#Carol Wagstaff

[thefoxlady]

My autistic ass watched one of the many Christmas Carol adaptations and thought up about a version where Don't Starve characters play out the story. Here's what I think up.

Don't Starve: A Christmas Carol

Maxwell/William Carter as Ebenezer Scrooge

Wagstaff as Jacob Marley

Wilson P. Higgsbury as Bob Cratchit

Webber as Tiny Tim

Wigfrid as The Ghost of Christmas Past

Wolfgang as The Ghost of Christmas Present

Wes as The Ghost of Christmas Future/Yet To Come

Willow as Mrs. Emily Cratchit

George T. Witherstone as Fezziwig

Charlie as Belle

(Older) Wendy Carter as Fred (Scrooge's Nephew)

Jack Carter as Fan (Scrooge's Sister)

Walter as Peter Cratchit

Wurt as Belinda Cratchit

Wilba as Melinda Cratchit

Pigmen as The Portly Gentlemen

If you think a different character should play someone else, tell me who and why. If you're confused about Wendy's part, Wendy is Maxwell's nephew so I gave her the role of Fred, as for Jack, he's Maxwell's brother, enough said.

[straykatfish]

Held in St Nicholas Church, Bramber.

All the work shown is for sale (with one exception) and wherever possible I will include links to the artist’s website or, if they don’t have one, to their page on the Steyning Arts site. Where possible I spoke to the artist about their work but many had taken a well-earned break on what was an extremely hot day.

These photographs are by Wendy Ball who says she take them for her own pleasure and, although she has won a number of prizes, appears not to have a website. Some of them are printed on aluminium which seems to add an extra layer of cold air to the mostly winter scenes. I found the compositions interesting and the colours, but mostly I was taken by the patience necessary to capturing a moving animal in the right spot at the right time,

These acrylics by Mike Kelly, reminded me of stained glass, fractured and with lead partitions between the pieces. I remember making pictures at school using black paper over red and orange tissue pasted onto cartridge to mimic the effect. 

  These prints are by Andrew Purches who doesn’t seem to have a website. I was drawn to the simplicity of the demarcations in line and colour in these landscapes.

  These are by Carol Wagstaff whose work is both prolific and varied. These two are probably not my most preferred in terms of my own likes and dislikes, but I think they represent her artistry. Her instagram account gives a far better idea of her range and includes portraiture and abstracts from her recent humanitarian project currently on exhibition in Shoreham. She describes her work as “Multi Media Artwork encompassing Painting, Sculpture, Installation, Photography and Print.“

These marvelous little textiles are by Jean Griffiths “Textile Art and 2D”. As someone who has no skill or patience with a needle, this kind of work is a challenge too far. I can imagine making them with inks though – dark umber, gold, and orange. This small group is called ‘Fractured Earth’,

the next two, ‘Violet Sunset’ and ‘Seascape’ which are almost collages of fabrics stitched into their composition.

‘Welsh Landscape’ (bottom right) also includes a section of ordnance survey map.

I met John Corballis at last year’s art trail and saw him several times around the village on his bike. I hadn’t known how ill he was, and perhaps he didn’t either at that time, so his death later that year was a shock to all of us. This is a token exhibition of his work in oils – precise, controlled, and detailed which might be expected of a man whose life had been the law.

Crafty corner! These lovely little pieces are made by Carol Parker using flotsam found on the beach. I find the compositions compelling in their simplicity, balance, and colours.

  These digital photography prints are the work of Andrea Shelton who doesn’t seem to have a presence on the Steyning Arts site. I was attracted like the magpie I am to the bright colours and sense of floating light which reminded me of some of the virtual world environments I have experienced.

Further round the exhibition I found more of Carol Wagstaff’s work. Simple marks with a core subject. Taking photos through glass doesn’t do them justice.

Sarah Duffield ‘Sussex Landscape Artist and art tutor’, is probably one of our more high profile members with her signature style of non-natural colours and simplified shapes, all derived from local landscapes. She uses her instagram account to post preparatory sketches, often in charcoal, and to talk about her work.

