Sophianotloren

Human figures seem to lurk in almost all of Françoise Grossen‘s folded, knotted, and coiled rope sculptures. They are resolutely abstract, the elaborate assembly of their drooping and dangling materials inviting close inspection, but seen from a distance their proportions, silhouettes, and the weight with which many of them hang a little morbidly from the ceiling makes it very tempting to anthropomorphize them. Grossen clearly realizes this; works on view in the Swiss-born, New York-based artist’s current survey at Blum & Poe — unbelievably, her first ever in the US — call to mind seductive, extravagant, and grisly scenes.

The most arresting works in the show, five pieces from her Metamorphosis series (1987–90), feature coils, meshes, and wraps of colorfully dyed ropes coated in dark-gray and black paint. Grossen used plaster, plastic, and paper to give the works unexpected dimensions that evoke ribs, hides, skins, and spines, and the resulting atmosphere is somewhere between meatpacking plant and mass hanging. The ropes’ bold hues peek out from the dark paint as if to evoke exposed flesh while the suspended sculptures, some topped with knots of rope that look like heads and broken or cut necks, are ominously suggestive of carcasses. The effect isn’t gruesome so much as solemn, and getting right up against the sculptures to appreciate their concealed colors and fused materials feels a little like paying respects to some noble beast or slain hero.

The mood is much lighter in the rest of the exhibition, which includes pieces created between 1967 and 1991 — and left me incredibly curious to know what type of work Grossen is making nowadays. The largest piece in the show, “Five Rivers” (1974), commands its own room, where its symmetric and elaborately knotted coils of manila ropes dyed purple, orange, pink, green, and turquoise cascade down in fraying strands for an effect that is so dazzling it may fleetingly evoke the brightly sequined costumes and synchronized movements of a chorus line. In addition to the razzle-dazzle of its choreography of colorful ropes, “Five Rivers” helps situate Grossen amid the generation of post-minimalist artists who rose to prominence in the late 1960s and early ’70s with textile works that rebelled against the rigid geometries, cold materials, and repetitive sequences of abstract minimalism — the likes of Sheila Hicks, Eva Hesse, and Claire Zeisler. In fact the exhibition’s earliest piece, “Swan” from 1967 — which was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s famous 1969 show Wall Hangings — now looks like a close relative of minimalism, calling to mind the climbing forms of Donald Judd’s Stack sculptures and zig-zagging lines of Fred Sandback’s architectural thread interventions, among others.

The exhibition’s more playful, sexy, and downright funny pieces are all in the room opposite “Five Rivers,” and include abstract sculptures so phallic and vaginal calling them abstract almost seems delusional. Most glaringly, “Sisyphe” (1974), seen from the right angle — the angle from which every visitor to the gallery will see it on its pedestal upon entering the room — resembles the intertwined legs of two lovers (or the suggestively spread and expectant legs of one). The adjacent hanging works “Aglaia (pink touch)” and “Thalia (all natural)” (both 1991) manage to be hermaphroditic in their suggestiveness, with their cascading loops and knots of thickly coiled linen and manila rope. Like the works from the Metamorphosis series, the proportions of the three hanging pieces in this room are distinctly human — they range from 80 to 85 inches in height. But in contrast to those much darker, slightly earlier works, the three works hanging alongside “Sisyphe” feel light and flirtatious, their net-like exteriors partially concealing inner structures and colors.

However, all the visual associations conjured when looking at Grossen’s works from a distance dissolve as you move closer and get tied up in the textures and materials of each piece, following ropes and threads, tracing lines of color as they disappear and reemerge from thick coils. Somehow, even though the newest pieces on view here are 24 years old, the work is gripping and as rich as if had been made last month. This may be Grossen’s first US survey, but I hope the second is not far behind.

Françoise Grossen continues at Blum & Poe (19 East 66th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through August 14.

It’s about how “Show us your humanity!” is more belittling and damaging than “Show us your tits!”

At The Stranger, Conner Habib argues that anti-sex activists are actually just bigots out to marginalize and oppress sex workers.

