The artist as Monkey

I'll take a break from ranting about Gaddafi for a moment to look at some old drawings that I found in the back of my excessively heavy flat file, again, years later, I thank Mike Bell for helping me drag that f'n thing up the stairs to my studio.

As some of you know, I have referred to myself as the Art Monkey, I feel that the Artist is a monkey who must respond to the needs of his/her environment. It is a bit like being a private dancer, but hey, when you are a dancer for money, I do what you want me to do.

I was working this insane gig back in 1995, painting in a restaurant, I had painted a mural there, now they wanted me to paint canvases while the glitterati ate red meat.

It was heinous but it came with a free meal.

I felt like those little monkeys with the cymbals you wind up for amusement.



You get the idea, then a few years later, I was in India and my mind was blown by Hanuman, the monkey god who goes around performing tasks, he flies on a cloud when needed and does one's bidding. I'm not saying I have Rama's portrait emblazoned on my heart or anything but it spoke to me.

So I think somewhere around 2002-3 I did these series of drawings of Monkeys. Monkey as artist, monkey as guy looking at a laptop sippin' coffee, etc.

And some as a kind of Hanuman friend to the animals, the cow image is something that i remember from the beach, these cows that would just walk around so I wanted to put an element of that memory into these drawings.

Its always interesting to look at work of yours from another time period, sheds light on what you were doing, interests and concerns.

Gaddafi Wins, what next for the West?

Hey don't get me wrong, I want Charlie Sheen to win over Gaddafi, 100% of the time, you can take that to the bank.

But, we do not need Muammar to get a Twitter account to know what he has been up to or what he would do if he can maintain power.

So the question remains not what the crazed despot will do next, we know that already (torture, maim and kill- all with total disrespect for the fashion tzars- except for perhaps Mr. Galliano???) but what will the West do if Gaddafi secures control over Libya, we know the oil business would like to put its head in the sand and just collect money but can we just accept that by buying his oil, yet again, the West enriches its own enemies?

Personally, I would like to see a little Mano e Mano with someone like Charlie Sheen and Gaddafi to fight to the death in the Circus Maximus with nuclear powered dildos....

In all seriousness, I was looking up quotes of these two twerps, and I just had to laugh, what else can I do...?

Charlie

Gaddafi

But you know, why waste your time with these two intellectual lightweights?

All the important quotes are right here

Gaddafi plays with Libyans as if they are Toy Soldiers

Yes, Mr. Gaddafi, your people love you.

Yes, you are proving each day that they lay down their lives as you mow them down.

No matter how much of an insane megalomaniac Gaddafi seemed in the 1980s, he is outdoing himself in the present.

What really irks me with the SNL send up of Gaddafi recently is that they just straight mimicked his Africa pin rather than making that in the LIVEAID logo, as so much of that money was un-tracked and no one knows how much went to starving people and how much went to despots.

By the way, did you ever watch LIVEAID? That Saturday was really hot in Toronto and the last thing I wanted to be doing was staying at home watching a concert so I popped in a VHS tape ( my Dad always kept the Beta to himself)turned on the VCR and promptly forgot about it for about 10 years. SO, somewhere between 1995-2000 I watched the concert of the decade. It was, merdeloaf. Anyway you cut it, it was MERDE. For serious.



But I still have the tape and the commercials are the bomb, you cannot believe it was 1985, it looks like the 1980 or 1979. Commercials for Vodka Cooler and crap like that. Ok, ok, Queen was ok, Bono was already the Bono he is now, but we were 15 years away from realising that.

Anyways, back to tyrants....

But as Brutus was to have said and more recently John Wilkes Booth, who shouted Sic semper tyrannis, after shooting Lincoln and then jumping from the presidential box at the Ford theatre and onto the stage during the performance of My American Cousin (Sic semper tyrannis = thus always to tyrants {their brutal endings} is the translation ) but, in relation to Gaddafi, when I ask you, when???

Of course this is a mixed message as the senate behind the Julius Caesar assassination were a bunch of a holes and Booth was a racist narcissist.

Still, I hope you get the idea.

While we wait for some form of brutal ending for Gaddafi, I would prefer he played with toy soldiers instead of real people. He seems to be obsessed with toys, he has a cadre of expendable toy soldiers around him and his famous 40 female virgins that are his Amazon body guards.

Maybe what he needs is a few ACTUAL toy soldiers and less toying with real people.

