#art

Mike· 2 years ago

One day, the sadness will end

So said David Lynch, via the Log Lady. Not today, though.

I can't remember the last time such a wide swathe of people and social media accounts were pouring their hearts out about how they feel on someone's passing. It's a testament to how he touched everyone he met and worked with, and how he inspired the artists he never did. Even NASA posted a tribute.

The work, as you probably can imagine if you know me, is hugely important. Eraserhead is a bible for a certain aesthetic that I'll never really grow out of. Pabst Blue Ribbon, no matter how many times I hold a can, will always make me hear Dennis Hopper in my head. And of course, coffee and pie are magical talismans of goodness and purity in a dark, corrupted world.

The thing that probably stands out most to me about the man himself was that he just didn't compromise. Well, he did once, and that was Dune. He would just as soon that hadn't happened, though it holds a special place in a lot of our movie collections. He wouldn't shorten scenes, he wouldn't remove parts, he wouldn't use product placement. As a result, he perhaps made fewer movies before retiring than he might've wanted to — but they were all his movies. I think most artists, especially in this era where even the hobbyists and weekenders are pressured into feeling like they need to turn their work into "content," should pay attention to that.

And whether you believe this or not, it's worth taking it into account as we grieve:

You have to keep Angelo [Badalamenti, of course] alive. I believe life is a continuum, and that no one really dies, they just drop their physical body and we'll all meet again, like the song says. It's sad but it's not devastating if you think like that. Otherwise I don't see how anybody could ever, once they see someone die, that they'd just disappear forever and that's what we're all bound to do. I'm sorry but it just doesn't make any sense, it's a continuum, and we're all going to be fine at the end of the story.

Mike· 2 years ago

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It's democratic values, Charlie Brown

The problem with believing the things about America and democracy that we were taught in school is that a huge chunk of it was untrue, so it's just as easy for the current crop of fashy oligarch bootlickers to say they're the ones pushing American Values. And I can't really enjoy hearing liberals or even progressives say "this is not what America is about," because it is. But the fun thing is, conservatives have always been talking about "getting back to American Virtues" — and people like George Wallace, Newt Gingrich, and Donald Trump have justified segregation, child labor, and family separation using that kind of language.

Maybe they're more right. After all, conservatism is by its nature status quo at best, regressive at worst, and if you go all the way back to the beginning you get a pretty explicitly white supremacist, patriarchal America where a good chunk of the voting populace are religious extremists.

But then you see something that reminds you that there have always been people trying to push forward and make us our best. And that almost gives me a sense of pride.

No, I don't mean John Brown. Here's some inspiration from the great Charles Schulz. He's a man who fought hard to get a Black character included in Peanuts (even if that character wasn't too distinctive). He espoused Christian values that actually seemed kind of Jesus-y. And he has a nice little inspirational civics lesson for a kid who asked him "What makes a good citizen?" during the Nixon years.

(Via Open Culture)

Mike· 2 years ago

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The tortured artist stereotype

I hate it, but it has to come from somewhere. Sometimes Van Gogh gets blamed for it and maybe that's not without merit.

What am I in most people's eyes? A nonentity, or an eccentric and disagreeable man -somebody who has no position in society and never will have, in short, the lowest of the low.

All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.

This is my ambition, which is, in spite of everything, founded less on anger than on love, more on serenity than on passion.

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven toward these things with an irresistible force.

I guess at least he had the opportunity to achieve that calm and harmony, though he was by most accounts not wealthy or even comfortable. Modern life should afford more of this than the early industrial revolution, but we're spending our technological efforts teaching computers to paint the sunflowers instead of ourselves. Yes, I'm still ranting about that, and shit like this is not gonna make me stop anytime soon.

Also: I think the piece about love vs anger is important: it's lost so often because he's still thought of as "disagreeable."

Mike· 3 years ago

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The point

It's almost a little too on-the-nose: A gallery piece where women are permitted entry to view famous pieces of art while being served champagne and otherwise pampered, and men aren't allowed. It would be, anyway, if a man hadn't sued the artist over it. Hear that whooshing sound? If it wasn't actually playing out in Australian courts right now, I'd have speculated he was a plant by the artist.

Mike· 11 years ago

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Black metal campaign logos

This is great. Fast Co gets metal logo designer Christophe Szpajdel to redesign the logos of all the bazillion players in the 2016 campaign.

The other interesting thing about this is that one guy designed all those unreadable black metal logos, from Gorgoroth and Emperor to Wolves in the Throne Room.