Thursday, October 26, 2006

Puff Puff Pass





BOTERO’S HUMANISM

by Donald Kuspit


Where do Botero’s somewhat inflated figures -- he says they are "rather slim" -- come from? Is there any precedent for them, or are the so-called "Boteromorphs" invented out of whole cloth? Are they "puffed up" to give them "sensuality," as Botero said, or to make a "satirical" point, as he has also said? Are they ironical figures of fun -- comic buffoons, waiting to burst like overinflated balloons -- or is there something tragic about them?

Their absurdity suggests as much: they might collapse under pressure, as the Colossus of Rhodes -- one of the wonders of the ancient world -- did during an earthquake. Indeed, antiquity may be their source; the Farnese Hercules -- a Roman figure of great girth and strength -- could be their model. For all their bombastic bulk, they are sturdy figures, able to endure -- Hercules was a symbol of fortitude -- adversity.

That’s the human point of Botero’s astonishing Abu Ghraib imagery, perhaps the most powerful representation of man’s inhumanity to man since Goya’s and Dix’s war pictures. But those artists’ human beings don’t survive torture and abuse -- Botero’s do. Botero’s victimized bodies hold their own, whatever catastrophes they are subject to -- beatings, having their hair pulled, being pissed on, sodomized with sticks, attacked by dogs, piled on one another like sacks, all the while with their hands and sometimes legs bound, and often with their heads covered in black bags as though they were about to be hanged.

They remain peculiarly invulnerable, despite the excruciating pain they suffer -- and, outside of medieval art, there are few images of utterly excruciating pain in art, and even fewer that convey it with sustained conviction. I am suggesting that in all but name Botero’s Abu Ghraib images are scenes of martyrdom. Christian iconography haunts Botero’s images, as the crucified figure in Abu Ghraib 64 (2005) -- Christ forced to wear a bra and jock strap, their blood red color matching that of his stigmata -- strongly suggests. The prison cell that appears in many images is implicitly the prison cell where Christ was kept, just as the brutal torturers resemble those depicted in medieval imagery, perhaps most famously in Bosch.

I don’t think Botero’s Abu Ghraib series are simply anti-American, however anti-American and pro-Iraqi they seem. No doubt it rides the current tide of Latin American anti-Americanism, but many of the Iraqi prisoners have the same sharp teeth as their American torturers, suggesting they would be as capable of sadistic torture, should their situations be reversed. How many Iraqi soldiers tortured for Saddam Hussein? Good soldiers, after all, want to do unto others as others want to do unto them.

Nor is Botero fascinated by torture per se -- although he may be, as many people are (it enacts and exposes their unconscious hostility and destructiveness). Instead, he depicts the nightmare of history. It is an endless, inescapable nightmare, allegorized in an endless stream of drawings and paintings by Botero -- Abu Ghraib is a means not an end -- each depicting an act or victim of gratuitous cruelty, a violence intended to break the spirit as well as body of the victim.

But, through it all, the bodies of Botero’s Abu Ghraib prisoners remain surprisingly intact, despite their wounds. They are heroes despite themselves, as their powerful bodies confirm. Indeed, they embody power -- including the power that violates them. The torturers (and their dogs) also have powerful bodies -- they are involved in a Herculean task. A plague on both Americans and Iraqis, Botero suggests. Both are crazy beasts, as their grotesquely animal bodies imply. Botero’s bodies are bloated by delusions of grandeur, that is, they are pathologically omnipotent.

Fernando Botero, "Abu Ghraib," Oct. 18-Nov. 18, 2006, at Marlborough New York, 40 West 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10019



DONALD KUSPIT is professor of art history and philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook and A.D. White professor at large at Cornell University.

taken from artnet magazine

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Albert Ayler - Slug's Saloon






Albert Ayler (tenor saxophone)
Michel Sampson (violin)
Donald Ayler (trumpet)
Lewis Worrell (double bass)
Ron Jackson (percussion)

CD 1
1. Truth Is Marching In
2. Our Prayer
3. Bells

CD 2
1. Ghosts
2. Initiation

Recorded at Slug's, New York, New York, June 1, 1966

Beneath The Water We've Played







Monday, October 23, 2006

Say Word, Rose






Even though I am 24 when I am away with my mother I feel as though I am a tween again. Why is impossible to grow up?

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Friday, October 20, 2006

Try Not To Get Thrown Under The Bus









Last night Dead/Bird, 2673, Tralphaz, and Door played at Casa de Poopie. It was a lot fun. Sometimes I don't go out and forget how much fun and vulgarity awaits me at Machine's. It was really good to go and see people I don't see enough albeit I see them every weekend. Totally bummed I didn't see Kevin play but if I had stayed for his set who knows who I could have offended. One thing is for sure though and that is that I love those dudes and sweet noise ladies aka Kate.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Daniel Johnston - The Early Recordings Volume 1



there is something about the change of season that leaves you longing for something more. maybe you didn't experience all that you requested the summer bring or maybe you want more for this coming winter. maybe you just don't know. whatever it is there is still that sensation that leaves you breathless for the sorrow. the sweet and cold frost that awaits your step in the morning. there is something waiting for you in a dark corner. you are waiting to cross and avoid that corner hoping it will leap into your path. and then it does. its there and there is no avoiding it. encounters in an f flat (e). breakups and breakdowns- i can look forward to daniel's voice pulling me through. he helps me plod my way through all the bullshit and back onto a somewhat balanced ground. daniel johnston is the voice of my generation. if you didn't know it is surely time you found out. he is the supergroup. he is the ghost. heisholy.

