Egypt

Nagat
12" x 9"
oil on canvas board, 2013

Nagat El Sagheera (pictured above) is an Egyptian singer I found through my friends at Bodega Pop, the one source to instruct me on the music from the Arabic world, old and new. Nagat is in between, neither old nor new, but a singer unlike I’ve ever heard in older or newer music. In stead of dwelling on this terrific recording of Ana Bashak El Bahr from the album Eyoun el Calb, I’ll talk about some of the techniques I used in painting these portraits. I direct you to Bodega Pop for more on Nagat (and you can listen to her music in the process).

After a series of double portraits I’m back to painting a single performer. Whenever a sort of series within the series happens (and this usually happens accidentally), there’s this urge to continue the trend. In 2006 I made the same attempt to paint all double portraits but then too, I gave up after the idea just didn’t make any sense anymore within the concept of the one hundred paintings. There’s a lot to be said for double portraits, both formally and conceptually, a whole range of ideas waiting to be explored, but I opt now to depart this exploration and leave it for the long term. Another thing the last series of paintings have in common is that the musicians are superimposed on landscape paintings that were made as demos for landscape painting classes I teach. And this, my friends, should continue, as at least three more of such 5 week classes are scheduled over the next few months. In contrast to last year’s, when the paintings were all done plein-air in my backyard. The new paintings are random Florida landscapes, and not as precious as the backyard ones. They are less planned out compared to last year’s. I randomly use these backgrounds as if they were blank canvases. You probably noticed that the landscape in the painting above was turned sideways. This also is the result of the randomness I treat the backgrounds with. For Nagat’s I simply chose to flip the landscape format of the demo into a portrait format. The choice is of course a formal one, but what does it mean conceptually? What does it do, for example, to my mantra “as it is above, so it is below?” Two halves of the composition exist side by side, rather than on top of one another. Except maybe in non-representational painting, or in diptychs, you don’t see this orientation much in two dimensional art. Sure the old Egyptians would paint trees sideways but they didn’t use the concept of the horizon. A concept abandoned again in the shift to non-representational painting that happened in the 20th century. In a parallel universe there’s no orientation. (Let’s leave it at that.)

And, by the way,….HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A Rundi Wake

Rundi women performing "Ubuhuha"
12" x 16". oil on wood, 2013

So my friend from the Netherlands came to visit for the holidays. He brought with him, as a gift, from his own collection, a fantastic set of records. My favorite so far from the set is a volume of traditional music from Burundi recorded in 1967. I've played the whole record several times already and it contains, perhaps the biggest bonus of all, an example of a lamentation that were traditionally performed during a wake. Once upon a time the lamenting of the dead was an almost universal practice but has since disappeared. About a year ago I compiled all examples I collected of recordings of such practices on a CD that I called Keening Songs and Death Wails. I am thrilled that I can add yet another one. Ubuhuha as these lamentations are called in Burundi is maybe my favorite of them all. (From the liner notes by Michel Vuylsteke:) "The women use their lips like reeds to set in motion the volume of air contained in the cavity formed by cupping both hands against their mouths. The resultant sounds vary in pitch, timbre and volume according to the postion of their hands and the  tension of their lips."

DEVO!

Jerry Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo
11' x 14", oil on canvas board, 2013

In 1984 the song Wiggly World by Devo made an appearance in the top 100 for that year. It came from the only LP that I owned of them back then, it was their second, the 1979 release Duty Now for the Future. Even though I acquired two more records in the following 29 years, Devo did not return to the list until this year when I met and befriended Jade Dellinger, (co)author of the book We Are DEVO! I read it and became hooked (again) to their story, their videos, and the music. The book is a "culturally essential" read, and I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in that era of (rock) history (the punk and new wave era that is). What I would recommend too is to watch (on YouTube) their video for Jocko Homo, a sort of Devo anthem. The video from 1976 is part of the short film (an art film) The Truth About De-Evolution. Jocko Homo was rerecorded in 1978 to feature on Devo's first album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!

I'm particularly interested in the concept of de-evolution (hence the name Devo), in which human kind, in stead of evolving is regressing backwards. It fits right in with the topic of paleolithic cave paintings that has kept my brain occupied for a while now. I have this vague notion that a concept (be it art, be it evolution) is at its strongest at the moment it appears. It is then when the circumstances are ideal for something to exist. Or as Devo would have it "the beginning is the end".

Women from Papeete

Women from Papeete 
(cd jacket of The Gaugain Years)
10" x 8".oil on canvas board, 2013

In front of me here I got this record with the title The Gaugain Years: Songs and Dances of Tahiti. The title is misleading because the songs on the record were not at all recorded during the Gaugain years but a good 75 years later. The text on the back sleeve puts Gaugain in the same category (tourists) as Captain Cook, missionaries, and European diseases. The text, however, is a fun piece of writing, full of irony, and from a very respectable source; that of the Nonesuch Explorer Series. It was written by Jane Sarnoff. She downplays the notion Westerners had of Tahiti as a synonym for paradise and argues that you would get a clearer picture of (pre-Western) Tahiti if you substitute “love,” and “easy living,” for “war,” and “oppression.” The song illustrated here is listed on the sleeve as Song for Birds in Flight and this is Sarnoff’s interpretation: “We may be romantically affected when we hear a singer in ecstasies about the flight of a bird (as if ‘we’ would be able to understand the words—ed.)—more likely the composer was trying to placate a bird after killing another one.” “No, the music of Tahiti isn’t just love—it’s hate, and fear, pride, and teaching, a way of life and a way to keep death at a distance.” The image in the painting comes from the jacket of the CD reissue of the LP (which hasn’t any photos). The photo (by Dennis Stock) includes a 1960s sports car. Gaugain would have rolled his eyes at that.

