8/08/2007

Harold Stevenson

93 comments:

Painter said...

Harold Stevenson @
Matthew Marks Gallery
523 W 24th St NYC




Project for a revolution in New York

milf-magic said...

WHOA.

It's like

the Art

is

looking

at

ME!


WHOA!

youth--less said...

Oh, that MM, Painter

Lots of cropping in this exhibit. Amputation. Sexy like Ballard. Quaint.

SisterBee said...

Oh, dear.

Unknown said...

small hands, probably smells like cabbage.

we call that sausage fingers.

The hand does look small though doesn't it, is that supposed to be a child?

None said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

I agree Qq, I don't see it as holding open a dead eye, but as enclosing their own eye.

The hand doesn't work right for it to be someone elses. A dead guy would be laying on the floor and some standing above him would have to contort their hand to get in that position. That's the dead guy's right hand.

I think I would like it more as holding open a dead eye.

amy boras said...

it almost looks like the eye part is in front of the hand, like the hand is holding it.

Nomi Lubin said...

Yes ^^^

no-where-man said...

its a fetish thing.

he is part of the "The New Realists", and classic Pop thang, Warhol crew even. nothing against jpg's, it may help to consider.

"Robert Rosenblum has located it within the American tradition of "Gigantism," which ranges from sublime 19th-century landscapes of the West to the sprawling abstractions of Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still.

poppy said...

Will this site let me post now? Let's see..

poppy said...

Whoever owns the eye owns the hand,..anatomically speaking of course.. but one never knows with these crazy narratives..

Some people seem to like this painting better if the story fits...
How do you get the inside scoop? Is there text to accompany this? Here lies the mystery of the close crop..

zipthwung said...

oh yeah

poppy said...

see, why can't i look at those last 2 images in a gallery,,.. but instead I'm forced to contemplate who owns the fat set of fingers and who's eye are they not prying open, anatomically speaking...

CAP said...

As a concept (or just a jpeg) it reminds me of really bad 70s rock album covers.
This would be a British band, needless to say, called Peeping Percy or something, a concept album describing some improbable odyssey, (Jethro Tull puts in a guest appearance), their only album, mercifully.

Not even Currin can redeem this territory.

Incidentally, on women sci-fi writers I’d add Pat Cadigan, Pat Murphy, Connie Willis and Octavia Butler, just from my own collection.

Of course I haven’t read any of that stuff for about 20 years, he said, hastening to preserve some shred of credibility.

zipthwung said...

I see them everywhere

I used to read sci fi - - now I just let other people tell me about it. I don't need the drama.

science fiction can be pretty transgressive, you know, penetrating the void and all that.

zipthwung said...

ok Time Out NY sheeple!

"Nearby, a Barbara Kruger graphic looking the worse for wear assaults the eye with what should be the stunningly accusatory phrase, you invest in the divinity of the masterpiece. In this context, viewers can only wish that Umland had made such an investment, or imagined this work as more than the sum of its mundane parts."

here

The alchemy of good curating amounts to this: Sometimes, placing one work of art near another makes one plus one equal three.

Jerry Saltz

with each gallery installed according to an elementary "compare and contrast" logic, good for those who think that curating is about making 1 + 1 = 3.

Walter Robinson

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
no-where-man said...

its Roy Dale Billy's eye.

Daft punk is playing 2morrow and they are giving free mini dv tapes for anyone who wants to tape the first hour. its going to be epic.

hey Cooky
i have given up finding my copy of the movie with the andy you want - but i hunted down where i can borrow the original ill let you know as soon as i get time to grab it, and can link to it. prob a mid sept. - watching factory girl in our new home theater (we found a bunch of couches - one is cheetta print and lined em up ;) we will do screenings this fall.

Nomi Lubin said...

When I look at the larger image of this picture on Matthew Marks' site, the space works better, less confusing.

But this painting is gigantic (considering the subject matter). It's 120x180 inches.

I sometimes have a problem when something is painted larger than life size. Often feels stagy. This, though, is beyond "larger than life size."

CAP said...

“I can see the whole room from here and… I’m the biggest thing in it!”

“Oh yeah!”

“Oh…”

“Uh…”

“Oh…”

“Uh...”

“My extravagance, my pretension and indulgence, my presumption and conceit, my myopic bombast and incompetence… it all makes me…
Big
Big
Big
BIGMEOUT!”

