You gotta know when to hold 'em. . .

Dan Levin, Lonely Hearts Monarch, 2020, Hand-cut playing cards, 3.5 x 2.5 inches | Images courtesy of the artist

Patience is not a virtue I possess. I have a tendency to expend enormous amounts of energy in short bursts, and, if not rewarded near-instantly with tangible results, to get frustrated. This tendency is so often why I find myself in awe of artworks in which the artist’s hand is so clearly visible they way it is in Dan Levin’s painstakingly, hand-cut playing card assemblages. Playing cards themselves present a challenge in their scale alone, and the finesse required of the hand that creates meticulous slivers and snips, nicks and notches is, simply put, stunning. 

Playing cards may have originated from Imperial China and the Tang Dynasty (ca. 618 AD) and the current iteration with which we are so familiar likely came to us via mid-15th century France. In a wholly modern approach, Dan Levin cuts each card by hand, excising bits of paper with an X-ACTO knife, and stacks one of top of the other to create a three-dimensional object, revealing an assembled image deep within the deck. Lonely Hearts Monarch is just one of my favorite examples of his work, and it’s my Pick of the Week.

Doggiest of Days

We’ve entered that funny point of summertime, some call it the Dog Days, I still refer to it as pre-season as all through school I played on the tennis team and our pre-season to the regular season would start around now. Whatever you call it, and wherever you’re from, you know that these are days whose heat make you want to strip down to your ribcage. These are days whose light is saccharine sweet and air is heavy and syrupy like honey. These days are no good for anything but dazing in the shade of an overgrown tree in the backyard, flat on your back, limbs thrown wide, considering the white-blue sky overhead.

Sometimes there are clouds to make shapes out of, but mostly, all there is is to watch the leaves of that tree up there, shimmering in the heat and ruffling in the breeze. No photograph or picture could better encapsulate these Dog Days than John Kilduff’s Under the Olive Tree #1. Experimenting with the interplay of spray paint, acrylic, and oil all together, John captures the searing heat and hallucinogenic-quality of the overhanging leaves, masterfully. I can think of no more appropriate piece to celebrate this week than Under the Olive Tree #1.

John Kilduff, Under the Olive Tree #1, 2020, Spray paint, acrylic, and oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches | Image courtesy of the artist

Pepper Odalisque

I’m drawn to artwork that is historically referential, that subtly tips its hat to the artists and works that came before it and helped breathe it into being. This photograph by Ryan Schude, Pepper Tree, does just that. What, at first blush, appears to be a woman, reading under the shade of a California Pepper tree in her backyard, upon closer inspection reveals a deeper, more intricate message.

To me, the image recalls a painting by Jean Augusté Ingres called La Grande Odalisque, from nearly 200 years ago, 1814. This painting, considered hideously erotic and inappropriate in its day, features a naked woman with her back turned to us. She is surrounded by sumptuous textiles and lavishly adorned accessories, and she is neither ashamed of her nudity, nor particularly interested in the reason you, the viewer, have interrupted her reverie. In the 1800s, Schude’s female protagonist’s bowl of fruit, some of which has been peeled and left, carelessly, to spoil, would have been an outrageous extravagance, even more so by the fact that it is wasted. The misty, foggy atmosphere of Schude’s photograph imparts an aura of the mysterious to the image, similar to the atmosphere of Ingres’ painting, in which the odalisque has surely been smoking hookah or opium as evidenced by the pipe sitting by her left foot. That’s why Pepper Tree is my Pick of the Week.

Jean Augusté Ingres, La Grande Odalisque, 1814, Oil on canvas, 35 x 64 inches | Image courtesy of the Louvre

The imagination is the vehicle of sensibility. Transported by imagination we attain life, life itself, which is absolute art.

Yves Klein

15 Minutes

What are your thoughts on Andy Warhol?

Andy Warhol, Cambell’s Soup Can (Tomato), 1928-1987

I kid, I kid. He never wanted you to have any thoughts on him. Seriously. He was completely and totally vapid. As empty as empty comes. But that was the point.

Who’s Andy Warhol? Thank you for asking, thank fuck, for asking. He’s that guy who painted the picture of the Campbell’s soup can. You may remember him more recently as the weirdo Burger King showed eating a hamburger in total silence during one of this year’s Superbowl ads. Burger King paid $5.25 mil for it. Andy’s dead, by the way, so they didn’t actually pay him. They paid his foundation. I know, I’m a little late the party. The Superbowl was already, like, 6 years ago.

