The McDonald’s-colored, yellow-roofed/red-bodied plastic Fisher-Price “Little Tikes” Cozy Coupe was one of the most ubiquitous toys of my millennial childhood. Who among us didn’t shuffle along our parents’ driveways like tiny Fred Flintstones, making vroom-vroom noises and trying not to seethe with envy at the luckier kids who got fancy-schmancy motorized convertible Barbie cars? Fuck … Continue reading
The most remarkable, equally elegiac and absurd, profound and berserk inclusion in Somerset House’s Holy Pop!, an exhibition dedicated to extreme acts of fanatical devotion to filth elders, was not Dot Alma’s bedazzled “Freedom” pew and kneeler, set in front of an altar to the Holy Father (Figure) George Michael and Hampstead Heath hookup trees, … Continue reading
“He likes hot chicks! With big tits! He likes hot chicks. I like hot rats!” sneers Tayler Lee, one half of my favorite musical gruesome twosome, Genre is death, on their cataclysmically cacophonous Zappa-referencing song, “Hot Rats,” from their debut album Talk. But what if you didn’t have to choose between hot chicks with big … Continue reading
I’m not often impressed by visual art, or at least institutionally accepted artsy-fartsy art, that engages with artificial intelligence. Most AI-related art fails to outshine or even match the wackadoo aesthetics of naïve AI slop produced by the Internet, whether heartfelt Charlie Kirk memorials showing the Turning Point guru paling around with Abraham Lincoln and … Continue reading
I’ve always been drawn to darker, more seductive, and, in some circles, taboo imagery, particularly in formats more readily available to a non-fine art audience, such as books or magazines. The more risqué, the better. It is exciting when people find community within their niche tastes, where open sexuality is not just celebrated but encouraged … Continue reading
Can receiving the stigmata be a sex act? It is surely intimate and sensual, not to mention penetrative. This is a question that I’ve been musing on ever since fixating on Giovanni di Paolo’s shimmering, submissive 15th-century panel painting, Saint Catherine of Siena Receiving the Stigmata, on view in the Met Cloister’s heroically horny and … Continue reading
I wish I hadn’t purposefully visited Christopher Gambino’s window installation, The Christmas Show at Below Grand. Not because I wish I could erase it from my mind, but I dream of stumbling upon this festive furniture crime scene by happenstance. A momentary look to my right while walking down Orchard Street. A glance at a … Continue reading
A dour-looking, ruddy-faced Quaker, who, after a heavenly bout of what was likely typhus in the same year that our founding daddies signed the Declaration of Independence, was resurrected as “a genderless servant of God.” A swivel-eyed polyamorous duo who bred unicorns (or really, did questionable surgeries on goats), one of which, named Lancelot, hit … Continue reading
Can ball gags be wholesome? Can an object stuffed into your gaping mouth, eyes watering as you struggle to slurp back a swallow, be family-friendly? Can that same ball gag, yanked into place by a leather harness with straps cutting sharp diagonals across your face, be a suitable accessory for a lovely, casual dinner with … Continue reading
A young boy in a rumpled maroon T-shirt and jeans pushes a wheelchair filled to the brim with heavy yellow plastic water jugs. His face is a spectral smear with a hint of a nose, a curved ear, and a slight, concentrated frown. These indistinguishable features not only obscure his identity but mark his effort … Continue reading