Live For Myself. Answer To Nobody. by Mach

LIVE FOR MYSELF, ANSWER TO NOBODY Steve McQueen Tribute Special Issue

LIVE FOR MYSELF, ANSWER TO NOBODY / STEVE MCQUEEN TRIBUTE SPECIAL ISSUE

ÂŠ Barry Feinstein Photography Inc

The Custom Factory welcomes you to the supercool world of Steve McQueen, in which we provide this guide to both the man as well as the exhibition running from Nov 28th to Jan 14th in London's Soho district.

A life cut short but lived fast, hard and without apology; McQueen's Bullitt became typical of his approach to all things. LWLies casts a rose-tinted eye over his films and life as part of The Custom Factory's tribute to every man's man.

ÂŠ Bill Ray

Contents: BULLITT pg 006

The Cool School pg 018

The Five Faces of Steve McQueen pg 030

Photographers pg 038

Event Guide pg 050

Directed by Peter Yates Starring Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Vaughn Released 1968 Words by David Jenkins

ONLY IN TRASH LITERATURE COULD YOU HAVE A HERO WHO GOES BY THE NAME OF FRANK BULLITT. a pump-action shotgun later and the witness is no more. But justice will prevail if the mechanically motivated Bullitt has anything to say about it. No-one dies on his watch. Only in trash literature could you have a hero who goes by the name of Frank Bullitt. Only in cinema could he be played by Steve McQueen. The divertingly alternate spelling might be uncloaked as a pathetic grab towards integrity and faintly ridiculous tough guy cheese. But somehow director Peter Yates manages to concoct a movie where exotic epithets manage to blend into the sun-baked, hardboiled backdrop. San Francisco, and Bullitt has been been sequestered by charmless, side-parted slimebag Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn) to protect a petty thief who’s on the lam from the Chicago mob. If Johnny Moss gets whacked, then Chalmers loses a star witness. And so to a dingy hotel safehouse to protect their man. Taking a much-needed bed break with Jaqueline Bisset, Bullitt receives a 1am wake-up call from his trusty underling advising that something fishy may be going down. A pair of unannounced visitors want to come up and visit their man. Two mighty cracks of

Inspired by John Boorman’s Point Blank, the new wave-tinged revenge saga from the previous year, Bullitt is a film which offers an effortless new spin on a musty police procedural template. Director Peter Yates – with ruthless determination – sets his stall as a director of roughhewn style and gliding precision, firmly placing a bookmark at the end of his formative work on TV (The Saint) and in movies, (the robust Robbery). Yates, to be sure, was a safe pair of hands, though he was clearly more than a mere journeyman: you can tell from the elliptical opening credit sequence where the wanted Johnny Ross evades his captors as giant type lunges out from the image.

ÂŠ Barry Feinstein Photography Inc

Illustration by Christian Ward

So, down to brass tacks: It’s often thought that Bullitt contains the greatest car chase scene in the history of cinema, and there is certainly credence to this argument. Contenders for the crown include the semi-improvised NYC-at-rush hour dash at the centre of William Friedkin’s The French Connection, and even the smash-happy extended Chicago road trip at the end of John Landis’ The Blues Brothers would be in with a shout. They’re good, but they’re not quite Bullitt.

Let’s set the scene: Bullitt, who, via meticulous policework, is closing in on the men who now have him in their sights. As he stomps down the pavements of San Francisco, desperate to find the killers of a man he never knew and never liked, they’re in fact eyeballing him from the cab of their sleek black muscle car. They wear black leather gloves, for driving and killing. Bullitt spies them, but they don’t realise. He hops into his racing green 1968 Ford Mustang 390 GT 2+2 Fastback, and takes them for a slow run around down some quite streets. Foreplay. Their sight lines are key. Who’s watching who? Initially it recalls Hitchcock’s Vertigo, with James Stewart’s Scottie Ferguson tailing Kim Novak’s enigmatic Madeleine Elster around the same city, the same streets.

speeds. Later, in the film’s airport finale, McQueen dashes beneath the wheels of a passenger plane heading for the runway. There are no clever cuts or angles used to cover the identity of a stunt man. It’s all filmed in a way that we know that McQueen is out there, getting his hands dirty in the name of realism and credibility. Then Lalo Schifrin’s sultry jazz score – all woodblock clicks and double bass plucks – is replaced with the sound of revving engines. Bullitt has managed to hoodwink his pursuers and the hunters have become the hunted. Despite the fact that this is very much a high-speed car chase around the strange, staircased streets and jutting hills of downtown San Francisco, there’s a Zen precision to the way these men slink around the city, with barely a dink or a dent being administered to their magnificent driving machines. Frank P Keller’s editing in this sequence is simplicity defined: shot of car, shot of face, repeat till fade.

