A week or so ago I showed a painting, Nighthawks by Edward Hopper and talked a bit about how this painting, and many of his other works, always reflected to me a sense of aloneness and alienation. On this Sunday morning I am reminded once again of this by another of his paintings, fittingly titled Early Sunday Morning.
While it is bright and colorful, there is a quality in the emptiness of the street that speaks of loneliness, an aloof sense of existence in the midst of a city. The warmth of the red in the building and in the sunlight is a strong counterpoint to the coolness of feeling depicted. I’ve always found this a powerful painting.
In the spirit of Hopper’s painting, I’m also showing a video of Johnny Cash and Kris Kristoffferson singing Kristofferson’s Sunday Morning Coming Down, a longtime favorite of mine whose main character has certainly walked down this Sunday morning sidewalk…
I always find old television shows , particularly old game shows, fascinating to watch if only for the snapshot they provide of the time in which they were produced. The language, the clothing, the personas, all create a sense of how the world was and how it has changed.
One of my favorites is What’s My Line? which still airs on the Game Show Network in the middle of the night. Normal people and celebrities would come out and sign in then the panel would try to guess their occupation. For celebs, the panel would be blindfolded.
The panel was famed columnist and tragic Kennedy conspiracy-theorist Dorothy Kilgallen, actress Arlene Francis, humorist/publisher Bennett Cerf and a male guest panelist, usually a famous personality. The host was the affable John Charles Daly who was also a well-respected news anchor/ journalist. Their banter was witty and urbane, their clothing dapper and when they would often question guests after their identities were uncovered, their conversation was serious with sometimes probing questions. But often it was just intelligent fun with legendary performers and people with odd ball jobs. They make you want to be in NYC in the ’50’s.
The range of the celebrities that appeared was amazing. From the biggest names in sports, movies, theatre, TV to military leaders and icons such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Salvador Dali, whose entertaining clip I’m showing here.
It was a different time and it’s always a pleasure to see a bit of it in the form of these short time capsules…
I’ve been a fan of the work of Paul Klee for some time now. Whenever I would stumble across his work in museums, I would immediately feel a sense of kinship with his work. His work is always the obvious product of his mind and seems unfettered by what might be expected by outside forces.
Much of his work is on paper and is smallish in size compared to many of the pieces that often surround them in museums, giving the work a very intimate, warm feel. I feel like I’m privy to some quiet secret when I see his work. Maybe it has to do with the way his paintings combine music and form, creating that elusive rhythm of which I often write. I also love the grit within his colors and how he sometimes segments his work into small boxes of color, a technique that I adopt at different times in my painting.
Many categorize his work as whimsical but I have to somewhat disagree. Granted there is sometimes an appearance of lightness in his work, but I see his work as very serious but with a distant and different perspective than the norm. If you get a chance, take a look at the work of Paul Klee. You’ll be glad you found him…
I’m on the road today, Tuesday, but I will be trying to post from the road in the next few days so check back in.
In the meantime, I’m going to leave you with an old song from one of my favorites, Hank Snow. I know he may not look very hip and his sound is old-time country but I’ve been a big fan of his for many years. He had a great knack for song selection and most of his songs had a real swing to them. In Bob Dylan’sChronicles, Hank Snow is mentioned as a big early influence. So if you don’t trust my judgement or taste, take it from Bob and give a listen.
Catchers and pitchers are reporting to spring training. Baseball is in the air.
Baseball has always held a special place for me. Oh, I was no more than an average player– decent bat, lousy arm and a so-so glove– but there was pure magic in seeing the heroes of my youth and hearing the stories of the early legends of the game.
I remember my grandmother telling me of going to NY in 1921 on their honeymoon to see Babe Ruth play. Ruth hit a double and a triple as she recalled.
I remember sitting with my grandfather, the mythological Shank ,who used to call me “The Rat,” and watching the World Series in the afternoons after I had my tonsils out in 1968. The St. Louis Cardinals were playing the Detroit Tigers and I was introduced to one of the heroes of my youth, Bob Gibson.
Gibby was it for me. The toughest guy out there, one whose competitive fire is still legendary. So dominating as a pitcher that baseball changed the mound height because they felt the hitters needed help since he was practically unhittable. I read his early autobiography, From Ghetto to Glory, numerous times and that made him an even bigger hero to me. He was eloquent and college-educated, a rarity for ballplayers of that era, and his story was compelling. He remains a hero.
Baseball was always played at our house. My dad was a pretty fair pitcher. He would play catch with me and my friends and would break out his knuckleball. It was uncatchable, having a spectacular drop that would appear to be entering your glove only to end up hitting you in the stomach. I was never able to master the pitch but still appreciate a well thrown knuckler.
Other times, I would pitch to him and he would hit flies to my brother in the outfield. Periodically, he would hit hard liners back at me. They would bang off me or make me dive out of the way and he would cackle. I would then try to drill him with the next pitch, which would make him laugh even more because he had gotten my goat. I would calm myself and wait until he would pitch to me, waiting for the perfect pitch when I could send one back at him, making him duck or dive.
Over the years baseball has become my calendar for the passing of the year and is a comforting friend on the days when the world seems ready to implode. I am still captive to the numbers and legends of baseball, one of those romantics who see poetry in a game based in tradition.
To that end, here is a wonderful version of Take Me Out to the Ballpark from Harpo Marx, played on I Love Lucy. It is delicate and graceful. It’s the essence of the memory of baseball for me…
I was listening to some music yesterday and, coming across some stuff from the late Townes Van Zandt that I hadn’t heard in a bit was reminded of a documentary that my nephew, Jeremy, passed on to me a few years back. It’s called Heartworn Highways and is from around 1975, chronicling some of the singer-songwriters who came to be known as alt-country.
