This was one of the first paintings I did for the show. When I was creating the "Hamlet 1999" series, Dean became one of the iconographic references for the figure of Hamlet. I have painted and drawn pictures of him since college. Many people still don’t know this, but Dean was almost completely gay, and had many documented experiences and lovers, as well as being one of the greatest actors of all time, and an icon for rebellion America. I started long ago, before grad school, to paint pictures of porn stars, as they were "cheap and easy" models, already printed in a magazine, therefore, by painting them, I wasn’t objectifying them first hand—they had already been objectified by the original photographer… I was also coming out, and felt the non-subjugated world of "free to be you and me" lovers was a utopic fantasy to suture into. Growing older, I realized that my favorite artists and actors do a better job fulfilling the role of a model—in film stills, it captures a performance (or a genius’s aura) where the persona is concentrating on being the role they stand in for, or just being themselves as great artists. By painting them, I can have some of the best models in the world posing for me in scenes reality and from films that have allegorical resonance to me, and hopefully, by extension, to our times…
Hopefully, this image of Dean captures some of his rebel spirit, which hopefully is more than just about sexuality, and about the fighting against repression and subjugation…
This was the first painting I created when my husband and I moved to our new apartment at the corner of 25th and 10th in Chelsea, down the street from my gallery, in the heart of the NYC art world. This is from a film still from the famous movie Giant where James Dean portrays Jett Rink, the never-do-well rough ranch hand of Rock Hudson’s cattle ranch, who discovers oil on the property left to him by Rock’s sister, a tough broad and probably lesbian, unmarried who had a shine for the kid who also was different like herself. Jett wanted to take over the world, perhaps in the wrong ways, but I identify with his rebel spirit, and wanted to do the same with my art. He’s holding a cigarette in his hand, one that I had smoked—not being a pervasive smoker, I was always giving it up, and cut my last one in half to be able to have him have the appearance of holding it.
Of course, “Giant” is a double entendre—Dean supposedly packed a big one. He was gay, or at least “Hollywood bisexual,” and was sugar-daddied by men into the Hollywood system, seeking out for pleasure and power the comfort of other closeted (and sometimes not) queers who helped him on his way to early fame and fortune, only to have his candle burned out by Donald Turnupseed, the hapless hayseed who didn’t see Dean’s Porsche coming down the highway, low to the ground and shining in the hallucination of the light on the desert California highway, bringing him to his early end. Dean was a rebel with a cause, he wanted to be a great actor who changed culture, an artist like Picasso or Michelangelo or even Judy Garland or Brando—channeling his spirit, a quintessential method actor, into his work to bring it life. He did change culture, he performed literally his goals. As a sensitive queer-like persona in all his roles, he was othered, on TV he played series of juvenile delinquents but in the movies, all three of them, he was the misunderstood kid who just wants to fit in and make things right, who is able to see the problems of the world and how mankind works, and wants to fix it and make a better place for all, however wrongheaded he might go about to accomplish this. He was the inspiration for rock ‘n’ roll—Elvis revered him and wanted to be like him, ushering him into film, but also singing his emotive music that made the characters in his songs become alive. I think the hippie generation and Woodstock may never have happened if it weren’t for Dean—certainly the bohemian poets of a generation before loved him as much as they may have loved the poet Arthur Rimbaud. For me growing up, he was not just a poster on my wall, but a vision I aspired to watching him on television, super sexy and cool, a strange morphing creature that was like Bowie (who was also influenced by him), like Ziggy Stardust an avatar from outer space come to our planet to be a star and to save us from ourselves.
This was from a show called Rebel Angels at the End of the World, after my husband’s best friend Alicia had died from AIDS-related causes. She too was a rebel and thinking of these angels who were also like saints, I created these images, worried about where we were going, but loving where, on the good side, these great icons brought us to progress as a nation and people.
I love Montgomery Clift, who was the idol of James Dean and Marlon Brando. Like them he was queer and lived the life of a gay man out in the open in his Hollywood and NYC circles. Here he plays Prewitt in From Here to Eternity (1953), a soldier who is also a boxer, who no longer wants to box after blinding a friend. Although a career soldier, he is also a bit of an artist, the music he plays with his trumpet makes all pause with tears in their eyes. Although ultimately a tragedy, Clift plays a rebel, an almost saint, who follows his North Star and puts up with the abuse of the world around him who wants him to conform—to box, to play his role even it might not be what ultimately is right, and Prewitt refuses, with stoic reserve and quiet power.
