Showing posts with label Nico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nico. Show all posts

Friday, March 31, 2023

No outography!

Nico/John Cale
The painting of Nico and Cale sure looks like it was intended as an outography, but it's not. The painting was intended as a double portrait, with both their shadows moving across the halfway mark, as I had done in 2007 with a double portrait of the White Stripes. The two black shapes representing Nico and Cale were not cut away but rather added. It's more of a stereoscopic image than an outograph. The source was a photo of the two with Brian Eno and Kevin Ayers. The quartet had collaborated on June 1, 1974, from which album Baby's on Fire, by Eno, once was my number 1. But this was a long, long, time ago. The year 2022 features Nico's Secret Side in its top 100. Secret Side comes from Nico's solo album The End... and was produced by John Cale also in 1974.

Since I'm at I might as well forward some other painting I finished over the last two months. There are about eighteen I did not (yet) write about in these pages. I made a series of three double portrait paintings representing four songs from the CD series Siberie on Music du Monde. Three from Volume 4: Kamchatka: Tambours de danse de l'extreme-orient Siberien, and one from Volume 8: Chants rituels des nomades de la Taiga. Two of these paintings, featuring Ivikovna Sajnav with Henri Lecomte, and Anna Vasilevna Kolegova with Irina Khristoforovna Kolegova, I had already done some months ago using images I had used before in earlier versions of the Top 100. I had ordered the the Volume 8 CD from a seller in Switzerland which took forever to make it to my house. I ordered the CD mainly because I needed images. No images of any of the singers in the series can be found on-line the the CD booklets contain several. I knew I would be waiting to post about the first two paintings until I was able to do the third. The singer in the Top 100 from Volume 8 is Uljana Nikoraevna Vasilova. A photograph of Vasilova was not included in the booklet but several others were, including Oktjabrina Vladimirovna Naumova, who had been in a Top 100 several times, and really was due for a painting. She is paired with Alexandra Lavrillier, who assisted Lecomte, and recorded about half the tracks on the CD.

Alexandra Lavrillier/Oktjabrina Vladimirovna Naumova

Ikovna Sajnav/Henri Lecomte

Anna/Irina Kolegova

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Chelsea Girl

Nico
12 x 5.5 inches, oil on wood, 2016
Fairest of the Seasons appeared to me three times within the span of two weeks. First iTunes on random play mode (there are about 6,000 titles in my folder), then my wife decided to watch The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001) again, then I ran across a copy of the LP Chelsea Girls (Verve, 1967) at a thrift store (I did not have it yet). Coincidence, a sign? I have always liked the song, a lot. I was going to see Nico in concert in the Netherlands in May of 1988. I didn't get tickets ahead of time because I figured it wouldn't be sold out, I'd buy them at the door. The concert was canceled because of a lack if interest. Two months later she died, on my 24th birthday!