...more recent posts
Thousands more cute pictures like this one await you at the VCL Anthropomorphic Image Library. The image I selected is Mulonica, a dragon created by Krystal Ishida (aka Mystica), which reminds me of Rousseau's Sleeping Gypsy. I have to say, as an artist, Krystal has got it goin' on. (Check out her page at VCL here.) She works in Paintshop Pro, and I love the "watercolor" textures she uses, in combination with her pixelated line. Her drawings of Pokemon and other anime-type characters have real punch and verve, and she sneaks in a lot of autobiography under the guise of these cuddly critters (VCL guidelines dictate that drawings be "furry/anthropomorphic"). If she wants a character to look angry, it looks angry. Ditto sad, lonely, sprightly... In other words, she's a "natural," and it's quite unfair to read her post that "my dad said that if my art was for sale, no one would buy it off me any way." Dad, you are so wrong!
seeing and believing
friends called him Barney....
Some familiar suspects at Galapagos tonight:
DR. MOM is the new joint venture between actress/writer/performer Ann Magnuson, drummer Roger Murdock, guitarist Dave Rick and bassist Stuart Popejoy. Ann and Dave were in Bongwater together, Dave and Rog were in King Missile together. Word is that Stuart was discovered in Albuquerque, NM in a dumpster with his passport and a bass guitar....hmmph, anyway, DR. MOM plan on performing a bunch of recalibrated Bongwater tunes, amusing covers and perhaps a few embryonic pieces foretelling possible continued collaboration. Good luck!
Hey, Bill! "6.4=Make Out" is being reissued! (Brian's probably already heard this.) Neil Strauss's Times story on the great Gary Wilson is on my miscellaneous page. Here's a choice tidbit:
"On Saturday night, I arrived at Mr. Wilson's house to conduct his first interview for publication since the late 1970's. For the last 17 years, it seems, Mr. Wilson, 48, has played keyboards in a lounge act whose members and audience are not familiar with his original music. (Mr. Wilson's father was a jazz bassist who often played hotel lounges.) At midnight he reports to a pornography bookstore and peep show, where he works behind two layers of bullet-proof glass, handling cash and dispensing tokens."
Wilson's LP is amazing; I can't wait to pick it up on CD.
I've never really warmed up to Richter, though I agree that many of the abstractions are "beautiful". They have a hollowness; a lack of engagement and belief, which typifies the transition between Modern and Postmodern (or some such thing). Like Johns & Rauschenberg, they're about letting the air out of Abstract Expressionism, but in a much cooler, detached manner, without the humor of the Americans. With Ab Ex, a bad painting might be an interesting sort of failure, with Richter, it's more like, "here's a good one, here's a less good one, let's move along". The photo-based works strike me similarly, but the imagery allows for more associative readings. Taken together, his various works make up a larger project, which serves to further deflate the value of any given piece seen in isolation. Again, this "whole greater than the sum of its parts" strategy is characteristically PoMo.