“Oh my! It’s so me, I mean eye… all seeing on the one hand and…”

“It’s not that I’m so dumb I give Gay a bad name anymore now Gay is so comfortable it can afford to open a branch in dumb.”

“Yeah, see I can see the whole room from up here and I’m working it even when it’s empty.”

zipthwung said...

The grid the square the circle....

this is better on so many more levels

youth--less said...

Dont the last 3 fall under the it-was-bad-in-the-60s-and-its-still-bad category.

badfinger

CAP said...

I award Today's Robert Fripp Trophy for Web Research, to No Rush, only by a short half-head, mind you, from Zip's Pussycabs.

milf-magic said...

Hello badfinger painting! You make me wanna break my rusty cage and run... where ya been all my life?
Yet the eye painting still sux. Change the channel.

Eye
Eye
Eye
Eye...

Da-na
Da-na, Da-na
Da-na

Anonymous said...

If I see one more eye painting... I think it has to be an Amano.  Bit like a Kelly.
Phone me when you're done with the nostalgia..

jpegCritic said...

yeah it really does suck.
I like Handelman's version better.

CAP said...

http://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/icansee.htm

zipthwung said...

dali

think like Dali:

"My Battle

Against Simplicity For Complexity Against Uniformity For Diversification
Against Equalitarianism For Hierarchization Against the Collective For the Individual … Against Progress For Perenniality Against Mechanism For the Dream … Against Spinach For Snails Against the Cinema For the Theatre Against Buddha For the Marquis de Sade Against the Sun For the Moon"

Or n\not

Tom Tomeluke

zipthwung said...

All this coded man love has got me thinking.

Well that and "Black Hawk Down".


In BHD, theres a scene where the helicopters are going along the shark infested waters of the coast of Somalia. It echos, in my mind, both the famous Apocalypse now scene with Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries and also Tom Cruise on Highway One, with Berlin's "Take My Breath Away".

Well the song in "Black Hawk Down" reminded me of the Righteous Brother's "You've Lost That Lovin Feelin'" featured in Top Gun. This sort of soundtrack thing was big in

So I looked it up. I think if this painting has a title track Elvis' "Suspicious Minds" might be good.

compare rockwell

to this:

here

yeah man, google is great.

CAP said...

Two leetle ones are bettair than one beeg one.

jpegCritic said...

One little one.

Behold the Gaze

jpegCritic said...


The Story of The Eye

Nomi Lubin said...

MARLÈNE MOCQUET said...

Two leetle ones are bettair than one beeg one.


I still think so. By the way. In case anyone's forgotten.

zipthwung said...

DOn't ask Don't Tell

hey old guy, when was your Lichtenstein put in a show last? Or is it locked in a closet somewhere? I don;t recall seeing it in my art history book so it must be a minor work I guess.

CAP said...

Roy Lichtenstein edited by John Coplans, Praeger Publishers NY 1972, page 71 I See the Whole Room and There’s No-body in it 1961 Oil on Canvas 48” X 48”. From the collection of Mr and Mrs Burton Tremaine, Meriden Connecticut.

Minor but amusing.

And I had forgotten.

zipthwung said...

The BBC spearheaded Britain's propaganda campaign, broadcasting the code word to start the revolution.[1]

that is so awesome, on a lot of levels.

It hink the code word was "Dead Eye Dick"

The Beastie Boys played B-Burg - 50 dollar ticket, I didnt go those guys never shoulda leanred to play their own instruments.

Ba ba bump!

CAP said...

http://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/0733.htm

another classic

Brianryden@gmail.com said...

on/off

zipthwung said...

go to the hall

zipthwung said...

All seing Eye.....

August 10, 2007
Warning NYC! But Don't Panic

Local news stations are reporting late this evening that an unverified radiological threat was made against New York City sometime Friday. The city's alert level remains at the long-standing orange level though. WNBC passes along a statement from the NYPD:

"While the threat remains unverified, our counterterrorism posture, which is reconfigured daily based on intelligence from around the world, has been modified to include increased deployment of radiological sensors, including vehicle, marine and helicopter-mounted, as well as those carried by NYPD personnel."


Vehicle checkpoints have been established around the city, concentrating on downtown and from certain jurisdictions. Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne reportedly stressed that the moves were strictly precautionary and that no threat had been verified. So if you notice an increased level of police, military, and air or marine activity around the city tonight, don't become too concerned. It's just standard precautions.

zipthwung said...

yes yes yes!