Related Posts:

• The Saturday Rumpus Interview with Noah Berlatsky
• Weekend Rumpus Roundup
• Dear Sex Worker Hater
• The Real Deal
• Treatment as Metaphor

Flags! They’re so crazy.

Hey! I revamped the rewards for Patreon patrons this week. The rewards are full of all sorts of recurring goodies, including a patron-exclusive bonus SFAM comic every month!

Check out these rewards:

• Access to the patron-only feed, including early access to all my comics as soon as they are finished.
• A free monthly haiku, written by me, Jon Rosenberg.
• An exclusive patron-only SFAM once a month. Bonus comics!
• Monthly SFAM or Goats computer wallpaper.
• One free ebook each year for Christmas!
• The original art for one Goats strip, each year for Christmas!
• And more!

Consider becoming a SFAM patron today! Your support makes this whole comics thing possible. I can’t do it without you.

The post Deathflag appeared first on Scenes From A Multiverse.

(photo by nerdburg)

Flower causes cat to malfunction. [video]

micdotcom:

Watch: This is painfully accurate — especially what Cho says to Barry on her way out of the room

Genius.

probertson:

🍄🍄🍄MUSHROOM BOYS🍄🍄🍄

The myth of white neutrality persists in the world of gaming, where black characters in fantasy games can be deemed less "realistic" than dragons. Read the rest

Content note: this post discusses homophobia, transphobia and biphobia

Tomorrow sees London’s Pride parade, supposedly a celebration of how brilliant things are. Each year, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth, because things are not great. They really, really aren’t, unless you’re one of the lucky ones who yell over the voices that should be heard and dominate our movement.

On a personal level, I wouldn’t feel safe attending the event with either of my partners. For a supposedly inclusive space, Pride in London is peculiarly intolerant of anybody but monosexuals and cis people. Marchers yell “breeders” at bi people, with many overtly expressing that they thing bi people shouldn’t be there.

And then there’s the transphobia, which they say they’ve cleared up, but it doesn’t look like it has. Perhaps “toiletgate”–transmisogyistic barring of trans women from accessing toilet facilities–has been cleared up. but a lot of the trans women I know don’t want to be the guinea pigs in finding this out.

So, even if I went, my friends and partners wouldn’t be there, so what’s the fucking point?

It seems as though a schism is becoming more visible than ever in our community. On one side are the marginalised, the oppressed. On the other are those who don’t give a fuck. This issue was perhaps exemplified in this week’s intervention by Jennicet Gutierrez, and the reaction to it.

Gutierrez is a trans woman and undocumented migrant. At a White House dinner, set up to circlejerk about how very good on LGBT rights Barack Obama is, Gutierrez shouted out truths. She pointed out the violences occurring against LGBT migrants, how they were being detained and deported, facing sexual and physical violence, by Obama’s very own administration. As reward, she was shouted down by the hypocrite she was trying to address, and hauled away by the Secret Service. The audience, who were ostensibly comprised of LGBT people, booed her and showed happiness at her silencing.

Here’s what Gutierrez wanted to say. Read her words, and digest them.

We have little to celebrate, all things considered. Yes, we can get married, and yes, in the US a breakthrough was made where now openly gay people can be killed in combat. Yet these are hardly victories when our siblings are homeless, facing violence, in poverty, in fear.

London’s Pride events ignore all of this. London’s Pride events actively march perpetrators of the violences we face through our streets. There was protest about UKIP marching, but so many more of the marchers are our enemies. The police, Tories, and countless corporations. If you can’t see why it’s inappropriate that they’re there, then you are out of touch with the very real violences which face a lot of us.

We have a lot of work to do, and the Pride parade is like a rainbow flag pinned to a wall covered in cracks. The issues are still there, but it distracts from them, giving the cishet population a feeling of warm fuzzies. Too many LGB people are complicit in distracting from the fights yet to be won: the fights which are barely being fought.

So no, I’m not going, because I know there’s nothing to celebrate, and nothing to be won by being there.

Inspired by the Harper’s Index, Sum of the Arts is a periodic tabulation of numbers floating around the art world and beyond.