I love Janet Butterworth‘s tables; in fact I have one next to my TV with a lamp and a sculpture of Alien made with bits of motorcycle parts on it! Janet ‘distresses’ and rescues old furniture by adding mosaics and colour. All of them sound furniture in addition to being things of beauty. Janet was the only artist there to talk to and she was busy fielding questions about possible purchases of other artists’ work on their behalf. We did have a brief chat but I never made the connection between her and the tables as she was down the opposite end of the church from them.

These are all by Rosalind Landreth who seems able to cover a range from botanical through to photorealistic. Again, glass, reflective in strong light, impairs photographed image,

  I think I would like to make work like these by Alison Millner-Gulland (Mixed media paintings, printmaking and ceramics). Almost cartoons, collaged, a bit abstract but with a message if you can stay to look and read it in there. There’s a lot to look at and so many interesting marks on her various supports. I’m interested in the frames too – how do people choose? How do you find the right one for each piece?

Lino prints by Melissa Birch, ‘Linoprint Artwork and Design’. I have to confess no idea at all how these works are made, my only experience being carving out channels in chunks of old lino at school, plastering the surface with poster paint, and slapping them onto paper to finally reveal an acorn or a spider or whatever we thought we had marked out. I suspect the operation is more sophisticated than that and I should ask – Melissa lives only a couple of hundred yards from me.

Jill Blake – ‘Water Colour and Acrylic Painting‘ – makes originals and prints of natural scenes, objects, and animals. I forget what she calls the technique used in the picture of teasels (bottom left) but it involves leakage.

Finally, these are by Karen Corballis, widow of John. She describes her work as ‘Mixed Media, Oil, Water Colour and Print Making’. The one I like best is a landscape of trees in a left-to-right, background-to-midground composition done in vibrant summer greens and yellows with a slash of dark trunks marking the line, and a sliver of sky above. It’s on her Steyning Arts website.

    Steyning Arts summer exhibition Held in St Nicholas Church, Bramber. All the work shown is for sale (with one exception) and wherever possible I will include links to the artist's website or, if they don't have one, to their page on the Steyning Arts site.

[rotten-dan]

alright, this would have a pretty long answer but...

name your favorite thing about each dst survivor (yes that includes bastardwell)!

HNGMGG..............

I SHALL PLEASE U ANON

Wilson: that he appreciates cute things and that in the face of danger can pull out a dumbass dad joke

Willow: that she is a full-on adult that still carries a plushy for comfort, it validates me. (also set fire to her abusers)

Wolfgang: big muscles yet a big sweetie

Wendy: her "you could never be a monster" to Webber. it just speaks volumes of her character

Wes: all of him. yes all... but if u want specifics. the fact that he doesn't mind being in the constant all that much cuz he got all these friends softens my heart.

WX-78: their evil bit is fucking funny as help. also how they sing the starvers carol

Wickerbottom: the way she baby talks to the critters

Woodie: his hockey skin huhuheuheuheue

Waxmell: UGHH.................................his...voice?

Wagstaff: the stupid eyes he gets when using his goggles

Wigfrid: Her friendly quotes at other characters, they are so good, she is a good teammate.

Webber: His positive attitude at things

Walani: she was a pirate and said fuck it and became a surfer, Big dick energy

Warly: He is a chef! and a picky eater!!! i feel seen!!

Woodlegs: the way he talks. also a pirate, which makes him gay

Wilba: she scREAMS everything and it reminds me of a friend

Wormwood: His voice and his need to have friends. also he transmasc no I don't make the rules thats just how it is.

Wheeler: she has the bisexual haircut

Winona: she fucks

Wortox: even tho he looks like a demon, he just wants to do a heeheehoohoo and have fun

Wurt: her face is so cute and her lil snout i cry.

Walter: he is the only character whose resting face is a smile. chatty cathy cutie

Wilbur: he says "nanas!" when examining bananas and i just find it absolutely adorable.

