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.)