Charles Garabedian, Jean Harlow, 1964
Good morning art reads:
1. Ever once in a while, one has a studio visit that is truly special and meeting Charles Garabedian this weekend was, for me, one of those visits. At 92 years old, we not only spoke about his new body of work on display this fall at L.A. Louver, but we also spoke about the long, complicated history of recent L.A. art history. Most of the stories, I will save for a rainy day, but I particularly enjoyed a moment when Garabedian told me a story about John Altoon, when he encountered the above work in Garabedian's studio. Jean Harlow is pretty steamy for a painting executed in a WPA, almost Thomas Hart Benton style, but Altoon perhaps said it best when viewing the painting, simply saying in a flirty, cool sixties style: "Jesus Christ." You'll find more here, in Garabedian's interview with archives of American Art.
http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-charles-garabedian-12734
2. "Trust that your fears will sometimes tell you about your desires."
Donald Antrim's Woodberry Forrest School in May has now been published by the New Yorker. It is wonderful, vulnerable speech about talent and its difficulties, about fighting through depression to eventually do what we do in life without anxiety, sometimes do what we do in life fueled by anxiety. I highly recommend this wonderful text:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-unprotected-life
3. I am going to say a line that is going to make you immediately stop clicking: Lifetime has a great new show on reality television. Now that any mood developed by Garabedian and Antrim's independent spirit has been killed, I have to admit that the show is very good and I agree with the critics that are raving about it. Actually, I think it even has implications for art and provides a great deal to think about. The L.A. Review of books has a interesting piece on some of the thinking that can arise from the show:
http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/gods-and-bachelors-on-lifetimes-unreal
4. Andrew Berardini is a friend of mine and great writer, always approaching his subject in lyrical ways prone to wonderful passages of prose and flights of the imagination. He has a piece on California's sunsets in moMus magazine, which recently announced a content sharing agreement with Tate, Etc:
http://momus.ca/how-to-see-a-sunset/
Video of the Week:
In a sense, this week's video gets you ready for this week's poem. John Coltrane only performed A Love Supreme once in live concert. This video purports to be the only extant footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qt435yF2Qg
Poem for the Week:
As bit off topic, but apropos of nothing, I can honestly say that the twitching runes of Jean-Michel Basquiat have always left me a bit confused and unclear of his value as a painter. Perhaps it is particularly difficult for me to latch into his world and interpret where he is coming from. This weekend, I was reading an anthology of poetry and stumbled across a poem called Dear John, Dear Coltrane by Michael S. Harper that seems to embody the energy and pulse of some of the language on Basquiat's canvases and shares a similar influence in jazz. I thought it would be a great poem for the week:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171552
On Click Deeper:
If you've never read Donald Antrim, you would be served by his particular brand of high energy surrealism. The Hundred Brothers is a high-wire feat of writing, and I honestly can say that I am not sure how he pulled it off at all. He has always been mysterious, but there is one great piece by John Jeremiah Sullivan about him that can be read in the link. There is a connection to David Foster Wallace that is, in and of itself, a fantastic thing to read about:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/magazine/donald-antrim-and-the-art-of-anxiety.html?_r=0