Around 7:00 tonight I was hatching away in the studio and looked out my window to see this:
Not bad huh?
Do you get these real estate mailers? I've edited out the listing agent, etc. These two came within a couple of days of one another from the same company. Which to buy? The two shells or the new construction with the strange computer-generated trees? And why would you put the shells on a postcard like they were a prize? Finding a shell in Philly is like finding sand at the beach. But you know, if they could provide me with those blobby trees, I might think about it:
Have a good long weekend if you get a long weekend. Tracy decided that today would be good day to get whatever illness I had last week. That might be a record for an incubation period for a cold. I assume this puts a damper on whatever we were going to do. Not sure what that was anyway so it doesn't matter.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Have a Good Weekend
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
RIP Panasonic KP-110
A) I felt at points during the past week that I was going to die.
B) CBS wants me to believe that Horatio Caine died this week...but of course, why would anyone believe that? No one...and I mean no one...kills...Horatio Caine (Rob puts on sunglasses and signals for The Who to be played: YEEEAAAAA!!!!)
C) I did suffer a loss this week. Something did really die. My pencil sharpener. A pencil is only as good as its tip...no that's not a sexual thing. The Panasonic KP-110 served me well for probably close to 2 decades. I took it from my parents' house around the time I left for college. I think we'd had it a few years prior that. I might be making this all up. I have no idea. All I know is that I didn't buy it.
Poor thing. It got a lot of use. By the end, it couldn't hack it. Rather than sharpening pencils, it would grind off a bit and then do something to cause the graphite to break up inside the wood. Now I have an X-acto Helix Electric Sharpener sharpener. So far so good. Takes longer than an airplane engine to wind down after you remove the pencil but it's fine. OK, it's better than the Panasonic. Pencil sharpeners have come a long way in 20 years. This one looks like it should be in THX-1138 or 2001. My Panasonic looked like it belonged in Ordinary People.
Weird video of the week award:
Please watch as Harrison Ford equates the significance of his chest hair to that of the rainforests.
Word from Cannes about the new Indiana Jones movie is that...
...but others were. Hey. All it has to do is be better than the two hour pile of crap that is The Temple of Doom and I will be fine with it. Just play the theme music a lot. It makes everything more heroic and fun.
We still haven't seen Iron Man yet so it might be a coin toss as to how we spend our Memorial Day weekend...I mean, how we spend the hours I won't be drawing.
Pitchfork.tv has great footage of Caribou in Chicago. Really Pitchfork does an amazing job taping live stuff. Here's "After Hours"
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Artist(s) #21 of 52
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L.L.L.A.A.A
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Three of the more interesting painters today hail from greater Los Angeles: Mark Grotjahn, Chris Vasell and Brian Calvin.
Much has been made of the auction house success of Grotjahn's classic "Butterfly" paintings and their prices. Artists instantly get pegged in New York for whichever style gets the most press. These "Butterfly"paintings are strong. To fully understand them one needs to stand in front of them. The surface is thickly painted with long lush brushstrokes often over brightly colored grounds. When you get to his signature and the date, they are the results of not being painted. You can see the depth of the top layer of paint as it bobs and sags around the letters and numbers. It is as if the whole purpose of this layer,or the painting itself, was so that the signature could exist.
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Mark Grotjahn- Untitled (Pink Butterfly Green MG03), 2003
Oil on linen. 36 x 28 in.
Initialed and dated "MG 03" lower right
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However, Grotjahn has created several different styles, from cartoon flowers with sock noses, cardboard masks, and a series of Picasso-like Cubist faces built out of fractured layers of paint strokes. Not afraid to use his name as part of the composition (see below), it gets written across the top of the eyes and nose as if a logo on a ballcap. It's fun to think of these painting within the context of the history of LA painting. How does it relate to the incredible paintings of Lari Pittman (or across the pond to the work of Chris Ofili)? How has finish fetish changed over the years? Has the attitude that has defined LA art for the last 50 years been given a New York City facelift?
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Mark Grotjahn- Untitled (Blue Face Grotjahn), 2005
Oil on linen. 61 x 49 1/8 in.
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Before his recent move closer to complete abstraction, Chris Vasell was an interesting figurative painter. Like Barnett Newman or Morris Louis, one needs to stand in front of his paintings, and then across the room from them to fully understand and absorb them. Originally a watercolorist, Vasell has taken his approach to making those works and transformed the art of painting creating ghostly and haunting images. The early ones, from 2005, had figures, or eyes, hidden within the many washes or, like Grotjahn, scumbled across the top.
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Chris Vasell- Frontwards
Acrylic on canvas, 90 x 76 inches
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With the newest paintings the figures are gone. We are left with an after image of a memory. There could be images buried in there, they might be, but like standing in complete darkness, we are never sure what, if anything is right in front of us. These paintings make the strongest case for the shift of finish fetish away from the manufactured towards the handmade.
