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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....
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...
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...
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....
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 f...
Bart Exposito
Bart ExpositoAfter 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...
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 existen...
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 shi...
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 Pr...
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...
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...
Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein
I'm not really sure what this whole thing proves...but it's still interesting: Deconstructing Roy Lichtenst...
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 centu...
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....
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....
Gerald Davis
Gerald DavisGerald DavisBullshit 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....
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...
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...
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 alrea...
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 proce...
Jacques de Beaufort
This is my blog...I wonder what in the hell to post...maybe some studio shots and work in progr...
