Tuesday, April 28, 2009

for Alex Eliot on his 90th Birthday - "Oriste!"

In Alex Eliot's marvelous essay in Frederick Franck's book, What Does it Mean to be Human?, Alex recounts his journey to the Greek region of Karoulia and his encounter with the "very holy fellow" Simon. Like many of his fellow Orthodox monks from Mount Athos, Simon retired to a cliff side residence in Karoulia. Perched high above the water, these monks spend their later years in solitude with the meeting of the sea and sky as their constant companion.

Alex was invited by a fisherman from Mount Athos, who spoke of Simon as a holy fellow, to make the journey with him by sea to visit the monk. With the fisherman's boat bobbing in the waves below, Alex climbed a series of steps carved into the rock face with only a series of chains spiked into the cliff to hold onto. The fisherman had said, "If those chains will hold you, it is as God wills" for Alex to meet with Simon. At the end of his climb, Alex explains that he lay drenched in sweat gasping like a beached fish until he felt a cool shadow break the heat and there was Simon, "sparkling eyed" with his arms spread wide, exclaiming "Oriste!" meaning "Welcome, what can I do for you!"



Forgive me if I break Alex's engaging narrative at this point. As I write these words, I am sitting in my studio surrounded by a series of new paintings inspired by a recent trip with my family to Japan. The siren of these images is calling me. And I can't help but wonder what Alex and Jane Eliot, who also traveled with their family to Japan, will think of this new work. I don't have to risk my life scaling a cliff to reach the Eliots. I just need to make my pilgrimage out my studio door and down Ocean Park Boulevard, Diebenkorn's old haunts, to Venice, California to visit this couple who always greet my friends and family with wide open arms and profound insights. Like Simon's greeting, Alex Eliot's welcoming words nourish and inspire me.


Gregg Chadwick's Studio with 13 Geisha (13芸者) - in progress

Alex Eliot will turn 90 on April 28, 2009. In his fruitful life, Alex has met with and written about the great artists of his age - Picasso and Matisse. One might think it would only be natural for a man of such wisdom and experience to be a bit haughty. Instead Alex shares the old monk Simon's gentle and generous spirit as well as his great wisdom and love for life.

While on that cliff in Karoulia, Simon offered Alex a piece of caramel candy. Alex, graciously accepted the gift and then when the monk was preoccupied, Alex, feeling that the seemingly undernourished monk needed all the calories he could get, slipped it under Simon's plate. Alex then bowed and scooted out to climb down the cliff to the boat waiting below. The sun was setting when Alex reached the fisherman who lay asleep in the boat. The sirens called. Alex disrobed and dove into the sea only to be startled by a basket hurtling down the old monk's supply cable which linked his aerie to the world. In the basket was the caramel. "My candy had come back! I put the caramel straight into my mouth and like a child once more I tasted its burnt sugar elixir right down to my toes."

And then Alex opens up to the mythosphere - "Never before in this life, possibly, had my poor spirit taken nourishment. I stood dripping upon the shore of time and Simon waved to me from eternity."

Like Simon's candy, Alex Eliot's friendship gives my poor spirit nourishment.

Let me break again from my essay to speak directly to Alex:

Alex, I thank you for your wisdom, your profound words and feelings, the inspired love that you show to your wife - Jane - and your talented children. Alex - you are a lifeline, an example, and a challenge. I am proud to be your friend.



Study for a Portrait of Alex Eliot
8"x13" oil on wood 2009

Throughout my years as I stand with my wife, MarySue, and my son, Cassiel, on the shore of time I will see Alex and Jane Eliot waving to me from eternity and exclaiming, "Oriste!"


More at:
Alex Eliot's Website
Jane Winslow Eliot's Website

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Los Angeles Times Festival Of Books at UCLA Today and Tomorrow - April 25 - 26, 2009






Author Wil Wheaton talks about writing, the sweet smell of bookstores and his Star Trek days as well as his excitement about the upcoming Star Trek film. See Wil Wheaton at UCLA today.

