Recent installations using my painted disks in simple installations.
My portrait of Bart Ryan is pretty much done but I'm wondering how to sign it? What style what name or surname. And what color? Also needs a like hair cut trim and maybe more tiny whiskers. Nice to visit with Bart just as he was leaving Walker gig. Now in Venice (Biennale) next he'll be in Gondola with chimps. Ms Darsie Alexander alive and well seen recently in the pages of The NYTimes (with Barthomeow). IPop a big hit or at least very tasty entertainment with real art stars (like a wax museum of Pop Art). The Billy Apple's SuperMarket fruit section installation is a knock out worth the price of admission Billy is still alive (Bart said) he is a totally lost genius of Pop this piece is extraordinary as good as anything like it as good as Ben! Ben's window is in storage again, I think it needs a permanent install like Duchamp's final installation in Philly Museum of Art. The Ben window is a thing which deserves to be always up (Frankie opines).
I felt a lot of nostalgia in the Barnes galleries during my visit to the International Pop exhibition. This was where the Walker grew from this 1960's material and what came of it ie. minimal conceptual installation art, Op art as well seems intimately connected to Pop. Martin Friedman acquired Pop works which are now nearly priceless. The Jasper Johns withe negative image color effect would sell for 100s of millions at auction.They could save the ship with that one and a few other items like those Brillo Boxes jeez those would be worth a handsome ransom. Year ago Peter Saul (not in International Pop {was in Hand Painted Pop forgot museum) my friend and bad example}said " Don't get too interested in other artist's work and in rich people". Peter was right and I have lived somewhat with these thoughts in mind. I'm not as obsessed with Saul's work as I was as a very young artist. It was a pure accident that I was in Saul's seminar at CCAC in 1968 save that it was the best criticisms I'd ever heard. Anyway Saul was part of Pop from the outside in, he was the wild punk ass pop art be made in Rome and elsewheres in the early 1960's in my mind is a key figure in the period not just his politics (leftist anarchist) but his color and form making, Saul's sick green pop is the anti-Pop the hangover style. An intoxicated realm of anything it takes to make a great painting. His inspiration was to find the personal in your art that which is only you, sounds simpler now but it was the cry to remain yourself remain outside the art circus. Saul was the unAndy even though he envied Andy Warhol's successes and made fun of him and his work. I thought it was his desire to be a hypocritical voice always on both sides of things artistic and political. Indeed hypocrisy maybe at the bottom why Pop Art was so perfect for a pop culture that loves it's poisons.
The edgy side of Pop was political it was a sort of blue collar style as silk screen was a cheap efficient image making stencil system. The situation in say 1965 between Warhol's ascent and Peter Saul's critique were both on my mind as an art student (staying in school a good student on scholarship dodging the Vietnam draft). Everyone is compromised at times, the artist between survival and a dream . Saul is 10 years older than me and he's wiser but he's also someone still in the big game who has a real tale to tell. The show of his paintings recently in New York (Venus show) paintings acquired from him by Allan Frumkin his friend and dealer I think made a deep impression on some friends I have who saw it. Peter is amazing an inspiration for old Pop artists everywhere! More follows -
anti-sculpture league (now more than ever). out
Jpg - added Pam's iPad pic od Bart Ryan portrait - good luck
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