[louisebelcherstan]

Secret Santa Fan Fic for @gayambrose

"Twas the night before christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stiring not even a mouse." "Philip, *sigh*, you know how much I enjoy listening to you read Christmas stories but you know how much I hate books, they're terrible." "I know, I know and I'm sorry, But Christmas is the one time of the year I get to be festive and cheerful, and the joy of knitting Christmas sweaters, going caroling and making hot cocoa just helps me forget how lonely I am." Ambrose sighed, he knew how hard these past few years had been on him, losing his mother hadn't helped at all. He wished he could take away all the pain and suffering he'd been feeling because truth be told, after the past few years they'd been working together at Wagstaff elementary, he'd secretly fallen in love with Frond. He knew Frond had dated a few women over the years and although it's pained him to watch his heart get broken over and over, he knew he was just another guy he had unrequited love with. Maybe flatting with him wasn't the greatest decision he would ever make as it would be so much more painful, to be hoplessy in love with his roommate, then to be hoplessy in love with a co-worker whom he would only see Monday-Friday from 9am-4pm every week. However if he had the chance to get even a smidgen closer to Frond, he take it. Because even though he knew you can't force people to fall in love with you, he so desperately wanted him to. "I'm sorry, I know how much Christmas means to you, how about I go make us some eggnog and you can finish reading your story?" he proposed. "Non alcoholic? frond asked" "just how you like it" he said, with a smile. He looked at Frond and swore his eyes were shining as bright as the lights on the Christmas tree. He was coming back with two glasses of eggnog when Frond stopped him in the doorway. "Excuse me Ambrose, you seem to be under the mistletoe and you know what that means," he said with a devilish smirk resting on his lips. Ambrose looked at him and never in his life had he seen Frond so flirtatious, it was intoxicating. He put the glasses down on the nearby bench. "Oh, well if you insist," he teased before pulling frond into him and kissing him hard. Ambrose pinned Frond against the wall, both of Frond's arms hooked around Ambrose's head pressing their faces together, their chins and their open mouths. Ambrose held on to both of his shoulders. After a few minutes-maybe more than a few they sepreated, lips numb and tingly but eyes filled with lust. As the panted for air, Frond took ambroses hand and lead him down the hall towards his bedroom, but as he reached the door he stopped. "Ambrose there's something I gotta tell you, I... I...." he mumbled nervously. Ambrose watched his eyes, he knew what he was trying to say so he said "I love you too." Frond's eyes lit up and Ambrose thought his heart was going to burst. He put his hands on Frond's waist and lent down and whispered "Merry Christmas ya filthy animal." Frond stifled a laugh before ambrose pushed him though the doors and their lips returned to each other once again.

Note: Hope you like it, still very new to writing Fanfic :) sorry if they're are spelling or gramme mistakes.

[violettesiren]

It is the season now to go

Into May' s fairyland-

Where happy, hand in hand,

We two can watch the green buds grow,

And breathe the lilac breezes blow

Within the woods' wild loveliness.

Oh, come, my love with me,

And lie 'neath yonder tree,

Whose shadows are a fond caress.

It is the season now for those

Who scent love's Spring.

The birds are caroling

Of youth that never has a close.

Our May shall be like to the rose

That never dies: Winter is o'er,

And happy, hand in hand,

In May's sweet fairyland

We two shall wander evermore!

May's Fairyland by Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff  

[paintandigitalproduction-blog]

Inspiration & Influences

Queer Films & TV Series:

The Boys in the Band (1970)

Pink Flamingos (1972)

Cruising (1980) / Interior. Leather. Bar. (2014)

Paris is Burning (1990) / KiKi (2016)

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Mysterious Skin (2004)

Bad Education (2004)

Transamerica (2005)

Milk (2008)

A Single Man (2009)

Beginners (2010)

Laurence Anyways (2012)

How to Survive a Plague (2012)

Pride (2014)

Carol (2015)

Strike a Pose (2016)

Theo et Hugo (2016)

The Death & Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017)

When We Rise (2017 TV Mini-Series)

Tom of Finland (2017)

Queer Icons:

Frank Ocean (American Rapper)

Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius (American Indie/Pop Artist)

George Michael (English Singer/Songwriter)

Freddie Mercury (British Singer/Songwriter)

Louis Kevin Celestin (Kaytranada) (Canadian DJ/Producer)

Achim Brandenburg (Prosumer) (German DJ Producer)

Danny Nicoletta (American Photographer)

Wolfgang Tillmans (German Photographer)

