Confusionism

Beth Orton
18" x 24.5", watercolor on poster, 2015

We have now the post-postmodernist era, post-internet art, metamodernism, zombie formalism, hypermodernism, and post-capitalism. From looking at it you can't distinguish post-internet art from post-internet non art, happily exploited by the commercialization of the internet. The characteristic of metamodernism is that it has characteristics of both modernism and postmodernism, floating between idealism and realism, between “a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy, between naïveté and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity.” [Vermeulen, van den Akker, 2010] Our culture in simply confusing, we have learned that truth subjective and illusive, and that falsehood is true. We have learned that identity is flexible, we can't distinguish between human nature and the human condition, we don't know what is knowledge and what is experience. It's all a big blur. There's an overload of information and images. There's too much (art). How to navigate? Rather than to cry about it we should embrace this condition of confusion. Doesn't the lack of any certainty create a sense of freedom? We know too that this era of post-postmodernism will end, perhaps there will be a future philosopher who, like Confucius, will make sense of this mess, and provide spiritual stability. Until then: let's enjoy this period of confusionism.

The watercolor of Beth Orton was painted on a poster with a reproduction of a work by Ikki Matsumoto featuring three spoonbills. The portrait was painted in the ground (negative space) that is the bodies of the spoonbills, which is at the same time the figure (positive space). The top 100 song: Safe in Your Arms from Comfort of Strangers.

Airto

Airto
16" x 12", oil on canvas paper, 2015

The painting of Airto was created on top of a landscape demo done in a new episode of landscape painting at the Alliance in Fort Myers. The landscape is situated in my back yard but was painted from memory. I turned it upside down to have Airto emerge out of water. I just added some waves to make the landscape become a reflection of itself. The top 100 song is called Andei (I Walked) and comes from the double album The Essential Airto featuring Flora Purim & Special Friends from 1976. The special friends are Hermeto Pascoal, Ron Carter, and Sivuca. There is a second version of Andei on the album on which Airto's wife Flora Purim performs her characteristic scat singing style. Usually I'd pick a version with a woman's voice but here I didn't. I guess I'm not a big fan of scat singing. I've painted Flora Purim before in a double portrait with Hermeto Pascoal but never Airto Moreira. It's a beautiful song.

Primary Colors: Tuareg

Tuareg: Camel Tournament
16" x 20", oil on canvas, 2015

Music for a Camel Tournament performed by Tuareg women was recorded during the Henri Lhote Expedition of 1948. A small black and white photograph taken during the recording sessions dons the liner notes. They are the notes to the album African Music from the French Colonies which is Volume 2 from The Colombia world Library of Folk and Primitive Music series compiled by Alan Lomax. On the recording one can hear a chorus of women accompanied by a tindi (a mortar converted to a drum) which is played, witnessing the photograph, by a little boy. The setting is in Algeria in the Hoggar Mountains of the Sahara Desert. I can't discern any mountains in the photo but I'll take Lomax's word for it. It was my intention to paint one red dot in the sky, which could possibly have been interpreted as the sun. Once one starts to place dots...

Obituary: Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman
12" x 16", oil on canvas paper, 2015

Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman died last month (June 11) in New York City. He was 85 years old. Coleman's legacy is an enormous discography and the concept of free jazz, which was also the title of one of his earlier recordings. I've made a number of Coleman paintings over the years, some belong to the best the archive has to offer. He is included again this year, established months before he died. NPR critic Kevin Whitehead reviewed Coleman's newest record (which turned out to be his last) New Vocabulary on February 10th this year. The album was recorded in 2009 with Jordan McClean and Amir Ziv and released on System Dialing Records in 2014. In the 2000s Coleman was not very active any more but this record sounds as fresh as his early 1960s recordings. The song in the top 100 is Baby Food, but likely others will follow as I've played many of his records (and YouTube videos) since. With the passing of Coleman the world has lost one of the most influential jazz musicians and one of the top 100 musicians in my 33 years of counting.

