Manu Chao - El Kitapena

my latest study from Bacon's images. painted version in progress...

Fuck Philosophy

source: Paris Match

Massive Attack - Teardrop

Any denizen of New York can tell you how much negligible celebutante-trash struts Her pavement. For me, this was astronomic in proportion; a divine signal. I'd moved to New York for this, but had been eluded for the last two months, finding nary a paint splatter on clothing other than my own...

Yesterday afternoon, I was with camera crouched, picturing wheat-pasted paper clouds on partitions, when I perceived a presence abreast. I looked no more than ten lateral feet to discover Chuck Close, a famous famous famous American artist, sunning himself, puffing perhaps a Parliament, outside of his inconspicuous printing parlour. Chuck's well worn eyes met my youthful ambition, his robust spirit acknowledged mine, and offered patronly push toward precipice of inevitability. The future of New York has infinite serendipity in store, but as they say, the first time for anything will be remembered.

To see just how hard Chuck Close gets down, peep this

Yeasayer - 2080

Good luck in LA Bub

Cit Cope bro - Somehow, 5.22

it's a rare and beautiful thing these days when a day is filled with more physical movement and communication then digital. put the fucking cell phones down. we are the last to know of an era without... nah but it really does make me sad watching children texting and the rapidly increasing lack of attention they give to things right in front of them... happy 125th birthday to the bridge

Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part One)

unfinished

I think that my art is a documentary of my current albeit temporary problems, inspirations, obsessions, proclamations, and anarchy. I think the environments that I create with paint embrace and shun being human, and are certainly privy to the gamut of human foibles. Perhaps for me painting is an escapist activity, allowing me to leave my humanly concerns and tap into an energy that feels more real & relevant; higher.

I don’t want my paintings to be even tangentially referential; I don’t want any concrete objects or ideas or messages displayed. I don’t want to obviate anything. I want the environment inside of my paintings to be as shrouded in ambiguity as possible, I think the idea of “topical ambiguity” is a lot more potent than the idea of “the obvious”, I think ambiguity speaks of potentiality, and I find that 'potential' is an incredible muse. I am trying to embrace and transcend humanity through painting, and though neither of those things will ever be fulfilled, it is the potential of either of them happening that keeps me going. I think it is cheap and fake to say you are going to paint something and then paint that thing. A singular object, a still life, people sitting in a park, whatever. Fuck it at least say you are going to paint from an idea. Eventually, you have not painted that thing; you have painted a painting of that thing. Most objective paintings would be much better off aflame, their emulations are offensive to the real items they emulate. A flower is much more beautiful than any painting could ever be. Flat out. Attempts to capture what the eyes see on canvas are useless, and boring, and redundant. And so limiting. Paint something your eyes aren’t capable of seeing. (Otherwise why paint at all?). And by the way, damn are still life paintings contemporarily and ironically irrelevant...

When I paint any one canvas, I am painting everything in my entire life, every image my eyes have ever witnessed every thought my brain has ever dared to cognate and every gust of wind that has blown through the hair on my knuckles, everything. The physical painting may change from canvas to canvas, but the image you see is merely a contemporary reinterpretation of the same information encompassed in life.

Inside of my paintings, one can see beauty and grace, strength, aggression, passion, contemplation, confidence, but can just as easily find weakness, anger, anarchy, exhaustion, impatience, and disbelief. The canvas is an extension of my physical embodiment, there can be no intellectual separation between the two, I and it, and therefore I refuse to limit my paintings to ‘a pear’ ‘a woman sitting’ etc …as it is neither appropriate nor practical to limit my scope to singular items of negligible importance. I am alive, and I want my paintings to be wholly representative of that. Of course, it has been argued that when a Picasso paints a pear, his painting is really about all of the things I have addressed in this letter, in response to that argument, I prefer to save that sort of speculative postulation, carrion, for the critics to jostle over.

Larry looking very V as the star of summer editorial

major!!!

Traxamillion ft. Husalah - From The Hood

supreme

finna put paint to canvas today for the first time in over two months...
before soon ill have this city turnt out

Brokenkites - 1961

New York X

So far the biggest and best piece in the Harlem series Ive been working on for nearly two months. I am soon to start reproducing these collages in oil paint, and very eager to see the result.

Martinis - Free

still life with grapefruit

Sigur Ros - Dauðalagið

the sky of one Mind

Heres an interesting poem I ran across this weekend, enjoy:

The wheel of the quivering meat conception
Turns in the void expelling human beings,
Pigs, turtles, frogs, insects, nits,Mice, lice, lizards, rats, roan
Racinghorses, poxy bucolic pip tics.
Horrible unnameable lice of vultures
Murderous attacking dog-armies
Of Africa,
Rhinos roaming in the jungle,
Vast boars and huge gigantic bull
Elephants, rams, eagles, condors
Pones and Porcupines and Pills -And all endless conception of living beings
Gnashing everywhere in Consciousness
Throughout the ten directions of space
Occupying all the quarters in & out,
From supermicroscopic no-bug
To huge Galaxy Lightyear Bowell Illuminating the sky of one Mind-
Poor!
I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel and safe in heaven dead

Jack Kerouac - 211th Chorus from Mexico city Blues

Peter Gabriel - Shock The Monkey

Sergej Vassiljevitsj Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 2 (Op. 18) - Adagio Sostenuto

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and

lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
Canada & Patterson, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between,

excerpt from Howl by Allen Ginsberg

Samuel Osborne Barber - Adagio For Strings

the self as the aparition

The Smashing Pumpkins - Mayonaise

thankyathankya

Robert Rauschenberg, one of the premier artists of the 20th century, died yesterday. Though he lives on, inspiring the hearts of artists to maintain the furious battle against stagnancy. We must all study and remember the intuitive legacy that this man has left to us. Thank you thank you Robert Rauschenberg for believing in your dreams and allowing us to follow ours.