• Minutes actress Eleonora Duse tolerated sitting for a portrait by John Singer Sargent in 1893 = 55
• Tons of confiscated ivory art crushed by US officials in Times Square = 1
• Number of days it will take 3,000 gallons of polluted NYC water to be purified in Spanish architect Andrés Jaque’s installation at MoMA PS1 = 4
• American dollars paid for a New Zealand giant squid to clear customs and enter the collections of the American Museum of Natural History = 10
• Percentage of 40,000 museum visitors surveyed in 2010 who enjoyed guided tours = 31
• Length in feet of a traditional Inca bridge that will be woven from grass ropes by indigenous craftsmen on the National Mall = 60
• Number of art dealers who had booths at Art Basel in both 2000 and 2015 = 92
• Weight in pounds of the eight-foot-tall bronze Ronald Reagan statue unveiled at the California Capitol = 800
• Gallons of water a day the Getty saves by turning off its fountains as part of California’s drought conservation = 2,500
• Number of people who witnessed the summer solstice at Stonehenge = 23,000 (down from 36,000 in 2014)

And If I want to find the song “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the fall of 1983 pile, but didn’t give it to them for personal reasons.

I think it’s one of these. (photo via runnitnlulem)

Mysteria Misc. Maxima is a weekly feature which brings together links on religion and esotericism from around the internet.

• The first seal of the apocalypse breaks as Buddhist monks knife each other on the streets of Oakland. (SFGate)
• A novice Halal butcher finds out that Ramadan is a pretty busy time of year. (Calgary Herald)
• Meanwhile, Muslims in India are offended by the government’s promotion of yoga. Namaste. (Reuters)
• One person loses their faith when they realize that holy texts aren’t written by God after all. (Salon)
• And one writer suggests that the movie Sister Act may not accurately represent the life of nuns. (Religion Dispatches)
• On the other hand, Hollywood is beginning to portray Pagans as good-looking awesome people. (Letter from Hardscrabble Creek)
• Do psychics need better client aftercare? (New Yorker)
• Etsy bans the sale of magic spells. (Jezebel)
• Roman-era graffiti in Turkey depicts gladiator fights, but researchers are not entertained. (Live Science)
• This week in Satanic Temple news: Detroit gets a new Baphomet statue. (Fox17)
• Oh hey, A.O. Spare made a tarot deck. (Boing Boing)
• Finally, in the wake of Going Clear, a former Scientologist speaks out about why she left the movement. Reasons include the high financial cost of involvement, bullying by high-ranking members, and L. Ron Hubbard being a dick to Jack Parsons. (Gawker)

Photo by Sam Javanrouh.

Active defenders of sweatshops really get under my skin because they combine a celebration of labor exploitation with cherry picking historical examples in order to create a false narrative of sweatshops leading to future national economic success.

Not so, says Benjamin Powell, a professor of economics and business at Texas Tech University who, controversially, argues that sweatshops are economically and socially beneficial to the countries they’re in.

“If you care about the consequences for the lives of developing nations workers I believe it is ethical to buy products made with sweatshop labor,” he says. Powell argues that sweatshops are not exclusive to poor countries in our modern, globalized world.

“My ancestors worked in the mills in Massachusetts. For the United Kingdom and the US, the process of development took more than 100 years to move through the sweatshop phase,” in which women and children worked in cotton mills, factories and manufacturing, he says.

Powell doesn’t suggest that sweatshops should be permanent fixtures but a stage in the development of developing nations, and they “often pay far above the levels of extreme poverty that exist in these countries and often even better than the countries’ average incomes. In 1960, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea all had sweatshops,” he says, but “in a generation they jumped from a pre-industrial standard of living to first world status.”

