Did You Know… http://www.janestown.net Thu, 09 Nov 2017 11:03:50 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.3 vignettes of the nite XLVI: genet and lee http://www.janestown.net/2014/04/vignette-of-the-nite/ Sun, 27 Apr 2014 05:10:30 +0000 http://www.janestown.net/?p=3327 “Thereafter, he ennobled shame. He bore it in my presence like a burden, like a tiger clinging to his shoulders, the threat of which imparted to his shoulders a most insolent submissiveness.”

― Jean Genet, The Thief’s Journal, 1948

The Thief’s Journal is one of my favorite books. The kind you can deeply commune with, and reread for the poetry and wisdom and offering of art and pain. Its been on my nightstand for years. Among the ever-shifting pile of books that have bored me, and wait for me to resurrect interest.

My friend Lee Gordon, who died 5 years ago this coming Memorial Day, once told me he thought Genet was too hung up on Catholic guilt. As a gay Jew and PLHIV, who had a truly sadistic father, his perspective halted me. His opinion about things was always well informed. I reasoned that for its time it was revolutionary, and he conceded it was. We were both right.

I miss Lee, and was sad to see there’s no work of his online. Somewhere in an old computer are a few jpegs, but I want everyone to see them. It renewed my desire to organize a memorial show here in NYC for him (preferably not on Memorial Day, I can hear him say, lol).

“Also worth a look are paintings by Lee Gordon. For several years Mr. Gordon has been producing exquisite, strange watercolor self-portraits in which he sometimes appears wearing women’s lingerie. In the new work in watercolor and oils, he assumes an infant’s body, which gives the several paternal encounters depicted a distinctly erotic cast…his watercolors are so good that he should be awarded a full-scale show soon.” HOLLAND COTTER, NYT, 1995

Lee never got that full-scale show. He kept on making art though, even while working a very demanding job. I’d like to at least give him some version of it, posthumously. So I contacted his best buddy, another great artist, Tony Feher, whose exquisitely gorgeous retrospective at the Bronx Museum of Arts, was so deserved, btw (I can at least post a couple of those), and will try to set that in motion. This post is in memory of Lee. RIP.

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abstract expressionism, the “renaissance prince” of cold war politics http://www.janestown.net/2014/03/3193/ Mon, 17 Mar 2014 06:44:27 +0000 http://www.janestown.net/?p=3193 Teaching Abstract Expressionism is never easy but its essential to the traditional modernist narrative, which I dismantle and question (I almost wrote “unpack”, phew) as a matter of course, and Ab-Ex provides ample opportunity:) Mostly its Pollock who bothers me, the shaman alcoholic (or is it the wounded cowboy?) whose vulnerability both tempered and underscored his ubermasculinity, reflecting the machismo of postwar American culture. Of course, I love many of the usual suspects, De Kooning, and Still, but overall I’m much more interested in what the Rauschenberg/Johns/Twombly/Cage/Cunningham coterie were up to in New York. Fellow arrivistes locked out of the cabbalistic Jungian dick fest. Where else will my students learn that on the heels of the red decade and the rise of photojournalism, Rauschenberg struggled with whether or not to be a photographer or a painter, explaining so much of his post combine work. If you’ve never seen the former, here’s a must have book of photos he took between 1949-62.

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Billed as the first art movement to steal the avant garde spotlight from Paris, and train it on New York, where it has – or so the myth goes – stayed ever since, I so enjoy introducing proof of the CIA’s use of Ab Ex as a a Cold War weapon, a Renaissance Prince, if you will as this great article brilliantly details via the declassified information. It certainly raises the possibility that some of AB-Ex’s historical significance may be linked to that peculiar form of propaganda. That in order to make the Soviet’s use of Social Realism look fascist, which it mostly was, the government hired ivy leaguers to promote the Ab-Exers internationally. In heavily funded exhibitions that became key to the movement’s rise.