All the while, while painting these women from Papeete, I was thinking about the cave paintings of Lascaux. There is a hypothesis forming in my head. “What does that have to do with this painting?” you may ask yourself. And honestly: “I don’t know!”, but my intuition tells me that in some way it does.

A Greek myth

Breno Mello and Marpessa Dawn 
as Orpheus and Eurydice
11" x 14", oil on canvas board, 2013

My wife accuses me of gravitating towards the sad and subversive when it comes to works of music and visual art. Her choices are more those of a loving, romantic, and happy kind of human expression. While I obviously have to agree with her assessment, I can not explain it. I like to think that my choices are ART while hers are not, but deep in my heart I know this is not true. The questions that a comparison between our preferences raise are not easily answered, in fact it raises many more. Questions about the nature of creativity, the nature of art, the nature of love. Is a human being good or bad, peaceful or violent deep inside? And where is that place we call deep inside? Is it a construct, an illusion, or something real?

Western culture has its roots in the Classical Greek period, whose dramas and tragedies depicted the dramatic and tragic mythologies of their deities, who in turn are metaphors for what human beings essentially are. Did we inherit the tragic arts from the Greek? Is the whole concept of art Greek?

Enough of that existential questioning; I tried to paint a lovingly portrait of two Brazilian actors, the lead characters in the film Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus). The soundtrack for the 1959 French/Brazilian film came courtesy of the legendary Brazilian musicians Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfá. The story of the movie, of course, based on a screenplay by Vinicius de Moraes is an adaption of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. A story of true love with a tragic ending (but with a glimmer of hope at the end of the Camus film). The Top 100 this year features a track from the album, but not one written by either Jobim or Bonfá. In stead it is recording of traditional Brazilian music that is labeled as Générique on the sleeve.

Group from Kigali

Two pygmy musicians
16" x 12", oil on wood, 2013

Different painting, but the same song as in last year's 100. Here's the link to the text and image from March this year. Painted on top of a landscape of my backyard that I turned 90〬.

Pop Music: Björk

Björk
10" x 8", 2013
oil and pastel on canvas

Music that could be labeled as pop is sparse in my top 100, and paintings of pop stars I make only once so often. I don't hear much pop music. I've established a mechanism that excludes me from hearing it too much. I mean, it's easy these days, you pick yourself what you listen to. You don't need radio or tv anymore and indeed, I have neither of them. Last weekend I indulged in a lot of listening to Icelandic pop star Björk. I always liked her music, as I did also like The Sugarcubes (the band she was in before her solo career), but—to my own surprise—she was never featured in any of the previous 30 top 100s. So it's kind of overdue...

La France...

François Dufrêne
pastel on board, 2013
14" x 6"

Oh, the lure of poetry. Poetry may well be the greatest of all arts, one of the oldest too. To be a poet is like the most non-materialistic profession one can occupy. It's from the outset an ill fated profession, the work of a dreamer completely devoid of action. (And therefore it is the noblest of all professions). It is the art form that most defies all commodification, that defies all popularization, all establishment. There's no fame or glory in poetry. I always understood the nobleness of poetry, but I never understood poetry. I've always become extremely bored with poetry, never made it through a volume. But I tried. I always feel inadequate reading poetry, especially when reading poetry criticism. There's so much meaning in poetry that seems only to elude me. Yet, I've tried to write some, I've even published a few in a zine, but it's been an act of defiance; to make public the inadequacy of my intellect. François Dufrêne was a poet, a Lettrist poet, and a pioneer in the field of sound poetry. He was a painter too, known for his technique he called decollage. And he enters my top 100 (as a sound poet) for the fourth time.

Three portraits of Dufrêne. 2006, 2009, and 2010

Some of the poetry I wrote is in French. I don't know much French, just a few words, but not enough to understand the language, and certainly not enough to write in that language, but maybe just enough to write poetry. I figured that without the knowledge of a language I wouldn't have any of the blockage that I experience writing in a language that I do speak. What follows then is gibberish, unintelligible to French speakers, and an embarrassment to myself. It didn't keep me from writing nonsensical French poetry. I filled quite a few pages with it. The following is an outtake of a page-and-a-half that I wrote last week. It's the paragraph that contains an allusion to Dufrêne.

..........Du chien, du frene, du gratulin, comme c’est faire ne pas de rien. Oubliet con gavilette, dans le fete sans briolet. Un cri de loupe attender les filles de frere, mais l’ecole errants la sacre fleur. Nous sommes l’ete, hurlement le chaud temps, arrive tres atterdes. Oui, ma oeil savile huile, mais non, je fais les rouges.......

K.B. Sundarambal

K.B. Sundarambal
13⅜" x 6",
oil on wood, 2013

Re-listening to nominated songs, researching their performers, looking for images, and preparing some boards to paint on; the production of a hundred paintings for the music year 2013 has started in earnest. This weekend I painted the Indian star K.B. Sunderambal. Small as it is, I spent a good number of hours on it. I stumbled upon a recording of Sundarambal on the blog Bodega Pop. The song Pazhari Mali Medi comes from a cd called Kalathil Azhiyatha Kariyam(The Film Hits of K.B. Sundarambal). It was recorded in 1969 for the film Thunaivan. K.B. (Kodumudi Balambal) Sundarambal was born in 1908 in Erode, Tamil Nadu, in South India. She grew up in poverty apparently singing for a handouts in trains when she was a little girl. It was in a train she was discovered and she made her theater debut at age 19, starting a long and successful career that led to her nickname "The Queen of the Indian Stage" (source: Wikipedia). Pazhari Mali Medi is with 2:41 a relatively short song when it comes to Indian cinema. The first 30 or 40 seconds is where it's at. Those precious seconds features her unaccompanied voice. At age 61 her voice is as strong and passionate as you'll ever hear. Then the tablas and sitar come in, the voice lines repeat themselves before the song is interrupted by a short dialogue from the film. The song picks up again into an  intense crescendo. Sundarambal was politically active, became the first film personality to enter a state legislature in India. She died in 1980.