Major eyeroll here. First, sweatshops are not beneficial for these countries. They are rank exploitation. The sweatshops themselves did not lead to the economic explosion of South Korea and Taiwan. It’s not like those sweatshop workers were gaining skills that led to an information economy in Korea. And it’s not like the long-term sweatshops of Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala has led to those nations rising economically. Rather, they have just been a next stage in a century of post-colonialist exploitation by American corporations. Note that the people making these arguments that sweatshops are great never reckon with the Latin American examples. They only focus on the Asian Tigers. But those nations have alternative reasons for their economic rise that include a) being close Cold War allies of the United States that led to massive economic growth as part of US foreign policy and b) steel and other heavy industries building huge new factories that out-competed the outdated US steel mills of the 1970s and 1980s, eventually forcing them to close. The heavy industry of China is a big reason why that nation has risen economically. Neither of those factors are likely to repeat themselves in the low-wage sweatshop economy of Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Cambodia. In other words,

And Lowell and the Triangle Fire were not necessary moments in the history of the rise of the American economy. The idea that the heavy exploitation of women workers in apparel factories is somehow required to have economic growth is completely absurd. Rather, these are highly avoidable situations where modern companies could still take advantage of relatively cheap labor while also not killing these workers, forcing them to undergo sexual harassment, pregnancy tests in order to work, stolen wages, etc. These are false choice offered by the defenders of the global race to the bottom. Back to the linked article:

“About 4 million people in Pakistan work in the textile industry and 95% of them never get the paperwork to prove it,” says Nasir Mansoor, deputy director of Pakistan’s Nation Trade Union Federation. “This means there’s no way for them to fight for their rights if something isn’t right.” The garment sector, he says, has some of the worst conditions for workers in the country.

“All garment factories, by law, have to register with the Pakistani government, but we estimate that 90% fail to do so and the government doesn’t enforce the law. It wasn’t too long ago that even inspecting the factories that were registered became outlawed in some provinces so there was no way to know what was happening in them either.”

It was only after the Karachi garment factory fire of 2012 that killed nearly 300 people and injured a similar number that the inspection ban was lifted.

Sajida Khanum, a 45-year-old, has only ever worked in sweatshops. She doesn’t want to disclose which factory she’s working in now for fear of losing her job and being blacklisted from working in factories again.

She says there is no security in her job, and that sometimes, when there is not enough work to do, she has to beg her contractor for work. Khanum gets paid about 40 cents per item she makes. “We have to work fast because we get paid per dozen garments.”

Khanum has been working in garment factories for 15 years. She says most workers live the contradictions of working in sweatshops. “We all do it because its necessary, what else are we to do? I’m uneducated, all I know is this job.”

It might be a hard pill to swallow, but what Pakistani garment industry workers Ahmad and Khanum say reflects what Powell has found in his research.

“When workers choose to take employment in a sweatshop, it demonstrates that they believe it is the least bad option available to them,” he says. “That means that, relative to their previous situation, these sweatshops improve their lives.”

Despite the rather specious reasoning over worker choice offered above (what other choice do these workers have, starvation? prostitution?), I do agree that we should not shut down these factories if we aren’t going to replace them with something else for these workers. After all, Kalpona Akter, head of the Bangladeshi workers’ movement, urges developed world consumers not to boycott these clothes because these workers need jobs.

So how do we fix these conditions while also empowering women workers and helping the world’s poor increase their economic status? As I’ve said in Out of Sight (now available for a Madison presidential election price of $18.08!), we have to create international standards that allow the poor of the world to live dignified lives and create middle classes of their own in ways that do not accept rampant exploitation. That must place power in the hands of workers to sue these corporations like Walmart and Gap if they or their contractors violate international standards of wages, working conditions, and pollution. This is how you create middle classes in nations like Bangladesh while taking away the incentive for these multinational corporations to move to the next nation as soon as these workers succeed in forming a union or enforcing a minimum wage. This is how you work toward international labor solidarity and it’s how you push back against defenders of the exploitation and murder of poor workers on the job.

micdotcom:

Watch: Still unsure if white privilege exists? This should clear it up.

nom-food:

Bacon wrapped cheesy stuffed jalapenos

lierdumoa:

battlenuggalope:

Jurassic World, Mad Max Fury Road, and Little Girls

For her birthday, we took my soon-to-be six year-old to Jurassic World. Prior to that, she had watched a bootleg copy of Fury Road with me after I had confirmed that it fit the levels of violence I consider acceptable based on what I know of my daughter.

The most interesting thing to me was her reactions after each film.

