is for Bother.
Another terse, yet nimble word than can be used as a noun or a verb. As a noun it can mean annoy, irritate, worry: “Such a bother!” Or it can describe effort or work: “Why bother?”
While as a verb, bother is something that causes annoyance, irritation, or worry as in, “You bother me.”
I found this why bother? We’re all gonna die image by Holbein at FromOldBooks.com
is for Angst.
We can thank the Germans for angst [1]. Who but they could so concisely express the feeling of dread, anxiety, or anguish? A useful world for a distressing world.
[1] The word. Germans don’t have a corner on its production.
I spent the whole of yesterday at the Getty Center. Truly, I was none too keen on it, given my general opinion of J. Paul Getty—one of the great third basers who we are all supposed to bow down to. The fact that he was a miser doesn’t help matters. He loaned his son money to pay for the kidnap ransom of his grandson. But he is perhaps best known for providing a payphone for his house guests to use. But the great thing about misers is that they die—leaving their money to go to cool things like, well, the Getty Center.
The museum has a limited collection in some ways. It is heavy on neoclassical art. And it was very limit on modern and medieval (and older) works. Nonetheless, it had some exquisite pieces. For example, the image on the left is Frantisek Kupka’s pastel drawing Girl Shading Her Eyes. It was one of many pieces that I was not allowed to photograph. They are tyrants. But I was able to take photos and video of a number of other things that I will post later. In particular, they have the best single Impressionist exhibit that I’ve seen—20+ paintings.
They also had a very moving collection of illuminated manuscripts from roughly 1200 to 1500. Next to it was a collection of stained glass from the same period. I am rarely as moved by anything as I am religious art from this time. I find this very strange, because most modern religious art (western anyway) leaves me cold.
When I get back home, I plan to cut together a video with all the stuff I saw, along with my observations—for what they’re worth. One thing worth mentioning right now is that Renoir painted very much like Pissarro in their early years, but they went in very different directions. Anyway, that’s all for now.
Radio Lab produced an exceptional short program called Unraveling Bolero. It tells the story of the Anne Adams, a PhD cell biologist turned artist. Her change from science to art was the result of the early stages of a brain disease called frontotemporal dementia. The disease causes the language portion of the brain (left frontal lobe) to die. In the process, it opens up the mind to great creativity that the constant chatter of the left lobe tends to suppress.
This is apparently the same thing that happened to Maurice Ravel. I’ve always hated his Bolero (although I’m rethinking it now), even as I’ve liked his other work, which is much like Claude Debussy. The speculation is that Ravel suffered from the same brain disease. Anyway, Adams had a good run of 14 years, during which she produced an astounding amount of really compelling work.
I’m on vacation, so I don’t have time to talk about this stuff much. But here is some of her work that I really like.
Migraine:
International House:
Pebbles:
I caught a bit of The Rachel Maddow Show tonight as I made dinner. During one bit, she mentioned that since leading Iraq into ever more chaos for the Bush administration, L. Paul Bremer is now painting. She showed the painting on the left and I thought, “That looks really interesting.”
So I went to his site (which is shockingly badly designed). I was wrong. This one painting is by far the most interesting of the 50+ paintings on his site. And it is not nearly as interesting as I first thought.
Don’t get me wrong: the man has talent. He is like the many other good artists I appreciate when I visit the Sonoma Country Fair every year. But it is clearly “talented amateur” work.
Which of the following paintings is by L. Paul Bremer and which is by Edward Hopper?
I’m glad Bremer is pursuing his art. Why shouldn’t he be? He is very wealthy, so I wonder why he didn’t do it sooner. But if it isn’t time now, when he is 70 years old, when is it time? The truth is that most people confuse me. They waste their lives doing things they don’t like, even when they don’t have to. So the question is not why Bremer is pursuing his art; it is why he waited so long (he’s always been wealthy). Grandma Moses he’s not, but what does that matter?