Andy’s famous for saying that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, or rather, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” See, you know who he is, kinda. So what do you think? Are you still waiting for your 15 minutes? Are you wondering why you didn’t get famous for painting a picture of the Campbell’s soup can? I sound like a hater, right?

Once, Andy painted some canvases with a copper-based paint, then he invited a bunch of his famous friends over to piss on them (one of which might have been Madonna). Want to know how much one of those canvases sells for now? You don’t wanna know. Millions.

Andy Warhol and Homer Simpson | Image courtesy of The Simpsons and Fox

Anyway, here’s the part where I must, begrudgingly, tell you why he is so profoundly important to the art historical cannon. Andy is inarguably, and unequivocally, the father of the Pop Art movement. By romanticising an object as mundane as a can of soup, and by imbuing it with the aura of a real and true objet d’art Andy made it art. Yes, your two your old could do the same, however, Andy got there first, he did it better and he didn’t just do it with soup. He did it with an electric chair called “Ol’ Sparky”, with newspaper articles and with car crashes, with Elvis in a classic stick-em-up pose and with Mao Zedong, with the iconic photograph of a bloodied Jackie O as she watched Lyndon B. Johnson being sworn in as president on Air Force One. Andy is as prolific as his media is varied, from painting to film to print and back. He is a force majeure and there is simply no denying.

Austin Powers and Andy Warhol | Image courtesy of Austin Powers and New Line Cinema

I think he’s lost his luster. Like they do with Disney movies, it’s time to put him back in the vault. His time is up and now, frankly, I’m bored. Andy is everywhere. He made a cameo in Austin Powers, and once on the Simpsons; maybe next they’ll carve his likeness on the moon.

Isn’t it true that distance makes the heart grow fonder? Or that rarity makes the diamond more valuable? It’s obvious, for the health of Andy’s market, which is positively sodden with his artwork, and for its longevity, that we should make him a little more scarce. I.e. put him in the vault; or whatever that artworld equivalent of the vault is. I’ll have to come up with that one myself, I suppose. Buried in an ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb seems like a good comparable.

Goodbye, but for 15 minutes . . .

Victoria Morton

Spoken Yeahs From A Distance, 2016, Oil on canvas, 98 x 86 inches | Image courtesy of Victoria Morton and Sadie Coles HQ

There is something about the tactile surface of a painting that I love. Something so tangible and sexy in the way paint is built up, layered, made to stand out from its surface, as if it cannot be contained within the boundaries of two dimensional space. It feels almost like watching the artist work in front of you, watching them make decisions and marks and erasures, watching their arm arc to create a shape, it is positively intimate. Impasto. Im-PAS-to. Im-pas-TO. IM-pas-to. Even the word feels bouncy, like bubblegum in my mouth, like taffy-pulling, like peaks of whipped cream. That’s what that is called, the paint that has physical shape in which brushstrokes and palette knife scratches are visible. The word “impasto” is derived from the Italian word for “paste”, you get the idea. The Italians got it right. The Italians always get it right.

I think this appreciation has a great deal to do with the fact that I am utterly incapable of putting brush to canvas and creating anything I like more than the blank, unmarked canvas itself. It’s true. I agonize over every brushstroke, dislike every gesture, am intrinsically unsuited to painting a picture. My inability to experiment, to get out of my own way and out of my head has engendered within me an awe of those who are able.

I stumbled–I like the idea of stumbling, I feel like that’s how I learn about a number of artists these days, by forming no set itinerary or intention and just wandering until I literally trip on something that makes me pause–on Victoria Morton’s work at an art fair last year and immediately fell for her brushwork and for the large swaths and washes of rich color laid to suggest volume and shape. Some pictures are geometric, unstudied and unpracticed, others bear faint hints of figures and pointillist dots. I simultaneously admire and envy her ease with a brush.

Check out some of my favorites below, and be sure to visit her Insta for the latest. Victoria Morton is currently represented by Sadie Coles HQ in London.

Memory Boy, 2015, Oil on canvas, 95 x 86 inches | Image courtesy of Victoria Morton and Sadie Coles HQ

Back Stroke, 2017, Oil on linen, 6 x 8 inches | Image courtesy of Victoria Morton and Sadie Coles HQ

Glowing Puppies

I stopped reading the news.

I stopped checking Facebook. I asked my boyfriend to please stop with his near-constant updates of politics, shootings, mass casualty events. I can’t abide it anymore.

