Category: Certainties

Small Dog From Texas

I knew it might happen.  But I didn’t know it would happen.  Actually, no.  It came as a complete surprise.  Wait, it was a pleasant surprise, but somehow not a complete one.  It was a semi-surprise.  Pleasant semi-surprises aren’t getting enough ink these days so to get one is good.  It’s nice.

We’ve been getting a lot of mail at https://samoyeddogs.wordpress.com about the origin of that title.  It’s Russian.  I organized it when I was in Moscow on the last leg of my Eastern European tour.  It was a food stand right in Red Square, that lovely place.  All that brick and Russians.  Samoyed Dogs.  Some kind of Russian hot dog.  Tasty.

The pronunciation is akin to Samizdat (sam-ee-is-dat).  Something like that.  Samoy-yeh-dogs.  Very Russian.  Very untrue.  You kids remember Samizdat.  Here’s a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat

The site and the concept have in common that if you can’t get published in official channels unless you want to get shot or receive a free trip to the gulag you start exploring other options.  You pass it around clandestinely.  Love that word.  Of course this here ain’t exactly clandestine and runs none of the pretty severe risks people took in the samizdat era, which, under that little twerp Vladimir Putin, probably still exists.  Did I just say something?

Some big, kind and generous friends of the site have taken to calling it “The dogs”, as in, “Really enjoy the dogs.  Keep them coming.”

“It’s not about the dogs,” I keep saying.  No one listens.  It’s sad.  And then I contradict myself and write about a small dog from Texas.  As my old accounting prof said, “It can get confusing.”  Bless him, he was right.

The Ring Please
The Ring Please

Georgia by name, a rescue hound.  Used to roam among the cacti not too long ago then caught a bomber from the Lone Star State.  How’d she do that?  Still in training mode.  Forced these people to come to a mysterious island, a place they’d never been before, and do it.  Managed to stay out of all the pictures, all that incriminating evidence, as it used to be called and maybe still is.  Doesn’t matter.  Strange things happen on mysterious islands.  Guys’ll get all sentimental and start handing over engagement rings.  The dog just looks up.  I don’t know about climbing up because I wasn’t there.  Bet she did though.

I should probably take another crack at explaining where that samoyeddogs title came from.

 

American Abstract Expressonism II

I know I know.  Some people don’t know what America is and couldn’t find it on a map.  As for “Abstract Expressionism” no, no.  Forget it.  Anyway, the book “The Turning Point”, still by April Kingsley, it’s like taking a course.  You learn a lot.  I just wanted to share with you a very, very small sampling…

index

 

 

 

Number 9 In Praise of Gertrude Stein by Bradley Walker Tomlin (1899 – 1953)

lee krasner Right Bird Left

 

 

 

 

 

 

Right Bird Left by Lee Krasner (1908 – 1984)

james Brooks Maine

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maine by James Brooks (1906 – 1992)

Arshile Gorky Diary of a Seducer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diary of a Seducer by Arshile Gorky (1904 – 1948)

Paintings not to scale.  Not for sale either.  Usually they’re pretty big.  You won’t see any of them at the Guggenheim either but that’s okay.  You’re seeing them here.  For anyone who knows the subject these artists might not be the first that come to mind.  They’re artists, poor me, that I’d never heard of.  You stay around long enough and maybe you’ll see what you’ve been missing.  I like that.  Thanks for the opportunity.

Another of the many, many things I found interesting about the book is that the author mentions the writer Malcolm Lowry.  That could be because, like him, many of the artists covered in the text, although my no means all, were well acquainted and some too well acquainted with alcohol.

But the quote she attributes isn’t entirely accurate.  The original is in Lowry’s long story, Through the Panama, and goes like this:  “Gin and orange juice best cure for alcoholism, real cause of which is complete baffling sterility of existence as sold to you”.

April has it, “Lowry once said, ‘The real cause of alcoholism is the complete baffling sterility of existence as sold to you’.”  Sure.  He once said something like that.  His character within a character within a character said it in Through the Panama, a fairly abstract expressionistic work in its own right.  So why didn’t she say that?  Forget it forget it.

Interestingly also, and I’m almost done, Lowry mentions Kierkegaard’s Diary of a Seducer in his story, the work Arshile Gorky used as the title of his, lets face it, weird painting above.  Most of Gorky’s paintings were weird.  Powerful and weird.  Gorky did himself in at the age of 44, poor fellow.

I love that line she delivers about Hans Hoffman.  “…finally gave up recognizable subject matter entirely…”  Must have been a great day for Hans.

One more re Robert Motherwell:  “Chance had brought him to the solution to a painting problem he’d been wrestling with for a decade–how to create disparate elements within a unified field without disrupting its unity.”  Exactly.  Applies to any art form.

I gotta go now.  There’s a small dog from Texas I gotta see about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

American Abstract Expressionism

SRGM_ph006

It’s such a good image.  Straight from the site.  I’ve been inside this thing and I can prove it.  Upon reflection, the building is magnificent.  And no question.  It’s still the best laundromat in Manhattan.  And I’ll vouch for that.

I knew nothing about the subject of the title of this post.  That is until the security guard said to me one day a while back, “I’ve got a book for you.”  And sure enough he did.

The book is called “The Turning Point” and it’s written by April Kingsley.  The publisher is Simon & Schuster, the publication date 1992.  That’s all right.  It’s not that long ago.

The security guard and I have a good relationship.  I’m not sure why that is.  It could be because in his duties he always preferred the .38 over the 9mm.  The reason?  “It’ll never jam.”  And I feel the same way on some level.

The security guard doesn’t pack these days but he’s painted for a long time.  And we share some of the same frustrations, like being born in Saskatchewan.  He found out I’m a writer because I told him, and told him where he could find proof, such as it is.  I’ve yet to see any work by the guard, and it better be good when I do.  I know it will be.

     more to come…