Gamming It Up

So wrong that it's totally right.

Now Available at the Goodwill: The Goodwill

(image via Reddit)

That's right! More crap to dig through at your local thrift thanks to some clever hipster with a Polaroid 2 camera and a few courses in French Film Theory under his belt. Until this turns into a chintzy mise en abyme of Suzy Perette dresses, we remain unimpressed.

Proto Cindy Sherman

Those of you from the City of Big Shoulders are likely already very familiar with Outsider Artist Lee Godie's unique oeuvre, but we just recently came across it, and had to share. While the resonances with Cindy Sherman are quite pronounced, Godie's technique was worlds away from that of Sherman. Lacking both a camera and a home, the itinerant artist relied throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s on a photo booth at a Chicago Greyhound bus station to make her absurdist self-portraits, and frequently worked upon their surface with ink pens to apply color and other flourishes. And unlike Sherman, whose youth and privilege can be read on the conventionally attractive body that she distorts for many of her portraits, Godie's especially sun-damaged skin bespeaks a certain mystery that no amount of postmodern play or dime-store makeup can negate.

What wonderful stories one can tell with some pocket change.

Sometimes a Garden Implement is the Best Accessory

In her new series of anonymously-framed and frocked women, artist Kelly Reemtsen reminds us that you don't have to wear pants to wear the pants.

Giving the Gift of Art

We're fond of giving and receiving art, both because it keeps us out of America's malls, and because it makes us feel like the men and women of leisure that we will almost certainly never be. Here are this season's moderately-priced contemporary favorites from Etsyland:

You Decide!

Is this:

a) the signature piece in Anthropologie's new Fall menswear line?

b) outtakes from a hip new Fruit of the Loom campaign?

c) an art project designed to make you feel bad about your consumptive practices?

If you guessed C, congratulations! The Zero Footprint Shirt series by New York-based artist Dave Rittinger works to remind us that the clothes we wear have as much to do with saving the environment as the cars we drive (or don't, hopefully). The leaf shirt is, of course, not available for purchase, but if it were, it could significantly reduce the rising core temperature of the earth by virtue of all the shade it would encourage people to throw at its wearer. (And doesn't the idea of solving the problem of global warming through bitchiness sound downright fantastic?!)

Finally! A Bike Helmet for the Vain & Fashionable

Have you ever looked at your bicycle helmet and thought to yourself, "Meh. I'll risk cracking my head open to spare today's expertly-coiffed hair?" If you answered yes, then you're not alone. According to statistics compiled by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, more than half of all US bike riders routinely forgo a helmet, despite the fact that doing so puts them at significantly higher risk for head injury and death. While most surveyed claim that they simply forget, or assume it's not necessary given the distance of the ride, it goes without saying that vanity likely plays a role in the decision--consciously or not.

Well, now, for a mere $450, you can look fly and save your big fat melon from traumatic brain injury. The Hövding (Swedish for "chieftain") looks like your typical hipster cowl, but actually houses sensors that signal an internal airbag to fill and deploy upon impact. Though we're not entirely sold on the idea of an airbag for our head, the test video below has sold us on the need to overcome our own conceit and wear a damn old school helmet all the time, every time because this video is scarier than a teabagger at a Glenn Beck rally. Yes, that scary.

Were the Gibson Girls Cool

We're not sure how we found these détourned Gibson Girl illustrations, but we're glad we did. The originals come from a well-known 1903 series by Charles Dana Gibson cheekily called "The Weaker Sex" in which the famously aloof 'Gibson Girl' demonstrates (however ambiguously) her power over the superior sex by way of clinical observation and sexual temptation. The updated versions cleverly photoshop the men out of the scenes, thereby making the Girls' power not only plain, but altogether their own.

Nice Stems

Shall we start placing bets on how long before we see these pieces in a Gaga video?

Surveillance Chic

This clever piece of art-cum-limited edition consumer purchasable won't actually record your roommate dipping into your weed supply or your nanny punching your croupy baby while you're at work, but it will illuminate a room so that you can comfortably read Discipline and Punish with a supremely smug expression on your face. Way cooler than our ramshackle petticoat chandelier, to be sure.

