Georges Braque's Pesky Squirrel

Above © Les Coleman, Touch. Felt pen, toilet paper roll (2006). Photographed by Nancy Fouts. As published in Les Coleman, Dirt and Other Works. Coracle Press, 2009. Courtesy the artist.

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The following is a story told by Pablo Picasso, as quoted in Francoise Gilot (his former wife) and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964, pp. 76-77—

I remember one evening I arrived at [Georges] Braque's studio. He was working on a large oval still life with a package of tobacco, a pipe, and all the usual paraphernalia of Cubism. I looked at it, drew back and said, "My poor friend, this is dreadful. I see a squirrel in your canvas." Braque said, "That's not possible." I said, "Yes, I know, it's paranoiac vision, but it so happens that I see a squirrel. That canvas is made to be a painting, not an optical illusion. Since people need to see something in it, you want them to see a package of tobacco, a pipe, and the other things you're putting in. But for God's sake, get rid of that squirrel." Braque stepped back a few feet and looked carefully and sure enough, he too saw the squirrel, because that kind of paranoiac vision is extremely communicable. Day after day Braque fought that squirrel. He changed the structure, the light, the composition, but the squirrel always came back, because once it was in our minds it was almost impossible to get it out. However different the forms became, the squirrel somehow always managed to return. Finally, after eight or ten days, Braque was able to turn the trick and the canvas again became a package of tobacco, a pipe, a deck of cards, and above all a Cubist painting.

Why Sitting Bull Wore Goggles

O.S. Goff, Sitting Bull (1881). Courtesy Library of Congress.

This is a curious photograph of Sitting Bull (1831-1890), holding a pipe and wearing what seem to be goggles. You can find the original photo file online at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs website. It was taken by Orlando Scott Goff on July 31, 1881, only about twelve days after the great Indian leader had returned to the US from Canada with his followers, in order to surrender.

But why is he wearing these goggles? As explained by James Welch in Killing Custer (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007, p. 258), he had a terrible eye infection at the time—

Sitting Bull certainly did not look well. He and his people had not eaten properly for three years. He was dressed in rags. He had a severe eye infection. He was demoralized.…[He was wearing] dirty pants and shirt, red paint on his face and a pair of smoked goggles shielding his infected eye…

Other people who were contemporaries with Sitting Bull also mention that he was wearing goggles when they met him. For example, this is a passage from Judson Elliot Walker, Campaigns of General Custer in the Northwest (Jenkins and Thomas, 1881, p. 90)—

He [Sitting Bull] wore a pair of green wire goggles, so we could not see his naked eyes, but it is said that he has a pair of as keen eagle eyes as ever was set between two high cheek bones on any red man in the aboriginal tribes.

And this is from J.W. Reading, "A Short Biography of Sitting Bull" in Locomotive Engineers Journal (1911), p. 219—

He [Sitting Bull] wore a pair of colored goggles, which served to partly hide the expression on his face, a thing that I regretted very much.

But maybe that isn't the (only) answer. I suggest that because it's just as easy to find eyewitness references to other Lakota Indians wearing colored goggles. When Laura Winthrop Johnson met a group of Lakota as early as 1875 (six years before this photograph of Sitting Bull), she reported that—

Several wore blue goggles—we knew not whether for use or beauty.

In addition, there are at least two photographs of the Oglala Lakota chief Red Cloud (1822-1909) in which he too is wearing goggles ("to protect his sensitive eyes"). Taken c.1891 by Clarence G. Morledge, those photographs are reproduced in Frank Henry Goodyear, Red Cloud: Photographs of a Lakota Chief.

Joseph Podlesnik | Marksman Par Excellence

© Joseph Podlesnik, Self-Portrait

In the early 1980s, Joseph Podlesnik and I were both living in Milwaukee. He was a student, and I was a teacher. Out of kindness, he likes to say that I was his teacher, but I don't think I taught him much, if anything. For one thing, I was a graphic designer, a collagist who had more or less given up drawing a few years earlier. But I have always loved strong drawing, and Joe, even as an undergraduate, was an extraordinary drawing-based artist (I hesitate to say "draftsman" because that doesn't quite describe his work), admired by teachers and students alike. Now he himself is a teacher, and he teaches drawing in a way that is based on intensified seeing. I continue to be amazed by his drawings, as well as his knowledge of vision. Above, for example, is a magnificent self-portrait he did about 8 or 10 years ago, using only a ballpoint pen. What impresses me so much is that every mark is both dead-on accurate and alive. I am reminded of what Hungarian-born artist-designer Gyorgy Kepes wrote in The New Landscape in Art and Science (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1956)—

There are two basic morphological archetypes—expression of order, coherence, discipline, stability on the one hand; expression of chaos, movement, vitality, change on the other.

It is common enough to see drawings that adhere too much to one of those polarities, while all but ignoring the other extreme. Joe Podlesnik (in his films as well as his drawings) achieves a masterful mixture of both.

