Tuesday

sci-fi



Yeah, so what's with all the sci-fi ? When I was growing up my mother was (still is) a librarian, and as a method of daycare, I would spend long solitary hours wandering the stacks and poking my nose into the battered collection of each library she worked at. I think something about science-fiction is very male and pre/adolescent..and it's also usually the province of nerds and outcasts. So it's coded heavily with a language of signs and symbols that a very specific audience is fluent with. There is, of course, a repressed type of voyeuristic sexuality that often forms the strange backdrop to a procession of variously imagined Dystopian nightmares. Science fiction is the most existential and mythopoeic of all of the pulp-genres. The idealism of youth is expressed as a precocious deconstruction of the present-as projected into either an idealized and hopeful future, or nightmarish and hellish descent into the Abyss. As a vital movement, it all ended sometime in the early nineties when reality and fiction merged completely and perfectly. Unfortunately the drab and horrific commonplace of the real future did not end up to be so brilliantly cinematic and vivid as the genre's greatest illustrators had proposed on the covers of magazines like Analog or Urania. But it could still be said to be bewildering and surreal in it's own way. Nevertheless, these paintings represent a seminal moment in cultural history. In a stunning fashion, they express a remarkable intersection between the inner and outer worlds of the individual. Looking back to this time of my life, I remember feelings of anxiety and hope, not only for my own future, and my own passage through life to come..but also for the civilization that surrounded me...which I also perceived as being young and in flux. In a way, not much has changed...

Why Write ?



I began writing this blog by accident...stumbling across Blogger one night in the empty hours between midnight and morning. As the month has passed, I've come to realize that this could actually be a good thing to continue. I remember reading recently in ArtForum's "Scene and Herd" a bit about how nobody ever talks about art in Los Angeles. I think the reason for this is both obvious and unfortunate. I believe that artists should write..we shouldn't be fearful of our beliefs and convictions...we shouldn't hedge our bets by hiding in mute safety. That being said, it is not my intention to judge, critique or complain. This is a project that allows me to organize my own thoughts and clarify the avenues of connectivity that inform my process. I'm not interested in writing a history or enforcing some sort of Procrustean worldview of my own design. Nor is this blog an attempt to demonstrate my own status within a picture gallery of the social scene. I'm not interested in creating "alliances" based on the specious notion that there is some sort of Manichean ideological struggle now brewing in the art world. On the contrary, embedded in this project is an abnegation of the shallow spectacle of narrative. There are only subjective values and interests..it is up to the individual to navigate their own inquiry and mount their own interpretive struggles. I'm motivated by the desire to explore these interests and create meaning by connecting them to the tiny plot of land that my own artistic identity now occupies.

"Herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge. If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment. What expert judgment, in art, could ever bear on the work to come?" Deleuze

Vintage Sci-Fi painting is better than 95% of the crap out there.



That's just my stupid opinion though...everyone has their own tastes and interests. And that's ultimately what this all has been boiled down to, a sprawling landscape of highly specialized knowledge with no visible dialectical landmarks sweeping us away into a thrilling and unfurling grand narrative. Nope. Not anymore. People that try to make vast summarizing arguments for the purpose of weaving their own projects into a place of eminent relevance are hopelessly misguided and should probably stop. Art should act as its own argument...theory is not a life raft for a bland and mediocre practice. Furthermore, it becomes increasingly apparent that everything is somehow equally relevant...just as the measure of relevance becomes more and more the property of the individual. At the end of the day I think it turns out to be a lot better and more democratic...and really takes a lot of the ego and self-important posturing out of the act of being an artist. Hooray for the 21st century!

