The Walking Dead

Some covers of the comic book series "The Walking Dead". One of my favorites. In my humble opinion the covers are really great art.

Robert’s Ruins

Hubert Robert (1733–1808) was a French painter who marks the transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. Like many artists of his time he traveled to Italy to visit and study there architecture, museums and landscape. Soon ruins became his favorite subject, which earned him the nickname "Robert of the Ruines".

Interior of the Temple of Diana at Nimes (1771)

Roman Ruins (c. 1760)

The Old Bridge (c.1775)

But even though he chose classical ruins as subjects he painted them in a romantic manner. It’s a sweet decay reminding of greater times which have long passed by.

Disaster Architecture

The Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pasadena, California was designed by the Californian firm of architects Morphosis and finished in 2009.

The terra cotta facade is fragmented and reminds of buildings after earthquakes. To me it looks like the quotation of disasters like that in Chile 2010 – in this case more a kind of anticipation.

Atomic Apocalypse

Back in the Fiefties fear of a nuclear war was real. So Collier’s published a series about how New York would look like after an atomic bomb. Reminds of the more romantic post apocalyptic stuff from today.

Terminator Styling

I stumbled upon this Dior advertising. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think that it’s possible to show an eye like this without quoting good old Arnold.
This red mechanical eye is already an icon, which was even quoted by the last Terminator film.

Industrial Gothic

Industrial Gothic is a comic book series illustrated by Ted McKeever and published in 1995. The story is settled somewhere in a dystopian future with lots of nice ruins.
The images are from volume 1.

Old Fortress

Abandoned pre World War One fortress in Lorraine (France). It’s closed but abandoned in the forest. The gun towers are exploded.

The Walking Dead on TV

Finallly The Walking Dead will premiere on Halloween (October 31, 2010) on TV. I expect much, because the comic book series is really great. So probably there will be a lot of abandoned places, death and decay…

Doomsday

Few days ago I watched the film Doomsday (2008) by Neil Marshall. I didn’t expect too much because the film received a lot of mixed and even bad reviews. But I liked it. It's nothing genuine new much more an homage to the classical post-apocalyptic films like Mad Max, Escape from New York and others. And last not least Rhona Mitra is a gorgeous kick ass heroine like Milla Jovovich from Resident Evil.

I think it’s a good action movie for all who appreciate the good old post-apocalyptic stuff. The message ist simple: civilization is rotten and corrupt. The savages on the other side of the new Hadrian Wall are the better men.

Dead Mermaids

The August 2010 issue of Vogue Italia published this editorial by Steven Meisel. Called "Water & Oil" reminds of the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf. Though it pretends to be critical it looks to me a lot more like an exploitation of the subject.

Anyway I appreciate a lot the cool style of Meisel’s photos and the quotation of the mermaid-subject. And there are his romantic roots, which seems much more important to him than this actual desaster.

Post-Apocalyptic Survival Tips

Sometimes I think that I will probably never understand US-Americans.

To me it seems normal to visit industrial ruins and breathe and feel there the nostalgic atmosphere of decay. I also understand that many people like Mad-Max-style post-apocalyptic movies or are passing their time with shooting zombies in video games.

But then I came across that book "When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need to Survive When Disaster Strikes" by Cody Lundin. At the first look it seemed to be some post-apocalyptic zombie novel (I'm always looking for books like these). But then I discovered that it is real, not a bad joke, someone is really giving tips how to prepare for the apocalypse. And not enough, there are further a lot of people who are buying that stuff, who wanted to be prepared for 2012. Sometimes good fiction seems to be overtaken by reality.

FreakAngels

FreakAngels is a free web-comic written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Paul Duffield.
The FreakAngels are a group of young people living in flooded London. They are cultivating plants on platforms over the rooftops a sunny tropical climate. Despite the story and the characters are interesting the abandoned decaying London has a special charm.

Beautiful Girls & Decay

Here two nice paintings by the Spanish artist Luis Royo. He combines his usual sexy girls with an environment of ruins and decay. Leather, bare skin with red and black as dominating colors, could be painted fashion.

Evangelical Etertainment

"Left Behind: Eternal Forces" is a Christian video game based on the evangelical Christian Left Behind series of novels. The player controls the Tribulation Force, a Christian military group in a post-apocalyptic New York ("post-Rapture" is the Christian term). He has to fight against the world government led by the Antichrist.

To defeat the enemy the player has to convert neutral and enemy-allied civilians or to annihilate them. He is encouraged to use conversion over violence when possible.

Nevertheless the game caused a lot of criticism upon its release. Even many Christian groups criticized the use of religious intolerance and violence as essential parts of the game. One critic said: "The game is about killing people for their lack of faith in Jesus."
But just because of that it may be a good example for the Christian Supremacist movement in the United States of today.

Cherry 2000

Few days ago I watched again Cherry 2000, a science fiction film from 1987. It’s one of these post Mad Max productions, mixing road-movie, western and science fiction elements. Despite the lack of ruins – like most of this genre and this time the film is set in the desert to reduce costs – there’s a lot of decadence and decay, which is presented with cutting irony.

Plastic fantastic. I’m sure that even Steven Meisel couldn’t do much better.

Trash and decay

When the beloved female home robot of the yuppie Sam Treadwell is broken, he is looking desperately for a substitute a new Cherry 2000. But it’s the future and Sam has to learn: "In The Year 2017, A Good Woman Is Hard To Find. A Cherry 2000 Is Even Harder."

Sweet Cherry 2000

He is told, that maybe in the lawless wasteland known as "Zone Seven" he can find another Cherry 2000. To go there, he has to hire a tracker, a certain E. Johnson, who turned out to be a woman, played by Melanie Griffith with cherry red hair. It needs the entire film and a lot of adventures until Sam realizes that a real woman could be more attractive than a robot.

Cherry red Melanie Griffith

Pixel Apocalypse

Probably one of best apocalyptic clips on Youtube is PIXELS by Patrick Jean. It’s very clever planned and well-realized. Old classic video games are destructing New York converting it into pixels.

Kinda Atlantikwall Bunkers

On the Costa Brava in Spain I discovered this strange piece of modern architecture. Half a dozen cubical beach cabins are hosting a sailing school.



What I found really interesting – besides the neglected condition – was the inclined construction, which gives the illusion that the cabins where half sunken in the sand.

It reminded me immediately of the well known pictures of the old German bunkers of the Atlantikwall in France.

Boring Gore

What a wonderful and splendid future the side effects of global warming have to offer shows one of the latest Diesel ad campaigns. Guys like the boring Al Gore seem completely wrong with their negative forecasts.

Rio de Janeiro is underwater but good looking people have still a lot of fun, on their yachts.

In flooded New York there is also nice weather, so that people use the rooftops of the skyscrapers for sunbathing.

Even foggy London became a tropical island.

With so much optimism I don’t wonder that already some new interpretations of this campaign can be found in the web. Like this one by dr4oz.