When I was a kid, I thought comics sucked. The only mainstream comic I ever read was Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth. It was written and drawn by Jack Kirby. But it definitely wasn’t the art I liked. Kirby is a really important comic book artist. He more or less created Marvel Comics as we now know it. And his style was totally new: extreme perspective implying lots of motion. But it was Kirby the storyteller that I liked. (Stan Lee is overrated.)
What I liked about Kamandi is that it is a post-apocalyptic story about a kid on his own. The stories were interesting, unlike the stupid stories about Spiderman and the Fantastic Four. I’m just not into superheroes. But something like Kamandi, though rare, was interesting.
Then in 1971, East Coast Comix started publishing reprints of the EC Comics from the 1950s. They focused on the horror comics—Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear—but published other things like their western and war titles. I was in love!
To start, these comics were really well drawn by people like Jack Davis and Ghastly (Graham Ingels). Davis is (still alive at 87) just great, but Ghastly: he was, well, ghastly. When you read comics he drew, you try not to touch the pages for fear the ink will come off. No one could draw someone’s heart being ripped out of their chest like Ghastly!
What was most important about all the EC comics was how well they were written. Unlike superhero comics, you didn’t know how they were going to end. Sure, EC had its cliches. In particular, they loved revenge stories—especially in the horror titles. I remember one from Haunt of Fear No. 12 (This is probably not exactly right—I haven’t read it for 30 years!):
Great right? At least for a ten-year-old.
Maybe the stories weren’t so great. There’s no doubt they were much better than all the other comics of the time. But I suspect they were great. William Gaines and Al Feldstein (still alive at 86) pulled stories from a lot of great sources. I first read H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and Oscar Wilde in the pages of EC Comics.
What’s more, EC Comics introduced me to a whole world of comic books that were more than the popular tripe of the day: from Bernie Wrightson[1] and Vaughn Bodē[2] at that time to so many talented artists today. Just the same, I wish comic books were not called “graphic novels” and that they weren’t sold in Barnes & Nobel.
Here is the story of EC Comics, a video made for the Horror Hall Of Fame awarding publisher William Gaines:
[1] Some of Bernie Wrightson’s work:
[2] Some of Vaughn Bodē’s work:
I’ve written before about Melveena McKendrick’s exceptional biography, Cervantes. I just want to finish it off by providing a few quotations that I thought were very good.
Probably the most important thing I learned about Cervantes in this book is that the portrait of him (seen on the left), is not him.
This picture is the Juan Martínez de Jáuregui y Aguilar (Jáuregui) portrait of Miguel de Cervantes. Or so it is said. There are three major problems with the painting. First, Jáuregui would have only been 17 when he supposedly painted it. Second, he spells his name in a way he never spelled it. And third, he spells Cervantes name as it was never spelled.
The whole thing comes from the fact that in the Preface of Novelas Ejemplares (Exemplary Novels), Cervantes wrote:
According to McKendrick (p. 278):
We do have some idea of what Cervantes looked like, from Cervantes himself in the same Preface:
In discussing Cervantes’ writing, I was struck by this passage about a writer’s need to balance expression and privacy (p. 102):
The Prologue to Part One of Don Quixote is very funny. In it, Cervantes makes fun of his own lack of erudition. It turns out, his actual target was Lope de Vega (p. 199):
The book is also very useful in providing a look at how Don Quixote was viewed in Cervantes’ time (p. 223):
Finally, McKendrick provides a good view of Cervantes at the end of his life when he was famous and respected, but poor (p. 252):
I highly recommend Cervantes. It is a very lively read about a colorful man. And unlike English writers of that time, we actually know quite a lot about him.
This is a cry for help.
For a couple of weeks now, I’ve been signing off my email with, “As Mista Moose-Puppet-Head would say, ‘Ha-cha-cha-cha!'” It speaks volumes about who I am and how long I have been, that not a single person has thought to ask, “Who is Mista Moose-Puppet-Head?”
