Willie Nelson has always deconstructed westerns, and maintained a
belief in telling the truth about places buried under their own
mythology. It is found on his album, the Red Headed Stranger and in
any number of singles over decades. It is found, in his low, lean and
hungry version of the traditional ballad "He was a Friend of Mine",
which could so easily have been dismissed, because of its lyrics, and
because of its placement on the soundtrack to that Heath and Jake
movie. After his soundtrack work, he released, on Howard Stern and
then i-tunes, a cover of the cult classic outlaw tune Cowboys are
Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other. The two songs entwine, and
emerge as one text, working out familiar themes: the decimation that
unexpected desire can cause, ideas of masculinity and honour, the
implications of dereliction of duty, and larger, more formal concerns
of isolation, landscape and comfort.

Cowboys…is the rare song that actually talks about what it means to
fuck the same gender on the prairies. Fuck in any number of ways, fuck
because they love each other, fuck because they are lonely, fuck
because they want to be kept literally warm or have a companion, or to
continue their lives outside the mainstream, as another kind of
outlaws. Like any number of us, it is about what happens when others
cannot handle the fluidity and dangerous nature of desire. The song is
a classic, because it catalogs the options for how bodies fit
together, and because it acknowledges that some of the options mean
that "there's always someone who says what the others just whisper/and
mostly that someone is the first one to be shot down dead"

The original is done in waltz time, and has a theatrical winking and
nodding. The music has the same kind of music hall extravagance that
caused Jobraith to lose his career, and 30 years later for Rufus
Wainwright to have one. (Think of it as a less secure, less ambiguous,
less haunting version of the Magnetic Field's Papa was a Rodeo.) The
slippages of gender, sexuality, and desire emphasized here are
bog-standard Freud, lines like "I believe to my soul/there is a
feminine/and inside every lady/there is a deep manly voice/ to be made
clear", maintain gay men really want to be women and vice versa line
that seems so old fashioned in the land of Brokeback and the
International Gay Rodeo Association.

The satisfaction in male companionship is a central theme in the both
songs, in the film, in westerns in general. The codes of masculinity
are Byzantine and violations of these codes are rewarded by violence.
One of the reasons why Matthew Sheppard was left to die in that field
in Wisconsin was the difference between city boys and country boys,
between those who went to college, and those who were working men.
Watching Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee is as aware of this; as is Ned
Sublette (the songwriter of Cowboys…) the hardness of the lovemaking,
and the wrestling/shoving/physicality of the foreplay in the movie
show this. He was also wise choosing the solidity of Willie Nelson to
sing over the credits, as a coda, a song that expressed issues of
masculinity, obliquely. He was a Friend of Mine, comes from the ground
of the west. It does not have an author, and the narrative is basic
narrative, with little detail, some in cliché. He sings it with great
tenderness, but little directness (as opposed to Dylan, who was never
really tender).

Like most ballads, the key to "He was a Friend of Mine", is the
repetition of the chorus. The lines "he never did wrong/a thousand
miles at home, and he never harmed no one" have an old fashioned,
permanence—a depth of hagiography that was never really existent in
either Clint Eastwood or in Roy Rogers. The two songs here are never
really about fucking, but about how to live integrously in a land that
rewards anything but what it says it does.

Both performances then are about what the Quakers would call speaking
truth to power, and farmers I know, would call handling your own shit.
The laconic taciturn outside of the cowboy hides a soft center. There
is an effort to keep secrets, to cause no trouble. There is something
of the private text, spoken softly amongst friends, in He was a Friend
of Mine, and Willie infuses all of the privacy, the sadness and the
shock, in the line "Stoles away and cries". There is tension between
being quietly silent and actually processing grief, a tension that
violates the code of the west, just as admitting that the desires that
one cowboy has for another, may not only be geographic convenience,
but about lust.

This might be Willie Nelson's American Recordings moment, a desire to
push himself away from old complacencies, and old audiences. It often
happens when someone's physical instrument is so ragged, and when the
desire is to communicate differently Nelson's voice is shot. But how
ragged he sounds here, and how broken he sounds, makes the two songs
even sadder, stronger, more tragic. They are a return to questions
that remain unsolved in the 70s, and their answers are of an old man:
be generous to people, mourn the dead, fight for the living, refuse to
apologize for love and desire. Together, they prove a testament to
Nelson's skills as an interpretive guide, and to someone who really
knows cowboys.

More Auction Results released, some big guns, so i might actually be able to spend the 94m (this is christies post war and contempary evening sale, ie the big guns...)

667 Dirk Losker's bright yellow train, made like a kiddie craft
668 A cosmic (literally, made with celestial maps), and holy joseph cornell box, shockingly cheap for such a master (when a bad warhol is worth 11m or a picasso is worth 94m, if i had my entire budget to waste, i would almost blow it on this peice)
669 One of the last remaining private combine, and though it lacks the rawness or strangeness of some, but with its use of solvent and tissue paper touches something intangible
670 Away from the flock, divided (Damien Hirst, Sheep, Vitrine, Formadelde, falling apart)
671 A huge, framed, hand coloured gilbert and george photo montage, filthy and poltical
672 A Calder Mobile
673 A large Morris Louis stain painting, with prominent use of a black transparent scrim
674 An excellent Chris Wool text peice, of atomic dog, by george clinton
675 Mazoni's Achrome, of Kaolin and unprimed canvas, like a textured ryman
676 an Eva Hesses test peice, looking like broken skin, out of latex and surgical bandages...
677 James Rosenquists Conveyor Belt, for its material:oil on canvas with motorized conveyor, painted canvas, conveyor belt, painted fabric and wood
678 A Brass, unpatinaed, ovoid, floating like a space egg pod, by Judd
679 A Galavinzed Steel and Aqua plexiglass single wall shelf, also by judd.
689 A pure and unblemished, Judd Box in raw pine, from the undervalued late 90s
690 1951 Graphite Study for De Koonings Woman Seires, lots of white space, but good formal use of space, etc

(my remaining 408 333 could not buy koons bronze model of an aqua lung 8m, wayne theibaud 7 candy apples 7m or a small, black and blue Cifford Still, of longing and meloncholy .2,8m )

New Auction Results, updating the Picasso list (Renfcos corpeate collection was sold in two parts, its not a v. good and deeply cannonical collection) but of it i would buy

640 Elgar Essars' work on bridges and seas
641 A perfect Rodney Graham's upended tree
642 Gaberiel Ozaco's green and black, Atomists, collage and couple print
643 John Balderssei replacing the heads with 60s icons with monochromatic dots.
644 A suite of 10 Ed Ruscha Gas Stations
645 Sigmar Polkes seires of 10 conceptual lithographs, mostly abstraction ideas about people
646 Bringing the War Home, by Martha Rosler, photo collages of veitnam war horrors placed in domestic scenes, including the white house, (15 images)
647 William Egglestons Memphis (First Imprint)
648 The Avedon shot of Warhol's boddy riddled with Solonias' damage
649 Arbus menacning, tattooed man, overwhelming a stomy sky and carnival fun
650 Matthew Barney Cremaster Cycle One, with Self Lubrciating Petroluem Jelly Frame
650-652 Two other Cremaster Couple Prints w/o the frame
653 Cattelans two praying hands emerging from a desert grave, called Mother
654 Gillian Wearings photos of common people holding signs (5 seires)
656 6 Belcher spherical gas holders (in one lot)
657 Gurskys 20 foot by 15 foot C Print of a Times Sqaure office tower (think modernist grid)
658 Another Gursky, German this time, of a van Der Rohe pavillion, in lovely grey and white tones
659 Friedman taking a picture of pink pepto bismal thrown against a blue sky
659-661 Two Eva Hesse uterine photograms
662 Adam Fuss Rabats connected by their own intestines
663 Eggleston working out racial implications of transportation in Sumner Missippi
664 Serrano's Black Christ

Which leaves me with 17 393 333

this is me with a neko case review

actually about papa now

Papa Was A Rodeo.’” “Papa Was A Rodeo” happens to be, probably, the most popular song on 69 Love Songs. It’s iconic and not filler–like. I expected, when making a three–hour set, that there would be people who wouldn’t like everything. Of course, that’s largely the point. But saying here’s a genre of music…I’m always interested inattacking the idea of genre in music. It’s horribly misleading. If I say that a love song is genre, and then there are 69 different genres on the album, what happens to the idea of genre? There are people who consider themselves to hate country music, so those people are going to have to hate “Papa Was A Rodeo.”
Discorder Interview Dec/Jan 2004

The Magnetic Fields didn't miss a beat, but some songs stood out in their live performances. "Papa Was a Rodeo" and "Yeah! Oh Yeah!" were duets highlighting the musical chemistry between Gonson and Merritt. "Papa Was a Rodeo" first teases as a gay love song until the person Merritt sings to, Mike, turns out to be a girl According to Merritt, the girl is actually modeled on a Nancy Sinatra film character and the song an homage to the weird Lee Hazlewood-Nancy Sinatra duets. The song also was unique for the only "special effect" of the entire show, as disco ball-style lights were jokingly introduced onto the stage as Merritt crooned, "The light reflecting off the mirrorball / looks like a thousand swirling eyes / They make me think I shouldn't be here at all / You know, every minute someone dies."
Johns Hopkins News Letter Concert Review: http://www.jhu.edu/~newslett/04-19-01/Arts/5.html April 19 2001