The Birth of Art

Jennie Williams and Nathalie Frost
24" x 12". gouache on oil on canvas, 2012-3

Hand prints, or stencils, are considered the first paintings of human kind. They are a metaphor for the birth of art, and therefor touches on essential characteristics of art as we understand it to be. When, in 1941, the Lascaux caved were discovered, the French writer George Bataille was one of the first to see it. He wrote a book about it: Lascaux, or the Birth of Art. In the chapter When Men First Began to Play he differentiated play with work: Play, as opposed to work, serves no function towards the sustenance of of the human race or the player itself. It is, to use Maya Deren's words: "to conceive beyond necessity", an activity of leisure, a wasteful use of energy, a luxury good. Some years later, Jean-Luc Nancy, another French writer gives this spin of the traced hands: "The traced figure is the trace of the strangeness that comes like an open intimacy, an experience more internal than any intimacy, deep-set like the grotto, open like the aperity and the appearance of the wall. The traced figure is this very opening." In other words: when the walls of the caves, opaque as they are, through the image of the traced hand become a window to the world, they open up to a whole new world, the world beyond the material world as we see it, a world of imagination and creativity. These are the ideas behind this painting in which I intended to open up the opaque ground that is an existing top 100 painting and reintroduce that playful activity that a top 100 painting ought to be. The top 100 started as hobby, and will remain that way (essentially). The existing painting is of two Inuit girls playfully performing a katajjaq (which is a type of throat-singing that is considered just a game). The girls, Jennie and Nathalie, in close proximity, looking each other in the eyes, sing to each other until one wins the game, that is when one misses a beat or starts laughing. This is the end of the song in which was imitative of sounds from nature. Jennie and Nathalie are distant descendents of the people who projected their hands on the cave wall, who migrated north to Siberia, crossed the Bering Strait, and settled in North America. We are too, most all of us, descendents of these peoples that struck Bataille, and Nancy, and Deren too, with awe. And we continue to play, to make our marks on a box car or concrete overpass, to draw a mustache on a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, draw a straight line on a map and walk it too.
I wasn't able to control the painting (but I wiped away the paint that covered Jennie's face). It didn't feel like play (there was no laughter).
Art is defiant
Art is subversive
Art is laughter
Art is—war was, worship—warship, ashes to ashes—dust to dust

The demo

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
oil on canvas board
8" x 10", 2013

Hello again, it's been awhile since a brand new painting was posted here. I've been quit busy with my 7 class assignment this semester. It's not that I haven't been painting, but the paintings I did were all demos for the studio classes. Lots of landscapes (that surely will turn into top 100 paintings), lots of portraits (that I gave to the respective sitters), and also lots of dirty palettes (that will also turn into paintings). This portrait of Pussy Riot's Nadezhda Tolonnikova was the first to go on top of a palette. I painted it the very day the news came out that she disappeared, moved by Russian authorities to an unknown location. I sure hope all of us will hear her story when she gets out of jail, if she ever gets out alive. Putin Light Up the Fires was Riot's last single before their infamous Orthodox Church performance that was the cause of a jail sentence for two members of the Pussy Riot group. It was in last year's 100, and will be in this year's again. The music is simply where it's at in term of punk rock. Ms. Tolokonnikova, a political activist, and conceptual artist, is the voice of Pussy Riot. She wrote the manifesto to protect the integrity of the group, and was described as "the evil genius behind the group." I suspect she also wrote most of the lyrics for the group. 

Demo painting is an art in itself; you're not supposed to screw up being the instructor. But I also need to keep up the integrity of my own painting practice. Practice what I preach. I preach that creativity is more important than technique, that the unconscious knows more than the conscious mind does, and that a successful painting requires the letting go of that consciousness so that the other part can take over. The trouble is with those demos that you're expected to talk your way through, that while you let your unconsciousness make the decisions on the canvas, your voice immediately translates it to the conscious side of the brain. That, and the need for a good result, creates a lot of pressure, and it requires the utmost form of focus and concentration. Sometimes I mess up. 

The M.I.A. portrait of the stencil print below was done in the context of my art appreciation class to non-art majors. As a homework assignment I had (all 53) students make a stencil in an edition of 10. They would keep one to submit with their portfolio for review, and trade eight with class members and the last one with me. The M.I.A. below was their reward. Not every student did the work so I still have about 10 prints left. Let me know if you want one. You can have one for $50. I've already painted M.I.A. for this year's 100, as her Born Free song makes the list for the fifth(!) time, and now this print then is dedicated to her second best song (in my opinion) Paper Planes. Even for Paper Planes it's already the third time in the list. (No other song of hers ever made the list.)

M.I.A.
stencil print on paper, 45/53
6.5" x 6", 2013

Ranie Burnette

Top 100 2000: Ranie Burnette
3.5" x 17", oil and aluminum foil on wood, 2001

The fifth reproduction from the Top 100 2000 series is this painting of Ranie Burnette, a somewhat obscure blues figure from Hill county, Mississippi. Hill county indeed, is that place where the blues tradition lasted longest, where the original tradition still could be witnessed well into the nineteen nineties. It was the place where Junior Kimbrough ran a juke joint that R.L. Burnside frequented, and home to Jessie Mae Hemphill, descendant from a long family history in blues music. Burnette was a mentor to Burnside, whom I've seen perform in the Netherlands. Burnside himself apparently traveled to the Netherlands but I didn't know about that, or about him for that matter. It explains however the find of a 45 single in a local record store. Both sides have been regulars in my top 100s. Side A is Coal Black Mattie, and Hungry Spell is on the other side. The single was released in 1981 on the High Water record label, a local from Tennessee. It was the first Burnette ever recorded. Later he was picked up by a label from his own area called Fat Possum. It finally meant a little bit of recognition for the aging bluesman. That this painting was made in the year Burnette died is purely coincidental. For an additional painting and another text on the Hill county blues scene I'll direct you to http://berrystop100.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-blues.html. The text together with that image of Kimbrough will be published in a forthcoming book called You Should Have Heard What I Just Seen. The painting of Burnside features a quote from one by Marcel Duchamp, whose works I studied intensely in the early 2000s.

