Daily Archives: March 20, 2015
Videographer Refuses to Film Ohio Same-Sex Wedding
Videographer Refuses to Film Ohio Same-Sex Wedding
A lesbian couple say a videographer denied them services due to their sexual orientation.
Daniel Reynolds
This Is What Happens When Art Students Recreate Famous Nude Masterpieces (NSFW)
This Is What Happens When Art Students Recreate Famous Nude Masterpieces (NSFW)
“Nudes are hot right now,” photographer Matthew Leifheitr mused in an email exchange with HuffPost. Leifheitr has many titles, among them VICE photo editor and editor-in-chief of MATTE Magazine. Recently, he’s taken on a faculty position at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, a role that’s allowed him to better explore the beautiful and nefarious world of naked art.
AFTER HENRI MATISSE. Photo by Noah Boskey, Erin Carr, Emma Castelbolognesi, Crystelle Colucci, Alberto Inamagua, and Allison Schaller.
The fruits of his labor are currently on view at SVA, in a pop-up exhibition titled “Artsy Nudes.” For the project, he gave his participating students a simple prompt: choose any nude work of art from all of art history and recreate it. From Henri Matisse’s “The Dance” to Diego Velázquez’s “Rokeby Venus” to Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase,” the appropriations breathed life into nude standards many hold near and dear to their hearts.
Some images appear remarkably similar to their historical antecedents, others take liberties to create a new photograph from an old painting. “I think reverse-engineering successful images to find out how they were made is a useful thing to be able to do,” Leifheitr explained. “My students are sophomores in art school, and I’d like them to be able to look at an image they like, be able to guess how it was made, and apply that knowledge to their own subject matter.”
AFTER MARCEL DUCHAMP. Photo by Anthony Costa, Jessica Frankl, Mikaela Keen Lumongsod, Frankie Mule, Gabrielia Priyma, Balazs Sebok, and Valeriya Vaynerman.
Leifheitr himself is no stranger to reconfiguring famous images. For example, he recently restaged a photo of Rudolph Nureyev taken by Richard Avedon, replacing the late dance icon with gay pornography giant Michael Lucas. He also photographed the contents of David Wojnarowicz’s “Magic Box” at NYU Fales Library, turning the results into a deck of oversized playing cards.
“I think there was something to be understood about the impossibility of true plagiarism in photography,” he wrote on VICE. “When I was in art school I remember becoming discouraged, believing any worthwhile image had already been made. The goal of this assignment was to teach that even if you try very hard to remake someone else’s work, your photographs can only be your own.”
“I’m interested in the stuff dead artists leave behind, and how those kind of archives can be reanimated or collaborated with,” he added over email.
AFTER DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ. Photo by Ebb Bayarsaikhan, Hannah Hurley, and Hayley Stephon; painting by Jake Kaplan.
“Artsy Nudes” is on its final leg at SVA (the show closes this weekend), though VICE fans can look forward to a 10-page spread of the works in this month’s magazine. You might have missed the show’s opening, which featured classical musicians performing in the nude, but it’s probably not the last figurative nude art show we’ll write about this year. Leifheitr cited Art F City founder Paddy Johnson in our e-conversation: “The figure is back.” Make that, the naked figure.
Before we ended our chat, we aksed Leifheitr about his show’s connection to the ever-present world of pornography, since he’s rubbed elbows with the industry before. “In my personal opinion, the line between porn and art is slippery, and ultimately unimportant,” he concluded. “It’s very dependent on context — if you’re in the office bathroom looking at the Matisse recreation my students made, and art historical pastiche makes you hot, I guess it might be porn in that context. If you’re in the gallery, it just looks like art.”
Well said, friend. Check out “Artsy Nudes” below.
www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/20/artsy-nudes-sva_n_6913694.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices
Monica Lewinsky Offers Powerful TED Talk on Her Public Humiliation and Fight Against Cyberbullying: VIDEO
Monica Lewinsky Offers Powerful TED Talk on Her Public Humiliation and Fight Against Cyberbullying: VIDEO
Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern whose affair with President Bill Clinton made her internationally famous overnight when its salacious details hit the internet in 1998, stepped into the spotlight at the annual TED Conference on Thursday in Vancouver.
I spent the week at TED and was in the room when Lewinsky stepped up in front of the receptive and curious audience to lead off a segment of the conference called ‘Just and Unjust’. Lewinsky has spoken about her experiences only a few times to date (she spoke at Forbes ’30 Under 30′ summit in October 2014).
Lewinsky talked of the mistake she made by “falling in love with [her] boss” and its “devastating consequences.”