General Info

Dates
Saturday, April 25
10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Sunday, April 26
10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Location
UCLA
405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024

Tickets
Tickets are free!
Tickets will be available on April 19 through ticketmaster.com.
They are needed for indoor panels and speaker sessions.
More...

Parking
Parking on the UCLA campus is $9.
Free shuttle bus services will connect the outlying UCLA parking lots with the main festival entrances.

More at:
L.A.Times Festival of Books Website

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Bo



(Click on photo to enlarge)

Springsteen and the E-Street Band cover the Ramones' "I Want to be Sedated" - Boston, April 22, 2009


Springsteen and the E-Street Band cover the Ramones' "I Want to be Sedated" - Boston, April 22, 2009


Springsteen and the E-Street Band cover the Ramones' "I Want to be Sedated" - Boston, April 22, 2009 (full song - another view)

On their current tour Springsteen and the E-Street Band are showing off their punk side. Last night in Boston, with a giddy Steve Van Zandt orchestrating the song, Springsteen and the E-Street Band covered the Ramones' "I Want to be Sedated". The video is a bit rough but in true punk form a manic energy is present. Enjoy!


Mike Ness, Springsteen and the E-Street band perform Social Distortion's "Bad Luck" - Los Angeles, April 16, 2009

Monday, April 20, 2009

Holland Cotter awarded 2009's Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.



Art writer Holland Cotter has been awarded 2009's Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

From the Pulitzer site:
The 2009 Pulitzer Prize for criticism has been "awarded to Holland Cotter of The New York Times for his wide ranging reviews of art, from Manhattan to China, marked by acute observation, luminous writing and dramatic storytelling."



Sun Zhijun/Dunhuang Academy
"Inside Mogaoku’s caves: A fifth-century painted Buddha, sprinkled with desert dust."

Holland Cotter's article from July 2008, entitled Buddha's Caves , is a nice introduction to his writing:

"Mogaoku is charmed ground. In late spring and early summer the air is fragrant, the sky a lambent blue, the desert oceanically serene. And there is the art and the soaked-in atmosphere of devotion. The place leaves strong and alluring memories in the memories of visitors; in its caretakers it inspires lifelong loyalty."



Gregg Chadwick
Sketchbook Image of "Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture" at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
pencil and wash in bound volume 10/21/08

For those of us in California, Holland Cotter's review of the Getty Museum's exhibition of Bernini's portrait sculptures was required reading:

Bernini "adhered to the Renaissance model of the artist as polymath. In addition to being a sculptor, painter and draftsman, he had a major career as an architect; was a poet, playwright and stage designer; and still found time for a scandalous love life.

"Like other successful artists of his day Bernini was both a master and a servant, a celebrity and a functionary. He could be innovative to the point of sacrilege — one thinks of his orgasmic St. Teresa, or the crazed immensity of the baldacchino over the tomb of St. Peter in the Vatican — yet his invention was almost always at the service of a conservative political and religious elite. He pushed the spiritual potential of art in radical directions but was a propagandist for hire to the Church Triumphant."



Photo: Monica Almeida/The New York Times
An installation view of "Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture" at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
(Both Monica Almeida and I were attracted to the same view of Bernini's portrait of his mistress Costanza Bonarelli with Cardinal Scipione Borghese looming beyond.)

The New York Times page for Holland Cotter:
Holland Cotter in the New York Times

Monday, March 23, 2009

Under Pressure from China, South Africa Declares That Soccer is More Important Than World Peace!


The South African Government, stooping under pressure from the Chinese government and business leaders, has denied the Dalai Lama a visa to attend the upcoming international peace conference in Johannesburg which is scheduled to begin this week.

Thabo Masebe, a spokesperson for the South African government has stated that if the Dalai Lama attended the conference, the focus would shift away from the 2010 World Cup which South Africa will host next year:

"We cannot allow focus to shift to China and Tibet," Masebe said, adding that South Africa has gained much from its trading relationship with China.