Clift was like this in his own life, very choosey with his roles and decidedly independent—he was the first to defy the studio system of ownership, striking out on his own he helped to release the slave-like domination a studio could have over their contract players. He was raised by his dilettante mother in an aristocratic manner, traveling the world and in private schools, even when his family couldn’t afford it. He was gay but didn’t compromise too much in his private life to become the straight man that society wanted and had his lovers and affairs. He put this all into his emotive work, the sensitive white guy that defied the phallocentric patriarchal order that he was born into—sometimes in subversive ways as a bad guy, like A Place in the Sun, but sometimes like archetypal heroes that sacrifice for the greater good, like in Eternity, and he played that role in real life.
The car wreck that changed his world also changed his face, his primary emotive tool, and after Elizabeth Taylor saved him, could only move really one side of his face, his “right profile” like the great Clash song that introduced me to him. Given to drugs and drink to squelch the pain both in his body and his life and career, Clift kept striving onward, still making some great movies and works before his bitter end.
For this painting, I was listening to the amazing album What’s Going On, by Marvin Gaye. The war in Iraq was raging, with W. as president and all the mendacity that went along with it, and it was all I could do but paint my heart away the way Prewitt would his trumpet. I want my works to break into surreal other worlds—I love Cézanne, and how in his images he projects his unconscious onto the map of what he is perceiving, and the subliminal space comes through. Here, like in a Cézanne or indeed how Gaye’s music—so compelling and in that classic album, about the politics of his day but transcending into musical ethereal space. I’m hoping this comes through in this work—what I was channeling being despondent about war and government, but also our personal life—my husband’s best friend Alicia had just died of AIDS-related causes and we were mourning her loss—comes through. The show was Rebel Angels at the End of the World, and I would like to think that Clift here is almost like a rebel angel, “wings” sub-consciously appear in the background, and like the actor who fell from heaven to enlighten the planet, I’m hoping the music of my brush will bring some respite to our world.
“My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.”—John Lennon.
Lennon was one of the greatest rock musicians of all time, and one of the great artists… He is someone who has appeared in my work for over a decade, and I’ve always felt that he was an amazing model of an artist. It’s incredible to me that the Beatles all somehow found each other and became the spokesmen for a generation, on the masthead of a culture, and helping the culture to under-stand where it was and how to try to cope through incredibly difficult times—through peace, love, and understanding… The Beatles were the Michelangelo’s of rock music, and Lennon was their leader…
There is so much I could say about the Beatles (they were also one of the first postmodern bands, in that they stepped into the Sgt. Pepper roles and spoke through other styles and characters to make their work more allegorical), but I love Lennon the most. He was the first post-postmodern artist, too, in that he felt he should speak earnestly about his own real experience, post-Beatles, to get his point across…
He defied notions of patriarchy, by insisting on interracial marriage to Yoko, by keeping her with him in “all-guy” situations, by becoming the first househusband, and by being simply the first big sensitive white guy with intellectual and political interests…
I think in his solo work he really became a “fine artist” in his experimentation in music and participation with Yoko and his famous performance pieces, the bed-in and bags and more… And obviously, in our current times, his messages for peace and how to “Imagine” have become even more important than ever…
The photo I had appropriated this from was taken from the “Lost Weekend” phase of his career, when he had separated from Yoko, and was rabble-rousing in LA, figuring out who he was as a man and as an artist so he could proceed into the future successfully, and I hope that I captured this pensive time in the portrait, as well as his greatness.
