Prosper Mérimée’s Carmen, the novel upon which Bizet based his opera.

(Click on images to enlarge)

A Modern Life

2011-05-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

Louis Icart

2011-05-23T12:04:00.001-07:00

"Icart's portrayal of women is usually sensuous, often erotic, yet always imbued an element of humor, which is as important as the implied or direct sexuality. The beautiful courtesans cavort on rich, thick pillows; their facial expressions projecting passion, dismay or surprise, for the women of Louis Icart are the women of France as we have imagined them to be Eve, Leda, Venus, Scheherazade and Joan of Arc, all wrapped up into an irresistible package. " -RoGallery

Set designs by Max Bignens, 1961

2011-05-22T16:47:00.000-07:00

Jean-Gabriel Domergue

2011-05-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

Are you in the know?

2011-05-22T16:36:00.000-07:00

(Click on images to enlarge)

Style Inspiration & My Style Icon: Gitte Lee

2011-05-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

A former model, consort of the most famous Count Dracula in film, and a fellow Aries - the timeless and elegant, Lady Birgit Lee (Gitte Lee for short). Her signature style and presence will always be an inspiration - her red ruby lips, dramatic sunglasses, turbans, and her fabulous classic clothing that accentuates her slender shape and frames her strong features, while being utterly comfortable. This is what I shall look like in my 70s.

"Not only are positive and beautiful images of older men and women who are aging gracefully and living life the to the fullest inspirational, but they give people of all generations something to aspire to. A picture of an elegant older lady in an ad campaign adds an element of history, quality, timelessness, and it tells a story." -Ari Seth Cohen of Advanced Style

Vogue Italia shot by Tim Walker

Thierry Mugler: Part 1

2011-05-21T14:27:00.000-07:00

(Click image to enlarge)

Grænn

2011-05-21T13:23:00.000-07:00

The Company of Wolves

2011-05-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

Dainty Little Veins

2011-03-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

NUTBUSH CITY LIMITS - TINA TURNER

2011-03-20T23:42:00.001-07:00

I Love U So

2011-03-20T23:11:00.000-07:00

Cassius - I Love U So by edbangerrecords

EMBODY

2011-03-20T20:18:00.000-07:00

SebastiAn - Embody by edbangerrecords

"Fade To Grey"

2011-03-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

"You Got The Love" (The XX Mix)

2011-03-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

The Driver's Seat (1974)

2011-03-13T16:40:00.000-07:00

Goth Night...

2011-03-04T14:29:00.000-08:00

Tonight Michael V. and I are guest djing at this party... It shall be interesting to play all the songs from my youth.

To Bend and To Bow

2011-02-24T18:58:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite artists, Tricia Cline and Toc Fetch, are showing at my favorite gallery, Obsolete... I am so excited for this!

Obsolete Gallery
222 main st venice ca 90291
phone 310. 399. 0024

"Lotus Flower"

2011-02-23T14:13:00.000-08:00

"Hot Voodoo"

2011-02-22T22:50:00.000-08:00

I've always loved this scene ever since I was a tinier Sasha...

"Ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin"

2011-02-22T22:37:00.000-08:00

"I Know" - David Lynch

2011-02-09T23:24:00.001-08:00

Stuck In My Head: "Black & Blue"

2011-02-04T00:44:00.000-08:00

These lyrics keep playing over and over again in my head...
"Hello mystery, don't bother to explain
How bout maybe, its all been in my head
Hey well I'm tired of this black & blue, black & blue..."

Ahhh I'm lame.

Another collection I would commit murder for... the Christian Dior Spring 2011 Couture collection

2011-02-04T00:29:00.000-08:00

(Click image to enlarge)

"Listen, Let’s Make Love"

2011-02-03T23:23:00.000-08:00

I would commit murder for the Jean Paul Gaultier Fall 2010 Couture collection...

2011-01-23T00:30:00.000-08:00

(Click on the image to enlarge)

Style Inspiration: Vivien Leigh

2011-01-22T23:58:00.000-08:00

Stuck In My Head: "I Wanna Be Adored"

2011-01-08T22:04:00.000-08:00

A Very Happy Birthday To Mister David Bowie...

2011-01-08T11:41:00.000-08:00

Swoon...

Boredom On A Rainy Sunday Night...

