When I was a teen, I fell in love with hard rock. I seem to remember groups no one else can recall like Mother Earth, Uriah Heep and Black Oak Arkansas as well as countless nameless bands that had at least limited influence on my young malleable mind. One thing that I also loved was album covers, something now lost in the past since soon there will be no more place to create such art given that music has evolved into something that only takes place in the ethereal world of cyberspace. One of my most beloved albums was Jimi Hendrix's "Are You Experienced"? What I loved most about the cover was the lettering, something we today in our computer world call "font" but way back then it was just "lettering":




Of course the psychedelic music was even better

My favorite Hendrix song was and still is "Little Wing":

I never thought anyone could play the guitar as well as Hendrix until Stevie Ray Vaughn come onto the scene, who below also plays "Little Wing" as well as Hendrix would have ever pounded out the music.

Of all the rock musicians with sixties roots, none had more profound influence on me more than Frank Zappa. While the  sixties rock and roll era produced a lot of very good and even great music, there was only one true creative and intellectual genius and that was Zappa who created music you either understand or you don't.  People who appreciate Zappa tend to be smarter and more creative than others, while those who find his music distasteful are generally intellectually lacking and tending towards the mundane.

 

Black Napkins

Of course, all are dead, and both more famous in death than life. Odd how that often happens to brilliant artists, both musical and visual.

 

Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock? is a movie about a seventy year old plus female truck driver who purchased what appears to be a genuine Jackson Pollack at a thrift store for five bucks. There are a lot of idiots in this movie, and the main character who purchased the painting is one of the idiots and she's the most lovable character in this movie. More on this later.





The title comes from the focus of this movie, Teri Horton who, when was told her five dollar purchase was perhaps a Pollack asked "Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?". You can fill in the blank yourself. Teri is a grandmother living in a trailer and decides to find out if this painting was done by the famous artist and she gets tons of proof that is was done by Pollack through forensic research and a fingerprint on the back of the canvas that matches a print on a paint can in Pollacks actual studio. Sounds pretty air tight, huh? Well not according to the "art experts" who get to view the painting in question, all of whom come off as complete baboons (all apologies to baboons for comparing them to "art experts"). The "experts" do all have a lot of arts education and "knowledge" but all seem blind to anything beyond their own limited world view. The best "expert" featured in this movie is one who cheated all his art customers at one time, did prison time and is now trying to get back into the art world using this particular painting. At least this guy is an honest sleaze bag, unlike the others.

This movie nails the attitude of the arts elite. It really is a must see for anyone who has an interest in high stakes art and confirms my theory that art is a commodity like pork bellies or wheat. I'll write more about this later.


Now, back to why the lovable Teri Horton is an idiot: In the movie we find out she turned down a two million dollar offer for her five dollar painting. In the final credits we find out another person offered her nine million. Still she's holding out for fifty million. Hmmmmmmmmm........... Let's see, a woman nearing eighty years old who could have become a mutilmillionaire over night on a five dollar investment wants to hold out for more just because she "wants it all"? She could have made a good CEO for a huge corporation getting a huge golden parachute while the investors suffer. Frankly, she have taken the money and ran, and for not doing that, in my eyes, she's an idiot.


MOVIE SITE

I don't like sub titled movies, but I'd heard so much about this film, I decided to give it a shot  and watch  Pan's Labyrinth. The only other subtitled movie I've ever really watched was Colonel Chabert, about a returning solder from the Napoleonic Wars in France, which was good but would have been better for me in English. Still, Pan's Labyrinth is worth watching. It's a fantasy but not for children, even if the main character is a child, one who enters a labyrinth and finds a magical character who gives her three tasks to complete so she can return her soul to her real father because, well,  the girl is a reincarnated princess who died some time ago and her father has been waiting for her souls return to some magical land. In this land, it's the era of Franco (the movie is set in Spain) and her evil stepfather is a truly evil Nazi Captain, and her mother is pregnant with the child of said Captain. Even without words at all, this movie is worth watching just for the effects and the "faun" that is the creature who assigns the main character her tasks. I don't know if the faun is computer generated, a real actor, or both (which I suspect is the case) but however it's done, it's great. I don't know why anyone would do a movie like this, it's not for children at all, but is a genuine fairy tale of sorts. No matter, the why isn't important, the final work is what's relevant and this work is fantastic.


