« Close, but no cigarette | Main | The Sontag journals »
October 2, 2008
Who says print is dead?
To hear media futurists tell it, print newspapers and magazines are going the way of such other extinct 20th century fixtures as phone booths and drive-in movie theaters.
But how do those doom-and-gloomers explain the lethal-weapon-sized September issue of Vogue?
And, what’s up with “Fantastic Man,” the fashion and arts magazine that keeps getting bigger and glossier with each new issue?
Issue number eight landed on my desk last week and it is nearly 100 pages fatter than the last issue.
The magazine is the brainchild of Dutch writer-entrepreneurs Jop Van Bennekom and Gert Jonkers whose earlier magazine, “Butt,” has attracted an international cult following for its combination of Q&As with important filmmakers and artists like Gus Van Sant and Marc Jacobs, and near-pornographic photo spreads and reader confessions.
Despite the rawness of their product, Jop and Gert began attracting high-end fashion advertisers willing to take a walk on the wild side — including Tom Ford and Calvin Klein — but the launch of the much more conservative “Fantastic Man” has opened an advertising floodgate.
Issue Eight has ads from high-end brands like Gucci and Prada along with an outrageous two-page ad spread from Marc Jacobs with a partially nude photo of Thomas Koerfer by Juergen Teller that would not not pass muster at GQ or Men’s Vogue.
The deadpan profiles are a riot including the one on cover boy Francesco Vezzoli, the Italian filmmaker/performance artist who has a genius for getting all sorts of celebrities to appear in his short films. His “Trailer for a remake of Gore Vidal’s ‘Caligula’” (above) included appearances by Helen Mirren, Courtney Love, and Benicio Del Toro, and was shown in museums all over the world.
The 36-year-old artist is a master at issuing over-the-top quotes of the sort that have made the careers of jet set fashionistas such as Karl Lagerfeld.
“I smell like an 85-year-old lady on Park Avenue in the ’60s. I love old ladies’ perfumes on me,” Vezzoli tells interviewer Tim Blanks (the scent in question is Olene by Diptyque).
“I am sexually very curious but not very active,” the artist says. “Being active sexually implies danger, and I’m not risking my life for sex.”
“Fashion is one of the greatest languages, like cinema or theatre. And it’s unashamedly part of the entertainment industry unlike art, which is embarrassed by it,” Vezzoli says of his personal alliances with Miuccia Prada and Donatella Versace (the latter made the costumes for his mock “Caligula” trailer).
“...there are all these people that belong to the art world who are embarrassed by their ambitions for visibility. It makes their intellectual attitude so crippled, and in the end their work suffers.”
"Fantastic Man" is a print product that wouldn't be possible without the Internet. Jop and Gert have forged links with ad reps, readers and writers all over the world. In a biographical note on contributing photographer Jeanne Detallante, we are told, "There is not much we know of Ms. Detallante since we have never met her, nor have we spoken with her on the telephone. We did exchange electronic mail for the production of the glorious 'Mountain Views' series on page 96..."
Posted by Joe on October 2, 2008 4:42 PM
