karl andersson next to one of his gisberta stencils, 2010
photo by karl's friend robert

 

file under; hero worship
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2006
approx the first photos by Patrick O'Dell that i ever encountered
he is still going strong at Epicly Later'd and is a daily inspiration

 

file under; hero worship; photographed
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photo found at welcome to the salon

he's about my age, has an awesome name, and has done so much cool shit it overwhelms me. i just discovered his short film Study After Cruel Intentions which i guess feels something like a skyscraper-sized dead dove looped around the recent Simian Mobile Disco track Cruel Intentions. the 'music video' for Cruel Intentions is made out of parts of the film and is kinda cool but has nothing really on the original work, which is an insanely powerful interpretation of a song i would call just 'ok' if this film didn't exist to expand it.

Saam brought the same kind of gravity to the playful tune Hustler by SMD- an intense sense of place and time, capital-S Sexuality, a queering of everything in the truest sense. Study After Cruel Intentions is extremely similar to Hustler, as both evoke a secret energy between women that is recognisable+real. in Hustler, it is colorful / youthful / jokey, but it is also ominous. in Study After Cruel Intentions, it has grown up / grey / into horror.

dude has also made a bunch of videos for Klaxons and one for Janet Jackson and even does commercials. i think he has also won some awards and stuff. however he does not have a wikipedia page.

watch Study After Cruel Intentions [enable fullscreen]

to the sidebar as soon as i get round to fixing the formatting-
saam.tv

 

file under; filmed; hero worship
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i found cheap pit tickets for Morrissey at Madison Sq Garden

[i missed the chance to see him in Stockton+Oakland]

i'm, well, really excited

 

file under; hero worship
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starts 27 April in Stockton CA. tickets onsale St Patrick's Day. -True to You

 

file under; hero worship
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--
Polaroid self-portraits by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1973

 

file under; hero worship; male beauty; photographed; robert mapplethorpe
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Look at My Hands

--
my first concert: R.E.M. Monster tour 1995, near Halloween. the first time i encounter Michael Stipe 'in person', in concert, he's already glammed-up and confident. i've told my parents that i'm staying the night with a friend, which i essentially am. we sneak out. believe it or not, a teacher from our high school picks us up and drives us to what was then the Blockbuster Pavilion, now the Hyundai Pavilion: supposedly the largest amphitheatre in the western half of the United States.

we're relatively close to the stage, maybe 5 rows back. when Michael Stipe first appears, he looks like he's wearing about 2 layers of clothing, max, like maybe 2 t-shirts with a pair of jeans. throughout the concert, swear to fucking god, he must take off like 10 different tops. he never looks like he's wearing more than 1 or 2 shirts at any time, but they keep coming off and keep coming off. his arms get totally bare and he starts to flex, blinking at his Krazy Kat tattoo. still, from someplace, the shirts keep coming off.

he never gets down to a bare chest, never runs out of shirts. Michael Stipe is, at that point, the most desirable thing i have ever seen. an animal so beautiful, i don't realize it's eating me.

the title for this drawing comes from one of my favorite R.E.M. songs, Green Grow the Rushes. mp3 maybe tomorrow.

 

file under; +; drawn; hero worship; male beauty; r.e.m.
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I own Taschen's softcover 1994 Wassily Kandinsky book because Kandinsky's art was the first art I ever pointed to in a museum and said I liked. This happened at LACMA when I was I guess about 5 or 6. In 5th grade, as a class project that was part of some program called 'Art Docents' which made absolutely no sense, my classmates and I were instructed to render a copy of Kandinsky's 1911 painting of a running horse, entitled Lyrical. There was, for some reason, a contest involved, with a prize or something for the closest copy. A poster-size print of the painting was stuck on the blackboard, and we were all given some rough-textured paper and pastels. We all tried to make as close a copy of the painting as possible, and in the end, the class and teacher and visiting 'Art Docent' decided that I'd come closest to copying the lines, and this dude Eric [who was smart, attractive, and i think gay /edit: and i just remembered his name was Craig, not Eric] had come closest to copying the colors. We both got some kind of prize. Maybe just recognition actually. I remember standing at the front of the class with [Craig], holding up our horse drawings. I was actually very into horses at the time, and within a couple years, I would briefly own a horse.

I brought the drawing home, and I know I explained the whole business of the contest to my parents at the time, because I thought it was an absolutely ridiculous way to teach art and I hadn't even enjoyed doing it. Somehow, though, they forgot or weren't listening or whatever, and they were so impressed with this impressionistic drawing of a racing horse that they _framed_ it. It was only after it had been hanging framed for at least a few years that I finally had the chance to bring it up and explain it to them that it was a copy of a famous painting.

