When Tilda Swinton was “swallowed up” by a fashion magazine

When Tilda Swinton was “swallowed up” by a fashion magazine

Andrea Tuzio · 6 months ago · Style

To talk about this surreal story we must first introduce you to Joanna Hogg
Born in London in 1960, daughter of the vice-president of an insurance agency, she attended elementary school at the prestigious West Heath School, an independent school in Sevenoaks, Kent. After graduating she moved to Florence where she studied photography and where she began to take an interest in cinema. She directed short experimental films in super 8 and one of these, dedicated to the kinetic sculptures of Ron Haselden, gave her the opportunity to enrol at the National Film and Television School in London in 1982. For her thesis exam, Hogg directed the short film Caprice, starring what would later become one of the most talented and charismatic actresses of the last 10 years, Tilda Swinton, and this is where our story begins.

Tilda Swinton and Joanna Hogg met for the first time right at West Heath School, they were in class together in elementary school – with them there was also Diana Spencer, yes that Diana.
According to Swinton, their relationship was one of “mutual hatred” but that actually hid an intrinsic bond based on the feelings of discomfort and embarrassment they both felt at the time in a very elite environment. Hogg changed schools during her teenage years and the two lost touch. In 1986, however, Joanna chose 26-year-old Tilda to star – effectively launching her career – in her film/dissertation, with which she went on to pass her final exam at the National Film and Television School. 

 
 
 
 
 
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Un post condiviso da LE CINÉMA CLUB (@lecinemaclub)

Caprice is a 26-minute short film in which the protagonist Lucky is literally swallowed up by the pages of a fashion magazine that gives the film its title. Matilda Swinton – so credited in the titles – moves through dreamlike atmospheres, crossing the different articles of the magazine: she finds herself involved in a high fashion editorial, in a New Wave dance and in a thousand other contexts typical of a magazine that deals with fashion. Lucky is Caprice‘s “number 1” reader and throughout the film it almost seems as if this passion of hers, which has led her to be swallowed up by the magazine itself, wears her down little by little. “At the heart of it is the pressure placed on a young woman by advertising to behave and look a certain way,” said Hogg. “I was really interested in the way a young woman thinks about herself, or the self-doubt about how she looks and how she looks. And then the contradiction in me at that time of really being interested in fashion and fashion magazines. I wanted to embrace the contradiction that I felt as a young woman who loved fashion magazines, but also understand the dark side of what they represented to someone who was desperate to be accepted”. 

Like a new Alice in Wonderland, Lucky enters a world that fascinates her but at the same time consumes and frightens her. A “playful but also very serious” story that deals with extremely contemporary and latent themes of the world of communication related to fashion, in an exaggerated and surreal key.

Hogg and Swinton will continue to work together over the years. The latest film directed by Joanna Hogg, for example, The Souvenir: Part II, stars Swinton and her daughter Honor as a film student. Tilda Swinton commented on her participation in this film closing a circle opened at the time of the West Heath School: “It is a kind of miracle for me to see the story of my oldest friend traced by my own daughter with such grace and understanding”.

When Tilda Swinton was “swallowed up” by a fashion magazine
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When Tilda Swinton was “swallowed up” by a fashion magazine
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What is post-internet art?

What is post-internet art?

Anna Frattini · 7 days ago · Art

The expression post-internet art can be divisive and at times incomprehensible. Let’s clarify this term a bit. The term emerged in the early 2000s when Marisa Olson, a visual artist and curator who was collaborating with Rhizome was searching for a definition to describe her work as a visual artist—a combination of online and offline creations. Olson’s intention was not to coin a term that indicated the future of contemporary art after the invention of the internet, but rather to find a word that would help her and the collective she co-founded, Nasty Nets, define that branch of art that celebrated, albeit with criticism, the world of the internet. Due to many misunderstandings, this term and its creator have faced numerous criticisms over the years.

post-internet art
Marisa Olson, Performed Listening: Boomerang (2008)

Today, post-internet art means the artistic strand that deals with the impact of the Internet in the world of art and culture. Unlike Net Art, which used the Internet as a medium in the late 1990s, times have changed. Now artists like Amalia Ulman, Jon Rafman and Cory Arcangel use content from the Web to create works that reflect on the relationship we have not only with the Internet but also with social media.

  • Argentina’s Amalia Ulman has used a variety of mediums over the years, from painting to smartphone apps, exploring the links between consumerism and gender identity, social classes and aesthetics.
  • Jon Rafman’success came with 9 Eyes, a series in which the artist “stole” some shots from Google Maps using the Street View mode. His critique of the internet world has reached far, incorporating its rich vocabulary and visual culture to develop poetic narratives capable of capturing the tension between the human and the machine, as seen in his recent exhibition, Ebrah K’dabri at Sprüth Magers in Berlin last April.
  • Cory Arcangel is another post-internet artist who plays with pop culture through techniques like digital hacking and reconfiguration. Arcangel employs bot performances and machine learning tools, such as in 2021 when his solo exhibition Century 21 in New York featured Let’s Play: Hollywood, a type of deep-Q machine learning supercomputing system capable of playing any open-ended RPG game in real-time.