There’s too much sadness, too much madness, too much hatefulness for me to handle anymore. In a word, I am sad that kindness has been so neglected of late. Does anyone else feel this way? I’m not interested in preaching things about “loving thy neighbor”, in fact, I believe–as the reality of living in apartments in New York City has taught me–it’s completely acceptable to not love your neighbor at all. However, while not loving them, it’s still important to be decent to them.

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Keith Haring, Two Dancing Figures, 1989

Self-care is a thing now, do you guys know what that means? I just learned about it; you know that thing you do when you treat yourself to a donut, or maybe you spend another 10 minutes in the shower and just let the water stream down your face, or maybe it means you run and run and run. Whatever it means to you, it means you’ve taken a moment out of the world to take care of you. For me, it’s taking a nap, getting a pedicure, cooking. It’s kittens. And dogs. I’ve turned off all social media except for Instagram, where I seek out adorable videos of kittens losing their minds to the twitching of a string or dogs who practice CPR on their human handlers–the explore/discover feature has been really helpful in this endeavor. I try to get lost in these adorable feeds when things start to get me down. Recently, I started following a Great Dane named Kernel. His owner calls him “a clumsy lap cow”, which is all you really need to know, and while I watch his antics (no, for real, antics; this is a word I never use) I can ignore how truly frightening the world is becoming. I think that’s why Lil Bub, and Doug the Pug, and Juniper the Happiest Fox have enough followers to rival even the most popular of Kardashians (ugh, I don’t follow them). They make people happy.

Tseng Kwong Chi, Keith Haring, New York, New York, 1983 | Image courtesy of Tseng Kwong Chi archive

Back in the day, pre-Instagram and Facebook, pre-cellphone, even, one of my all-time favorites, Keith Haring, was decorating New York with images of glowing babies and dancing dogs, friends holding hands and high-kicking and mothers holding babies, alien spaceships and hearts. So very many hearts. Haring was an artist who staunchly believed in making artwork accessible to everyone. He didn’t reserve his work for the ultra-rarefied world of the super wealthy, but also for children whose help he enlisted to paint murals and for whom he hosted art-making workshops. Haring recognized the power of these simplified images as a vehicle for happiness. Before I was using puppies on the internet as a serotonin-lift, he was leaving them on street corners and in subway stations in an attempt to completely subvert the traditional means of viewing artwork. Haring made an effort to create images that were simple and powerful at the same time, images which would mean something to any viewer, no matter the language they spoke or the lives they led–it was a phenomenon, a powerful phenomenon that gave the whole world entry to a museum or to a gallery through which they already had spent their entire lives moving.

The impulse to seek out what makes one happy isn’t a new development. Human beings are predisposed toward happiness. The only thing that’s changed is the means by which we access those things. Keith Haring painted murals and drew on subway advertisements, we use the internet and instagram.

If you happen to be in Japan, Haring has a show up at the Nakamura Collection in Kobuchizawa, for another two months. If you’re in New York, like I am, you can see his mural, Crack is Whack, along the FDR and in Harlem River Park where its lived since he painted it in 1986. For more info always, check out his foundation HERE.

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Keith Haring, Crack is Wack, 1986 | Image courtesy of Bobby Zucco

Georgia Gyllenhaal

When I picture the American Southwest I envision wide-open expanses of scrub, interrupted occasionally by the odd canyon and accompanying rock formations, cacti and tumbleweed, bleached cow skulls and desert roses. I envision all of the stereotypical desert tropes, Wile E. Coyote hiding under a flat-topped mesa isn’t far off in the background. There are a number of things that have informed my impression of the Southwest–the old Roadrunner cartoons, photographs of my mother’s, taken long before my sister and I were born, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

I discovered Georgia at the Art Institute of Chicago. It truly felt like a discovery to me, because she was displayed above a somewhat forgotten staircase. To find her, one must first pass through many halls of Impressionism where Claude Monet’s world-famous Water Lily paintings live, and through lots of rooms of dusty and tortured European depictions of “Christ on the Cross”; look for the bathrooms and there you’ll find her. Indeed, finding the piece is a journey, arriving at it akin to reaching a far off destination. Statistics say that it would take over 100 days, spending a mere 30 seconds with each artwork on view, to see every single thing at the Louvre in Paris. The Art Institute is a smaller museum, however, you can apply the same basic premise to its collections of work displayed. I had been to the Art Institute a number of times–starting at age eight–before coming across the piece when I was 12, which honestly feels a little unfair to Georgia, who donated it to the museum in 1983. Surely she could not have intended for it to be all but abandoned over a staircase when she gifted the work. Sky Above Clouds IV (1965) sprawls 24 feet wide and hangs 10 feet above your head over a marble staircase deep in the museum’s recesses. Thankfully, the stair has a skylight which lends the enormous canvas a subtle glow, all the same though the magnificent piece feels misplaced in its corner of the massive Art Institute.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Two Calla Lilies on Pink, 1928 Oil on canvas | Image courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art