Robert Mapplethrope (American Photographer)

Herb Ritts (American Photographer)

Ryan McGinley (American Photographer)

Tom Bianchi (American Photographer/Writer)

Geroge Platt Lynes (American Photographer)

Bruce LaBruce (Canadian Photographer/Director)

Gus Van Sant (American Director/Screenwriter)

Touko Valio Laaksonen aka Tom of Finland (Finnish Artist)

Andy Warhol (American Artist)

Keith Haring (American Artist)

David Hockney (English Artist)

Leigh Bowery (Australian Performance Artist)

Yves Saint Laurent (French Designer)

Thomas Carlyle “Tom” Ford (American Fashion Designer/Director)

Alexander McQueen (British Fashion Designer/Director)

Calvin Klein (American Fashion Designer)

Karl Lagerfeld (German Creative Director/Artist)

Will Munro (Canadian Artist/Club Promoter)

Sam Wagstaff (American Art Curator) (Partnered to Robert Mapplethorpe)

Candy Darling (American Transgender Actress)

Edward Montgomery Clift (American Actor)

Divine - Harris Glenn Milstead (American Drag Queen)

Christopher Isherwood (English-American Novelist)

Sylvia Rivera (American Gay Liberation & Transgender Activist)

Allen Ginsberg (American Poet)

[londontheatre]

Joining the previously announced Adrienne Warren, who plays the title role, are Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Ike Turner, Madeline Appiah as Tina’s mother Zelma Bullock, Jenny Fitzpatrick as the alternate Tina, Lorna Gayle as Tina’s Grandmother GG, Tom Godwin as Record Producer Phil Spector and Lyricist Terry Britten, Francesca Jackson as Ike and Tina’s manager Rhonda Graam, Aisha Jawando as Tina’s sister Alline Bullock, Natey Jones as Tina’s father Richard Bullock and Tina’s first love Raymond Hill, Gerard McCarthy as record company Marketing Manager Erwin Bach and Ryan O’Donnell as Tina’s Manager Roger Davies. They are joined by ensemble members Tsemaye Bob-Egbe, Keisher Downie, Kit Esuruoso who also plays Tina’s son Craig Hill, Jammy Kasongo, Sia Kiwa, Jason Langley, Kayleigh McKnight, Baker Mukasa and Tanisha Spring and swings Derek Aidoo, Gavin Alex, Edward Bourne, Candace Furbert, Hannah Jay-Allan and Rodney Vubya.

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd and written by Katori Hall with Frank Ketelaar and Kees Prins, the world premiere of the new musical TINA will open at the Aldwych Theatre in April 2018. Performances will begin on 21 March 2018 with press night on 17 April 2018. Produced by Stage Entertainment, TINA is currently booking to 16 June 2018.

Choreography is by Anthony van Laast, with set and costume designs by Mark Thompson, musical supervision by Nicholas Skilbeck, lighting by Bruno Poet, sound by Nevin Steinberg, projection design by Jeff Sugg and orchestrations by Ethan Popp. Children’s casting will be announced in due course.

[See image gallery at http://ift.tt/1FpwFUw]

  From humble beginnings in Nutbush, Tennessee, to her transformation into the global Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Tina Turner didn’t just break the rules, she rewrote them. This new stage musical, presented in association with Tina Turner herself, reveals the untold story of a woman who dared to defy the bounds of her age, gender and race.

Adrienne Warren will make her West End stage debut as Tina. Her most recent theatre credit was in Shuffle Along at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway, for which she received a Tony nomination. Her other US theatre credits include Bring It On The Musical at St. James Theater, Dreamgirls at the Apollo Theater, which was followed by a National Tour, and The Wiz at Encores City Center. She has toured and recorded with the multi-platinum selling Trans Siberian Orchestra for which she received her first Platinum and Gold records. Her television credits include the Amazon Pilot Point of Honor, Orange is the New Black, Blue Bloods, Royal Pains, People in New Jersey, Irreversible and Black Box. In March this year, she made her Carnegie Hall debut with the New York Pops.

