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...