I swear to god, this is all true. I think the framed drawing is still in my father's office someplace. I'm going to check when I'm in California this Christmas.

I got the Taschen Kandinsky book for Christmas in 1994, after having been reminded of Kandinsky by the film Six Degrees of Separation, which includes a long, hilarious nonsense treatise on the paintings of Kandinsky and The Catcher in the Rye. In it, Donald Sutherland plays a Manhattan aristocrat obsessed with art, who rants, 'Kandinsky left areas of his canvas blank, if he had nothing to paint on them, rather than have imperfection.' [What else you need to know about the film: while very passionate about something or other, it has nothing to say about art. Will Smith, who reveals himself to be kinda shitty at playing queer in the first place, has a stunt double kiss Anthony Michael Hall because he was thinking, quote [Entertainment Weekly], 'What are my boys in Philly gonna say about this?' His character is a con man who claims to be the son of Sidney Poitier.]

Kandinsky left blank space at the apparent risk of imperfection? Blank canvas is perfect? You would think this meant Kandinsky left giant open spaces on his canvases. Kandinksy's canvases actually tend to be- i dunno, pretty full so far as canvases go? Of course Kandinsky uses what's called 'negative space', but not more than any other random artist. It's such a bizarre moment in that film. Everything the movie says about The Catcher in the Rye is similarly daft. At the end of the film, Will Smith supposedly hangs himself with a pink shirt. 'That burst of color,' Stockard Channing tears. Whatever.

In the fucking meantime?

Hello Prophet -->

 

file under; drawn; hero worship; kandinsky; quoted
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Art Is Only Good
[062 / 100]

--
here is the drawing about how i couldn't do 100 in November.

like every other thing in the world, it's meant to speak for itself, and like every other thing in the world, it has a context too massive to even begin describing.

i guess what you need to know, if you don't know these things [about me] already, is: pop music has saved my life ten zillion times. so has pop art. one time i was working in a job i really hated, in a place where i didn't want to be, inside a narrow stairwell, sweaty, carrying an armload of giant textbooks up 14 flights of stairs. [the elevator was broken.] somewhere in the building there was a tinny radio, and i heard Thom Yorke's voice. 'the best you can is good enough.'

for a long time i wanted to write a book called Good for the Dead. maybe i will still write it. the title comes from a... dream, visionary truth, whateverthefuck. a slogan that carved itself a home inside my mind: Art Is Only Good for the Dead.

as usual, it turns out that the universe is so much simpler. this isn't to say it makes it kinder or easier. it's just simpler.

i mean, right? -->

 

file under; +; 100 in november; drawn; hero worship
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just found this the other day. the best kind of free art.

radiant baby

 

file under; hero worship; keith haring
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Radiant Baby 2006
[014 / 100]

 

file under; +; 100 in november; drawn; hero worship; keith haring
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For Keith H

 

file under; drawn; hero worship
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Morrissey

 

file under; +; drawn; hero worship; male beauty; morrissey
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Ha, finding shit like this makes me want to manifesto, 'every [populist?] artist of any note, who has ever lived, has made use of the red + at some point.' Warhol's red-painted cross silk screening: easy for_instance. Maybe there are better red +'s in Warhol to discover.

Anyway, Keith Haring's art was always a lot sexier than him as a person [although he was incredibly photogenic]. I hadn't really thought about him or his art for a really long time when I most recently started using the +; it wasn't a conscious reference to anything, though I have drawn the + in margins and shit since I was a very little kid. But Haring's art has been in my life an incredibly long time, as it's basically modern art training wheels. The cartoon version. I bought Keith Haring Editions on Paper 1982-1990 [the Katz book] for an incredibly low price, like $25 maybe, in Boston, over ten years ago. It's an outsize book so it's followed me anyplace I've had large bookshelf space, including to Brooklyn. Until I picked up that Mao Mag thing I mentioned, I hadn't thought about Keith Haring or his art for years. In my recent reappraisal of his stuff, I've been pleased to discover

[1] dude was a genius
[2] dude also tagged using the red +.

'Untitled', 1985. Yeah, basically all his works were untitled, and their number is staggering. It makes me want to sit down with all his work and title it. I mean, not like I feel my connection to the work is _that_ special or anything, but I'm competent at writing titles. Who does not love to title their artwork? That's fucking daft. It's totally the best part.