Crappy Creative Reuse: Part Deux

We love miniatures, dioramas, and creative reuse projects of the scatological variety, so naturally, we love this toilet paper roll series from Parisian artist Anastassia Elias. We're almost inspired to try our hand at one, but this little reminder of our creative shortcomings reminds us that our time is probably better spent writing and planning next week's lecture on gender in American postwar television.

Pro Tip: Photography was invented a full 40 years before toilet paper. Bananas, right!?!

Animal Lover

Summer of Love by Saiman Chow

We're not big fans of animal anthropomorphism a la Disney, but these are quite dope, as the kids say. If Donna Haraway hasn't already bought the rights to this series for the cover of her next book, she really ought to.

Worldly Objects

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

We tried to think of something really insightful to say about the death of paper map culture and the resulting aestheticization thereof, but settled instead for the bad pun you see in the title. Sorry, and TGIF!

10-Second DIY Petticoat Chandelier

We're not convinced that a romantic petticoat chandelier works in our spare, mid-century modern-ish living room, and, yes, we just slipped a probably-flammable vintage petticoat over a hot arc lamp in a lazy attempt to re-create the effect, but we really like the idea and imagine that it would look swell in the right room, with the right execution.

Honestly, Petticoat Chandelier, it's not you, it's us.

Recent Purchases That We Have Not Regretted

:: Vintage Dress 1, 2, 3 (thrifted), 4

:: Throw Pillow

:: Ceramic Mug (thrifted)

:: Wooden Bowling Pin (thrifted)

:: Map Coasters

Bravo Appreciates Art Like It's 1984!

While I never expected Bravo's newest competition reality show, Work of Art, to be anything more than an Andy Cohen-approved showcase of lame pop culture references and unfounded smugness, I was brought to uproarious laughter last week when resident sorority girl-cum-artisté Jaclyn found herself swimming in a sea of praise from the hackneyed committee of NYC art wonk judges. In her absurdly cliched collection of photographs of anonymous men looking at her bronzed, tumid fun sacks as they walked past her on the street, the judges found an 'impressive' and 'successful' effort to subvert the so-called 'male gaze'--a chestnut of an idea about as interesting and revolutionary to artists and intellectuals as Myspace is to teenagers. Perhaps next week she will subvert capitalism by setting fire to dollar bills taped to an Audi? Viva la revolucion, Bravo.

(Please find below selections from my current fine art wishlist ~ in case you're wondering what it takes, creatively, to please an old crank like me.)

THESE!

These are why I'm sometimes almost compelled to spend upwards of $230 for a mass-produced, contemporary cotton dress. So clever! So whimsical! So misleadingly easy to tastefully recreate on a smaller scale in your own home for special events like hip baby showers!

Just Slap Some Paint On It

Living in San Francisco, it's not uncommon to see houses painted in bold colors and avant designs. Typically, though, these houses are not in the city's ghettos since, well, there's usually little to be cheery about there. This apparently is not the case in Brazil, where two Dutch artists have used one of Rio's notorious shanty towns, or favelas, as their latest canvas. The artists call it 'urban renewal,' but I have to wonder if they haven't merely 'modernized' the community's endemic poverty?

A New DaDa for the Naughts

"In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom." - JG Ballard

Though our blog banner suggests a deep love of interwar Russian constructivism, our hearts and minds belong to dada (and thusly to Spanish artist Dani Sanchis, whose massive oeuvre of canny mixed media collage work summons a beautiful, Gordian world in which madness is celebrated rather than treated, naturalized rather than pathologized). View more from this contemporary dadaist and philosopher of the human condition at his refreshingly spare blog, Tarda Mucho.

Current Etsy Obsession: Margaux Lange

Fellow Bay Area vintage clothier Zwzzy turned me on to Margaux Lange's Etsy shop last week when she tweeted about her favorite piece from Margaux's collection (it's the sideburned-Ken doll kissing his beloved, btw), and I haven't been able to stop thinking about these fantastically whimsical and sardonic wearable fine art trinkets ever since. Finally, an example of (post)feminism that I can endorse (you know, in case you're keeping tabs)!