"This other critic claimed I tainted the Magnetic Fields' Papa Was A Rodeo because I was too earnest or something. Whatever.""People just love that Papa Was A Rodeo song. It's the favourite song of both my mom and my Republican brother. I've never spoken to Stephin Merritt before, but I hope he likes it, too. I'm really a fan of the artists whose songs I do, and this is just my way of sending folks like Johnny Paycheck and Willie Nelson little love letters." Now Toronto May 11-20th, Cover Story on Kelly Hogan, who is speaking here (Tim Perlich)

Hipsters also have their cowboy fetishes; they've moved from Serge Gainsbourg's sub lime saddle frolics on to Lee Hazlewood reissues, most delectably 1970's Cowboy in Sweden. Over some jaunty easy listening, cornpone philosopher Hazlewood duets on "Hey Cow boy" with a Swedish blonde who taunts: "You're just a toy." As he defends himself—"You wind me up and watch what I do to you/I may be small but...no big cowboy can do the little things I do"—I start to wonder if he's actually her vibrator. Unable to resist an exploded trope, Stephin Merritt cuts in with "Papa Was a Rodeo," the 69 Love Songs song that got the biggest cheers the night I saw him. "Papa was a rodeo, Mama was a rock 'n' roll band," Merritt deadpans to his lover, Mike. "Never stuck around long enough for a one night stand." Turns out the exact same is true for Mike, so they settle down for 55 years. Why play the field when everyone else is a cowboy anyway? (From Eric Weisbands article on Sally Timms and the Mekons, Village Voice Nov 17-23 1999)

Merritt's writing talent is undeniable, which is probably why people are drawn to cover his tunes. What about Kelly Hogan's cover of Papa Was A Rodeo (Merritt's Nancy Sinatra-Lee Hazlewood tribute) on the Pine Valley Cosmonauts' Beneath The Country Underdog (Bloodshot) disc?

"I think it might've come out before my version did. Apparently, she saw us play it live, and somebody must've been taping the show. I should call her up and find out, shouldn't I? 'Hi, it's Stephin Merritt, and I'm just wondering how you managed to cover Papa Was A Rodeo before I did. '"Technically Hogan's cover came out a few months after 69 Love Songs, so Merritt's a bit off. But he should really call her up for a chat. I mean, the cover's fairly sincere, so I don't think she's pissing all over the song."Yeah, but she changed the genders in the tune. That's not something I would've done in that particular song. It takes away the central joke. Oh, well."

Interview With Merritt, Now Toronto, July 1-7 2004, Sarah Liss

Not all gay men are urban hairdressers who swoon at Judy Garland (not that there's anything wrong with that) as this Magnetic Fields' song from Stephin Merritt's epic gender-bashing exploration of varied forms of love, straight and gay, reminds us. "Papa Was a Rodeo" is an after-hours country saloon song about a gay man who "could rope a steer" and for whom "home was anywhere with diesel gas, love was a trucker's hand," who finds a kindred spirit without having to run away to the big city.
Al Weisel, Freelance writer, on personal blog here: http://home.nyc.rr.com/alweisel/cdnowgaymalesongs.html

Since Stephin Merritt remarks that he doesn’t “want to say which ones are ‘true’ songs,” there is no profit in going down that byway of pop criticism which insists on seeing songs as extracts from an autobiography. And yet I adhere to the delusion that there’s something heartbroken and truthful and even sincere about a lot of these songs. Sincere, a word that doesn’t come in for a lot of respect these days. I brought the point up with Claudia, by e-mail, and her response was, “There’s something about sincerity that nauseates me.” I had the same reaction from Stephin himself. I did an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer before opening for the Magnetic Fields, and when asked why I liked the band, I told the interviewer that I thought that Stephin’s songs were, notwithstanding his denials, heartfelt and moving. Then I made the mistake of repeating this to Stephin backstage. His put-down was swift and complete. I can’t recreate it exactly but it was close to words like: “What incredible bullshit.”But if there’s not something true and sincere about the complexity of human emotions on this record, why bother to keep listening to it? An album rewards attention over four years, or more, because it means something about how people live. That’s why no one really listens to the Electric Light Orchestra anymore. Theirs were impeccably crafted pop songs that meant nothing at all. They were adept, and they were as compelling as sheet rock. People listen to Burt Bacharach not for the tricky metrical changes and major seventh chords, although these are nice, but because of the conjunction of the music and the complicated pathos of the words.After all, it’s not called 69 Clever Songs or 69 Songs with Extremely Dextrous End Rhymes or 69 Songs in Which a Guy With a Lot of Talent Apes Other People’s Musical Styles. It does say Love Songs in the title, and I take the ambition to be as indicated. The word love is invoked in the title, and it turns up in ninety-nine one-hundredths of the songs—not as a mere signifier of the sort imagined by Ferdinand de Saussure, but because love, the word, the idea, speaks to an important, even exalted way that people interact. When this interaction has been effectively dealt with in the popular song (“All You Need Is Love,” “Shelter From the Storm,” “God Only Knows,” “My Funny Valentine”), it has reached a place that is indelible to millions. To incline toward this word, to incline toward this abstraction, with all the trouble and bliss that it causes, in sixty-nine different ways, is to be preoccupied—centrally, vitally—with what it means to be living here on earth. That we are still listening to the album is proof of its meaning, not proof of its inventiveness. Because inventiveness is not forever. Inventiveness lasts about fifteen minutes.

Rick Moody Believer May 2003

Papa Was a Rodeo," as should be explained in the box set book, is (in my mind) sung by a man, who resembles a Lee Hazelwood character, to a woman named Mike, as Nancy Sinatra's character was called in "Wild Angels." It is thus explicitly a Lee & Nancy tribute, with an actual lyric reference, however roundabout, which is more than I usually do. If Stereolab did story songs, that's what their references would look like too.The trucker's hand refers to truckstop sex of the most banal kind. The couple stays together for fifty-five years, and their vocation (by implication, the original vocation of the narrator) is that of itinerant alligator wrestlers. The song is heterosexual, with homosexual tease because until Shirley sings you don't know Mike is a woman.
ld beighton, from the stephin songs mailing list, archived here: http://stephinsongs.wiw.org/msg.html

Her take on the Magnetic Fields' "Papa Was a Rodeo" may be the year's most sublime five minutes of recorded sound. Hogan is nonetheless sensitive to critics who slight singing and exalt songwriting. "Everyone respects Loretta Lynn as a songwriter," she notes. "But [guitarist] Andy [Hopkins] was looking at a bunch of her old records and figured out that I do the same ratio of originals to covers-- about three of ten. That was like getting my Christmas present in July."
Allison Smith Lindell Minnepolis City Pages Oct 11 2000

Before I spoke with Magnetic Fields ringleader Stephin Merritt, who is also the froggy voice behind the synth-pop of Future Bible Heroes and the Gothic Archies, I made several efforts to avoid falling into the dismal flypaper that is a bad interview. I called another writer who had spoken with Merritt in the past and asked him about the singer's conversational traits. "Oh, he's a monster," he told me without hesitation. "Whatever you do, don't interrupt him, even if there's a pause." Check. A representative of the Magnetic Fields' label, Merge Records, asked if I had ever spoken with Merritt before. When I said no, he quickly ticked off a list of helpful suggestions that rivaled a Miss Manners column in intense, nit-picky etiquette: "Whatever you do, don't tell him you like his music. Don't gush; it makes him disgusted." Check, check. "Ask him about French and Brazilian pop--he's a big fan. He likes movie soundtracks, too. Oh, and you know he's a writer, right?" Triple check. Despite the caveats, I didn't think talking to Merritt would be traumatic. His songs are filled with broken hearts and tearful admissions of suicidal desires; surely anyone who writes such teetering-on-the-brink keyboard pop can't possibly be a demon interviewee. Krista Ojala Williamette Week, April 12 1998

At TMF's previous Philadelphia gig, club patrons briefly considered the quartet's odd instrumentation and studied, low-affect vocals, then threw bottles and shouted "Go away, faggot! Village Voice, Rob Tannenbaum, DEc 1-7th Concert Review, 1999

tephin Merritt is a gay east villager who has recorded mostly for indie labels but has little affinity with indie culture, an introvert who spends many of his nights in a gay bar, not socializing, but writing songs in a notebook while listening to a jukebox. Although he was never closeted, and on the Magnetic Fields' 1990 debut Distant Plastic Trees called his publishing company Gay & Loud (the other half refers to his manager, drummer, keyboardist, singer, and close friend Claudia Gonson), his poker face keeps emotions closeted ibid

"I have a low voice and a sad facial expression, and I'm not enthusiastic about anything," Merritt explains unenthusiastically, "and I prefer honesty in conversation. That combination drives some people crazy. Almost everyone in California thinks I hate them. I relate well to the English; they understand that I don't hate them." The emotions detailed on 69 Love Songs, he says, include many unknown to him, like—er, such as ecstasy, joy, jealousy, and boredom. All are "emotions I don't actually feel," he says, because his own moods range only "between delight and agonizing depression." ibid

He never had to come out, he says, because "no one thought I was straight." Friends kept telling him he was gay, "and finally I said, I guess you're right." His mom gave him a book called The Gay Mystique, and he followed the author's advice on how to find sex: He went to New York and struck up a conversation about Fassbinder in a West Village bookstore. "But I hadn't read the part about what you're supposed to do," he laughs, "so it wasn't all that satisfying." ibid

And TMF have expanded to include Gonson, a Harvard College grad now studying with queer theorist Eve Sedgwick at City University while pursuing a Ph.D., plus two of her college mates, Chinese American cellist Sam Davol, a Legal Aid lawyer, and Korean American guitarist John Woo, a graphic designer. ibid

The wit and conceits of your lyrics seem to have a lot in common with country music. Do you like country?