Maybe they all assumed that it is just another obscure reference from a guy known for obscure references. Or maybe they just thought that if someone named Mista says something, there’d best be no backtalk. But I think it all comes down to the fact that unless you know Mista Moose-Puppet-Head, you really can’t care about him. And you should. You really should.
I so wish that I could provide a picture of Mista Moose-Puppet-Head, but alas, I no longer have one. So all I can do is describe him and where he lived. You see, Mista Moose-Puppet-Head was not a nice guy. He was a despot. He ruled over the Puppet Theater and generally abused all of its inhabitants. All except one: the antimatter baby—the only non-puppet in the whole place. And Mista Moose-Puppet-Head? He was this tall guy with a puppet head who acted like Frank Sinatra in Randy Newman’s Lonely at the Top: filled with himself, but a star by any measure.
The Puppet Theater was a kind of post-apocalyptic universe where all the puppets were safe. Think: Beckett’s Endgame. It lived inside a little magazine called Naked Toast. But it would perhaps be more accurate to say that it existed inside the supremely twisted mind of artist and writer Mark Neville. No, not that Mark Neville. Or that. Or that. Damn these common names! (And yes, I am perfectly aware there are no links there.) I thought my Mark Neville would be easy to find. Certainly by now he would have scanned his Puppet Theater cartoons and put them on the internet! But no. Certainly there would be some mention of Mista Moose-Puppet-Head. Again: no. In fact, Google provides no results at all for the way I believe his name was actually spelled: Mista MoosePuppetHead. There is nothing on Naked Toast or its predecessor Orange Toast.
Could it be that Mark is dead, literally or artistically? What if he is? That’s bad news and there’s only one thing to say.
Ha-cha-cha-cha!
I have managed to find two old chapbooks of Mark’s: The Time Dog (1991) and Died: Not Yet (1992). That second title is a bit ominous.
[The header mentioned in his article is no longer used, but it is still available. It was created by Andrea, who is responsible for any art you find around here that looks professional. -FM]
As my 2.72 readers know, the header to this site is based upon an couple of paintings by Rene Magritte. One of them is not the following:
This is one of my very favorite Magritte paintings, however; it is called La Condition Humaine (“The Human Condition”) and was painted in 1935 (to distinguish it from a painting of the same name painted in 1933). Again and again, he used the device of hiding the object that he was painting. An example of this would be Le Fils de l’Homme (“The Son of Man”)—a self-portrait with a green apple obscuring his face. With “La condition humaine,” Magritte is obscuring what is behind the easel with an exact representation of what it is obscuring. Very clever, right? And beautiful!
So there I am at the library, and I notice The Art of Optical Illusions by Al Seckel. It is supposedly a book for young adults, but frankly, anyone who doesn’t find this book fascinating is dead. (Plus, it is the ultimate book for an LSD trip. I think.) So I’m flipping out as I flip through it, and I come to plate 33, titled “This is not a Magritte.”
Seckel has almost nothing to say about this photograph, “This photographer caught an unusual painting by an artist.” No other information is given for the photo. It looks rather old—judging from the the man’s dress and the high contrast (but that could just be the photographer). Certainly, the photograph was set up; this was not a coincidence. In fact, it could be done as follows:
It is wonderful to imagine that this photograph was taken before 1933 when Magritte first did this (as far as I know). Of course, it is also wonderful to think that some artists were trying to do Magritte in the real world. In addition to the photograph, there is a certain anti-art going on here, because anyone standing where the camera was at that time got to see this wonderful piece of ephemeral art. It is also possible that it is a fake. It could be a collage or worse. Regardless, I am interested in finding out.