The Dalai Lama's fellow Nobel laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, said that he will not attend the peace conference in protest:

"We are shamelessly succumbing to Chinese pressure," Archbishop Tutu was quoted as telling the Sunday Independent. "I feel deeply distressed and ashamed."
A spokesperson for the Dalai Lama told AFP news agency he was "very disappointed" by the decision, also accusing South Africa of caving into "intense pressure" from Chinese authorities.

Former South African president, F.W. De Klerk, also a Nobel laureate, is in solidarity with Desmond Tutu, saying that he would also not participate in the conference if the Dalai Lama remained excluded.

De Klerk said that the decision to refuse the visa made a "mockery" of the peace conference."The decision to exclude the Dalai Lama is irreconcilable with key principles on which our society is based including the principles of accountability, openness and responsiveness and the rights to freedom of expression and free political activity."

"South Africa is a sovereign constitutional democracy and should not allow other countries to dictate to it regarding who it should, and should not admit to its territory - regardless of the power and influence of the country."


More at:
South Africa bans Dalai Lama trip

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Off to Japan!


This beautiful photo is by my Japanese friend in Kyoto.
More at: lolalways

I will be in Japan for the next two weeks. My bags are almost packed. Loose ends almost tied up. OK, I am not quite ready yet.
But I still must say "Gambate!" (Very roughly in Japanese - "Go Get em")

I will be in Tokyo for the first eight days and then on to Kyoto. It will be quiet here on Speed of Life. Much more when I get back.

Yossi Govrin's Monument to Donald Douglas and His Dog, Wunderbar, Unveiled at the Santa Monica Airport


Yossi Govrin and his Bronze Sculpture of Donald Douglas and Wunderbar

Yossi Govrin spoke yesterday at the unveiling of his bronze sculpture of Donald Douglas and dog Wunderbar ."I have always been afraid of flying, " he said. "As an Israeli, all citizens serve for a time in support of the country. And as I just said I was always afraid of flight. So what did they do? They put me in the airforce. And they made me jump out of airplanes!" Yossi was safely on the ground speaking in the shadow of the Douglas DC-3 Monument which seemed to soar above him.

This aircraft was built at the Santa Monica airport in 1942 and after a long journey from the US Army Air Corps, to the Navy, to a stint in commercial aviation with Nationwide Airlines, to service with the Richfield oil company, the plane now dubbed "The Spirit of Santa Monica" is home. Echoing Yossi's days jumping out of aircraft, this DC-3 was initially used as a 28-seat paratrooper and glider tug.


Palmer, Alfred T.- photographer.
Women at work on C-47 Douglas cargo transport, Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, Calif.
1942 Oct.


In the 1920's, Donald Douglas started building planes in a small workshop in the backroom of a barbershop on Pico Boulevard. By the end of World War II, Douglas Aircraft had produced more than 30,000 planes for the United States Armed Services. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, former commanding general of the United States forces in Europe fighting the Nazis, remarked "that the DC-3 was one of the four reasons the allies won the war."



Artist Yossi Govrin

My father-in-law, Ralph Heilemann, after serving with the Navy, worked at a secret weapons system in a hangar at the Santa Monica airport in the 1950's. Ralph later went on to work on the Lunar Rover for the Apollo, moon shot, program. Yesterday, watching the crowds beneath The Spirit of Santa Monica and milling around Yossi Govrin's sculpture, I thought of how the past continually mingles with the present. And that the creative spirit and heroism of those who have come before us continue to season our lives.

I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (Ralph - Madison)
Gregg Chadwick
I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (Ralph Heilemann)
16" x 8" oil on linen 2008



Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Thoughts of Travel on Saint Patrick's Day


Phil Cousineau at Yeats Tower in County Clare, Ireland.

"I am convinced that pilgrimage is still a bona finde spirit-renewing ritual. But I also believe in pilgrimage as a powerful metaphor for any journey with the purpose of finding something that matters deeply to the traveler. With a deepening of focus, keen preparation, attention to the path below our feet, and respect for the destination at hand, it is possible to transform, even the most ordinary journey into a sacred journey, a pilgrimage."
--Phil Cousineau, from
THE ART OF PILGRIMAGE

Before he departs on a journey, Phil Cousineau calls a dear friend or a trusted mentor. In his wonderful book, The Art of Pilgrimage, Phil describes just such a call to his friend and mentor Joseph Campbell before Phil left on a journey to Paris in 1987. Phil describes how Joseph Campbell's bon voyage felt like a blessing and that Campbell's voice "took on a shimmer of delight" as they spoke of Campbell's years in Paris in the late 1920's.

