Art of the Day’s goin’ on a holiday break while I catch up on stuff. See you in ‘11!

-SCrow

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       Don Van Vliet, Dirty Champagne, 1995

 


 
    I never imagined him passing. Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart), gone as of Dec 17. I always imagined him by now as less man and more force, covering the desert with his wild, laughing & life-affirming magic, everywhere & suffusive as pollen, as everycolored dust.
    I remember first encountering Trout Mask Replica. I felt its surging boundless energy, all grinning spasms & fuschia tracers & Howlin’ Wolf rasps & crazy squeals. I was overwhelmed.
    But it wasn’t until later that I felt the power of not just the songs — those spiky guitar lines that felt composed and totally wildly improvised at the same time; that muscular grunting surrealist word-barrage, a mescaline dreamwork language visceral as it was violent — but of his sincerity, playfulness, warmth. I started to get to know his weird-warm spirit. Here’s a poem called “You should know by the kindness of uh dog the way uh human should be”:
 
 

You should know by the kindness of uh dog
The way a human should be
You should feel the wet wood heart of the tree
Wood sap pop like a frog's eye
Open t' the fly 'n the blood of the river
When it ripples 'n clicks like uh waterbell
'n the elephant in his beautiful grey leather suit
Though he's wrinkled he looks smart as hell
'n the turtle's eyes carry bags very well
'n the snake's in shape
He rattles like uh baby 'wears his diamonds
Better than uh fine lady's finger
'n his fangs are no more dangerous
Than her slow aristocratic poison
And he plays his games on uh grass bed
'n uh monkey never had uh guilty masturbation
'n uh monkey wouldn't shit on another's creation
And the fatman cries throughout all creation
'cause he's got uh cold
'n the icebear dives thru blue zero for uh frozen fish
'n the eskimo wears his hide 'n chews his heart
'n the beautiful grey whale oils some bitches lighter
Someday I'll have money 'n I can frame myself
What uh picture I'll be choppin' down uh tree 

 
 
    I didn’t have to dig deep to find in his vast output of song lyric and poetry a huge healthy yawping love for nature, animals, a sincere wish to find happiness in existence, a remorse for the difficulty humans have in connecting and loving, for our collective struggle to grow and progress and maintain our link to all that’s pure and natural and elemental. He may have been a jerk to know, a ranting megalomaniacal ogre in person — and many accounts hint at such a possibility — but I’m not a biographer, I’m just going off his output; I’m going off what he condensed of himself and channeled as best he could through his art. Here’s another bit, this one a fragment from the lyrics for “Space-Age Couple”:
 
 

Space-age couple
Why do you hustle 'n bustle?
Why don't you drop your cool tom-foolery
'n shed your nasty jewelry?
Cultivate the grounds
They're the only ones around.
Space-age couple
Why don't you flex your magic muscle?
Hold a drinking glass up t' your eye after you've
Scooped up a little of the sky
'n it ain't blue no more.
What's on the leaves ain't dew no more.
Space-age couple
Why don't you jus' do that?
Why don't you jus' do that?

 
 
    And the lyrics to “Plastic Factory”:
 

Phos'phrous chimney burnin'
Modern-men's a-learnin'
Time and space a-turnin'
Motor's engine churnin'
fac'trys no place for me boss man let me be

Wind and wave all blowin'
Mountain 'n sky showin'
Bee 'n flower growin'
Boy 'n girl are glowin'
fac'trys no place for me boss man let me be

Minds inside are goin'
Muscle 'n bone are showin''
One thing sure am knowin'
Get a fire goin'
factory's no place for me boss man let me be
boss man let me be boss man leave me be

    I loved the man’s music, singing, poetry, most of all I sensed in him a wide soul, a feverish burning soul, one that I felt I knew, one that kept me company so often in headphones or over speakers, one whose breadth and force I know I’m not the only one missing right now.

 
 
 
 
More of Van Vliet’s art
 
 
 
All writing © copyright C. Way / Snailcrow.com 2010

       Louise Bourgeois, Nature Study, 1984-1994

 
 
I love the proud throat-base protuberance, a firm and almost genital ridge where we expect a hollow. The globed rows of breasts, & the lean strong back and feline frame somehow supporting their mass. The tail crossed over the strange spearlike phallus. The powerful haunches. This beautiful, terrible Egyptian cat-androgyne devourer-deity perched and waiting and ready.

 

 
 
 
 
NYTimes on Bourgeois, her death & legacy
 
 
 
All writing © copyright C. Way / Snailcrow.com 2010

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       Aubrey Beardsley, The Fourth Tableau of Das Rheingold, 1896

 
I like the triumphant turn of the Rodin’s-Balzac back, the highly stylized body-hair tufts that Beardsley so loves — here rising tongue-flames, elsewhere gentle pendant grape-clouds. I love the row of trees in the distance mirroring the figure’s extended left arm. And the voluptuous flourishes of line down the front of the figure’s body, at first seeming to be drapery & then looking like some artful-surgical skin/musculature peelback, extending from the right knee in wild vivisect.

 
 
 
 
More of Beardsley’s art at Artchive
 
 
 
All writing © copyright C. Way / Snailcrow.com 2010

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       Caravaggio, The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, 1600-01

 
The tension, the tumult, the vectors and cross-rhythms, yes,
But those colors too:
The negative diamond that the red, green, yellow and blue make:
Blood-angry scarlet, nauseous ochre, corrupted green, bruised/drowned blue.
And the black of the croucher’s soiled foot
Which is an ash-black, a necrotic black/deathblack,
Just like that of the redcloaked man’s
Empty face, eaten by black, & his sockets for eyes.

 
 
 
 
More of Caravaggio’s art at Artchive
 
 
 
All writing © copyright C. Way / Snailcrow.com 2010

       Raymond Pettibon, No Title (I Thought California), 1989

 
The sumi-e economy of it, the insight & soulcapture, the hunched hurry, the spotlight wash on the back, the tense lift of the elbow, and those words, plunging everything — as in so much of the artist’s work — into some black plot whose conclusion everybody knows.
 
 
 
 
 
 
More Pettibon artworks here.
 
 
All writing © copyright C. Way / Snailcrow.com 2010