Though Bullitt is first and foremost a piece of hard cinema for hard men, McQueen does manage to lend his hero a humanist, fallible edge via extremely subtle and economic means. Look out for the shot where he’s entering Chalmers’ house during a function, and he comically leaps out of the way, emphasising his essential estrangement from this high-rolling set. Later, he’s having dinner with Bisset, and the edge of the menu slides across his cheek and he bridles back. They’re tiny moments, but they remind us that, as much as Bullitt may resemble a machine in the way he goes about his business, there’s a heart in there, somewhere.

IT WON HIM AN OSCAR. IT’S NOT THE IMAGES OR THE METHODICAL WAY HE SWITCHES BETWEEN THEM THAT ARE SO RADICAL, MORE THE LENGTH OF TIME EACH IMAGE IS HELD FOR. It’s what suffuses the scene with its magnificence, by suggesting that any moment, one man’s going to break and it’ll all be over. You can feel the wind in your hair. But no, ten minutes in and we’re still hurtling along with nary a sign of who’s going to be named victor of this supercharged bout (bar the fact that the film has half an hour to go and, unlike Hitchcock, Yates doesn’t seem like the type of guy to kill off his leading man at this premature juncture). Things start to get a little hairy when the firearms come out. But perhaps Yates’ biggest coup is the way he chooses to round things off with a whimper rather than a bang. Yes, there is a explosive pay-off which comes with the help of some handily positioned drums of flammable liquid, though Yates almost has this violent retribution occur off screen, instead following Bullitt as he drops safely into a drainage ditch. It’s over. The investigation continues. Much was made of the fact that McQueen did all of his own stunts in this movie, and it was documented that he spent much of the film’s pre-production period at a local raceway so he could perfect the art of driving closely to another car at high

Anticipation: The film that’s often regarded as McQueen’s screen zenith. 4 Enjoyment: The ten minute car chase in the middle is pure, unalloyed pleasure. 5 In retrospect: Unreconstructed genre fair it may be, but this is 100 per cent pure, unfiltered McQueen. Accept no substitutes. 5

010

011

ÂŠ Barry Feinstein Photography Inc

012

ÂŠ Barry Feinstein Photography Inc

013

014

Introducing a collection of original art, four contemporary illustrators have reworked the iconic imagery of McQueen. Both the art and photography form the backbone of the special issue and exhibition.

ARTISTS Christian Ward pg 015

Jesse Auersalo pg 026

autumn Whitehurst pg 028

Magnus Voll Mathiassen pg 056

PHOTOGRAPHERS Barry Feinstein pg 038

sam christmas pg 040

Bill Ray pg 046

joe mcgorty pg 053

Christian Ward is a London based Illustrator and comic book artist. Along the way, he has developed a fetish for drawing mysterious femme fatales, psychedelic mind clouds and men in capes. He is influenced by comic book art and contemporary illustration as much as he is by graffiti, art nouveau, animation and film.

His past credits in comics include the critically acclaimed The Infinite Vacation from Image Comics, Young Avengers from Marvel Comics and the upcoming ODY-C again from Image Comics.

015

CHRISTIAN WARD

016

017

THE COOL SCHOOL

018

Words by Trevor Johnston

Steve McQueen was an actor who cut through the chatter with attitude and his piercing blue eyes. LWLies looks back at the tumultuous life and times of the peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s champion of the Hollywood Hills.