Before I leave for Tokyo, I intend to ring up Phil and congratulate him on his new television program, Global Spirit which is set to premiere Sunday, April 12, 2009 on Link TVGlobal Spirit will delve into humanity's existential questions, "tracing our collective human journey in the timeless quest for truth, wisdom and understanding."

Phil's passion for humanity is evident in all aspects of his work: writing, filmmaking, and teaching.
Phil - you inspire me daily and I am honored to be your friend.



"Beannacht Lá Fhéile Pádraig"

More on Phil Cousineau:
Phil Cousineau's Website

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

3rd Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk on Saturday, March 28 from 1 to 5 pm and Doni Silver Simons Opens at Sherry Frumkin, March 26 from 6-9 pm

2010 Update: The 4th Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk is on March 20, 2010 from 1-5pm
Details at:
Airport Artwalk


The Presence of Light
Gregg Chadwick
The Presence of Light
48"x36" oil on linen 2009

When a painting seems to be finished I ask,
"Is the work open enough to allow the viewer
to enter into the painting and find their own
path or story?" If not, I dive back in again.


Coming up soon is the 3rd Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk on Saturday, March 28 from 1 to 5 pm. My studio will be open and I will have a group of new paintings on view. This will be a nice opportunity for you to take some time off from the stresses of our twittering world and to enter into my paintings in search of your own paths or stories.

I will be in Tokyo but my talented friend, the singer/songwriter/dancer Kelly Colbert, will be on hand to answer questions and to engage you in conversation about art and perhaps, life?

Zeitgeist
Gregg Chadwick
Zeitgeist
48"x36" oil on linen 2009

Also, that same week, the numinous artist, Doni Silver Simons', exhibition "....lines...." will open at the Sherry Frumkin Gallery on Thursday, March 26, 2009. The reception runs from 6-9pm. The Sherry Frumkin Gallery is in the same hangar as my studio, as is Doni's studio. As an act of community, Doni has asked us to open our studios during her opening on Thursday, March 26. Kelly Colbert will be on hand in my studio on the 26th as well. I am fortunate to have such a group of intelligent, talented and caring artists and gallerists around me. When the news of the world threatens to throttle our creative souls, a shared artistic community can help keep us on the path. Doni Silver Simon's work marks the passage of time yet its open spaces are less elegiac than timeless. Like the photos of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Doni Silver Simons limns the ineffable space of time.


Doni Silver Simons
Neilah
16'3"w x 7'h
Acrylic on Linen



The Santa Monica Art Studios are located at 3026 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90405.
My studio is #15



More at:
3rd Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk
Santa Monica Art Studios
Doni Silver Simons







--

Monday, March 09, 2009

Royal T

Royal T
Gregg Chadwick
Royal T
20"x20" oil on wood 2009

This very recent painting was inspired by a visit to the opening of the KAWS curated exhibition, I Can't Feel My Face, at Royal / T in Culver City.

Whitney Museum Council member Susan Hancock, a collector who owns several works by KAWS and operates the café and art space Royal/T, compares KAWS to Takashi Murakami, who is described by the Los Angeles Times as " a Tokyo-born pop savant whose work is inspired by Japanese manga comics":

"I consider KAWS the U.S. Murakami equivalent," Hancock said. "He is mimicking what is popular in today's world: SpongeBob, Smurfs, Simpsons, much like Murakami took off from the world of Japanese contemporary culture."

My work nods subtly to both KAWS and Murakami.

Next time you are cruising the galleries in Culver City, stop by Royal/T for a bite to eat in an art studded site. Check out KAWS' exhibit at Honor Fraser as well (Up until April 4, 2009).

