Huguette Caland, Self Portrait I, 1973, Oil on canvas. Via.

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(…) when writers attempt to describe sex accurately, the scenes all tend to sound the same, no matter what the writers’ individual styles may be. I think most writers just want their sex scenes to be realistically sexy. My goal is to try to articulate what my characters wish to express during sex but can’t and to depict the way language is compromised by sex, as realistically as I can. The truth I’m talking about is the stuff that gets distorted and compromised every time you write something down or open your mouth to speak, ­because your priority when communicating isn’t to represent your thoughts or feelings exactly but to make sense, to appear sane and comprehensible and ­appealing. I like working within that impossibility.

(…)

I think it’s important to reiterate that my novels aren’t realist. They’re not selective transcriptions of the real world. They’re highly organized missives from my imagination. When there’s a real-world resemblance, it’s there to create an atmosphere of familiarity that’s helpful as a comfort zone in which I can introduce things that are difficult and unsuspected. The characters are the main entrance into the work because they’re shaped like humans and they’re lit more brightly than their surroundings. But they’re not real—they don’t feel or think or want anything. Everything in the books is half mine and half the reader’s, and the characters are just enunciations of my ideas. All of that is in the work, and I realize it’s very difficult to get people not to think of characters in novels as their text-based friends, but a lot of misunderstanding is eliminated if they don’t.

Dennis Cooper, interviewed by Ira Silverberg for Paris Review, Fall 2011.

Top, photograph via AFP/Getty, An employee holds a photograph entitled ‘Bee’ by US photographer Irving Penn taken in 1995, which is expected to reach £15,000-20,000 in auction at Christie’s in London, 2010. Via. See also, Irving Penn, Bee. Bottom, uncredited snap of the cover of Interview Magazine, Issue 2 with Lana Del Rey, photographed by Sean and Seng, 2012. Via. See also, Lynch x S&S.

See also, The Beauty Investigator.

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The greatness of Warhol’s work was that he offered an astute response to contemporary culture at the same time that he forever changed its future course. His fetishization of fame and celebrity called out something that was already in the zeitgeist, and made it his bitch. In [Alex] Israel’s funny, harmless videos, you kind of get the feeling that the artist is the bitch; he’s made these awkward little Valentines to celebrity but their biggest draw is still, well, the celebrities.

Carol Cheh, James Franco and Alex Israel: Why Their Obsession With Celebrity Doesn’t Pay Off, for The LA Weekly, May 2012.

Noreen Malone, Meet Noah Kalina, the Zuckerberg Wedding Photographer and Former Viral-Video Sensation, for The New York Magazine, May 2012.

See also, I just took this photo. I’ll tell you about it later., and Priscilla and Mark - 20120519.