019

It’s in the eyes, of course. Not just that they’re a glacial blue, though that very paleness makes them explicitly readable, unlike rich hazel or sea-green. And not just the piercing stare either, much as Steve McQueen knew how to use its intensity to steal the scene from anyone else who happened to be talking at the time. No, it’s all those things, and an ability, shared by only the most charismatic, to make us see him in the very act of looking. Getting us wondering what he’s thinking, then leaving us hanging on the possibility we’ll never know. Because he’s way, way too cool to be explaining himself. After all, he’s Steve McQueen…

Bullitt director Peter Yates cottoned right on to the celluloid potency of the McQueen look. Time and again, it registers as his eponymous renegade cop stalks his prey. The camera pans across the frame to set the scene, but the real tingle-factor comes with the reverse-shot of Frank Bullitt scanning the horizon, reading the room, bringing a hard-earned lifetime’s knowledge of pursuit and escape to bear on the decision of the moment. Utterly compelling, and yet McQueen never makes any of this seem effortful. He’s just there. In the now. The key is that we instinctively know there’s something complex and beguiling behind that catlike economy of presence. ‘When you’re hot you can play it cool’ McQueen declared at the outset of his career, when he was another graduate of New York’s method acting workshops who got lucky and landed a hit TV western (Wanted: Dead or Alive, where his

bounty hunter carried a sawn-off shot gun). It was a distinctive modus operandi which served him well when he made star billing in the likes of The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape, where his canny reserve made him a man apart from the rest of any ensemble, no matter how stellar. In the early ‘60s when the rest of Hollywood was waiting for the next James Dean and the next Marlon Brando, McQueen’s example took an entirely different approach from their febrile emotionality, and changed the contours of male stardom in the process – playing it, like the man said, ‘cool’.

020 © Barry Feinstein Photography Inc

There had been stars before who didn’t go out of their way to ingratiate, like brooding Humphrey Bogart or fierce John Garfield, and stars before who didn’t say much (though John Wayne and Gary Cooper had the physical presence to do their talking for them) – yet McQueen was something else again. As his on-screen identity became fully crystallised in iconic fare like Bullitt, The Thomas Crown Affair and The Getaway, he suggested

psychological depth by denying much apparent indication of it. Just a momentary tightening of the gaze, or a squeezed pursing of the lips. And the look. Somehow it was obvious: this guy means it. Others have tried to make the ‘Cooler King’ vibe their own. Clint Eastwood, arguably, took it and enriched it, but others, in a long line from Charles Bronson to Jason Statham, put up a similar

biography, it’s not altogether surprising – the intensity is real. Seriously real. -

impenetrable front without really suggesting a credible or fascinating psyche lurking within.

McQueen’s Zen façade consistently draws us hither, however, and given the grisly details of his off-screen

If he’s intensely self-contained on screen, it’s evidently the habit of a rough-and-tumble lifetime. Is the diamond-cut arrogance a cover for some deeper vulnerability, the gritted impatience embodied on celluloid masking some deeper well of anger? We’ll never know, but it’s surely plausible. Still, while that brutally picaresque backstory seems to inscribe the star persona which became his trading commodity, it’s one of his least-known movies which offers the most authentic psychological portrait. His USAF pilot in the 1962 British-shot WWII drama The War Lover provides a devastating account of an authority baiting loner who sees women as playthings, and is made for combat because he gets a real kick out of dropping bombs on target.

021

His upbringing in 1930s Montana reads like some dimestore novel. His mother was a teenage goodtime girl, who may have been a prostitute. His father was a stunt flyer in a travelling show (think Douglas Sirk’s The Tarnished Angels). They lasted six months together before he departed, and she parcelled Steve off to an uncle with a farm. In the years that followed he repeatedly tried to get back together with her but there was always another man in the way, so he ran off to join the circus at fifteen. Then there was running with LA street-gangs, the merchant navy, a stint as a towel boy in the most notorious brothel in the Dominican Republic, and finally a post-war tour in the marines – which eventually paid for his early ‘50s acting classes on the G.I. Bill.

