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.

The Independent's new look: Madame Arcati review

Certain darling Arcatistes have messaged me privately imploring me to cast my eyes on the redesigned Independent. It's not as if I haven't other things to do. I'm busy. But as I sit here drinking a lunchtime latte mocchiato from my Tassimo coffee machine - barcoding has never been put to better use - I succumb to blandishment and compromise by summoning up the front page. Only.

To quote the No 1 single of the moment: omg! I am utterly appalled. Return editor Simon Kelner simply has not a clue about visual seduction. The Mail grabs and molests and you yield against better judgement; the Telegraph emits a tractor beam with its high-low mix of hoity-totty. Even the ghastly Express catches your attention with a waggle of a varicose veined pin before you hurry past. But the Independent! I just don't want to look at it. It makes me feel all Hannah Montana and want to go ew!

Why can't Kelner simply steal some ideas from other papers if he can't master the idiom of sexy look?

Now, of all the papers, the Indy is my least unfavourite. Its mind is in the right place, it does not demand the return of the Coliseum, it doesn't hire tomb-toothed loony James Delingpole; atheistically, it's on the side of the angels. The case for the Indy is a good one. New owner Alexander Lebedev potentially has a great asset here. So why the hell (to use a Carole Malone-ism) can't it get its face right?

Where to start? First, why all that white space to the right of the headline? How many trees were felled for that art statement? A front page must demand our instant interest; there's no time for lolling. If a paper wants stylised it must commit not omit. The only case for white space on a front page is a signposted area for reader shopping lists or moustache doodling - a playpen for idlers. And is "Goldmans" literate? Is the plural accepted use for Goldman Sachs? It just doesn't read right.

And what's with the fancy font for the new Viewspaper? You expect to see those squiggles on wedding invites or Valentine's cards or in a movie starring Margaret Lockwood - for lickle sticky-out finger occasions when silly tarts dress like Jordan and the men breathe in for the cummerbund.

Logically and aesthetically, the front page makes no sense. The Indy primarily is a read paper. One way to signal this fact is to have plenty of words on the page and several stories. What we have instead is the one story body copy squashed down at the bottom in favour of a hideous great plane and a dumb monster screamer (with tabloid exclamation mark). The overall sell is basically tabloid though the product is broadsheet all but in size. What is Kelner thinking of?

The only thing going for this front page is the come-on for Gauguin's Girls in the bottom right hand corner, featuring a patch of female pubis: an advert for the editor's cock-cunting inclination no doubt because it would be hard to imagine, say, a naked Alex Reid here with his flaccid four-incher hanging down like a rotten corgette.

Oh no. Must do better. The overall impression is that of a local newspaper with airs. This may work if the paper does go freebie. But not if you're looking for cash.

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...."

Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother: The Official Biography - judging the book by its covers

At over 1000 pages, William Shawcross' Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother: The Official Biography is more heavy collectible than an actual read, something to position near a west window on bright afternoons when sunlight can play on the title gold lettering. Mind the dust motes.

Certainly very few people will read it through. Aside from its weight - the osteoporotic are advised to stack up on splints - its prose is so exquisitely formal as to garrote any semblance of breathing life. It is a words vacuum for image mummification: a relic for grazers of Majesty magazine; and a posthumous and flattering gift from the Queen to the memory of her venerated mother. That's evident from the covers, so let's keep the book shut and just savour its wrapping.

Where to start? Well, royalty's pet paparazzo, Cecil Beaton, natch. His two portraits of the Queen Mother adorn front and back: both left-profile visions of a benevolent goddess. In both she smiles, a royal heresy that won over her publics long before teeth bleaching was considered necessary. The front photo rings bells if you collect royal mugs: it's how we remember the old girl in tissue paper in the commemorative box. It's a clever resonance for the sentimental ma'am-ers. The myopic may treat the background vases as a reminder to visit the optician once again, but they should be reassured that the ornaments are indeed a little out of focus: all the better to draw the eye to the sharply focused simplicity of Elizabeth and her pearls (the body) while furnishing a sense of hinted splendour (the vases in the palace).

