The original painting was used in the pilot of Queer as Folk, but Showtime was concerned about having such a valuable piece of artwork on the set. The painting was therefore printed on canvas, and the texture of brushstrokes was added using a glaze.

Skin Deep - Attila Richard Lukacs paints his dreams
from Culturati by Richard Goldstein February 9 - 15, 2000

"I have this recurring dream where I’m a serial killer," Attila Richard Lukacs reveals. Once, he woke up in such a panic that he couldn't tell the reverie from reality. He kept asking himself whether he'd ever murdered anyone. "I didn't know. It was like, they're coming for me tomorrow, and I spent 20 minutes on the toilet trying to decide what to do with my life." He kept repeating the same question: "Attila, what did you do with the body?"

A natural question for a painter of bodies, perhaps. But for this artist, whose latest show opens Saturday at the Phyllis Kind Gallery, it carries a special weight. At 37, Lukacs has made his mark by representing acts that verge on murder — brutal beatings and ritual humiliation as well as rhapsodic sex between tough young men. His adoring portraits of skinheads and thugs have made him the official bad boy of his native Canada. But even in New York, where being an evil genius is the second oldest profession, Lukacs has had quite an impact on the Nietzsche and Nobu set.

Elton John collects him. Architects have designed rooms to accommodate his massive canvases. One house-beautiful photo shows an elegantly minimal dining room — complete with a view of the Pacific — dominated by the image of skins in all their grimy splendor. The unintended comedy of brunching before such an icon holds a clue to what makes Lukacs more than a flash in the post-Koons pan. For in these elegiac portraits, painted in a style that mixes high realism with Nazi kitsch, is everything about masculinity liberal society struggles to suppress. Here is Fight Club set in an even more idyllic world, where women don't even exist — an Eden without Eve.

It's a dream most men won't own up to, though they act on it all the time (in sports, business, war). But for Lukacs, these images of what one critic calls "the hysterical male" are souvenirs of an excursion to the place where jerking off meets art meets life. "I've already gone there," he says. "So it's a matter of, do you want to go there too?"

His studio is a farrago of found objects waiting to be "referenced" in a painting: stroke books from the 1970s ("when porn was still dirty"), news photos of young men in earnest poses (Timothy McVeigh under arrest, jocks at a Columbine memorial), books of Indian and Persian miniatures, a Boy Scouts manual, and Polaroids — hundreds of them, filling a tall cabinet and filed by each model's name. Hustlers would be more like it, since many of these boys pose for him and then put out — as Lukacs briefly did back in his Canadian days, using the money he earned from turning tricks to pay for other boys.

These photos are also a chronicle of the artist's life, taking him from a stormy adolescence in Calgary and Vancouver to a precarious sojourn in the squats of Berlin to the belly of the art beast, New York. (Of course, he's been here before: Fresh out of high school, he arrived at the legendary Mine Shaft only to be told he couldn't enter, not because of his tender age but because of his Ralph Lauren wardrobe — which he promptly removed.) All along there has been a fascination with skinheads that began when he came upon them as a teenager, sitting in his mother's sun room and thumbing through a magazine. Doc Martens were this boy's madeleine.

"I mean, there's nothing like a 17-year-old with a shaved head and a pair of boots," Lukacs explains. "There's a rawness that's really sincere. And they can be very . . . romantic." As for the swastikas that adorn skin culture (and a number of his paintings), Lukacs insists, "They've taken all meaning out of the image and replaced it with pure aesthetic." And it's true, up to a point. In the brave new world of Jörg Haider, fascists don't sport swastikas, freeing up this symbol to become a fetish. But there's nothing archaic about its connection to male power. Among other things, the swastika signifies the suppression of femininity, which is why, to certain skinheads — some of them gay — it's sexier than leather. "Even those gay boys in Berlin loved to pose in front of a swastika," Lukacs recalls.

Still, there are only so many ways to hook a cross. Whether it's an astute sense of the market or the drift of his dreams, Lukacs is painting over the swastikas in a portrait of coupling skinheads when I arrive. "I'm subordinating them," he explains.

Skins are not the only players in this artist's repertoire. There are also men in uniform, a preoccupation ever since he begged his father, a Hungarian émigré, to send him to military school. It never happened, but Lukacs kept the catalogs as cherished jerk-off material, and in 1990 he used them to make paintings for a show about cadets. It opened during the Gulf War, saddling the artist with a meaning he hadn't intended — combat has less to do with these paintings than discipline does. One piece stands out as a clue to Lukacs's sensibility. Called The Good Son, it shows a boy sitting bare chested, spit-polishing a buckle, while an officer stands over him monitoring his work with an unmistakably fatherly regard. But what are those blotches on the boy's body — painterly technique or scabs and welts?

It doesn't take a brutal father to plant that image in your head. Just growing up gay, even on the ample Canadian plains, will do: the brothers who played hockey while Attila did crafts; the kids in high school who knew he was queer way before he did; the crush on a straight boy out of Caravaggio, sealed with a blow job that would be immediately denied. And through it all, the fantasy of fusing with the savior, the destroyer, the Man.