Wild West, Hot Dogs and Gertrude Kasebier

Gertrude Kasebier, Portrait of Charging Thunder (1898)

Above A studio portrait of a Native American (Lakota) named Charging Thunder, as photographed by Gertrude Kasebier (1852-1934) at her Fifth Avenue Studio in New York.

Kasebier had studied with Arthur Wesley Dow (whose theory of composition also influenced Georgia O'Keeffe), and was associated with O'Keeffe's partner Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession. After attending the Wild West show in Brooklyn, she secured permission from Buffalo Bill to photograph a group of the Wild West show Indians in her studio.

The photography session took place on Sunday, April 24, 1898. It lasted for three hours, during which the guests were served with tea and hot dogs ("hot frankfurters between unbuttered bread"). It isn't certain, but apparently one of Kasebier's guests was Charging Thunder (shown in the Kasebier portrait above). Details about the session and a selection of the portraits can be found in Michelle Delaney, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Warriors: A Photographic History by Gertrude Kasebier (New York: Harper Collins, 2007).

There seems some confusion about whether there might have been two performers named Charging Thunder. The person in this photograph appears in another photograph (also taken by Kasebier) with his Native American wife. However, elsewhere online, we have found a story (with photos) of another Lakota Indian named Charging Thunder (they certainly don't look like the same person), who was part of the Wild West troupe when they performed in Salford, England, in 1903. This second Charging Thunder, who was 26 years old at the time, had fallen in love with one of the show's horse trainers, a woman named Josephine, and when the Wild West left town, the two of them remained in the UK, married and raised a family. For the rest of their lives, they lived in the vicinity of Manchester. Charging Thunder changed his name to George Edward Williams, registered as an immigrant, and worked for many years at the Belle Vue Zoological Gardens, where he took care of the elephants. According to BBC Manchester, two of his grandchildren have recently been located in the UK.

It's nice to see the Kasebier photo of the first Charging Thunder with his dog. Back then, it was commonly rumored that some of the Native Americans considered dog meat a delicacy. Here for example is a paragraph from the New York Times (Thursday, June 28, 1888, p. 2)—

WHERE DOGS ARE DISAPPEARING: The refining influence of civilization has not lessened the strong taste that Buffalo Bill's Wild West Indians have for dog flesh, and the canine population of Staten Island is rapidly diminishing. New Shirt yesterday devoured with apparent relish an expensive poodle that had been used to much better treatment than it received at the hands of the fighting warrior. The show is still drawing large crowds.

Wild West Indians in Paris

© Roy R. Behrens, Indigenous Nativity (2004). Purchase online.

I've been reading about Native Americans in connection with a talk I give for Humanities Iowa on Iowa-born Wild West showman William F. Cody. It seems clear that throughout his life, the convivial scout had a propensity for the pleasantries of "firewater" in large amounts. Earlier in the 19th century, according to James Welch in Killing Custer (NY: Norton, 1994), "the white man's water" was a brew of "tobacco, capsicum, molasses, peppers, and alcohol mixed with river water and whatever else could produce a fire in the belly" (p. 26).

In 1889, Cody took his Wild West show (including a number of Native Americans) on a performance tour of Europe, concurrent with the World's Fair in Paris. It was the Eiffel Tower's premiere, and all sorts of celebrities attended, as is vividly described by Jill Jonnes in Eiffel's Tower (NY: Penguin, 2009). The Native Americans enjoyed enormous popularity with the French public. According to Jonnes, their performances were so well known in Paris that—

the clowns at the Cirque d'Été [summer circus] had worked up a parody called Kachalo-Ball. The real Wild West Indians instantly gave it cachet by attending the show in groups each night, cheering wildly as the French clowns satirized their riding and their wars and attacks. When the clowns took to dancing their version of Sioux war dances, the visiting Native Americans laughed so hard they had tears running down their faces.

More Morsels from Les

Above Those clever Victorians. This turn-of-the-century drawing, published in the Strand Magazine (c1907), is made entirely of shorthand notations.

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Meanwhile, Les Coleman shares his latest thunks—

Overnight intruders broke into the clay pigeon factory and shot all the pigeons.

Ping: Pong's friend.

Blind, Deaf and Dumb came to their senses.

He sold his soul, and a second-hand car, to the Devil.

There was no conversation to speak of.

The lead balloon was proving impossible to blow up.

Nudity: the height of fashion.

Cold weather caused the skull's teeth to chatter.

Parachute complaint forms need to be filled out in
advance.

A face-off ensued between the two cuckoo clocks.

The deaf piano tuner lived in the same street as the
blind art critic.

Eve went to the greengrocers to buy some apples.

A leaking sieve only added to their problems.

Copyright © Les Coleman

Jared Rogness | E-Chicken Extraordinaire

Copyright © Jared Rogness. All rights reserved.