‘It’s just me against the system,’ his bank-robbing CEO says in The Thomas Crown Affair, a seemingly trite line in the circumstances, but for McQueen in person, you could take ‘the system’ to stand for a whole edifice of emotional commitment, moral standards, drugs legislation, and the competitive arena of Hollywood movie production. In 16 years of marriage to his first wife, dancer Neile Adams, he kept up a JFK-level regimen of priapic infidelity, yet punched her out to make her confess to a single indiscretion. Second spouse and The Getaway co-star Ali MacGraw was the biggest female star in Hollywood until she married Steve, who kept her at home so she never made another film in the five years they were together. Clearly, only room for one star in the household, and McQueen was always keen to keep himself centre-stage: the famous motorbike finale of The Great Escape, for instance, was concocted during the shoot to allay his fears that co-star James Garner was getting a bit too much limelight.

022

Sam Christmas

Looks like he had the anti-hero thing down pat then. But he came around at the right time when the times were a-changing, the movies were changing, and audiences were ready for a new kind of leading man. MacGraw confessed she actually went weak at the knees watching him in Bullitt, and a lot of men simply envied a guy who drove with Stirling Moss, trained with Bruce Lee, represented his country in off-road biking, flew his own plane, had his own brand of Rolex, and bedded starlets from Mamie Van Doren to Jacqueline Bissett. Never a critic’s favourite, and Oscar-nominated only once for his surly stoker in The Sand Pebbles, he became a people’s-champion type of star, because he’s all about attitude – the kind that lives longer in public memory than it does in reference books. And it killed him. A bolshy marine during his late-’40s service, they put him down in the engine room to strip the asbestos lagging off the pipework. Three decades later he was diagnosed with mesolthelioma, a rare cancer which

grows between lungs and chest wall, directly traceable to asbestos inhalation. Dead at fifty, he left us the very fine 1980 revisionist western Tom Horn, an achingly poignant elegy to the passing of the age of cowboy heroes. For the most part though, the image that’s preserved is of McQueen in his serene prime. At the wheel, shotgun in hand, outrunning his pursuers, bouncing his baseball off the wall, giving the camera that look. Implacable, untouchable, eternal.

023

Sam Christmas

ÂŠ Barry Feinstein Photography Inc

024

025

026

Jesse Auersalo is a Finnish born illustrator, designer and art director known for his signature style of beautifully crafted and often macabre digital paintings.

In 2010 Jesse was selected for Creative Review’s illustration annual, for IDN’s ‘Most Wanted Issue’, and was chosen as Print Magazine’s one of the emerging new talents for their ‘new visual

artists issue’. His personal and commercial artwork has received awards and accolades in prestige competitions such as in European Design Awards and in D&AD professionals.

JESSE AUERSALO 027

028

AUTUMN WHITEHURST

Autumn Whitehurst is a full time illustrator based in Brooklyn, New York. She has been featured in a number of highprofile fashion magazines, and her clients include Sapporo, Coca Cola, the Principality of Monaco, Lillet, Ray Ban, Aveda, Italian Vogue, Rolling Stone, and the New Yorker.

029

THE FIVE FACES OF STEVE MCQUEEN

030

Words by Paul Fairclough

How to Steal a Movie in 75 Lines

1. the cowboy

How to Steal a Movie in 75 Lines -

Photography by © Barry Feinstein Photography Inc

031

As a bounty hunter in the late ‘50s TV western Wanted: Dead or Alive, McQueen played a truculent, cold-hearted killer; Bud Ekins, his longtime stuntman who made the famous jump in The Great Escape, once said the character was “pretty much him”. Other actors might have chafed at that perception but, as McQueen said, “I’m not here to be liked, I’m here to make a show.” Acting was a contest just as much as the dirtbike racing he’d got into while making the series. And when John Sturges offered him a part in his new film, The Magnificent Seven, McQueen had no intention of letting the supposed star, Yul Brynner, walk away with the film.

In every scene the pair share, McQueen is up to something: cocking his hat, swatting a fly, flipping his gun or just chewing on his finger. You’re listening to Bryner, but you’re watching McQueen. He had about 75 lines in the whole film, but screen presence and expert scene-stealing means The Magnificent Seven belongs to him. To view it again with the knowledge of McQueen and Brynner’s battle for on-screen supremacy is like watching boxers in slo-mo looking for the sucker punch.