Long Live Hanna

Top 100 2000: Kathleen Hanna
4.5" x 17.5", 4.5" x 12.5"
oil on wood, 2001

There is a bit of nostalgia involved in putting up these series of early 21th century paintings. It was for me a wildly creative period, both in terms of painting and in writing. The soundtrack to much of this creativity was provided by 1990s Olympia, Washington based punk band Bikini Kill, and their singer Kathleen Hanna. Hanna was closely related with the inception of, and spokeswoman for the Riot Grrrl movement. Riot Grrrl's message was that of personal (female) creativity, not compromised by society's expectations and demands. Hanna always kept on doing her thing, politically, in writing, in art, and in music. This year she produced a new collection of songs under the moniker The Julie Ruin. Sounds a bit like a return to the sound of Bikini Kill, but it doesn't have as much aggression or angst as Bikini Kill's music had. There's more harmony but less harm. The same can be said for my painting: Looks great but where's the pain in painting? In 2003 I wrote the following text to accompany a song by Bikini Kill called White Boy. "The antithesis of Bikini Kill is a band called Kill Hanna. Kill Hanna produced the year's (2003) worst record I heard: I Wanna Be a Kennedy. The song is conservative and worst of all...a big hit. They want to be rock stars. They played at Little Brothers (in Columbus, where I lived at the time) and were heavily promoted by CD101, the Alternative Station. Alternative to what? The alternative?" Bikini Kill's record label was Kill Rock Stars.

An Appreciation of Art

Top 100 2006: Shellfish vendor
14" x 6.75"
oil on wood, 2003

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted many new paintings on this site. Not to worry though; new top 100 paintings will come—I just can’t not do it, I just can’t do it at this moment. The top 100 still is, and always was, a reflection, or diary if you will, of my life (be it through the vantage point of a music fan, and a music fan I will always be). My life, at this point, is at a transitional stage. I am, for the first time, teaching a lecture class—not just one but three of them. And then I am also teaching four studio classes—introduction to drawing, and landscape painting, two of each. The lecture classes—art appreciation for non art majors—are in particular the ones that represent best the transitional phase in my life. In these classes that follow a standard textbook on the subject, I have to situate myself, as an artist, inside the community that discusses art rather than making it. And for an artist this is a very reflective situation to be in. As a sort of preparation for the lectures in these classes I am rereading a lot of my writings from the past that deal with art criticism. In the process I’m also reflecting on a lot of works from the past. As an insider I’m looking from the outside. I have to overcome all forms of bias that come from being at the inside but that result to some sort of detachment while at the same time still communicating the specific insights gained from being within. Even if I weren’t to pick up the paint brush ever again, I could still post weekly (even daily) updates with material (paintings and texts) from my vast archive. There are still about 2,000 paintings and drawings around that haven’t been seen on these pages, as well as more than a thousand pages of commentaries I’ve written over the years. In my current state of reflection, and the creative impasse as a result, I will indeed, as I have been doing the past months, dig into the archive and pull out some interesting things from the archive worth sharing.

The image above belongs to the top 100 of 2003. The source material for the painting comes from a photograph found on an album that was edited by the American musicologist and folklorist Alan Lomax. The photo depicts a shellfish vendor. The album is a collection of primitive and folk music from France and was distributed as part of the Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. The Top 100 2006 featured three songs from the album: a funeral lament by 86 year old Barbe-Marie Monti, Para Lou-Loup (Beware of the wolf), played on the accordion by Raymond Jabrier, and Martin Prit Sa Hache (Martin took up his axe), sung by A. Letellier in 1950. For the last one of these I used this image of the shellfish vendor. Martin Prit sa Hache, is kind of a humorous novelty song in which the subject had his nose cut off by a group of nuns because he stuck his nose into some business that wasn’t any of his business. Apparently there exists a raunchier version of the song in which it wasn’t the nose that was cut off but rather a more sensitive part of his body, a part that he had stuck in some woman’s business that he shouldn’t have. In the painting it isn’t the nose either that is missing but rather an ear. When I painted the painting I had no idea I was omitting the left ear, I only noticed this much later. At the time, in 2003, my favorite author, and the only author I collected monographs of, was Georges Bataille. This is what I wrote in 2003: "Gerges Bataille reduced the cause of madness that leads to self-mutilation to an obsession with the sun. He traces this irrational behavior to the ancient practice of sun-worship and its sacrifices. Van Gogh had painted his most intense images of the sun around the time he cut off his ear. 'The sun in all its glory' wrote Vincent to his brother Theo. The sun is the highest achievable for human perception—the sun is God. The sun is also a symbol for Christ. The son of God is often depicted with rays emanating from his outstretched arms. When the sun and the son are equally sacred, sin is probably too. For Bataille the sun (God) was not represented by the Son with his outstretched arms but by a naked woman, especially if she was a prostitute, with outstretched legs. Van Gogh mailed his severed ear to a prostitute." That the street vendor in the painting is missing an ear was clearly a freudian slip of the paintbrush.

Needless to say, I can’t use any of my art criticism writings from the past (compare also my previous post on Duchamp) in my current Art Appreciation class. Neither can I use any of my favorite art critics, as I tend to like the more controversial accounts that for me make the art world an interesting place to be. As a matter of fact I have to distance myself altogether from all that the material makes me appreciate art in order to successfully teach the course.