Whatever else may be said of teaching, it passes like a high speed train and carries ones life along with it.

My first college-level teaching position began 40 years ago, which means that I've just concluded my eightieth semester. In each of those years, I've worked with about 150 students, sometimes more. There was a time, I like to think, when I could recognize the names of all of them, usually because I remembered their work. Despite moving from school to school, many I can still recall, and there are some I continue to hear from.

Beginning in the late 1990s, for example, I had the memorable opportunity to work with a talented young illustrator named Jared Rogness (BFA 2003). Most likely, I doubt if I taught him a thing. He was one of those "driven" enthusiasts for pen-and-ink drawing who had probably been drawing nonstop since early childhood (a species now close to extinction). As an undergraduate, he was an editorial cartoonist for the student newspaper (he called himself "e-chicken"), for which he was doing professional work that was amazingly original, intelligent and of course well-drawn.

Years later, after somehow surviving the ordeal of making a living while continuing to do things of quality, he settled in California, working as a storyboard illustrator for Hollywood, while making imaginative comics. Reproduced above is a black-and-white drawing he made recently, in advance of his current major project, the first installment of a new creator-owned comic, titled The Knightmare of Nabokov.

I still recall so many drawings he made over the years. There was a period of time, for example, when I was the art director of what was then a small but widely-known magazine (a National Magazine Award winner), admired in those days for the quality of its artwork as well as for its writing. It was my good luck (and that of the magazine) to be able on occasion to hire Jared Rogness to illustrate some of the short fiction. He produced the most astonishing illustrations, some of which can still be seen on his current web portfolio. Two of those pieces are shown below.

Copyright © Jared Rogness. All rights reserved.

Copyright © Jared Rogness. All rights reserved.

Les Coleman's Doors

Above An ominous drawing by British artist/writer Les Coleman, titled Shadow (c2007). Copyright © Les Coleman, all rights reserved.

Film Review  |  The Architecture of Doom a film by Peter Cohen, 1991. VHS video. 119 minutes. Color. Available from First Run / Icarus Films, 32 Court Street, 21st Floor, Brooklyn NY 11201.

There are countless historical videos on Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich, and the circumstances of the death camps, but this is undoubtedly one of the best. From its beginning moments, which consist of a drawn-out, completely mute flight over a tranquil German village, this film demands our attention, then holds us firmly by the throat for a full two hours. Its power in part is undoubtedly due to the night-marish subject matter (I couldn't sleep after watching it). Yet, few accounts of World War II Germany are as memorable, which I think is mostly attributable to the images used (photographs, revealing documents, artworks, and rare and often shocking film footage, especially that made by the Nazis), the artfully insistent pace of the editing, and the persuasive clarity of the narration. It is not a film that is summarized easily, but its underlying premise is that Hitler (who had initially wanted to be an artist, then an architect) was not entirely irrational, but rather that the things he did, while outrageous and revolting, were seemingly logical methods by which he could "art direct" or "design" society. A devotee of Darwinian natural selection, he believed that the natural process by which the weak (or unfit) are self-exterminating was being subverted by permissive social practices, which he also perceived as analogous to the threat of contagious diseases. Like many of his contemporaries, he was a great admirer of the composer Richard Wagner, especially his elaborate operas, which combined different arts (music , theatre, literature and visual art) into a harmonious single event, for which Wagner used the term Gesamtkunstwerk (German for "total work of art"). Surprisingly, this film does not mention that famous word, although it was widely and commonly used by turn-of-the-century architects and designers, among them Henry van de Velde, Peter Behrens, Josef Hoffmann, and Frank Lloyd Wright (who called it "organic form"). In those days, when the finest architects were asked to design a building, they were likely to refuse to make only the rudiementary shape or shell. Instead, they tended to design the entire building (much as William Morris did with (at least) the interior of his own residence, Red House), to make it consistent by also designing the furniture, the fittings, the dinnerware, and, in some cases, even the ideal clothes to be worn by the building's residents. This was taken one step further in 1899 when Josef Maria Olbrich was invited to design (as a deliberate Gesamtkunstwerk) the setting and most of the houses for an artists' colony in Darmstadt, Germany. This film does not mention that colony, but it does say that, as Chancellor, Hitler began to imagine himself as the set designer, director and leading actor (or perhaps what designers now commonly call the "corporate designer") of a colossal Wagnerian opera called the Third Reich, for which he really did design certain uniforms, flags, standards and buildings. It also claims that, in addition to Hitler, at least half of his leading officials had direct and significant links to the arts. Those artistic involvements were not incidental, the film argues, because the Third Reich was in certain ways an aesthetic movement—a perversely misguided attempt to improve the world for the German Volk, and to reunite art with everyday life.—RB more>>>

See also: Roy R. Behrens, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016).  