After watching MMFR, she talked incessantly about it. (She had talked during the film as well, making observations, etc.) Her name was suddenly changed to Angry Cereal, mirroring two of her favorite characters. She made a new Sims game, spending more time than she ever had before perfecting the characters - and giving them all pets. A Lego car set was turned into a crazy car that could fit into the Mad Max world. Barbies were now the Wives and her dad’s Diablo figurine was now Immortan Joe. It’s been a little over two weeks and she still talks about it.

When the credits rolled on Jurassic World, she said, ‘Can we go see another movie?’ –And that was it. The only other comment vaguely related to the movie was her assertion she liked dinosaurs. Nothing else. No elaborate recreations, nothing.

I had thought with MMFR that my excitement had rubbed off on her but that doesn’t seem to be the case. After Jurassic World, I was excited, encouraging her to talk about her favorite parts. She asked for a Happy Meal. When we went to spend a gift card at Toys-R-Us the next day, I pointed out all the Jurassic World toys. They had Blue! She barely gave them a second glance.

It didn’t jive. She had tons of dinosaur books. Why was she infinitely more interested in an adult movie that was pretty much one big car chase rather than a movie about dinosaurs? Was it because despite the differences in ratings, Jurassic World had frightened her more? Maybe. But when she picked out a new stuffed animal to buy with her gift card, she informed us the little owl’s name was Splendid.

And that was it.

She had watched Fury Road in almost complete silence until the first shot of all the Wives. Then she turned to me and said, “There’s so many girls!” That was her takeaway from MMFR: there were lots of girls! All the girls were fighting together against the bad guy! The girls were the heroes! That was important to her, seemingly even more important than it was to me. Maybe because she’s just getting her first taste of playground culture where boys and girls are separate and the two don’t mix often and it’s been confusing. Maybe because she just really liked seeing girls on the screen. When I ask her, she just shrugs and says, “I don’t know, mommy, I liked all the girls. I liked Toast.”

As an adult, I’m aware of issues with representation. I don’t remember consciously noticing it as a child but I remember Leia and Uhura and Janeway being my favorites. I remember dressing up as Dana Scully. As a mom, I watch my daughter gravitate to girls and women on screen. A movie I thought would a sure thing because DINOSAURS! became a total miss because for her, there was no one on screen that she left the theater wanting to dress up as. There was no incentive for her to change her name to mimic favorite characters. I left grinning because holy shit, raptor squad! She left wanting a cheeseburger.

Children know when they’re being marginalized. They might have no idea what they word marginalized means, but they can still tell, instinctually, when they’ve been misrepresented in and/or excluded from the story.

[look, there’s even a scientific study supporting this]

IF you loved Secretary, our new collection will make you purr: Bent Over His Desk: Hot Office Kink ($4.49).

Image: From sense8, the Netflix show I love right now, a perfect pick for Pride.

• A group of teenage inventors have struck upon a clever (albeit still very conceptual) way to alert folks to the presence of various venereal diseases before the burning starts: fluorescing condoms that light up when they encounter dangerous bacteria or virii. See also: No, teenagers did not invent STI-detecting color-changing condoms (Hopes and Fears)
  Color-changing condoms could tell you which VD you just got (Engadget)

• “The Internet has become integral to modern life,” John Oliver says in a recent segment from Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight. The host breaks down the perils that women encounter online, including revenge-porn and chilling cyber threats. ”Congratulations on your white penis,” Oliver cracks, “because if you have one of those, you probably have a very different experience of the Internet.”
  John Oliver Takes on Revenge Porn on ‘Last Week Tonight’ (Rolling Stone)

• All the creativity at the Cannes Lions festival clearly became too stimulating for one couple spotted getting romantic outside the famed Palais’ des Festivals, right in the middle of the red carpet.
  Couple caught having sex on Cannes red carpet (Page Six)

Thank you to our sponsor in Spain, women-run Lust Cinema.