Mario Correa



A class of mine from LA Valley college took a trip to Chinatown this past weekend to pop in on some old friends. Our first stop was Mario's studio, where we were greeted by this show-stopping image. Mario has been working on a really interesting series of portraits of figures from strange, esoteric subcultures..like drag racers, hang-gliders...and people who hold odd records in the Guiness Book of World Records. Each portrait is accompanied by an abstract background meant to recall early 20th century abstraction, and to create a linkage between the odd communities that abstraction grew out of while examining the nature of "community" in general. Besides being beautiful works..they do get one thinking about the strange sub-culture that we call "the art-world". The art openings later in the evening kept my mind wandering in this direction..although in the dizzying and chaotic spectacle..there were few answers.But I did feel at the end of the night that despite the arena of competing ambitions and the shared desire to rise from the faceless swarm into glorious notoriety that perhaps we were all authors of this scene..and that ironically, the artist who was being celebrated in each show was not a lone figure on an elevated stage,but perhaps more like a "host" who had merely invited us into his little corner of the world.

Mario 2




Mario gave a great talk to my class, and was quite charming and articulate despite being obviously fatigued from the characteristicly Bohemian long evening before. I think some of the ladies in our group were quite taken with this handsome young artist, and I also know of others who have admired his charms from afar. What's more is that Mario seems completely humble and unaware of his effect on the fairer sex..and is quite down to earth..and yes, sorry girls..he is spoken for.

Bart Exposito

Bart Exposito

After Mario's studio, my class hopped over to Bart Exposito's..
I liked this image because it reminded me of a shot of a Barnett Newman painting that also had a spectator observing from close range. Except here the spectator is mirrored by the figurative element rather than dwarfed by a sublime field of color. I was reading some writing in the Saatchi catalog about Bart's work enforcing ",the impersonal and anonymous as a comforting numbness." I disagree..I don't think there's anything impersonal or numb here..it has nothing to do with "lifestyle arbitration" but more to do with a thrilling objectness. The painting is experienced initially as 2 dimensional plane, but it forces it's way past that limitation and becomes fully realized as a material object...one in which color and form are personality traits contributing to the charismatic aura that it projects. These are beautiful and serene objects..and despite the obvious and easy reference to the 60's..I feel they are timeless and cannot be held within such a narrow interpretive field. They are contemporary exemplums of a long and esteemed tradition that stretches not only into a rich and fertile past, but into a hopeful and robust future where, yes, perhaps painting does "Triumph" after all.

Bart 2





I remember one time around 2002..Bart was getting ready for a show in NY...I was living next to his studio in Chinatown. I think Bart's ass must've been really numb..because he would work about 12-14 hours a day everyday. Sitting and drawing...then smoking cigarettes. Drawing some more. I've always been impressed by his ability to focus for such long periods of time, personally I can't last more than 4-6 hours at any given stretch...People can forget how boring and lonely being a painter can be...the intense visibilty and celebration of an art opening is but a brief and giddying exception to what is primarily a monastic existence.

Thursday



For some insane reason I made some drawings today..I've been looking at alot of Oceanic art and African art..These will end up as components in paintings..but are kind of nice alone.

3 things I was thinking about today



I usually hate Picasso...but there was that one period when he was painting little balloon animal people with really small faces. That's the only Picasso period I like...the rest is shite.

Tuesday

Che......?

artists now all the sudden on Wikipedia

Dérive


Bruna Mori seems to be kicking up a lot of dust lately....which is good, America needs a little poet dust in our eyes once in a while. Dérive is a collection of poems with paintings by Matthew Kinney that "depict an ever-shifting subjectivity within the urban sphere, interspersed with paintings of architectures dis/assembling." I'm not really sure what that means..but basically she wandered around NY and wrote some great poetry inspired on these wanderings. We were going to attempt an LA wandering project..but I don't think Situationist theory is applicable to freeways.

Here's the link for Meritage Press:

  • Meritage Press
  • This is what I looked like 5 years ago.