2. The Loner The Film About the Guy on the Motorcycle

Joe Mcgorty

McQueen walked to his own beat again in the The Sand Pebbles, swapping the cooler for a ship’s engine room as rebellious seaman Holman who’s up the Yangtze without a paddle. The film is essentially an Indian-country western dumped in China, overlong and worthy, but it was, bizarrely, his only Academy Award nomination. And this for a man with Papillon and The Getaway on his rap sheet. As McQueen famously said to an obfuscating Norman Jewison: “You’re twisting my melon, man.”

032

When he landed the part of Captain Hilts, ‘The Cooler King’, in The Great Escape, McQueen told friends that the picture was “about a guy who escapes from a prison camp and steals a motorcycle”. That shorthand said a lot about how he saw his role: utterly central but completely apart from the crowd. As usual, he was right. Hilts’ natural habitat is solitary confinement and in the story he follows his own way in what amounts to a parallel narrative. While the other chumps are sweating in the dirt, the endless ker-tthwack-umph of that baseball on the cooler walls beats out his star status across the camp; hell, he doesn’t even wear a uniform. Sam Christmas

The Film about the Guy on the Motorcycle

3. The Daredevil

Sam Christmas

If McQueen’s stint as the arrogant flyboy with a deathwish in The War Lover drew on his love of speed and machines – not to mention his Marine days when he broke a tank by trying to hotrod its engine – his high-rolling film star life was reflected in his unlikeliest role so far. For The Thomas Crown Affair, the bad boy transformed himself into an entirely believable old-money New England aristo; but he inhabited the role through Crown’s obsession with winning against the odds, preferably in the company of fast cars and faster women. Director Norman Jewison originally thought that McQueen was still too much the street kid for such an urbane character. In fact, his performance is the only thing that breaks through the movie’s loungecore fug to elevate it beyond an extended Campari ad. Crown’s indulgence in boys’ toys couldn’t have been further from the real-life, down-and-dirty

033

The Real Deal Behind the Wheel

action of motorcycle racing doc On Any Sunday. McQueen produced the picture, a sort of Endless Summer in mud and leathers, but he was also one of the bikers featured – just another sweaty rider in the semi-pro ranks living out his weekend speed dreams. Simplicity is the film’s power, just as a lack of it would be the downfall of his other big road trip, Le Mans.

The Real Deal behind the wheel

seem so crazy; we can only imagine what a paean he might have made to his greatest love.

4. The Obsessive How to Lose Your Shirt at the Track

034

On the set of Thomas Crown, the crew once stayed up all night waiting to get a shot just as dawn broke. But at first light the leading man was miles away – on the beach, alone, haring around in a dune buggy with a mile-wide grin on his face. McQueen’s auto infatuation cost the shot, but Le Mans cost him far more. It’s been said that the problem with his meticulous dramatisation of the 24-hour motor race was that McQueen was the boss for the first time. But despite the stories of spending weeks on a single two-car shot or hours perfecting the size of the bugsplats on his windscreen, McQueen had an ambition to communicate the thrilling reality of the circuit. He was no stranger to racing: he’d just been pipped to second place in the Sebring 12-hour race by Mario Andretti. Unlike his director John Sturges – who’d given him his break in The Magnificent Seven and who walked off Le Mans saying, “I’m too old and too rich for this shit” – McQueen didn’t see the need for a tacked-on romance. The race was the romance. And so he lost control of his movie and lost Sturges. Today, in the era of Senna or Touching the Void, McQueen’s idea doesn’t

How to Lose Your Shirt at the track Illustration by Christian Ward

Now You See Him

5. The Serious Man Now You See Him… -

035

Steve McQueen may have considered Le Mans the “most dangerous thing I’ve ever done,” but others might say that honour goes to his 1978 adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People. He was fresh from the blockbuster conflagration of The Towering Inferno and had already proved himself more than a match for Dustin Hoffman in Papillon. McQueen had shown he could pull off classy drama and had achieved a lifelong ambition by playing opposite Paul Newman, so his choice of this classical smalltown melodrama seems a straight-up two fingers to the film establishment.

But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that, at the height of his success, McQueen chose to put on granny glasses and shoot a 19th Century Scandinavian chin-stroker. In a world that expected him be a rugged, charming tough guy, this was the ultimate act of rebellion.