• This is so cool! MiKandi announced today that publishers can now share their adult comics and hentai manga in its Android adult app store. Today’s launch marks the culmination of months of collaboration between MiKandi’s team and launch partners Studio Cutepet, Class Comics, Triangle! and Hizzacked that now have a presence in its app store, MiKandi’s Jennifer McEwen said. Fans can discover new comics by publisher, author or illustrator — and more are on the way.
  MiKandi Now Supports Adult Comics, Hentai Manga (XBIZ)

• Director and producer Sam Scott left no stone unturned in The Big Turn On, speaking with SexTech stalwarts such as Cindy Gallop, Kiiroo, Hot Octopuss, Ashley Madison owner Noel Biderman and a host of other commentators, and delving quick and fast inside the industry. The consensus is unanimous: SexTech is here and ready to stay.
  The Big Turn On: SexTech Hits The Silver Screen (BaDoink)

• “For the past decade, and in numerous capacities, I’ve toiled as a sex worker. I’ve peddled my trade in bars and hotel rooms, on the sets of feminist pornos, and in shady peep shows. I also work in academia—arguably, an equally shady enterprise.”
  How the Government and the Christian Lobby Quash Real Research on Sex Workers (PS Mag)

• When exes and relatives call social workers on BDSM-loving moms and dads, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is there to help. Like many women, Samantha likes kink. Unlike many women, she lost custody of her children over it. (…)
  Parents Can Lose Custody of Children Just for Being Kinky (Daily Beast)

Thank you to our sponsor, Nubile Films.

• One way or another, you can be sure anti-porn crusaders will push to extend Australia’s new anti-piracy laws. The Australian Christian Lobby didn’t even wait for the legislation to pass, calling for the proposed anti-piracy laws to extend to porn in April during the copyright senate enquiry. Back when Conroy’s porn filter was on the table, there were calls to expand it to cover other vices like piracy and gambling. Now that the piracy bill has passed through the Senate, you can be sure the ACL and others are looking for ways to expand it or loopholes to exploit it.
  Porn will be next on Australia’s website-blocking agenda (Sydney Morning Herald)

• Behind the scenes of Erotic Chatbots, Ltd. are two British men: chess genius Dr. David Levy and digital erotica king Paul Andrew. Dr. Levy is the President of Erotic Chatbots, Ltd. and the International Computer Games Association; he’s also the only person to have entered the esteemed Loebner Prize for human-computer conversation more than once and achieved a 100 per cent score by winning it each time. VICE spoke with the duo about loneliness, passion, and what it means to fall in love with a smooth-talking robot.
  A Chess Genius and an Erotica Publisher Are Making the Perfect Dirty Talk Chatbot (Vice)

• “A little googling led me to the only brothel in Melbourne that was owned and operated entirely by women. It was nothing too flashy, but in reviews clients consistently referred to the club as “friendly,” which sounded nice. Plus, I couldn’t miss the chance to support a woman-owned business. I screwed up my courage and called the club.”
  I loved working at a legal brothel in Australia (Hopes and Fears)

• This one’s by me! The U.K.’s online-sex censorship crusade is a toxic encounter between government arrogance and things it simply does not understand: sex, free speech, and the internet.
  https://www.instapaper.com/read/602991509 (Penthouse)

Thank you to our sponsor in Holland, Abby Winters.

• A must-read: Do any of the anti-porn criticisms hold water? It would be nice to know. Reliable statistics about pornography are notoriously difficult to obtain – many people underreport their own habits, and many porn companies are loath to share any sort of viewership statistics.
  Does too much porn numb sexual pleasure? (Aeon Magazine)

• Multiplayer survival game Rust randomly generates players’ physical characteristics for them, imitating the screaming chaos of biology rather than letting players choose. The next step in this boundary pushing social experiment? Penis size, of course.
  Rust Randomizes Penis Length, Players Compare Sizes (Kotaku)

• Le WTF: Germans will be able to buy adult-themed e-books only between the hours of 22:00 and 06:00, under new rules. The rules have applied to German cinemas showing adult films since 2002, but they are now being extended to cover books available on the internet.
  Sex-themed e-books given curfew in Germany (BBC News)