This is a picture of Marvin Gaye, an appropriation from the cover of his famous “What’s Going On” record that changed Motown records and made music history as being one of the most politically charged soul albums of all time. The smoky, spiritual sounds of it send me and I was obsessively listening to it while painting the “Archer Prewitt (Montgomery Clift)” painting that was also featured in the show this originated in “Rebel Angels at the End of the World” at QED Gallery in Los Angeles in 2005, and felt compelled to render the cover of Gaye’s masterpiece immediately. This album seemed more relevant than ever in those dour times as we were getting more involved in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and Gaye’s cynical, yet somehow ultimately hopeful view of humanity seems as necessary as ever. He is a transcendent figure, in a way a saint and a true rebel, one of our great artists, murdered by his own father. It is my hope to be able to make work, that like Gaye’s is able to address the culture outside of the work itself, to make work that is political and conscious of it’s place in contemporary times and also cultural history, but also to have the same work be beautifully formal, and ultimately transcendent beyond immediate context and times and meaning. Gaye began his amazing career as a Motown soul stylist, helping to forge the sound of that great studio, but as the politics of the time and the singer/songwriter movement grew to create songs of deeper meanings, Gaye fought for the right to make this and subsequent works of great meaning, and while Berry Gordy resisted this creative control, ultimately everyone realized the power of the work and it became one of the touchstone albums of all time. It’s always important to make work that is “about something”, but also, in a post Post Modern way, to make work that can also be instinctive, melodic, and ultimately sublime in transcendence beyond language. While painting this, I listened to Gaye obsessively, and tried to capture the spirit of all this while painting the cover of the album, like I used to listen to records as a kid while gazing at the cover, bringing me to another place within the music.
Inspiration
Portrait of Juan Pareja, by Diego Velasquez, 1650, Metropolitan Museum.
One of my favorite portraits at the Met, and one of my favorite in the world, is this picture at the Met of Juan Pareja. In fact, the day I found out I was in the Whitney Biennial, I was on the steps of the Met when I received the email, after taking my SVA comics kids on the “kinda like comics” tour of the Met. where we look at narrative works and also seek out the people of color and respectful pictures of women throughout the museum, to give these students (many of whom aren’t regular museum goers) as sense of the history of narrative in art, and also to demystify and give access to art history, which can seem remote to them, for political reasons of class, race, and gender. I don’t want to make the same mistakes of art history, and want to people my exhibitions of all kinds of communities and histories that make up our world. The “Sister Wendy” story of this work was that Velasquez was already famous in Spain, but when he wanted commissions while visiting Italy, he had his assistant Juan Pareja hold this painting up and slowly lower it, to show how well he painted and how he was able to capture the proud dignity of the man who carried the work, who was himself an artist, who Velasquez freed from slavery, and whose work he encouraged to leave around the studio to introduce it to patrons and royalty, establishing Area as a renown artist in his own right and lifetime. I hope to bring proud agency to the people in my painted portraits, especially those like Gaye, who changed culture with his amazing work.
This is an image from the film Giant, where James Dean plays Jett Rink, a ranch hand on the character played by Rock Hudson, Jordan “Bick” Benedict Jr., a wealthy Texas rancher who brings home a new wife from the East Coast, played with power by Elizabeth Taylor as Leslie Lynnton. It’s the mid-’20s Texas, and Bick is in love with his cattle and their ranch history, while his neighbors are striking it rich with black gold—the oil that is pervasive in their world. Jett inherits a small plot of land from Bick’s sister Leslie (who is kind of a lesbian, a lone wolf of a woman who resents Leslie as the new woman of the house and dies abusing her horse who takes off on her). Jett is sure there is oil in his property, and relentlessly tries to bring him-self up both in society and in his land, loving Leslie from afar and being supremely jealous of Bick. When he does and comes to Bick covered in oil and slugs him—success is the best revenge—although he takes over Texas as a millionaire, opening hotels and taking over more land, he becomes more sadly pathetic—careful about what you wish for. The last scene featuring Dean is infamously called the “Last Supper” as his character, realizing all he has won, but how this doesn’t help his heart of what he really longs for—acceptance and being a better man (and Leslie’s daughter) after a drunken rage poisoning the party of all the kinfolk at the hotel, he passes out. George Stevens, the tenacious director of the film, hated Dean, and resented his rebel attitude, but in a method-acting way, brought out the best in his acting (as Dean also resented the director), and after the final scene was filmed with Dean, he flew back to California, got his new Porsche, and died in a traffic accident en route to a race (he wasn’t allowed to race for safety and insurance reasons while filming). A tragic end to an actor that changed the world, but an amazing film that came out after his death.