 

       


Pan's Labyrinth

Britain’s contemporary artists are fêted around the world for their willingness to shock but fear is preventing them from tackling Islamic fundamentalism. Grayson Perry, the cross-dressing potter, Turner Prize winner and former Times columnist, said that he had consciously avoided commenting on radical Islam in his otherwise highly provocative body of work because of the threat of reprisals.

Perry also believes that many of his fellow visual artists have also ducked the issue, and one leading British gallery director told The Times that few major venues would be prepared to show potentially inflammatory works.

“I’ve censored myself,” Perry said at a discussion on art and politics organised by the Art Fund. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”

Perry said that he had also been scared by the reaction across the Islamic world to Danish cartoons deemed anti-Muslim in 2006 and by the protests against Salman Rushdie’s knighthood this year.

Tim Marlow, director of exhibitions at White Cube, the London gallery, welcomed Perry’s admission. “It’s something that’s there but very few people have explicitly admitted. Institutions, museums and galleries are probably doing most of the censorship. I would be lying if I said of course we would show something like the Danish cartoons."


Perhaps the future of artists in the US if we allow this to spread here. It's not hard to imagine considering the insane political correctness of many artists in the US.

FULL STORY

I didn't know the name of the artist as a kid, but Ed "Bid Daddy" Roth was one of the biggest influences on me not because he was an artist really, but because of his most famous creation, Rat Fink. In the early sixties, the idea of a grotesque rat driving bizarre cars and rocket like dragsters made me delirious with joy. I tried to copy the art with no success, but that didn't keep me from loving the big rat. Later on I learned that Roth started as a pin stripper (as far as I can tell) and graduated to drawing art on cars he and others restored. I don't think Roth ever had any art shows in galleries and I'm sure he was ignored by the mainstream art world, and it's doubtful he's high on the list of artists taught in art schools. Considering he often painted his main character on things like toilet seats it's doubtful he'll be showing up at the Louvre any time soon. I think Roth was pretty much the guy who started much of the more bizarre art now created by many American artists, even more so than any European cubist or abstractionist.  Even if I'm wrong about that, it doesn't matter, all that matters is that I think he was cool.







 

These are two photos of sunrises I took with an old digital camera just pointing and shooting on different days. There is no photoshop work, this is what was there when I snapped the photos.

Years ago I read an odd short story that stuck with me about aliens discovering that humans were "made out of meat" and deciding that news was "just to strange" to report back to thier home world and then decided to "forget the whole thing". Presumably the aliens were an ethereal form of energy or a sort of non corporeal life form capable of assuming human like form to discuss the entire event. For some odd reason this story has stuck with me for all this time. Obviously it stuck with some else since I have found a video based on the story on youtube:

 



Here's the original short story.

My journey to the appreciation of Salvidor Dali, like all of my entries into art was not from the ordinary path of "arts appreciation" or any art class. I remember seeing Dali on the old Dick Cavett Show, and he seemed just plain nuts (big surprise, huh?) and not very impressive at all. I think the now famous short film of Dali trashing a piano on an island or at least on the coast was shown, but I'm not sure if I saw that film then or later. What synched the deal for me was when I saw Dali on a TV special with shock rocker Alice Cooper. I wasn't very old at the time and remember seeing Dali with Alice on TV and thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Years later, when I walked into the Dali Museum in in Florida I stumbled onto a painting that to me looked a hundred feet tall, called The Discovery of America by Columbus. It blew me out of the water. I was stunned. I must have been standing there in a trance and slobbering on myself because a security guard came over and asked me if I was OK. I wasn't. I was in some netherworld. I did keep looking around the museum but came back to this painting over and over as if I was magnetically attracted to the thing (maybe it was that metal plate in my head). 









Then as I left the museum, in the gift store I discovered books and cards featuring Dali and Cooper. I was in heaven.







Much later, I visited the same Dali Museum and while being guided around by a particularly knowledgeble docent, I and the others in the group were told that Dali was "quite close to death".  Sure enough Dali passed away two days later, on January 23, 1989. In Florida, some distance from the Dali Museum, an even more newsworthy death occurred on Janurary 24, 1989: The execution of serial killer Ted Bundy. The news coverage of Bundy getting fried was relentless. Now I can't think of the death of Dali without thinking of the execution of Bundy. Truly surreal.
 



 

This is an assortment of ink on paper drawings I've drawn:

These are various water colors I've painted: