Frida Kahlo, Patti Smith and Noguchi’s Butterflies

Patti Smith. Photo by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1987

 
 

Noguchi’s Butterflies

I can not walk

I can not see

Further than what

Is in front of me

I lay on my back

yet I do not cry

Transported in space by the butterflies.

Above my bed

Another sky

With the wings you sent

Within my sight

All pain dissolves

In another light

Transported thru

Time

By the butterfly

This little song

Came to me

Like a little gift as I stood

Beside the bed of Frida.

I give it to you with much love,

Patti Smith

 
 

On May 4^th, 2012 a press conference for Patti Smith’s first show in Mexico was held at “La Casa Azul”, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s residence located in Coyoacán (México City). Patti performed a couple of songs in their honor and left a beautiful poem for Frida, inspired on a butterfly collection that friend and architect Isamu Noguchi gave her many years ago, which hangs on the ceiling of Frida’s night bed.

The Caterpillar and the Butterfly

“The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity.”
George Carlin

 
 

Photograph by Chema Madoz

Self-Propelled Flowers

“Butterflies are not insects,’ Captain John Sterling said soberly. ‘They are self-propelled flowers.”

Robert A. Heinlein
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

 
 

Photographs by Roberto Kusterle

Letters From the Earth

Lettere della terra (Letters From the Earth), photo by Roberto Kusterle, 2004

 
 

A Goddess, not a God, was usually credited with the invention of alphabetical letters. All letters were originally symbols-the literal meaning of hieroglyph. In Egypt the art of writing was the gift of the Goddess Isis, Maat, Menos or Seshat; In Rome, that of the Goddess Carmenta or the Fata Seribunda (writer-fate); In Scandinavia, that of the Norms as Schreiberinnen, “writing-women”; in Babylon, that of the Gulses of Logos power, that is the power to create the world by means of words. That is why the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet appeared on the necklace of skulls worn by Kali Ma, perhaps the oldest Goddess of Creation. These letters were matrika “the mothers”, which brought all things into being when Kali formed them into words. The Logos Doctrine is still extant in Christian theology, though the original idea of creation by the Word has been made more abstract to conceal its primitive naiveté. In the third century A.D., Jewish mystics spoke of the biblical smith Bezaleel as an expert on alphabetical wizardry; he “knew how to combine the letters by which heaven and earth were created.”

A number of symbols systems have been devised for alphabetical letters. Here is one for the English alphabet in its present form: A, the cone, mountain, pyramid, First Cause or birth; B, mother’s breast; C, the moon; D; day, diamond, brilliance; E, the sun; F, fire of life; G, creative power; H, Gemini, dualism, the threshold; I, number one, self-hood, the axis mundi; J, tree and root, K; connections; L; power arising from the earth; M, undulating mountains; N, a serpentine path; O, perfection, completion; P, the staff; Q, the sun tethered to earth (rising or setting); R, support; S, the serpent; T, the double ax, hammer, or cross indicating conflict or sacrifice; U, the chain; V, convergence, a receptacle; W, water, waves; X, the cross of light, union of two worlds; Y, the three-way crossroads; Z, the lighting (destroyer).

Until the Definitive Edition

 
 

“Homem é…uma errata pensante, isso sim. Cada estação da vida é uma edição, que corrige a anterior, e que será corrigida também, até a edição definitiva, que o editor da de graça aos vermes.”

(“Man is…a thinking erratum, that’s what he is. Every season of life is an edition that corrects the one before and which will also be corrected itself until the definitive edition, which the publisher gives to the worms gratis.”)

Joaquim Machado de Assis

Word Drags Word

“Palavra puxa palavra, uma ideia traz outra, e assim se faz um livro, um governo, ou uma revolução, alguns dizem que assim é que a natureza compôs as suas espécies.”

(“Word drags word, one idea brings another, and so on, a book, a government, or a revolution is made. Some people say, in fact, that’s the way nature put together their species”)

Joaquim Machado de Assis

 
 

 The Sea Inside, digital artwork by Christian Schloe

A Joint Experience Between Two Persons

Lover’s Farewell by Christian Schloe

 
 

“First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.”

Carson McCullers
The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

When There’s No Sign of Love in Sight

“The Heart is a lonely hunter with only one desire! To find some lasting comfort in the arms of another’s fire…driven by a desperate hunger to the arms of a neon light, the heart is a lonely hunter when there’s no sign of love in sight!”

Carson McCullers

 
 

Portrait of a Heart

 
 

Love is the Key

 
 

The Heartache

 
 

Set Your Heart Free

 
 

It Comes and It Goes

 
 

Digital artworks by Chilean artist Christian Schloe

Like Leaves Grow Slowly

“And she could play the Beethoven symphony any time she wanted to. It was a queer thing about this music she had heard last autumn. The symphony stayed inside her always and grew little by little. The reason was this: the whole symphony was in her mind. It had to be. She had heard every note, and somewhere in the back of her mind the whole of the music was still there just as it had been played. But she could do nothing to bring it all out again. Except wait and be ready for the times when suddenly a new part came to her. Wait for it to grow like leaves grow slowly on the branches of a spring oak tree.”

Carson McCullers

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

 
 

A Loneliness I Cannot Bear

“The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear.”
Carson McCullers
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

 
 

The Former Teddy-Boy and His Teddy-Bear

“Yes, this is my teddy bear that I brought with me for this mature sit-down interview; I’ll say nothing more on the matter because you’re not going to either”

John Lennon
(1973)

 
 

Gummy Bears Dress

 
 

On 2012, for the launch of TWELV Magazine, Hissa Igarashi and Sayuri Marakumi designed a breathtaking dress using only gummy bears. The dress, according to TWELV, was inspired by Alexander McQueen’s iconic The Parrot Dress influenced by his muse Isabella Blow. Igarashi and his fashion assistant Sayuri Marakumi recreated the McQueen Parrot dress with 50,000 gummy bears. The dress was first created from a dress form out of steel wire, covered with a sheet of vinyl. The 50,000 gummy bears were then hand-glued to the form in a chevron rainbow pattern, creating an edible-and memorable- version of the iconic dress.

 
 

 
 

To create the masterpiece, steel wire was twisted into the shape of the dress and covered with a sheet of vinyl. Then the 50,000 gummy bears were painstakingly glued on by hand in a colorful pattern reminiscent of a Chevron rainbow.

Taking three weeks to complete, the final dress was fitted exactly to major model Jessica Pitti‘s measurements. And weighing in at approximately 220 pounds, required the strength of three adults to move.

The shoot was held at Splashlight Studios and took 4 to 5 hours to complete.

The result? An incredible nod to a fashion genius that was literally good enough to eat!

 
 

The Parrot Dress. Alexander McQueen’s La Dame Bleu Spring-Summer 2008 collection

Girl Under Ursidae

BEARS

Scientific Classification

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Suborder: Caniformia
Family: Ursidae

 
 

Bad Romance (Francis Lawrence, 2009) music video. The polar bear coat was designed by Benjamin Cho. It was presented on his Spring 2005 runway show for which he joined forces with The Humane Society of the United States – the nation’s largest animal protection organization – and Glenoit Fabrics to present an innovative and daring collection, incorporating faux fur as an essential to the socially conscious wardrobe.

 
 

G.U.Y. (Lady Gaga, 2013) The paper teddy bear suit, was created by Polish designer Bea Szenfeld.The bear cutout was from the Stockholm-based designer’s spring 2014 “haute papier” collection of fantasy swimwear, Sur La Plage (On the Beach). A description of the collection says that the paper “undergoes a complete metamorphosis” that “leads your mind to Jules Verne’s fictitious sea demons.”

Plush Toy Coats

“My Teddy bear coat was a conceptual exercise created in 2002 as an homage to the Campana Brothers and their famous stuffed animal chair. I only heard about Castelbajac in 2009 when people saw Gaga and started asking me if I was working with her.”

Sebastián Errázuriz

 
 

Teddy bear coat by polymath Chilean designer Sebastián Errázuriz

 
 

The jacket, as Errázuriz himself would say, is designed to honor the 80’s eco-friendly fur campaigns but at the same time it seems to serve as a bitter criticism to the fur comeback on the runways.

 
 

Teddy bears — 39 to be precise — festooned a snuggly 1989 Jean-Charles de Castelbajac winter coat that was worn by Madonna and Lauren Hutton. This infamous “teddy bear coat”, worn by Madonna, was also inspired by a childhood devoid of toys.”Throughout my career I have explored themes associated with childhood. It’s not that I didn’t want to grow up,” he explains. “When I was a kid, I was living an adolescent life, when I was a teenager I was living an adult life, so I believe my time for childhood is now”

 
 

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Fall 2009 collection

 
 

20 years later, Kermit, that lovable Muppet frog, emerged as the inspiration for an JCDC plush toy coat worn by Lady Gaga

Missed In Advance

 
 

I Miss You is a song by Björk and Howie Bernstein, the sixth and final single release from her 1995 album Post. The lyrics describe Björk already knowing who her perfect lover will be, even though she hasn’t yet met him. The music video for I Miss You was animated and directed by John Kricfalusi of Spümcø, best known for the Ren & Stimpy cartoons, which Björk admired. The video has a surreal and humorous quality with some sexual imagery.