Dard Hunter | Graphic Work

Above Dard Hunter self-portrait, from an advertisement for The Dard Hunter School of Handicraft in The Caxton: A Magazine for Quality Folks No 2 Vol II (November 1910).

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A new book has just come out about the American artist, craftsman and papermaker William Joseph (Dard) Hunter (1883-1966). The title is Dard Hunter: The Graphic Works by Lawrence Kreisman (Petaluma CA: Pomegranate, 2012). While it does provide information about his participation in the Roycroft Workshops in East Aurora NY (founded by Elbert Hubbard) and his contacts with the Wiener Werkstatte in Vienna (including some wonderful photographs that I haven't seen elsewhere), it isn't so much a biography as a rich, full-color portfolio of his Arts and Crafts designs for books, bookplates, typographic lettering, advertising brochures, and stained glass windows.

Among the many things he made while living at East Aurora was an ornate title spread for Hubbard's book White Hyacinths (1907), which was subsequently used for two other Roycroft books, The Tale of Two Tailors (1909) and Pig-Pen Pete (1914). more>>> 

WPA Artist | Orr C. Fisher

Back in 1999, we published an essay (now online) about the painted murals that were made for US post offices in the 1930s and 40s as part of a government program called the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Among our favorites is an oil on canvas mural made in 1941 by Iowa-born artist Orr C(leveland) Fisher (1885-1974), titled The Corn Parade (reproduced above). It was commissioned to hang in the lobby of the new post office in Mount Ayr IA (and is apparently still there, assuming it hasn't closed), the seat of Ringgold Country in south central Iowa. (In an earlier post, we noted that Jackson Pollock's mother was born near Mount Ayr, and his father was also from Ringgold County.) As a WPA artist, Fisher also painted a mural for the post office in Forest City IA, titled Evening on the Farm (1942).

Fisher was originally from Ringgold County, having grown up near Delphos (originally named Borneo). According to online information (submitted by the artist's niece, Donna L. Howard) at a website on WPA murals, he studied art through correspondence schools, and (in 1913 and 1921) with Charles A. Cumming at the Cumming School of Art in Des Moines. While in Des Moines, he also studied at Drake University and worked with J.N. "Ding" Darling, the famous political cartoonist for the Des Moines Register. 

In an autobiographical article in 1930, as quoted in his niece's article, Fisher described his interest in art—

At an early age, yet in the primary department of a country school, I exhibited a talent for drawing by making pictures on my slate during the study period and on the blackboard at recesses and the noon hour. The barn doors, granary walls and every place on the old homestead where a smooth surface appeared was a temptation too strong to resist the markings of my pencil or chalk. Hence everything on the old farm was either decorated with comics or carved with knife in crude designs and initials. I use to draw with my finger in the plow furrow where the over-turned sod presented a smooth surface. On the way to school I would dig from the clay hills red and yellow soft rocks to color my pictures at school. This was before I knew what a crayola was.

He went on to say that "everywhere I have gone, I have drawn. I have drawn almost everything imaginable up to the modern art era, except a salary." Aside from being an artist, he worked for the railroad, drove a six-horse freight wagon, and produced articles, cartoons and illustrations for various publications. He was also an erstwhile inventor, and in 1904 (at age 19) he received a US Patent (No. 759,257) for an Automatic Whistle Operating Mechanism for locomotives (see patent diagram below). 

In later years, he lived in Woodstock NY, where he built a studio. In the 1960s, he moved to California, where he died in Fresno in 1974.

The Wonderful Woman I Live With

Mary Snyder Behrens on Etsy

Dean Schwarz at Blanden Art Museum

The Blanden Memorial Art Museum, founded in 1931, is housed in a historic neoclassical building in the Oak Hill District of Fort Dodge IA. It was the first permanent art facility in the state. Opening there a week from today will be an exhibition of the paintings and pottery of Dean Schwarz, co-founder of South Bear Pottery and South Bear Press in Decorah IA. There is a talk by the artist at 3:00 pm (Saturday, April 21), followed by a reception at 4:00–5:00 pm. The exhibition continues until September 15. Schwarz's pottery is produced in collaboration with his son, Gunnar Schwarz, who makes the large wheel-thrown pots which Dean designs the surfaces of.

In connection with the exhibition, the museum has published a large format full-color catalog titled Dean Schwarz: Pottery, Painting and Persistence, 1958-2011 (see cover above). The catalog essay was written by Margaret Skove. It was designed by Lynette Ubel, with photographs by Peter Lee, Harry Baumert, and Jerry Grier.