Country, back when it was awkward and funny and smart and odd, was simply Southern pop. Now that it's marketed to death (again) as "down home" -- read "stupid" -- it's stupid a priori. In Nashville they eat their young and then expect them to reproduce. They drove Nanci Griffith and k.d. lang out, and they're doing it to Lyle Lovett. Creative people won't live there anymore.
Mother Jones April 1999

Before long, Merritt goads Bruno into a gentle debate about lyrics: Bruno -- a philosophy doctoral candidate that could be likened to a wordier, American Elvis Costello - decries the use of cliché in his songwriting, preferring to find new ways of expressing his emotions. Ever the counterpoint to the thoughtfully animated Bruno, Merritt explains that he likes to use clichés as a sort of emotional shorthand, a way of expressing something with a few words rather than a whole verse.

I'm confused. "Do you ever worry that people might not pay that much attention to your lyrics if you load them with clichés?," I ask. "That they might overlook the meaning of what you're trying to say?"

Merritt pauses, dramatically. He often does this before speaking, though whether he's collecting his thoughts or intentionally increasing the tension in the room is anyone's guess. The effect is the latter. "Are you familiar," he asks, his voice monotone, "with the works of Andy Warhol?"
Earshot April 1997 Randy Silver http://www.sfbg.com/Dilettante/newbible.html






some guys have a beer, and do anything, anything anything (i wish you were my bf,i)

Brokeback Mountain (the short story) foregrounds tensions b/w metropoliton and non metropolitian sexualities, posing questions of legitimacy and stability of metropolitian sexualities in geographical and social margins by disrupting the imperializing tendecies of the metropolitian sexual voices. The story was first published in the New Yorker (Oct 13, 1997) and it easy to imagine how some metropolitian might have interperted it: a sadly familar tale of homosexuality and redneck homophobic violence, set incidently, if eloquently in Wyhoming. Indeed it would be easy to read Brokeback Mountain as the story of gay men sititutated in a place and time that had yet to come to terms with homosexuality. However, mainstream reviewers, impressed with the universal qaulities of the book have insisted that it was not only gay liteture...They are right, if possibly for the wrong reasons. For while gay literture can resonate as wildly as any other, there is no mention of Gay or Lesbian in Brokeback mountain. The charachters in Brokeback are not gay because they are not possesed of sexual orientations that are generalized or transferable to others of their sex... De-Centering Sexualities: Politics and Representations Beyond the Metropolis
edited by Richard Phillips, David E Shuttleton, Diane Watt (2-3)

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you cant fix it, you gotta stand it Annie Prolux, Brokeback Mountain, in Wisconsin Stoires, 58, qouted as opening epigram, ibid

For all of this silence, this open space, there remains proable cause. The cowboys meet and fall in love on Brokeback mountain,and their love from then on is situtated in and associated with that mountain, and natural settings and open spaces more genuinely. On that mountain they have sex by the fire, in the tent, and in the open. Later, when they meet up it is ostenabily to hunt and fish, again they find natural enviroments that accomadte their love in a manner, that society, wil all of its towns and farms, could not. (ibid 4)

The "problem film" often equates sexual excitement with "love," and often ends with the reconciled lovers implicitly living happily ever after—not the case here, but probably never the case when sex is the only real adhesive between two people, anyway. Even so, Brokeback Mountain (opening December 9) suggests that the opposite could be true, if only other people could respect all kinds of love, not just the kind they imagine they themselves enjoy...What Ennis and Jack both refer to as "this thing," established early, is more or less the same thing that glued Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman together in Magnificent Obsession, yet separated them in All That Heaven Allows—a socially inappropriate love, rendered acceptable in the former movie by Rock Hudson's dedication and skills as an eye surgeon, but made impossible in the latter by his low station as a gardener. Needless to say, "this thing" activates Neanderthal reactions in the rowdy cultural backwaters of the film, necessitating a tragic conclusion with calculated echoes of the Matthew Shepard murder....Consider Brokeback Mountain's overt pandering to Rousseauian notions of the American West and its insularity, the toughness and self-sufficiency of its tight-lipped, xenophobic denizens, its rituals of faith and patriotism. You could say that simply depicting this hillbilly heaven accurately is itself an unsettling criticism, yet the effect, again, is to make it seem, in many ways, admirable—its unflagging work ethic, its quasi-mystical connection to harvest, soil, livestock, and weather.... (about the film, Gary Indiana, Village Voice, Nov 29 2005)

...Both narratively and visually, Brokeback Mountain is a tragedy about the specifically gay phenomenon of the "closet"—about the disastrous emotional and moral consequences of erotic self-repression and of the social intolerance that first causes and then exacerbates it. What love story there is occurs early on in the film, and briefly: a summer's idyll herding sheep on a Wyoming mountain, during which two lonely youths, taciturn Ennis and high-spirited Jack, fall into bed, and then in love, with each other. The sole visual representation of their happiness in love is a single brief shot of the two shirtless youths horsing around in the grass. That shot is eerily—and significantly—silent, voiceless: it turns out that what we are seeing is what the boys' boss is seeing through his binoculars as he spies on them. After that—because their love for each other can't be fitted into the lives they think they must lead—misery pursues and finally destroys the two men and everyone with whom they come in contact with the relentless thoroughness you associate with Greek tragedy. By the end of the drama, indeed, whole families have been laid waste. Ennis's marriage to a conventional, sweet-natured girl disintegrates, savaging her simple illusions and spoiling the home life of his two daughters; Jack's nervy young wife, Lureen, devolves into a brittle shrew, her increasingly elaborate and artificial hairstyles serving as a visual marker of the ever-growing mendacity that underlies the couple's relationship. Even an appealing young waitress, with whom Ennis after his divorce has a flirtation (an episode much amplified from a bare mention in the original story), is made miserable by her brief contact with a man who is as enigmatic to himself as he is to her. If Jack and Ennis are tainted, it's not because they're gay, but because they pretend not to be; it's the lie that poisons everyone they touch....
New York Review of Books 2/23/06 Daniel MEndelshon

As with other efforts — against gay marriage, stem cell research, cloning, assisted suicide — the anti-birth-control campaign isn't centralized; it seems rather to be part of the evolution of the conservative movement. The subject is talked about in evangelical churches and is on the agenda at the major Bible-based conservative organizations like Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition. It also has its point people in Congress — including Representative Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland, Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, Representative Joe Pitts and Representative Melissa Hart of Pennsylvania and Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma — all Republicans who have led opposition to various forms of contraception.

R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is considered one of the leading intellectual figures of evangelical Christianity in the U.S. In a December 2005 column in The Christian Post titled "Can Christians Use Birth Control?" he wrote: "The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age — and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm.. . .A growing number of evangelicals are rethinking the issue of birth control — and facing the hard questions posed by reproductive technologies."
Two Ppghs

This is an article from the ny times, of the kind they do well (nothing new, nothing radical, but a solid synthizing(sp) of social patterns) this time, it is about religious, non catholic, governemntal forces, intended to marshall forces against not only against abortion, but against contraception...

for me, i dont see the fear of non reproductive sex, ive said it before and ill say it again, there are god given gifts of sexuality that do not flow from reproduction--gifts of communion, pleasure, joy, tenderness, devotion, and coperality, that occur outside of the gifts of children--and it horrorfies me to have children loathed, and unwanted come into the world...

here is the article...

this is a war against pleasure, the body, flesh, against anyone who fucks for reasons that do not revolve around kiddies.

fight it well

pattismithsmense (3:58:34 AM): well, piety and righteousness are bed fellows ;-)
AnthonySEaston (3:59:10 AM): i dont think theres ever been a bed involved
pattismithsmense (3:59:30 AM): rack fellows then
AnthonySEaston (4:00:31 AM): like two frat boys pissing beside each other in a dark alley after closing time
pattismithsmense (4:00:41 AM): no, see that's art

These are blankets, laid all over the place, by Sally Ann in Boston, the hungry take these, wrap them in these blankets, and because we have been trained to notice text, force the complacent to watch them...brilliant


Damian Scott has an issue of Solo next month, and his combo of super hero porn, outsider rawness, and street art smarts make the most exciting pervert suit imagery ive seen in months--here is a link to his wonder woman:

it might not work

and here is a link to his monkey:

big green monkey
markers!1

Anything marked the Postmodern Bible means i will buy it--but this catalog copy:
ou probably have a Bible in your house, whether you're interested in the stuff on its crinkly pages or not. We all have Bibles - believers and non-believers, conservatives and liberals, carnivores and vegans, gas guzzlers and hybrid fans - because the Good Book is, by far, the most owned book of all time. And probably the least read. Admit it, you've heard all the stories about Noah (ark) and Jonah (whale) and Baby Jesus (manger), but that's about it, right?

