Jack Vettriano (visual) and Suzi Quatro (audio)

All right, since from today I'll change the day when the Duo is published from Monday to Friday I say let's get wild, I have a feeling Duchovny would like this post. For the musical side of things I selected Suzi Quatro with the song entitled "Love Touch" from her 1991 album "Oh, Suzi Q". The song is written by the Bolland brothers who also wrote "Rock Me Amadeus" for Falco and "In the Army Now" for Status Quo. I found it suitable for the images which will follow.
Official site: http://www.suziquatro.com/


Jack Vettriano (Scottish painter) is not very loved by art critiques, some of whom go so far as not even considering him an artist. I don't want to enter into a polemic right now with where I think they are wrong but I will try to do Vettriano some justice. First of all, art developed an impressive array of forms in which it was molded with time and especially during the last two centuries. I like what Vettriano does because it lacks that useless complexity often appreciated in art by art critiques. The artist clearly and firmly expresses his admiration for a vintage and slightly pop influenced world.  His works are sensual and sincere, offering a world of intense love (either erotic or romantic) to the viewer in purely modern "genre" scenes (with people doing everyday things).
Official site: http://www.jackGallery vettriano.com/

If you have someone special, try to have an intense and also calm life together, live it to the fullest, there's no second chance.

Gallery

The Singing Butler

All Systems Go

Back Where You Belong - 1996

Right Time, Right Place - 1993

Yesterday's Dream

Betrayal, No Turning Back, 2001

Dance Me to the End of Love

Anastasia Zharkova (visual) and Zemfira (audio)

Zemfira (left) and Anastasia (right).

Russian art and spirituality are some very captivating and emblematic elements of the global culture, we, however, will not stop at the consecrated names now. Zemfira Ramazanova is a Russian rock artist of Bashkir descent. At the age of four she became interested in music and one year later she was sent to a music school. As time passed she started to become more and more interested in rock music. Apparently she has a powerful personality which often gets her in the news and on the first pages of the tabloids in Russia. This could also be explained by the fact that, as I was led to believe, she was the first female rocker in the country that actually challenged the male dominated podium.



The song 'Skazki' means 'fairy tale' and for lyrics click here, an English translation is to be found here. The album is '14 Nedel Tishini', meaning '14 weeks of silence', from 2002. For her official English site, click here.

Anastasia Zharkova studied industrial design and is interested in photography with some experiments in painting and drawing. You will now meet her as a young and promising photographer, enjoy. The portraits ('Kseniya and Elen) are especially well done in my opinion, the first, slightly contemplative black and white with the model looking somewhere down with her face turned to the left and her eyes not meeting ours. She is neither smiling, nor is she sad, a type of ambiguity that gives an aura of mystery. The second is different and although Anastasia makes evident use of her qualities, the lights, colors, and the position of the model who is looking straight at us,with no inhibitions, slightly upwards with her head tilted to the left showing more of the right side of the face while covering the left with her hair and all this while being rather undressed... well... damn, classic flirting in my opinion (and let's not forget the bed). These two images are excellent together.

Kseniya

Elen

Air

Bathroom (not finished)

Last day of my summer

Moment on the backroad [another great photo]

Picture from the 'Ostuni' series

'Last day of my summer' and 'Moment on the backroad' go hand in hand due to their use of light and color. Also interesting to point out is the fact that one has antennas and the other has a book, it may be accidental but I see a message here. Overall, Anastasia has great talent and I'm looking forward to seeing more works from her. Check her flicker account here.

Till next time, all the best,
Florin

Sara Murk (visual) and Bijelo Dugme (audio)

By pure coincidence this art moment stands under the sign of Croatia (and by extension Yugoslavia).
What you are hearing now is Ako Ima Boga which means... i don't know really, it has something to do with God and an "if" (maybe "If there is God" but don't quote me on this one). I'm sure the lyrics are great but for those who don't understand a word of Croatian we will simply rely on the music. The band is called Bijelo Dugme which according to Wikipedia is translated as "White Button" (Google translate indicates Elvis Presley... dunno what the hell is that about). Many people know about Goran Bregovic, he is a legend of sorts in the Balkans and Europe in general. When the band was up and running he played the guitar and in fact composed much of their repertoire, this explains the excellent quality of their songs although, let's be honest, a band is not made up of only one member. The song is from their 1988 album entitled Ćiribiribela.

Sara Murk


For some reason I found that Sara's works go well with this song even though I don't think that their starting points are the same, I may be wrong. This could possibly be the first time I present an artist who does mainly portraits. Before now I had a general resentment when dealing with portraits, especially in paintings, but now, oddly enough, when it comes to photography I have seen the unbelievable expressiveness of the human figure.

utjeha_kose

Can you see us?

Wrong turn

New born

Holding you tight

Lots of curves

Bijelo Dugme on Facebook, don't forget to like
Sara Murk on deviantART and Flicker