This is an extraordinarily rich publication, featuring 112 pages of text and breathtaking photographs, with 105 reproductions in all, two of which are shown below. It is priced at only $35 (for museum members) and $40 (for non-members) and is available at the museum's gift shop. Or it can also be ordered by mail, with a $6 shipping and handling charge. Make checks payable to Blanden Charitable Foundation, and send to the Blanden Memorial Art Museum, 920 3rd Avenue South, Fort Dodge IA 50501. Please include a correct mailing address and phone number for reference. >>more…

Dean Schwarz©, Barn Poppies

Dean Schwarz©, Silos

Howard's End

Chain carved from a single piece of wood

Growing up in the Midwest in the 1950s, when I was in elementary school I spent a lot of hours, especially in the summer, sitting outside in the shade on a concrete slab, carving shapes out of wood with my aging next door neighbor, Howard Steele (he looked like J.C. Penney to me). Recently, when I found the above photograph in a turn-of-the-century issue of the Strand Magazine (c1890s), it reminded me of Howard's specialty: He was good at "whittling" wooden chains out of a single scrap of pine, a trick that was pretty amazing to me at that age. He gave me my first pocket knife, which I used when I was whittling with him. Later, when I was in fifth grade, I took up ventriloquism. My sister gave me the head of a discarded doll, which I modified so that the mouth would open and close. One day when I came home from school, I was surprised and delighted to find that Howard had carved an entire wooden body for my makeshift sidekick, and my mother and a seamstress friend had made an appropriate miniature suit. I named him Mitch Mahoney, because he was supposed to resemble television bandleader Mitch Miller. It must have been the following year that, as I again walked home from school, I noticed as I neared my home that perhaps a dozen neighborhood women (my mother among them) were gathered on the lawn in front of Howard's house. As I approached, it became apparent that Howard, lifeless and propped up on a chair in the grass in the yard, was having a terrible hemorrhage, and the women were frantically trying to stop the bleeding with towels. After Howard died that day, I was given his pocket knife, which I still have, along with the one that he'd given to me. Oddly, now that all the years have passed, I can no longer remember which pocket knife was his—and which was mine.

Étienne-Jules Marey's 3-D Motion Picture

Without hesitation, one of my favorite people from the past was a 19th-century French scientist named Étienne Jules-Marey (1830-1904). The number and complexity of the things that he invented are almost beyond belief. He began to study animal movement in the late 1860s, then used photography and a photographic gun to record successive stages in the movements of a wide range of animals and of humans. By far, my favorite invention of his (shown here) was very likely the first 3-D motion picture device. Using a spinning drum-like motion picture toy called a zoetrope, he arranged inside of it (on upright wires) a series of tiny wax sculptures of ten stages in the flight of a seagull. By spinning the drum, while bending down and looking through the slits in its side, one could see the breathtaking illusion of a tiny three-dimensional bird, flying through the air. I wonder if this still exists, or if it could be rebuilt. More>>>

Sandburg's Story of Fingers and Forks

Roy R. Behrens, COOK BOOK: Gertrude Stein, William Cook, and Le Corbusier ©

From Carl Sandburg, Always the Young Strangers. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1953, p. 167—

A NORWEGIAN told me his mother sent him to a store to get something and he came home saying he forgot what she sent him for. She sent him again with the words, "What you don't keep in your head your feet must make up for, my little man." When he ate with his fingers and his grandmother told him to eat with his fork, he said, "Fingers were made before forks," and she cornered him, "But not your fingers."

You Can Kiss My Foot

Art Deco-era poster, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

From Bruce Siberts, in Walker D. Wyman, ed., Nothing But Prairie and Sky: Life of the Dakota Range in the Early Days. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954, pp. 5-6.—

Our family were strict Methodists, attended church regular, and none of them ever got drunk, chewed or smoked tobacco, or used bad language. Only Uncle Ed, who bought cattle and hogs for the Chicago market, was different. He chewed tobacco, was suspected of drinking beer once, and had the reputation of seeing a show in Chicago called The Black Crook, in which women wore tights. As Uncle Ed and Mr. Crum, a neighbor, were the only Methodists who used tobacco, except on the sly, it was urged that they be expelled from the church. But looking over the records, it was learned that they were the best in paying money for the support of the church so they were allowed to remain in good standing. However, the minister preached a good sermon on the evils of tobacco, saying "There you sit with hell juice running out of your mouths," and on in that line for two hours. Uncle Ed said that the preacher could kiss his foot and go to hell. Only he didn't say foot.

Stuarte Cloete on the Phases of Life

Art Deco-era poster. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs.

From Stuart Cloete, A Victorian Son. New York: John Day Company, 1972, p. 15—

The first twenty years of anyone's life are more or less spent in growing up, not that a human being is developed or fully matured by then, but it is an approximation. The next twenty years in the life of a man or a woman are the period which is dominated by the sexual urge. Biologically speaking, at forty, both men and women can be and often are grandparents. Sex may continue to manifest itself till an advanced age but the fury has gone out of it…This is the period of maturity. Success has either been achieved or not achieved by forty. The ladder must, by this time, be at least partially climbed. After sixty comes the last period of life—the evening, where thought and memory replace action. Where a man not only puts his material affairs in order but tries to sort out his life, to evaluate his failures and successes. Where, with sufficient perspective, he can at last begin to see the wood without being confused by the trees.

