You realise you're in a place that doesn't exist right at the entrance to the town, where someone has decided to raise a series of improbable animals, from ostriches to Tibetan yaks to South American llamas, all in the same field.
Read more
And so, Gina Pane. A woman, an artist who turned her body into a white canvas on which to cry out all the pain that each of us carries inside.
Read more
Jan Švankmajer is a Czech painter and director born in 1934 whom, if you are a lover of the dreamlike and the surreal like me, you cannot help but adore. His films are true masterpieces of surrealism, no question, an artistic movement in which he took an active part in the 1960s (the Czechoslovak Surrealist Group).
Read more
I loved Watts from the very start, through his books. I loved his irony, without which one can never speak of wisdom. I was enchanted by his ability to entertain through philosophy, and to make the teachings of Eastern philosophies, above all Zen and Taoism, so wonderfully “simple”. Most of all, though, I love his humanity, including the “imperfections” and the “shadows” he was never ashamed of.
Read more
There are no words to describe the music of Lingua Ignota; you simply have to listen. Her singing moves from the lyrical to the heart-wrenching and the unspeakably violent, reaching the scream of Black Metal. The music goes from classical piano to the most violent noise. The atmosphere is one of extreme pain, which at times becomes tangible, almost physical. As if you could touch it.
Read more
A woman who embodies the Avant-garde. She dedicated her life to discovering, collecting and bringing to the public the newest and most avant-garde art forms of her time, forms that remain so today.
Read more
Shin'ya Tsukamoto is a Japanese director and actor, regarded as a cult figure of independent and underground cinema, with an aesthetic that ranges from cyberpunk to ultraviolence, from the most harrowing horror to the murkiest perversions. He is wildly admired by Quentin Tarantino too, who considers him a master and a constant source of inspiration.
Read more
Mishima is the perfect example of someone who cannot be pigeonholed, who is non-aligned, who escapes every category, and for that reason he is a hero of mine and a “living” example of freedom.
Read more
Joel Peter Witkin is an American photographer born in 1939, who lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is an extremely controversial photographer, very often censored, capable of provoking heated debate in both artistic and moral circles. Yes, because Witkin shocks. Universally.
Read more
Today's pill is dedicated to a wonderful American musician: Chelsea Wolfe. A brief preface: I was born in '83 (like this artist, as it happens) and I lived the “Girl Power” years to the full, and although at the time I wasn't feeding on the Spice Girls but on Black Metal and Industrial, I have always felt the spirit of female solidarity very strongly. And I admit that, beyond this, I simply like most of the music coming from female projects better, out of personal taste and perhaps because of a sensibility that feels closer to my own.
Read more
Michel Gondry is a director born in Versailles in 1963 and known for his visionary, dreamlike and extremely personal style. He started out very young as a musician, playing drums in the band Oui Oui, for whom he made a few music videos. By a stroke of great luck, his videos were seen by none other than Bjork herself. And from there began a wonderful collaboration between these two artists.
Read more
Trevor Brown is an English illustrator who has lived and worked in Tokyo since the 1990s. A lover of Japanese art in the style of Maruo, he has created a personal style that fuses the pop imagery of Japanese culture with the extremes typical of that society, developing highly controversial themes, above all linked to paraphilias, sexual perversions, domestic violence, BDSM and fetish.
Read more