Here are a couple of toys I painted a few months back. These 2 watercolour sketches show some GI Joes, both clothed and naked like Helmut Newton's photo of models from years gone by.

Oscars are painful, look at these drawings instead.

Good Lord are the Oscars worse than ever!

Anne Hathaway is getting the over zealous nerd-jock role down pat, James Franco is just seeming invisible. We caught a glimpse of Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin dancing together but the Academy switched screens to focus on Penelope Cruz for a super long shot. And lastly, everyone is kissing the Academy's ass.

What happened to the days of a native woman saying Marlon Brando cannot accept this award.

Man, people do something interesting!!!



Look at Roger Moore, how the hell was anyone to believe he was James Bond? he has no idea idea what to do, what a lame duck.

As a result, here we are loading some pictures onto my blog, the Oscars are just too painful, where the hell is Ricky Gervais? He should have been flown in to save the day after the painful opening scene.

Billy Crystal came out for a bit and you could hear the collective sigh of relief, everyone could at least have a few laughs.

So here is a couple of sketches from some work that is on the sketchbook at the moment.

As you can see with the above image, it plays off of Goya's print, Wonderful Heroism! Against Dead Men! from his series, Disasters of War. I was thinking about heroism and the ideas of manhood. As with previous work, I am using the GI Joe dolls of the 1970s as a representation of the aging adult male. Contrasted to this paragon of self doubt are female characters drawn from Penthouse magazines from the same era, I have quite a stack of mint issues from the early to late 70s.

Anyways, here is the print from the Disasters of War by Goya, this series is powerful and macabre as, well really, most of his later work. I am reading Robert Hughes book on him right now.

This a version by those tools, the chapman brothers. These 2 Brits are called bad boys, but bad only if you consider making horribly obvious work that beats you over the head and makes you think Oliver Stone is subtle. Then these to ponces are radical. They made this stupid sculpture back in the late 1990s which was dreadful and I was so happy to read it was consumed in a fire when a warehouse belonging to Saatchi went up. Good riddance!

These watercolours sketches are studies for my upcoming show at Loop Gallery with Larry Eisenstein, the amazing artist. Right now I'm working out the details of this imagery.

Man, I look up at the Oscars, it bombs full stop!

By the way, here is the website of Sacheen Littlefeather, the woman who spoke on Brando's behalf. No one knows what happened to that Oscar award by the way.

Clothing, Despots and really really good Villians are always British

Sure, when you think of Die Hard the late 80s action film opus, you think of the last of the archetype villain who is German, Hans Gruber.




Within a year, Lethal Weapon 2 would be released and the villains were no longer Germans, our post war animosities were put to rest and now it was the South Africans, with Apartheid, who were the baddies, trading Krugerrands on the streets of LA.



Of course what made Die Hard villain so devilish was Alan Rickman's acting, a classic Brit. He is suave, the first wave of Euro trash we see in Hollywood and this suaveness is shown by his talk of clothes, he mentions how Yasser Arafat has 2 shirts from Brooks Brothers himself. Man, is this guy evil, he knows what a former terrorist wears.

Yasser had a far better idea of how to dress than Gaddafi, like Castro, he decided never to stray from his initial fashion success and stayed with the military olive drab by and large. Why did he not call Muammar up and lecture him on his outlandish fashion sense, I'll never know. Anyways, what is done is done, Gaddafi needs to dress like he is a friend of Diane Keaton, making his own dresses for the red carpet on Oscar night.

Here is the Tyrant who brought us the rumble in the Jungle and his fashion sense:

On the other hand, have a look at these jackets, this is Military influenced fashion that is bang on the money

You can tell these styling of these jackets are just perfect. Many come from a now defunct place in NYC called Operations. These paintings are from my series on Jan's Jackets, and at about 12 Watercolour and Ink, that is pretty much the whole run that I will do of them.

The original idea came from some jackets of mine that were destroyed and I worked on repairing them, then from there, I started painting images of them but abandoned the project. The title came to me in a flash at the time, Battle Dress, as my clothing was often military styled or a military jacket and appeared to have gone through the wars, I will not elaborate.

Here is one of those paintings from about 2 years ago, soon I'll post some more as they are completed.

Lastly, as those who know me, you will remember my Lethal Weapon 2 phase last year where I could not stop making references to it, Alma Varda...9 o'clock. Like that.