Stravinsky on the Telephone

Above Separated at birth? (Left to right) German architect Peter Behrens (in a portrait by Max Liebermann, 1911), and designer Roy R. Behrens.

Below From Robert Craft, Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship. Nashville TN: Vanderbilt University (1994), p. 188—

I.S [Stravinsky], telephoning the G. Wittenberg Surgical Appliances Company: "This is Mr. Stravinsky, S-T-R-A-" He spells it out loudly and deliberately, as he does when dictating a telegram. "Two years ago you fitted me with a truss. I want an appointment to have it repaired." He has dialed a wrong number, however, and the other party has apparently had to hear the entire speech without finding an opportunity to interrupt. I.S. ill-humoredly cradles the receiver, then carefully dials again. "This is Mr. Stravinsky, S-T-…" You made a …" The same party answers, very annoyed. Annoyed now himself, I.S. double-checks the number in his address book, finds it correct, still believes he has misdialed, tries again. "This is Mr.…" This time the man on the other end, no doubt believing himself the victim of a raving lunatic, slams down the receiver. At this point V. [Stravinsky's wife] discovers from the telephone directory that I.S. has miscopied the number.

Jackson Pollock's Iowa Roots

 © Les Coleman, Pollock's Palette (1972). Household paint on hardboard. Photo: Colin Sackett.

From Henry Adams, Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock. NY: Bloomsbury Press, 2009, pp. 22-23—

[Jackson] Pollock's mother, Stella McClure, the eldest child in her family, was born on May 20, 1875, in a log house near the little town of Mount Ayr, Iowa. Her parents were stern Presbyterians who believed that there was just one straight and narrow path to salvation. Life on the McClure farm was harsh and strictly regulated, and misfortunes, which came frequently, were accepted with a kind of stoic resignation. One of Stella's sisters died of convulsions in her arms; another died young of tuberculosis. Around 1890 the farm failed, and the family moved to Tingley, Iowa, where her father, John McClure, found work as a brick-mason and plasterer…

The background of Jackson Pollock's father was, if possible, even grimmer than that of his mother. Two years younger than his wife, Roy Pollock was born to the name of LeRoy McCoy on February 25, 1877, on a small farm in Ringgold County, Iowa. In 1879, when LeRoy was two, his mother and sister both died of tuberculosis. Despairing and destitute, John McCoy gave away his infant son to James and Lizzie Pollock, a poor farm couple in Tingley who were not his relatives.

Les Coleman | More of Les

Les Coleman © Trispectacles (1995). Photo by Nancy Fouts.

More from British artist Les Coleman—

Ventriloquists drink gottled geer.

There is no future in being a clairvoyant.

You can be sure that if it's in small print, it should be in large print.

The dice had never learned how to count beyond six.

Terror struck at the very heart of his epiglottis.

The smell was blinding.

Please refrain from prohibiting.

Seaside holidays should be seen as a last resort.

Audience tells stand up comedian to sit down.

The autobiography of a ghost writer.

They sawed the magician's coffin in half before lowering it into the ground.

Reading his own obituary caused him to have a heart attack.

He had all the symptoms of hypochondria.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith use a false name when signing the hotel register.

Copyright © by Les Coleman. Used by permission.

Mary Snyder Behrens | American Canvas

Above (top to bottom) © Mary Snyder Behrens, American Canvas II, III and IV (2002). Mixed media on board. Each measures 48h x 30w x 4d inches.

THIS SERIES, called American Canvas, began in 2002. It is a sequence of canvas-less "paintings" that are comprised of discarded maps, law book and hymnal pages, stuck to dried latex house paint. These form the ground on which painting and pencil and other various markings are applied… >>more

Cubist Food

A cartoon by Frank King (April 1913), making fun of cubist art.

James Elkins in Why Art Cannot Be Taught. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001, p. 68—

Art school catalogs from the turn of the century are filled with reproductions of student paintings that look like slavish copies of John Singer Sargent or Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and exhibition catalogs from the 1950s show hundreds of students' works that emulate abstract expressionism. The lesson I draw from looking at older art school catalogs and graduation exhibitions is that fifty years from now even the most diverse-looking work will begin to seem quite homogenous. Works that seemed new or promising will fade into what they really are: average works, mediocre attempts to emulate the styles of the day. That's depressing, I know: but it's what history teaches us.

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Joshua Fineberg in Classical Music: Why Bother?: Hearing the World of Contemporary Culture Through a Composer's Ear. London: Routledge, 2006—

Most art is crap. This may be a shocking idea to many people. We think of art as the great masterworks we know, and it's very easy to forget the mountains of mediocrity that were sifted to lift Bach or Dante or Emily Dickinson to their Olympian heights.

