Flora (detail), c. 1590-1600, attributed to the circle of Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Category: Art
Untitled (King) — Ho Che Anderson
Untitled (from King), 1993/2005, by Ho Che Anderson (b. 1969)
Hibernation — Remedios Varo
Hibernación (Hibernation), 1942 by Remedios Varo (1908-1963)
30 frames from David Lynch’s Eraserhead
From Eraserhead, 1977. Directed by David Lynch with cinematography by Frederick Elmes and Herbert Cardwell. Via Film Grab.
Thank you David Lynch
RIP David Lynch, 1946-2025
We weirdos lost a spiritual uncle today.
Lose isn’t exactly the right word–the work is still there, the tremendous body of works, the films and images that I’ve returned to for so much of my life, films and images my fourteen-year-old son has recently been drawn to himself, wholly independent of me, getting there through his own weird back channels, my son who asked me just the other day if we could watch Eraserhead, and I said, Not yet, although I was the same age as he is now when I watched Eraserhead and let it do something weird to me. Maybe we’ll start with The Elephant Man instead, let it break his heart a little. Keep him away from Fire Walk With Me until he can handle it (you can never really handle it). I saw them all too young. Was way too young when my older cousin showed me Blue Velvet; I think it imprinted on me. Rewatching it (for the fifth? tenth?) time a decade and a half later, I realized I was Kyle M’s Jeffrey Beaumont peering through the closet in horror at the Adult World. Maybe I wasn’t too young. But I’ve loved them all, again and again—Lost Highway, the first one I got to see in a theater, Mulholland Dr. (the best one?), Inland Empire (really the best one). Even Dune, the first one I saw, perplexed as hell. My parents let us watch it again and again on VHS and it always refused to cohere. I think they thought it was like Star Wars, which it both was and very much wasn’t. Even the straight one he made for the normies (especially the one he made for the normies–although I don’t know if they appreciated it). But really, especially, when he Got the Old Gang Back Together for Twin Peaks: The Return—it was such a gift, a gift that seemed to come out of nowhere, unexpected, but I think even then we could recognize what a beautiful gift it was — even if it broke my heart all over again at the end, in the best possible way (“What year is this?” / “Laura!” / HOWL). I think we all knew to say Thank you then; I think we showed our love in return for the artist’s gifts. I’m thankful now, sad, selflishly sad that there won’t be one more gift, one more vision that could never come from another mind. But thankful.
Saint George and the Dragon (Detail) — Martin de Vos
Detail from Saint George and the Dragon (c. 1590-1602) by Martin de Vos (1531/1532 – 1603)
“What Do I Need to Paint a Picture?” — Ithell Colquhoun
“What Do I Need to Paint a Picture?”
by
Ithell Colquhoun
From Surrealist Women: An International Anthology (ed. Penelope Rosemont)
Certainly not a canvas or an easel, because I need first a resistant surface (wall or panel) and a steady support (wall or table or bench). I like the surface on which I paint to be as near that of polished ivory as possible; sometimes this surface is so lovely that it seems a pity to paint it at all. Then I need a number, but not a large number, of opaque pigments and a small amount of medium, I am not going to say what is in the medium, but it smells very nice. Then a still smaller number of transparent pigments, and lastly a surfacing-wax which I put on when the paint is dry and which also smells very nice.
I need a line to work to (Blake’s “bounding outline”); that means a full-sized detailed drawing afterwards traced. Then I put on the opaque colors very smooth and finally the glazes, if any, with the transparent colors. These are only the fixed and the cardinal qualities; what of the mutable? What of inspiration? What can one say of it except that it comes and goes, is helped and hindered, is unbiddable and unpredictable?
As to results, I aim for them to be sculptural: drawing and painting are branches of sculpture. For me, drawing is two-dimensional sculpture, painting is two-dimensional colored sculpture. If I do any sculpture, it is colored.
Mine is a very convenient way of painting, because it needs so many consecutive hours of work that it is almost impossible to do anything else.
The Pentagon’s Pet — Artemio Sepúlveda
La mascota del Pentágono (The Pentagon’s Pet), 1968 by Artemio Sepúlveda (b. 1937)
The Order — Carlos Orozco Romero
La manda (The Order), 1942 by Carlos Orozco Romero (1896-1984)
Some pictures I took of Remedios Varo paintings last Sunday at Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City
We enjoyed a lovely week between Christmas and New Year’s in Mexico City — great food, great people, great art. I especially enjoyed getting to see paintings by Remedios Varo, one of my favorite artists ever, at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Chapultepec Park.
Between Rounds — Thomas Eakins
Between Rounds, 1899 by Thomas Eakins (1844-1916)
Comic as Christmas | From William H. Gass’s Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife
From William H. Gass’s Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife, as published as a supplement in a 1967 issue of TriQuarterly.
“A Chthonian Christmas” — Edward Gorey
Xmas or Xmess — Tomi Ungerer
A comic by Tomi Ungerer, from the 1 Dec. 1958 issue of Esquire.
Untitled (Conquest) — Benjamin Marra
Untitled sketch (Conquest) by Benjamin Marra (b. 1977)
Mass-Market Monday | Donald Barthelme’s Amateurs
Amateurs, Donald Barthelme. Kangaroo Pocket Books (1977). No cover artist or designer credited. 207 pages.
I’ve written a few times about my slow acquisition of someone else’s library. This person lives in Perry, Florida, a small panhandle town south of Tallahassee, and I guess he drives into Jacksonville at least once a year to sell books at the bookstore I frequent. I’ve talked to the bookstore’s owner about him a few times. Sometimes, I’ll spot a spine and think, Yeah, his name and address are going to be stamped on the inside cover. And there it was this Friday when I picked up his mass-market edition of Amateurs. His by-now familiar habit of checking off volumes by the same author is on display here too. He also put neat pencil dashes by some of the stories in Amateurs, including my favorite from the collection, “Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby.” He also checked off “The Educational Experience,” which, in this Kangaroo edition of Amateurs, sadly fails to include Barthelme’s collage illustrations that accompanied the piece when it first ran in Harper’s
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Dec. 16th (Peanuts)