Of course, at home, it was still a very hard sell. Americans wary of all art abstract, or too provincial to get it (again, so the story goes). Pretty damn interesting wrench to throw in there, esp. since my aim is to get students to question dominant cultural narratives, in this case the eurocentric diachronic model of art history. It’s a weird thing to actually explain though (that a bunch of lefties would be employed by a bunch of isolationists to foster an international reputation for cultural tolerance).

Another thing I really like to introduce is the related interest in American primitivism, our very own “others” to project and steal from, ala Jazz and Native American cultures, at that time. Some of it sincere, I’d imagine. Still, this photo of Eleanor Roosevelt, who deserves a lot more credit for advocating for federally funding the arts, says it all, and this wonderful essay reveals a very interesting convergence of interests as well. Regardless, the influence of this larger interest in Native American art is another overlooked aspect akin to the role of African art on cubism.

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1943: First lady Eleanor Roosevelt greets Miss Spokane Catherine Betts, in Native American dress, at a War Bond Rally in Seattle.

Franz Kline’s series of magnified details rendered iconic through a chance experiment with a projector at de Koonings also wonderfully undermines the whole authentic spontaneous gesture thing. MoMA owns this one from 1950, and describes it on its website in carefully guarded terms:

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“True to an alternate name for Abstract Expressionism, ‘action painting,’ Kline’s pictures often suggest broad, confident, quickly executed gestures reflecting the artist’s spontaneous impulses. Yet Kline seldom worked that way. In the late 1940s, chancing to project some of his many drawings on the wall, he found that their lines, when magnified, gained abstraction and sweeping force. This discovery inspired all of his subsequent painting; in fact many canvases reproduce a drawing on a much larger scale, fusing the improvised and the deliberate, the miniature and the monumental.

‘Chief’ was the name of a locomotive Kline remembered from his childhood, when he had loved the railway. Many viewers see machinery in Kline’s images, and there are lines in Chief that imply speed and power as they rush off the edge of the canvas, swelling tautly as they go. But Kline claimed to paint “not what I see but the feelings aroused in me by that looking,” and Chief is abstract, an uneven framework of horizontals and verticals broken by loops and curves. The cipherlike quality of Kline’s configurations, and his use of black and white, have provoked comparisons with Japanese calligraphy, but Kline did not see himself as painting black signs on a white ground; ‘I paint the white as well as the black,’ he said, ‘and the white is just as important.'”

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its all about lou tonite (categories don’t suit me) http://www.janestown.net/2013/10/2197/ Tue, 29 Oct 2013 04:26:04 +0000 http://www.janestown.net/?p=2197 6045592f-a19d-4c92-b84b-d163e19e1d97
Creme magazine, March 1975, Lester Bangs goes nuts on Reed

I didn’t know Lou Reed personally, I imagine few really did. Of course, because of his tangential relationship to the art world via the uber-brilliant Laurie Anderson, his wife, I know people who did. Or who thought they did, wanted believe they did, because they interviewed him or took a picture together, hung out at some event, etc. Over all, capitalizing on a just-deceased person’s fame really turns my stomach, but once its an official news story, I guess its expected.

And then there were the people who got to trashing him right away?! The inevitable “he was an asshole, period” comments (eyeroll) that seemed so inappropriate. Doesn;t anyone consider the suffering and shock of loved ones left behind, especially when they have to live in the fishbowl of public scrutiny? It astonishes me. There’s just no communal respect anymore for those in mourning, it would appear. Anyway, I attempted here and there to politely counter these callous digs by saying “well, he might have been a misanthrope but he was also compassionate” – a contrary nature that gave his work its power IMHO. When one blogger suggested that LR had no talent – because the latter gave him a hard time when he was first starting out – and got by on attitude, I thought nice eulogy, who’s the asshole? That’s when I gave up, and said nothing:)

How people hang on to things like that for decades is beyond me, anyway. Pouncing the second they can when a person is no longer alive to defend themselves. No balls. Case in point, Vulture today publishing “Looking Back at Lou Reed’s Famously Contentious Relationship With Rock Critic Lester Bangs”, which I’m not going to link to, but here’s the opening line, which relegates LR’s death to a parenthetical (?!): “Over the years, Lou Reed, who died today at age 71, gained the reputation for being a sensationally prickly interview subject.” (Here’s the original profile by Bangs, that I’ll share) So you see what I mean, I’m avoiding the media on this for a while.