...

Alan Fletcher in The Art of Looking Sideways. Phaidon Press, 2001—

I made my weekly telephone call to my mother. "What have you been up to this week?" she asked—as usual. "Nothing much," I responded—as usual. Then adventurously said, "I've been putting a book together." "Oh, what's it about," she queried—with vague interest. My mother wasn't into reading, she equated it with working. "Well," I improvised, "it's about seeing." "Oh, I see"—she said. Then changed the subject. "Are you looking forward to going on holiday next week?"

Identical Twin Cities

John Page, Together Now (2011). Collage on canvas, 34 x 40 in.

Trevor Fishlock, in Americans and Nothing Else. Cassell (1980)—

Minneapolis and St Paul..are nicknamed the Twin Cities. They are divided by the Mississippi River, and united by the belief that the inhabitants on the other side of the river are inferior.

...

Harrison Salisbury, in Chester G. Anderson, ed., Growing Up in Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976—

Once [after he moved to New York], on top of the Woolworth Building (the Empire State Building did not yet exist), a man asked my mother what it was that lay beyond the Hudson. She said New Jersey. "Oh, yes," he said. "Well, I've never been west of the Hudson." How to explain Minnesota—not only west of the Hudson but west of the Mississippi? It was not easy. New Yorkers didn't seem to understand the difference between Minneapolis and Indianapolis. And even when I explained they didn't seem to think it really made a difference. I knew that New Yorkers were very sophisticated people. In fact, I was ashamed of coming from a place out west where, as I understood the New York view, no one really lived and certainly no one from New York ever ventured.

...

Art Buchwald, More Caviar. New York: Harper, 1959—

Brno is a vry nce cty, but we ddn't get a chance to spnd mch tme thre... Thre are mny twns in Czechoslovakia wthout vwels, but Brno is the lrgest one of thm all.

David Meyer | On Ernie Summers

Coles Phillips, Know All Men by These Presents (c1910). Library of Congress.

The following passages are from David Meyer's memoir of his friend Ernest Summers, in Ernie and Me (c2003)—

His antics in restaurants were always entertaining. "As Shakespeare once said, 'What foods these morsels be!'" was his usual comment when a meal was served... He would scoop up unused silverware into his coat sleeves and let it spill out again as he was paying for the meal. He was never rude to waiters, but he often confounded them. He kept a stack of freshly minted one-dollar bills glued together at one end so they appeared to be a pad of paper. As Ernie tore off singles to pay a bill, the expressions on the faces of the wait staff or cashiers were wonderful to watch. Decades before the advent of portable cell phones, he carried a phone receiver with a cord attached to the inside of his suit coat. A ringing device was in his pocket. We would be in a restaurant and as the waitress was taking the order, Ernie would have the phone "ring." He'd reach into his coat, pull out the receiver and put it to his ear. After saying "Hello" and "Hold on," he would hand it to the waitress and say, "It's for you." No one I saw who was given that fake phone ever hesitated saying "Hello" into its receiver.

...

On our first introduction he asked me how old I was.

"Seven," I think I told him.

"D'you know how old I was when I was your age?" he asked.

"No."

"I was eight."

It wasn't only waiters Ernie confounded; children were included.

"If S-O-U-P spells 'soup,'" he'd say, "What does G-O-U-P spell?"

"Goop?"

"No... 'Go up,'" he'd reply.

He'd also show how he had eleven fingers. "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six," he's say, counting backwards, "and five on this hand makes eleven."

Early on he gave me a piece of advice which I have never forgotten:

He who takes what isn't his'n,

Pays a fine or goes to prison.

I've Got A Room in Chicago

Canadian Pacific Railway (1940s)

Anon: I've got a room in Chicago, and she's got a flat behind.

Francois Rabelais: Nature abhors a vacuum.

Tennessee Williams: A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

Charles Bragg: Nature abhors a vacuum cleaner salesman.

Anon: Hey. Pop! Vot is a vacuum?

—A vacuum is a void.

—I know it's a void, but vat does dat void mean?

Anon: Sorry about my dancing. I'm a little stiff from badminton.

—I don't care where you're from. You'll never dance with me again.

Henry Moore: [Before getting married] I had argued with all my friends that really artists shouldn't get married, they should be married to their art. After all Michelangelo wasn't married, Beethoven wasn't married and so on, all the examples of really good artists who weren't married; but after meeting Irina [his future wife], I began to say Rembrandt was married, Bach had twenty children and so on. All this attitude changed, and within six months we were married.

Finnegans Wake | James Joyce

Roy R. Behrens © Combat Fatigue. Digital montage (2004).