Still, the Bible shows up everywhere in our culture. In our language, our law, our entertainment, and especially our art. From Michelangelo to Rembrandt to Keith Haring, artists the world over have applied their vision to all kinds of biblical passages and themes, bringing ancient words to life. In this project, that tradition continues. Some of the best illustrators and designers in the world contribute their interpretations of those familiar passages we often take for granted. The results are striking, risk-taking, illuminating. Inside, along with the illustrations, you'll also find brief insights by the artists themselves about the subject matter. More than a work of art, Postmodern Bible Stories is also a spiritual conversation. This is Scripture like you've never seen it before.

made me feel really excited about Realvent's book, abstract, complicated, holy, and truly about illuminating the text, you can find samplepages in a pdf on the publishers website...buy this. (esp noted is Marc Sgarssas almost tender and gentle abstraction of noahs flood, Jeff Prasfiks text peirced collage of the destruction of babel, and a Chris Kosle picture of Jacob fighting the angel, that is one of the first to show how fucking destructive, violent and opressive that act was, and Matt Currys decalouge

10 images from the street, at the death of Moses Tennbauam, an important Hasidic Rebbe...here The full story of the implications (violent hasidic street fights, 500 million dollars in property, major estates in Brooklyn, a largish town on long island, settlements in London, Amsterdam, and Montreal, two sons, both with legit claims to be the next Rebbe, and a tangled web of governmental, proto ngos, and other suppourt services, the shit is offically hitting the fan, the new york magazine peice that sort of explains the mess is here (the article is well worth reading, for its wisdom, and its ability to explain to all sides...the pictures are from the day of the funeral, and are amazing for the sheer number of people, and the oddity of cellphone/blackberry presence while people are still fighting about the ezum


From AP--Here is their text: House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Ill, center, gets out of a Hydrogen Alternative Fueled automobile, left, as he prepares to board his SUV, which uses gasoline, after holding a new conference at a local gas station in Washington on Thursday. Hastert and other members of Congress drove off in the Hydrogen-Fueled cars only to switch to their official cars to drive back the few block back to the U.S. Capitol.

Bush is comparing his little adventure in iraq to WWIII, here is an image from The Roosevelt (useless/imperial/violent/obscene/choose other word) little adventure from the phillipines, almost 100 years earlier, March 5 1906: (the picture indcludes women and children, sometimes infants at breast)



(you guys can find similar images from the united fruit wars, the various mexican wars, the indian wars, the wars in korea, vietnam and elsewhere in indochina before it was called vietnam, any of a number of wwi messes, the bombings of tokyo and dresden in wwii, my lai when it was called vietnam, etc etc)

and on that note of state based hatred, here are some SI slogans, and some posters
(Every day i am reminded that we need more SI in our lives--this time its the far right rise in Poland, including one or two genuinely fascist parties winning seats, and the BNP (read nazis) mainstreaming sort of working, doubling the council seats in England, including 13 in a london borough mostly made of Muslim Immigrants)

remind me to write about going to church with gerard, charismatic catholics, faith healing, social justice and evangelism tomorrow

A year ago, a really medicore picasso sold for 120m breaking records for no good reason. I went thru the auction results and told you what you could have gotten if you didnt waste it on pablo. This is apparently worth 95 million dollars apparently. If one had 95,216,00 million to spend and didnt want to waste it on a ugly, slightly misogynyst, medicore cubist thing, you could have bought:

