Rahsaan Roland Kirk, oil on canvas, 10x20" |
The Top 100
The Top 100 started as a hobby; a fan adoring his musical heroes and paying tribute by making portraits of them. The hobby became obsession and the project went from the boy’s room into the art world. But I'm still that fan, it's about them in the end, their music, and not about me.
Saturday, November 16, 2024
Sound??
Sunday, November 3, 2024
No title
Cover Image from Musique Proto-Indochinoise |
Musique Proto-Indochinoise - Recueillie Chez Les Moïs Des Hauts Plateaux Du Viet-Nam is a record recorded in 1955 by Frantz Laforest: "Mission Ethnographique 1955 sur les Hauts Plateaux du Viet-Nam." Moïs or Montagnard (from la montangne—the mountain) is an umbrella term for several groups of indigenous people from the central highlands of Vietnam. The record does not specify between different groups. The woman represented here (and on the cover of the record) is most likely one of the main performers from the recordings by Laforest; she also appears on the back sleeve playing a jew's harp. In the image above she's playing a stringed bamboo instrument that I don't recognize from the descriptions of the songs, neither from instruments I've come across before. The top 100 song is performed on a "carillon hydraulique," a sort of bamboo organ. It's also possible that Laforest, who took the photo featured on the cover and back sleeve, posed a particularly cute indigenous woman with the instruments for the sake of increasing sales. Probably not, but the practice of employing cute women, stripping them above their waist, was very much standard procedure a half a century ago. The anthropologists paid extra for the the women, to reinforce the notion they were primitives, to strip. Years ago I swore not to use gratuitous nudity anymore for my Top 100 illustrations but recently a number of 50s and 60s racy photographs have functioned as a source for paintings. Another painting recently completed is of a woman from a group of women in a healing ceremony from an image by the famous Charles Duvelle, that appeared on the record Anthologie de le Musique du Tchad from 1966.Moundang woman (Duvelle)
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
De Klankbron
"Lahu" cover image, 20x10 inches, 2024 |
Monday, September 2, 2024
Girl With Gun?
Dani people, 20x10 inches, oil on canvas, 2024 |
Friday, August 2, 2024
A name!
Wambustrik, mourning. 20x10 inches, oil, 2024. |
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
My-This, My-That, Myself (Redemption)
The full caption below the photograph that I used for the painting above
reads: "Ill. 6: A Shaman of the Semoq-Beri tribe with the bamboo zither
keranting (recording no. 11)." It comes from the pages inserted in the
album: The Semoi of Malacca.
A shaman of the Semoq-Beri |
Recording 11 is the recording illustrated for the Top 100 series, as it was in my previous painting from last week. I then accused myself of exoticism and found myself guilty on using gratuitous nudity. This painting then offers me a bit of redemption, as it is the one and only image that could possibly illustrate the song well. Yet, this is also a depiction of the "other." I've been painting the "other" for most of my life, and it feels strange to paint myself, or my familiar surroundings. As to counter any illusion of moral integrity, I immediately started painting an image I found on the Wikipedia page dedicated to the Senoi.
Senoi woman playing the bamboo-zither kereb | |
The full caption reads: "Senoi women and children performing dance-music at Perak River, 1906. Note the head-dresses and girdles. It is impossible to depict the "other" in a fair and subjective way, as there is always projection involved. The above painting belongs to the Western tradition of painting.
Carolyn Niethammer didn't have such a long history available to her when it comes to representing the "other." Her Daughters of the Earth: The Lives and Legends of American Indian Women is nearly fifty years old. For the time her integrity was probably greater that that of many contemporaries. In the introduction she states that she probably isn't without bias. Reading the book there are indeed plenty of instances that show a racist relation between object and subject. Using the format of a zine, I compiled some of the most interesting observations and anecdotes of the book, and drew every image.
Daughters of the Earth, cover, 8.5x5.5 in. |
Niethammers representation of Olive Oatman, one of the most famous westerners held captive by Native Americans, is far from accurate. I had happened to read Oatman's story in the Smithsonian Magazine not too long ago and was like "What!" when I read her story told by Niethammer.
Two pages from "Daughters of the Earth," 24 p. |
Tuesday, July 9, 2024
Senoi-Shipobo-Sanapana-Bassa
Cover image of An Anthology of South-East Asian Music | |
Bassa girl from Ivory Coast |
Pao Cocha, wife of Shipobo Chief, Peru |
Sanapana woman, Gran Chaco, Paraguay |
Thursday, June 20, 2024
R.I.P. James Chance
Een kloddertje roze hier...
Hermeto Pascoal, 12"x12", oil on canvas, 2024 |
King Pleasure, 12x12 |
Mose Allison, 16x13 |
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Les Deux Frederics
Frederic Chopin, oil on canvas, 6"x6", 2024 |
Musica Elettronica Viva, pen and paint on paper, 14"x11", 2024 |
Two Eipo girls making a net, 20"x10", oil on canvas |
Two Eipo girls making a net, 20"x10", oil on canvas |
Saturday, February 24, 2024
Expansion and departure
!K-2. 40"x30", oil and acrylic on canvas, 2016/2024 |
!K-1. 40"x30", oil and acrylic on canvas, 2016/2024 |
Campa-8, mixed media on drywall, 12"x12", 2023/24 |
Campa-9, mixed media on drywall, 13"x13", 2024 |
Sunday, January 28, 2024
The Mist
Rengma Naga, woman from Tesophenyu, 20x10 |