This is not an unusual rite of passage for a gay boy, especially an artist (think of David Wojnarowicz growing up close to the knives). If you're lucky and blessed with love, you come to some sort of peace with your (self-) destructive urges. And the stuff Lukacs is showing these days does suggest a provisional cessation of hostilities. Now the tough guys are languishing in their Eden while a Persian menagerie cavorts around them. And the swastikas, at least in this painting, are a faint white shadow.

It's impossible to say what this gesture of erasure means, though Lukacs insists, as he does whenever he's asked to explain his work: "It's not a critique. It's coming from an eye." But the eye sees what the heart feels. So perhaps it's fitting to mention Lukacs's boyfriend, Claus. They met in Berlin four years ago, and they went where any young gay couple on a first date might: to the baths. "We were sitting in this room watching the hair grow on the walls," Lukacs recalls, "and he cried in my arms."

There's the serial killer in your dreams, and then there's the man who cries in your arms. And that makes all the difference.

(from The Village Voice)

See more of Attila Richard Lukacs' work at these sites:
Attila Richard Lukacs Official Site
PartyPix (pictures from one of his gallery showings)

Juicy Salif Juicer - Philippe Starck for Alessi, 1990 - $65

A high profile juicer for Alessi by Philippe Starck [1949- ]: it suggests that one is looking at the work of an imaginative and somewhat undisciplined man with a taste for science fiction and sex.

"Philippe Starck is a legend. An extraordinary mix of pop star, mad inventor and romantic philosopher, he is also probably the most famous designer in the world. His work is everywhere: from the chic hotels of New York to the FF4900 mail-order house, from the private apartment of a French president to the biggest waste disposal centre in Europe, from hundreds of thousands of chairs and lamps in cafes and homes all over the globe to the toothbrush in your bathroom. Seen together it is a pulsating magma of signs and symbols, a plastic menagerie in which object and meaning collide. Now in the prime of his working life, Starck is leading the way in reconciling objects and the people."

From: "Starck" ©1996 Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH, Koln.
©1996 Philippe Starck, Paris. Edited by Simone Phillipi, Cologne.
Juicer available from Unica.com

Jack Light by Tom Dixon - $295

Designed by Tom Dixon for his company, Eurolounge, the Jack Light is made of rotationally molded low-density plastic for a lightness and toughness. The jacks are stackable and can also be used as seating, table bases, etc. The jack light uses a 40W bulb max and, despite its durability, should be treated like any electrical appliance. Colors available: white, red, lilac, blue, orange, yellow, green & phosphorescent.

From Unica.com

Falklands Lamp by Bruno Munari - $195

Classic hanging lamp designed by Bruno Munari. Fabric shade. Lamp is approx 60" tall with 5' cord. Uses 60W bulb. Can be wired for plug in or hard wired using the cap provided with the lamp.

From Unica.com

Le Corbusier LC4 Chaise Lounge - $529 to $1660 (depending on manufacturer and upholstery)

This famous chaise lounge earned its reputation not only from beauty, but from comfort as well. The entire chaise rotates on the chrome arc that rests on the base. Position it so that your head is lifted for reading, or move your legs up for relaxing.

Le Corbusier (aka Charles-Edouard Jeanneret) was already well-known for his architectural accomplishments when he began experimenting with furniture design in 1928. The creations were the result of a collaborative effort between himself, architect Charlotte Perriand and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, whom oversaw production. Their revolutionary works forged their way into the forefront of "Modern Classics" with the innovative use of steel tubing as an element of design rather than structure. Available in black leather and chrome.

There is some doubt regarding the chronology of the pedestal series. However, it is certain that the chairs were developed before the tables. It has been said that Saarinen began drawing the chairs as early as 1953. However, Don Petit, Saarinen's assistant is reported as saying that the first sketches were made in 1955 and full sized models of the chairs were completed in 1956. The work on the tables began after 1956 and were the last pieces of furniture designed by Saarinen before his untimely death in 1961. The pedestal group was Saarinen's attempt to solve the problem of the "slum of legs" and to eliminate the resulting visual clutter. Since his early work with Eames, he had continued to work on the problem of creating "organic furniture", that is, furniture in a unified form and in a single material. Visually the pedestal group presents an organic unity. However, given the technical limits of the time, Saarinen did not manage to make this series from a single moulded material. The bases had to be made of cast aluminum since moulded plastic in such a graceful form did not have sufficient strengh to support a heavy table top or large person. Consequently, from this point of view, Saarinen considered this project a failure and hoped some day to find a mouldable plastic material strong enough to solve the problem without having to compromise the beauty of the final object.

From The Magazine.info

It's hard to know exactly which dinnerware set Brian has - there are a number of designs that have the same appearance. And based on the screen cap above from episode 109, he actually has two different kinds of plates - both black, but one with a matte finish, and one with a more glossy finish.

From Bed, Bath and Beyond