This 1985 one, I think I call it Red Plus.

 

file under; drawn; hero worship; keith haring; male beauty
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Sexual restraint at the state of the art

--
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in the glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in the glass.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true cannot be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface, do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol, do so at their peril.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.
--

it was for me as it was for many: Oscar Wilde was the first sloganeerist to catch my attention and throat my heart. this is the introduction to The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891, my favorite work of 'art criticism'.

infinite loop --> oh baby baby

 

file under; hero worship; quoted
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Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith
photographed by Norman Seeff

 

file under; hero worship; patti smith; robert mapplethorpe
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Sexual jealousy at the state of the art

Want

 

file under; hero worship; male beauty; matthew barney; photographed; quoted
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Robert Mapplethorpe, shot by Andy Warhol, 1983 [left]
self-portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1975 [right]

both Polaroid
Robert's vanilla
Warhol's a Polacolor ER print

 

file under; andy warhol; hero worship; male beauty; photographed; robert mapplethorpe; twins
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Matthew Barney: holy fucking christ. hello Captain Rockstar.

 

file under; hero worship
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These are 4 stills from my favorite film, Blow Job by Andy Warhol, which I have cropped into squares.

and

 

file under; andy warhol; filmed; hero worship; male beauty
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the one on the right in the top one, and on the floor in the bottom one, sent me two of the most amazing letters, once, before he got famous. just look at him; imagine what getting a letter from him must be like; you don't know half of it.

Virginia Puff-Paint by Jeremy Laing, 2004
Jeremy Laing and Will Munro, shot by Bruce LaBruce

 

file under; hero worship; male beauty; photographed; twins
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At True to You:

I am writing this in the city of Barcelona where, many years ago, I discovered the American writer James Baldwin sitting alone and somewhat lost in the darkened lobby of one of the city's oldest hotels. Surprised at being inches away from such a great man, I froze in sheepish clumsiness, circled him eleven times, before I realized that he could not possibly have any interest in being approached by someone who had spent all 25 years of their life locked in an attic because too awful to look at. So, I did nothing, walked on, and shortly thereafter he was dead. Yet another lesson.

 

file under; hero worship; morrissey; quoted
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Lou Reed
shot by Andy Warhol, in the Factory kitchen

 

file under; andy warhol; hero worship; lou reed; photographed
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From the booklet to the new Morrissey album, Ringleader of the Tormentors.

Update, 8 PM on 2 April: it is, for sure, the back of a medal for the Order of the Crown of Italy. Knights class, maybe? The front should show a crown.

Can anyone pinpoint the era?

Apparently, the Order was created by King Emmanuel in 1868, when Venice was annexed, to celebrate the unification of the Kingdom of Italy. It was given to both Italian nationals and foreigners (civilians and soldiers) as a symbol of national gratitude. It was issued through 1946 and today has been replaced by the Order of Civil Merit of Savoy.

 

file under; hero worship; morrissey; photographed
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Most days, still kind of do.

Michael Stipe, 2003, photographed by?

One of the best live versions I have ever heard of ANY song by ANYONE is Harborcoat by R.E.M. from the 'Bochum 1985' bootleg. It makes me wish I could be Bill Berry as well, or rather play the drums the way he did back in 1985.

Harborcoat live in Germany, 1985
by R.E.M. / lyrics
album version on Reckoning, 1984

Too bad, isn't it, that the most recent R.E.M. album, Around the Sun, was such crap? Given that it was an overt response to 9/11 and the Iraq war, the impression I got was, 'OK, the war has creatively destroyed R.E.M.' I have high hopes for the next R.E.M. album, though. I found New Adventures in Hi-Fi and Up both subpar (the former, dreadfully so - why in hell does everyone call it their 'return to form'? it's SHIT!). But after those records, they made Reveal, their best album since Murmur.

Beat a Drum
by R.E.M. / lyrics
from Reveal, 2001

 

file under; hero worship; male beauty; photographed; r.e.m.; sung
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art not meant to be seen or heard by anybody

self-portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe
Polaroid, 1973

Honey You Know Where to Find Me
rough demo by Morrissey / lyrics
Southpaw Grammar sessions, c. 1995

 

file under; hero worship; male beauty; morrissey; photographed; robert mapplethorpe; sung
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Morrissey, March 1985, photographed by Stephen Wright

Morrissey, 2006, photographed by?

 

file under; hero worship; male beauty; morrissey; photographed
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