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."