During this time when I was painting, W. was in office, and we were getting going into what turned out to be America’s longest—and in some ways most bathetic and sad—war. I was listening to Air America at the time, when there were pro-tests outside of Bush’s ranch in Texas, and worried about the direction that the USA was taking. At some points, rebels and punk rockers slide into a far-right-like feeling—as they go against the system, and strike out on their own, thinking about it from another perspective, especially if they are phallocentric and patriarchal too, they aren’t too far away from W., or Trump in our era. I think a little of George Bush entered the persona of Jett Rink in this painting perhaps. When I paint, I am like a method actor, listening to music and films and audiobooks that somehow have something to do with my subject matter. Here I was listening to all this—but the news and the war, too. I hope that my apprehension appears here, but also the beauty of America and Texas and possibility—my love for oil paint is like Jett Rink’s love for oil, hopefully it brings me to a better place than he, and painting is my spirit and my heart in my world and my art.
Darby Crash was the leader of the seminal Southern California punk band "The Germs," the band that was one of the primary leaders of the movement. Listening to the Germs now, they don’t seem dated, they seem even more artful, skilled Dada artists creating a sound that still rips and feels right-on target.
Darby was gay, and according to one of my friends who knew him well at the time, it was one of the reasons he committed suicide. He couldn’t stand the fact that the other punks might hate him because he loved ballet. He was a virtuosic poet, and his lyrics come close at times to being a 20th century Rimbaud, and as he shouted them, not always into the microphone, he created a sound that exactly replicated the fury of his content.
I found all these photos in a thrift store in Lake Elsinore, California from a portfolio of a Hungarian-born actor named Janos Prohaska, who worked as a costume actor in the 60’s and 70’s. He was "Dancing Bear" (although maybe not the official one) on the Captain Kangaroo show, in addition to being various apes, monkeys, aliens, mummies, and a sasquatch for movies and television. This is from one of these photos. As I’m thinking this show as being allegorical in some ways for the "Last Judgment" I was thinking of the Captain as Archangel Michael and the bear representing humanity trying to get into heaven. "Gold" on his book represents Mammon to me, as in "No man can serve two masters… Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Matthew 6:24. The Captain is hopefully letting him in, especially since the painting seems to be running out and dancing bear is shuffling his feet, hoping that the Captain will let him through before he looses his footing and spills out into nothingness.
I was also teaching precollege kids comics during the time I painted this, and listened to the entirety of the latest Harry Potter book on cd while actually creating the image, so I would feel that the fantasy world the kids engage in, and the hero-relevance of Captain Kangaroo, and how he helped to give generations of children their agency is also hopefully embedded in the piece… (2005)
My husband and I collect Marklin HO trains, the best company who make them, coming from Germany but we collect the American trains, in this case, the box top from an HO Digital Premium Starter 2 Trans Set, STEAM Big Boy Union Pacific and Super Chief F7—plus cargo and passenger cars! I like how on the box, “Start” as part of “Starter” was declared so prominently on it, and all the graphic elements landed into a surreal landscape of a made-up train coming out of a tunnel in a toy world that resembled our own real world. Thinking of the industrial revolution that led us on the track to where we are today (but also in ’05, with 9-11 still very much on my mind, having been in NYC and teaching literally during that tragedy), and the dystopia of the W. Bush era and the War on Terror that ended up starting all the prolonged conflicts of America’s longest war.
But I was also thinking of the great masterpiece by Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed—The Great Western Railway, where the hare is trying to outrun the steam engine barreling toward us in the rain. I love this painting, and feel it has everything about man vs. nature, industrial progress but also the inherent negative aspects about technology exceeding the growth of the country—and the proletariat.
With global warming ravaging the world, even more than when I originally painted this in ’05, the surrealism of the landscape, as I’m painting my thoughts as much as projecting my unconscious onto the image, comes true. I’ve thought that subconsciously, it’s as if the back of a head, shoulders, and arms of a skeletal figure is looking onto the train, and behind the train, a fiery landscape appears with figures, almost like ghosts, emerging, the graphic on the right almost like an ax coming to chop through the oncoming trains. In the side of the trains seem like seascapes or like a red feather coming through a sky background, instead of the signage that originally appeared there. I love visionary poetry, and Cézanne, and like how Cézanne would project upon a landscape and his innermost thoughts come out unconsciously realized on the picture plane, hopefully my own dreams and nightmares project through what I’m gazing upon while I paint that give it visionary verve. Hopefully we aren’t on the speeding train toward apocalypse, and painting for me is also about warning the world to slow down to save ourselves and the planet.
