In Memory of Vladimir Lenin

Dmitri Shostakovich
8.5" x 8", oil on wood, 2014

Wikipedia barely has a good word for Shostakovich's 12th. It calls it programmatic, traditional, workmanlike, naive, infiltrated by Soviet politics, patriotic, a creative slump, an overblown film score, academically correct, and so on. True, the words are the result of what critics have said about the piece, but still. I don't think I've ever read such a negative Wikipedia page. The 12th Symphony has been with me since 1987 when I found a set of Soviet printed discs on Melodia. The 11th was also part of the haul. They introduced me to Shostakovich and the 12th especially has been one of my favorite pieces of classical music ever since. Thus despite Wikipedia's analysis, the 12th Symphony belongs to my list of the 100 favorite recordings of all time. The symphony is subtitled The Year 1917 and is dedicated to the memory of Vladimir Lenin, who, according to the composer, "is the greatest man of our epoch." The symphony (opus 112) was written in 1961, a year after Shostakovich had joined the communist party.
I chose to paint a younger Shostakovich this time. (This is my 4th.)

Jan van Leiden

Johnny Rotten (John Lydon)
6" x 6", marker on paper, 2014

Johnny Rotten is a seminal figure in the history of pop music. On my thirteenth birthday in 1977 I was given a record player. In eager anticipation I had purchased Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols a few days earlier. It was my first record ever. Johnny Rotten was the singer of the band and as such the face of a whole new movement. Punk's influence on our culture goes far beyond the history of pop music. The contemporary art scene of the here and now has a direct link to punk music. Some of the most important artists of the 21st century have direct roots in the punk movement and almost all came of age during punk and the decade following. Some played in bands before they became artists (Mike Kelley for example.) Punk did not just change the sounds and visuals of our culture but changed its character, its being. Punk opened up the world for a generation, and generations to come. Punk is an attitude; it is DIY, it is equality, it is freedom. Johnny Rotten personifies all this. In his 1989 book Lipstick Traces music critic Greil Marcus sketches an analogy between Johnny Rotten (whose real name is John Lydon) and the 16th century Dutch anabaptist Jan van Leiden. In a marvelous piece of criticism Marcus compares the year in which Jan van Leiden was the king of Münster (1534-5) with 1976-7 of the Sex Pistols. According some historians Jan van Leiden led the city state of Münster on the precepts of social equality, political democracy, and communal living. John Lydon, of course, is practically the same name as Jan van Leiden. The top 100 song of the Sex Pistols this year is Pretty Vacant, not from Never Mind the Bollocks but a live version found on the compilation The Greatest Punk Album of All Time. Timeless!

Cat Power

Cat Power
10.5" x 8.5", oil on wood, 2014

I don't know how many times I've painted a portrait of Cat Power, it must be up to thirty by now with only half of that, at best, living up to my self imposed standard of quality. This image, taken from the cover of Moon Pix, I've painted four times, this one I believe is the most interesting of them. One day I'll show all Cat Power portraits together with all the writings accompanying those paintings. I think it would make a nice exhibit, dedicated to this one "celebrity" as an ultimate expression of fan-ness. I never met Cat Power. I contacted her once, attempting to meet after a concert, but to no avail. The closest proximity of me meeting Cat Power, besides from being at the front row of a concert, is in this book called You Should Have Heard Just What I've Seen, in which both my work, and the Moon Pix cover are featured. The Moon Pix cover is a work by renowned photographer Roe Ethridge. 

The painting reproduced here must be attached to the Moby Grape cover Naked if I Want to, the third Cat Power song in the list from her 2000 The Cover Album release, as both Metal Heart (from the Moon Pix album), and Names have already been designated. On my mind however, as I painted this today, were the lyrics to song Names, and to some of the commentaries on YouTube I read while listening to the song just yesterday night. One thing I never noticed before in the lyrics is that there is a pause after the line "Her father came to her in the night." It's a rather shivering pause at that, but the one comment that affected me the most was by a listener who added another verse to the lyrics: "Her name was Imogen. Her momma died when she was 16. She was so sad she was nothing but grief. I hope one day she'll come back to us." I can only assume that this is the commenter's autobiographical anecdote. Heartbreaking!

Note on the painting: The purple background is an outline of Sly Stone's afro in a painting that I abandoned (and started anew—see previous post).

I Want to Take You Higher

Sly Stone
10.5" x 8.5", oil on wood, 2014

The year must have been 1969, I was five years old and it's when I had my first experience of art criticism. My sister, who was then ten, was coloring in a coloring book. She complained about how you could see lines when she tried to color in an area. I suggested she should color in circles. I could not have known that I would, forty-five years later, be doing just that while painting an afro. I had never seen an afro, not even heard about it, yet I Want to Take You Higher by Sly and the Family Stone was already released, and a big hit at that, but I don't think it made it onto Toppop, the hit TV show on Dutch television that my older siblings watched religiously. I could sense though that I was to become an artist. I could draw cars better than anyone in class and my father too. "Boom laka laka laka boom."