CAP said...

I sometimes wonder about the counter on these threads.

Just read Hoberman's crass tribute to Antonioni and now I'm pissed off!

Think I'll haze TETY (again).

Stelios Argiros said...

Is it not a shame that in a city with over 300 galleries I can only find 7 galleries that accept submissions?
I think it is disgusting. At least it has given me ideas for a subject of my new work.
Also I think this site should offer a section for us to review eachother's work. Why review people already in the system? How is their work more valid? Why do they need more attention? I assume everyone here is an artist. Why not post and comment on each other's work instead of marketing a system that excludes emerging artists?

Stelios Argiros said...

Here's my "emerging" work for those interested in getting this started.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=8633&l=d7b89&id=632712494

youth--less said...

vlahos--i suggest you hit up saatchis website. everything you want is over there

Ray said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nomi Lubin said...

Eh, I wouldn't say that Saatchi's site has the most insightful criticism.

zipthwung said...

Get a publicist vlahos - you need buzz and market cache.

Your work has the look of art - its got a lot of formal stuff in it. I'd harsh your mellow but I havent had any coffee yet.

One thing is even if your work is political, you might want to think about writing it up in a way that matches rather than detracts from any sophistication you have.

For example:

1) What artists (showing in Chelsea) incorporate your formal technique? In your writeup you might want to reference or aknowledge them. This is a form of bridge building and also a "positioning statement". It will be used to categorize you and give your sales people something to say to the collector when they are doing blow in the back room (if its that kind of gallery).

1.1

Read the statements of the artists who's work is like yours. Read between the lines. Get paranoid. Smoke pot. Write your staement referencing those statements. If nothing else, I will give you an A and compliment your integrity.

2) Make some racy or controversial work (this does not have to be exhibited in a show - it can remain in the back room). This serves to generate buzz and also shows you are "serious". When conservative types buy your work you can "pull the rug out from under them by having a big "coming out" show.
Just a thought, I don't know it would be fun. Think Marylyn Minter and Keith Haring - their crazier work doesnt end up in the college textbooks.

3) Start your own gallery. Pack it with your friends. Make a statement. Get a grant. Get a backer. You know what you gotta do. If you can get some art world royalty or children of a lesser god, do so, its good for sales and publicity, plus you get to meet their parents.

And finally, most galleries recruit through social networking. If you want to be a part of the system you have to find your nitcha nd crawl into it. I'm sure you will have no trouble finding a gallery if you move to NY and start socializing.

Also you seem to have two different body's of work, which is fine but it makes it hard to comment.

Your Guru

CAP said...

Did you try Williamsburg?

ungoogleable said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Stelios Argiros said...

Thanks zipthwung,

Funny Minter was a teacher of mine. We butted heads on my mixing of hardedge and organics. That was such a New York school of painting arena. (In 1998 anyway) If you did not do that faux expressionistic thing you were considered white trash. haha. That is fine I learned a lot from it.

I think my work can use an ignition switch of a painting. I have three ideas that will piss people off. Keeping them in the back room is great reminder.
I actually live in NYC so I understand the importance of networking here. I was just griping about having to go to every F'ng opening to get into Nepitamia. I guess there is not enough staff for all the freaks with a brush in NYC with submissions.
Leave it to social Darwinism. So, be it. "Madness,... THIS IS CHELSEA!!!!"

"Also you seem to have two different body's of work, which is fine but it makes it hard to comment."
I understand. The work's diversity makes it elusive and that could be its weakness. I am attempting to merge these two styles, the painterly, and the hardedge, into a hybrid. Is not painting from Photoshop pixilation as much representation as the photo source in ‘Paleon Patron (the priest painting)’? Are not pixels a part of our everyday world as are photographs? These are questions.

To me abstraction and figuration are one in the same. It is something to think about and work through. I think this hybrid will be my style and eventually my signature. I do not want my shows to look like group shows in the end.

Thanks for your feedback.

Stelios Argiros said...

Old Guy,

I've been looking at BillBurg but like I said earlier I found only 6 galleries. They all seem to have a similar curatorial vision. Jack the Pelican, Cinders, Metaphor, New General Catalog, and Dam Stihltrager are the ones that accept submissions.

Know of any more?
I'll knock on these doors but more spice would be welcome.

Sven said...

90% of the time submissions only annoy or anger people . why bother?