--
dunk the drunk


Please Stay Dooon't Go

Shakespears Sister
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

video here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE1zv4ylrRc


Origin London, England
Years active 1988 – 1996

Genres- Rock
Synthpop

Labels- London Records

Members- Siobhan Fahey
Past members- Marcella Detroit

Shakespears Sister was a band formed by Irish born former Bananarama singer/songwriter Siobhan Fahey and American musician Marcella Detroit. The band formed in 1988, the same year that Fahey left Bananarama. The name is taken from the title of the song "Shakespeare's Sister" by The Smiths, which in turn refers to a section of Virginia Woolf's feminist essay A Room of One's Own in which Woolf argues that had William Shakespeare a sister of equal genius, as a woman she would not have had the opportunity to make use of it.

History
Shakespears Sister released two albums as a duo, Sacred Heart and Hormonally Yours.

The band's single "Stay" is their best known work, achieving number one in both the UK (for eight weeks, one of the longest in chart history) and Ireland singles charts. It was their highest entry in the UK charts, being the only time they entered the top five. The single also became their biggest U.S. hit, reaching number four on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1992. The accompanying music video was also a hit, if somewhat controversial.(Recently featured in Channel4's Top 100 Music Videos). In it, Fahey fights over the fate of a dying man in an allegory of life and death that mirrored her own internal struggles. The imagery in the video was seen as a depiction of witchcraft/raising the dead so was banned in Germany, hightening the track's profile.

After a year-long worldwide tour through 1992 Fahey cancelled further European touring due to physical and emotional exhaustion and, subsequently admitted herself into a psychiatric unit with severe depression.

In 1993 one of Fahey's favourite songs "My 16th Apology" was released as a single, to moderate success, followed by the quasi-singles "Prehistoric Daze" from The Flintstones soundtrack in 1994, and "Waiting" from the Sadie Frost/Jude Law film Shopping in 1995.

In 1996 Fahey resurfaced again as Shakespears Sister with the single "I Can Drive", a single picked by the record company instead of Fahey's choice of the arguably superior "Do I Scare You". After the single charted at number thirty and London Records refused to release the full album, Fahey insisted upon being dropped from the label, leaving the album unreleased.

In 2003, Fahey regained the master tapes from those sessions. #3, recorded in 1995-1997 , was finally given an independent release in 2004 after London Records originally shelved the project.

A greatest hits CD/DVD retrospective (The Best of Shakespears Sister) was also released in 2004, containing all of the group's singles and music videos, as well as tracks intended for the #3 album. An additional compilation album, Long Live the Queens!, featuring a tracklisting of remixes and b-sides, was released in late 2005.

A recurrent theme of many of the early Shakespears Sister songs involve departure ("You're History", "Goodbye Cruel World") and blame ("You Made Me Come to This", "I Don't Care"). In interviews, Bananarama members Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward have alluded to these songs being about them.


Discography

Albums
Year Album cover Album UK U.S. AUS Additional information
1989 Sacred Heart 9 - 22 Debut album
1992 Hormonally Yours 3 56 20
2004 #3 - - - Solo album by Siobhan Fahey recorded 1995-1997, released independently in 2004
2004 The Best of Shakespears Sister - - - CD/DVD hits compilation album, contains all of the band's music videos
2005 Long Live the Queens! - - - B-sides, remixes and rarities compilation album
Singles
Year Song UK singles U.S. Hot 100 AUS NZ Album
1988 "Break My Heart (You Really)" / "Heroine" - - - - Sacred Heart
1989 "Heroine" (U.S. and Canada only) - - - - Sacred Heart
1989 "You're History" 7 - 20 28 Sacred Heart
1989 "Run Silent" 54 - 47 - Sacred Heart
1990 "Dirty Mind" 71 - 65 - Sacred Heart
1991 "Goodbye Cruel World" 59 - - - Hormonally Yours
1992 "Stay" 1 4 3 5 Hormonally Yours
1992 "I Don't Care" 7 55 18 11 Hormonally Yours
1992 "Goodbye Cruel World" (reissue) 32 - - - Hormonally Yours
1992 "Hello (Turn Your Radio On)" 14 - 97 43 Hormonally Yours
1993 "My 16th Apology" 61 - - - Hormonally Yours
1996 "I Can Drive" 30 - - - #3

taken from Wikipedia

Noise Kittens
















Monday, October 16, 2006

La Bamba






Why can't weekends age gracefully?


I am writhing in pain and I have to go stand on my feet for hours hopefully propped up against a wall behind a red snapper.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

The Sandpipers








T. Rex - The Peel Sessions

Although it only clocks in at barely over 15 minutes, T. Rex's Peel Sessions is an important landmark in the group's career, since it marks the precise moment when ex-folk hippie Marc Bolan transformed into a rampaging glam rock n' roller. It was recorded in late 1970, right before T. Rex-mania swept England, and when the group was still just a duo (Bolan on guitar/vocals and Mickey Finn on percussion). While the 4-cut EP contains T. Rex's first true hit ("Ride A White Swan") and a popular album track ("Jewel"), it is the elongated "Elemental Child" which proves to be the album's surprise highlight. It features a long, wailing Marc Bolan guitar solo, which contains phrases from the future hit, "Jeepster," and shows that he could certainly hold his own on the six-string. "Sun Eye" is a throw-back to the band's folk days, with a gentle vocal melody and acoustic guitar strumming. T. Rex freaks will certainly want to track down a copy of this brief Holland import.


1. Jewel
2. Ride a White Swan
3. Elemental Child
4. Sun Eye

Marc Bolan
Mickey Finn

Recorded October 27, 1970
Broadcast November 7, 1970