It’s pretty gritty. These guys are shown completely unvarnished and it is the antidote to the packaged, slickly produced music that pervades the airwaves today. There is the first recorded version of Mercenary Song from a very young and greasy looking Steve Earle and good versions of L.A. Freeway and Desperados Waiting For a Train from Guy Clark but the parts that stand out for me are those with Townes Van Zandt.
This is Waitin’ Around to Die and has an interesting intro that really sets up the tune well. It’s a pretty powerful song. Enjoy…
One of the first painters to really draw me into their work was Georgia O’Keefe. Her colors were vibrant and crisp. Her use of organic forms and the beauty of the curves and arcs she employed was impeccable. Her compositions were unique and out of the box, often bisecting the picture frame in an unorthodox manner.
Here images were very iconographic– cow skulls, driftwood, poppies that filled the picture frame in an abstract fashion and on and on. Her paintings were not narratives nor were they snapshots of a particular time. There was an ethereal, timeless quality that makes them always feel contemporary, fresh and vital
There was also the sense of stillness and spirit that I now hope for in my own work. Again, there is a timelessness in the work that goes beyond the moment when she created the piece.
I was also drawn to the different styles of her work- her modernist cityscapes, her abstract paintings of flowing color and form and her floral. Her hand was always obvious in the work. Every piece in every style has a sense of being in the present.
There are so many elements in her work that I have absorbed over the years and incorporated in my own work that I could never fully express the appreciation and gratitude I have for her career.
As much as I have always been drawn to her work and affected by it, there is one drawback that I first discovered a number of years ago. I had discovered her work in books and prints, never seeing them in person. When I first saw a show of her work, while being stunned to see the imagery up close, I was less than excited by the surfaces of her paintings. There was a great deal of flatness and they lacked the visual oomph of the printed page. The surfaces had no excitement of their own.
I realize this is my own subjective feeling on the work and that many great paintings have this same lack of surface excitement. For example, I feel the same way about the work of Joan Miro even though I am knocked out and excited by his work. This feeling of mine does not in amy way take away from the greatness of the work. I just realized that while I wanted to create the same type of graphic excitement of these artists, I also wanted to create something that had a tactile, textural effect when seen up close and in person. To that end, I think my work always shows better in person than in print or on a computer screen.
But that doesn’t really matter today. I just want to show the icons and forms of Georgia O’Keefe and hopefully it will spark something in someone else and they will create their own forms, their own vocabulary of imagery.
It’s yet another Sunday morning and I’m a bit tired. Time for a little music.
Casablanca was on TCM last night and, of course, we had to watch. It’s one of those films that I could watch on an endless loop. It has so much going for it- great performances, great story, memorable writing with lines that became part of our language, incredible characters (Conrad Veidt’s Strasser is the prototype for Nazi film villains), romance, action and surprisingly great humor.
It also has the glow of Ingrid Bergman.
That brings us to my selection for the day from the CD, Mermaid Avenue, from the collaboration of Billy Bragg and Wilco with their versions of song lyrics from Woody Guthrie. For more info, click on the album cover above.
This is the song, Ingrid Bergman, from that CD. I wish I had a better video to accompany it but enjoy the song anyway…
Another Sunday morning and I think we all deserve a little break, maybe a little song.
Today, I’ve chosen Nat King Cole and his uber-cool Route 66.
The voice of Nat King Cole has always been magic for me. Silky smooth and seemingly effortless. Full of nuance.
His choice of song was nearly perfect. He seemed to always perform songs that fit his voice and his combo’s cool playing, so much that the song became his and his alone.
Mona Lisa, Route 66, L-O-V-E, and on and on. Nature Boy is still one of the most haunting songs I’ve ever heard.
Anyway, on this Super Sunday, sit back, relax and take a little trip down Route 66…
Some of my favorite films to have on in the studio are those that have something to do with World War II. Not necessarily combat films, although there are a number of those that I find really engrossing, but rather films that have to do with the periphery of the war and how the world coped with a raging war or its aftermath.
Of course, many will immediately think of films like Casablanca and I can’t deny that it is one of my favorites as well. It’s just a treasure trove of great dialogue and powerful moments ( the dueling anthem scene with Nazis being drowned out by the patrons exuberant and emotional La Marseillaise is a classic) and remains as powerful a story today as ever.
I think I am most taken by the film that deal with the ideology of the times. For example, Idiot’s Delight, starring Clark Gable, was made before our entry into WW II and was an appeal to the nation to rise up against the Nazi tide that was sweeping through Europe.
It’s filled with great ideological dialogue, words that really do more than just propel the story forward. They’re meant to stir and anger, to drive people to action.
Another along the same lines is Lillian Hellman‘s Watch on the Rhine with Bette Davis and an incredible performance from Paul Lukas as the simply worded Resistance fighter. Again, it takes place before our entry into the war and portrays us as innocent and naive but as the events of the film take place we, as represented by the characters, begin to understand and show our resolve to fight for freedom.
There are so many powerful films from this time that it would be impossible to list them all in a simple blog. The Best Years of Our Lives, Mrs. Miniver, 49th Parallel, Hangmen Also Die! and on and on. They were meaningful films in a trying time and I think the overriding emotion of them still shines through. I recommend that anyone with a feeling for the drama of history take a look…
Early Sunday morning.
Redtree Times 