• San Francisco’s “Water Conservation is Smart and Sexy” campaign features voluptuous shots of shiny water features along with suggestive messages, such as “Replace Your Old Toilet and Get Paid for Doing It.”
  San Francisco thinks sex will make your showers shorter (Mother Jones)

• Warning for survivors of sexual assault and trauma. About 50 people a day are sexually assaulted or raped while they’re on the clock, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Any statistic about sexual violence, though, is a farce – only a fraction of victims ever come forward to report the crime.
  Under cover of darkness, female janitors face rape and assault (NAME)

The post Sex News: Light-up condoms, adult comics on Android, sexing up California’s drought appeared first on Violet Blue ® :: Open Source Sex - Journalist and author Violet Blue's site for sex and tech culture, accurate sex information, erotica and more..

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina —  The Art Books of Henri Matisse at Charlotte’s Bechtler Museum of Modern Art is a travelling exhibition with a new twist. This iteration offers the chance to see four of Matisse’s print books next to a handsome selection of artists’ books from the Bechtler Museum’s own collection, some of which rival the great French Modern Master’s work in this medium.

The largest room in the Matisse section is given over to pages from Jazz, perhaps his most well-known art book. Printed in 1947, it consists of playful images of circus performers and animals, interspersed with notes by Matisse in his own handwriting. The bold, flat colors and arresting shapes arose from the decoupage technique (cutting up pieces of colored paper) that he discovered in the 1940s, and which became his major form of creative output in his final years (and which were justly celebrated in a survey at New York’s MOMA last year). Jazz is notable for being the first public statement of this technique, and even though Matisse was dissatisfied with the book when it was printed (believing that the stencil-based reproduction did not do justice to the vibrancy of the cut paper), he came to appreciate the status of Jazz as introducing a new form of visual language to the contemporary art of the time.

Seeing these pages from the original edition makes one appreciate the high degree of skill involved in their making: each color and shape was applied by hand using mainly gouache applied through stencils, for every shape on every page of every book in the edition. Most reproductions of Jazz don’t catch the resulting subtle variations of color from page to page, or the slight smudging sometimes between one color area and another that accentuates the book as a handmade object.

The other three books are an edition of poems by Stephane Mallarmé, illustrated by sinuous line etchings; a story by Henry de Montherlant, illustrated with linocuts; and poems by Charles d’Orleans, illustrated by lithographs.

The de Montherlant illustrations are particularly fine, combining a symmetrical balance between the dense text and the simplicity of the prints. The least successful book is the Charles d’Orleans, consisting mainly of a few repeated heraldic designs that look hastily produced, proving that even the great Matisse could occasionally run out of inspiration.

An adjacent gallery houses books produced by an impressive array of 20th-century artists, from George Braque’s collection of intaglio prints The Order of Birds, and densely textured prints by Antoni Tàpies, to several accordion-fold books by Swiss artist Warja Honegger-Lavater. To contemporary eyes, it’s perhaps true to say that many of these art books gave the artists the opportunity to try out work in a different medium that was nevertheless very similar to their studio work. Certainly, compared to the experimentation on view at New York’s Center for Book Arts, or the Joan Flasch collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the books by Matisse, Braque, et al, seem almost conventional in their format. Nevertheless, an exhibition like this one at the Bechtler Museum is a chance to see some rarely seen artist’s books, and affords a riveting snapshot of a new form of expression in its first full flowering.

The Art Books of Henri Matisse continues at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art (420 S Tryon Street, Charlotte, North Carolina) through September 7, 2015.

From 1936 to 1943, around 2,000 posters were created as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). An executive order signed on May 6, 1935 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up a federal assistance program so millions of the unemployed could get to work, including artists. The Library of Congress (LOC) holds over 900 WPA posters created to advertise the national parks, promote local cultural programs, and prevent drunk driving and syphilis. Their Work Projects Administration (WPA) Poster Collection  (the WPA was renamed in 1939, although its acronym stayed the same) is the largest collection of such posters, and earlier this month they added new copyright-free examples to their Flickr page.

