The House of Toth: The Art of John Toth: "On The Runway"/2012 (marker and colored pencil)

Welcome to HOUSE OF TOTH.com, featuring the drawings of artist/illustrator JOHN TOTH.

All artwork shown here is done by hand. The computer is used only to document/display the work.

The actual drawings vary slightly in color and detail (i.e.; they are more detailed), as displaying them in this format "blows out" some of the finer subtleties in shade/tone and line.

For information on commissioning a drawing or to purchase any of the original pieces shown here, please email: john@houseoftoth.com. To purchase prints, posters, t-shirts and more, click on the image below for the H.O.T. online store. You can also visit the "H.O.T. Shop" by typing: www.zazzle.com/house_of_toth

How/where it all began: I spent a large part of the late 1980's/early 1990's traveling back and forth to London, which in the 80's was THE place to be for avant-garde fashion and nightlife. My interest in the capital city's "colorful" scenes was fueled by the many "alternative" fashion magazines produced there such as:

i-D, BLITZ and THE FACE.

I absorbed as much of the aforementioned "culture" as I could while training at Vidal Sassoon's London School and Academy to polish up my haircutting/coloring skills. I also attended courses, in London, given by the famous "street-style" hair salon ANTENNA to learn their hair-extension technique. I found ANTENNA's post-punk aesthetic to be very exciting/inspiring, and went on to become very proficient in the application/reproduction of their style.

I then took my newly acquired skills (and a suitcase full of acrylic hair) and moved to New York City in 1991.

After a brief stint at Vidal Sassoon's downtown salon, I started working at "Sex and the City" wardrobe stylist Patricia Field's Greenwich Village boutique, known at the time as the HOUSE OF FIELD. This was long before Pat achieved her now worldwide/commercial fame with SATC.

The store (which sold trendy clothing, wigs, shoes, makeup and accessories), then, had a more "exclusive" air and employed a sort of "royal family" of NYC nightlife/drag personalities. It was a magnet for fashionable "misfits" and those on the cutting edge of style.

To get a job there, at that time, was considered a badge of honor amongst the denizens of New York City's wildly creative "downtown" scene.

It was a unique and fantastic experience, and one that I'll never forget. It was there that my New York "education" began...

While working at the H.O.F., I began doing makeup (which is very similar to drawing/painting) and became friendly with a few professional makeup artists (who would stop in to buy lipstick, powder etc...). Soon, as my makeup application skills improved, I was being hired (through various contacts) by a number of different photographers and magazines, and my career in fashion took off.

(I also around that time briefly worked for the Japanese fashion designer MATSUDA. First, as a salesperson in his Fifth Avenue boutique, and then, eventually, doing makeup for runway/video presentations.)

I got a job assisting a top makeup artist, which led to myself being on the set of a different, major fashion photographer on a weekly basis. A few of the well known names I've worked with include: Richard Avedon (who, for a legend, was incredibly nice), Helmut Newton, Annie Lebowitz, Patric Demarchelier, Steven Meisel and Ellen von Unworth.

I also did makeup for various fashion shows, such as: Vivienne Westwood, Thierry Mugler, Betsey Johnson, Geoffrey Beene (who I went on to do makeup for regularly) and many, many more.

This led to my workng solo with "provocative" fashion photographer Steven Klein, who hired me specifically for my body painting skills. Our collaborations ended up in the pages of VISIONAIRE, L'UOMO VOGUE and THE FACE magazines.

OK, here's the part of the story where THE DRAWING finally comes in! I have drawn my whole life, since I was child. My father, who is an architect, used to sit and draw with my brothers and I when we were young. I attended private art courses, once a week, after school, during high school and took one "college level" figure drawing class (at night). The rest is self-taught.

While in New York, I continued to draw steadily in my free time. The subjects were always the same: cartoonish, muscular "he-men" in high heels or vixen/dominatrix types in patent leather space suits.

Eager to display my work in a nightlife environment, I brought my drawings, first, to the creators of a weekly fetish themed nightclub called PORK.

I then approached the producers/ringleaders of the "spawning ground of sub-sub-cultures": The decade (1990's) defining, weekly party JACKIE 60.

I had numerous, "atmospheric" shows at both places. My drawings were presented in the form of slide projections or giant photocopies thrown up onto the walls of the clubs, and by "cut-outs" hanging from the ceiling. (I also had a similar type show at the legendary SOUND FACTORY nightclub). From there my confidence grew, which inspired me to concentrate on my drawing more intensely.

By the early 2000's I began to grow bored with "fashion" and went back to cutting hair freelance, which allowed more time for me to draw. A friend and I launched a t-shirt line featuring my art called PUNKATURE (the name pulled from a Vivienne Westwood collection), which lasted about a year before we went our separate ways. In 2006 I launched my own t-shirt line, simply called JOHN TOTH, and sold my wares at such NewYork City "institutions" as TRASH AND VAUDEVILLE, LIVE FAST and PATRICIA FIELD.

HOUSE OF TOTH is now the moniker which encompasses everything I do (artwork, t-shirts etc..). The name is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the legendary fashion "houses" of Europe and a nod to the equally legendary "ball houses" of New York City.

My work has been displayed in galleries in New York City and Paris and has appeared in various publications including: THE OMEN, MARQUIS, DRESSED TO KILL and LASH magazines.

For more information about purchasing original artwork, please email: john@houseoftoth.com.

(I have a large number of drawings not shown here.)

To add to my resume, I have, and still do occasionally, work as a DJ (a passion inspired from years of going to nightclubs). I also continue to cut hair and still do a makeup job now and then as well.

Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy the "eye candy".

-John

**All work shown here is the copyright of John Toth, and may not be used, displayed or reproduced without permission. Contact: john@houseoftoth.com

Notable Quotes:

"Unlike photography, illustration does not produce a mechanical, unselective documentation of a subject; it's point is not that of total recall but of an individual and refined interpretation. Yet a drawing can be more true than a photograph, for by selectivity and discrimination the artist can lay bare the essential." -

Nicholas Drake

"The essence of fashion is the fantasy of escape." - Rebecca Arnold

"It must be our aim not to deny or disavow masculinity, but to disturb it's manifest destiny - to draw attention to it as a prosthetic reality." - Homi Bhabba, "Are You A Man Or A Mouse?" in Maurice Berger and Brian Wallis' Constructing Masculinity.

"In American football the power of the player is what counts. Dressed like an armoured medieval knight, the footballer thunders down the field, his body entirely encased in protective clothing. His broad shoulders, narrow waist and Gaultier codpiece lacing give him an appearance so extreme that it is a pastiche of masculinity." - Colin McDowell

"On the (fashion) runway there appears, amidst general excitement, a man, wobbling and swaying on a pair of stiletto heels...but not a transvestite, that's old hat, ever since the evening news started carrying coverage of fashion shows. This is a real man, a man's man." - Giannino Malossi, describing the events at a Vivienne Westwood show, in Material Man.

"Since masculinity is held up as a signal of the "norm" in Western culture, any deviation from conventional male attire is viewed with great unease." - Rebecca Arnold

"The line between masculinity and femininity can be a very troubled frontier." - Jean Paul Gaultier

"To dress the body as something non-sexual is akin to putting a quilted cover on a toilet roll. The only point in putting clothes on is to make someone want to take them off." - Julie Burchill

"Fashion is eventually about being naked." - Vivienne Westwood

"Every display of virility becomes, per se, feminine." - Jacques Lacan

"Sex is the explanation for everything, our master key." - Michel Foucault