Molly Parkin: The portrait by the artist Trademark

Molly Parkin by Trademark

I love this new hyper-glam portrait of my permanent fiancee Molly Parkin, due to be unveiled at La Galleria, 30 Royal Opera Arcade, Pall Mall, London SW1Y 4UY on  26 April, 2011.

It's the work of artist Trademark aka Mark Wardel. His other celebrity subjects include Kylie Minogue (who commissioned a series of portraits for her Showgirl Homecoming Tour), Divine, Grace Jones, David Bowie and Boy George (who describes Trademark as a modern-day Warhol).

And Kanye West and Naomi Campbell are among star collectors of his artwork.

Of the Moll unveiling, Trademark tells me: 'The event is being filmed as part of the BBC4 profile which has followed the process of myself painting this portrait of your fiancee.'

I would affectionately title her Nefertiti-like portrait: Moll: Murder By Maquillage. The purple lips are sealed - for today she will spare you a sharp retort - while the black eye greasepaint is a promise of risky drama, lovingly applied. This face is trouble.

To view more of Trademark's work, click here. For a critique, go to this.

PS to Trademark: Think about Judge Judy. Turn this hideous virago and persecutor of the fat, blue-collared litigant into a drag queen. She is the most dangerous woman in America. She is also thin. And cruel.

Tony Blair: The Journey of his face - a review

What does this front cover tell us of Tony Blair's current state of mind and his memoirs The Journey (out September)? Arcatistes will be familiar with my appraisals of books by their cover alone: so let's examine the method and the message of this presentation.

Most striking is the light bleaching. I haven't seen anything quite like it since Beth Ditto's cover pic for Love magazine. Two white lamps are trained on the left-hand side of his face: one flat on, the other just off-central visage, casting shadows at the farthest reaches to our right, with illumination splashes on left cheek and mid-forehead. All this serves two purposes: to flood out most of his wrinkles and to deflect attention from the translucent bronze tanning or powder with shade brown and white contrasts.

Artfully, criss-cross lines are just discernible on the forehead while beard grain is non-existent. This succeeds in expressing a hint of the exigencies of past high office while reassuring us of a preserved boyishness, even at the age of 56, one still capable of being summoned up with discreet bronzing and lighting. To go further would be to risk Americanisation of the face. Uncapped teeth and greying hair are another concession to British ideas of authenticity (or another way of maintaining blue transatlantic water between Blighty grunge and American perfectionism). He's still a Brit even if he, like Thatch, is an honorary Yank.

Black open-necked shirt essays a smart-casual, Paul Smith-ish brand of 21st century cool statesmanship, in keeping with the not-quite smile: a smile or grin would incite public violence. So instead we get a Mona Lisa countenance: one that may suggest a certain conflict of feeling. This is a face sensitive to tone (and Tone). Notice how the corners of his mouth level off against the suggestion of a promised smile from the parted lips: it's the look of someone no longer certain of his reception. He looks you straight in the eye but he's wary. Not to be confused with contrition.

Much planning has gone into this pose of informal authenticity. His book promises much as a result, but will it deliver?

Philip Levine: An artist who gives the best head

I just love Philip Levine's head designs. Artworked bonces are so sexy, so clean. I commend to A-listers, the intelligent and cancer patients. For more on Philip's extraordinary work, see his new website. "Philip started using his head as a canvas for creativity back in 2006 when he began to go bald...."

London G20: Bloody riots as art for the super pink trooper

As London is immersed in G20 tumult next week, with 100,000 demonstrators expected and all police leave cancelled, the artist Ben Moore will manfully vogue through the riots in his pink Star Wars-like trooper suit. Confrontation will serve as aesthetic backdrop to an artistic experience.

A spokesman tells me: "Ben wants to capture images of the pink trooper standing still amid a chaotic and violent environment - like a statue. This piece of work is about armour and uniform - the pink trooper was once white and automical. By becoming pink it has changed sides - gone from the side of the police onto the side of freedom and freedom of expression." I just hope a bodyguard of France's Dior-clad Première Dame, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, doesn't shoot him on sight - what an unfortunate diplomatic mishap that would be.

Ironically, I understand London mayor Boris Johnson is rather fond of Ben's work as one of the artist's subjects. I shall expect to see him at the subsequent G20 Art Wars exhibition. Click here for more details of the pink trooper.

Carla can do pink, too. But whose side's she on?

Is Love's Beth cover a Ditto of NME's? No

A couple of Arcatistes have drawn my attention to the claim that Love's recent debut Beth Ditto cover is a rip-off of NME's Ditto cover in 2007 (left). I think not.

Whereas NME's is done in vulgar readers' wives style, with the clear intention to fetishise Ditto's voluptuous curves for the purpose of male self-pleasuring (consider the magazine's core readership), Love's is an asexual aestheticising of her form (given that the title is high fashion/art, gay, guest cunt-cock-cocking [ie straight female gay friendly]).

NME has stained Ditto's body with a tan hue: a visual trope of soft porn imagery. Red coverlines subliminally comfort the viewer in a tabloid red-top ambience while the red kiss lips mark on her buttock cheek is both playful and defiant, a common attitude struck by glamour models: a fake frisson is enticing to those who require the simulacrum of will in a sex doll. Ditto bears a Victorian-style come-hither countenance, her lips parted for the fantasy possibility of a reader blow-job, her hair bottled brunette because blonde would not work against the yellowy-gold background, redolent of the sun/Sun - however, given the model's colouring, brunette is most unsuitable here which is paradoxical perfection: colour clash reassures she's human, lower class, not quite with alienating perfecting. At its most extreme this cover is a poster for the taste that finds expression in the movie Feed.

Love's cover is more suggestive of classless exclusion: you are invited merely to admire the thing on the canvas, not to auto-eroticise, not to take part. The light-bleaching of Ditto's body transmutes flesh to stone (white marble?), the deep purple of closed lips hints at sexual unavailability if not death in its advance stage. Ditto's eyes are closed; she is lost in her own world (or dead again?); the viewer's role in this exhibition is to stand back in awed respect, as an aspirant window shopper with nose pressed against Harvey Nicks glass. Fat folds are light minimised, one is not encouraged to be prurient: the red copper hair exists only for one purpose: to set off for complementary effect the mint green background. The squiggly cover-choral-lines both artfully accentuate Ditto's natural curves and script editorial unorthodoxy and personalisation. Ditto's pink, ruched fig-leaf connotes a stylish and witty portcullis to further inquiry.

On other matters, an Arcatiste has kindly referred me to the website of Terry Richardson - the Love photographer whom I described as "off my radar". I now realise why - this is his mother ...

Terry's website