Dastgah Systems

Mr. Ahmad Ebadi
11" x 8", markers on paper, 2014

Awoken by the flashing lights of police cars and a helicopter overhead, and after a peanut butter sandwich and a cup of coffee,  I felt I had to something positive with the unexpected available hours of the early morning. I decided to spent time with my #1 hobby so I pulled up the top 100 list and looked for an image for the highest number not painted yet. This was the Iranian master of setar Mr. Ahmad Ebadi. Plenty of images to choose from, from all stages of his long career, I settled for this image of Mr. (or Ostad—master) Ebadi that shows him late in his life. Ahmad Ebadi was born in 1906 in Tehran and died in 1993, also in Tehran. The piece in the top 100 is titled Dastgah of Mahour, and is after Dastgah of Shour the second piece from the album Classical Music of Iran: Dastgah Systems, Vol. 1 on Folkways Records. Picking up random markers from a box without a concern for artistic integrity I filled up the page in my sketchbook before daylight struck, put it on the scanner, fiddled around with the tools in my photo program, and voila...It is 6:00 am now, the police have left, and I might have an early morning nap. Enjoy your weekend y'all.

...It!!!

Busta Rhymes
24" x 16", oil on canvas paper, 2014

A year before I started blogging the Top 100 was published in book form. At #92 that year appeared the song Touch It by Busta Rhymes. The video for that song is beautiful as a group of high school girls out-rap Mr. Rhymes. Before that song hit the top 100 I had already collected a list of songs whose titles consisted of only two words, the last one being "it." It sure makes for a good hit!

• Twerk It – Busta Rhymes
• Work It – Missy Elliott
• Touch It – Busta Rhymes
• Whip It – DEVO
• Rock It – Herbie Hancock
• Push It – Salt 'n' Pepa
• Pump It – Black Eyed Peas
• Beat It – Michael Jackson
• Eat It – Weird Al Yankovic
• Hold It! – Eddie Cleanhead Vinson
• Bump It – Erykah Badu
• Doin It – L.L. Cool J
• Doin It – Herman Brood
• Bring It – Judge
• Shake It – Metro Station
• Lick It – 20 Fingers (a much better lick it song is by Khia but it's called My Neck, My Back—"My neck, my back, Lick my pussy and my crack.")
• Fake It – Seether (really bad song, I really expected to find a song with this title by a female hip hop artist)

Let me know if there are other its I need to listen to (I always appreciate a comment :) Busta Rhymes then; Twerk It (a second twerk song in the list—see Big Freedia) is the second "It" song by Busta Rhymes in the top 100 (the other one is the aforementioned Touch It. Busta Rhymes, according to MTV "one of hip hop's greatest visual artists, is a rapper originating from Brooklyn. His real name is Trevor Tahiem Smith, Jr., Chuck D (from Public Enemy) gave him the moniker Busta Rhymes after a football player. The background in the painting, the shadow that is, or shape, is the image of Sylvester Stone. His painting will be next. Why? Just because I want to...I want to...I Want to Take You Higher.

"I am a Cliché"

Poly Styrene/X-Ray Specs
16" x 10", oil on canvas, 2014

Among painters it is a cliche that you paint in similar colors as the clothing you wear. To keep up with the cliche I even went so far as to paint exactly what I wear, I am the cliche! It's been too long since the X-Ray Specs were in the top 100, and I haven't painted their singer Polly Styrene in six or seven years. When I painted her again, just today, I decided to use the image from the Oh Bondage Up Yours!/I am a Cliché 45 sleeve. Exactly the sleeve that is reproduced for the t-shirt I'm wearing in the photo below. You can't really read what it says but it is—in yellow "X-Ray Specs", in green "Oh Bondage Up Yours!", and in red "I am a Cliché." Now the top 100 contains neither Oh Bondage nor I am a Cliché but yet another hit of the punk band The Day the World Turned Day-Glo. The X-Ray Specs is truly a family affair as Emil gave me the t-shirt while I provided Maria with a picture disc version of Germ Free Adolescents on which The Day the World Turned Day-Glo appears. The Day the World Turned Day-Glo is also a single for the band.

:o)

Cover photo of Mississippi Girls: 1928-1931
17.75" x 10.75", oil on roofing felt, 2014

For blues aficionados like myself the Document label is where it's at. The Austrian label has the ambition to release all blues music recorded before 1945 in chronological order. It released nearly a thousand records thus far. I own about twenty-five of them and my favorite is the cd Mississippi Girls: 1928-1931. It contains the complete works (in chronological order of course) of Geechie Wiley and Elvie Thomas (see an earlier post), Mattie Delaney, Mary Butler, and Rosie Mae Moore. Mattie Mae Moore recorded 4 sides in 1928 accompanied by Charlie McCoy on guitar. Staggering Blues and Ha Ha Blues stand out most. Ha Ha Blues makes the top 100 for the second time: "Papa, I'm slipping out tonight, I'm going ha ha ha. All you men, you may go your way. I'm sick and tired, of your low dirty ways". There is no known photograph of Rosie Mae Moore that I'm aware of but the cover photo on the cd-jacket provided a more than appropriate alternative to illustrate Ms. Moore. It's painted on a piece of roofing felt, left over from my roofing job, as a challenge from one of my students who recently started painting on such surfaces. (I don't think I'll do more than one though!)

