Exquisite Object #7: Jodhpurs

The marvelous flared hip fitted cuffed trousers worn traditionally for horse riding may not be the most cutting edge in the world of high fashion (the first three images bellow are drawn from Balenciaga's fall winter 2007 line) but that doesn't mean they aren't exquisite. I can't even tell if they're flattering but rest assured I myself am saving up for a pair.

Goya

Fransisco Goya  (1746–1828) was a mediocre painter, sentimental, and generally offensive, but then between 1819 and 1823 he stopped painting pudding-y aristocrats and began to manically adorn his dinning a sitting rooms with a series of 13 tenebrous and nightmarish murals. They are monstrous and magnetic, almost reminiscent of the psychotic James Ensor, and strike such a sharp contrast with the cloying quality of his earlier paintings which, in my humble opinion, should be lost to the annals of Western art. In addition to twelve of the thirteen paintings I have also included a number of his more disturbing etchings, many of which were created in response to the Napoleonic wars and the various schisms Spain endured in its wake.

Exquisite Object #6: Cigarette Holders

I'm not really sure what the point is, they certainly don't filter anything, I suppose they prevent one's finger's from getting that awful film of stale nicotine adipocere, but utilitarianism is hardly my concern and no matter what they're elegant as fuck. The illustrious individuals who have employed these exquisite objects serve only to demonstrate this point further.

Shintaro Kago

Shintaro Kago (b. 1969) is a Japanese guro manga artist. While much of his work can be classified as pornographic even his more extreme works, appearing only in adult publications, have a high degree of artistic merit. He uses comic format and conventions to complex and interesting ends pushing the limits of meta-fiction both in dialogue and in visual form. The work is odd, extremely so, even the more... masturbatory works are highly self aware, playing with the topoi of hentai and making numerous nods to their own peculiarity and perhaps even perverse nature. His Style is also gorgeous, almost anti-manga in its construction and craft.

Exquisite Object #5: Kewpie Dolls

Kewpie Dolls, based on the 1909 comic strip Kewpie by Rose O'Neil, were tremendously popular in the early twentieth century. I really don't have much more to say except that I spend a lot of time trying to look like one.

Franz von Bayros

Franz von Bayros (1866-1924) was an Austrian illustrator and commercial artist belonging to another movement near and dear to my heart, the Decadents. His best known works belong to a series, though not a formal one, known as "Tales at the Dressing Table" and are shocking in their frank depictions of rather extreme sexual practices, as well as notable for their simple technical splendor. The complexity, baroque quality of the images presented with clinical precision of line and texture, serves as an elegant evocation of cultural decadence, lavishness and resplendence coupled with spiritual destitution.