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith was last on stage playing Laertes in Hamlet at the Barbican alongside Benedict Cumberbatch. His previous theatre credits include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Edward II, Antigone and Death and the King’s Horseman for the National Theatre, The Low Road for the Royal Court, Feast, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and The Changeling for the Young Vic, Love’s Labour’s Lost for Shakespeare’s Globe and Detaining Justice, Seize the Day and Fabulation for the Tricycle Theatre. His television credits include The Split, Wagstaffe, Class, Capital, Crackanory, Worricker Trilogy, The Last Panthers and Midsomer Murders. Holdbrook-Smith’s film work includes Paddington 2, The Commuter, Justice League, Doctor Strange, The Double and Roadkill and the forthcoming Mary Poppins Returns and Ghost Stories.

Madeline Appiah’s most recent theatre credits include Hamlet for the Almeida and in the West End, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Here We Go and Welcome to Thebes for the National Theatre, Hotel Cerise for Theatre Royal Stratford East, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice and Taming of the Shrew for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Off The Endz for the Royal Court and The Duchess of Malfi for the Old Vic Theatre. Her television credits include In The Long Run, King For a Term, Partners in Crime, Gavin and Stacy, Doctors, The Bill and Holby City.

Jenny Fitzpatrick was last on stage in Boudica at the Globe Theatre. She has also appeared on stage in Oliver! at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Peter Pan at the Manchester Opera House, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry IV Part I and Camelot at Regents Park Open Air Theatre and Little Shop of Horrors at the Duke of York’s and Menier Chocolate Factory. She has also toured the UK in The Blues Brothers, Soul Sister, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Our House. Her television credits include Eastenders, Silent Witness and MI High.

Lorna Gayle has appeared on stage in A Tale of Two Cities for Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Guys and Dolls at the Savoy Theatre, Nation for the National Theatre, Rudy’s Rare Records at the Hackney Empire and Almost Nothing for the Royal Court. Her television credits include The Rebel, Doctors, Cuckoo, Fried, Holby City, Utopia and Eastenders. Her film credits include Carmilla, Caribbean Dream, Having You, One Day, The Dark Knight and Run Fat Boy Run.

Tom Godwin’s more recent theatre credits include City of Glass at the Lyric Hammersmith, The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre, The Little Mermaid at Bristol Old Vic, To Kill a Mockingbird at Regents Park Open Air Theatre, Bingo at the Young Vic and Taming of the Shrew at Shakespeare’s Globe. His television credits include Coronation Street, Holby City, Knightfall, Doctors, Eastenders, and Waking the Dead. On film he has been seen in Alice Through The Looking Glass, The Danish Girl and About Time.

Francesca Jackson’s stage credits include Kiss Me Kate, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George and A Little Night Music at the Theatre Du Chatelet, Million Dollar Quartet at the Noel Coward Theatre, Dusty at the Charing Cross Theatre, Dreamboats and Petticoats at the Playhouse Theatre, Rent at the Duke of York’s Theatre and All the Fun of the Fair at the Garrick Theatre. Her television credits include Boyfriend Material and Refresh. Jackson was a finalist in the BBC 1 show I’d Do Anything with Andrew Lloyd Webber. Her film credits include Hiding in the Shadows and Evita.

Aisha Jawando is currently playing the lead role in the Hackney Empire Pantomime Cinderella. Her other theatre credits include Martha Reeves in Motown the Musical, as well as roles in Beautiful The Carole King Musical, The Book of Mormon, The Lion King, Fela, Legally Blonde and Soul Sister.

Natey Jones’ theatre credits include One Love: The Bob Marley Musical at Birmingham Rep, Doctor Faustus, Don Quixote and The Alchemist for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Tomorrow for the White Bear Theatre, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Courtyard Theatre and Once Upon a Time in the 90’s at the Albany Theatre. His television credits include Doctors and Shakespeare Live! From the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Gerard McCarthy’s stage credits include Cat for the Courtyard Theatre, It’s a Wonderful Life at the Bridgehouse Theatre, The Merry Wives of Windsor at Shakespeare’s Globe, Mamma Mia at the Prince Edward Theatre, Saturday Night Fever at the Apollo Theatre and the UK tours of Blue/Orange and Beautiful Thing. His television credits include Call The Midwife, Puppy Love, The Fall and Hollyoaks. On film he has been seen in A Nightingale Falling.

