“The scroll shows the stages of decomposition of the body of a woman, beginning with her fully clothed body and ending with her bones being eaten by dogs. The subject is an ancient Buddhist one, treating of the transience of the physical body, but which later assumed didactic functions relating to the proper conduct of women. In this example, however, the theme is given a new and somewhat prurient twist by its featuring of a prostitute as the subject. The work intersects with the world of ‘erotic pictures’ (shunga) and gives a very useful counterpoint for studying that genre. A prolific and versatile artist trained in the traditional Kano school, [Kobayashi Eitaku] achieved success rather through ukiyoe works and newspaper illustrations, but his reputation in Japan is not yet as high as it should be. Like many important artists whose careers straddled the end of the Edo period and beginning of the Meiji era, Japanese scholars have found it problematic to classify him.” — The British Museum

(Click to enlarge)

[via The Mary Sue]

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Happy Halloween!

I received this press release from artist and philosopher Jonathon Keats about his new exhibition that opens tomorrow in San Francisco’s Modernism Gallery. This is the same gentleman who attempted to genetically engineer God, and his work is worth a peek. If you’re out west, please pay him a visit.

Four hundred and sixty-eight years after Nicolaus Copernicus informed the world that Earth orbits the Sun, his revolutionary idea is gaining acceptance with artists, and threatening to shake up museum collections from New York to Tokyo and Paris. An exhibition at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco, opening on October 20th, will be the first to present art made in accordance with Copernican principles, including paintings the color of the universe. The show will be supplemented with Copernican cuisine and music.

The new Copernican art promises to be more profound than any painting or sculpture ever before seen, according to artist and philosopher Jonathon Keats, who has previously exhibited abstract artwork by both cypress trees and extraterrestrials. “And that’s not promising much,” he says, “when you consider that art on our planet has hardly evolved since the first cave paintings were made.”

Mr. Keats acknowledges that reform takes time. “Science didn’t really begin until the Copernican revolution,” he says. “After millennia of egocentric navel-gazing, astronomers learned from Copernicus that there’s nothing special about us. We’re on an average planet in a typical galaxy, and that’s to our advantage because it lets us assume that whatever we observe here, like the speed of light or the forces within atoms, will be the same everywhere.” In other words, scientists can make generalizations about the entire cosmos without ever leaving home, because everything about our home is perfectly mediocre.

“This Copernican principle is one of the most successful principles in science,” according to Princeton University astrophysicist J. Richard Gott, III. Yet Mr. Keats points out that artists have failed to take advantage of it. Art is still resolutely Ptolemaic. “In fact, artists take the geocentric worldview to an extreme even ancient astronomers like Claudius Ptolemy couldn’t have fathomed,” asserts Mr. Keats. “The focus of art is on self-expression. The most famous artists behave as if they personally were the center of the universe. And the work most cherished is esteemed for being atypical.”

Museums from the Metropolitan to the Louvre are complicit in this scheme as storehouses for the most anti-Copernican of artifacts, the masterpiece. “That isn’t a problem if art is just a cultural trophy,” says Mr. Keats, “but if what we seek from art is universal understanding, then the great works must go. We should banish masterpieces as distracting anomalies, just as scientists routinely discard artifacts from their data sets.”

“Copernican art is a major change in the art world,” acknowledges Modernism Gallery director Danielle Beaulieu. “There’s still a strong market for masterpieces, but Jonathon never was very good at making money.”

Mr. Keats vows that nothing shown at his Modernism Gallery exhibition will be a masterpiece. On the contrary, everything will be perfectly average. For instance the color of his paintings – monochrome canvases covered in a flat coat of latex housepaint – has been calibrated by averaging the spectrum of starlight in more than 200,000 galaxies. The paintings are beige.

Mr. Keats will also present sculpture with the typical composition of the universe, wrought in hydrogen. The colorless gas will be free to disperse.

His music will have the entropy of the universe, as calculated by Australian National University cosmologists Charles Lineweaver and Chas Egan: Since the universe is approximately a quarter of the way to “heat death” or total disorderliness, Mr. Keats will apply the same ratio to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, randomizing 25 percent of the notes.

Mr. Keats is applying Copernican principles to cuisine by producing a universal anti-seasoning that gives any dish the homogeneity of the cosmos. Blind taste tests have shown that his new condiment makes everything bland.

A manifesto released this week also includes plans for Copernican literature with the mathematical predictability of the universe, and Copernican architecture with the fundamental geometry of the universe. The manifesto is anticipated to foment a Copernican revolution in all the arts.

“Copernican painting is nothing special,” insists Mr. Keats, “and the same is true for Copernican cuisine and music and sculpture. It’s all perfectly mediocre, like the world. And like the world, Copernican art can reveal to us the nature of the universe, if only we can learn to appreciate the ordinary.”