1 A very early, eerie, De Chirco before he became a self parody.
2-5 Three excellent, tight and self contained Arp wood reliefs.
6 Duchamp's Green Box, a seires of texts, and prints to explain his cryptic masterpeice A Bride Stipped Bare By his Bachelor, a heremtic and mystic classic in its own right
7 A peralescent, and mildy pornographic portrait by hans bellmer
8 A Dunier portrait of two self containted, jocular merchants, like a more bitter Hals
9 a tender and urbane Pisarro, one of the more under-rated impressionsts (though that might be changing, with recent new york and paris showings)
10-11 two charming, little Sisley landscapes, with perfect Provencal colours
12 A succuluent, overwhelming, luminous Letour stilllife of three peaches
13 A perfect Paul Signac Seascape study
14 A Rodin Death Mask, more Balzac then the Kiss
15 A Bonnard painting of foliage and a red roofed shed, the canvas sized and shaped like the view form a high window
16 A Bonnard nude, slightly voyeuristic, and deeply sad.
17 Kees Van Dogen kitsch masterpiece, L'écharpe verte
18 Roualt’s holy fool portrait of St Francis,
19 An original cast of Ernst Balach’s stations of the cross,
20. A really sexy, late Arp Bronze
21. A loose, sinuous, pastel drawing of a woman combing her hair, by Degas
22, A dargerssque, transgressive and filthy water colour by James Ensor
23-25 Two first rate Schiele Pencil Drawings
25-28 Three first rate Klimt Pencil Drawings
29 One of the best middle period Ben Nicholson, geometrical, with excellent use of colour
30 A drawing of one of Schlichter’s cat fights
31 Two haunting, and unhinged Fujimotos
32 An almost white on white, landscape of a warm, courtyard by Vuillard
33 An excellent Cezanne Landscape, almost Tuscan in its browns and greens
34 A Ernst Grotesqury in Bronze
35 A Pciabo from the mid 40s, that reminds us why this once ignored period was the start of Salle, Polke and company
36 Balthus Female Nude
35 A Large, trademark Ox Carcass by Soutine
36-39 Three Auberbach Portraits, the ones where faces seem to melt
40 A colourful, mid Francis Bacon Self Portarit, perhaps the most optimistic of the lit.
41 Andy Warhol paints Diane Keaton (before and after a hair cut)
42 two multicoloured homage to the square, by Alberts
44 A Gursky Cibrachrome of the floor of The National Bank of Singapore
45 An On Kawara Date Painting
46 Cattelan playing Zorro
47 A Francis Bacon Study for the infamous Pope Innocent Series
48 10 Marylins by Warhol
49 a Richard Prince Biker Chick
50 10 Views from Sao Paulo (Silver Gelatin Photos) polke
51 One of Gurskys Epic Football Pitches
52 Bridget Rileys Uber Minimalist Sound
53 A Brillo Box by Warhol
54 A Tom Wesslemans Smoking Portrait
55 Two from Warhols Toy Seires
56 Alighiero Boetti’s Arte Povero Playing with language
57-58 Two Hans Hartung Scrawls
60 Two Chillida Terra Cotta Puzzle Sculpture
61-62 Two De Sota constructions, in wire, nylon and linen
63 An Early Vasserly Collage
64 An Almost Camp, sexy pink Max Bill remix of Mondrian
65-66- Two Dubuffet Portraits
67-72 Five prep drawings by Jean Claude nad Christo
73 RB Kitaj drawing Robert Wilheim
74-75 A Yves Klein Sponge, and Table, in his trademark blue
76-78 Two Ceaser Compostions, stuffed with an end civlivaltzations detrieous
79 A seminial Wols watercolour
80 A large Guzman, who corrects lingustic problems with latex and newspaper
81 A prime mid 80s Scharf Cartoon
82-83 Two large Sam Francis Watercolours, without much effort or noise,
84 A WEssleman Manquetee of a cigarette, with smoke, playful and slightly dull
85 Janine Atoniniès icon of feminist masochism, Lipstick
86 Harry Hollands Advertising Slickness, this time in Sunsuits
87 A Shirin Hisnit medittion on Islam, Desire, Language and pain
88-93 5 Hamish Fulton Lithographs
94-97 Three examples of how Jorge Strasseès C Prints are wry destructions of the nu german photogs
98 An Olfar Eliussan Photo of cold and remote islands, from his undervalued island seires.
99-103 Four Hirisho Sugmioto photo of still and somber seas (Ionian, Carribean North, and Tasman)
104 April Gopniks hard edged realist convases of inclement weather
105 A Sigmar Polke Screen Print, on Vinyl Table Cloth
106 A very early silver gelatin picture of gas plants by the Belchers
107 A stark Art and Language text and glass piece
108 A rare non photo work by Gilbert and George, lovelier and less angry then they usually are.
109 A tattoeed and Cured pigs hide by Wim De Voye
110-115 Four Tracey Emin Monoprints, and one Doll
116 A Damien Hirst Spin Painting
117 A Julian Opie, narrative screen, of a woman stripping
118-119 Two Grayson Perry Cermics,
120-122 Two prints from the work Chiho Aoshima did for the NYTC
123 A Jack Peirson Applause Sign
124 Two Vintage Bernice Abbot Photos, of the Lower East Side in the 30s
125 a Keith Harring Subway Drawing
126-128 Two Colour Coppler Landscapes by the criminally underrated Todd Hido
129 A canonical William Eggleston vintage print of parked cars
130 Danny Lyon snapshotting bikers
131 Pierre et Gilles astrounauts and flowers
132 Warhol screenprint of the most wanted men
133 A tiny, intimate, and charming martin parr snap of a woman holding a purse
134 Helmut Newtonès Amazonic Big Nude
135 A late imprint of Belloqs storyville prostitute
136 Matthew Barney Cremaster 3 Print
137 John Waters conflating Manson and Divine in photographic form
138 Marcel Dzamas domestic monsters
139 Tom Sachs Homemade Bomb Kit
140 A mournful, and pyschogeographic realized Barry McGee Portrait, painted on a bottle
141 Ed Ruscha, Lithograph, Other
142 A fantastic, and quite dark Twombly lithograph, from his prime in the 70s
143-144 Two Candida Hoffer C Prints of Theaters
145 Expressionist, and unphotographic, John Balderssi Lithos, in in a edition of 6
146 Minor White Rayogram
147 One of the best, in theoretical and pictorial terms, of Winogrands stock show photos
148 Walker Evans farm photos
149-150 Two large, colour coupler and plexi mounts, meant to stroyboard films, by the other Steven McQueen
151 An masterpiece of analyticial coldness, of Hercules hangers, by Lynn Cohen
152-153 Two mournful nudes, in melancholic cynatype colours by Doug Sanders
154-155 Three Hirst Dot Prints, from the Drug Series
157 A truly perverse McCarthy Silkscreen
158 Richard Prince remaking Altamonts
159 A tender and difficult Alex Katz portrait, away from his usual formal coldness, this one of John Ashberry
160 A Late Licheenstein, Vientan Blinds, which I a fuck you on the decorative powers of minimialism
161 A really cute, end table sized Naim June Paik Robot
162 A Jeff Koons Porcelian Poster
163-164 Two Murakami Portrait Lithographs, one of 1000 eyes and one of Mr Dobbs
165 Uta Barth laminate and photographic construction
166-171 Five very pretty photos of very pretty boys by Wolf Gang Tillimans
172-173 Two Ernst Haas Super close up floral studies
174 A Robert Indiana that finds the place between Amish Quilt and Unaco 76 Ball
175-178 Cindy Sherman Dressing up as a Farm Girl and Lucille Ball, amongst others
179 Steve McCurryès famous photo of the Afghan Widow, from National Graphic
180 Annie Lebowitz doing Esther Williams for the Culver City Synchro Team
181 Nan Goldin playing Life and Death on Long Island
182 Two Ellsworth Kelly Prints, curving towards each other, one black and one red, elegant and reductive
183 Dora Maar's landscapes of Picassos Spain
184 Belchers portrait of a coal furnace in Belgium
185 Gerry Tice making a Cherry Hill Esso Station seem like a beacon in the dark
186 A louise Borgeiouse drawing of spider, that works like a cosmic wheel
187 Ron Rochelon's High Theory Stand Up Comedy Mash Up of Alice and Disney
188 Heberard Havekost marking the formal geometery of international style buildings
189 More of those Gopnik clouds, this time a lithograph (most under rated painter of her generation, perhaps.)
190 A charming little isreali landscape by Jakob Steinhardt
191 Yehiel Shemi Large sculpture, made of wood and iron, post miminal;ist
192-195 Three Ansel Adams Yosemite landscapes
196 An Original Imprint of Edward Westons 1930 Pepper
197 An Orignial Imprint of Edward Westons 1947 Natalius
198 Fredreick Sommers Tribal and Iconic The Judgement of Solomon
199 Joel Sternfields photograph of firefighters buying pumpkins
200 Two late 19th Century Stereoscope photographs by Charles Negre of Paris Asylums
201 Julia Margaret Camerons Late Victorian Series Prayers and Praise
202 Edward Muybridge Panaroma of San Franscio
203 The Entire Edward Curtis Portfolio of North American Indian Seires
204 Tuscalosa Wrecking Company by Evans
205 Alice Mae Burroughs by Evans
206 Ben Shan's picture of synagogue
207 Robert Capras evocative greatest greantion shots of D Day
208 The lyrical abstractions of Henry Callahan's Chicago Tree
209 Elliot Porter’s portfolio of flying birds, (bue skies, motions, gorgeous)
210-215 Five Diane Arbus portraits of freaks, babies, midgets, and the like…
216 An excellent Mapplethorpe Orchid
217 The infamous sado masochistic X Portfolio also by Mapplethorpe
218 Nan Goldins Cody at the Boy Bar
219 An Eggleston Shot that makes Elvis’ Piano look like a saints relic
220 A Sally Mann viled, dark, daugertype, called Deep South
221-226 Five Sugimoto prints of empty movie theaters
227 Adam Fuss Placental Baby
228 Michelle Kim Tank Field
229 A 20 Foot Gursky, high as opposed to wide this time
230 The Self Portrait by John Coplan, that makes his back look like a Neolithic monument
231-33 Two Great black and white Keitas (wrong size, and note problems with ownership)
234 The strange clarity of Serrano’s klansmen, half in the darkness, out of frame
235-236 The two most famous Guy bourdains (the one with the Pink Elepehant toys, and the human/desk Legs Akimbo one)
237 Gary Winnogrand’s Park Avenue (the one with the angry monkey)
238 Gary Cannone Freuds Booksale
239 James Welling Soo Line Bellingham Train Picture, in gritty black and white
240 Eight Claire Weemens pieces on anthropology, African identity, and photographry
241 Niki Lee’s playing with idenitiy
242 One of Burtynsky’s Ship breaking Series
243 Two of Avedon print from the In the American West
244 Robert Frank’s Assembly Line
245 Glen Sleator’s sexy slick prints of convex security mirror (on plexiglass)
244 117 Bill Owens Suburbia Photos (sold as one lot)
243 Seaton Smith's melancholic bleached out prints of train mirrors
244 Richard Avedon’s menacning portrait of a eye patched john wayne
245 Film Stills from Tinseltown South by Teresa Hubbard and Alex Bircher
246-250 4 stark, and intimidating urban landscapes by Thomas Struth
251 Doug Halls loving odd to endless hi-ways, somewhere in Nevada (C Print)
252 6 Walker Evans polaroids (Sold as one Lot)
253 Joel Sternfield’s bleak coupler print of a decaying foodmart, in the missiouri wilderness
254 Craig Kalpakjian’s Kubrickian Corridor
255 See 251. Make it in black and white, but by Robert Frank and in Colardo
256 A paradigm destroying, conflation of landscape, and self portrait, casual but not self effeacing, by Lee Friedlander
257 one less good, but equally moving, also by Friedlander
256 The almost social realist Iriving Penn studio portrait of an Astronaut
257-259 Two hygienic, scientifically lit, still lives, of cigarette butts, also by Iriving Penn
261-263 Eisenhadt’s Photos of Marylin in Black Sweater and Marlene in Black Tux
263-265 Two Eggleston photos of domestic chaos
266 Richard Princes Modernist Grid of Found Cowboys
267 A callotype by Henry Fox Talbot, one of the earliest pictures ever taken
268 Serrano’s White Christ
269-271 Two Roni Horn conceptual/abstractions, this time of cephlapods
273 Allen Ginsberg homoerotic shots of his lover, and his lovers lover
274 One of Larry Clarks barley legal rough trade, this time with gun, from Tulsa
275 Rene Dijkstra’s photo of a young female isreali soilder
276 Aretha, by William, mostly for the colour
277 That Dinae Arbus NoLa shot where the hairdresser looks like her poodle
278 Henri Cartier Bresson,Bike Photo, mid 30s
279 Brassais Corpulent Streetwalker
280 Imogen Cunnigham’s portrait of Frida, making her look like an Incan Goddess or Our Lady of Gaudelope,
281 Dora Maar Ray-o-Graph (better, stranger, and more fractured as an artist then a subject)
282 More Weston Nataulises
283 Lewis Hine’s heart rending document on child labour, Girl working in a Carolina cotton mill
284 Paul Strands Deep Shadows and Opressive buildings, on wall street
285 Leni Refiensthal Camera Man
286-288 Two Mid 40s Helen LEvitt NY Street scenes, before she discovered colour
289 Werner Birschoffs tranquil, holy, photo of snow falling on a monastery near Toyko, cause it reminds me of Houksai
290 Sad Marylin, and Pensive Pound, both by Avedon
291 The Bettina Rhiems portrait that looks like some kind of Liz Taylor shows her boobies thing, but it isn’t liz taylor, again mostly for the colour
292 Bettina Rhimes, nude, in a hospital surgical suite
291 Eggleston photo, of a woman hitching nearing Glendon Missipi
292-295 Two Christof Klutes, and one Hofer, of University Corridors
296 Bernice Abbots Sci. Portfolio (12 images), meant for text books, initially
297- Three Onions, Three Tulips, Three Tulips (different varieties) by english botanist Charles Jones, for their balance, precision, and lack of pretention (ca 1900)
298 Man Rays Portrait of Charllote Hessling
299-302 Three Harry Callahan Silver Nitrite photos of Torn Signs, font shots of doom, etc
303 Larry Clarke’s Portrait of Linda Rochester, for her perfect Ronnie Spector Beehive
304 Robert Franks Hoboken, the famous one with the American Flag
305-309 Four photos Arbus took of a tired, and slightly haggard Germaine Greer, in some American Hotel room, Greer wrote about it later.
310 Danny Lyon portfolio, mostly natives and bikers, 30 images
311 Shores photo of a boulder on a street in Bozeman Montana
312 A Baltz photo of a door in suburban Pasedena
313 Sally Mann’s mother land, a daugertype made white by tea, the landscape barely visibile in the background
314 Atget’s picture of a willow in a paris graveyard
315 Eakins Motion study, young boy
316 Gary Winnogrands photo of the young hoods necking, while the ugly girl looks on
317-321 Four Silver Nitrate fotograms, done at the same time as ray devolped rayogrpahs by the painter/sculptor mology-nagay
322 Paul Outerbridge Nude With the Towel, for the audacity of the colour (Im not sure the process)
333 Harry Callahan’s wife looking like a mermaid in Lake Michigan (Silver Nitrate)
334 Robert Frank Silver Geltain, from the London series, of a man in a morning coat and top hat, London
335-340 5 photos by Lee Friedlander, from his travels to famous American Tourist sites
340-342 Two Iconic Madonna Shots
343 A truly hard on inducing Seranno of a priest tied, bound and gagged, titled Martyr
344 Jessica Craig Martins Portrait of two v. rich smiles on the hamptons, at the fourth of july
345 A picture from Vanessa Beecrofts Second performance at the intrepied
