Halloween Halloween is big business and the festivities – which used to begin on Black Friday have morphed into a lengthy festival beginning well before October 31. It’s quite lucrative for those producing plastic pumpkins, synthetic spider webs and all manner of ‘spooky’ Halloween goods. It’s been estimated at least five million Australians … [Read more…]
Are we amused? ‘I guess when I think about it, one of the things I like to dramatize, and what is sometimes funny, is someone coming unglued. I don’t consider myself someone who is making the argument that I support these choices. I just think it can be funny Wes Anderson … [Read more…]
The Frida Khalo Effect Frida Kahlo – named Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón – took up painting in 1925 after a near fatal bus accident. She was only 17 when an electric streetcar, also known as a trolley, rammed the bus she was travelling in. Khalo was left with severe damage … [Read more…]
Hold Your Fire Seek the company of people who, when left alone in a room with a tea cosy, will always try it on. Billy Connolly – actor, comedian & writer. We live in an era where it is astonishingly easy for pretty much anyone to be ‘cancelled’. Meantime many … [Read more…]
Botticelli’s Venus Goddess on the mountain top Burning like a silver flame The summit of beauty and love And Venus was her name … Venus by Robbie van Leeuwen, Shocking Blue rock band. On a recent visit to the National Gallery of Victoria I glimpsed Jeff Koon’s stainless steel version of Venus. And … [Read more…]
‘I am 100 percent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs, and 1,000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD. And drugs are not central to my life.’ Timothy Leary, American Psychologist 1920-1996 Drugs have a tendency to become fashionable and then fall from favour. In … [Read more…]
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes ‘I overheard Dorothy tell Major Falcon that she liked to become intoxicated once in a dirty while.’ Lorelei Lee from Anita Loos novella, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. One of my favourite books is a hardcover 1926, tenth edition of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. So popular was Anita Loos’ novella that … [Read more…]
Ritual Madness The Ancient Greeks were enthralled by opposing forces and heavily invested in two of their gods, Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo was the god of reason and wisdom – devoted to logical thinking, patience and duty. Dionysus was significantly more adventurous and dealt in the realms of imagination, play and chaos. Dionysus – … [Read more…]
Naked in Leopard Skin Born into Italian aristocracy in 1881 and heiress to a fortune made in cotton, Luisa Casati managed to run up personal debts of $25 million. She and her sister had been orphaned when both parents died and Luisa was only fifteen years old. The Marchesa Casati was a devotee of the … [Read more…]
Romancing the Mushroom pine mushrooms live a thousand years in one autumn Den Sutejo 1633-1698 (translated by Makoto Ueda) Autumn in Melbourne is a fine time to take a trip to the Prahran Market and visit the wild mushroom man, Damien Pike. For many years he’s been sourcing and selling mushrooms. Much … [Read more…]
25 Cats Named Sam And One Blue Pussy The reason I hate regular underwear – and socks, too – is that if you send twenty pairs of shorts and twenty pairs of socks to the laundromat, you always only get nineteen back. Even when I wash them myself, I get nineteen back. The more I think about … [Read more…]
Venus in Steel He has the slimy assurance, the gross patter about transcendence through art, of a blow-dried Baptist selling swamp acres in Florida. And the result is that you can’t imagine America’s singularly depraved culture without him. Robert Hughes on Jeff Koons. Jeff Koons has always been a divisive … [Read more…]