Curatorialist

Danger Mouse is the guy who did that mash-up album of The Beatles’ White album and Jay-Z’s Black album. He’s back with another album ensnarled in controversy, called “Dark Night of the Soul.” But you knew all that. The album is a who’s who of musical and cultural importance; from The Shins’ James Mercer to The Strokes to Sparklehorse to Iggy Pop to. What was strange was that David Lynch’s name was also attached to it. That didn’t ever seem to make sense. Well, now, because of some potential lawsuit, the album has been released but with, get this, no music. That’s right, it comes with a blank CD. One guess what you’re supposed to do with that thing as, oops, the songs have somehow all turned up online. The thing you might not know is that there’s a show opening tomorrow night (May 30th) of David Lynch’s photographs that appear in the music-less album’s attached book. The show is at the Kohn Gallery on Beverly and is also called “Dark Night of the Soul.” And the music playing in the background will be, you guessed it, the unreleased music of Danger Mouse and crew.

The chaos of it all got me thinking about David Lynch movies, shows, photos and weather reports. It’s all stream of conscious. It doesn’t move in a linear fashion, or even in a temporally correct kind of way. Instead it meanders in and out of environments and realities, the only thing you have left to hold onto are themes, which you eventually come to realize, are the most important thing anyway. It seemed weird for him to be involved in a music project from the beginning, but now that it’s all so confusing, it’s actually starting to make sense.

Here’s where you can listen to the album

Here’s the gallery opening info

Here’s David Lynch’s weather report

Enjoy enjoying it.

Yes, a year ago. I can’t remember to eat dinner most nights, but this random moment somehow sticks in my brain like a thumbtack. I was reading an article about a crazy Frenchman, named Michel Fournier, who was planning on taking a balloon 25 miles up into space so that he could jump out and set some kind of record. It was an interesting article, but the user comments were twice as entertaining. For fun, I did a search to see if I could find one of them that I remembered. Yup, the digital library of everything ever uttered still works. I don’t know why, but it still makes me chuckle.

The article was called, “Frenchman Plummeting 25 Miles From the Sky Will Break Sound Barrier, World Records.” Published in Gizmodo

This guy’s user comment was:

Based on the information above, here are 10 headlines to accompany his potential death.

10. World record set for longest suicide.

9. Man locks self in capsule, floats into outer space.

8. Man in fire retardant suit catches fire.

7. Unidentified aircraft shot down by military. People continue to live.

6. Sky diver hit by jumbo jet.

5. Parachute proves useless for man rocketing to ground.

4. Death drop, 15 minutes without parachute.

3. Man dies of shitting, heart attack.

2. Man jumps from space, lands on flagpole.

1. Man survives jump, eaten by bear.

People are funny.

You’re wondering what happened to him, aren’t you? Well, as it turns out, he never got off the ground. It would seem that improper attaching of the balloon part of his contraption caused it to float away while he was filling it. Why do the French make fun of us, again?

As you may have noticed, my RAM (Random Artist of the Month) is actually more like RAW. That’s what makes it random!

There’s so much to like about Robert Longo, for me. He studied sculpture, but preferred drawing. He was/is heavily influenced by all forms of popular culture and mass media. But he did something that no artist did for me – he bridged a gap between drawing and fine art in a way I hadn’t seen before. All the drawings I had studied and admired in art school, and before, were more like sketches. Rarely would you see a drawing for drawing’s sake and if you did, it was usually of the Picasso variety, which felt like the pen was held with two fingers near the top. Longo’s “Men in Cities” series, which depicted business men (and women, actually) against a white seamless background, were rendered to perfection. The images were stark and gorgeously applied with thick lines and layers of shading. It’s said that graphite is his clay.

The writhing poses of his figures in that series added to the effectiveness of the image and the white seamless background which served to single out the image in some kind of hero-ized fashion was, potentially, ground zero for all the ads we see today on white backgrounds. It is not as though he invented the white backdrop, but for many, it was the effectiveness of that series that burned that graphic style into our brains.

I followed Longo through his career for a long time, buying his books and prints and even spending time emulating his drawing style. He has other great pieces of work, most notably his “Black Flags” series, but also continues to do extraordinary charcoal drawings that blow your mind and challenge your brain. He has an incredible eye for iconic imagery and depicts them in such a way that you are forced to evaluate your belief system and understanding of it. From Longo’s drawings, one can learn about photography, sculpture, fine art and graphic art. But one can also learn about the world, media and the place of the observer.

You see remnants of his work and style all over the place. Take this Portland artist, Zach Johnsen. His drawings/illustrations are also top notch, and he’s certainly got his own thing going on, but there is a lotta Longo in there. And that ain’t a bad thing.