Much of the legacy of the WPA remains, in the highways we drive over or the murals hanging over us while we wait in line at the post office, but a lot of the art went missing, something the WPA Art Recovery Project has been trying to fix since it launched in 2001. The posters in particular were mass-produced for 17 states, mainly in California, New York, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and often disposed of after use. Artists were asked not to sign their names. Nevertheless the posters endure, as do their creators. The Posters for the People project, which published many of them in a 2008 book, identifies artists like Vera Bock, who was born in Russia and inspired by woodblock prints in her designs, the Bauhaus-trained Richard Floethe from Germany, and Tony Velonis of New York, who was influenced by Cubism and experimentation with printmaking techniques (the LOC has an interview with Velonis on its site).

All those distinctive styles of modernism found an unexpected outlet through the WPA, with advice on hygiene, ads for zoos and local marching band parades, or ominous, collage-style warnings like Robert Lachenmann’s “Don’t mix ’em” lithograph, in which a skull hovers behind a bottle of whiskey and a gas pump. The posters for the Federal Theater program, United States Travel Bureau, and other State Departments hold up surprisingly well with their direct messages and simple designs. At a time when unemployment was at almost 20%, these posters encouraged people to get out and explore their country and participate in local life in defiance of the hardships of the Great Depression.

View the Library of Congress Work Projects Administration Poster Collection online. Selections are available on the Library of Congress Flickr.

Just because a game decided it’s a woman shooting a dude in the face doesn’t change why I feel disconnected from this medium.

Hyperlax

Web experience by Taylor Crane combines instagram timelapses with Soundcloud playlists to create audio visual montages.

Do you see those Instagram #hyperlapse videos on the left? They were just posted to Instagram; it’s a real-time feed. Enjoy a peek into the lives of others, from locations around the world. Hyperlax is meant to be a bit of an escape, a bit voyueristic, a bit relaxing. I think it’s mesmerising. Maybe you will too!

Try it out for yourself here

Autocomplete Archive:

The Autocomplete Archive saves daily suggestions from Google Autocomplete, using Google.com, Google Images, and Youtube, in 32 different languages.

Link

1. My First Rattle Was an Improperly-Sealed Bottle of Prenatal Vitamins

2. Misandry Began At Home

3. I Am Not One Of Your Commenters

4. No One Provided Me With An Adequate Explanation of the Difference Between Crocodiles and Alligators

5. So Few Barbies, So Many Gay Penguins

Read more Prospective Titles For My Daughter’s Tell-All Memoir at The Toast.

Cicero

Honestly, it's all about what's available. Plenty of newer shows haven't been licensed for dubbing yet. I'm for whatever gets people to watch more anime. I can't pick a side.

King Solomon

Subs preserve the nuance of the original. Look at something as basic as Princess Mononoke - I'm not saying Gillian Anderson doesn't have a great voice, but in traditional Japanese anime, dogs are voiced by men, and cats by women, and that gets lost when you recast without respect for the original.

Hannibal Barca

That's actually not even true? Moro was a wolf goddess. She was clearly female. Did you even watch the whole movie?

Read more Significant Historical Figures And Where I Believe They Would Fall On The “Subs Versus Dubs” Argument at The Toast.

Amy first realized something was amiss in the third grade. There she was one minute, staring out of the window, thinking about the blueness of her classmate Jonah’s eyes, when suddenly a week had passed.

It always happened like that. She would lose herself in a daydream and then lose herself in real life. She’d imagine a comet hurtling towards the earth, laying waste to the school, then wake up a day later in bed staring at the ceiling, her mom’s voice calling for her over and over. She’d imagine mountains folding into each other like origami paper, the sky cracking like glass, a boy in class passing her a love note. Next she’d be sitting in her mother’s car on the way to grandma’s house, December having passed with no notice from her.

She didn’t mention this to anyone at first. It didn’t matter much anyways—she was young and there was a lot of time to waste. There was always more where that came from.

So she let time pass like that. Sometimes she willed it on. When exams came during high school, she’d think about the future—apartments in New York, weddings in the snow, herself disappearing into the world with just a suitcase. When she was done, she’d pick up her term papers.

It wasn’t until she met Matt that it became a problem.

Read more Fugue: A Short Story at The Toast.