    One of my students, who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, recently showed me this allegorical self-portrait. I found the work and the story behind it very touching and so asked her if I could share it.
    Here's the explanation:

    "There is a poinsettia plant that has seen better days. There are a few large healthy leaves left and the rest have all died off or been beaten off somehow. The plant is me. Sticking deep into the pot is a huge sharp knife. It represents the man who tried three times to kill me and who still wants to. Every two years he comes up for parole and I am scared out of my wits that he will get out of prison and come looking for me again. So the knife is a huge scary threat that I live with. Next to the knife is a shadow cast by a stem and small leaf. It is in the shape of a cross. It is laughably small in comparison to the knife because I don't see any help coming from religion. The fake butterfly's torn wing allows light to shine through creating a shadow face with an arm pointing to the knife emphasizing that the knife is a very real threat. The shadow is ghostly because nobody ever seems to notice what is happening. It all has an unreal quality. It's horrible but life goes on as if it isn't even happening. It's my pain and I suffer by myself. The baby dragon is a fantasy creature representing the desire to escape reality. It is sitting on a book that says 'diary' which gives the clue that all of this stuff represents a life. The dead bug and dead butterfly show that life is fragile and death is real. The shot glass with liquor is a way to escape reality but the liquor is spilled revealing rat turds that were in it. This is because alcohol can have an ugly side to it and sometimes you get more than you bargained for. There is a picture frame turned face down representing loved ones that were lost. There is an apple core behind it representing a life that feels worn out and used up. A bottle behind the core is one that health supplements are sold in. It is broken and is symbolic of broken health that comes from too many injuries and too much stress. In the top right of the picture is a shadow dipping into the picture. It is the shape of two huge fangs and the small leaf at the top of the plant appears at just the right spot to make it look like one of the fangs has a drop of blood hanging from it. It is hinting that something scary and ugly and dangerous is close at hand. Last of all, back to the potted plant, underneath the few remaining large leaves there are a lot of new little leaves just starting to grow. And that's because life does go on. Despite 'it' all, I am still trying grow as a person and make a new and better life. And that is the point of the picture. Never give up."

    The World's Greatest Living Artist





    While other "made" art stars of his generation have been luxuriating in the fruits of their success by marrying Icelandic pop stars and opening trendy bars and then selling them as works"of "art", Glenn Brown has been quietly and anonymously painting his way into greatness. It's not suprising that in today's Post-Warholian era, where a well crafted "persona" can make up for no considerable shortage of talent, that an artist who has done so little to cultivate a public image (I'm aware of only 1 photo of him circulating on the internet), is only known by a small group of enthusiasts. Despite last years appearance in "Ecstasy", and a high profile Gagosian show, Brown, who seems to be selling well at least, flies deep below the radar of most of the cultural elite...While the ravishing and obsessive surfaces make these works easy objects of collector fetish, the content has a bleak and apocalyptic darkness that keeps most at bay. Brown is truly an obsessive genius, adrift and alienated from contemporary culture, he mines the art-historical rubbish bin for clues to the unraveling present. This is how I see Brown..as an outsider..painting endlessly, constantly, tragically into the deep hours of the night..impelled by the need to recover at least a shred of beauty from the dark mist of decay that swarms around us like worms in the charnel house. From the sidewalk of a quiet London street, his studio light pierces the darkness..it is the last dying ember of a fire lit by the last man on earth..waiting patiently and with quiet resolve for the end that awaits us all.

    "Misogyny" by Glenn Brown



    From the recent show at Max Hetzler

    Thursday

    Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein



    I'm not really sure what this whole thing proves...but it's still interesting:

  • Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein
  • is anyone reading this fucking blog?

    ....or am I just engaging in some sort of futile and pathetic masturbatory exercise that seems to be shockingly endemic in todays strange cultural millieu and a representation of the common fantasy of self-importance engaged in by egoists of the early years of the 21st century?

    tuesday.02

    tuesday

    Natasa Sword Fighting



    Screenshot from Female Anatomy for the Artist.com....see sidebar for link.
    I was just thinking I really need an obese woman sword fighting in my next painting...and then the clouds opened and this image descended like manna....

    FlashBack: 2002





    4 years ago this summer.