More at:
Royal T
KAWS Website
Honor Fraser Gallery

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Thoughts on "No Line On the Horizon's" Cover Art: Hiroshi Sugimoto's "Boden Sea"


Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born 1948)
Boden Sea, Uttwil,
42.3 x 54.2 cm (16 5/8 x 21 5/16 in.) gelatin silver print 1993
Metropolitan Museum of Art


Seascapes

Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention―and yet they vouchsafe our very existence. The beginnings of life are shrouded in myth: Let there be water and air. Living phenomena spontaneously generated from water and air in the presence of light, though that could just as easily suggest random coincidence as a Deity. Let's just say that there happened to be a planet with water and air in our solar system, and moreover at precisely the right distance from the sun for the temperatures required to coax forth life. While hardly inconceivable that at least one such planet should exist in the vast reaches of universe, we search in vain for another similar example. Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.
- Hiroshi Sugimoto


Hiroshi Sugimoto's haunting photograph Boden Sea, Uttwil graces the cover of the band U2's new album which was released this week. At its best the music on No Line on the Horizon, produced by Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, and Steve Lillywhite, is open and atmospheric and in many instances raises similar questions to those found in Sugimoto's photographs in which water meets air. Since 1980 Sugimoto has traveled the world to find his locales. Ephemeral seaside moments are stripped away in Sugimoto's images. Rather it is the "particularity of light and atmosphere" at play in front of a distant horizon which compels Sugimoto. In each of his photos where sea meets sky, the horizon precisely splits the image into equal parts of air and water. From this combination. in primordial times, life began. The Metropolitan Museum in New York, in their catalog notes on Boden Sea, Uttwil, describes Sugimoto's photos as limning "the shifting envelopes of air and water covering the earth" and ultimately describing the ineffable: " the featureless purity of the world's first day."


Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born 1948)
Aegean Sea, Pilion,
152 x 183 cm gelatin silver print 1990

What does the horizon mean? At some time we have each gazed across a body of water attempting to unlock the mysteries of life and creation. The Metropolitan Museum describes Sugimoto's horizons as both literal depictions of "the contact between Earth's surface and the ether" and also as "metaphors for the bounds of our mental and visual perception."
"The depth of field within each picture is as far as the eye can see. This visual approximation of the infinite is an apt expression of the sublime for an age that has forgotten that such majesty exists on a shrinking and polluted planet."
Like the light from distant stars, we are viewing the light of the past as it arrives in our sphere of vision.


Mark Rothko (American, born Latvia 1903–1970)
White and Greens in Blue, 1957
oil on canvas 1957
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
photo by Gregg Chadwick

Like Sugimoto, the painter Mark Rothko courted the numinous in his work. Standing in a front of a large Rothko painting is in many ways similar to gazing from a cliff across the sea to a distant horizon. Rothko resisted attempts to see his paintings as abstracted landscapes but we can't help but feel the mists and waves created by the seemingly effortless movement of Rothko's paint across the massive expanse of his canvases. Rothko's paint creates an interior luminosity that pours out of the canvas. Mark Rothko is not illustrating a pleasant day of sun and surf but instead is creating light with the barest of means. This moment of creation which reaches back to the origins of life is a direct connection between Rothko and Sugimoto. In this spirit Sugimoto writes,"The beginnings of life are shrouded in myth: Let there be water and air. Living phenomena spontaneously generated from water and air in the presence of light."


Caspar David Friedrich (b. 1774, Greifswald, d. 1840, Dresden)
Monk by the Sea
110 x 172 cm oil on canvas 1809
Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Another much earlier antecedent for Sugimoto's work is the 19th Century German painter Caspar David Friedrich, whose painting Monk by the Sea depicts the meeting of air and water witnessed by a lone figure. The art critic Robert Rosenblum connected Caspar David Friedrich's seascape and the paintings of Mark Rothko when he wrote in The Abstract Sublime that,"We ourselves are the monk before the sea standing silently and contemplatively before these huge and soundless pictures as if we were looking at a sunset or moonlit night."


Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born 1948)
Time's Arrow,
(Seascape 1980/ reliquary fragment, Kamakura Period, 13th Century)
H 8.4 cm gelatin silver print, gided bronze 1987

Hiroshi Sugimoto collects fragments of the past. Time's Arrow combines a hoju (flaming jewel) shaped Buddhist reliquary from 13th Century Japan with one of his contemporary seascapes. In the catalog to his exhibition L'Histiore de L' Histoire, Sugimoto writes of this piece:

"In place of the missing ashes, I have inserted a seascape of a calm sea surrounded by fire, somehow reminiscent of the newborn earth. Time's arrow shoots from the primordial sea through a Kamakura period frame straight at your eye."

There is an interesting connection between Sugimoto's interest in time and Brian Eno's involvement in the Long Now Foundation. In 2003, Brian Eno took part in a fascinating discussion at Fort Mason in San Francisco. During the evening, Brian Eno described his musical and artistic goals:

"I was interested in losing the obvious boundaries of music, I wanted to make something that didn't sound like it had edges, sonic edges, or that it had a beginning and an end. I wanted to make something that belonged to a big space and you as the listener could hear some of that but not necessarily all of it, and I wanted to make something that felt like it had always been going on and would always be going on and you just happened to catch a part of it .... and I wanted to give the implication that this was not a piece of music in the ordinary sense of something that had been composed with a beginning, a middle and an end, but instead was a continuous endless place in time. So I was developing this idea of place of music being not so much a sonic narrative but more a sonic landscape - again with the feeling that this was a landscape that was always in the present tense, a landscape that was an extended present tense."


The Sea is Watching  (for Hiroshi Sugimoto)
Gregg Chadwick
The Sea is Watching (for Hiroshi Sugimoto)
36"x48" oil on linen 2009

Listening to U2's new album No Line on the Horizon, I am struck how much different the music would be if the band had fully opened up to the sonic landscape that Brian Eno helped them create in the studio in Fez, Morocco. Instead of striving for a hit with Get On Your Boots, the first single released from the work and which reportedly Brian Eno disliked intensely, what if the band had allowed the organic process of creation to lead to an album that felt like a musical equivalent of a Mark Rothko painting or a Hiroshi Sugimoto photograph? There are moments to be sure, but overall the album doesn't reach the grand poetry of Sugimoto's cover image or Brian Eno's production. Ultimately, the final four songs - Fez, White as Snow, Breathe, and Cedars of Lebanon - stand alone as testaments to what could have been a rich voyage of sight and sound. Hiroshi Sugimoto writes in L'Histoire de L'Histoire, "Images of the sea have an evocative power to stir distant memories of where we humans come from. Such images possess a profound embracing gentleness, a healing quality of parental love."



Said Taghmaoui rows from Europe to Africa in the final scene from Linear, a film/music video mash-up of U2's songs from No Line on the Horizon directed by Anton Corbijn



Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born 1948)
Sea of Buddhas
gelatin silver print 1995

Sea of Buddhas
The art scene I knew in New York in the 1970s was dominated by minimal and conceptual art, experiments in visualizing how abstract concepts. It occurred to me that similar motives inspired the making of art in twelfth-century Japan, when they reproduced the afterlife conceptualized as the Buddhist Pure Land Western Paradise in model form in this world. Thus we have an installation of a thousand and-one Senju Kanon "Thousand-Armed Merciful Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara" figures passed down eight-hundred years to this day in Kyoto. After seven years of red tape, I was finally granted permission to photograph in the temple of Sanjusangendo, "Hall of Thirty-Three Bays." In special preparation for the shoot, I had all late-medieval and early-modern embellishments removed, as well as having the contemporary fluorescent lighting turned off, recreating the splendor of the thousand bodhisattvas glistening in the light of the morning sun rising over the Higashiyama hills as the Kyoto aristocracy might have seen in the Heian period (794-1185). Will today's conceptual art survive another eight-hundred years?
- Hiroshi Sugimoto




More at:
Hiroshi Sugimoto's Website
Brian Eno's Website
Rothko at the Tate
Anton Corbijn's Website
U2 Performs "Breathe", "Magnificent", "I'll Go Crazy", and "Beautiful Day" on David Letterman