CAP said...

Maybe Jersey?

Cold calls are always tough, and mostly just a formality (I agree with Cooky and Zip). Sorry I don't have an answer for you.

I will say that a lot of the discussion here is pretty general, and opinions are often as applicable to works not shown in NYC or maybe anywhere else. I think a lot of artists are more comfortable using gallery-based examples as their stalking horses, whipping boys, etc, but are basically staking out positions in any case.

But I mean if you're against the system then maybe you should rethink exhibition venues along with the content of your paintings.

I probably shouldn't say this on this site, but 'making it' as an artist doesn't necessarily have to start or end with showing in NYC.

surfkook said...

If you have any friends (that respect your work) you shouldn't need to submit work.

Try White Columns or Artist's Space or the Drawing Center. All better than W'burg-gallery-no-mans-land

Brianryden@gmail.com said...

If I sold blow for a living and did art on the side do you think I could make it as an artist?

surfkook said...

Depends on how good your blow is.

If I was a Wall Street Trader and did art on the side would I make it as an artist?

Ask Jeff Koons.

zipthwung said...

what is painting?

I was asking myself that all yesterday and part of today.

If you put works in rooms, and you think of each painting as an architectural element, you get a kind of Necker cube fractal.

This sort of gridding across scales makes my heart palpitate a bit.

The Christian Cross layout of the Henry Darger, for example, when it was at the Outsider Folk museum. Very nice.

The Egyptians were big into integrating art with architecture.
I like some of their stuff. A bit heavy handed witht he god king stuff, but still, you could read them and walk around at the same time. What if the subway showed hyroglyphic stories instead of movie posters? Think like Amano-Ra!

What if you could buy all the ad space for the subway for a year? You could advertise only one product - say luxury highrises. People would probably draw penuses on them but it would be interesting to see what happens psychologicly.

Itsd well know that during the SPanish revolutrion political prisoners were tortured in cells inspired by modern art.

I had a dream last night I flew to Saudi Arabia. The plane fle almost straight down on approach. All the buildings were connected like in an Escher, but a disnefied version, not a modernist one.

Why was the Bauhauus considered cool? People yearned for the modern I guess. Its cheaper, too - so for example you can get rid of the expensive gothic revival gingerbread adornments. SOme of the best stuff, though, in my mind, was created by the WPA artists. Often you'll see an awesome gargoyle on a piece of shit brick box (an immitation of an immitation of a bauhaus masterpiece).

But what is painting? You'd probably have to know what painting is before you could ask that question, in a way. So I guess I know the answer allready.

zipthwung said...

Like the Rothko Chapel. Some people really love that place. Rothko's studio is now a Japanese tea room. It looks pretty sweet - I'd love to go there, you know, like DIsneyland but Japanese. Where you have tiki huts and controlled indoor monsoons.

It's hard to believe that there is nobody out there
It's hard believe that I'm all alone
At least I have heard of the city
She loves me
As lonely as I am
Together we cry

youth--less said...

