Philip Levine and Headism: Time we were all baldazzled

Philip Levine's Tsunami. Daniel Regan's
photography
and Kat Sinclair's body art

Though I boast a luxuriant and stylish head of hair, shiny and bouncy with each toss, I do recognise that bald can be sexy. And this is almost entirely due do to the work of cultural entrepreneur Philip Levine whose pate is his canvas.

Do catch his debut exhibition 'Headism', featuring his best head designs, at the NL Gallery 40/42 Riding House Street, London, W1W 7E, May 3-9. Photography by Daniel Regan, documentary by Viviane Castillo and sculpture supported by Lifecast. All his designs are in collaboration with body artist Kat Sinclair. There will be a published book of these images.

Philip Levine's baldazzled head,
 boldly going.
 Daniel Regan's
 photography
 and Kat Sinclair's body art



More details on his site (link above) and on Facebook. Philip will be an exhibit during the Friday Late evening at the V&A on 25th March 2011. There will also be an estimated 10 posters of his head images displayed on the London underground from 11th April 2011 in a build up to the gallery show.

He first caught Madame Arcati's attention in 2009 when I laboured a pun on giving head and his work to caricature my apparent obsession with cock. Nothing could be further from the truth.



I shall know Philip Levine's genius has touched cultural base when yet another useless cock-cunting British PM enters No 10 baldazzled.

Carl Teper: Did the Blitz Kid switch barrister's wig for mascara?

Is Carl Teper in this photo? I don't think so

I was disapppointed to see the philanthropist, barrister and sometime deputy district judge, Carl Teper, not depicted in the recent Boy George TV biopic Worried About the Boy. Or, if he was depicted, I couldn't pick him out in the Blitz nightclub shadows.

It only occurred to me after I'd reviewed it that Carl, whom I very unhappily encountered as a law student at the Middle Temple around 1980/1, was one of the so-called Blitz Kids - a curious and rather wealthy addition to the clubber clique that included Steve Strange (Gemini), Boy George (Gemini), Marilyn, Martin Degville, and others bound for i-D Magazine-plus celebrity.

Quite what drew him to this milieu I do not understand: for the most part, the Blitz Kids were working class, self-created androgynes seeking escape from stifling suburbia to pop/fashion infamy. Rich boy Carl in his sober suits, or the Carl presented to me at the time, was intent on a career at the Bar: politics interested him, too - certainly I recall him telling me that he'd joined both Tory and Labour constituency parties in two different parts of London, which I thought glamorously nonpartisan at the time. These days I'd call him a tart.

Looking back now, I assume he threw his barrister's wig off at night for the piratical shirt and dayglo cake eye liner and shimmer powder; ooh yeah, baby. Well, one is forced to speculate, playfully....

Nothing Carl ever said to me made much sense - he was inclined to the self-empoweringly cryptic when not doing the football pools or eating his din-dins at the MT - but I'm sure our judiciary (or at least the English Bar) is better for this intrepid social voyager who has many friends in showbiz (eg Boy George, Barbara Windsor), journalism (eg Matthew Parris, Adam Mars-Jones), and in several other areas of life. I wonder if he's still a Freemason.

Aged nearly 55 now - yes, another fucking Gemini - he may not want too much attention focusssed on his New Romantic period. But surely a fly-on-the-wall doc of his life - with the gaudy 80s flashbacks interspersing glimpses of his doubtless intriguing work as a parking adjudicator - would make fascinating TV.

Boy George and Worried About the Boy - brief review

Worried About the Boy cast- click here to watch show

Well, I enjoyed the arse-fucking in the red phone box - last seen on the set of Dixon of Dock Green (the red phone box, that is). Not that we saw a cock, or an arse, or anything really. But the glass was all steamed up, and one of the males was Boy George dressed as a nun in high heels who had his back to his saviour (it's a long story ...), some hideous 'tached cock-cunter dallying with same-sex action because it was circa 1980 and David Bowie had made bisexual posing cool. Try to keep up.

BBC2's Worried About the Boy - a "compassionate" dramatisation of Boy George's early life before TOTP and stardom - caught me unawares so it had the advantage: it was just a relief not to be subjected to yet another Freemans catalogue romance or Agatha Christie murder mystery. Boy George was far too quiet and thin - the original is a massive, messy, soulful noise; Marilyn certainly not pretty enough; Steve Strange (him again!) too old and raddled; and Mat Horne as Jon Moss tried his best but was way too weathered with the dyed black hair - c'mon, Moss was a beauty back then. Still, Mat can act. So I forgive him Lesbian Vampire Killers.

Maquillage - perfection all round, as was Bowie, though all we saw was his regal hand slumming it at the Blitz. Strange made mention of the Thin White Duke's crooked teeth, as authenticating trademark.

And I loved it when a brick smashed through one of Malcolm McLaren's windows, eliciting the quip to bewildered George that his new house was being delivered bit by bit. Wonderful panto.

Personally, I'd have added graphic sex, more of the music; lengthened the film to about three hours to take in more of the Blitz club where George and Strange and Spandau et al nurtured their pop dreams. Culture Club just evolved out of nothing in particular, according to this gospel: and I could have lived with two scenes fewer of George's tiresome father. Leave soap to the bloody soaps.

"Keep your chins up," bitchy Marilyn told George. But the slimline actor only had the one.

Tories return for the Steve Strange birthday party!

How fitting that on the day of Dave Cameron's ascension, the New Romantics king Steve Strange should invite me to his birthday party at London's Green Carnation on May 21.

It's the early '80s again! Maggie's in No 10, and there's me empurpling my eye sockets (photos safely tucked away). There's something about Tories-in-power and makeup: they're soooo such a match.

Steve's timed his do to perfection, he's so with the zeitgeist, even unintentionally. And it's most considerate of Dave to furnish us with yet another blue political backdrop for transgender frolics (part deux: nostalgia rerun): how mysteriously do the cycles return us to square one.

Perhaps someone will launch a style mag and call it The Facelift.