Mostly though I just posted all day to process my own sense of loss. LR’s music meant a lot to me, and I identified very strongly with it for many years. I’d rather not get more maudlin than that. There were a few interesting obits I read too (always amazes me what good writers can do w/so little time), loved this one by Michael Musto, and Rolling Stone did a good job of getting the whole profile together and focusing on compiling music (sadly one expects there was a file ready to go in some computer before the transplant though), and a few impromptu tributes here in NYC (Bowery Poetry Club, Otto’s Shrunken Head), which I decided not to go to (open mic is not my scene).

Here’s what I posted on FB followed, if you can stay with me that long, by some observations as I re-experience these posts in reverse (created links w/quotes when latter were song lyrics):

I AM STUNNED… LOU REED HAS MEANT SO MUCH TO ME OVER THE YEARS…WAS JUST LISTENING TO VU, AND “NEW YORK”, SO GRATEFUL I GOT TO SEE HIM PERFORM SEVERAL TIMES, ALWAYS CANTANKEROUS AND BRILLIANT! RIP


“HE’S NEVER EARLY, HE’S ALWAYS LATE…”
— Velvet Underground – I´m Waiting For The Man

GREAT FOOTAGE OF LOU DANCING!!! — Lou Reed – Sweet Jane – live in Paris, 1974

Vicious / You hit me with a flower / You do it every hour / Oh baby, you’re so vicious / Vicious / You want me to hit you with a stick / But all I’ve got is a guitar pick

“sha lalala, c’mon baby lets slip away…” — Lou Reed – Street Hassle (complete music video)

“One chord is fine. Two chords is pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.” — Lou Reed Metal Machine Music, Part 1 (HQ)


“lou was very adept at spontaneously erupting into elegant forms of prose and poetry”
– john cale
— John Cale on Lou Reed and himself

Lou Reed & John Cale – Songs For Drella (Full Album) (HQ)

“so you want people to take drugs, why is this?”
“oh yeah, cuz its better than monopoly.”
— Lou Reed Interview at Sydney Airport – 1974


THE EYELINER AND ‘FRO DAYS, LOVE THIS FOOTAGE THO HE’S REALLY HIGH HERE
— Lou Reed Live Olympia Theatre, Paris 1973, Walk On The Wild Side , Heroin and White Light, White heat

“give me your hungry, your tired, your poor, i’ll piss on ’em, that’s what your statue of bigotry says” — Lou Reed performs “Dirty Blvd.” live at the Farm Aid concert in Indianapolis, Indiana on April 7th, 1990.

“people in new york do get ahead by who they know not what they can do” lou at his cranky best, taking on the music biz:)) –Lou Reed grills Mark Josephson, co-director of the New Music Seminar, on a 1986 episode of MTV’s 120 Minutes.


Lou after the transplant, on spotify/free downloading of music
: “this whole idea of starving artists that stay starving artists, meanwhile you’ve got artists like damien hirst selling for a gazillion dollars” –Lou Reed’s shock at Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations

ok, the last one – my namesake song, a bouncy version, lou you will always and forever be in my heart

OBSERVATIONS: Obviously, I was drawn to live footage immediately, interviews as well as performances (as I’m sure were many, but I didn’t read posts until after I’d “processed”. AND it seems I liked anything that captured him dancing (and less guarded)! I think I captured examples of his rancorous wit and fierce generosity ( (even on David Letterman), that unusual mix that as I said above made his music so potent (and like Sinatra, I find his phrasing brilliantly varied in live stuff). The verbal runs in this show when he just ad libs all this poetry is a perfect example. The line I quoted in related thread being: ‘fuck radio ethiopia, man, I’m radio Brooklyn” Recorded live at Bottom Line 17-21 May 1978, no overdubbing. Mixed at Delta Studio, Wilster — Sweet Jane Germany (and yes, I noticed there were several Sweet Jane versions — naturally!)

I noticed too I liked the 1970s and 1990s Lou the best, the former for the obvious sexiness and decadence but also for its fevered experimentation, and the latter for the more reflective writing. I think of LR as a storyteller. “New York” is on my desert island list, I never get tired of it. I could go on and on. I’m glad to have a place to archive my thoughts/reactions. My little mourning session for the ICONIC NEW YORK ROCK LEGEND, LOU REED (1942-2013) who will forever be missed. RIP. (How painful to have to type that end date…may a new fan be born every minute)

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vignettes of the night VII: oops http://www.janestown.net/2013/10/vignettes-of-the-night-vii-oops/ Wed, 16 Oct 2013 06:23:42 +0000 http://www.janestown.net/?p=2016 Almost forgot.

Getting out of the train tonite, I found myself thinking about my 20 year anniversary, of how impossible it would seem to live anywhere else. Outside NYC I mean, because I’d move back to Manhattan, should it be an option (not likely, waay too poor). But Brooklyn really is a lot more interesting overall (filmmakers, musicians, artists, everyone whose anyone in the up-and-coming way is producing in this borough).

Greenpoint has changed so much since I’ve been here these last 14 years. Which is what I specifically was thinking as I saw a new yippie shoe store go up, and a Ricky’s pop-up for Halloween. And I thought Starbucks and then Seven Eleven had truly sealed its fate. HA, who knows. As the waterfront gets developed and more homeless shelters get built to shuffle all the newly vulnerable homeless that it will create (there’s already a 200-bed facility that went up a year ago, and one of the worst SROs in NYC history a few blocks away, which has been here for decades). But I don’t wanna go off on the horrors of gentrification, here’s a few BK pics for you of the hood instead!
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vignettes of the night II: janestown headquarters http://www.janestown.net/2013/10/vignettes-of-the-night-more-from-the-janestown-lair/ Thu, 10 Oct 2013 05:12:30 +0000 http://www.janestown.net/?p=1950 (Wondering if technology will ever be able to surveil our thoughts, data spilling from brains into computers that codify them, I stumble on this Atlantic article suggesting YES, ohmygawd how frightening)

My shrink keeps using this term “projective identification” lately so tonight I tried to remember where my attention unconsciously strayed during the day for these three vignettes presented below, though what that reveals exactly I don’t know.

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starting june 6th – my annual workshop for visual artists http://www.janestown.net/2013/05/starting-june-6th-my-annual-workshop/ Fri, 10 May 2013 19:45:05 +0000 http://www.janestown.net/?p=1733 This workshop, in its 4th year, has been a great success, with student-participants of all stripes – from recent MFA grads to successful commercial artists returning to their fine arts roots – utilizing their new skills to gain solo shows and access to residencies. Sign up soon as space is limited. And please feel free to email me with any questions! Cheers, Jane

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easter 2013 with the voluptuous horror of karen black! http://www.janestown.net/2013/04/easter-sunday-bonnets-and-babies-the-voluptuous-horror-of-karen-black/ Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:39:13 +0000 http://www.janestown.net/?p=1678 If you’ve never seen the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black you must! Imagine tom-tom beats, surf rhythms, throbbing guitars, songs about death and fucking all wrapped up in body paint, gigantic wigs (the bigger the hair the bigger the brains!), and the best props this side of the planet! Kembra Pfahler is amazing! All pics courtesy of www.janestown.net, and taken on Easter sunday at their gig at Santos Party House…an amazing show I almost missed (guest-list mishap). ONE OF NEW YORK’S BEST!






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