matouenpeluche

Merry Christmas everybody!

 
I'd like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a happy and fulfilling holiday season. XXX's Sam.

Angelic Angelica

(All images via here)

Did you know that Angelica Huston is the third generation of her family to be in film and the third generation to win an oscar? Her father was the famous film director John Huston and her mother was a famous Italian-American prima ballerina. Her grandfather was Walter Huston a character actor in Hollywood from the 1920s - 1940s.

I've always thought she was very striking to look at and I've always admired her acting.

Happy Tuesday (already?!) tout le monde!

Hump Day pick me up!

(Life Magazine 1922 from here.)

(Andre Kertesz 1928 from here)

(Montparnesse Station Train wreck from here)

(Lee Friedlander Revolving doors from here)

Ok, well these images are a little unrelated but I kinda like them all the same!

Happy Hump Day folks!

P.S. Thank you everyone for all your lovely comments and enthusiasm for my drawings - it's very encouraging!!

Martin Sharp

This is Sydney artist and legend Martin Sharp circa 1970. I went to a terrific retrospective exhibition of his work at the Museum of Sydney last week.

Martin Sharp, born (1942) and raised in Sydney, is seen as Australia's number one pop artist. He is best known internationally as the album cover artist for Cream's Wheel's of Fire, the exploding Jimi Hendrix painting and the Mr Tambourine Man Bob Dylan portrait.

 

(Top two images from Art and Australia Vol.47 Spring 2009)

(Disraeli Gears LP Cover from here)

He also co-wrote songs with Eric Clapton, published scandalous (for the 60s) magazines, restored and renovated Sydney's Luna Park, was friend and collaborator of (Tip Toe Through the Tulips) Tiny Tim, designer and artist for beautiful Sydney event posters in the 70s and 80s and a whole heap of other things! Actually, the exhibition itself is a real 4D experience with all his posters and knick knacks displayed in the one huge room. I've decided to go back sometime soon and properly photograph it.

 

(Top: Babylon the great is fallen, fallen. Revelations 18 v2. 2000 - 2006 from the Spring Historic Houses magazine. Bottom three images are postcards from the exhibition: The Sydney Opera House is ten 1983, Tiny Tim, The Chameleon 1982 and Eternity, Haymarket! 1977)

  Martin Sharp was a hero of mine when I was a young cartoonist and illustrator in Sydney so this exhibition was a real treat for me to go to. His posters like the one above of Sydney's Haymarket particularly remind me of my youth and memories of Sydney at that time.

Hope everyone is having/ will have a fabulous weekend!

This is Max.

Max was the creation of master cartoonist and illustrator Pericle Luigi Giovannetti. Isn't that a wonderful name? Anyway, Giovannetti started drawing for the now defunct Punch magazine after World War One and launched little Max in April 1953.

Max was such a hit with his wordless pomposity and general shenanigans that Giovannetti even wrote several books starring the one and only Max himself.

(Image from: Non-Stick Plans)

Unfortunately, all the Max books are now out of print but I've been surfing Amazon and I think I might have found a second hand copy...

Here's another Max story:

Both cartoons are from the book: Punch, All Creatures Great and Small published by Prion.

Happy Thursday evening everyone - hope your weather is a little tamer than it is here in Sydney! I am currently listening to 100 - 120 kilometre icy gale force winds (blown directly off the glaciers of the Antarctic) rattle my windows! And to think last week was a sweltering 34 degrees!! Go figure!

Dogs in Vogue.

While surfing the internet last night I chanced upon this delightful book due to be published on the 8th October: Dogs in Vogue. It has all the classic pup shots plus a whole swag of others. I love this one of Lee Radziwill (above) taken in 1960 with her pug Thomas. Here are a couple of others...

Aren't they gorgeous? I love the expressions on some of the pooches' faces - bless! They really are the stars! From top: Lee Radziwill by Henry Clark, Balanciaga hat by Henry Clark, Jean Shrimpton by Eugene Vernier, model and ball and dog by Gjon Mili, another Henry Clark and smart suit by Karen Radkai.

You can find more Dogs in Vogue here.

Happy Monday everyone!!

Happy weekend + Art Deco cards.

First of all: three cheers for the weekend and congratulations to everybody who made it!! Sometimes it feels like quite an achievement, doesn't it? I've had the week off however, so I can't say my week was anything other than highly enjoyable!!

At this time of year I have quite a few birthdays to buy for and birthdays mean cards. Cards! So difficult! They are either cloyingly sentimental or too cool for school or just plain boring. Fortunately, I found these stylish beauties whilst rummaging around in my favourite card shop the other day. They are a new set taken from the covers of a New York magazine published in the 1920s and 1930s called "Asia". All the covers were done by Frank McIntosh and they are super Deco. I love this panther above. My boyfriend says he looks like a piece of beautiful machinery.

Unfortunately, I can't really find much info about "Asia" magazine or Frank McIntosh other than it was a magazine that looked at reportage about ASian countries. The cards are published by a company from the Netherlands called Catch Publishing which you can find here.

Speaking of pussy cats, I am totally in love with the snow leopard cover boy for the new Mac operating system of the same name.

Hello sailor!!

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Happy Saturday!

 
I'm having a quiet day today inside drawing and resisting the urge to watch more divine Mad Men! I watched two and a half episodes last night and I'm being very good and saving the rest on disc one for tonight. I've actually been working on a commission from a certain wonderful blogger - all will be revealed next week!

Mad Men season 2 is everything I remember from season one but even better! I just fall in love with the entire everything about the show when I watch it - it's so beautifully filmed and the costumes are superb and the characters...e.t.c. e.t.c.!!

So, here I have some painterly Vogue covers all from the '30s. For some reason I thought the exacting art deco line was still in vogue (sorry!) then but it was left behind in the '20s and this delightful feathery style came in. Enjoy! P.S. Don't forget to enter my competition!











All these images can be found here!

J'adore Dior!

Ever since the May edition of Vanity Fair I've been dreaming about the new (ish) range of jewellery from Christian Dior called Milly-la-foret. Call me insane, but I think one of these knock out cocktail rings would just be the bee's knees. I adore their outrageous prettiness! I feel that I'd never have to worry about jewellery again if I had a couple of these beauties! I've got it bad huh?

I even did something I don't ever do which is go on a hunt for them! I went to their delightful website and emailed HQ plaintively mewling "Please, where can I buy these exquisite baubles in Sydney, Australia?" No response. I even looked up all the Dior shops and outlets in Sydney and hoofed it around on foot "Do you happen to have.....?" But the utter sadness of it all is that they are not stocked here in Aus. Ah! Mon Dieu!! Quelle horreur!! I'll just have to get on a plane then won't I and go to New York and get me a couple! Seriously!!

 

Fly me to La Lune!

O.K. O.K. it's not Armstrong and he's not on the moon - it's John Glenn and Scott Carpenter 1961 just about to enter a heat chamber in order to test the durability of both themselves and their suits in extreme temperatures. But I thought it was a very nice photo anyway. My mother had the foresight to collect and keep all the Life magazines she had bought from the 60s and this is a scan from one of them.

So:

The Romans called it Luna, the Greeks called it Selene and Artemis and it is now thought to be a piece of the earth that was flung into space when a meteorite hit earth trillions of years ago. Forty years ago today, Neil Armstrong was the first man to actually walk on it. I find that incredible - even in this day and age!