Cracking the Duchamp Code

Top 100 2000: Marcel Duchamp
4.3" x 13", oil on wood, 2001

Here’s another image from the Top 100 2000, a portrait of Marcel Duchamp painted in 2001. It was also the year I presented a public lecture about his 1917 readymade piece Fountain which consists of a store bought urinal placed horizontally on a pedestal, signed R. Mutt, 1917. I was obsessed with this piece as I thought at the time I had cracked the Duchamp code by figuring out that the name R, Mutt was not just a reference to the French manufacturer Richard Mutt but also a reference to the German word urmutter that translates roughly as “primal mother” (or “our mother”, or “primal matter”). In other words I likened the urinal to archaic stone age depictions of fertility figurines such as the well known Venus of Willendorf to which it also shares a visual similarity. Reading the Wikipedia page now on Duchamp’s urinal, it turns out that I wasn’t the only one associating R. Mutt with Ur Mutter. The part of the lecture that I haven’t seen interpreted yet in literature is that of the position of the beholder: If, at the normal vertical mounting position of the urinal, the beholder stands in front of it, erect, and uses it for the function it has—to urinate into—then, when placed horizontally, the beholder shifts horizontally too, and lays on top of the urinal. The beholder then would not urinate into the “fountain” but impregnate it. “Brilliant” I thought at the time, considering Duchamp’s preoccupation with sexual references and esoteric imagery. (The Bicycle Wheel, another one of Duchamp’s readymades is to me a clear reference to the medieval depictions of the “axis-mundi”, in which the enlightened individual is grounded for eternity in a central spot on earth with a wheel stuck to his (her) head, and thereby keeps the world spinning.) I’m not quite as excited anymore about my “discoveries” but don’t discard of those ideas either. The lecture in 2001 was more of a stand up comedy routine than a serious art history lecture. I do believe, still, that there is much more than the self-proclaimed (by Duchamp) randomness of his readymades that were meant (according to Duchamp, and his contemporary critics alike) to stir up outrage and subvert the idea of art altogether. While the subversion is clearly part of Duchamp’s intentions, his intentions in my opinion go much beyond that subversion. That I suddenly pick up the theme of a twelve year old lecture (and paper) is because I find myself once again submerged in art criticism. In the context of teaching art appreciation to college students, I watched the documentary Jeu d'Žchecs avec Marcel Duchamp from 1963 on the fabulous ubuweb.com. And yes…Marcel Duchamp also composed music. The Top 100 2000 featured a recording of La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même or The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even performed by Petr Kotik and the S.E.M. Ensemble. The painting above was the illustration for it. I couldn’t find the original painting so I scanned a reproduction of it. The reproduction had dog ears and other wear and tear that show in the scan. In good Duchampian fashion (the cracks in The Large Glass) the wear is now married to the image.

p.s. Did anyone ever consider the title (fountain) to be of any significance? It doesn't require a big stretch of the imagination to figure out that, in slang, this choice of word for a title, may very well refer to "ejaculation". If this is the case then once again, the focus shifts away from the object towards the subject (the user). It's like a mirror, and the person in the mirror, especially in a public space, is made to feel self conscious to say the least. Had only Brian Eno (et al.) intuited this interpretation before urinating into "Fountain".

Lil Armstrong

Top 100 2000: Lil Armstrong
4.75" x 20", oil and collage on wood, 2001

As a sort of sequel to the previous post here's another jazz painting belonging to the Top 100 2000 series. That there were multiple early/mid 20th Century female jazz pianists in that top 100 was undoubtedly due to me borrowing the CD 40 Years of Women in Jazz from the Columbus Metropolitan Library that year. Lil Armstrong (née Hardin) is on that CD but the top 100 track Boogie Woogie comes from an LP dedicated to (multi-gender) jazz piano music that I own. Lil Hardin married Louis Armstrong in the 20s and they produced a score of recordings together. While the marriage didn't last Lil kept Louis' name. And I keep all these old paintings of mine in boxes in my attic and it's fun to every once so often revisit certain eras in my archive. This Lil Armstrong painting has a bit yellowed now, and the silk rose has flattened some but Ms. Armstrong hasn't lost any of her sparkle. The top 100 paintings done in early 2001 belong to my wildest ones in the series. The approach then was to totally (as totally as I could muster) give in to my impulses while working on these paintings. The results were sometimes good sometimes bad but very fresh in general. The Armstrong portrait was one of my favorites from that year. 13 years later I decided that the plastic leaves on the left were a bad impulse at the time (while the rose that was connected to it works quite well) and I removed it. Block out these leaves to see for yourself...

Barbara Carroll

Top 100 2000: Barbara Carroll
4.75" x 20"
oil on wood, 2001/2013

I was showing my sister Annemie some of my paintings the other day on my computer. She took a liking to this portrait of Barbara Carroll that I did 12 years ago. I told her I'd send it to her. When I found the painting in my attic, where it was stored for a long time, it suddenly struck me why she liked it. The Barbara Carroll portrait (at least the one on the left) reminded me (and I think—unconsciously perhaps—her too) of her daughter, and my niece, Sabijn. The painting was rather dirty and damaged after all this time in the hot attic, so I took out my paint brushes and touched it up. I probably spent as much time touching up then it took me to paint it in 2001. I hope she likes the "enhancements". The song illustrated by the painting is Morocco composed by Harold Arlen. The Barbara Carroll Trio performed it as an instrumental in 1949. A recording of it appeared on Forty Years of Women in Jazz.