To the Editor of the Washington Post,
I would respectfully like to submit the following letter to the editor in response to David Segal’s article, The Puzzling, Tragic End of A Golden Couple Artist Jeremy Blake a Suicide Weeks After His Companion, Theresa Duncan, Took Her Life.
Sincerely,
The Right Reverend James W. Bailey
So, Do You Really Want To Be The 21st Century’s Greatest Living Artist? Then You Had Better Be Prepared To Commit Suicide.
David Segal’s nauseating myth-spin tribute to the Romeo and Juliet-style suicidal artist love couple Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake perpetuates the laughable stereotype of the genius artist who’s made so because of his or her supposedly tortured soul, a tortured soul whose mental Minnesota bridge eventually collapses under the oppressive weight of having "dared" to ask the most profound of questions that the average "sane" non-artist man or woman simply cannot intellectually approach due to their inadequate curiosity about the mysterious forces that move the world.
Will somebody please find us a qualified forensic mental health structural engineer from the U.S. Army Corps of Mass-Murdering Engineers Department of Levees and Bridges for Mentally Suspect Artists so that we can have a proper mental bridge inspection done among all artists so as to prevent this type of aesthetic collapse from occuring in the future? What utter nonsense. There has never lived an artist who has asked a daring question about anything in this world or beyond that was not first asked by a non-artist. If I am wrong, then please my gentle reader submit your proof. I can promise you that I will be able to easily respond within seconds with a fanfare for the common man answer.
White artists within the tradition of Western culture operate in an echo chamber; living within that echo chamber often produces delusions of grandeur. The greatest delusion among the champions of white Western art is that the white artist producers of art commodities are engaged in the act of pushing, provoking and challenging the society-at-large to engage those "radical" questions proposed by the artist. Of course, this is a joke, especially in light of the fact that in Western culture there are leaders and followers and artists clearly follow the masses for inspiration, not the other way around.
White Western art, especially in the United States of America, has become all about liberal/progressive choir-preaching. And excessive liberal/progressive choir-preaching in an echo chamber produces delusions that, however colorful, are often quite pitiful.
Jonathan Binstock, of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, compounds the aesthetic infraction of this shallow myth of the tortured soul of the genius artist by intoning the following: "He was a great artist, an artist for the 21st century. He had his hand in music videos, in gaming, in Hollywood and in the world of contemporary art that you find in the best museums in the world. He didn't draw distinctions between those industries. He was brilliant, concentrated and deeply committed.”
Dear God help us if the future of great art is linked to music videos, gaming and Hollywood. Everything Mr. Binstock says of Jeremy Blake also applies to Paris Hilton…except for the brilliant part, of course. Or maybe not. Some in the art world (and you can most definitely include me as one of them) would argue that Paris Hilton is the most important work of visual art since Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.” And more importantly, and for what it is worth, at least Ms. Hilton has the artistic common sense to find a reason to live through adversity, rather than caving in to her paranoid pulp fiction delusions. Paris Hilton represents an artistic sensibility that I can respect.
The contemporary art world apparently now models its definition of the greatness and genius of a white male artist on the postmodern political assassination theory that says a president like John F. Kennedy is a great man once he’s been whacked from the grassy knowl. During his presidency, Kennedy was never that popular. But throw in a paranoid Jim Garrison triangulated assasination conspiracy and suddenly you've got the most popular dead president ever.
Maybe all a mediocre 21 Century white male artist needs to do in order to have his genius declared and officially certified by the white male curatorial leadership of the museum world is commit suicide before being kidnapped and reprogrammed by the white male leadership of the Church of Scientology. Or maybe I’m just a cynical and jaded artist whose modern art world curatorial race theories about dead white male artists that have been elevated to mythical status within Western culture are all wrong.
But, then again, maybe what I really suspect is that the Corcoran Gallery of Art has simply latched onto a cleverly timed contemporaneous news marketing ploy to promote its upcoming exhibition featuring works by the dead white male artist, Jeremy Blake. Unlike the rest of the museums and galleries in the metro D.C. area, the Corcoran Gallery of Art charges a fee for the common man to visit. A little bit of Hollywood-art-gone-noir-wild sure doesn't hurt when it comes to drumming up interest among all those red state capitol-stepping tourists in paying inflated exhibition ticket prices to see this rubberneck show.
I guess the only art critical question that really matters now is that if the tourists fall in love with the upcoming Jeremy Blake show at the Corcoran, will Blake Gopnik do so as well? That Blake Gopnik sure does love dead or alive angry white male artists (think Richard Serra) and the idea that painting is dead, unless the "painting" is, of course, a video. We could be heading toward a national art crisis, depending on what fly-over America thinks about this sad tale. Stay tuned for Blake Gopnik's review of Jeremy Blake @ The Corcoran.

zipthwung said...

Big Journalism as "Laser"

I submit to you that lasers are a more accurate metaphor for describing our journalism system then the more popular echo chamber.

The laser metaphor has much more explanatory power. An echo chamber echos everything. A laser only significantly amplifies photons that are going in the correct direction. The news media only amplifies certain stories.

The reason I believe this metaphor is superior is that it gives us the opportunity to discuss the "excitation level" of Big Journalism. If you take a laser and just lightly stimulate it, it won't actually form a coherent beam because the light is escaping too quickly to become involved in a standing wave inside the resonance chamber. As you stimulate it more, eventually you cross the point where the coherent beam develops, and then more stimulation only brightens the beam until it eventually melts the components themselves.

As I hope is obvious, the "photons" are stories, and the "atoms" are people or companies participating in the journalistic process. Just like photons in the laser, atoms are randomly emitting photons all the time, little stories that attract little or no attention and die without ever being echoed or amplified, because they aren't in line with what can be sustained.