Ryan O’Donnell was last seen playing the lead role in the touring production of Sunny Afternoon after appearing in the West End production. His other stage credits include Quadrophenia at Plymouth Theatre Royal, Romeo and Juliet the Royal Shakespeare Company, Victor Frankenstein at the Royal & Derngate Theatre, Tracy Beaker Gets Real! at Nottingham Playhouse, Shadow Mouth for Sheffield Theatres and Stand Tall at the Landor Theatre. His film and television credits include MI High and Jesus: The Beginning.

TINA is produced by Stage Entertainment, Joop van den Ende and Tali Pelman, in association with Tina Turner.

Adrienne Warren is appearing with the support of UK Equity, incorporating the Variety Artistes’ Federation, pursuant to an exchange program between American Equity and UK Equity.

LISTINGS INFORMATION Theatre: Aldwych Theatre, Aldwych, London WC2B 4DF Dates: initial booking period 21 March – 16 June 2018 Press Night: 17 April 2018 at 7pm Performances: Monday – Saturday at 7.30pm, Thursdays and Saturdays at 2.30pm Nb first midweek matinee 12 April 2018

  http://ift.tt/2mzYglP London Theatre 1

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: A Movie Remembers the Artist Who Made Fashion Illustration Fashionable Again

Eija Vehka Ajo, Juan Ramos, Jacques de Bascher, Karl Lagerfeld and Antonio Lopez, Paris, (1973), from Sex Fashion & Disco directed by James Crump

Speaking candidly to the camera, the actress Jessica Lange remembers the time when she worked as a model for the fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez during the 1970s. She can’t hide her smile: “Everybody at that time got swept into Antonio’s world. There was something magical about it. He had this way of bringing joy into people’s lives.”

Lange is just one in a long list of Lopez’s collaborators who appear in James Crump’s seductive new documentary, Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco, screening this Friday as part of Doc NYC. And their admiration and devotion toward the artist are key in understanding the magnitude of his work.

“Donna Jordan, for 20 Ans” (1970), drawing by Antonio Lopez (© copyright the Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos, 2012; from Sex Fashion & Disco directed by James Crump. Used by permission.)

Born in Puerto Rico in 1943, Lopez moved to New York as a child and grew up in Spanish Harlem and the Bronx. When he was 12, he won a scholarship for the Traphagen School of Fashion’s Saturday children’s program, and attended the High School of Art and Design on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Later, he was accepted into the Fashion Institute of Technology, but never completed his degree. While at school, Lopez started working for John’s Fairchild Women’s Wear Daily, and within just a few months, his illustrations were featured on the cover of the prestigious publication. He quit school to work for Fairchild full-time, when his work was noticed by Carrie Donovan, the legendary fashion editor for the New York Times. She offered him freelance work, and that exposure eventually turned him into a regular contributor for some of the most influential fashion publications of the time, such as Vogue, Elle, and Harper’s Bazaar.

Along with his collaborator and boyfriend-turned-lifelong-friend Juan Ramos, Lopez is credited with saving fashion illustration from extinction. Starting in the late 1930s, photography had started to overshadow illustration, as the work of Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, and Irving Penn became more prominent in fashion magazines. “The first photographic cover of [American] Vogue was a watershed in the history of fashion illustration and a watershed mark of its decline,” fashion historian Laird Borrelli-Persson writes in her book Fashion Illustration Now. When Lopez brought his style to the glossy pages of magazines and portrayed his models dancing and moving across the page, breaking with the old tradition of stagnant poses, he injected life and fantasy into the work. Speaking in the movie, Vogue’s creative director-at-large Grace Coddington explains: “Until he came along, a fashion drawing was just like a very stiff couture model. Antonio brought this thing where he put them in a fantasy.”

“Carol LaBrie,” for Italian Vogue, (1971), drawing by Antonio Lopez (© copyright the Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos, 2012; from Sex Fashion & Disco directed by James Crump. Used by permission.)

Directed, written, and co-produced by Crump, who’s also an art historian and collector, the film is an unapologetic love letter to Lopez’s work and to the glorious days of the art and fashion worlds of downtown New York during the 1970s (a theme the director has already visited in his 2007 debut feature Black, White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe).