When I initially made this digital montage—in a form that alludes to a book spread—it had nothing to do with the Irish novelist and poet James Joyce (1882-1941), at least not directly. In fact, the obscured image on the right is reworked from a photograph (in the Library of Congress) of an equally admired writer and Joyce's contemporary, the Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). But it had everything to do with writing and designing. Years earlier, when I was in an architecture class in graduate school (the only one I've taken), I began to think about Venn diagrams in relation to figure-ground patterns, and then, by extension, to architectural building plans. In part I was led to this by the writings of Christopher Alexander. It seemed to me then that one can make purposeful "category confusions" (puns, rhymes, parodies, allusions and so on) in architectural building plans as easily as one can with words. I was "reading" Finnegans Wake at the time, so to some extent this came to me because of their concurrence.

Not to pretend to explain Joyce's comic novel, its two central characters are HCE (Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker) and ALP (Anna Livia Plurabelle). Beyond that, you can find a detailed and reasonably good summary at the Wikipedia article on the book. For the moment, I would simply like to share a few examples of the astonishing word play that Joyce employs throughout the book.

He frequently offers sentences that say one thing and yet, by the way they are written, they echo (or parody) other famous passages, especially religious texts. Listen to these two examples:

"In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singitime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven!"

"Wharnow are alle her childer, say? In kingdome gone or power to come or gloria be to them farther? Allalivial, allaluvial! Some here, more no more, more again lost alla stranger."

The complexity of the patterns he makes is beyond belief. Here's a particularly interesting part in which he poses a question, then follows with an answer:

"8. And how war yore maggies?

Answer: They war loving, they love laughing, they laugh weeping, they weep smelling, they smell smiling, they smile hating, they hate thinking, they think feeling, they feel tempting, they tempt daring, they dare waiting, they wait taking, they take thanking, they thank seeking, as born for lorn in lore of love to live and wive by wile and rile by rule of ruse 'reathed rose and hose hol'd home, yeth cometh elope year, coach and four, Sweet Peck-at-my-Heart picks one man more."

Finally, I don't know how many people realize that, throughout this astonishing book, Joyce has embedded word sequences—words that begin with h, c and e—to allude of course to HCE (the protagonist). There are tons of them, but here a few:

"Howth Castle and Environs. he calmly extensolies. Hic cubat edilus. How Copenhagen ended. happinest childher everwere. Hush! Caution! Echoland! How charmingly exquisite! human, erring and condonable. heptagon crystal emprisoms. Heave, coves, emptybloddy! Hengler's Circus Entertainment. Heinz cans everywhere."

Priestly Curators

Mary Snyder Behrens, American Canvas Series, mixed media, 4" w x 5.5" h

British artist-writer Patrick Hughes, from the essay "A Bit of Artobiography," in the catalog of his recent exhibition at Flowers Galleries in London, titled Patrick Hughes: Fifty Years in Show Business 1961-2011—

"The museum of art has replaced the church for popular devotion, and so the curator is the new priest. The priestly curator's job is to introduce new mysteries and moralities to the impressionable public, backed up by spectacle and verbiage.

My art has always appealed directly to the people, calling out over the heads of the priests straight to the congregation, doing the vicars and bishops of official art out of a job. I am an unbeliever. I do not speak in tongues. Thus officialdom ignores me. I like to think that art is a lingua franca which can be understood by all the inhabitants of the planet. The idea of Korean art or New Zealand art or Polish art or Nicaraguan art or Californian art or Kenyan art is anathema to me. Writers may be stuck in their languages, but we artists can be seen and understood by all."

Les Coleman | Just Thunking

Whatever can be said about British artist and writer Les Coleman (whose work we have followed for decades), he is not thoughtless.

He thunks, he unthunks—and now in his latest book, he's been having afterthunks. It's called (appropriately) Afterthunks (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Boekie Woekie, 2011. ISBN 978-90-78191-25-4). Above is a scan of the cover, as beautifully designed as are the interior pages by Colin Sackett. Some of Coleman's other books are available here at the same publisher's website (scroll down the page to find his name). Like many of his earlier publications, this is a book of his puzzling aphorisms (his thunks), ever so wonderfully interspersed with his equally "doubletake" drawings (one of which is shown below). As for the verbal thunks themselves, here are some teasing samples of those:

A triple-edged sword.

What is it about rag that makes a bull see red?

Houdini spent his life escaping from himself.

Terrified of shooting himself in the foot, he had both feet amputated.

"How the Electric Chair Saved Me From the Firing Squad"

As I have myself have always said, Les is more.

Sirloin Steak and Whiskey

Mary Snyder Behrens, Trammel: White Wish III (2005) ©

From James Webb Young, The Diary of an Ad Man: The War Years, June 1, 1942-December 31, 1943 (Chicago: Advertising Publications, 1944)—

"Talked with domestic science editor of one of the women's magazines. She told me that she had tested literally thousands of recipes, covering almost every kind of food. Asked her what, after all this, she considered the best eating. She thought it was pretty hard to beat a good sirloin steak, washed down with straight whiskey. Western gal."