Anyways, back when we all sat in a car watching LW2 back in 1989 at a drive-in we all laughed at the scene where the evil South African Diplomat shoots Riggs (Mel) and then shouts "Diplomatic Immunity" as a defence.

Well of course, Murtagh was gonna waste him!

But yet again, proving that life is stranger than that thing that Hollywood claims is art, is the recent news that a US diplomat shot and killed 2 men in Pakistan, he may be a CIA operative and the US says that Pakistan has no right to hold him as he has diplomatic immunity!



here is the BBC article

Libya, Gaddafi and the passage of time

You know, this guy has always been a piece of work, not the least reason being that it appears that his form of plastic surgery/botox was some treatment where they hold a blow torch to your face, Yowzers Kaddafi (as he was called in the 1970s) burst on to the scene in the 1970s and looked relatively normal

This would be exhibit A if you will, contrast that to this footage, it looks like he is wearing a skin mask that he got a la Silence of the Lambs.

In exhibit B, the footage, he exhibits all the traits of a dictator as described by Norman Mailer in "When we were Kings" something to the effect of Ugly, brutal and a ridiculous panache for dressing themselves- I am liberally lifting from what I remember but hey, i saw the film once in 1996 so cut me some slack.

Part of my lament for passage of time that this fool has been around, is that I remember a Saturday Night Live skit they did for a Gaddafi line of clothing " for when you are on the way to an execution" but I cannot track it down, I think it had Bill Murray walking around modeling the clothes around a Jeep.

To think he has been in power that long and able to keep fooling the world, blowing up the plane over Lockerbie Scotland, and then having the audacity to call the protesters "terrorists" by that turn he should be loving them. Not to mention his making nice with the US and the West in general by or is that buy giving 1.5 billion dollars as compensation for the country's collusion with terrorist, which of course they deny but just wanted the US sanctions to end. It is rather hilarious in a mad way. Now of course, no longer a terrorist, Libya took the role of representing the human rights chair at the UN, its true, as Mordechai Richler said, the need for a satirist is over, every day is satire.

So this may not directly relate to the arts, but is more on the reflections on culture; and in closing-

In the spirit of SNL, this is my David Spade tribute:

"Hey Mo Mar!
Guinan called from Star Trek Next Generation, she says she wants her clothes back, Pronto!"

wallpaper

In Buenos Aires, near the Chacaritta cemetary, there is this crazy warehouse that is absolutely loaded to the rafters (I should know, i was in the rafters) with Wallpaper. When you hear about this, you picture ancient beautiful Argentinian wallpaper, loaded with toxic chemicals but vintage and yet the reality ? The place has thousands and thousands of remaindered rolls from the USA in the 70s and 80s. There were rolls from Wisconsin and as far as some made in Canada which have been shipped to this place.
Why? Who knows.

The place as you can see from this simple phone pic, is a real mess. It is an Insurance collection waiting to happen. The place has rolls and borders everwhere, but we came out that way so we had to grab something.

February 19th, 2011

Not sure where this was drawn....

February 18th, 2011

A live band at the milonga

More sketches from Buenos Aires...Tango.

These are a few sketches of the very popular tango scenes down here, I liked watching all the people on the sidelines- a real interesting assortment of Lautrec to Bruegel types if you catch my drift.

These dance halls are interesting as you have some ancient creepy cronies and young people, a real mix.

I didn't think it was too fair to sit near the front, it would afford me the best view but would block people from the subtle head and eye movements that say whether or not a dance is on.



This Milonga, was set up like a high school dance, wallflowers against the long walls, men to one side, women to the other.




The lady in the middle of the above painting had crazy collagen implants on her lips that seemed to have gone sideways or something, blobs above and below her lips, it was hard to portray that.

More to the left, the woman in the red skirt is Christine, an Australian woman who is staying in the same place as us, soon after this picture was completed she danced with a guy who stomped on her toe and ripped the nail off, yikes.

Ladies at the Milonga

working sketches

working in the sketchbook on some ideas for an upcoming show at Loop. Here are just a few of the things I'm playing with at the moment.





These sketches are my thoughts and creating the type of short hand that my new work will come out of in the next few weeks. With these pictures, I was thinking of British-Portuguese artist, Paula Rego. Her work about childhood and her handling of materials is always an inspiration.




