"Disheveled Blonde" (1999) by Lisa Yuskavage

"Disheveled Blonde" (1999) by Lisa Yuskavage. Gouache and pastel on paper. 32.4 x 24.8 cm. From an auction, estimate: $35,000-45,000

See also: previous post on Lisa Yuskavage.

"Mambo Jambo" by The Perez Prado Orchestra

"Mambo Jambo" by The Perez Prado Orchestra (Globe Records in Stereo! / Japanese).

Found here at LP Cover Lover. See more in the "nudes" category.

Listen to samples at Amazon.com, or buy the single copy left in stock (and leave a comment so I can update this text). See him perform his biggest hit, Mambo No. 5:

"Cashback" (2007) by Sean Ellis

Based on the Oscar nominated short, Cashback is the tale of life on the graveyard shift at a supermarket. When a bad break-up leads to insomnia, art student Ben joins the nocturnal existence of a group of young grocers who indulge in the art of the imagination. As Ben learns to let his run free, he begins to see beauty in the ordinary as well as the possibility to love again.

Here's the trailer:

Here's the original 18 minute short:

I really liked this movie. At some points it suffered from debut feature film syndrome (too many ideas crammed into one movie) but it's still highly recommended. The IMDM rating is 7.5/10

Justin Chang wrote this for Variety:

Slickly charming, genteelly erotic and directed with supreme polish, "Cashback" is a conventional romantic comedy that plays unconventional games with time and memory. Elaborating on his Oscar-nominated short of the same title, Brit filmmaker Sean Ellis reveals a gift for formal sleight-of-hand that's ultimately more dazzling than his patly amusing script. Though frank sexuality will limit audience scope, pic's kudo cachet and bankable title should earn worldwide distrib Gaumont some cashback of its own from savvy younger viewers. [..] It's [in the supermarket] that Ben discovers his ability to stop time, a phenomenon that gives him a new appreciation for the beauty around him. The beauties in this supermarket readily identify pic as a supremely cushy male fantasy. Ben wanders the aisles of the store undressing the drop-dead gorgeous women around him -- photographed by Angus Hudson in unsparing detail -- then sketches their portraits.

Buy the DVD at Amazon:

Four photos by Favian Vergara

Desnudo y Tradición / Nudity and Tradition: Banquete de la Monja (Rojo) / The Nun's Feast (Red)

Desnudo y Tradición / Nudity and Tradition: Banquete de la Monja (Azul) / The Nun's Feast (Blue)

Carne / Flesh: Carne #2 / Flesh #2

Carne / Flesh: Carne #4 / Flesh #4

Favian Vergara (Mexico, 1958) is painter and photographer. He lives and works in Miami, Florida.

"Untitled #205" (1989) by Cindy Sherman

"Untitled #205" (1989) by Cindy Sherman. Color photograph. 53 1/2 x 40 1/2 inches. Source.

Since 1977, Cindy Sherman has made photographs of herself, which are not self-portraits. "I am trying to make other people recognize something of themselves rather than me," the artist has said. Her endeavor has yielded multiple series of photographs in which she deftly investigates issues about the construction of self-image, particularly for women. In her first works, small black-and-white photographs known as the "Untitled Film Still" series, Sherman explores stereotypes of women in films of the 1950s and 1960s. In a more recent series, Sherman made much larger color photographs restaging the settings of various European portrait paintings of the fifteenth through early nineteenth centuries. In Untitled, 1989, Sherman poses as La Forinara, just as the model might have been painted by her lover, the 16th century Italian painter Raphael, or later by Ingres, except that Sherman's Forinara exposes milk-swollen (plastic) breasts and cradles a (false) pregnant belly beneath her shawl.

See also: previous post.

"Stripper" by Charles Thomson

"Stripper" by Charles Thomson, 40 x 30", oil and acrylic on canvas. Source.

Charles Thomson instigated the Stuckist movement in 1999. He has been the driving force behind it and responsible for most of its media coverage. He has led demonstrations against the Turner Prize for seven years, stood as a Stuckist for parliament, reported Charles Saatchi to the Office of Fair Trading, and run a Stuckist gallery. Previously he was a member of the Medway Poets (1979) and a full-time poet for over a decade. He was briefly married to the artist Stella Vine. He now lives in North London.

Charles Thomson paints in flat areas of mostly high key colour with black outlines, and sees the influence for this from Japanese woodblock prints, Van Gogh and German Expressionism. Subjects are mainly people and situations in his everyday life, but transformed to show "a synthesis of the material, mental, emotional and spiritual." He has observed the paintings often have alternate readings.

"Robert Lenkiewicz and Lucinda Nash" (1993) by Chris Summerfield

"Robert Lenkiewicz and Lucinda Nash" (1993) by Chris Summerfield (1956). Photograph. From Saatchi Online

Three photos by Rachael Dunville

"Meeting Tina, Springfield, MO" by Rachael Dunville. From the "portrait" series.

In making a photograph with another person, my aim is to nourish the complex human essence and express it through the intensity, humor, surrealism and grace of photography.

"Amo" by Rachael Dunville. From the "springtown" series.

I approach the transaction of making a photograph of and with another person as an intuitive, magical exchange; a subtle seduction between willing participants. Springtown is an extensive series of color portrait photographs that reflect the ethos of the Ozark community in which I grew up and to which I belong. These images reveal an evolving emotional rapport between photographer and subject, based on a mutual regard for looking and for being seen. This oscillating event displays the complexities of human desire and tension as fundamental to the act of making photographic portraits.

"2004" by Rachael Dunville. From the "freelance / studio" series.

The studio is a platform; a bare setting, primed to reveal inner repose -- or a filter from reality to create a masquerade of fantasy.

All photos courtesy & copyright of Rachael Dunville.

"Crepe and Black Lamps" (1986) by Don Van Vliet

"Crepe and Black Lamps" (1986) by Don Van Vliet, oil on canvas, 58 1/4 x 48". (source)

Although Don Van Vliet is better known as Captain Beefheart, his first passion was sculpture; it wasn’t until the early ’60s that he devoted himself to the avant-garde blues and rock music associated with his more ludic moniker. In the early ’80s, Van Vliet put music aside and turned to painting. Though a neo-primitivist aesthetic is evident in both the artist’s styling of figures and his recurrent imagery of rites and rejuvenation, the largest influence on Van Vliet’s work is that of the CoBrA painters. He frequently imagines frenetic barnyard scenes involving battling and copulating animals.

"Gnu" (1973) by Mel Ramos

"Gnu" (1973) by Mel Ramos. Oil on canvas. 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm). From an auction. Previous posts on Mel Ramos.