I grew up in a household that emphasized the importance of art in everyday life. Both of my parents were creatives–my mother a commercial interior designer and my father an architect, who turned to artists to inspire their work. I was exposed to every kind of art possible at a young age, and I credit my parents with my love for art today. The feeling of “happening” upon Georgia’s painting in a stairwell is familiar because that is how much of her artwork made me feel; like I’d found something truly mythical, that spoke to my very soul. I understand how ironic that feeling is now, knowing what I do about Georgia’s work, her life, her fame–but as a child, I had no way of understanding that Georgia was not simply painting for me, and for me alone. When I looked at a painting of two calla lilies against a white background I could feel the velvet of their petals and I could smell the green of their stems. This was the first time in my life that I would reconcile a painted picture with my experiences, with my life. When I looked at that painting I was not only seeing the image on the page but also the vase of white calla lilies my mother had kept in her bathroom. For the first time, art was personal.

I’ve lived in New York for a number of years now, as such, I have a number of celebrity sightings under my belt. This is not boastful, it’s honest. Many, many actors call New York home, and many film here constantly. My initial curiosity at a Haddad’s film truck has turned to utter exasperation because they’ve blocked the whole goddamn street and I am stuck behind it in a cab with the meter ticking ever higher, my patience threading ever leaner, and my appointment growing ever more tardy. However, I was recently at a restaurant with a good friend when I noticed that the group sitting at the next table included Jake Gyllenhaal. I am no fan girl, but part of my aching, teenage heart still beats and so when I saw his dreamy blue eyes, I nearly swooned. I was thoroughly starstruck.

Rewind about 20 years to when I first saw Sky Above Clouds IV. Apply the same feeling of breathlessness, of admiration, of disbelief at finding something so extraordinary in a situation as ordinary as attending a museum, and that is exactly how I felt. I’m an art history nerd, I am more commonly starstruck by paintings I have studied extensively and admired from afar than I am by real celebrities. My visit to Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper (1495-1498) in Milan is the same as the next person’s chance encounter with Robert De Niro, or insert-your-favorite-celeb-here.

Georgia O'Keeffe with Sky Above Clouds IV at her 1966 exhibition at Texas' Amon Carter Museum | Image courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago

Take a look at Georgia’s depiction of soaring above the clouds and try to replicate that sensation for yourself. Imagine, next time you are in an airplane, that you are not trapped in a tin can that seems to defy physics and all logic, that your neighbor in the next row over is not attempting to cough up their left lung, and that you have more than six inches of personal space. Imagine, for a moment, the electric jolt that runs from wrist to fingertip when you are well and truly thrilled by something unexpected. Imagine that freedom.

About Art Is A Beating Drum

Some years ago I suffered a devastating loss from which I thought I might never recover.

For a moment, the whole world stopped spinning on its axis, nothing made sense, everything lost its color, its taste, and I found that those things that had once mattered could not be borne. I found myself well and truly lost. 

Enter Art is a Beating Drum . . .

I don't recall how, but I came across Bill Viola, described alternately as, "a pioneer in the field of video-art" and as, "one of today's leading contemporary artists". Shooting single-channel videos that place emphasis on the human condition and its attendant emotions, Viola's videos are moving homages to life itself. For me, Viola encapsulated my grief and found a way to express it meaningfully, more so than I felt I was capable at the time. He measured it, diagnosed it, and categorized it with little more than silence and a simple gesture.

I began to understand more fully than ever before that art could be the balm to heal my wounds. The literal and metaphysical salve for the feelings and emotions with which I continued to struggle. Art was the catalyst and antagonist that enabled me to feel fury and joy, despondency, and hilarity. Plainly, it kept me company.

The most powerful examples gave me actual, physical, and visceral feelings; they punched me in the gut, shook me from my stupor, and reminded me that like a rhythmic drumming, my heart beat. I breathed. I lived.

Art is a Beating Drum is the truest expression of what that felt like for me. In the moments where I had forgotten how to breathe, and to rejoice, and to love, and to cry; art reminded me, like the ever-present drumbeat of my heart. Art connected the disparate parts of me to each other and continues to do so. It is both primal and involuntary. So, Art is a Beating Drum was born to express and record those instances where I felt most keenly. To keep those instances alive and safe long after they had passed.

