McNeill and Burroughs: Ah Pook Is Here
OBSERVED WHILE FALLING: Bill Burroughs, Ah Pook, and Me’ & THE LOST ART OF AH POOK IS HERE: Images From The Graphic Novel’ by Malcolm McNeill; Fantagraphics, November 2012. William S. Burroughs’ The Soft Machine, inaugural novel of what would become his “Nova Trilogy” (also including The Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express) arrived on [...]
ANGELA CARTER’S THE PASSION OF NEW EVE
Angela Carter’s anti-mythic The Passion of New Eve (1977) is a novel that, for me, resides in easy company with Jean-Luc Godard’s new wave Weekend (1967) and Derek Jarman’s post-punk Jubilee (1978). Visually, with its hysterical sexually dimorphic revolutionaries, graffiti, machine guns, dystopian landscapes, surgical Sadomasochism and improvised guerrilla skirmishes The Passion of New Eve [...]
Brilliant New Cover Art For Orwell’s 1984
The cover art for Penguin’s latest edition of George Orwell’s classic dystopian tale is fantastic! Designer David Pearson said that the design went through numerous iterations as to, “Establish just the right amount of print obliteration. Eventually we settled on printing and debossing, as per the Great Ideas series [Why I Write shown, above], with the [...]
Jones the Cat and the Litigation of ‘Alien’ and ‘The Terminator’
Of all the enigmas of Ridley Scott’s magnificent film Alien (1979), one with the capacity to genuinely cause fans and critics to sink into dejected catalepsy or fevered rage is the presence aboard the space vessel Nostromo – and the narrative consequences of – Jones the cat. My purpose here is to close decades of [...]
Treme’s New Character Based on A. C.Thompson and his Invistigative Story: Katrina’s Hidden Race War
Tonight’s season premiere of Treme, written by David Simon and Anthony Bourdain, featured a new character based on Pro Publica journalist A.C. Thompson. In 2009 Thompson published an investigative story in The Nation on police officers who where ordered to shoot looters. In the wake of Katrina officers not only opened fire killing unarmed civilians in [...]
Edward Hopper and the Dissolution of Pulp
Edward Hopper painted American melancholia, scoping the silent exhaustion and unuttered shame of men and women so isolated and suicidal that one can only wonder at the desperation shadowing them. These mute Hitchcockian scenes (his 1925 painting House by the Railroad is worthy of Norman Bates – incidentally Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, got his [...]
Ralph Steadman’s 2012 Olympics
Ralph Steadman’s interpretation of the 2012 Olympics in London is featured in this week’s New Statesman, accompanying Will Self’s essay on a stroll through the protean city with his son.
Get Jiro! Anthony Bourdain at SDCC
Noted chef, author, and world traveler Anthony Bourdain has finally released his graphic novel “Get Jiro!” Vibrantly illustrated by Langdon Foss and José Villarrubia, “Get Jiro!” features a raging sushi chef in a near-future Los Angeles who casually slashes and decapitates militant vegans and soy sauce slathering sushi noobs. Besides his two hit shows “No [...]
VIDEO: Diggin’…The art of Brian Woida
Humboldt County artist Brian Woida has done it all. He’s a DJ, painter, sculpture, record collector, rockin’ guitarist in bands such as The Ravens, and the best damn barista in town. His latest art show, Diggin’…Can You Collect Them All? sets out to show the interconnectedness of music, as well as all the mediums he frequents, through collage. Unlike [...]
Occupy Art
“I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.” – Henri Matisse Every cultural movement leaves in its wake a sea of art. Over the past two months the Occupy Movement has not only brought the world some stunning photos, it has inspired quite an array of posters, prints, and paintings. Although many [...]
Shades of Green: Artist Lucas Thornton
Artist Lucas Thornton slid into his modest home studio and eagerly began rotating pieces gathered from all over his home onto his lyre easel. The walls, lined with everything from mid-sized acrylic paintings, sketches, etchings on aged ivory piano keys and art books – some over a hundred years old – seemed to kaleidoscope out [...]
Meth Mouth: The Art of Jesse Wiedel
Jesse Wiedel paints Americana. That’s not to say his subjects are your run of the mill placated Protestants ornamented in shrouds of patriotic exceptionalism like the works of Norman Rockwell or Charles Wysocki. Nor are Wiedel’s creations Warholistic imitations screaming for attention like spoiled hipsters measuring their self-worth on the spectrum of irony. On his [...]