Not just that these guys really are brothers, which is always fodder for good crazy fun. Not just they used to play at 42nd St and Union Sq., in the subway. Not just that they sound somewhat identical to my high school band. Not just that they look like about the most fun bunch of fellas you’d ever want to get in a van with. But for the pure raw energy of a band just playing because it pleases them. And all that other stuff.

Found this one, too:

I not only remember my first pair, I remember what else I was wearing when I got them. Blue O.P. shorts and a white O.P. shirt with a sunset scene on it. It’s easy to remember because I didn’t own any other clothes. The “Era” wasn’t just a cool shoe to have, it was the only shoe to have. It was designed by skaters for skaters. It was somewhere around 1980 and I was somewhere around 12 years old. I was spending as much time as I could at the Del Mar Skate Ranch, buying G&S stickers, eating Abba Zabas, drooling over Independent Trucks and playing the newly-released Pac-Man. It was MAYHEM at the Del Mar Skate Ranch – kids were everywhere. Skateboarding and video games were blowing up. For those of us that used to go to Oasis to skate, we couldn’t freaking believe ourselves. I grew up right on 24th St., so I could walk to the park by hopping over the slew and the train tracks, pass by the abandoned building with the broken windows and never even cross a street. The skate park was basically my backyard.

Continue reading ‘New book on Vans Shoes. Recalling an Era.’

I’ve had this story rolling around in my head for years…

A girl takes a photography class in college. As part of a class assignment, she grabs a suave freshman student to sit for her on a sheet-covered couch, siting against a wall, etc. Natural light fills the room, perhaps a bit over-exposed but nice – the subject smiles and is unusually comfortable and relaxed in front of the lens. The pictures capture something but she dismisses it and goes on to major in psychology.

29 years pass, the girl has her own practice, and that guy in the picture suddenly turns up as the President of the United States. What are the chances? She rummages through her garage, past old yearbooks and that first Nikkormat SLR. She wipes the dust from the viewfinder. Then, under a stack of old records and letters, she finds a proof sheet. It’s him.

Continue reading ‘“The Obama Photographs” Why does real life keep stealing my best ideas?’

Just found this nice animated gif, wandering around the Web. Back in the old days, we really sweated over this kind of stuff in GifBuilder. In fact, out of habit, I immediately took a look at how big this file was (392k!) and started thinking of ways I could knock that down. Old habits die hard, I guess. I just like how well it captures NYC. In just a few frames, I am somehow transported. And the fact that it’s a Gif somehow makes it all the more cool.

“Really?”

Back a number of years ago, I tried to put an end to the term, “Whatever.” At least in my little corner of the world. John Lennon said that “Apathy isn’t it.” And I believe that. Any person content to dismiss a situation with a single word seemed like part of the problem to me. And the term had an air of condescension to it, as though some kind of beachhead was gained for the person who cared least. I railed against it, chose not to associate with people who used it and let it infuriate me to no end. Eventually, either the word lost its spunk or people eventually realized that not caring put them, actually, in a place of disengagement that has little worth in most of life’s real endeavors. I suppose I just outlasted the “Whateverers.”

Enter “Really?” Not since “whatever” have I had this kind of visceral reaction against a word. For the most part, memes like “Really?” gain popularity because they make communicating a complex idea simpler. The NY Times has put the term to good use in their Science section, with a column by Anahad O’Connor called “Really?” where she tackles science questions, mostly pertaining to health. In that case it’s not sarcastic, so it sets up the column well. But when it does veer into the sarcastic, the message often gets lost. Take the article that ran in the LA Times Business section this morning, entitled: “GOP rides on the ‘Daisy ad’ storm. Really?” By adding that single word, we get it – the author is incredulous.

Continue reading ‘“Really?” The lazy man’s opinion.’

It was sad to hear that Claes Oldenburg’s wife, whom he also worked hand-in-hand with on his art, died this past January. To think of him working alone, without her, reminds me of my own grandparents’ years that they had to live without their significant others. Although in my family, the women all outlast the men. It also reminds me that different artists work best in different kinds of environments. Some close the doors and hole themselves up and others open their studios and prefer the presence of others. Warhol, obviously, was the ultimate open door artist. In fact, it could be said that, later on at least, he had no ideas of his own, but to reflect the world that swirled around him. He let his own fame become his art. And what is fame without the audience?

To have been part of the Pop Art movement and remained alive, innovative, new and truly relevant has been nearly the sole proprietary space of Claes Oldenburg – and the man knows how to fill a space. The show at The Whitney, in NY, features a number of works by Oldenburg and I’m itching to go see it. It is, in some ways, a retrospective, but seems to be marking a turning point in the 80-year old’s life. How his art changes is something I am more than curious to see.