On a totally different note, when I was in the market on Sunday I painted a few small sketches in watercolour of people, this is one of them. This guy gives a tango show, I won't bore you with the details, but he starts the music people all come together and then nothing happens for awhile and everyone leaves, or sometimes he dances, hard to figure out the reason.

Quick Sketches at a Milonga

These are fast moving people so its a tough gig, let me tell you!

Insomnia

I was thinking maybe sung to the tune of Victoria by the Kinks, at least that is the song I think it is. I hear that guy from the Kinks singing it anyways.

Well, while I'm up I thought, why not post a few more pictures, indeed.

As with my previous if ancient post, I was working on this jacket project, I have finally completed those 12 paintings, thanks to Myles for his generosity in lending me these beautiful and truly precious jackets (coats? I am not 100% sure, i still have a hard time figuring out if something is a skirt or a dress)

I digress, the point I was trying to make was that these belonged to Jan and they are great articles of clothing which say a few things about her, her style and personality. I hope some of these paintings capture those qualities.



This is a great jacket, the cut and line make it ideal to paint. These are not my favorite of the series, but somewheres in the middle. Near the end, I hit my stride and really got somethings that I was really trying to do with this small series. I will get to the post some of those in about a week. They are a little less technicolor and more graphic me thinks.



Well with the other jacket from my previous post you get the idea of what the work looks like. For me, it was great to have something to really focus on after getting the studio re-organized this winter, laid down some new flooring and put mostly everything on wheels- mobile and nimble to accommodate whatever is going on. This is good to as I have to hit high production for my next show with Loop gallery in a few months with Larry Eisenstein, an amazing thoughtful and challenging artist.

Here is a link to Larry's postings he does with ARTPOST, its a interesting blog that is divided up into different artists, Larry is one of them, worth a peruse. Larry's is the top left corner.

BTW, I looked at the lyrics to Victoria, pretty odd, not surprising I guess.
Here is a link to the video.



The guy is frickin' flippin his lid up on stage.

Insomnia.....

February 9th, 2011

April 01, 2011

People selling junk

These people were like hippie tourists selling braids and crap like that. You could smell people did not wash, camped a lot and thought the rave scene in The Matrix 2 was HOT...Yikes, tres yikes.

San Telmo Market Painting III

I would like to show the whole thing at once, but it is just too long. You ever at the studio, remind me and I'll show you.

San Telmo Market Painting II

Here I moved to the area where people sell dreadful paintings or photos. On the left a tourist lady, on the right a aforementioned artist, this guy was from the States and was talking about Alien landings.....

San Telmo Market Painting

Using the Japanese fold out Moleskine, I sat at the San Telmo antique market and ink sketched a long flowing record of a few hours, as people walked in front of me, like this woman's butt, they just got added into the record.

Ongoing work

This painting is something that I am working on at the moment at the studio. There is so much that I can say about this Jacket and the others like it that have been graciously loaned to me, but suffice to say that I am really interested in trying to capture something in my painting, something at odds with the tangible of this object.

I started with an old piece of Fabriano paper, that I probably had around since 1992, then China ink in layers building up the underlying structure or architecture of this amazing piece of clothing and finally gouache paint, introducing some colour and texture to the painting.

I found the time to make it to the AGO, in truth, we went to Frank the restaurant, the snacks are great, the mixed drinks are too sweet for me.

Anyways, speaking of art, we stuck around long enough to check out the Julian Schnabel retrospective, a superstar of art, according to the AGO.

Really interesting to see the work, still after all these years I don't really get the broken plate paintings, I hope never do in a way.

Having said that, the painting that really touched me was the black velvet painting of Andy Warhol. Interestingly, this painting and the ones around it were in an intimate space not the volumes of air and concrete the AGO committed to this New York Big Mouth who has all but referred to himself as a modern incarnation of Picasso. For all that loud clothes and his bravado, there is something exceptionally touching in this piece he must of saw in Warhol, whose by his own accounts was fairly vacuous, so this painting dialogue between big mouth and superficial is something much greater than the sum of their parts.

here is an article from the Globe and Mail, see what they have to say


Maybe I am a sucker for velvet paintings ever since we had a red bull fighter in our dining room that my Dad painted.

Here is that painting, in the basement with an illustration on top of it from a series of photo/paintings of mine from 2006.



Julian Schnabel: Art and Film

continues until January 2, 2011, take your honey and have some fries and booze at FRANK.