M.I.A. at Letterman

M.I.A.
4" x 4"
watercolor, 2013

I know, it's been awhile. Life's been taken me places. But then the top 100 is kind of my life, so it will continue, in one form or another. The only painting I've able to churn these last two months is this tiny M.I.A. portrait done with watercolors. It took me a whole week to do it (to illustrate where my mind is at right now.) But it's M.I.A.! so I will take this opportunity to butter you up to her art (which is performance art.) I had already been mesmerized by her song Born Free since the day it was issued. It's been ranking high in my lists ever since its release in 2010, and it's steadily moving up the ranks of my all time favorites list ever since. There are three versions of the song now contributing to this rapid ascend up the list: First there's the album version on her CD Maya (that also appeared on The Believer 2010 Music Issue), then there is the 9 minute official video which is one of the most horrific I've ever seen (http://vimeo.com/11219730). It's a piece of art that video, but what I consider the real piece of art capital "A" is her performance of the song on Letterman. The keyboard player plays with his fists, creating a soundscape as punk as punk gets but the real treat is M.I.A. with her many clones. The video ranks with best music performances I've ever seen. I should not fail to mention that the song is based on the classic Suicide tune Ghost Rider, in itself a top 100 veteran.

Ol' Dirty

Ol' Dirty Bastard
10" x 10"
oil on wood, 2006

Another image from the vaults to keep the blog occupied. This time back to 2006 when the song Shimmy Shimmy Ya by Ol' Dirty Bastard and the Wu Tang Clan appeared in the list. "I like it raw" raps ODB in the song, and that's precisely when I like hip-hop the best. 2006 was the only time the Wu Tang Clan appeared in the list but the song Shimmy Shimmy Ya has been gathering points since I first heard it in 2004, so much so that it has entered the list of 500 songs counted over the 31 years of top 100 list making. Much of this is due to this wonderful video of this song that is on YouTube. It's a classic!

Exuma

Exuma
12" x 9"
watercolor on board, 2013

It's a watercolor, what can I say? I've done watercolors before but not like this... I mean like a textbook kinda watercolor. The kind you see for sale at art festivals and gift shops at a cultural arts center. The watercolor depicts, beside the landscape of my backyard, the musician Exuma, which is an alias of Macfarlane Gregory Anthony Mackey (1942-1997). Exuma (also the name of his 7-piece band) is from the Bahamas, he grew up in Cat Island. Exuma, the name, refers to a district of the Bahamas. Now the Bahamas may sound very exotic, but it is in fact not all that far away from where I am at in South Florida. I've never visited the Bahamas but music from the Bahamas, from the great Joseph Spence, has been in my Top 100 many times before. The music of Exuma is pretty exotic, with elements of calypso, reggae, junkanoo, and an African type of spirituality. I found Exuma while searching for Count Ossie (also in this year's list), and that'll give you an idea about the direction of the music. As the list for 2013 slowly takes shape, it is clear that there will be a good amount of Caribbean music in it. Due, no doubt, to what I've been referring to as the 'great reggae haul'. This is a link to Exuma's Wikipedia page, it's a good read!

Top 100 2012 @ WDNA 88.9 FM

Top 100 2009: Milford Graves
±12" x 9", oil on wood, 2010

The complete Top 100 2012 series continues to be on view at the WDNA Jazz Gallery in Miami, FL through July 13. The gallery is located at 2921 Coral Way in Coral Gables and is open during regular business hours. The opening took place on May 25th during which the Carl Allen Quartet performed live. Right before the concert started I was invited to speak a few words. The video below is a registration of those minutes. I am introduced by Howard Duperly, the public relations director at the radio station.

For the occasion I published a small 22 page book that I titled OMG, I Made a Jazz Painting! in an edition of 25. The title I took from a page at this blog that was posted in 2010. The book is a freebie with the purchase of any work in the exhibition but can also be purchased for $14. Just send me a mail if you're interested. The books features texts and images of Jazz musicians compiled from my large Top 100 archive. One of the images in that book is the one of Milford Graves depicted above. It also appeared in Top 100 2009 (74p., Iconoclast Editions & Berry van Boekel, 2010) which can be purchased through the Iconoclast Editions website. The following is the text that accompanied Milford Graves in Top 100 2009:

20. Milford Graves/John Zorn – Calling in Proceed
     This past summer my wife Maria and I  visited the Netherlands and stayed at the home of my oldest and best friend Wim van Vonderen. He was present at the very first Top 100 played in 1984, and since I moved to the US I send him every year religiously a copy of the images, texts, and music of the Top 100. He made a bunch of top 100 lists himself. Our tastes have a lot in common and every year he influences the contents of my list. The differences in our tastes however, are as striking as the similarities. His taste is more formal than mine. For him lyrics are literature, and the music has to live up to the standards of art. Ascension through music is a path I abandoned a long time ago, replaced by a descent into chaos. As I go deeper and deeper into the abyss of human existance, I still meet my friend at points where the two paths miraculously meet.

Here are two more images from OMG, I Made a Jazz Painting!

Top 100 2007: Charles Mingus
charcoal on paper, 8" x 10"

Top 100 2006: Sun Ra
±7" x 11", oil on wood, 2007

Marguerita

Anita 'Marguerita' Mahfood
9" x 12", oil on canvas board, 2013

Marguerita is the stage name of the Jamaican exotic rhumba dancer and singer Anita Mahfood. She was the long time girlfriend of the famous trombonist and Skatalites member Don Drummond. On new year's day of 1965, in a fit of rage inspired by his mental illness, Drummond stabbed her to death. Anita Mahfood was only twenty-one years old. The author Klive Walker in his Dubwise: Reasoning from the Reggae Underground, sketches a portrait of Mahfood and argues that she was a lot more than just a footnote in the annals of reggae music. At her young age Mahfood had already established herself as a dancer, was instrumental in the launching of the career of Count Ossie, and had shown a talent for writing poetic lyrics. She wrote the lyrics for Woman a Come, recorded with the Skatalites in 1963 or 1964. It's a love song but it reflects Rastafaria consciousness, and is deeply rooted in African cosmology. I recently acquired a copy of the recording as it is featured on the LP Intensified: Original Ska, 1963-67, in a big thrift store reggae haul. Listen to Woman a Come and read about the haul on my blog Musical Thrift Store Treasures. Don Drummond died under mysterious circumstances locked up in a mental hospital in 1969. As a footnote perhaps, I should mention that his tune Green Island was the number one in my Top 100 of 1991, and therefore part of The 100 Greatest Recordings Ever that I compiled last Summer. This link will lead you to that page. The painting of Anita Mahfood above was superimposed on a seascape painting done as a demo for a class on landscapes that I'm currently teaching. If the painting were a song I would call it a ditty. I waddle along as I remain undecided about the scope and future of the Top 100 project. If I decide to make the full scale series of 100 paintings as I have been doing, Mahfood certainly will receive a do-over. Woman a Come is much more than that ditty.