Primary Colors

Suicide (Alan Vega, Martin Rev)
10" x 16", oil on canvas paper, 2015

The image of the women in the center comes from a 1920 photograph by an anonymous photographer and is part of the Uwe Scheid Collection. It's getting a little ridiculous, these series of musicians flanked by anonymous (nude) women from that collection (the photos by Gerhard Riebecke that were used last month also belong to the collection) and it will stop soon (there is one more on its way). Why these women appeared in the paintings in the first place has to do with the Buzzcocks painting that was part of the previous series of paintings (with the musicians superimposed on found paintings). A very objective reason indeed. (There are more subjective aspects to it too. The mind wanders places and the unconscious is being well taken care of.) Anyway, here's Suicide, the two-man band consisting of Alan Vega and Martin Rev. The song, no surprise, is Ghost Rider, the track used by M.I.A. in her song Born Free, the number one in consecutive years. As noted in Bun Bun, Martin Rev (who co-written the song with Vega), appears on my favorite version of it. Ghost Rider appeared on Suicide's self titled debut of 1977, in which format it appeared in this top 100. The current version listed is however a live recording found on YouTube filmed at CBGS's in 1977 or 1978. The audience boos and Vega anticipates.

Happy Anniversary

 

Maria van Boekel
oil on canvas, 2015

Out of context in terms of the top 100, but you're number 1, you always were and will be. Happy 15th anniversary!

Gamelan

Peliatan Dance Troupe
16" x 12", oil on canvas paper, 2015

Sekar Jupun is the title of a gamelan performance by the Peliatan Dance Troupe, it was uploaded to YouTube in 2012. The Peliatan Troupe is from Bali, Indonesia. In the context of ancient art history I used this video to talk about a music tradition in south-east Asia dating back to the bronze age. Gamelan, however old it is, doesn't go that far back in time. (The oldest depiction of a gamelan ensemble is found on the walls of the famous 8th century Borobudur temple on Java. According to local lore gamelan dates back to the 3rd.) The clip was a substitution for music performed on bronze age bells from China which is rather boring. About a month later I saw the same clip posted on the Facebook page of a friend in Columbus, Ohio. The central figure in the painting is based (again) on a photo by Gerhard Riebicke, photographer of a German nudist movement, taken in 1925. The painting reminds me of a painting by Linda Gall that another friend from Columbus owns. (Love that painting.)

Saint Coe

David Allan Coe
20" x 48", oil on canvas, 2015

The album Nothing Sacred by David Allan Coe is described as "among the most racist, misogynist, homophobic and obscene [albums] recorded by a popular songwriter." The song Jimmy Buffett insults the popular singer of the title. Both Coe and Buffett were living in Key West in the 1970s, but in the lyrics "Jimmy Buffett doesn't live in Key West anymore," Coe accuses Buffett of escape (and being an elitist m*f*er.)  The photograph on which this painting is based is much newer that 1978, the release date of Nothing Sacred, but looking at the palm trees in the photo it may very well be in Key West. (Why Coe is wearing a fur coat in the picture I do not know. My wife and I drive to Key West tomorrow but we won't take any more clothes than a t-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, and bathing suits.) Music critics were hesitant to give any attention to the album and musician. Yet the art world was not so concerned. The Art Institute of San Francisco pulled a drawing of Coe from this website for their announcement of the exhibition Wrong is What I Do Best in 2014.

Vision of Disorder

Vision of Disorder
30" x 40", oil on canvas, 2015

As a teenager my favorite music genres were punk and hard rock. When I was in my twenties the two styles fused into what came to be known as hardcore in America. Perfect you would think, yet I was the least bit interested. My favorite hard rock bands were all British: Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin. When in the eighties hard rock (now known as metal) started to speed up with American bands like Slayer and Metallica I had lost interest. By that time I had taken an interest in the history of popular music and listened to music that came before punk and hard rock. Blues, folk, garage rock (the list kept expanding in years to come). By now all music is fair game for me and in that context I occasionally check out the latest trends in metal, in punk, and fusions of heavy music. As I stated in my previous post (painting of Minor Threat) I'm not that crazy about most of the metal music that has been produced since the 1980s. This holds true too for the band Vision of Disorder, despite a remix (by The Tyrant) of their song Slapped with an X in this top 100. The painting of them, larger than usual, is the most macho I've ever made.

U.S. Punk

Minor Threat (in front of a Gerhard Riebicke photo)
oil on canvas paper, 12" x 16", 2015