Crump doesn’t try to hide how he feels about his subjects. He became fascinated with Lopez and Ramos when he was a young teenager living in rural Indiana and read about their “magical lives and milieu” on Interview magazine. You can feel the urgency the director feels in telling the story of an artist who’s been unfairly overlooked. The film feels personal without being too sentimental.

Through interviews with Lopez’s entourage and incredible archival footage, Crump documents the duo’s creative process and intense appetite for the nightlife: From wild parties at Max’s Kansas City in Manhattan to wilder parties at Club 7 in Paris; from a trip to St. Tropez with Karl Lagerfeld to a shoot in Jamaica with Norman Parkinson and Jerry Hall; from the set of an Andy Warhol film shot at Lagerfeld’s Rive Gauche apartment, to the legendary designer Charles James’s home at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. (Jessica Lange memorably describes going into “Charles’s strange little studio living apartment with this obese beagle called Sputnik that lived in the bathroom.”)

Bill Cunningham and Antonio Lopez, New York City, 1978 (photograph by Juan Ramos © copyright the Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos, 2012; from Sex Fashion & Disco directed by James Crump. Used by permission.)

His entourage, by the way, is an impossibly impressive collection of powerhouse names in the industry on both sides of the Atlantic: magazine editors (Vogue’s Joan Juliet Buck, Interview’s Bob Colacello), legendary models (Jane Forth, Donna Jordan, Pat Cleveland), living icons (Karl Lagerfeld, Jerry Hall, Grace Jones) and the soul-touching Bill Cunningham — the late New York Times photographer and one of Lopez’s closest friends — who gives his last interview before passing away in 2016. (The film is fittingly dedicated to Cunningham.)

Enhanced by a soundtrack that nears ‘70s dance floor perfection (Donna Summer, Chic, Marvin Gaye) and subtle visual effects by Andre Purwo that alternate between Lopez’s drawings and jaw-dropping images of decadent lifestyle, Crump’s movie delivers its message of 1970s glory — sex, fashion, and disco — without ever feeling gratuitous.

Lopez was also a champion of diversity and inclusion, and the film underscores how this was a unique attitude for the high fashion world at the time. While the American public was just starting to discover the new phenomenon of the top model and was going crazy over the sweet perfection of the all-American girl (made official by a 1978 Time magazine that featured Cheryl Tiegs on its cover), Lopez was challenging stereotypical modeling poses and celebrating nontraditional beauty with his models: Donna Jordan’s gap toothed-smile, Jane Forth’s shaved eyebrows, Grace Jones’s extreme haircuts. Over time, he developed a following among a group of models, who became known as “Antonio’s Girls” (a somewhat patronizing term popularized in an essay by Jean-Paul Goude that appeared in a 1973 issue of Esquire).

Juan Ramos, Paris (1972) (photo by Antonio Lopez, © copyright the Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos, 2012. From Sex Fashion & Disco directed by James Crump. Used by permission.)

“Race, ethnicity, sexuality have become the primary underpinnings of their art, as opposed to fashion, which has always been how everybody perceives Juan’s and Antonio’s work,” the artist Paul Caranicas says in the film. Caranicas was Ramos’s partner from 1971 until his death in 1995, and he’s the executor of the Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos.

When Lopez passed away from AIDS complications in 1987, a New York Times obituary described him as a “major fashion illustrator [whose] always flamboyant style has influenced the work of many other fashion illustrators since the 1960s.” But Lopez was more than that. His vision, which was multicultural and glamorous, made him a unique artist in the high fashion world. His life was cut too short and Crump wants the world to remember that. As he said to me, “[Lopez’s] older contemporary [Andy Warhol] successfully made that jump from illustrator to being considered a studio artist. I think that Antonio might have been successful [at that] had he lived longer.”

Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco had its world premiere in October at the BFI London Film Festival. Its North American premiere will be on Friday, November 10 at DOC NYC.

  The post A Movie Remembers the Artist Who Made Fashion Illustration Fashionable Again appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[xpresthanx]

Married a Gay Minister - Carol Wagstaff