ArtAge

ArtAge is a contemporary art magazine with a world view of the visual arts and associated media, literature, performing arts, and film. Executive Editor is Jerry Harris, sculptor, writer, and social critic.

Copyright, 2009, by Jerry Harris

Self-Portrait of a writer, collage by Jerry Harris

Oh! China Baby

Yue Minjun

Yue Minjun, Holding Head

Just 25 years ago, Made in China meant for many in America, something cheap, and not well made. Oh! Things have changed. We are in debt to them, and they in turn are on the way to super power status. Their artists are catching up to international art too. Yue Minjun is a leading Chinese artist. He paints an esoteric view of the world called Cynical Realism. Even in a Communist country, artists find ways of “sneaking” in ideas pass the censors, something that even Michelangelo did. Yue Minjun’s work follows an artistic trend that evolved as an aftermath of the 1989 student demonstrations in Tiananmen square. His humor and cynicism portrays strong and vibrant colors, putting the centrality of the individual on display. In a one party regime, he and others of the Chinese avant -garde reflect this new temperament onto the canvas, while generating great international interest in contemporary Chinese art.

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

EUGENE MARTIN

Eugene Martin, graphite pencil drawing

Eugene Martin, Janus, collage and mixed media

The output of the painter Eugene Martin (1938-2005) now on display (November-December, 2009) at the Cajun Spice gallery, Lafayette, La is just amazing. Martin spent his final days in his studio  in Lafayette with his wife, the biologist, Suzanne Fredericq. He left over 5,000 paintings, collages, and pen and ink drawings. A quiet man who was born in Washington, D.C., he was not into the pomp and glamour of the art world. He just wanted to paint, and that is what he did. His work evokes the lyricism of Miro and the biomorphism of the European surrealists. As a colorist, his paintings beam with the light of Matisse, and his fluid use of color makes him a brilliant and original draughtsman.

LOST IN SAN FRANCISCO

John Romig, 4th Street Studio, San Francisco

Tango, Elizabeth Dante, Varnish Gallery, San Francisco

It is almost impossible to get lost in The Big Peach, San Francisco. The art is always fruity, but one can get lost in the small jungle of art galleries throughout the city. If there is a “school” of painting and sculpture that typifies San Francisco, it is its relatedness to gaudy, sloppy, and unimaginative art, and on the other hand, there are the old-established art galleries on Sutter and Geary streets, downtown. They show the same work that one might find in the upper east side of New York City. There has never been a big local art scene in this city by the bay. Of course they have SFMOMA, and venues like the Yerba Buena Art Center, but that is about it. Yet, I will always leave my heart in San Francisco. Perhaps art becomes this way when the only people who can afford to live there are the dot comers and rich people. Putting romanticism aside, and the old hippie days, this is no town to be poor in.

BALTHUS-THAT DIRTY OLD PAINTER

Balthus

Balthus

Balthasar Klossowski (b. 1908. d. 2001), better known as Balthus. He was a controversial Polish-French painter. As the writer Edna Ferber said, “Writers should be read and not seen.” Turning that around, Balthus insisted that his paintings should be seen and not read about. In Christian, fundamentalist America, his art would probably be called the work of a dirty old man. Well, we will leave them with Thomas Kinkade. Was the French-Pole a voyeur? Who knows? I don’t think that we, in America, could produce such a talent, or even a Francis Bacon. This kind of work would shock the average American. Balthus is primarily classical, but very modern. There is no doubt that his little girls are very erotic, and if he lived on my block, here in California, the mob would be out, yet he insisted that his work was not erotic. Well, you be the judge.

SOL Le WITT (1928-2007)

Sol Le Witt’s Tower

SOL LE WITT- THE MINIMALIST’S GOD

Now, as in the 60’s, Sol Le Witt was, and still is the God of the minimalist and conceptual art movement, especially in America where he was born. Although he, and Donald Judd, or “Donald Dudd,” as he was called in certain art schools in London, supposedly they took sculpture off its precious pedestal. The duo reigned  supreme in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Le Witt is definitely an interesting artist, but no God, for we have enough of them. In 2006, Le Witt’s “Drawing series,” were displayed at Dia.Beacon. He drew directly on the walls using graphite, colored pencil, crayon, and chalk–something that we all used as children. This is good, but let’s leave God out of it. Peace in the art world–never.