As a punk rock fan you'd expect more American bands on these pages. In theory American punk (hardcore as it's called) would be the greatest rock and roll music ever, yet I never listened much to it, and when I do, I don't care much for it. Unlike black metal and some of the more naive British punk bands, the American ones act (in my opinion) in the right spirit of non-conformist, socially conscious, and anti-establishment way. Bands like Black Flag, Fugazi, Dead Kennedys, so important in the history of punk, are, as it is with so many genres, dominated by white middle class young adults. They're missing from the top 100 history (the two most successful punk bands within that history are Bad Brains and Bikini Kill, both of whom do not fit the characterization). The 1990s was a decade in which hardcore split-up in many sub-genres, fusions often between 'heavy' styles. The 2006 CD Threat: Music that Inspired the Movie, chronicles bands that would fit in a genre called metalcore. It features some of the most important punk bands within this genre: Agnostic Front, Vision of Disorder, Bleeding Through, and a bunch of others. The film (that inspired the music) is about the friendship between a hardcore and a hip-hop fan. The music on the disc are remixes (from the world of hip-hop deejaying) of hardcore songs. Usually in products like this the parts are better than the whole, but in the case of Threat it's the other way around, and for me it's the most exciting fusion CD out there. I don't care about many of the bands that are on it (in their own right), and worse, the individual deejays I can't even listen to. Within this context then I present then the first portrait of cult/punk hero Ian MacKaye (second from the right) as singer in the band Minor Threat.

Bahnar Postage Stamp

Bahnar People of Vietnam
12" x 16", oil on canvas board, 2015

The source for the above painting is a postage stamp from Vietnam. It depicts two youthful Bahnars (Vietnamese highland tribe, also known as Bana) in traditional costume. If the two youngsters on the stamp are actual Bahnars is highly doubtful. It appears as if the people, the stamp is modeled after, are Vietnamese fashion models stuck in Bahnar costumes and attributed with a Bahnar spear and fish basket. The Vietnamese government is proud of their indigenous people with their own characteristic forms of culture, who for sure are an asset to the tourist industry. The record Introduction to the Music of Viet Nam (1965, Ethnic Folkways Library) recorded by Pham Duy features three examples of Bahnar musical traditions. The track in the top 100 is called Calebass-Zither Ting Ning in the liner notes. The track is the least accessible of the three and I don't expect it would ever be used by the Vietnamese government to boost their image. I don't think Ting Ning will attract any tourist to come to Vietnam (with the exception of a few obsessed music fanatics). Tourist attractions in the central highlands include gong concerts by the Bahnar (an example is also included on the record). They were originally a matriarchal society.

Whatever Happened to the Buzzcocks?

The Buzzcocks
14" x 20", oil on found canvas, 2015

I've had Singles Going Steady, a Buzzcocks compilation album, for more than twenty-five years yet it is not until now that the record first appears in a top 100 list. I always liked the record and must have played it fifty times or maybe even more. Nearly every song on the record is a classic, and has at one time or another found a spot in my weekly top 10 lists from which the annual top 100 is compiled, most appeared multiple times. 

The painting in the background was given to me by its maker, a woman from Ohio who's name I forgot, many years ago. At a fair I told her I liked the painting, she told me I should buy it, I told I didn't want to spend money on a painting. she told me "how's ten bucks," I told her "it's worth more than that." She ended up giving it to me, at first I wouldn't accept it, but she wanted me to have it, she insisted. Somehow I hope this writing finds her, and hope to she'd approve of the addition of the four Buzzcocks.

Mark E. Smith

Mark E. Smith
12" x 36"
oil on found canvas, 2015

Stations of the CRⒶSS

CrⒶss: Gee Vaucher, Eve Libertine, Steve Ignorant, Penny Rimbaud
oil on (found) canvas, 24" x 32", 2015

Stations of the CRⒶSS is a record that was on top of my want list until right before last year's end (at Christmas) when I got a copy. The jacket folds out to a poster which is an art work by Gee Vaucher, while the back of the poster contains lyrics, more graphics, and the outer sleeve. My favorite (of the graphics) is the page with the juxtaposition of the iconic J.A.D. Ingres painting La Piccola Bagnante (1828, a naked woman seen from the back) with a no less iconic workof another naked back—a 1945 photograph of a Hiroshima burn victim. The song the painting illustrates is Do They Owe Us a Living. The source for the painting is a recent photograph of four Crass members, it was published by The Guardian in 2009, twenty-five years after their last concert. The background is a found painting that, despite my intentions not to modify, were stripped of a bunch of trees. (What would Crass think of this voluntary act of deforestation.)