And to perhaps share them. . .

Banksy, I presume?

Graffiti has an adverse effect on the quality of life in various communities in the City of New York, creating an impression of disorder and chaos; and graffiti vandalism can be a precursor to more serious acts of crime and violence; and the damage caused by graffiti-related vandalism depreciates the value of the property it defaces and costs the City and property owners millions of dollars in clean-up expenses each year. - The Mayor of the City of New York’s Anti-Graffiti Task Force Executive Order

Recently, New York was graced by Banksy’s spray can. Banksy, tagger of international acclaim, world-renowned prankster, critic of government, and possibly, graffiti’s biggest sell-out, made his secret way to New York, broke the law, and left just as quickly as he came. In his wake, a 70-foot long mural depicting 365 hash marks and a portrait of Turkish artist, Zehra Dogan. Near the ground on the wall’s far right corner the phrase, “Free Zehra Dogan”.

Many are already familiar with Banksy’s work, but may not yet know it. Banksy, an alter ego to an as yet, anonymous English artist, has traveled the world and left a trail of oftentimes critical, sometimes irreverent, always thought-provoking imagery in his wake. He is best known for a spare style of artwork made using stencils and spray paint. He is, inarguably, the world’s most recognizable street artist and graffiti writer. Banksy is one of the first graffiti artists to have made the “successful” transition from street to gallery where his artworks have sold for as much as $1,000,000. As such, his imagery has transcended the art world in a way that very few others before him have–Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can, Vincent van Gogh’s sunflowers–and can be found on anything from sneakers to posters, stickers to key chains. He has inspired legions of copycats and enraged scores of fellow graffiti writers. The long and short of it is that Banksy is notorious and has brought attention to artwork and to the art world that they are otherwise often not afforded.

I can’t recall what exactly drew me to street art, nor when I first experienced it. I do vividly remember documenting it on a trip to Paris when I was 16. I couldn’t stop looking at it. I couldn’t stop stopping for it, staring at it, admiring it. Growing up in Chicago I had always had experience with graffiti–tagging, scrawls written on the side of buildings that usually were all but indecipherable to me–but I had never known that graffiti could be art in its own right. I had no idea that it could extend beyond tags, nor that people would spend their time creating a piece of artwork worthy of preservation and protection outside, on the streets, with no guarantee of its future. I was stunned. Was I the only one to notice? Paris is a lot like New York in that its streets swarm with people unconscious of one another and of their surroundings, they are perpetually in a hurry. When I stopped to look at a piece people looked at me like the oddity, the tourist stopping in the middle of her tracks on the sidewalk, rather than at the extraordinary work I felt like I had uncovered.

Herein lies graffiti’s hidden virtue. Having spent years working in and out of galleries I recognize their tendency to isolate. Galleries sell commodities; many would argue that artwork is not intrinsic to human survival the way that food, clean water, and shelter is (I would argue otherwise, but I understand the rationale). Therefore, a gallery represents an already inaccessible and unnecessary expense that few can justify. Galleries serve the bourgeoisie, a class that invites scorn from those who do not belong. As such, they impart an aura of unattainability. Of hostility and hauteur, a place where protocol and behavior is not inherently obvious. All of this falls away when artwork is introduced to the streets where it is afforded new visibility.

On the Bowery Wall, located in downtown Manhattan on Houston street, Banksy has chosen to use his visibility for good. Just over a year ago Turkish artist Zehra Dogan was sentenced to two years, nine months, and twenty-two days imprisonment for painting and sharing an image of a Kurdish town, Nusaybin, decimated by the Turkish government’s bombs. Banksy’s image bears 365 hash marks, signifying the time she has spent imprisoned for exercising one of her basic human rights: free speech. The hash marks become prison bars, behind which Banksy has painted a portrait of Dogan; the final bar becomes a pencil, a simplified signal of the “crime” she has committed. Before visiting the wall myself I had never heard of Dogan, had never heard of the injustice she currently suffers. As soon as I got home, I researched her and found that in addition to being an artist, Dogan is a decorated journalist and a champion of women’s rights in Turkey. She hardly fits the criminal archetype. Banksy's done it. Awareness begins with a single person, and by having brought Dogan's story to me he has achieved his unspoken goal. And here, I further the process, by bringing Dogan's story to you.

Free Zehra Dogan.

Find additional information and resources HERE.