Bio Mean, collage by Jerry Harris

AESTHETICA-FILM. MUSIC. LITERATURE. DESIGN. VIDEO.

Here in our aesthetica section we will dig into the worlds of film, video, music, and literature. Checking out Pop Life, and Art In The Material World. No boundaries here.

CONVERSATIONS FROM THE CRYPT: TALKING WITH ANDY WARHOL TODAY

Readers might want to know how I managed to get this interview from Andy. Well, we have a special relationship: We are both from the “burgh,” Pittsburgh, Pa. JH: Well, Andy, I was surprise to see you on my recent visit to the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and here I thought you were dead.

AW: Oh! That was my last joke on the New York City art world. Actually I have a secret studio in the museum, and now I am home again with the steel workers, people who know bullshit when they see it. It feels great to be back to my roots.

JH: You are still The King of Pop Art? How does it feel?

AW: It feels just like it did 20 years ago–dead. Even the money is worthless, but it was fun.

JH: You were friends with the painter Jean Michel Basquait? What are your thoughts on his work and life?

AW: Basquait was a great painter, but he, like myself was too much into drugs, and as you can see, we both look like that character from “Tales from the Crypt.” He did warn me about that crazy bitch who shot me, but I didn’t take heed, too much coke, and I don’t mean the cola.

JH: I always wondered why you didn’t start with Heinz ’57 ketchup instead of the Campbell’s

soup cans. HJ Heinz is headquartered  in our great town of Pittsburgh?

AW: Well, cans are more durable than glass, plus New Yorkers don’t want to be associated with Pittsburgh. The necks of the bottles are too phallic for American art.

JH: Do you believe that you are one of America’s great artists?

AW: It is all hype and money. As the young black rappers say, “Don’t believe the hype.” Now it is all five minutes of fame, and then you are back into Koonsvile, Jeff Koons, a so-called disciple of mine. He laughs all the way to the bank as I did. America has never produced great art. Paint the dollar and you will be on safe ground.

JH: Conceptual art seems to be the rage today in America. What are your thoughts on it?

AW: It’s theater, and not very good theater, but I like it. I only feel sorry for the real actors. I guess one has to make a buck. I do like Kara Walker and her installations. Black artists will survive, but at what cost? When you reach the top, like Obama, you wonder if it is all worth it. Black people are becoming whiter, and white people are becoming blacker. Well, I am off to the crypt. There is nothing like solitude and loving your Polaroid camera.

Henry Miller The Old Man and Sex

While Ernest  Hemingway was on his way to write The Old Man and The Sea,there was Henry Miller in Paris, France, eking out a living while writing Tropic of Cancer– the book that flayed literature in 1934. He was not a man of Paris in the roaring ’20s. He did not hang out with Gertrude Stein, and the Picasso crown. He was an American bum. The whore houses interested him. The French language intrigued him.  He felt the need to master it.  I discovered him in a small used book store in Stockholm, Sweden.  I certainly did not read him at San Francisco State University. I took him home and I was shocked. Who was this American that I was never told about in the halls of academia? I absorbed him. I ate him. As a struggling young writer, he released the word in me. Until I absorbed all of his writings, I can honestly say that I did not think white American writers could write. He was a white Negro to me. And the man suffered, and was hated in his own country for many years. Why? The Puritans of America looked at him as a dirty old man, and maybe he was. After he won his case against the United States government in Miller vs. The United States, he alone opened up freedom of speech in the USA. There are feminists who will never love him, but what they don’t understand is that his books are not about sex; they are about diving into the waters of creation. There is not one 20th century American writer who is not influence by Henry Miller, and he was turned on by Celine. Miller is one of the great prose writers out there.

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