    Beautiful Sickness: Richard Dadd



    While traveling the mediterranean as a young artist, Richard Dadd smoked a water pipe for 5 days straight with a group of Arab men he had just met. The resulting psychotic episode, murder and dismemberment of his father, and subsequent institutionalization is one of the most sensational stories in the chapters of art history....which is why it's so strange that today's art audience seems to be completely oblivious to this fascinating tabloid scandal. After his imprisonment, Dadd worked primarily on only two paintings for the rest of his life. One painting took 5 years to complete, the other took 9, and was still considered unfinished by the artist. These two paintings, however, are unrivaled in all of art history for their obsessive beauty. I'm fascinated by the manner in which human sickness and suffering is not only the most universal and resonant theme in art, but is in fact a condition, that when experienced in its extremities, can produce, through the sacrifice of selfhood and sanity, the most utterly beautiful and amazing paintings that man has ever laid brush to.

    I'll be discussing Glenn Brown next....

    Gerald Davis

    Gerald Davis

    Gerald Davis


    Bullshit seems to fly pretty far in the Art World for some reason. Which is why I like Gerald Davis...its hard to say that this is anything but excellent painting. I remember one night in Chinatown a few years back enthusiatically telling Gerald that his brushwork was "genius". Although I might've been somewhat tanked at the time, this judgment holds up well under the unforgiving and sober light of day. Aside from the technical fluency, the work has the uncanny ability to draw the viewer not only into the strange narrative being suggested, but also into a Proustian re-discovery of the dusty cobwebs of one's own adolescence. And maybe why this is why the work seems "dark", because all memories are bittersweet and untrustworthy...because they might as well be fictional...and because we experience them from the end of a tunnel, with the tragic knowledge of everything that has transpired in between "then" and "now".

    Trona



    About 20 miles west of the Manson Family Ranch is a small desert town called Trona. Signs on the approaching highway say something like "The End of the World-10miles, Trona-15miles." So as I was riding the exercise bike in the Cypress College weightroom yesterday while reading the LA Times article on said town, it occured to me that "Trona" would make an excellent title for a painting. Today I finished the first of what will be an unusual series of paintings of faces, or face-like paintings, and so I played matchmaker. As with most of my work, the title signifies very little about what you will see within the picture, but there is generally a backstory on what the title actually means...so there it is.

    I also think "Trona" would be a great title for a Sci-Fi movie, maybe one starring Crispin Glover, about humanoid apes and time-travel or something.

    Sandy Does South East Asia




    Sandy Olkowski until recently lived in the dark blue shadow of Dodgers Stadium here in LA, but lately the tortured writer and general kool thing was dispatched by Jacquesdebeaufort.com to suss out the possibility of yours truly living a re-imagined Gauginesque fantasy of Romantic isolation in or on the tsunami riddled South Asian shore. If it's good enough for John Mark Karr...

    I'm not sure if she's aware of the irony of her blogpost title and the salacious implications that a literal reading suggests, but she did mention meeting a nice young Thai boy named "Korn" in one of her posts. Lately though she's been describing in assiduous detail the in's and out's of Thai cuisine. A must read for all 3 readers of this blog.

    see the sidebar or:
    http://blogs.bootsnall.com/thisissandy/

    the hard drive yields more fruit




    I was REALLY into caves at the time....
    The model is Bruna Mori, a local poet who I think has a book coming out soon...or maybe it came out already?

    Paintings that no longer exist




    These two paintings no longer exist...but they're interesting relics of process.
    The smoky one was called "Katushya" after the Hezbollah rockets. The more horizontal piece was called "The Cut Worm Forgives the Plow" after the William Blake proverb. It was fun destroying them..I don't know if anyone can really understand that, and I'm sure my friend Michelle will be pissed as she hates it when I destroy my work, but hey it's all part of the process.

    Backup



    Right, let's back up a little...who the hell is this Jacques de Beaufort:
    Well here are som photos..
    I'm an artist in LA...teach at a local colleges..
    check out my main site:
    http://www.jacquesdebeaufort.com




    It's interesting to see work in process..
    Ehpebophilia became Venlafaxine (the drug in Effexor). And now actually this painting has changed drastically again...I think I'll post some more process shots soon. Perhaps some current images from my studio as well.

    Jacques de Beaufort Blog


    I'm blogging...what the hell?

    Maybe some studio shots..

    Jacques de Beaufort

    This is my blog...I wonder what in the hell to post...maybe some studio shots and work in progress

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