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Category Archives: art
Do you have any books the faculty doesn’t particularly recommend?
One of Flannery O’Connor’s early drawings:
“Do you have any books the faculty doesn’t particularly recommend?”
(Via Wesley Hill.)
The Heraldic Crest of a Modern American Man
Gerald Murphy (American, 1888–1964). Razor, 1924. Oil on canvas, 32 1/16 x 36 1/2 in.
With its almost “pre-Pop” billboard-style oversizing and graphic boldness, Gerald Murphy’s Razor suggests the heraldic crest of a modern American man, whose necessary tools are a Gillette safety razor, a Parker Big Red pen, and Three Stars matches. As the son of the head of the Mark Cross company, known for fine leather goods, Murphy was attuned to product design, as well as to style and status. After taking up painting in Paris in 1921, he borrowed from the new, reductive decorative aesthetic of Purism to celebrate American machine-age design for an enthusiastic postwar French audience. The painting also resonates in the context of Murphy’s obsessive self-fashioning as ultramodern and unconventional—an expression, in part, of his own bisexuality.
Part of Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties, now playing at the Brooklyn Museum.
Posted in art
“Yeah, that was me. I’m Steve Jobs.”
From Andy Warhol’s Tuesday, 9 October 1984 diary entry. It’s Sean Lennon’s 9th birthday party.
We went into Sean’s bedroom – and there was a kid there setting up an Apple computer that Sean had gotten as a present, the Macintosh model. I said that once some man had been calling me a lot wanting to give me one, but that I’d never called him back or something, and then the kid looked up and said, “Yeah, that was me. I’m Steve Jobs.” And he looked so young, like a college guy. And he told me that he would still send me one now. And then he gave me a lesson on drawing with it. It only comes in black and white now, but they’ll make it soon in color. And then Keith and Kenny used it. Keith had already used it once to make a T-shirt, but Kenny was using it for the first time, and I felt so old and out of it with this young whiz guy right there who’d helped invent it.
(Via.)
One Dog Goes One Way and the Other Dog Goes the Other Way
After seeing a couple different people on Twitter link to a short video wherein Jim Jarmusch asks Martin Scorsese about the scene in Goodfellas with Scorsese’s mom, I couldn’t resist sharing an image of the painting her character is supposed to have painted in the film.
Actually, as http://www.goodfellaspainting.com/ (perhaps my favorite single-serving site ever) points out, it’s a painting by Nicholas Pileggi’s mom based on a photograph from the November 1978 issue of National Geographic.
I am, of course, not the first person to point this out, but this strikes me as one of those things that’s so utterly delightful it can’t be pointed out too many times.
Tommy’s (Joe Pesci’s) analysis of the painting is particularly delicious:
“One dog goes one way and the other dog goes the other way. And this guy’s saying, ‘Whaddya want from me?’”
Indeed.
Teen Wolf
From Olly Moss’s clever and charming “Paper Cuts” series.
Previously: Olly Moss’s Movie Poster Remakes.
Dreams Taken Through a Straw
Tom Waits in Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
From Elizabeth Gilbert’s June 2002 GQ profile of Tom Waits:
“‘Children make up the best songs, anyway,’ he says. ‘Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don’t care if they lose it; they’ll just make another one.’ This openness is what every artist needs. Be ready to receive the inspiration when it comes; be ready to let it go when it vanishes. He believes that if a song ‘really wants to be written down, it’ll stick in my head. If it wasn’t interesting enough for me to remember it, well, it can just move along and go get in someone else’s song.’ ‘Some songs,’ he has learned, ‘don’t want to be recorded.’ You can’t wrestle with them or you’ll only scare them off more. Trying to capture them sometimes ‘is trying to trap birds.’ Fortunately, he says, other songs come easy, like ‘digging potatoes out of the ground.’ Others are sticky and weird, like ‘gum found under an old table.’ Clumsy and uncooperative songs may only be useful ‘to cut up as bait and use ’em to catch other songs.’ Of course, the best songs of all are those that enter you ‘like dreams taken through a straw.’ In those moments, all you can be, Waits says, is grateful.”
(Article via Austin Kleon.)
Further listening: Radiolab’s “Help!”
How to Steal Like an Artist
Austin Kleon’s simple list of 10 things he wishes he’d heard when he was in college.
Required reading.
Posted in art, endorsements, inspiration, work
Warhol’s Underwear
“I quickly found the brand I usually use, Jockey Classic Briefs. They were three for five dollars which didn’t seem too inflationary. I read the label on the plastic bag they came in, just to make sure they hadn’t changed any of their famous ‘Comfort Features’ – ‘Exclusive Tailoring for Proper Fit to Support a Man’s Needs; Contoured Designed Arch Gives Added Comfort No Gaps; Support Waistband is Smoother Fitted Heat Resistant; Stronger Longer Lasting “V” No Chafe Leg Openings; Soft Rubber at Either Thigh Only; Highly Absorbent 100 Per Cent Highly Combed Cotton.’ So far so good, I thought. I checked the ‘Washing Instructions’ – ‘Machine Wash Tumble Dry.’ Everything was fine, the same as always. I hate it when you find a product you like that fits a particular need of yours, and then they change it. […] At least the Jockey Classic Briefs were still Classic.”
—Andy Warhol, From A to B & Back Again: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
A Salve on Our Communal Doubt
“Technology acts as a salve on our communal doubt. ‘Will they like me?’ ‘Will I be accepted?’ ‘Are my teeth white enough?’ ‘Buy this and you’re OK!’ Can you imagine Picasso asking, ‘Will they like this painting?’ Or Van Gogh saying, ‘Will they understand what I’m doing?’ Those guys were like, ‘Fuck you, I got something to do. I have an idea. I don’t care what you think. Thick paint, you don’t like it? Then get the fuck out of here!’”
—Melvin Sokolsky, Wraparound Magazine 1.4 (2004): 16.
Posted in art, inspiration, technology, work
