Punk At The Met

Jordan in front of Malcolm McLaren's SEX shop
in London, where the Sex Pistols and punk were born

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a show opening tomorrow about punk fashion.  PUNK: Chaos to couture

From Anarchy Unleashed by Calvin Tomkins in The New Yorker:
"The Costume Institute owned some classic punk garments, acquired in 2006 when Bolton persuaded the Met’s trustees to buy the collection of an English post-punk rocker known as Adam Ant. ...  The Met had bought one or two items at auction, but the rest came from private clients, from Westwood, and from the Adam Ant collection. Both Westwood and Ant had preserved and archived pieces with great care, never doubting their historical value."

Oh, how I wish I could go.  Not just for the Adam Ant connection but because of punk itself.  The idea of one of the finest museums in the world celebrating punk as art is so wonderful it makes me want to weep.  One could certainly make the argument that the point of punk was the opposite of history, of museums and their collections and the type of person who is most likely to patronize a museum.  And that is true, it really is.  But the birth of punk was ART, more than anything else.  And fashion was an equally vital component to the music.  So many things that are completely commonplace today were a shocking, outrageous political (and artistic) statement in 1977: spiky hair, piercings, unusual colored hair, metal studs, chains, black lipstick, black nail polish.  Punk changed things.

Adam Ant, black leather and black kilt

Adam Ant performing in kabuki makeup,
black leather and tartan kilt

Adam Ant and punk fashion icon Jordan, wearing
makeup from the movie Jubilee

Adam and the Ants, pirate era

I Heart Art: An Etsy Experience

I love Etsy and can spend hours pooting around on the site, looking at handmade soaps and jewelry and wall hangings and clothes, and daydreaming about spending thousands of dollars.  Unfortunately, I don't happen to have thousands of dollars to spare, so I've never actually bought anything.

Until I saw this store!  This artist hand paints lovely little portraits onto actual pages from vintage books.  Having a bit of a book fetish, I thought this was the coolest thing ever.  And her prices, for originals or prints, are very reasonable.

So when I saw the sweet couple dancing in front of the Eiffel tower, I had to do it.  I bought a print (which is actually enlarged and is bigger than the original book page painting), and a set of note cards.

The artist is in England, and I was a little afraid of the possibility of the prints/cards getting bent in transit, but she packaged everything so well that the artwork reached my eager hands in perfect shape. And she even sent me a bonus note card as a gift, which was so nice of her.

Here's the Eiffel tower print, in a plain black 11x14 frame (I hung it by my bedside table):

The notecards were such good quality, I decided to frame one of those, too, and I put it on my dresser:

I'm sure this is obvious, but I do want to make it clear that she didn't compensate me or anything for this blog entry, I just wanted to share her stuff because I was so impressed with it.

And I'm so not kidding when I say I am really, really, really tempted to buy this, a giant octopus wall decal.  Neat!

Inspiration: Vali Myers

Since hearing Anne Rice speak about surrounding herself with things that inspire her (I mentioned it here), I've been more conscious about what inspires me.  What tv shows/movies/books/music do I just kill time with, and which ones really spark creativity?

One artist that I've been thinking about a lot lately is Vali Myers.  In many ways, I think she must have been the exact opposite of me; she seems like she was just completely fearless, and lived her life making choices that were shocking to most people.  She spent years as a homeless ballet dancer in Paris, then several decades in a remote village in Italy, living with two men and countless animals, including her pet fox.

She tattooed her face.

She inspired, befriended and loved many famous artists, including Salvador Dali, Tennessee Williams,  Patti Smith, and Mary Ellen Mark and Annie Liebovitz, who took this photo of her in 1974:

Her artwork is unique and passionate, and utterly painstaking: She used a technique similar to pointillism, creating beautiful works of art using tiny pinpricks of ink.  It was an incredibly time consuming process, and could take months or years to complete.  She herself, her animals, and her lovers were often the subject of her artwork.

She lived her life with joy, and fire.  She was free.

She died after a short bout with cancer in 2003, back in Australia, where she'd been born.

"I've had 72 absolutely flaming years. It doesn't bother me at all, because, you know love, when you've lived like I have, you've done it all. I put all my effort into living; any dope can drop dead. I'm in the hospital now, and I guess I'll kick the bucket here. Every beetle does it, every bird, everybody. You come into the world and then you go." ~ Vali Myers, 2003