Of course the metaphor isn't perfect. Real lasers have nothing like CNN. Real lasers have a fairly sharp line between "laser" and "mere light", whereas in journalism the line is fuzzier and much more complicated because there are many, many interesting directions instead of just one. But as long as you are aware of the dangers of metaphors and only use the metaphor as explanation, not argument, it's a pretty good metaphor.

zipthwung said...

information behaves like heat

according to Claude Shannon.

no-where-man said...

Art like it or not is a part of the entertainment field, blow is a grain of sand in that desert.

just out of curiosity do any of you show in chelsea?

Stelios Argiros said...

Never checked Jersey but will keep in mind. Thanks.

Unknown said...

All the best, most innovative new art is coming from jersey. Why??????

What kind of world is new jersey? it is just a big suburb, isn't it?

They must be holding meetings everyday discussing art philosophy, art theory, art criticism, aesthetics, and writing research papers about them.

Unknown said...

Let's play a game. We each tell each other what gallery we show at without telling each other our names. Then we try to guess each other's names based on the gallery's website.

CAP said...

While we're off the topic, might just say I found the rest of Algus' choices in Marks' summer diversion kind of fun.

I know Stevenson showed with Clert in Paris, but he still looks the odd one out here. On the French Pop/New Realist tip I thought Mitch might have included Martial Raysse - but maybe he was too Pop.

I looked at them as borderline or peripheral Pop - which is a lot easier than looking for a thesis on 'Painting'.

You can sort of see how the artists might have progressed to this stuff from standard comic strips or print illustration but at a certain point they then don't look much different from just bad painting, so the whole thing sort of peters out.

But it strikes me as a good way of reviewing/revising Pop Art, looking to its perimeters or peripherals like this.

I can't quite believe we're still on this post after 5 days though.

jpegCritic said...

isn't jersey like Neo Rauch's Leipzig -- the outlaying areas... Fuck bushwick, let's spawn galleries in newark!

zipthwung said...

I show at the gallery of Our Lady of the Ascenscion.

Maybe you've heard of the Shroud of Turin. I made the original.

Unknown said...

newark--that's not where the advanced work is coming from. It's coming from further west. In the suburbs.

they show in philly, but they all have suburban NJ towns in their cv.

Murray Hill, Edison, Morristown, Madison, places like that.

Unknown said...

i will be very disappointed if the next good school of painters comes from jersey suburbs instead of some chic place like brooklyn or LA or something.

DarthFan said...

Consciousness raising (often abbreviated c.r.) is a form of political activism, pioneered by United States radical feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group of people on some cause or condition. It is the first half of the adage "Admitting the problem is half the battle."

here

and mainly here


Camille Paglia seems like a pretty cool PT boat.

surfkook said...

Do any of you show in Chelsea?...

I would hope so, otherwise only every other word you write counts. I'll accept LA or London too.

It's easy to complain from the margins.

surfkook said...

Yeah, it's about time for another post Painter

zipthwung said...

Who's complaining?

zipthwung said...

Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems is destined to become a landmark. In it, America's premier intellectual provocateur explores and celebrates a series of great poems of the Western tradition, including some surprising discoveries of her own. She brings new energy and insight to our understanding of poems we already know, such as masterpieces by Shakespeare, Donne, Shelley, Dickinson, Lowell, and Plath. She leads us to appreciate the artistry of writers with whom we may not be familiar, such as Chuck Wachtel and Wanda Coleman. And she hails the songwriter Joni Mitchell as a major contemporary poet.

Daring, erudite, entertaining, and infused throughout with Paglia's inimitable style and passion, this beautifully written book--and the dazzling mind behind it--will entice readers to begin or renew a passionate engagement with poetry.

zipthwung said...

Elizabeth Murray (1940–2007)

08.13.07 - Elizabeth Murray, a New York painter who reshaped Modernist abstraction into a high-spirited, cartoon-based language of form whose subjects included domestic life, relationships, and the nature of painting itself, died yesterday at her home in upstate New York, writes Roberta Smith in the New York Times. She was sixty-six and lived in TriBeCa and in Washington County, NY. The cause was complications of lung cancer, said Douglas Baxter, president of PaceWildenstein, which has represented her work since 1995. Murray received a full-dress retrospective spanning her forty-year career at the Museum of Modern Art in 2006, one of handful of women to be so honored. In 1999 she was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. In Ms. Murray’s mature work, eccentrically shaped or multipanel canvases fused Cubism’s shattered forms and Surrealism’s suggestive biomorphism with the scale and some of the angst of Abstract Expressionism and more than a touch of Disneyesque humor and motion.

milf-magic said...

