My friend
HHH gave me a copy of
Electric Youth, my first, somewhere between drinking a large carrot and orange juice in the basement of the
Paragon, and drinking a large
Mosburger iced tea in the basement of
Takashimaya. In between we looked at
Bally shoes and
Zegna sunglasses,
Lego bricks and wooden picture frames, a gold
Cartier pendant in the shape of a screw ("It's a pendant for a top!" I said) and a
Bulgari gold chain that's just the right length. It's my first
Electric Youth, a large-format collectible, as it is one of 1,000 copies, and comes with a medium sized swim trunk in navy blue printed over with tiny silver stars. This latter I've stowed away in the drawer where I keep my briefs and shorts, still in its plastic bag. The magazine I cracked open that night and greedily skimmed through. This occasional, limited publication by
American Apparel, part
Tiger Beat, part
Bel Ami, is an interesting concept on first encounter, but I quite quickly wearied of it, and before I turned the last page, was bored.
Part of HHH's routine of an afternoon is a stroll through
Kinokuniya , alighting with feathery quickness on this and that magazine, dipping into the fresh glossy pages, very much like those sparrows downstairs flitting and dipping and pecking on this and that all along the shop houses of
Chander Road. This afternoon, after a protracted chat with a young lady at the magazines section, about essentially nothing really, he led us to the fashion books section, where we stood a long time looking at every page of the new
Jurgen Teller book; I felt like a horse standing in its stable. This is where I bought
David Downton's
Masters of Fashion Illustration which is simply a must have, and
Paul Morand's
The Allure of Chanel (with illustrations by
Karl Lagerfeld), which appears to be a transcript of a long conversation with
Mademoiselle herself. It's fascinating of course, she does say so many eccentric things.
MC gave me a book (we had
dim sum at
The Cathay overlooking
Handy Road) because he said that the title reminded him of me -
Memories of my Melancholy Whores by
Gabriel Garcia Marquez. What can he mean? In it, he wrote: "Stay every bit as silly, unpredictable and wonderful as you've always been. Love, M".
Silly? Yes, undoubtedly. Unpredictable? Surely not. I'm one of the most predictable people ever.
Gorgeous Nil Butler horsing around in a set of very dubious pictures (Vogue Paris) by the always dubious Steven Klein. Of course I need to say that Mr Butler is more lupine, than equine - do I quibble? I do so like the lupine.
Of course nothing is quite as dubious as this 'art' video Mr Klein made called Stag Film, which is truly dubious. You can see it at http://theimagist.com/node/5231 and judge for yourself whether Mr Klein's fascination with 'horse studding' is indeed art or merely prurient.
Stag Film is alsothe title of Mr Klein’s second photographic artist book, following his 2003 collaboration with Madonna. Stag Film is issued in an edition of 2,000 copies and a limited, signed edition of 100 copies.
The book reproduces and sequences 60 black-and-white images culled from a larger photographic series on horse studding produced by the photographer. The process of horse studding fascinates Mr Klein, and in Stag Film he trains his camera on the practice of horse breeding which involves collecting a stallion’s semen for implanting in mares. A stallion is led into the paddock and introduced to a “phantom” mare and using a combination of artificial inducements the stallion is drawn to mount and penetrate the dummy, into which its semen is projected.
Mr Klein is supposedly seeking to expand traditional horse portraiture by "blending an appreciation of the stallion’s beauty with an awareness of the provocative physicality of the breeding act." Mr Klein designed every element of the book, creating a folio sized digest of printed images hidden within a fragile, hand assembled paper box. The box has a cut out window on its cover to reveal the head of the phantom mare.
But as for me, give me a good old fashioned Chinese horse, like this Eastern Wei (534–550), ceramic sculpture, any day! Isn't it a truly beautiful thing?
And this lovely T'ang Dynasty (618-906) ceramic... I want!