346-348 Two Uta Barth photos, with large white fields carved from blurry landscapes
349 Milton Avery Pencil like print of a very thin, extended young woman
350 Child Hassam’s etching of Yews on an english estate, because of the crowding in the trees crowns
351 Winslow Homers open, content etching of one man in a boat, fly fishing
352-355 Drypoint, illustrative etching of depression era new york, by Martin Lewis, spring time in greenwhich village, subway steps, and Bedford gang
356 Lewis Lowzick’s etching of the Brooklyn Bridge
357 Deigo Reiveras Portrait of Emma Dunbar
358 Ben Shan’s portrait of the three principals of the tea pot dome scandal
359 Charles Scheer’s industrial series no. 1, later paitned
360-364 4 of Rufel Tofina’s venauclar, tidy, brightly coloured, and tender prints, (including two watermelon on a tangerine field, a grey burro, and others)
364-369 5 of Whisters 26 Etchings, of boats, birds, bridges, and other domestic marine scenes, tidier, and less colourful then his paintings, but delicate and full of love.
368-355 Friedensreich Hundertwasser prints, from the 60s and 70s. A swiss mystic, his abstractions contain a symbolic logic that is present but intractable—also great colours
354—Fantastic odlesqiue nude by Matisse, drawin in one sinuous line
355 Matisse, Homme D Ennemi, a male version of the above, with white lines on black Field,
366 One of the claustrophobic henry moore drawings, done before his expansive sculpture
367 A Edward Munch etching, in dark green, of two people lost in a murky forresst.
368 One of Several Neo Classical drawings Picasso did of the Minatour fucking a lady—this one more bestial then most.
369 A Redon watercolour of a woman tunring into a serpernt
370 A woman, like a ribbon in the wind, by Schiele, lithograph from 1920
370-374 Four of the more famous Ta Louse La Trec posters, including dancing girls
374-376 Two delicate, lovely, decorative, pastel coloured intereriors, limited edition lithographs by Villuard
377 Bellows portrait of rich men, in the midst of a fight
378-383 5 Exagareted, psychically imposing, newsprint etchings by Thomas Hart Benton. Mostly of landscapes, an amazing one of trains, and another of lumberjacks
384 Black Magic, of the Flat Iron building, by Geerlings
384-386 Two large, WPA style, etchings by Martin Lewis, of Transportation
387-390—Grant Wood, Rural Farm Scenes
391 Tamayo’s print of a wolf howling at the moon, like a Mexican/inca version of Klee.
392 Drypoint self portrait of Max Beckman, looking like a greedy gnome
393 For their historical relation to the multiple, and photograrphy, Duchamps RotoReilefs
394 Kadinsky Album of 46 Etchings, in mulberry binding
395 Joan Miro Ubu Roi VI cause its pink, and bouncy
396 A Munch lithograph, where two people are sitting at the very edge of a desolate landscape, very few lines used very well
397-402 5 Nolde Aquatints and Etchings, mostly brooding and paranoid portraits, with one excellent seascape
403 Serge Poliakoff’s brown and yellow composition, looks like a crackled wall somewhere in the south of spain
404-409 5 Blake Etchings, Deaths Door, Annuncation, some images of Crypts, and Christ Rising, the most traditionally Christian of his work.
410 Gustave Caillebott’s Yellow Roses in a White Jar, a tight, well composed and has a certain purity of vision
411 Tamara d’Lembicki’s Four nus, four hard edged, deco women, naked in a very tight square canvasses, modernity strips any of Ingres’ softness
412 Josef Albers White Embossing on Grey 7 Prints
412-415 Three Chuck Close Prints, one from fingerprints, one early Phil Glass
416-418 Two lots of Monochromatic Flavin lithographs for Judd, one set of four, one set of three, and one set of 6
419 Frankenthalers Flirt, From 1995, written about lower on the page
420 Philip Guston’s Sea Group (cause of the empty top corner, and he crazy busy bottom half)
421-426 5 David Hockney Drawings, including three heavenly luxurious, blue swimming pools, with a wonderous aqua.
427 Robert Indiana illustrations of Robert Creely Poems (set of 10)
428-439 11 various John’s prints, including examples of Numbers, Targets, Flags, Hatches, and Ale Cans, illustrated poems by Frank O Hara, Others
430 Donald Judd Black and White Diagonal aquaprint, has the thrust into pictorial space of the best sculptures
431-434 Three Ellsworth Kelly Prints, Green Amoprhus Blob, Three Colours, and Navy Devon
435-438 Three Sol Le Witt, late, brightly coloured, lithographs
439 Lichenstien Poster for Leo Castelli (service for five)
440-442 Robert Longo, Mn In Cities (Erick and Gretchen)
443-446 Three Greytone monoprints also by judd
447 Agnes Martin (On A Clear Day) conceptual working out of grids, lavendar on buff paper, 10 parts
447-452 5 Murakami Lithogrpahs, including nightscape and Homage to Francis Bacon evil yet super kawaii
453 A small, Kelly green, relief of a 1963 Packard, by Oldenberg, intended as a manquette
454-464 10 Rauschenberg prints, including some of the insisously poltically Soviet-American Alliance seires and a really cute one featuring a cat.
465 A lithographic version of Richters painting of a double or mirroed candle, with signturures, as seen on that sonic youth album
466 Rosenquist Spaghetti, super annotated, hyper real close up of chef boyadee, looks like factory guts
467-470 Ed Ruscha Prints, all classic, including Standard Station, Soap Bubbles (blue and white, so light, commercial, epherameal, and pure) and one other
471 Plans for Fred Sandblacks minimalist string installations, lithographs made with the same rigour (seires of 6)
472-475 3 lots of Richard Serra prints, mostly hugely blocked sections of black oil stick on white canvas, one set of four, that construct a narrative of black slowly overwhelming white, like an oil slick (ie 1 is ¼, 2 is 1/2, 3 is ¾, four is wholly black)
476-483 7 lots of Wayne Theibaud Prints, one landscape, two single flowers in vases, some usual commercial food drawings, and a an album of 4 lithographs illustrating the physoginomy of taste. (the spareness, and the lack of overkill in his e arly work)
483-486 Three Twombies, two that look like file cabinets, and the masterful Roman Notes, a sea foam colour, with light blue chalk, loosely scrawled in continous loops in tight horizontal rows
484 Warlhol Black and White Brimmingham Race Riot
486 Warhol Cambpell Soup Portfolio (10 Prints)
487 Warhol Pink and Silver Electric Chair
488 Warhol Shadows I (an album of 6)
489 Warhol Sigmund Freud
490 John Wesley Panolpy (A wreath of wrestling soilders, and a general as paper doll)
491 Ta Louse La Trec colour litho grpah, with one elgenat rosy pink nipple
492 Doufys St Slevin, a drawing of the famous goth cathedral, that folds into itself like a fractal
493 Otto Dix portrait of an angry and sour woman, an excellent example of his satirical ege
494-497 Two Kirchner drawings, post coital, and hollow with hunger
497-499 Two drawings by Marc, one of a tiger and a deer
501 Meloncholy III by Munch (described well in the title)
502 Redons Happy Little Dancing Spider
502-504 Two easy, almost scrawelled, corpulent little Dubuffet Homonculi
505 Clase Oldenbergs Erotic Drawing (an orgy with cox the size of baseball bats)
506 Chaim Soutine, the exact opposite of the blood and gut meat paitings, a peaceful and verdant work remindcent of cezannes pines
507 a gorgeous, and almost life sized bronze nude, by Andre Mallioli
508 A 6 feet high, 10 feet long, Epic Hepworth, initimate and open for its huge size
509 A small and almost empty Degas Landscape, blue sky and sea, with brown ground, trifurcated almost perfectly
510 A Henri Martin Nude, naïve, with long brown hair, that flows into the murky water, almost interiror and domestic in its use of space, though out doors
511 More naked chicks, this by Nisling, and it looks like a dutch baker who doffed her top at a lunch hour, quick and ideal in its naturalism
512 one of those windswept cardinals, by Manzu, in White Marble—the purity, and the modernism of these figures always reminded me of the goals of Vatican II, and I think are amongst the best of 20th century religious art
513 A large, late Giocemetti, designed for the mexico city library, combines ideas of furniture, sculpture, openness and capture,
514 Ernst painting of butterflies, a good transitional piece b/w his paintings and his collage work
515 A much smaller, about the size of an ostritch egg, hepworth bronze, hollow in the middle, strung like a lute
516 A white chalk drawing by Degas oon Brown Craft paper, of a jockey laying prone after being throne from a horse
517 a slight, and lithe, sexually ambiguous boy child by balthus
518 A perfectly composed, drawing of the head and shoulders of one of Schieles doctors
519 Though intended as an etude, a perfectly composed girl, leaning over the front rails of the bed, her coat on a chair besides, also by Balthus
520 Lyle Feinnger drawing of semaphore flags, ground and a black ship
521 a very late Ben Nicholson 4 inche squre in the midst of dove grey matting, with a variety of opposing and complimentry segments/lines/squggles in browns, greys and greens, an earthy, miniature riley, and a thumbnail of his concerns for most of his life
522 This Kupka illustration that looks like a brooks brother pocket square, handsome use of blues and red
523 A student of Rudhart painted a dark and vile Bear Hunt, like something you would find in a mediocre regional museum, in a dark corner, has power of natures tooth and claw, American Victorian
524 Louise Garieb, dramatic flower painting, all verticle motion almost spurting into the black background, great pinks and oranges
525 Two Cezanne Drawings, a great one of Aloe in a japanese pot, and a mediocre one of a human face
526 One of the Better flower paintings by Redon
527 A Bonnard circus scenes, with all of this dusty rose and red chalk, gorgeous
528 A double Picture, Recto 6 Nuns eating lunch, like still in France Gaugin, verso, a fantastic circus strong man, doughy and seductive, by Denis
529 Théo van Rysselberghe has an almost tropical hill top view to the sea, it reminds me of Victoria, and I love it (all the little islands make everything better, and that slapdash loosened pointillism as well)
530 A painting described as Canal De Bruges, and it is exactly that, dun coloured concrete, dull water, and townhouses in the background, miserable industry made revelatory
531 A greek island, all seascrubbed whites and sage greens by mediterrianist Marquet
532-535 Three early giocemettis of these fat contented birds, mostly wanted for the irony of owning something so happy by someone who made his career on misery
536 Lynn Chadwick Manquetee of two standing, formal men, genderless and sort of ominous
537-540 3 George Grosz cartoons, Weimar era, narrative and composition excellent, not as nasty as they could be
541 An August Herbin Composition that is the fine art equivalent of Carmen mirandas hats, loud, fruity, rollicking, camp, and w/o beginning or end, his more restrained work people like more, but I like when he goes a bit crazy
542 A spare piece of Mondrians sketchbook, figuring out a late compostion, the ones he painted and repainted over and over again…
543-545 Two avain like constructions, almost ceadric, and strange—by an unknown by henri lamont
546 A Leger Painting, heavily stylized, of grass and larkspur growing around and thru a yellow girder
547 A Polychrome Cermaic rising meteror, also by Leger
548 Two more Lyn Chadwicks, Male and Female, with capes, the female a bronze triangle instead of a face, the man a square, stilling on a unformed bronze lump
549 Bimorphic, slef supporting, Arp Bronze, shaped like a French curve
550-6 Henry Moore Bronzes, Madonnas and Reclining Nudes, models for larger pieces (I think moore works smaller, the size of a hand, rather then an arm,)
557 Chadwick manquette, similar to the seated one, but Standing (actually walking)
558 A coquettish Lempicki, a black velvet band around her neck, a confection of blonde on her hair, like a happy stranger Olympia
559 Lavendar Glass Sculpture, ovoid, with large black opening, like a mouth—Ernst one off
556 Vija Clemens Web no. 2
557-560 three chuck close prints, two black and white, one colour, 10 decades apart, the ravages of age is subtle but haunting
561 One of those proto ocean parks with perfect california colours by Dieborken
561-567 5 Perfect well edited, bizzarely clean urban lanscapes by Estes
568 A monotype, brown ink on white archival paper, of chinese simplicity, Fischl nude
569-570 A matched set of Frankenthaler watercolour prints, blue and pink, with the same green/yellow poking through
570-585 15 great, colourful, strange, and polymorphus keith harings, including medusa, and mickey warhol
585-580 More Hockney Swimmingpools, Half of his weather seires, inculding the apoclyptic lightening, and two of the best portraits fomr the mid 80s
579 Robert Indiana's Numbers, in colour (10 Lithographic prints)
580 Moulded Steel Judd Multiple, almost with Andre
581 4 aquatints, also by judd, hard edged, almost pure minimalism
582-586 Two Ellsworth Kelly drawings of flowers, and two spectrums, one sqaures and one triangles
587 Koon's Made in Heaven Souvineer Tote (its much more awesome then it sounds)
588 Lichenstien Lithogrpah of a sunset, with the original ben day dots
589 INstructional Poster by Lichensthal, on lithography, limited edition
590 Brice Marden Cold Mountain 18--a move away from solid bricks of muted, meloncholic cholour, to gorgeous, lines of movment in empty space, a freeing of late minmialism, and the next great discovery
590-596 Six Etchings by Motherwall, mostly black and red--but the red is this expansive, oxblood, rust, that reminds one of newmann, and other more ancient things
598-602 Four Nauman deconstructions of language, Raw War, black and red; Life Mask in graphite on white field; violence with a drawing of four violins drawing;and partial truth in classical roman font, the u a v.
603 Polyresin smaller cast of Nevelson's wall sized found and painted wood sculptures (this one black)
604 a 6 inch, 6 foot long kenneth noland aquatint
605 Bridget Riley twisted black and white on clear plexiglass
606 Print of Rosenquist pouring red paint into a teal bucket
607-614 7 Ruscha word works, including Pepto Bismal CAviar, and 1984 in that computer like font
615 7 Robert Ryman Aquatints (Buff on White!)
616-626 10 Black and White drawings
626 Thiebaud Rabbits
627 Theibaud Candy Apples (it explains the red colour)
630-631 Two Gorgeous, calligraphic, Twombies, with interplays of several colours, tight and contained in a way his scrawls are usually not
632 Kara Walker Silehoute
633 Andy Warhol Liz Taylor
634 Andy Warhol S&M Green Stamps
635 Andy Warhol Four Grieving JAckies
636 Andy Warhol Scotch Broth
637 Andy Warhol Nixon for McGovern
638 Andy Warhol Mao
639 Andy Warhol Dollar Sign Qaudrant
640 Andy Warhol Judy Garland as Blackgama