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Chris Vasell- Urine Burn (Burned Mind), 2007
Acrylic on canvas, 107 x 90 inches
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The final of my LA three is the understated and quite work of Brian Calvin. Often compared unfairly to Alex Katz, Calvin does not use the frame of the camera like Katz does; rather these paintings are constructed to end at the canvas edge creating a forced tension. In school, we all wanted to make paintings that were as cool as Giotto's work. Calvin did that. Making paintings that have a strong sense of narrative, of figures pausing and wondering, of being staged but natural. Perhaps the most California of the three, with his choice of subject matter, Calvin has created a world that is as contemporary as it is art historical.
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Brian Calvin- The Open Window, 2003
acrylic on canvas, 152.4 x 203.2 cm
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Monday, May 19, 2008
Sick, Album #21 of 52
I have finally turned the corner on whatever bug has invaded my system. The weekend was unpleasant to say the least. That is all I have to say about it. If you need to know anything about the last season of Reno 911! I can probably help you out. Other than that, I didn't really experience much this weekend that didn't involve me staring blankly out into space praying for a quick merciful death.
Album #21 of 52: American Music Club- Mercury*****
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If I were in a band and had to record an album, I'd have Mitchell Froom produce it based solely off of this disc. I don't know what Froom did before or after this. I could look it up but I don't care. This line-up of AMC had a ton of talent: Eitzel's songwriting, Vudi's guitar, Bruce Kaphan's steel guitar being the three highlighted strengths on this record. The rhythm section was inventive and great too. I don't want to sell'em short.
AMC were called "slowcore" which is a moronic, invented word up there with "emo"- which they were also labelled at some point. Apparently if you write songs about how depressed you are, you are considered "emo" which I guess makes Hank Williams the king of that genre. AMC are/were a country-rock band. That's all you need to know. The window dressing changes from record to record but at the heart of the band is country/soul.
The band got a lot of attention for their Everclear record- their 1991 album prior to Mercury. It has some of Eitzel's best songs but someone dumped it under a mountain of reverb that traps it like a mosquito in amber. It's their equivalent of The Replacements' Don't Tell a Soul.
Mercury is probably just as trapped in 1993 but 1993 sounded a lot better than 1991. As it is, this album stays permanently in my top 10. I think it's some of the most solid lyrics ever captured on one album. Lots of sounds get heaped into the mix but it never sounds like too much. It's a bummer but it has a greats sense of humor at the same time.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Artist #20 of 52- Sharon Ellis
Nature Slow
Before the over saturation and ease of knowledge that comes with the internet and art fairs (pre-2002), one way to learn about West Coast artists and ideas was through two, now sadly defunked magazines, Art Issues and Artext. Both were far from the cold, isolated, insider attitude of New York City and East Coast art magazines. In these issues I was first exposed to the works of Todd Brainard, StevenCriqui, Mark Grotjahn, and Eric Wesley. One issue had a feature on the mesmerizing and stunning paintings of Sharon Ellis.
Sharon Ellis- Night's Regent, 2000
Alkyd on canvas, 40 x 32 inches
Long before symmetry became the norm in contemporary painting, Ellis was using it with her over saturated colors and unreal patterning to personify the vastness of nature, creating landscapes that are all botany, lacking evidence of mammals or any other living thing that lacks roots. Similar to the paintings of L.C. Armstrong, but without the trickery or politics, Ellis creates a world that is more spiritual than natural. As her paintings are hyper-real to the point they become unreal, she relies on our knowing the archetypes of nature, of 'plant', 'sky', and 'space'. Feeling like the painted backdrops of forgotten vintage Hollywood films, the abstraction of stylization of all depicted creates a real that is all its own.
Sharon Ellis: Lotus for Agnes, 2006
Alkyd on canvas, 34 x 23 inches
A slow painter, finishing only four or five works a year, Ellis works with some of the classic themes of the canon: 'Four Seasons', 'The Four Elements' and 'Times of the Day'. Often, her solo shows will just be just four paintings; forcing us to see the world she paints through the lens she sets up and only one element or experience at a time.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Filling Space
Sorry for the lack of blogworthy material so far this week.
I finished up for the semester yesterday and immediately got sick afterwards. I'm not holding that against my students. If I could drill a hole in the side of my head to relieve some pressure like that guy in Pi, I would. I don't think it worked in the movie.
Other than that, Rubens was nice enough to provide me with some music last week so I've been diving into that. I like this Kiln record.
Nick Cave has two videos out for the Dig Lazarus Dig record. Nick ain't much for making engaging videos. The video for "Night of the Lotus Eaters" extends about 2 minutes beyond the album version which makes the song feel about 2 minutes too long for me.