“I was branded as a tramp, tart, slut, whore, bimbo and, of course, ‘that woman.’ I was known by many, but actually known by few. I get it. It was easy to forget ‘that woman’ was dimensional and had a soul.”
She added: “Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of my mistake, and I regret that mistake deeply.”
Lewinsky said that she was finally able to put some perspective on the public shaming she had endured 12 years later after her mother called her to discuss the death of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who took his own life after being secretly filmed by his roommate have an intimate encounter with another man and then humiliated when the video was posted to the internet.
Said Lewinsky:
“Tyler’s tragic senseless death was a turning point for me. It served to re-contextualize my experiences and I then began to look at the world of humiliation and bullying around me and see something different.”
She added: “There is a very personal price to public humiliation and the growth of the internet has jacked up that price.”
Lewinsky, who also cited recent hackings of Snapchat, iCloud, and SONY pictures and the intent behind them to publicly embarrass celebrities and executives, said she has since been motivated to battle cyberbullying and encouraged people to be “upstanders” rather than “bystanders” on the internet, and battle trolling with positive comments.
Finally, she addressed accusations that her decision to step back into the spotlight might be politically motivated:
“In the past nine months the question I’ve been asked the most is ‘why?’ Why now? Why was I sticking my head above the parapet?’ You can read between the lines in those questions. And the answer has nothing to do with politics. The top note answer was, and is, because it’s time. Time to stop tiptoeing around my past. Time to stop living a life of opprobrium. And time to take back my narrative. And it’s also not just about saving myself. Anyone who is suffering from shame and public humiliation needs to know one thing. You can survive it. I know it’s hard. It may not be painless, quick, or easy, but you can insist on a different ending to your story.”
Watch, AFTER THE JUMP…
I’ll be sharing more videos from the TED 2015 conference on a variety of topics over the next few days and weeks.
Andy Towle
Anti-LGBT bills filed in both Kansas & Missouri
Anti-LGBT bills filed in both Kansas & Missouri
Missouri legislators are considering eight different bills targeting the LGBT community. Some would require all public restrooms be gender-divided and another would prohibit the use of state…
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Business, Faith Leaders Oppose Indiana 'License to Discriminate' Bill
Business, Faith Leaders Oppose Indiana 'License to Discriminate' Bill
The bill may be on a fast track to passage, but some influential voices are registering their objections.
Trudy Ring
www.advocate.com/politics/2015/03/20/business-faith-leaders-oppose-indiana-license-discriminate-bill
FAMILY Act Will Benefit Workers and Families
FAMILY Act Will Benefit Workers and Families
Yesterday, Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), re-introduced important legislation to address the needs of working families across the country.
HRC.org
Sean Penn Got Into Character For Milk With Disco And Hot Wings
Sean Penn Got Into Character For Milk With Disco And Hot Wings
Sean Penn’s 2008 Oscar-winning performance in Milk as the titular gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk was nothing if not a proper salute to a fallen hero of the LGBT community.
But it’s his recent revelation on Conan about how he prepared each day of shooting in San Francisco that got us thinking about the film in a new way.
If this anecdote is to be believed, Penn prepped each morning with a plate of spicy chicken wings and a rousing jam sesh to The Weather Girl’s 1982 hit “It’s Raining Men” as he entered the Castro.
Or as he calls it, “homosexuality by musical hypnosis.”
Watch below:
Dan Tracer
This Video Makes A Powerful Case For Transgender Pronouns: WATCH
This Video Makes A Powerful Case For Transgender Pronouns: WATCH
Willfully misgendering someone who identifies as trans is one of the most common forms of transphobic violence. It robs a person of their right to assert who are and denies them agency merely because they don’t perfectly fit into preconceived notions about what it means to be a man, woman, or person living outside of the gender spectrum. In many ways accidental misgendering can wreak that same kind of havoc, but often times the very act isn’t coming from a place of intentional transphobia. Sometimes you just don’t know how to refer to people.
Adult film star Buck Angel, YouTuber Kat Blaque, author Kate Bornstein, and comedian Ian Harvie sat down with Buzzfeed to discuss why, in their opinion, there’s a pressing need for broader usage of transgender pronouns.
“For a long time a lot of people have felt like that they don’t fit into the mold of primarily he or primarily she or maybe they feel that they are a blend of both and that there’s not really a word for that,” Harvie explains. “Everybody else in the world out there can say ‘I am…’ and they identify themselves. Everybody believes them. But when I say ‘I am…’ I don’t know why people just don’t believe us.”
Check out the full video AFTER THE JUMP…
Charles Pulliam-Moore
www.towleroad.com/2015/03/making-the-case-for-transgender-pronouns-watch.html