This is another image culled from photos of the costume character actor Janos Prohaska who died in a plane crash. He more famously was the "cookie bear" on the Andy Williams show for a brief time in the early 70’s, where Andy who begin to croon his famous "Moon River," and just before, the "Cookie Bear" would shuffle onto the stage asking for a cookie, to which Andy would reply "You can’t have a cookie!" and the saddened bear would shuffle off. This was Janos as an alien, however, in a more positive role, and I feel he represents an alien angel telling Andy (representing Man) that all you need is "Love."
This work "blisses" out into otherworldly landscapes, hopefully appropriate to its theme. Since college I have made abstract paintings (that subconsciously perhaps begin to cohere as figurative scenes) side-by-side figurative works (that purposively fall apart into abstraction). With this show (Rebel Angels, 2005), and specifically in this painting, I feel that I have finally been able to conflate both abstraction and the figurative into works that have recognizable themes and subject matter for the viewer to "suture into," and upon contemplation, have them "open up" into other worldly (inner worldly?) situations that are transcendent and sublime. I want all my paintings to be "puzzle boxes" that first appear to be "normal" recognizable images, only to have their veil pulled off to reveal subconsciously derived "windows onto other worlds" the more the viewer "unlocks" the works by their persistent gaze. (2005)
With our love, we can save the world.”—George Harrison
The Beatles were really a “gift” to the world of our culture. They seem like a miracle to me, geniuses that created PERFECT pop songs that were on the same artistic level of Mozart or Michelangelo. It’s fantastic that we have so much recorded history of them, on photos, film, television, and of course, in their recorded music. Movies of fine artists are always boring or seemingly “false” of a recording of their moves to change art history. However, records of musicians capture sonically these moments, and pictures and film are incredible documents of time changing (the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show is a fantastic recording of history changing before your eyes, as is Jimi Hendrix at Monterey Pop and so on). By painting from photos of these moments, I try to bring about the essence of what was happening at that specific historic time—indeed, perhaps they are a true version of “history painting.”
It’s incredible to me that in the many photos I have collected of the Beatles, most often Paul is grouped with Ringo, and John with George when they are separated into pairs. In this image, I really felt the relationship between the two martyred Beatles, and the atmosphere seemed to truly glow.
I was looking for a lot at Picasso’s “classical period” when I was painting this, and can only think the exaggerated weight of the heads and hands must have subconsciously been influenced by this… It took me a terrifically long time to get John’s face right (like in most of the paintings I create out of images from famous stars, I immerse myself in their “oeuvre” and world when I paint them, with their films and inspiring music playing in the background).
I particularly like his praying hands in this one, and feel that one hand is in the “real” space of the painting, while the other is on a mirrorlike “other side,” just like George is touching John’s hair, I’m “touching” their image, hoping to go to their world.
Again, I’m a super-lefty liberal, and this I feel is a comment on our current administration, and by allegorical relation, patriarchy (symbolized by the house-and the "man" behind the curtain-the chimp) in general. This is from a scene almost taken completely out of the film, where a gang, dropping his "groceries," harasses a man and running away, observed by a drunken Dean in character. The actual film opens up with what happens next: during the title sequence Dean drops to his knees to get closer to the mechanical monkey, emulating the stupid way he bangs his cymbals, and "putting him to bed" by placing the toy chimp on his back and covering it with the paper to his right that had wrapped the lily’s to his left. This is a clean symbolic allegory for me: "Rebel Without a Cause" is W. and Iraq, and Dean is making fun of the chimp in front of a nightmarish White House and the bourgeois suburban culture it is a part of… Ultimately, this movie is so great (and Dean in it) because it has come to symbolize in the most iconic way the adolescent-like hopefulness of the power to rise above patriarchal oppression and ignorance. (2005)
From 2005 when I first painted this picture:
This is from an outtake from the filming of Giant, when Dean has had his makeup applied for the scene when he finally strikes (and becomes covered in) oil, both bringing on his financial success and his spiritual demise. I was listening to the liberal talk radio “Air America” through the painting of this and many of the other images in the show, and feel this is a commentary on Iraq, and subsequently, all other decisions by the Bush administration to prioritize oil and profit over humanity. This is “blood for oil” with a lusty relish, “God” is in his pocket (with his emblematic chain), as the “Good Old Boys” in the background look on…