Elizabeth Murray - R.I.P.

Great Artist & Great Person.

DarthFan said...

‘The reason I am painting this way is because I want to be a machine. I think it would be terrific if everybody was alike,’

Andy Warhol

Nomi Lubin said...

Elizabeth Murray. That's upsetting.

CAP said...

Tony Wilson RIP

http://grammardj.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html

zipthwung said...

It gets worse:

Successful Attack Stage operations previously conducted on targeted
individuals involved:

1) Tricking the targeted person into believing her or she is speaking
to God. The targeted person is tricked into believing that God has
commanded him or her to commit a violent act, usually killing his or
her children.

2) Tricking the targeted person into believing he or she is being
attacked with mind control devices.

3) Tricking the targeted person into believing he or she is living in a
haunted house.

4) Tricking the targeted person into believing he or she has an
electronic chip implanted in his or her body which he or she believes
is used for surveillance and to inflict pain in the targeted person.

5) ECT....

here

I'm mostly conscerned with #5 how about you?

CAP said...

The whole thing sounds pretty Philip K Dick, Zip.

A lot depends on what an authority might reasonably regard as �a threat�. If an individual was involved in political or social protest, then steps might be taken to discredit their sanity, as a way of preserving the appearance of democracy or civil liberty, while sidelining an inconvenience. The USSR was notorious for declaring dissidents �insane�. Then again �enemies� of the CIA can find themselves unemployable, bankrupt and friendless, even without being aware they were actually enemies.

There is a deep and disturbing contradiction between democracy and secrecy.

The heart of the matter is the argument for the necessity of secrecy, as a matter of national security. Who gets to decide what constitutes �national� and �security�? What qualifies someone as an expert, and who is expert enough to confer expertise on another? Precedent pretty soon points back to revolution, oppression and war. At a certain point one is expected to take things on trust, make a leap of faith. But history shows that is rarely rewarded, tends to be a recipe for conspiracy and corruption. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Against faith we draw up rules, argue for the letter over the word but when push comes to shove who judges? Ain�t no jury big enough; ain�t no trial long enough.

There is such a thing as madness, and to try and reason your way out of it is a solitary pursuit.

zipthwung said...

Hyacinth was relaxing on the back patio, by the pool.

"I feel great", she said to no one in particular.

"Me too", said the narrator.

"Are you going to go see anything interesting?", Hyacynth asked politely.

"Oh god, yeah Im getting out of the fucking house, gonna go see Bonnie and Clyde at the park on tuesday, probably get a styro at Turkey's Nest fo 3.50 and chill.", the narrator was harshing Hyacinth's mellow. You could see it, if you were there, which you are not.

"I read about Bonnie and Clyde in the New York Times", said Hyacinth, "It was a shalllow fluff piece of little intellectual merrit, I wonder why they think art should have some moral or 'teaching' value, its so bourgeoise".

"How bourgeoise of you to say so", the narrator spat, not out of hostility, just for drama.

"Oh god this is like that vanity press Reena Spaulings book isn;t it", Hyacinth said.

"No its not, I wasn't even thinking of that, and why would you bring it up anyways, its so stupid," the narrator was getting ready to end the failed writing experiment and go watch some John Hughes era teenage softporn. Or maybey Peter Greenaway, or Peter Weir or Kurusawa. Why did they have to fuck a good buzz up with a NYT article anyways? The nartrator decided to stop reading the NYT arts section once and for all. That'll show them.

The narrator wished for a subscription to cancel but goodled Repo Man instead.

Hyacinth intoned:

"A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness."

CAP said...

The narrator had worked for Greenaway briefly, as an assistant editor, on various small productions for one of the more obscure offices of government information. He signed The Official Secrets Act pledge at the start of each week, signed off on it come Friday night. It gave the whole deal a vaguely paranoid whiff, especially when they seemed to know his bank account better than he, at some point.

