TOO MANY KISSES (a french blog about kisses)

ORLAN | THE ARTIST’S KISS | 1977

Orlan is a French Feminist artist whose work of art “Le Baiser de l’Artiste” (The Artist’s Kiss), had a big impact on the Art scene in the 1970′s.

The performance occured near the Grand Palais during the FIAC fair in Paris, where she basically sold her own kisses for 5 French Francs. Here’s the motto she shouted to request the public’s attention: «Approchez approchez, venez sur mon piédestal, celui des mythes : la mère, la pute, l’artiste.» — «Come here, come on my pedestal, the pedestal of the myths: the mother, the whore, the artist.»

Since then she kept involving her body in her art, most of the time in provocative ways.

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SUMMER OF LOVE | ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI COVER BY SAIMAN CHOW | 2011

This artwork entitled “Summer of Love” is by Brooklyn based illustrator Saiman Chow, who also did the cover for Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti’s Round and Round single. And, the music is great!

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KISS | TEENAGE KISSERS | ED TEMPLETON | 1996

Ed Templeton is a skateboarder, painter, graphic designer and photographer. He got some success with a first photography series entitled “Teenage Smokers”, and kept the same process for “Teenage Kissers”, a serie about teenagers learning how to kiss, with touching and/or awkward attitudes.

http://www.toymachine.com

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PLEASURES AND TERRORS OF KISSING | JAMES FRIEDMAN | 1994/1998

From “Pleasures and Terrors of Kissing”, 1994.

James Friedman is a fine art, portrait, architectural, commercial and personal documentary photographer. He is American, based in Columbus, Ohio, and internationally renowned. About this project : “I do not remember any kissing between family members as I was growing up. It wasn’t until my mother was hospitalized for eight months, unable to speak, that we began to kiss good-bye before I would depart for the day after visiting her. These newly discovered displays of affection were imbued with genuine caring and profound sadness as we both know she had only a short time to live. Our relationship in my mother’s final months inspired my photographic project, Pleasures and Terrors of Kissing.”

www.jamesfriedmanphotographer.com

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KISS | LINA SCHEYNIUS | 2008

From Swedish photographer Lina Scheynius’s Diary. This is her and her former boyfriend on the picture. www.linascheynius.com

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DEBBIE HARRY AND CHRIS STEIN | 1976

Debbie Harry and Chris Stein are the founders of punk rock band Blondie. They met in a New York bar in 1973. At that time she was a waiter, a dancer and a singer, he an art student. They became lovers and bandmates.

Debbie and Chris were very much in love. In the mid 80′s when Stein became ill with a terrible skin disease, Debbie stopped working completely to nurse him back to health. Then they broke up in 1989, but they have continued to work together.

The photographer who shot this amazing picture is Roberta Baylay, in January 1976. She used to work as a door person at CBGB’s, and subsequently befriended leading musicians on the punk scene. She started to take pictures almost by chance: “When I came to CBGB all these bands wanted their pictures taken and it turned out I was pretty good. It was going to work for Punk magazine that really opened things up a lot because they really had an interesting take on things.“
Among the artists she has photographed are Iggy Pop, Richard Hell, Elvis Costello, The Sex Pistols, Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers, The Ramones, Nick Lowe, The Damned, The Clash and Joe Strummer, The Dead Boys, The New York Dolls, and of course Blondie and Debbie Harry. Read an interview of Roberta here.

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PAUL NEWMAN AND JOANNE WOODWARD | A NEW KIND OF LOVE | 1963

From the movie “A New Kind of Love” by Melville Shavelson in which Paul Newman kisses his real life wife Joanne Woodward.

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WOODY ALLEN AND ROMY SCHNEIDER | PARIS | 1964

From the movie “What’s Up Pussycat”.

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MARYLIN MONROE & JOE DIMAGGIO | WEDDING KISS | 1954

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THE VANCOUVER KISS | 2011

This picture was shot during the Vancouver Riots in June, 2011, and rapidly spreaded all over the internet, without anybody knowing the identity of these two young people kissing in the midle of chaos. The day after, their names were revealed, as well as the purpose of their strange acting. He is a 29-year-old Australian named Scott Jones, and the woman is his canadian girlfriend Alexandra Thomas. She actually just had been injured by the riot police, she was crying and her boyfriend was trying to comfort her. This is love.

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KISSES FROM HELMUT NEWTON

If you want more, you can go see the Newton Exhibition at le Grand Palais, in Paris.

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THE PARK | KOHEI YOSHIYUKI | 1973

Untitled, from the “Park” series.

Kohei Yoshiyuki (born 1946) is a Japanese photographer. His black-and-white series “Kōen” (公園, Park) captured people in sexual activities, sometimes with people around them, in Shinjuku and Yoyogi parks, Tokyo, in the early 70′s. He used infrared flashbulbs to keep undetected.

“To photograph the voyeurs, I needed to be considered one of them. I behaved like I had the same interest as the voyeurs, but I was equipped with a small camera. My intention was to capture what happened in the parks, so I was not a real ‘voyeur’ like them. But I think, in a way, the act of taking photographs itself is voyeuristic somehow. So I may be a voyeur, because I am a photographer.”

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THE ART OF KISSING | ANDY BARTER | 2012

After his first Photography series THE KISS, Andy Barter is back with a similar project showing kissing couples, viewed from below.
www.andybarter.com

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KISSTERVIEW : ADA | KASAKH | FIRST KISS AT 12 YEARS OLD

At that time I lived in a little town near the border with China, in the mountains of Kazakhstan. My first kiss was actually funny and bizarre tasting. There was blood!

It took place at our house, with a bunch of people playing the “bottle” game, which consists in turning an empty bottle until it stops, then the two people pointed by the two ends of the bottle have to kiss. It pointed to me and one of my friends. We actually liked each other, so we stood up –which is unusual for that game, you normally bend towards each other–, and hugged, and then finally kissed.

It didn’t feel like a kiss because we both had braces and our lips started to bleed. From then we kept seeing each other, hugging and holding hands but never kissing again. There was a lot of spying on us…

We are still good friends now.

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ZABRISKIE POINT | MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI | 1970

Zabriskie Point, Michelangelo Antonioni’s first English movie, captured the rebellious spirit of the american hippie youth in the late 60′s and early seventies, and describes its newly conquered sexual freedom. This absolutely gorgeous scene takes place in the Mojave desert, Arizona, starring Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin –who both acted for the first time, and whose characters were named Mark and Daria, their actual first names–, with a soundtrack by the Pink Floyd, and Richard Wright at the piano.

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