Yes or No? (2)

Mos Def
12" x 8"
oil on wood, 2010

However insignificant the question I posted two weeks ago may seem, for me its ramifications are very significant. The question isn't answered yet so I'm stating it again: Yes or no? And while I await the answer, that I know will appear to me (probably from an unexpected vantage point) I will post a few images from the Top 100 2009, the year before I started blogging. The images of that year's top 100 have been published in Berry van Boekel: Top 100 2009 in an edition of 100 by Iconoclast out of Cincinnati. 

Number 29 in the Top 100 2009 was an anonymous B-Boy street performance made in Brooklyn. The recording appeared in the documentary film The Freshest Kids: The History of the B-Boy. The "B" in B-Boy stands for beat. The film chronicles the history of break dancing and while the dancers are mostly credited, the musicians remain largely anonymous. Luminaries from the early hip-hop scene are interviewed and I suspect that some had a hand in the soundtrack. Mod Def is one of those interviewed and since he was only a point short of being in the list himself, I chose him to illustrate the anonymous performance. This was particularly challenging simply because one of my favorite musician's portrait is of Mos Def done by Illinois based artist John Jennings.

John Jennings
Mos Def
digital print

The process of how the poster is produced is interesting: First there is a small pencil drawing in a sketchbook. Next there is a scan of it. The coloring, the effects, and all the rest of the work is done on a computer. I used the concept once in an advanced drawing class for college students. The students could use any drawing they fancied and take it from there. I was surprised how little experience students from this computer savvy generation had with graphic programs. It took a while to get it going. The process sounds easy but in reality it is not so. What it really requires is vision, you have to be able to make a mental image of the sketch as a finished product. John Jennings came for a visit, the students met him, saw his work...and his visions. A few students were inspired. And that's enough.

Yes or no?

Alela Diane
12" x 9"
oil on canvas, 2013

There's always something awkward about the first three or four paintings in a new top 100 series. From the outside it may appear that the top 100 paintings are a continuous effort in which a new series naturally picks up where the old left it, but in my experience this is far from the truth. There is no rhythm established yet, no continuity, no concept for the new series when I paint the first paintings. And then there's the question: Should I go for another year, or should I quit? The first paintings in a series foreshadow another year of hard work, frustration, and self doubt. Making the first paintings is like getting on a sailboat to go across the ocean. Once you embarked you're in it for the long haul. With the prospect of having to make 98 more there is no excitement yet in these paintings. I was a bit depressed making this small canvas portrait of Alela Diane. I never felt right about this painting, but I didn't know why. While the doubt is in the painting there's no hesitance concerning the inclusion of the musician. Alela Diane is about to release a new album (About Farewell) and 2 songs were released as teasers early on. The Way We Fall is one of the two song and is already guaranteed inclusion in the Top 100 2013.

I painted a nice (and inspired) portrait of Alela Diane for the Top 100 2010 in 2011, the reproduction of which became the most visited page on this blog. The original painting was sent to a fund raiser in Miami where it was purchased by an art collector. The painting ended up being displayed in her house in Miami. A few weeks ago this house was featured in an episode of Four Houses on TLC. The small Alela Diane painting came in full view. (I don't recall ever to have seen my own work on TV.) I made some screen shots:

Alela Diane painting featured in Four Houses on TLC

The Top 100 2013

John Coltrane and his band
40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2013

The first painting for the Top 100 2013 series is of a John Coltrane ensemble superimposed on a backyard landscape painting. This image of Coltrane is an iconic one in the Top 100 series. I've used the image many times before, but I had never included Rashied Ali and Jimmy Garrison in any of the paintings. It is the last, and my favorite Coltrane line up. Missing in the source photo, and in the painting, is the fifth member of the quintet Alice Coltrane. At the last moment I added her grand piano to the left into the painting to give her some sort of presence. The last time I used the source photo was in 2010. This is what I wrote then:

There's one image of John Coltrane I like better than all others. I believe that this may be the eight painting I've done from a photo taken by F. Winham. I have a copy of it in the book Jazz Heroes by John Fordham. The photo shows Coltrane performing at the end of his career. Gone are the black suit and tie, gone are the conventions of the traditional jazz combo. The photo shows Coltrane with with Pharoah Sanders on tenor, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Rashied Ali, precisely the line-up I cherish most. Of the eight or so paintings from the photo I've only included Sanders a few times, Ali and Garrison remain unpainted, and now again Coltrane is singled out. Funny thing is that of all eight paintings, the one just finished, still wet, is the only one I own. The first one I painted in 2000 and it was one of the first paintings ever to sell from the Top 100 series. Apparently my audience likes this image of Coltrane just as much as I do. If the new one doesn't sell I'll keep it and it will be time to close Jazz Heroes forevermore and find myself a different Coltrane image to paint. 

The painting sold and Coltrane is back in the top 100. That track is Leo, a 45 minute extravaganza that fills up half of the 1973 album Concert in Japan (1966). As a novelty I filmed the process of making the painting. From about 10 hours of raw footage I edited this hour outtake.