An opening reception for the First Copernican Art Exposition will be held at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco on Thursday, October 20, 2011 from 5:30 to 8:00 PM. Click here for more information.

About the artist:

Acclaimed as “a poet of ideas” by the New Yorker, Jonathon Keats is an experimental philosopher and artist based in the United States and Italy. Recently he opened a photosynthetic restaurant for plants at the Crocker Art Museum. He has also launched a space agency for potatoes at California State University, exhibited extraterrestrial abstract art at the Judah L Magnes Museum, presented the nation’s first ouija voting booth at the Berkeley Art Museum, and attempted to genetically engineer God in collaboration with scientists at the University of California.  His projects have been documented by PBS, NPR, and the BBC World Service, garnering favorable attention in periodicals ranging from The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle, to Nature and New Scientist, to Flash Art and ArtInfo. Additionally, Keats serves as the art critic for San Francisco Magazine and as a columnist for Wired Magazine. He’s the author of two novels and an American

Library Association award-winning collection of stories published by Random House, as well as a book about the co-evolution of language and science, “Virtual Words”, published by Oxford University Press last October. Since graduating summa cum laude from Amherst College in 1994, he has been a visiting artist at California and Montana State Universities, and a guest lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as the recipient of Yaddo and MacDowell fellowships.

Bauhaus front man Peter Murphy lends his booming vocal talents to the dreamy, stunningly animated The Lady ParaNorma. Director Vincent Marcone (AKA My Pet Skeleton) — a multiple Emmy award-winning artist and filmmaker — has teamed up with horror mag movie outlet, Rue Morgue Cinema, for a ghostly filmic poem. When an eccentric woman is haunted by the howls of specters, she follows their strange call to uncover the mystery. Gothic icon Murphy added his voice to the project for several of the darkly beautiful soundscapes. He also narrates the film, which is currently making the festival rounds. Marcone recently shared an amusing story about his recording session with the artist. “‘Was that ok?’ he asked politely when he was done. The lot of us sat there unresponsive for a more than a moment, paralyzed by our own goosebumps. ‘Yes Peter, that was good … ‘” Hit the jump for a peek at Murphy in the studio and to check out the trailer for the film.

Last week I wrote a bunch of stuff for Flavorwire. You can catch up on all the posts over here.

You can pick up a double-bill of hospital horror from Shout Factory, who have pitted this Canadian slasher against the American supernatural terror Bad Dreams, starring Jennifer Rubin. The film feels like it could be A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors all over again, but actually has decent gore and other strange stuff from The Craft’s Andrew Fleming to make it more memorable than a mere copycat.

A fascinating look inside BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop in the 1960s, its influence on the sci-fi genre, and how it shaped the history of electronic music. Includes footage of the old greats like Delia Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson, John Baker — and all the insane instruments and equipment they used to create pioneering sounds.

Tonight, people at YBCA in San Francisco are going to watch a documentary about smut that has been making the rounds at the festival circuit. Director Michael Stabile, DP/editor Ben Leon, and producer Jack Shamama — all vets of the adult film industry in their own right — got together to make Smut Capital of America. The documentary takes a look at San Francisco’s sleazy Tenderloin district in the ’70s. According to YBCA:

“Smut Capital of America is the title of Michael Stabile’s in-progress documentary which chronicles San Francisco’s reign as the center of porn production in the U.S. during the early 70s. In 1969, San Francisco became the first city in the U.S. to effectively legalize pornography, hugely boosting our reputation as a boomtown for sex, and eventually opening up the floodgates to the rest of the country. The series begins with a screening/discussion with Stabile and continues through August 18 with a wide variety of films made during the era. All will be presented in their original film formats (not digital transfers).”

Check out the clip below. You know if John Waters is scared, it’s serious. Prepare to learn about the origin of the “split beaver.”

The role of King was a position he never wanted — in fact, it devastated him — and England was just as wary due to concern surrounding his various medical conditions and oft-talked about stammer. After working with speech therapist Lionel Logue, and thanks to the support of his loving wife Lady Elizabeth, he was able to overcome his fear of public speaking and become a valiant leader — particularly loved for his commitment and sympathies to his people during World War II.

Revolver’s DVD includes commentary from Colin Firth, whose role as King George VI in The King’s Speech won him last year’s Oscar for Best Actor. The film’s director Tom Hooper also provides thoughts, as does Logue’s grandson. The feature-length documentary contains original footage from the King’s reign, and several extras (King George V Memorial, Royal Welcome at Cape Town, Royal Christening, and the movie’s trailer). King George VI: The Man Behind the King’s Speech is also available On Demand and for download. Visit Revolver for more details, and buy the DVD over here.