In the slippery slope of allegory, however, I feel this has more than one meaning… Like most of the other images from the show in which I first exhibited this painting (Rebel Angels at the End of the World, QED Gallery, LA, 2005), this was derived from a black and white (and fuzzy!) image, and I part of the artistry of painting these images comes from projecting onto them not only emotionally and thematically, but also formally, creating color interpretations for values that I see, and hopefully creating synaesthetic worlds from those interpretations. I love painting, and quite frankly, really enjoyed painting this (as with all the works in that show!) and feel that my love for OIL (painting, that is!) is hopefully conveyed in this work (in addition to all the other layers on interpretation)…
Inspiration:
Velazquez, Pope Innocent X, 1650 and Francis Bacon, Study After Pope Innocent X, 1953
Of course the Francis Bacon painting after the Velazquez portrait of Pope Innocent X is intense and great, and well-earned in its legend. But of course the original Velazquez is hard to beat, as it’s a master painting by the master! Bacon, as amazing as he is I feel tires after a while—he usually feng-shui’s the figure as if it got lost in a psychological photoshop, in a distilled, Matissian-color field background, with pathos, over and over again—not exactly formula—but seeing his retrospective, I wonder if it was almost like listening to Joy Division every day without a break—even the Smiths had more of a sense of humor and balance, and couldn’t a gay guy like Bacon get a break (although who am I to belittle a contemporary master like Bacon, and I do get a more Picasso-esque interiority and nuance of being in his work when I want)… But Velazquez, kind of like Lucian Freud, I think does a thing harder—instead of people screaming in boxes to have emotive effect, I think its in the layering of the skins of paint, the micro-managed moments, that have a wonderful range of intensity and personality in his sitters. Can you have your cake and eat it, too, exaggerating some of the moments, but also embed them in figurative representation closer to life?
Willem de Kooning, Woman, 1950
Another contemporary Master, de Kooning, recognized the power of talismans to riff off into a spasm of emotional abstraction—his epiphany was the weirdness of objectifying the orifice of the mouth, spurring on his imagination to create his powerful Woman series—not to get into the complicated politics of this, and loving his ability to slide from representational into the abstract, but could you bring the mouth back to the figure and also have it reside in plastic space that adheres to form and still have the intensity, and abstraction in micro-managed moments like the old masters?
From 2005 when I first painted this picture:
This is from an image from the original crash site, painted on the 50th anniversary of the James Dean’s death… I wasn’t thinking of this however when I was painting it, it was from a James Dean book (James Dean: American Icon, with the photos archived by David Loehr, owner of the James Dean Museum, that I have subsequently become friendly with) that is I felt compelled in the middle of the movie “Room With A View” that I was watching one summer day when I was at Brown to run out to the bookstore and get…
Obviously this relates to Andy Warhol disaster series… If painting is like punk rock, which is essentially about “killing your father” to do something new, Warhol is the father to kill in order for art to progress into the 21 century…. After all is said and done, I really believe that Warhol was a pock-marked gay poor kid from Pittsburgh who really wanted to BE Marilyn Monroe, and that his work was saturated with the pathos of the agency being reified into commodity culture, and his work is exemplary of a culture spinning out of control, and talked about it in a spiritual way… However, this isn’t how his work was considered in his time, and the “slip-shod” way of his “non-hand” silk-screening a painting surface was all about HIM killing the fathers of abstract-expressionism, and perhaps Picasso and all that came before…
But what if Warhol painted like Rembrandt? Or Van Gogh? Or Velasquez? With all of the ideology (modernist? or what came to be considered the ideology of modernism–i.e. its not the subject matter that was important, but what you bring to the subject matter that is important? The mind of the artist, the subconscious, the transcendent and perhaps SUBLIME affects of painting?)…
I think that post-modernism has opened up so many doors and windows considering the politics that surround art and the language in which we interpret it, that the time for painting being able to be PAINTING while at the same time smart and true to the culture in which it is brought out in is possible…