The Bass of The Fall

Steve Hanley of the Fall
drawing on found paper, 8" x 10", 2015

I recently bought the Fall compilation LP The Domesday Pay-off Triad Plus! at Joe's Record Exchange (the only decent record store here in Fort Myers). It has some tracks from their 1986 LP Bent Sinister on it as well as some singles from 86 and 87. It's not considered one of their best but it's been on my turntable numerous times regardless and half the songs made it into the top 100 2015 list already. Odd choice perhaps to pick Steve Hanley (the bass player) for the illustration, but there's plenty opportunities left to paint their leader Mark E. Smith. Besides, Hanley, a long serving band member, was important in the establishment of the Fall sound. The choice for Hanley is not the only odd thing about the illustration. (That I will not discuss here except that it was hard to capture Hanley's portrait—it took me hours.) The Fall in 1987, when the album was released, consisted besides Hanley and Mark E. Smith of Craig Scanlon, Brix Smith (mark's wife), Simon Wolstencroft, Simon Rogers, and Marcia Schofield. Production was by John Leckie and it was recorded at the Abbey Road Studios in London. The Fall are from Manchester.

The Beastie Boys

Adam Horovitz
oil on canvas paper, 16" x 12", 2015

Just picked up a second Beastie Boys cd filled with marvelous instrumental jams. The band was already dominating the 2015 top 100 list by way of the cd Ill Communication (1994) that I picked up in the beginning of the year for twenty cents, and the ($1) purchase of The In Sound from Way Out! (1996) will further establish the Beastie Boys in this year's list. And it's due time as the band didn't appear since 1987, when they had a couple of hits in the Netherlands (Fight for Your Right and No Sleep 'till Brooklyn). The In Sound from Way Out borrows its title (and graphics) from Perrey and Kingsley, pioneers in synthesizer music. It features a tribute to Groove Holmes, Tibetan chanting, and tons of funky riffs.

Andy Warhol

The Velvet Underground
20" x 24", oil on canvas, 2015

The generation that are now freshmen in college never heard of the Velvet Underground. This is about to change, at least concerning those freshmen that attend FSW and select Art Appreciation as an elective. I personally make sure that those students attending know about, if not appreciate, this part of the history of rock music. There are about 60 of them each semester, and when pop art is discussed the Andy Warhol hook is used to introduced the Velvet Underground. The video clip selected last semester was one recorded by Andy Warhol in the Factory. I'm Waiting for the Man is one of Velvet's most memorable songs. I used it in class to talk about the work ethic that existed within the confines of the Factory, and that (especially) Lou Reed composed songs all day. (In class I don't shy away from talking about New York City night life and the drug references that come with it either.)

Viet Nam

Calebass-Khene, Highland People, Central Vietnam
oil on wood, 16" x 16", 2015

The khene is a southeast Asian mouth organ made of bamboo whose origin dates back to the bronze age (c. 2,100 BCE-900 BCE). It is of Lao origin invented, as myth has it, to mimic the sound of the garawek bird. I was introduced to the khene by way of the cd series The Secret Museum of Mankind compiled by Pat Conte. On the third volume Conte included the track Soutsanaeh which made it into the top 100 of 1999. The top 100 series are, above anything else, a record of the music acquired in a given year. One of the top finds thus far in 2015 is the record Introduction to the Music of Viet Nam selected by Pham Duy for the Folkways label in 1965. The record is divided into pre-Vietnamese and Vietnamese music, the former "a name given to all the music of ethnic minorities living on the Indochinese peninsula before the politcal formation of Viet Nam proper. This music, of a purely popular character, still conserves archaic traits in spite of the passage of time" (liner notes, Folkways). The Vietnamese khene is different from the Laotian in that the tradition hardwood reservoir is replaced by a gourd (calebasse).

Mariko Gotō (Midori)
oil on canvas, 30" x 40", 2015

No better way to get into a fresh round of paintings than to produce a big one with vivid colors. Mariko Gotō, singer of the Japanese jazz/punk band Midori, provided the perfect expressionist pose, and a modernist/abstract thrift store painting the perfect backdrop. Welcome back everybody (sorry for the wait).

Student Work

Courtney Fisher, Abner Jay
xerox transfer and frottage on paper, 11" x 8.5", 2015

Three more Art Appreciation classes did end last week. Besides learning about the the different disciplines and all of art history, students also worked on art projects in their sketchbooks. They also made zines and prints that were traded with other students and I received mail art through the US Postal Service in the mail. The most exciting work however (from the vantage point of contemporary art) came from two sketchbook assignments dedicated to transfers and surrealist techniques. These assignments were introduced through demos and in-class time dedicated to experimentation. To demonstrate xerox transfers I had brought in a folder from my Top 100 archive consisting of source materials for paintings. I rewarded the best works with extra credit points. A student named Courtney Fisher received the highest reward for a series of reworked transfers from photocopies. Every semester a few students (who are by the way no art majors) really show a knack for visual creativity, get really into the making, and go far beyond the easy and obvious. In Courtney Fisher's visual work, the transfers and other in other assignments as well, she displayed a cohesiveness of vision that was not in any way dictated by thought. Just her tools, materials, and doing. Without putting too many consequences on my experiences teaching non art students into my own visions, ideas, and attitudes towards art, it does kind of bring me back to a base sense of creating visual work. The essence of art is to be found in materialism (as opposed to concepts, ideas, and ideals). The image above depicts the blues musician Abner Jay (performing together with a little girl—his daughter?) that I used for a painting in 2013.