Shot in stagey long and medium takes, the movie stars a rotund, heavily bearded McQueen, so unrecognisable that the poster features images of the actor as Frank Bullitt, Hilts, and Holman from The Sand Pebbles in an attempt to draw in an audience. Who wouldn’t like to have been in the room for that design meeting?

Joe McGorty

036 ÂŠ Barry Feinstein Photography Inc

037

038

BARRY FEINSTEIN

“It was wonderful. It was early in the season ... It was in the early 70s ... It wasn’t about the money. People were doing things for other reasons then. It was about doing it. It was just great.” Barry Feinstein

Barry Feinstein began his long career at Columbia Pictures in Hollywood in the late 50’s. His photography creates a world of imagery spanning music and Hollywood’s most extraordinary artists. His work has appeared in Life, Look, Time, Esquire, Newsweek and scores of other magazines and album covers. His photographs of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Janis Joplin and others are considered “classics” of the genre. Feinstein was a brilliant documentary photographer with the eye of a fine artist. He would work almost unnoticed and be at the centre of the action for the vital moment.

Feinstein was also a close personal friend of Steve McQueen and the two shared a similar laid-back approach to life, an innate cool and a passion for fast cars and motorcycles. Feinstein’s pictures of McQueen, taken between 1960-68, have all remained completely unseen until now. They are reproduced for the first time in magnificent quality in the book Unseen McQueen. McQueen is pictured at the racetrack, on the set of his iconic film Bullitt and also relaxing in his downtime. Feinstein’s friendship with McQueen infused his photos with an intimacy rarely experienced in shots of the star.

039 ©Barry Feinstein Photography Inc

040

SAM CHRISTMAS

Sam Christmas is a London-based portrait photographer who more recently has focused on his passion for motorcycles and has quickly become synonymous with the custom motorcycle scene inÂ the UK.

041

042

043

In January this year his personal work on the subject culminated in a solo exhibition called â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Natural Habitatsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Recent clients include Triumph, BMW, Edwin Europe and Honda.

044

045

Sam Christmas

046

BILL RAY

047

Bill Ray was a staff photographer for Life magazine, based in New York, Beverly Hills, and Paris. From these bureaus he travelled the world covering major events, wars, and great personalities. Since Life's demise, his work appeared in many major publications, such as Smithsonian, Archaeology and Fortune, including 46 Newsweek covers. Bill specialises in portraits of individuals, families and executives in their environment.

He has photographed everyone from the Kennedy's to Elvis, and covered global events during a period of modern society that could arguably be considered it's most formative thus far. Having spent time extensively with the Hell's Angels and of course McQueen, he is well-placed to provide some of the best images in the motorcycling genre.

048

ÂŠ Barry Feinstein Photography Inc

049

050

The Custom Factory, a new collaboration between Mach Schau and The Vinyl Factory, is very proud to present an exhibition of unseen photographs of the legendary Steve McQueen by one of the 20th Century’s great image-makers, the photographer Barry Feinstein. Taken from his early racing days through to the set of his most famous movie Bullitt, these unique images will appear together with original artwork, photography and illustration by contemporary artists.

LIVE FOR MYSELF, ANSWER TO NOBODY EVENT GUIDE ‘Live for Myself, Answer to Nobody’ showcases Feinstein’s limited edition prints that form the new book ‘Unseen McQueen’, alongside contemporary artists’ own work, contextualising the collaboration, dealing with the overarching theme of the ‘Outsider’ and rebel culture still present today. Leading contemporary British illustrators such as Autumn Whitehurst and Christian Ward, working

in digital and traditional art techniques rework these iconic photographs of McQueen in their individual mediums. In addition to this original collection is an exploration through the work of Bill Ray, Von Dutch, Sam Christmas, Joe McGorty, Blitz, Death Spray Custom, Corpses From Hell and other custom car and bike creators, of the legacy of biker

culture in contemporary society where the same rebel spirit lives on. Bespoke merchandise and apparel from premium biker culture labels will be available for purchase at the show beside limited edition prints, books and original artwork.