2011-01-03T01:48:00.000-08:00

Childhood Memories: "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor"

2011-01-03T00:54:00.001-08:00

"Good Fortune"

2011-01-02T23:55:00.000-08:00

2011...

"Down By The Water"

2011-01-02T23:52:00.000-08:00

The Four Categories

2011-01-02T20:44:00.000-08:00

"We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers."
-Milan Kundera

Black & White... Boredom

2010-12-29T01:49:00.000-08:00

James Dean hair action...

The Most Beautiful Suicide

2010-12-29T01:11:00.000-08:00

"On May Day, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. "He is much better off without me ... I wouldn't make a good wife for anybody,"... Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale's death Wiles got this picture of death's violence and its composure.

At 10:40 A. M., Patrolman John Morrissey of Traffic C, directing traffic at Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, noticed a swirling white scarf floating down from the upper floors of the Empire State. A moment later he heard a crash that sounded like an explosion. He saw a crowd converge in Thirty-third Street. Two hundred feet west of Fifth Avenue, Miss McHale's body landed atop the car. The impact stove in the metal roof and shattered the car's windows. The driver was in a near-by drug store, thereby escaping death or serious injury.

On the observation deck, Detective Frank Murray of the West Thirtieth Street station, found Miss McHale's gray cloth coat, her pocketbook with several dollars and the note, and a make-up kit filled with family pictures. The serenity of McHale's body amidst the crumpled wreckage it caused is astounding. Years later, Andy Warhol appropriated Wiles' photography for a print called Suicide (Fallen Body)."

My Childhood Inspirations: "The Darkness Seduction Dance Scene"

2010-12-28T19:10:00.000-08:00

As child, this was and still is, one of my favorite scenes from a film. Watching this scene at an embarrassingly amount of times as young girl, I actually wanted to be her character...

David Wright (1940s)

2010-12-27T21:12:00.000-08:00

Style Inspirations

2010-12-23T00:19:00.000-08:00

I want these dresses right now...
1949, Stonecutter.
1950, Modess.
Suzy Parker- 1956, Modess.
1957, Modess.
1960, Celanese.

Memoirs Of...

2010-12-21T00:51:00.000-08:00

"Accomplices in certain great nastiness..."

2010-12-20T23:47:00.000-08:00

"So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of
or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices
in certain great nastiness…"
-Antonin Artaud
(Photos - "Revenge" by Ellen Von Unwerth)

Song Of The Moment: "Kilometer"

2010-12-20T23:35:00.000-08:00

The Usual Day At Work...

2010-12-19T21:29:00.000-08:00

Style Inspiration: Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard

2010-12-19T21:18:00.000-08:00

Style Inspiration: Anouk Aimée

2010-12-19T21:00:00.001-08:00

Love, love, love her!

"Reclining Beauties"

2010-12-13T18:06:00.000-08:00

"Portrait of Madame Gely No. 1 (On the Couch)" by Frederick Carl Frieske, (1907).
"The Green Cushion" by Irving Ramsey Wiles, (1895).
"Nudo con le Calze Rosse" by Giuseppe de Nittis
"Reclining Nude" by Giovanni Boldini, (1842-1931).

"Florette in Paris"

2010-12-13T17:59:00.000-08:00

"Florette in Paris" by Jacques-Henri Lartigue. January 1944.

"Gobble Gobble"

2010-12-13T17:24:00.000-08:00

Books & Sex

2010-12-12T13:01:00.000-08:00

Egon Schiele, Liegende Frau Mit Roter Hose Und Stehend (Reclining Woman with Red Pants and standing) 1912.

“Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and to fuck are infinite; it surpasses our own deaths, our fears, our hopes for peace.”
Roberto Bolaño speaking of Stéphane Mallarmé’s quote The flesh is sad—and I’ve read every book.

Life Without Sex

2010-12-12T12:42:00.000-08:00

Robert Heinecken, Cliche Vary/Autoeroticism, 1975.
(Photographic lithograph)
“Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull. It is the sex instinct which makes women seem beautiful, which they are once in a blue moon, and men seem wise and brave, which they never are at all. Throttle it, denaturalize it, take it away, and human existence would be reduced to the prosaic, laborious, boresome, imbecile level of life in an anthill.”
- Henry Louis Mencken

In The Hand of Dante

2010-12-12T12:27:00.000-08:00

“Love at first sight. Life after death. We may eventually know if we experience the latter. But how are we ever truly to know if we experience the former? Can the depths of the sea be reached in a breath, without movement? Can the stars wed two souls that have never looked upon them together?