Ph. courtesy Marisa Olson, Amalia Ulman, Jon Rafman, Cory Arcangel

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On the set of Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s new movie

On the set of Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s new movie

Giorgia Massari · 3 days ago · Art

Props from Asteroid City, the new film directed by Wes Anderson, will be featured in an exhibition curated and presented by 180 Studios and Universal Pictures from June 17 in London. The film is set in a fictional American desert town during the 1950s and features a stellar cast, from Scarlett Johansson to Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzman to Margot Robbie and many others. But, sure to steal everyone’s thunder is the alien, who appears for a few minutes but will leave everyone speechless.

The exhibit anticipates the dreamlike atmosphere and retro aesthetic of Anderson’s new film, exploring the props and costumes we can already glimpse from watching the trailer. A jetpack, a ray gun, a meteorite, a telescope, as well as colorful posters and much more. Visitors will even be able to dine inside the diner, faithfully recreated like the one in the film. The exhibition will be a true immersive experience in Asteroid City, amid the music and colors of the movie, which will accompany visitors as they await its theatrical release, scheduled for June 23, 2023. From the trailer clips, one can already sense the richness of the details and the meticulous care Anderson has toward the set. The colors and cinematography are also remarkable, almost succeeding in drawing attention away from the plot and focusing instead on the harmonious beauty of the shots. Indeed, the pastel palette, from blues to desert beiges, creates an almost dreamlike, at times metaphysical, setting that allows the viewer to relax.

Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson  | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson  | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson  | Collater.al

In short, Wes Anderson’s touch is clearly discernible. His manic use of symmetry and refined framing enhance what is a set bordering on the surreal. Indeed, it is not the real American desert, but the Spanish landscape. The director preferred to recreate the setting outside Madrid, first also evaluating the Cinecittà studios.
So all we have to do is wait and, in the meantime, discover a few frames and catch a glimpse of the objects that will soon be featured in the London exhibition, open until July 8 and bookable here.

Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
On the set of Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s new movie
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On the set of Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s new movie
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Glen Martin Taylor and his reconstructed ceramics

Glen Martin Taylor and his reconstructed ceramics

Giulia Guido · 2 days ago · Art

Among the most famous and fascinating artistic techniques, the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi undoubtedly stands out. It is a practice born from the idea of transforming an imperfection, a damage or a wound into something even more beautiful and perfect. Basically, this technique consists in repairing ceramic objects, even those of daily use such as cups and plates, using gold or cast silver to weld the shards. The final result gives the object a unique look and, what is no small thing, a much higher value than the original. It is precisely from the art of Kintsugi that the artist Glen Martin Taylor was inspired for his works. 

Like Japanese, Glen Martin Taylor repairs ceramics of all kinds, some made by him and others bought but replacing precious metal with everyday objects, from twine threads to metal elements. 

If in Kintsugi’s art the only important part is that of repair, for the artist the act of reassembling objects is as important as that of destroying them. Through these two phases, the artist frees his emotions and confronts them by creating objects that will eventually have lost their primary purpose, but not their importance. 

Discover all the works by Glen Martin Taylor on his Instagram profile

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Alexis Ralaivao zooms in on the human body

Alexis Ralaivao zooms in on the human body

Giorgia Massari · 2 days ago · Art

With a photographic cut and a very close gaze, French painter Alexis Ralaivao (1991) is able to cancel the distances between the subjects of his oil paintings and the viewers. Bodily details become the protagonists of his huge canvases. An ear, a hand holding a fork, a pendant swinging above a cleavage, a naked belly. Ultra-zooming bodies almost seem to come out of the canvas, becoming tangible and real. They can be brushed against, sniffed, sensed. The viewer is involuntarily led to establish an intimate connection with the subject, though not seeing his or her face. Simple, everyday gestures lead the viewer on an empathetic journey, allowing him or her to get closer. And here the Dutch figurative painting from which the artist draws inspiration becomes “accessible.” No longer something to be frightened by, almost overwhelmed by, but a moment to relax, to surrender to delicacy.

Alexis Ralaivao translates the everyday and the simplicity of gestures into eternal moments, suspended in time. Calm and lightness are evoked by pastel hues and delicate shades, enclosing the canvases in a dreamlike dimension. The choice of mixed-ethnicity subjects, being himself part of that community, and the photographic cut borrowed mostly from social media, allow Alexis to take a contemporary look at what is one of the most traditional and ancient techniques, the figurative. The boundaries between the traditional and the contemporary are broken, “In classical portraiture there is a distance between the audience and the person represented. I want to erase this distance,” Ralaivao declares.

Thus ephemeral and simple moments, which in the world of social media would disappear after a few hours, become crystallized forever in a dimension that is not meant to be magical or surreal, but rather tends toward inclusion and the breaking down of boundaries.

Alexis Ralaivao | Collater.al
Alexis Ralaivao | Collater.al
Alexis Ralaivao | Collater.al
Alexis Ralaivao | Collater.al

Courtesy Alexis Ralaivao

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