Unseen McQueen: Barry Feinstein Edited by Dagon James and Tony Nourmand

LID Magazine Lid features some of the finest rare and unpublished photographs and art from the worlds of music, fashion, the fine arts and cinema. Artists the world over open their archives to Lid, offering extensive portfolios not seen in other magazines. Each bi-annual issue of Lid is published in all black and white, on premium paper, and printed as a limited edition for serious collectors and archivists. Available at some of the finest shops worldwide. The Steve McQueen limited edition will be available at the Brewer Street show whilst stocks last. lidmagazine@gmail.com

You can find the exhibition in the heart of Soho:

Show runs 28th November till 14th Jan 2014.

For more visit TheCustomFactory.com

3rd Floor NCP 32 Brewer Street Soho London, W1F 0ST

Wed-Sun 12pm-6pm.

To register interest and all other enquiries please email info@thecustomfactory.com

Preview Party 27th November by RSVP only.

051

This November, Reel Art Press will release a stunning photographic volume of unseen Steve McQueen; an amazing collection of unpublished images of the public and private life of a true icon. Barry Feinstein was one of Steve McQueen’s closest friends, notorious for restricting access to his incredible, closely-guarded photographic archive. The term ‘unseen photographs’ is generally misleading and overused but in this instance, it is simply true. These rare, previously unpublished photographs include over 120 wide monochromatic images taken at the height of McQueen’s movie career. Great photographs, great artists and great friends, Barry Feinstein and Steve McQueen, both the epitome of cool, doing what they loved doing most and doing it better than most. While McQueen was creating his legend, starring in films such as The Thomas Crown Affair, The Great Escape, Bullitt and Le Mans, Feinstein’s images were capturing not just the icon but the real man in action. www.reelartpress.com

052

Maxwell Paternoster Maxwell Paternoster is a london based artist/illustrator who completed a National Diploma in Art & Design at Suffolk College , then earned a BA Honors in Illustration and Animation at University of Westminster. Maxwell has worked in fashion, advertising, editorial, film, and many other mediums since then, and currently has many clients in the area of motorcycle based imagery.

JOE MCGORTY Joe McGorty has built up a reputation as a portrait photographer, working extensively for magazines and various publishing houses as well as shooting bands for some major labels including Warner and Island Records. Some portraits have been acquired for the permanent collection of London's National Portrait gallery. Right now he feels schizophrenic; shooting between analogue and digital, and also going between shooting loose to capture a spirit then switching to shooting static. His recent and current commissions include Intersection, The Ride Journal, Sideburn, Cyclist, Icon, Glass magazine, Guardian weekend, Sundaytimes, Sleek, Fiasco, Bike, Article magazine, WIRED, Audi magazine, Bentley and Toyota, Condor Cycles, Dice Magazine and Steel.

Edwin & Blitz Autumn / Winter 2013 sees the second collection made by Edwin Europe for Blitz Motorcycles, born from a shared passion for road trips, great friendships and beautiful simplistic design. The collaboration retains at its heart the main core principles that prompted the first: creating non-seasonal, non-trend led functional garments that fit in with Fred and Hugo’s way of life…

The collection uses mainly black and greys as its palette, the use of monochromatic tones and fabrics lends itself to the season and its temperament. To complete this collection, Edwin have teamed up with Stewart to produce the S.E.B (Stewart, Edwin, Blitz) Motorcycle Jacket, handmade in Italy using the finest horsehide, modelled on 1970’s racing jackets and featuring RiRi zips. The inner lining is printed with a map of Paris, on which the Parisian duo’s daily route has been drawn out.

053

bodies. He took his nickname from his stubbornness. “Stubborn as a Dutchman” is a by now quaint ethnic slur. But beyond stubborn, Von Dutch became insufferable. He was the quintessential cliché romantic artist, selfish inside his own vision, alienating family, friends and customers alike. Part romantic, part beatnik, part general pain in the ass, he was a belligerent prima donna, he managed to irritate almost everyone who admired him-and in the best aesthetic mode, somehow made them admire him more in the process.

054

He died in 1992, leaving two daughters. At the end, he was drinking heavily, holed up in an old Long Beach city bus. For years he lived at the museum called Movie World, Cars of the Stars and Planes of Fame in Buena Park, California. He had become paranoid and he spent time elaborately engraving and painting knives and guns as well as cars.