* * * *

Her pantyhose lay on the floor beside the bed. I took them and tossed them on my cheap green vinyl traveling-bag. She knew that I thus had claimed them as mine.

They are in the drawer to my right as I set down these words, sitting here, prepared to do, or to be undone, within whatever remains of this dream that we call time.

All there, in the drawer to my right.

A vial of morphine, a pistol, the false passports that I did not use when I went to Italy to boost the documents from the archives, a lot of money, and the beige carnation of her pantyhose.

I hold this carnation now to my face and inhale the scent of her and the scent of a garden of all that is untold and untellable.

I envision myself dying like this; alone, holding my face like an oxygen mask the bunched, perfumed flower of her pantyhose.”
-Nick Tosches, “In The Hand of Dante”

In The Mood For Love

2010-12-07T22:50:00.000-08:00

Sesso o Amore?

2010-12-07T21:39:00.001-08:00

Happy 50th birthday to Mister John Galliano!

2010-11-28T12:17:00.000-08:00

Happy 50th birthday to Mister John Galliano! I had no idea he was 50 years old... to me, he is a magical little elf.

"What'd I Say"

2010-11-28T00:56:00.000-08:00

Natalie Wood As Gypsy Rose Lee in "Gypsy"

2010-11-28T00:52:00.001-08:00

A Very Happy Birthday to Bjork...

2010-11-21T13:41:00.000-08:00

"Get Some"

2010-11-20T21:11:00.000-08:00

A Naughty Fairytale

2010-11-20T20:37:00.000-08:00

Oh my goodness! This naughty fairytale is my fantasy... well, one of them...

"It Was Never Meant To Be This Way" (Piano Version) by CFCF

2010-11-14T21:54:00.000-08:00

Thank you Nikoo...

CFCF - It Was Never Meant To Be This Way (Piano Version) from RVNG Intl. on Vimeo.

Footage from Stereo by David Cronenberg.
Edited by Michael Silver.
RVNG Intl.
igetrvng.com

"Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend"

2010-11-14T21:34:00.000-08:00

"Put The Blame On Mame"

2010-11-14T21:27:00.000-08:00

Cover Girl (1944)

2010-11-14T21:16:00.000-08:00

As a child, this scene made me fall absolutely in love with the 1940s style and glamour... I want it all.

"Houses"

2010-11-13T13:48:00.000-08:00

"Lemonade"

2010-11-13T13:34:00.001-08:00

"Gallows"

2010-11-13T13:32:00.001-08:00

Strangelove...

2010-11-12T12:51:00.000-08:00

Click here... "Strangelove" by Depeche Mode

Photo booth & a wig...

2010-11-09T15:03:00.000-08:00

"Azzurro" - Adriano Celetano

2010-11-09T12:13:00.000-08:00

"Vola" Patty Pravo

2010-11-09T12:08:00.000-08:00

"Ciao Amore Ciao" - Dalida

2010-11-09T12:05:00.000-08:00

"Bang Bang" Dalida

2010-11-09T12:01:00.000-08:00

"La Belle Vie" - Sacha Distel

2010-11-09T11:59:00.001-08:00

Sacha Distel & Louis Armstrong!

2010-11-09T11:55:00.001-08:00

Une vie d'amour" - Charles Aznavour

2010-11-09T11:50:00.000-08:00

"Paroles, Paroles" - Dalida and Alain Delon

2010-11-09T11:48:00.002-08:00

My mother and I have been listening to Dalida and Alian Delon all day today...

"Pourquoi mon amour"

2010-11-09T11:48:00.001-08:00

"Odessa" - Mireille Mathieu

2010-11-09T11:47:00.000-08:00

"Les yeux d'amour" - Mireille Mathieu

2010-11-09T11:45:00.000-08:00

"Salut" - Joe Dassin

2010-11-09T11:44:00.000-08:00

Alice

2010-11-08T16:21:00.001-08:00

Wishery

2010-11-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

...what???

Perfect

2010-10-25T19:35:00.000-07:00