I really like Rachel Maddow and I think she is really smart and knowledgeable. But the other night, she used René Magritte’s painting, The Treachery of Images to make a point. The painting is a realistic rendering of a tobacco pipe with the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”) written on it. Here is the segment:
The problem is, that she seem to misunderstand the painting. Magritte was not being ironic. He was making a comment about painting (or photography). The truth is, The Treachery of Images is not a pipe; it is a bunch of dried paint on a canvas that looks like a pipe; in other words, it is a painting of a pipe. This may not seem to be a very interesting point, but there is actually a lot here. Images are just that: images. They only become meaningful in the mind. Everyone knows that painting that (depending upon how you look at it) is two faces or a single vase—or another that is an old woman or a young woman. Nothing changes in the painting, ever; but depending upon the state of your mind, everything changes.
Maddow used Magritte’s painting to good effect, but that effect depends upon trivializing the painting. I am not saying that everything is just a matter of how you look at it. I believe there is some absolute reality. For example, The Treachery of Images is most definitely oil paint dried on a canvas. Also: the current protests in Wisconsin are most definitely about union rights. But Magritte’s painting: it is most assuredly not a pipe.
Yesterday, I had a curious, but ultimately delightful meeting with a young artist named George Henry. He is working on a collection of photographs of the poor, dispossessed, and wounded. And he thought I might be of some help in this endeavor—how much remains to be seen. Until I met with him, I had not seen his work, but a cursory review of his online photo-album showed him to be at least a very interesting artist.
The meeting did not start off terribly well. I was concerned about the project that George had in mind; I thought it might be exploitative. This concern quickly vanished after seeing some of his work and talking to him. Just as my concern was fading, his was rising. He became agitated. “Why are you helping me?” he wanted to know. This struck me as a strange question, so I answered bluntly, “I’m not helping you—at least not yet.” And then he was concerned that maybe I wasn’t who I claimed to be. This all ended in what was—for me—a humorous episode where I showed him my driver’s license. This seemed to assuage his concerns and we went on to have a three-hour conversation with topics as far-flung as the cardinality of different infinities, using literature to determine if you are dreaming, and how platonic idealism makes me a bad artist.
Even without this young man’s (he is only 21 years old) formidable talent (more on that in a moment), he was well worth meeting. It is so rare that I meet people—much less young people—who are interested in much of anything. George seems to be interested in just about everything.
The self-portrait above is a very good likeness of him—both in appearance and attitude. He has a certain frightened yet defiant air about him. Whatever the reason for this (and I could speculate, but it makes me sound so old), he comes off as a cool guy. You can imagine him at the back of the Royal Roost in ’49 to experience Miles Davis at the birth of the cool before anyone new it was cool. One of his paintings is called, “All My Heroes Are Long Gone.”
From left to right, they are: Leo Tolstoy, Bill Hicks, GG Allin, Andy Kaufman, Travis Bickle, Salvador Dali, and George Orwell. The inclusion of Travis Bickle is a bit perplexing or just creepy, given that he is one of the most evil characters I can think of. But he does fit in with this group. All of them are rebels. The problem with Bickle is his motivation: “Kill a senator? Kill a pimp? It’s all good.” George Henry does seem to have a certain fascination with death.
What is most compelling about his photographs is what he chooses to shoot. It has a profound affect on his art. Looking at many of his photographs, I often think that I am looking at images from my childhood. There are a number of shots around a junkyard that are exceptional. I particularly like a shot of two little girls who apparently live there; the camera is tilted slightly—giving the feel that the girls are being flung off the earth. His feel for pain is tangible, and he snatches it in the most unlikely places. And, as you can see in the picture of the train stopped in the middle of a snow-covered forest, he is capable exquisite photographic composition.
George Henry’s painting is less consistent than his photography. This may have something to do with his media: he often works on plywood and even particle board. He seems much more at ease with charcoal and paper, as in the self-portrait above. But he always has interesting ideas. The following image, called “Made of Paint,” is very compelling.
There is a great deal to like from this talented young man. I will be very interested to see what he does over the next couple of decades.
The top Classical Realist painters seem to sell large canvas oils for upwards of a couple hundred thousand dollars. So the money isn’t bad, if you are very good—which you must be to create even workman-like paintings in this sub-field.