Okay that’s all I could imagine wanting 640 pieces—most expeinsive work is 13m, cheapest is $600, those who failed to sell, I took the low estimate, did not include any auction where the Picasso would be out of place time wise (so modern, and contemporary auctions only, and only for spring 2006.) Aside from what I would buy, I attempted for history, further market, diversity and other reasons people buy art. Spelling and Gramar mistakes mine.

I have 21 141 133 left.

More Fiction

39 Star-- Pamela Anderson : I liked it, barely disguised roman a clef, funny, self aware, naughty, and well written.

38 Clumsy Chester Brown, self loathing, voyueristic, open wound, i dont think he likes women v. much, and much of his interactions with his gf seem passive agressive and forceful, not quite rape, but they make me feel v. uncomfortable. its also strange that he shows her pussy over and over again, but refuses to show his penis i find interesting.

(in the middle of collected webster, norman spinards iron dream, jesus son, and white noise)

Chelsea Charms

The Last Picture Show

...is not sociology though it is sociologically true nor is it another excuse in romantic nostaligia on the order of Robert Mulligans Summer of '42, It is filled with carefully researched details of time and place but although these details are the essential decor of the film, they are not its essence. It is a movie that doesnt look back, rather it starts and ends off on its own time...
(The ny times guide to the best 1000 films ever made, staff of ny times)

...in his 1971 movie, the last picture show, the director, peter bogdonovich, used the community of teenagers assembled in the royal theater, on the main street of anarene texas (pop 1131), as a metaphor for the dying town. When the picture show closes down, after one last showing of red river, so does the story of the young friends and their mentor, Sam The Lion, who once owned the Royal...what araene knows of life comes straight from hollywood and a picture perfect ideal of love, and a picture perfect vision of love that because it falls with the realities of small town lust makes real life seem inauthentic and wrong...
Textures of Place: Exploring Humanist Geographies, edited by Paul C Adams, Steven Hoelscher, Karen E Till, pg 19 (note red river is another john wayne western, done by howard hawk--whos career was inssturctive in analysing genre, and who was not stuck with the limitations of ford) (and also talk about mcmutrys view of the western in this film, and then in the film made of brokeback)

...of mcmutrys first three novels, the last picture show (1966) was considered the bleakest portyal of the rural west. the central setting is now the town of thalia rather then the countryside, idiot ridge becomes only the site for nostagic picnics...as in all of his novels a combonotion of black humour and thankless sex envinces the dislocation and isolation of contemparary westerns)...
A Literary History of the American West, Literature Association Western, 619

Notably it was John Fords intervention that secured Ben Johnson;s partciaption in the LAst Picture Show, He didnt like he way the part was written, paticurally the langauge that was used by his charachter, Johnson was far from a prude, but he understood his strength and appeal as an actor, and had no interest in playing the charcahter bRodonovich had essentially written for him. Desperate, the director called John Ford, in the hopes that he could intervene and talk to Johnson. This was not merely a self serving gesture on the part of Brogdonovich, he knew the role was spsecial and that he was born to play it. Ford convinced Johnson he should take the part, with assurances that Bogdonovich could change the dialouge to adress Johnson's concerns... Drive in Nights, J D Guilfoyle, 102-103