The pic at the rear is an "intimate" and surprisingly close-up shot of Elizabeth as pretty young Queen: crowned and bejewelled. It is nonetheless, like the front pic, a formal shot of knowing, crafted intimacy - a visual suggestion here that we're about to get personal between the covers. But not that personal: absence of any qualifying or promising text makes that clear. Here's the image - let's go with it.

Which brings us back to the front cover. The book title - which is nothing more than Elizabeth's royal title in her epic widowhood - alone is a promise that whatever revelations are made, none will dishonour the subject. To emphasise this message, the embossed gold of "Queen Elizabeth" marks the value of reverence. The bulla words "The Official Biography" stamp Elizabeth II's own imprimatur. There's no sell, no sensational under-the skirts IVF promise. Here's the monument: bow or curtsey with your debit card. No wonder Shawcross writes of being "honoured" by the Queen's invitation to construct her gift to mummy. No warts 'n' all, ducky.

The funereal monochrome of the two photos subliminally repeats the Queen's own view that the royal family is not showbiz: her instinct for dullness explains her enduring neutrality as a public figure, a dullness her mother did not possess. Now open the book and learn at the feet of a master-flunky.

Bow or curtsey

Quentin Crisp and Arnold Schwarzenegger: When they met on a date

An Arcatiste in the post two below asks where he or she can read about Duncan Fallowell's mad lunch at San Lorenzo with his companions Quentin Crisp and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Duncan replies: "Yes, it's in my collection 20th Century Characters published by Vintage, now out of print, but available secondhand on Amazon. Perhaps I should post it on my site since it has a wildness about it you don't come across in journalism today. Richard Davenport-Hines cites that particular lunch as one of the greats in his book on Proust at the Majestic. Even then the Governor of California was an unstoppable force of charm and ambition." To buy click here

Jade Goody - Mark McGowan's art tribute

Mark McGowan is planning to reenact the last few hours of Jade Goody's life in what he threatens will be a two-hour performance at Cordy House, Curtain Road, Shoreditch. Tickets for the May 18 performance are £17/£25.

"I am from south London," he says, "and I loved Jade. The last months of her life were in the public eye, except the moments of her death. As an artist, this is my tribute to Jade, I always supported her, even through the Shilpa Shetty incident." Here's a preview trailer: I doubt that his singing voice would get him far on Britain's Got Talent.

Q almost sunk by U2 interview

A spy at Emap tells me that the issue of Q that carried a mega-interview with U2 a couple of months back was the worst-selling in the magazine's history. Time for the Christ in shades to take off the perma-Red Nose.

Attitude's Matthew Todd seeks Cheese Scones

I assume that Matthew Todd, editor of Attitude since last year, placed this entry on MySpace before his giddy ascension:

"Who I'd like to meet: Someone to start a band with. I know a trillion and one muso industry people through work including a couple of very famous producers who said they'd be interested to hear anything I come up with. Wanna start an electro dance pop thang - kinda Pet Shop Boys meets Goldfrapp meets KLF. I sing and write lyrics so looking for a keyboardist/programmer/melody person. Get in touch. Or someone to be my boyfriend, move me to Cornwall/New York and feed me Cheese Scones all day long. Fuck off anyone from Attitude. (Xxxxx) "

Not exactly Anna Wintour, is it?

(My thanks to the naughty boy who drew this to my attention)

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

Love mag is a many splendoured cock-cockery

J'adore Condé Nast's new biannual glossy Love edited by unofficial UK Vogue editor heir apparent Katie Grand. I'll review it properly sometime very soon but meantime my eye is drawn to the contributors list which boasts scarcely a cock-cunter.

Anders Thomsen shares: "I once shared my last pickled onion with a boy to make him love me."

Mert Alas reveals: "My first love was this guy back in Turkey ... I think he got married."

Olivier Rizzo: Has a partner called Willy. Hello, Willy.

Paul Flynn: "My first love was Lewis Collins in The Professionals.'

Handstanding Joseph Mercier names Optimus Prime in Transformers as his first love. "I Want To Fuck You Like An Animal by Nine Inch Nails is his favourite love song. Mmm, the jury's out on him.

Alasdair McLellan appears to like Bucks Fizz and Tina Turner.

Terry Richardson: Appears heavily tattoooed, naked from the waist up, bespectacled and is into Tropical Skittles. Off my radar, sadly.