Greenaway was a God in The Department, and reputed an artist. Not for him dull reports on terrorism and counter-insurgency in nearby provinces, nifty new hardware and information gathering encouragements, advances in remote mining engineering, Greenaway got the arty assignments. He had his favourite editors. They got assigned assistants. Greenaway was art school, through and through. He got to interview Henry Moore on his two hundredth birthday, and smirkingly tell him to his face he was an anachronism. Henry took the news quite well, replied when he had been a lad in art school in 1812, even then they were all of the opinion that everything had been done.

That bit didn’t make the final cut.

In small talk over track laying, Greenaway would lecture on the necessity of artistic freedom, the unstoppable force of the independent film maker. When asked how he would finance his films, if unpopular with the funding bodies, Greenaway conceded he would economise. When asked if no finance was forthcoming, how he might proceed? He pondered for just a moment, and replied he would have to mortgage one of his houses.

DarthFan said...

"WHich house are you going to sell?" Hyacintyh asked, munching on a macrobiotic kale and soy kurd bento box ordered before recorded history.

The narrator was leafing through one of Greenaway's hard bound limited edition storyboards destined for collector's shelves. It was for the remake of Kurusawa's "Hidden Fortress" - working title: "Death Star", illustrated by Ralph Steadman and Phillip Pearlstein. Phil did some sketches. Ralph did the blood splatters.

Greenaway, distracted by the aside forgot the narrrative arc and slipped into a dissociative fugue state.

You should have used the same dude the Watchowski brothers used, the narrator said, pushing his heavy black framed glasses up on his nose. Uneccessarily - the glasses were snapped into surgical bone implants designed by William Gibson while high on Ayahuasca extract.

Oh thats cute, said Greenaway. Want me to invite Antonioni? Jodorowski? I could probably even get Bergman if I scored some shrooms.

Thats ok the narrator said, does the lack of punctuation bug you?

Not really, but you might want to keep telling me who I am before I say something.

Ok have it Greenaway, the narrator said, get it?

Keep hamming it up said Greenaway.

You mean egging me on, the narrator said.

Hyacinth had by now forgotten what houses were and how they could be liquidated to buy goods and services or other assets.

Its not how much you have, its how liquid you feel, said the narrator.

Don't I know it, said Greenaway.

Like if you melted down a Henry Moore, how much would you get? Hyacinth had finally perked up from her barbituate and alcohol induced macrobiotic stupor.

Screw that ghetto shit, the narrator said, I'm talking selling arms to the Shias or the Sunnis - whoever. Fully structured deal, if we don;t do it the maffia or the Chinese will do it and if they don;t do it the reptillian Nazi saucers from the hollow earth will. Are you in? All you gotta do is marry the Sheiks daughter and front me thirty grand to prime the pump.

Thats sounds like the Spanish Prisoner scam, the narrator said, running his finger around his glass of Oban single malt.

Yes, yes it is, said Greenaway, I hqave to finance my movies some how. Are you in?

Of course, the narrator said, as long as I get to travel by private jet.

Unknown said...

HOLA Harold Stevenson,

I worked with you in the 1990's
on trying to get the El Cordobes
painting shown in Seville 1992...
can you get urgently in touch with
me or someone who can help us ..I want to get the painting project going again and I will do it full
ádelante....andrew porter marbella spain tel:34-658815199 and email;
marbellainsurance@gmail.com

Darlin' said...

Hi Harold! It's Gail from Idabel. I would be willing to bet that is Lightnin'Billy's Eye! I still have the painting of yours from the '40's. I would love for you to take a look at it soon. I'll call you. God Bless. 01/12/08

ANDI222 said...

Hi Harold,

My name is Andi Vasluianu and I represect a surveillance company.

It is a great paiting and I wish I can afford to buy it.

http://www.icansee.ro is our site and you cand find the contact email there!

Waiting for your kind reply!

Thanks !

ArtFreak said...

The painting is "The Eye of Lighting Billy" he was an outlaw of sorts from SE Oklahoma. He was also a lover of the artist. Harold Stevenson is known for his Homoerotic art and use of body parts such as hands and eyes. Google "The New Adam" another outstanding work of his.

cosset.ro said...

great painting!but not fot my budget ...I wish I could afford
my contact details here
Fier Forjat

Retrowife said...

Harold Stevenson will be the featured artist at the Music MAYnia and More art show May 22, 2010 at the Beavers Bend State Park in Hochatown, Oklahoma, (outside of Broken Bow, Oklahoma)
For more information about the art show go to www.brokenbowtheatricalsociety.com and click on the Music MAYnia button,
Thanks,
Tawsha Davenport