In the last picture show Polly Platt sceneic design the public area...as a flimsy , ghostly facade, reducing public space to the merely residual and supplemental...in terms of its c entral charachter and locale, his movie concerns an absent center...
(Go to Google Book Search Home: The Seventies Now, Stephen Paul Miller) (78)

sean

i dont have yr email and i dont have yr phone number, and so im writing this as an open letter---i see that you have been commenting on my blog in public, under yr own name now--though i dont know how recently you have been reading it...

ive been reading yrs off and on, in the late nights, or had, i realized though that we had nothing left to say to each other, that the year i lived with you was the best in my life b/c of raymond and the worst b/c of sean--it was painful and i dont want to hear what you think ever again. you havent read carefully, and youve been silly.

do you really spend time thinking about helen frankenthaler, or are you really offended that i like britney's cover of satisfaction more than micks (no, i wasnt talking about baby hit me one more time, in fact my least favourite single from her)

i dont know why you are posting--and i could ban you, or i could just say fuck off, but thats the way i run things--the comments are there and the public element is there for a number of reasons, mostly though because i belive peoples thinking should be transparent--the organic turning and returning, the static and the music of ideas in and out of focus, and thats why i post so many aim conversations, qoutes, emails and links and thats why most of my initial research work ends up here (that and if i need to print, or write somewhere else i can...)

so it makes me complicated. i will be honest, yr the only man i ever hated, and baby yr my biggest regret, and i dont want you to read this or comment. You hurt me. christ tells me not to hate you, and living in the past with regret aint a good thing, and what i want doesnt really matter when it comes to openness, transparency, or all that good stuff...

so balls in yr court i guess
ase

(also, l.m. i really love yr comments, yr suggestions, yr questions and yr answerings, but i have no idea who you are, can i get a clue?)

cheers
ase

one of my favourite expereinces with art ever, was seeing a mid 60s crown point seires of prints, done by helen frankenthaler, kneeling on the floor, infront of this portfolio, hung together with string, white linen gloves on, in the basement of an office tower, in vancouver, about 3 years ago, spending an hour looking thru these 10 images, tight, goregous, ehteral, complicated, and new images--images made by staining and moving, by the implication of pigment, away from brush into something more elemental--they looked arieal, shots from an airplane, of dileuvian fields, odd deltas, or more abstract places, they had the cartography of natures chaos--and the colours, no one was a colourist like frankenthaler--they were impossible to describe, a pink somewhere b/w shrimp and flamingo, a green like the shade of a rubber tree plant, a turqoiuse that kind of looked like swimming pool water done by hockney or navaho jewellery...

in the rise of 2nd generation abexers, and of women esp. (in terms of market and respect) i had two mysteries---why the hell wasnt robert motherwells collage peices getting more love, and where in gods name was frankenthaler (shes still alive, still making art--

the problem with good ol google image search, is that the colours are radically different, and so its difficult to talk about them, and with the watercolour effects here its even more difficult--and this was designed as a poster for lincoln center too, so that also makes these things problematic--anyways this image:

Flirt, 1995, is amazing, and since it sold for 10k at sothebys this week, her star may be rising (after lee krasner, joan mitchell and morris louis)

form and joy arent popular these days--but the lightness, the airness, the flirtatious glee that permeates this--the ease and the decades spent aquiring that ease are all here--that red stain that bifurcates the orange and pink forms, meandering to the blue edge, like a wine stain or lipstick; the two green rectangles beside all of that pink, to avoid cute, the blue itself, a wide and open colour, edging to the ends, past the ends of the paper, like some kind of watery frontier, the tiny touch of yellow in the far left, anthologzing all the other colours in the peice, the moulting circles of pink on pink at the center, like flamingo feathers...


frankenthaler is deeply over looked--and i think it is because she is so pretty, so decrotative, so lovely, and uncomplicated and joyus and pure...and shes still working towards something...

we are in the middle of a commerical and critical re-evaulation of 2nd wave abexers, esp work by women, so it suprises me that work by helen frankenthaler isnt more respected---(last i saw on sale at a gallery, 3 yrs ago, 10 peices, 13k, mid 60s)

this was from 1995, 9,200 dollars, and its a masterpeice:

Hugh Edwards, From Bleak Beauty, 1950s, Howard Illinois, taken with a rolliflex, done before he became an early currator of contemparary photography...

FINALLY NOT RESEARCH!

Photography... is this permission slip that you're given to go into the nail salon or to walk up to that person at the bus stop and say, "Can I stare at you for 30 seconds?" It's an incredible luxury. We could do this without a camera, but it'd probably be even more awkward... I used to joke that I was going to become a "binoculographer." I'd just go around staring at people with binoculars. Kind of performance art... I feel like a large part of photography is like a performance. And the photograph is like a document of this performance, of this encounter with the world. Alec Soth, Interviewed on the Walker Blog

Notes on Film:

(Filmic Genres) "provide different strategies for dealing with the same ideological tensions." Robin Wood, Ideology, Genre, Auteur." Film Theory and Criticism, 478

(genre films are only potent b/c) of the intervention of a clearly defined artistic personality in an ideological-generic structure. (ibid, 479)

(Both Qouted by Katherine Lawrie here: http://www.film.queensu.ca/Critical/Lawrie2.html)

On The Searchers by john ford:
Ethan's cynical cathphrase "that'll be the day" made a big impression on buddy holly and jerry allison, when they saw the searhers at the state theater in lubbock texas, their break thru song of that title, first recored in july 11956, by buddy holly and the crickets became the number on hit both in Us and Britian, during the fally of 1957...the late fifties a seventh grader making amatuer films in phoneix, steven spielberg shot a 2 reel western in a freinds backyard, immitating the searchers, using a backdrop of monument valley painted on a bedsheet...In 1967 Jen Luc Goddard included a reference to the Searchers but the hommage failed to enlighten the american art house audience... (Josesphm McBride, John Ford: A life) 570

...Apart from the searchers--which is a very moving and mysterious fiom that does not cheat on a serious subject adn that beutifully relates the landscape to its theme--I find his Westerns, pictorial, tediously rowdy, and based on cavalier treatment of american history...David Thomson, The New Biogrpahical Dictionary of Film,312)

...The narrative loses its sense of linerar devolpments events start and stop and start over again, just as ethan and martin leave, return, leave, return, leave and return again, semmingly caught in a repetive loop..the contrast b/w the doemstic and the landscape b/w inside and outside b/w those who stay and thouse who wander--all the familar opposites of the classical western narrative are again reinscrived thru the sieres of shot/reverse shot images...the searches disrupts the paterns by constructing a spatial-geographical detour as Ethan and Martin criss cross the landscape. Temporal as well as spatial markers are vage and we cannot map their movements with any certanity...
John Ford Made Westerns: Filming the Legend in the Sound Era
edited by Gaylyn Studlar, Matthew Bernstein, et. al, 121...

The opening credits (portrayed in a Playbill fontface) are displayed before a backdrop of an adobe brick wall. The words of the romantic Stan Jones ballad (sung by The Sons of the Pioneers) that play during the credits, What Makes a Man to Wander?, define the central theme of the film - one man's wanderings and obsessive search:

What makes a man to wander?
What makes a man to roam?
What makes a man leave bed and board
And turn his back on home?
Ride away, ride away, ride away.
Tim Dickinson--Greatest Films.com (shit site, just for info, bibilo the film)

t's a peculiarly formal and stilted movie, with Ethan framed in a doorway at the opening and the close. You can read a lot into it, but it isn't very enjoyable. The lines are often awkward and the line readings worse, and the film is often static, despite economic, quick editing. What made this John Ford Western fascinating to the young directors who hailed it in the 70s as a great work and as a key influence on them is the compulsiveness of Ethan's search for his niece (whose mother he loved) and his bitter, vengeful racism…The sexual undertones of Ethan's character almost seem to belong to a different movie; they don't go with the many crude and corny touches in this one."
-- Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies

Johnny Guitar:

Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden) is a gunfighter who has replaced a gun in favour of a guitar. His masculinity , however ,is undisputed. w/o a gun, he is still the "best shot in the west" The gunfighter that Johnny Guitar used to be is never represtented on screen; masculinity s unreprestenable expect as self diffeence, figured in the film by the films love interest Vienna, As the film begins, Johnny returns after a long absesnce, during which he has ubndergone change from gunslinger to vagabond singer. His arrival coninceides with attacks on Vienna by a group bent on driving her out of town on the pretext that she is involved with members of a criminal gang. The group is led by Veinna's rival Emma small (Mercedes McCambridge) whose hatred strms not from the trumped up chagees against Viennea but from jelousy Emma sees Vienna as her rival for the affections of the Dancing Kid... (Writing Voices of Pleasur:HeteroSExuality w/o Women, Anne Callahan, 205)

...Though Rays freedom in playing with genre conventions, charachterizes most of his work, Johnny Guitar is perhaps his only film to exhibit a similar freedom in realtion to gender; positing two women as the strongest charachters in a group consisting mainly of outlaws and the members of a lynch mob... On the Necessity of Film Canons
Jonathan Rosenbaum (336) (mentions Rays relation to Haydents Motto: I'm a Stranger Here Myself)

Debord translates and includes two sequences from Johnny Guitar in his film work (more research)

In Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, we have the scene of the dubbing
of Johnny Guitar. I directly steal the dialogue of Johnny Guitar and make it the dialouge of my film (Interviews w. Pedro Almodavor, 99)