Bun Bun

M.I.A.
oil on canvas board, 9" x 12", 2015

David Letterman calls it quits on May 20th. His late show included guests like Captain Beefheart and M.I.A. The M.I.A. performance of Born Free from her Maya album at Letterman's Late Show in 2010 ranks among the most exciting live performances I've ever seen. It's not often I would consider a musical performance as art but this one sure is. M.I.A. is seen performing with two musicians and a dozen dancers, clones of herself, in what seems an unrehearsed, not choreographed rendition of Born Free that borders on anarchy. Alan Vega and Martin Rev composed the riff the song samples (Ghost Rider, 1977), and should be proud of what became of it. The name of the Bunny in the painting is Bun Bun, I found her (the painting) in a thrift store.

note: just after I wrote the above text I watched a youtube video of suicide performing ghost rider in 1977 and i thought that martin rev looked a lot like the keyboard player on letterman's late show 33 years later it didn't take me long to figure out that it actually was martin rev performing with m.i.a.

My Favorite Albums (after 32 years counting) Part 2

My Favorite Albums (after 32 years counting) part 1: Anthologies

Top 100 2015

The Beastie Boys
16" x 12", oil on canvas, 2015

Yes, the Beastie Boys, they are starting off a brand new top 100 edition. If the first two months are any indication to what the music year 2015 has coming, then it's a shift away from female singers' dominance towards a more equal distribution. After a decade of painting Kathleen Hanna, I now, for the first time, portrayed her husband Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz. He's situated in the middle flanked by Michael "Mike-D" Diamond and Adam "MCA" Yauch. The CD Ill Communication, bought for 20 cents at a thrift store, has provided many hours of rocking out while driving. Three songs are already guaranteed a spot in the new list, of which the biggest hit from the album, Sabotage, is one.

Spring Break!

Azealia Banks
8" x 7.5", stencil print
ed. 75 on paper, 2015

It's spring break, and that means beach, studio, and taxes. Midterms are wrapped up and graded, and the customary stencil prints have been traded. The stencil print is becoming a tradition, and now in my fourth semester at FSW, I have collected, by trade, over two hundred original prints made by students of the art appreciation class. My fourth stencil design, printed in an edition of 75, is once more depicting the portrait of a popular musician. I chose to do Azealia Banks, thinking that she would be popular by the students. I did not nearly get the response like last semester, when Jay Z was a big hit, only two students showed any interest in Miss Bank$. Yet she represents a fast-rapping sub-genre of hip-hop that is rapidly gaining popularity. When I heard Lady LeShurr, the British/Caribbean rapster, perhaps in a tradition of Jamaican Dancehall, rap in a style similar to that of Banks a couple of years ago, I thought it was the greatest new development in popular music.

Cat Power (again)

Cat Power
20" x 16", oil on canvas, 2015

In the top 100 of 2014 Cat Power was the highest ranked musician, again. Her song American Flag, from Moon Pix of 1998, was in 2000 the first of her songs to feature in the annual lists of 100 that she dominated since. 2000 was also the year I saw the first (of four) Cat Power concerts. The 2014 edition contains five of her songs, this then is the fifth painting of her in a year's time (it's actually a do-over illustrating the 2012 song Real Life that had been represented by a photographic image appropriation using one of the surrealists' techniques. The source for the painting above is a photo of a youthful Cat Power taken somewhere in the mid nineties). I have lost count but the total Cat Power portraits I painted since 2000 must be nearing fifty! (I don't know if I should be proud or embarrassed of this feat.) Anyway, the Top 100 2015 has started and no sign of Cat Power dominance thus far. No, tomorrow will be a flashback to the very early years (mid eighties) of the top 100 when Laurie Anderson had a string of songs in the list. I will bring my Big Science record along that I will ask her to sign. Tomorrow she will present a lecture discussing her work in the ArtSPEAK series hosted by the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery in Fort Myers.