Von Dutch Kenneth “Von Dutch” Howard Kenneth Howard a/k/a ‘Von Dutch’, born in Los Angeles in 1929, is a renowned motorcycle mechanic, gunsmith, pin striper and artist. His father, Wally Howard, was a well-respected Los Angeles sign painter and provided him with the introduction to art and design. In the early 1950s, Von Dutch started earning money by doing pin striping. He was a major influence in the Southern California custom car and motorcycle movement of the 1960s and is regarded as the Godfather of the ‘Kustom Kulture.’ Born in 1929 as Kenneth Howard, Von Dutch was the man who brought pin-striping as a high art from motorcycles to automobile

Von Dutch’s posthumous fame has amazed veterans of the car culture. “I knew Von Dutch,” one hot rod buff said not long ago, shaking his head. “I saw him drunk every day.” “I make a point of staying right at the edge of poverty. I don’t have a pair of pants without a hole in them, and the only pair of boots I have are on my feet. I don’t mess around with unnecessary stuff, so I don’t need much money. I believe it’s meant to be that way. There’s a ‘struggle’ you have to go through, and if you make a lot of money it doesn’t make the ‘struggle’ go away. It just makes it more complicated. If you keep poor, the struggle is simple.“ Von Dutch

Death Spray Custom Death Spray Custom (DSC) is the alter ego of London based Welsh artist David Gwyther. Welsh means being born in Wales. And when youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re born in rural Wales, mobility plays a key part in the development of the youth, body and mind. Be it BMX, hiking a surfboard to the

beach, professionally driving agricultural machinery, motocross to rally cross. These themes of mobility, desire or the interaction between brands and consumers combined with a wink of playfulness defines the body ofÂ work of DSC.

055

056

Magnus Voll Mathiassen is an independent graphic designer and illustrator, and has been running his own practice MVM since 2009. He co-founded the design studio Grandpeople in 2005 after graduating with an MA in Visual Communication. His work experience includes Nike USA, Neenah Paper, Rune Grammofon, Microsoft, Buskerud County Council, Sony PlayStation and ESPN Magazine. Mathiassen has been featured in numerous books and magazines, and exhibited at Chamount International Poster Festival and Somerset House. He lives and works in Norway.

The Steve McQueen tribute special edition was produced in collaboration with Mach Schau Gallery, Barry Feinstein, The Vinyl Factory, TCOLondon and Little White Lies. 057

Words, pictures, thanks… David Jenkins, Trevor Johnston, Paul Fairclough, Christian Ward, Jesse Auersalo, Barry Feinstein, Autumn Whitehurst, Sam Christmas, Magnus Voll Mathiassen, Joe Mcgorty, Edwin, Bill Ray, Von Dutch, Death Spray Custom, Neil Thomas, Cindy Stockton, Marlys Ray, Metisse, Bone Shaker Choppers, Kevils, Chris Cotton, David Redhead

Cover illustration by

Published by

Christian Ward cwardillustration.com

TCOLondon 71A Leonard Street London EC2A 4QS tcolondon.com @TCOLondon

058

ÂŠ Barry Feinstein Photography Inc

THE

VINY L FACTORY

The Vinyl Factory is pleased to reveal a new project space within the iconic Art Deco motor services building on Brewer Street, Soho.

those preceding them. The project space will consequently be symbolic of the unique talents that continue to thrive in Soho.

The philosophy underpinning the project space is to create an environment for artistic collaborations that stand at the crossroads of Art, Fashion, Film, Food, Music and Design.

In this spirit, The Custom Factory, created to represent these ideas, will hold it’s inaugural Brewer Street event with the show ‘Live For Myself, Answer To Nobody’.

It will work as an incubator that nurtures emerging talents from the next generation whilst referencing the pioneers and tastemakers of

The show will play on the motor heritage of the building alongside the contemporary love of a petrol-powered lifestyle

through historical and modern associations, from Steve McQueen to custom car builders to the flourishing and fashionable biker scene. Original art, photography, limited edition prints, collectors books, along with bespoke and craft retail will be available for purchase at the event. This will form part of an ongoing series of shows and events in the project space.

059

thecustomfactory.com

060