While painting this I was thinking how his car crash is emblematic of a culture that is currently embracing cars, oil, technology and so on in such a manner as to disregard where it is leading us…. James Dean is the humanistic sincerity of all of us caught up in a system that doesn’t care, that will ultimately serve to destroy the people that help to drive it… I love Van Gogh, but wasn’t thinking consciously of him or his work when I was doing this; it just came out that way… I love looking at the space in modernist (and premodern) paintings in the subconscious pockets of plastic space that appear in the negative space between things, think that the artist was able to have their inner mind (or eye, or spirituality) spill out into the works, giving it the alchemy of life. There are many wild pockets of activity in this painting, and I have spent hours gazing into it, interpreting it… I feel that James Dean is in the back car seat, and saw in the photo what I took to be Christ or an angel lifting him up… I’m not a religious person, but a spiritual one, and found that unlike many of the other posed photos I appropriate, this real life scene was saturated with Third Meanings that gave it such a life that it seemed like a recording of an otherworldly event… Whether or not this is true, certainly when painting it I felt driven and inspired as my subconscious took over, describing the death of one of Americas great iconographic actors that came to an untimely end, surrounded by the patriarchal-like figures of his mechanic (who miraculously?) was thrown to safety, and those who happened (?) to be at the scene to help to pick up the pieces…
Inspiration
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Andy Warhol, Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), 1963
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Van Gogh, Harvest at la Crau With Montmajour in the Background 1888
In 2004 I painted a series of images of Judy Garland. As a “younger” (?!!) gay man, I’m impressed by how many gay men over fifty are infatuated with the character and persona of Judy Garland, and how many gay men younger than fifty are terrified by her. Like so many “reporters” investigating cults, I found myself “becoming a member” by obsessively playing her music and movies, and really channeling her energy. She was a GENIUS in her ability to convey emotion and nuance in her music—like Elvis or a method actor, she was able to communicate in song and acting a breadth of REALNESS filtered through the iconographic allegorical language of the lyrics and lines that she was given. This is what I am trying to do through my painting of an appropriated image …
Judy was a super-strong woman who was stigmatized by the misogyny of her time, in addition to being an artist whose creativity continually struggled to prevail over the commodity capital culture that exploited her. I feel as tragic a figure as she has come to symbolize, it is her empowered struggle (and many successes) that made her such a giant with the gay (and larger) community that adored her, and her unbridled talent.
In this image, she of course is Dorothy, who was all about the other side of the rainbow and finding Oz. As Oz is commonly perceived to be a positive allegory regarding capitalism, I feel in this painting she’s looking for the Emerald City, only to be looking at its devastation in the Kong painting across the way. Contained in the painting itself is her iconic persona, and as I was painting her I was alternately listening to the entirety of her catalog and the plight of Cindy Sheehan on Air America radio as she was camped out in front of Bush’s “ranch” wanting to interview him to ask him why he created his war that her son was murdered in …
After painting this, I realized Dorothy herself looked a bit like a doll, with the ribbon on her left looking much like one of the keys used to turn a toy on so it will move and sing. I wonder how Judy might have gotten tired singing her signature song, that, like so much with language, became the performative theme of her life…
I was thinking of ending the show with the Dorothy painting, a freeze-frame of confused pathos, like in the end of the "400 blows," but felt compelled to paint this painting, really portraying a version of what she might be looking at "the end of the world." I have also always wanted to paint this image as it was large black and white poster of this was tacked to my bedroom wall when I was a child, and I have always loved it.
I teach a section of my senior class at NYU on King Kong (the voodoo nature of stop-motion animation-so fake its real!), and we discuss the allegorical associations with the narrative, in addition to looking at the formal attributes of a "moving sculpture" that has been obsessively "rendered" in that it appears to be "breathing life." There are obviously colonial references throughout the film, and it is about race and slavery as much as anything else. I, however, have a real interest in the iconographic power of anthropomorphosized animals to portray humans, and feel for me that gorillas, monkeys, and humans in animal suits are representative of human beings, sentient animals that are trained and conditioned to act within ideological power structures.
I painted this during the entire Hurricane Katrina debacle, in despair of what was happening and how it represents capital at its worse: the disregard of people, our environment, and our world for the sake of profit and corporate greed. Kong is all of humanity, and perhaps nature itself, reacting in rage and pathos to what man has created and its subjugation by a belief system that threatens to annihilate itself and bring on "the end." (2005)