For more on Rauschenberg: the Times article

Aram Ilich Khachaturian - Spartacus - Adagio Of Spartacus And Phrygia

blue sky nudes

I am very pleased to that these electronically produced images are becoming so painterly

Frederic Chopin - Concerto Pour Piano No. 1 (Op. 11) - Romance

Speaking of great verse...

Read it at 18 and was ferociously inspired.

Still am.

Plan to paint from its stanzas.

You have no excuse not to read it!

Ennio Morricone - C'era Una Volta Il West (Once Upon A Time In The West)

words both nimble and powerful

And he replied, seeing my soul in tears:
"He must go by another way who would escape this wilderness, for the mad beast that fleers before you there, suffers no man to pass."
|88-91| Dante Alighieri - The Inferno

44
If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way,
For then despite of space I would be brought,
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay,
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee,
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,
As soon as think the place where he would be.
65
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O how shall summer's honey breath hold out,
Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?
O fearful meditation, where alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
|Sonnets 44, 65| William Shakespeare

What a blessing and worthy adversary it would be to conquer the pen. I suppose time only changes the delivery of life's address. Tribulation persists. Greatness is timeless.
I hope my message to one day reflect the beautiful cavalier of these words.
Let us not lose the aesthetic power of language read, heard, and spoken.

Kokin Gumi - Daylight

through infinite dust

in my mind- zen is to be practiced within a grossly overpopulated urban environment. reaching and maintaining a deep state of consciousness within erratic surrounding will strengthen the mind and body, exhausting the weak, and allowing the sound to transcend the tribulations of mortality.

there is so much weakness in this city .and in retrospect, the world. there is so much platitudinal production. there are so many weak words leaving wispily from mouths and minds. i am tired of requests to prove myself from people not worth a glance. of grandfathered hierarchy. i am tired of self-loathing cuckolds in grey buildings running confused agendas, whove forgotten where they stand and why they are here. forgotten who they are or who they once aspired to be. tired of watching their constitutional failings . i am becoming so apathetic toward incompetence. i am so disgusted by pavlovian reinforcement of mediocrity. mediocrity is the ugliest flattest grey, an aimless army peripherally marching to nowhere through infinite dust. i am tired, but nonetheless i am human. i close my eyes to the failures of people, but my humanity fights past my lids and lashes and out into the world. perhaps my purpose for zen is to escape the chains of humanity i bare. but if i were not tired of all these things. if not fed up and disgusted and unequivocally opposed, i would become complacent, become mediocre. there must be reference. without ugly, beauty marches nowhere through infinite dust.

Vitalic - La Rock 01

Electro Pop French Puff

Hangin Tree

I hate apostrophes

Intergalactic representable g's. Millenium Billy Dee's Scrillion gettin in NYC

Sonic Youth - I Love You Golden Blue

Capp's Hiroshima

Telepopmusik - Just Breathe

Hallucinogenic Heather Marks Ghandi

after week-long languid breeze, a gale finally meets my sails

An artist in the Game

"Men love women but he cannot create a masterpiece for her, because he is not a woman, so he doesn't know the real soul of a skirt, or a dress. In my studio, I let boys make only men's clothing, all tailoring"

Yohji Yamamoto, Feb ID london 2008

Peter Gabriel - San Jacinto

shandruk redux

Burial - Etched Headplate

Not A Map

Just found out about this new dub-step album Untrue by Burial. Radiohead took over Zane Lowe's BBC Radio Show on January 17th, 2008, and within that time played a Burial track titled 'Archangel', afterward saying that this Burial album is "the sound of 2007/2008". I have to agree. Ironically, after this week I feel like having a burial myself...listening to Untrue all day today healed my frayed nerves.

spring film

had the pleasure of doin it really gigantic with superstar maitland mcconnell in town for a few days during the film festival. she got the juice.... ...........


......... JJones still keepin it bossied up

more fashion more funny

make it through the controlled recession!! more colors, less black. more parties hahaha more funny

Citizen Cope - Deep

VeeV

Went to a 'fashion party' last night in SoHo. Downed champagne liberally. Looked at blah clothing. Laughed when hearing a man refer to the guests as "the Zoolander crowd", hahaha WTF were you hoping for my friend?
All in all- my gear was bossed up, forcing me to stand out, and the night was a successful venture.

...I wonder how old Andy Warhol was when he started making the rounds at these functions.
...I wonder if Harry Crosby would have left sooner.