Sound States

Sonny Rollins
±14" x 9", oil on wood, 2005

Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies (1997) is a book compiled by Adelaide Morris that contains articles by some leading scholars in the field of musicology. The sound cd that accompanies the book, is an anthology of some of the most innovative sound works of the 20th century. Some of my favorite music collections are on cds tucked into academic research works. In book stores and libraries these are the first items I look for. In 2005 I got my hand on a copy of Sound States and in the top 100 that year the cd was my highest ranking album. The list of my 100 favorite songs that year featured a score of tracks from that cd: La Niña de los Peines, Prince Buster, and Henri Chopin are just a few of these. The books also places (free) jazz at forefront of the avant-garde in the latter half of the 20th century. It inspired me to paintings that in retrospect belong to the best musician’s portraits I’ve ever made. The images here of the performance poet Kamau Brathwaite, and the Sonny Rollins painting, are some the most enduring of all top 100 paintings.  

Edward Kamau Brathwaite
11.5" x 7.75", oil on wood, 2010

Jazz in the Top 100

Albert Ayler
oil on wood, 2009

The Top 100 2012 contained very little music that one one would label as jazz. It's a bit surprising as I consider myself a jazz aficionado. Surprising too because jazz, unlike blues for example, is not a rigid style at all, it evolves along with changes in the world's music, and the world's cultures. (I do seriously question if this is still the case though—did jazz stop evolving somewhere in the 1980s, has jazz become a vestige of a once thriving culture?) The Top 100 2012 exhibition takes place in a jazz venue and I would like to cater to my audience a little bit beyond the two Rahsaan Roland Kirk paintings that are in the exhibition. To do this I'm referring to my archives. Looking at the 100 Greatest Recordings Ever that I compiled last summer, I see, for starters, a few candidates to be framed up and claim a spot in the WDNA 88.9 Serious Jazz Gallery come May 25. The 100 Greatest series contained 11 jazz paintings, all of them have appeared on these pages here, but most have not been exhibited yet. The Top 100 of 2009, the year before I started the Top 100 blog, contained 13 jazz paintings: John Zorn (2), Roland Kirk (3), John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Art Ensemble of Chicago (2), Milford Graves, Billie Holiday, Walter Roland, and Machito. Reproductions of all these paintings, together with their accompanying texts, appeared in the book Top 100 2009, published in an edition of 100 by Iconoclast Editions, 2010. The small paragraph illustrating #23: Albert Ayler – Change Has Come reads: "My Name is Albert Ayler is the name of a film (2008) by the Swedish director Kaspar Collin. I saw it in an art theatre on a big screen in 2009. The audience became eerily silent when, in the film, things went wrong with Al. Albert Ayler (1936-1970) was from Cleveland, Ohio. The film made quite an impact on me. The tune Change Has Come was not featured in the film but comes from the LP Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village that I recently bought. The album was Ayler's first release on Impulse!, it was recorded live in 1966. I played this record, together with the other two Ayler albums I have, directly after coming home from the theater that night."

Stats for the Top 100 2012

The Top 100 2012 is all but wrapped up and what's left for me to do is a bunch of busy work. Update the archives, create wall labels for each painting (for the exhibition starting May 25th), and things like that. I've been collecting some data from the 100 entries in the list that I plotted into some graphs. Not that it proves anything like serious statistics would, it's just indulgence. First I collected, as well as I could, geographical data. There are a remarkable 43 countries represented in the list, the same amount as last year but more than ever before that. The percentage originating in the United States is at an all time low, at exactly 25%, but still by far outnumbering any other country. Here's the top 10 countries represented in a bar chart:

There were eight countries with two representatives: Albania, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Italy, Japan, Niger, Peru, and Romania.

The remaining 25 countries had one recording in the list: Algeria, Argentina, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Netherlands, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, Rwanda, Solomon Islands, Sudan, Sweden, Thailand, and Venezuela.

The chart would look a little different if I change the country of origin to the country the recordings were actually made in. The United States gains 9 more to count to 34%. England drops out of the top 10 altogether with only one of the six recordings originating in England actually recorded in England. It should be noted that 4 of the top 5 in the list are from England, and that New York is the most often occurring state and city with quite some distance.

This is what the graph looks like when the numbers are plotted to represent the continents (numbers total 100):

The next graph then is the years the 100 recordings were made in, plotted to their corresponding decades (numbers total again to 100) 2012 is the single year that yields the most (9) recordings.

 

Here's an example of what kind of data I collected. For Macedonski Narodni Ora by the Maliot Radio Orchestra at #92 (I haven't posted this one yet):

Country of origin: Yugoslavia (Macedonia)
Ethnic group: Rom (? and/or Slavic)
Recorded in: Skopje, Macedonia
Year of recording: 1951 (or earlier)
Source: blog –Excavated Shellac
Performers: Maliot Radio Orchestra (Two zurlas players, tapan, and double headed drum)

Skopje Radio and Television Orchestra
8.5" x 11"
watercolor, pencil on paper, 2013

So that one (like many others) came courtesy of the blog Excavated Shellac. Jon Ward, Shellac's writer, goes two steps beyond the sort of data collecting I've been doing. This is what he had to say about this tune:

"The Sperry label, based at 10625 Shoemaker Street in Detroit, Michigan, was run by Sperry Boge and issued a number of recordings originating from tape, and all from Macedonian groups sponsored by Radio Skopje. Radio Skopje began broadcasting in 1944. I know very little information on Sperry, however, they were in operation for a number of years in the early 1950s, issuing approximately 120 selections on 78 and 33rpm. All of their records were RCA Custom pressings. RCA had three custom pressing plants in the United States including one located in Indianapolis, Indiana, and the pressing number on this disc indicates that this Sperry record was pressed in 1951 – though finding an actual recording date might be more difficult."

This then brings us to the last category: What were the sources for the recordings? Over the years, with the shifting towards the digital, the whole concept of collecting records has changed. For the first time in the 30 years of the Top 100, with 49 provided, my own collection as the source for music has fallen below 50%. In the following pie chart music from my own collection are in blueish colors while the reddish colors represent music I picked up elsewhere (all but one from the web): Read clockwise from 12:00.