John & Yoko

Yoko Ono
8.5"x11", markers on paper, 2014

The source for the two drawings presented here is the same photograph in which the illustrious couple is divided by an American flag. Separated here in two drawings to represent Ono's song Air Male (1970) from the Fly album recorded with Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band and Helter Skelter (1967) from the Beatles' White Album which was actually written by Paul McCartney. I made the drawings last night experimenting with a new set of designer markers my wife gave me as a present. Yoko was the first drawing I did with these markers, and it's better than John's who came second. The American flag in the iconic photograph of the two is actually an art work by Ono and the stars of the flag are represented by skulls, the stripes are lines of texts, political anti-American statements. I played a small part earlier this year in the preparations for the Yoko Ono exhibit Imagine Peace at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery. The videos in the show and the lectures accompanying it were to me the most interesting part of the exhibition.

John Lennon
8.5"x11", markers on paper, 2014

  

Rebel Girls

Tobi Vail (Bikini Kill)
24" x 16", oil on canvas paper, 2014

The first painting class in the new season at the Alliance for the Arts I named A Means to Meaning. Usually I introduce the class with a slide lecture, and for the occasion I had prepared a talk in which I would introduce the theme of meaning through the topic of punk rock. The second second class then I brought with me a selection of my punk rock records, and especially those that come with the customary artwork insert. I brought with me all my Bikini Kill records along with the Dead Kennedys, Huggy Bear, and some others. Included was Bikini Kill's album Pussy Whipped (which features Rebel Girl) as well the single version of Rebel Girl on which Joan Jett makes a guest appearance. The previous class had the (Bikini Kill's) artwork for the song embedded in the presentation, and I was actually flabbergasted to find precisely that image (but in the color red) tucked in to the 45 single. Rebel Girl is a sort of anthem of the Riot Grrrl movement and the song yet again made my list of 100 this year. Most paintings I've done for Bikini Kill songs featured a portrait of Kathleen Hanna, but this time I chose (drummer and sometimes singer) Tobi Vail. I had just watched the documentary movie Her Noise (a nice anagram of the word "heroines") about punk rock music and art made by women. Tobi Vail's current band The Spider and the Webs make an appearance in that movie. See for yourself: http://ubu.com/film/her_noise.html

Bikini Kill, Rebel Girl

Skrjabin

Alexander Scriabin
24"x16", oil on canvas paper, 2014

I forgot to mention in the previous post that I also turned fifty during the summer. Not that it has too much to do with anything but it may the reason that I suddenly start playing selections from this substantial collection of classical music of mine. Not only because classical music is more suitable for a fifty year-old than say punk-rock, but also that at that age one starts to recollect memories from the past (and play the same music you played twenty-five years ago.) Sonate No. 3 op. 23 from the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin belongs to that category. It made it into my top 100 twenty-five years ago but remained unplayed since. Until just recently that is. My archive still spelled his name the Dutch way: Skrjabin, which is actually identical to how it is spelled on the German vinyl record I bought a little while back that features the sonata in question. I never had a copy save for an old cassette tape that is long lost. I don't know who played piano on that old tape that I copied from a radio broadcast. The pianist on the German record is Vitalij Margulis from the Soviet Union. He was born in Kharkiv in what is now Ukraine (the north-eastern part of it. Yet another instance in which the top 100 selections parallel the news. Purely coincidental this time.)

Summer 2014

Béla Bartók
24" x 16"
oil on canvas paper, 2014

Summer was not a good time to paint. Between reconstruction of the house, the World Cup, and the heat there simply wasn’t a space for painting. Now that the roof is done, the World Cup is over (heat still here), and teaching season starting, I found my way back into the studio. The soundtrack to all this summer activity? There wasn’t one. I didn’t buy any new music and I didn’t play any music while working construction. I remotely picked up an interest in the Brazilian composer Ary Barroso, whose Aquarela do Brasil was a bit of World Cup theme song, but not enough so to claim a spot in the top 100. The few records I did play in the past few months were classical discs by East European composers. Due to my habit of shopping for records at thrift stores, I have quite a collection of classical music. So much so that I stopped buying medieval music, Maria Callas recordings, and records from the Nonesuch label. What I still pick up are records by the composers Shostakovich, Scriabin, and Bartók. I now have fourteen 33rpm discs with the music of Béla Bartók, and two more records with ethnographic recordings made by him. Some records feature Bartók himself on piano. This is not the case however in a recording of The Miraculous Mandarin by Tibo Serly and the New Symphony Orchestra of London. Still, the record is pretty close to the source with the label being Bartók Records, and Tibo Serly being an intimate associate of Bartók. The recording was made in 1951, six years after the composer died, and was one of the first recordings of the piece.