Sunday, March 01, 2009

U2 Performs "Breathe", "Magnificent", "I'll Go Crazy", and "Beautiful Day" on David Letterman

Update: Thoughts on U2 and Sugimoto at: No Line On the Horizon


U2 Plays Breathe on Letterman - March 2, 2009

Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.
- Hiroshi Sugimoto


U2 Plays Magnicent on Letterman - March 3, 2009


U2 Plays I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight on Letterman - March 4, 2009


U2 Plays Beautiful Day on Letterman - March 5, 2009

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

A Delphic Dream

A Delphic Dream
Gregg Chadwick
A Delphic Dream
36"x18" oil on linen 2009

"As I entered the still bowl, bathed now in marble light, I came to that spot in the dead center where the faintest whisper rises like a glad bird and vanishes over the shoulder of the low hill, as the light of a clear day recedes before the black of night...."
- Henry Miller, The Colossus of Marousi

"For the initiated, there is unabashed wonder and humbleness before the sacred. It's as if you've surprised the secret lurking at the heart of the world."
- Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage

Through Tibetan Eyes: Monks Urged by the Dalai Lama to Spend Losar Remembering



Today in Tibet is the start of the holiday Losar which is the Tibetan New Year. Losar (lo, year, sar, new) began as a pre-Buddhist observance in which rituals were performed each winter to appease the spirit protectors of the mountains. After Buddhism arrived in Tibet around the 6th century BCE, the holiday merged with Buddhist traditions. Since the 13th century, Losar has traditionally fallen on the first day of the first lunar month. It is usually a time of new beginnings and great celebration. But this year, the burgundy robed Tibetan Buddhist monks have been urged via cell phone text messages to mark the day with silence and prayer rather than celebration.

The Globe and Mail reports that "the movement to boycott the New Year's events is a highly organized one, originating from the Dalai Lama's home in exile in Dharamsala, in northern India."

"A lot of people were killed on March 14. In our culture, we don't celebrate Losar if someone in your family died during the previous year," said Thubbstan, a 24-year-old Tibetan monk who was passing through Chengdu this week.

Thubbstan referred to the pro-independence protests in Tibet last March that were brutally shut down by Chinese soldiers.
Many monks were killed in the violence.

"We cannot forget our fellow men who sacrificed for our benefit," reads a text message a Tibetan monk received on his cellphone several weeks ago. "To commemorate Losar, we will not celebrate, we will not fire fireworks, we won't wear new clothes, we won't dance, we won't sing. We will protest silently and we will pray."

Through Tibetan Eyes
Gregg Chadwick
Through Tibetan Eyes
72"x96" oil on linen 2008

More at:
We will protest silently and we will pray

Taking Back Our Losar

Monday, February 23, 2009

Screenwriter Dustin Black Honored for His Work on the Film Milk

"When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas to California and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life, it gave me the hope to one day live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married." -- Dustin Lance Black, accepting an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, February 22

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Happy Valentine's Day



Hope that your Valentine's Day was as wonderful as mine. Thought I would give you a few interesting statistics on the day from the History.com site:

"According to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making Valentine's Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.)"

"Approximately 85 percent of all valentines are purchased by women."
Wow. Come on guys.

"In addition to the United States, Valentine's Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia."

"Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages (written Valentine's didn't begin to appear until after 1400), and the oldest known Valentine card is on display at the British Museum. The first commercial Valentine's Day greeting cards produced in the U.S. were created in the 1840s by Esther A. Howland. Howland, known as the Mother of the Valentine, made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as "scrap".

More at:
History of Valentine's Day
History of Valentine's Day Video

Friday, February 13, 2009

Support for the Arts in the Economic Recovery bill!

From Americans for the Arts:

"Just moments ago, the U.S. House of Representatives approved their final version of the Economic Recovery bill by a vote of 246-183. We can now confirm that the package DOES include $50 million in direct support for arts jobs through National Endowment for the Arts grants. We are also happy to report that the exclusionary Coburn Amendment language banning certain arts groups from receiving any other economic recovery funds has also been successfully removed. Tonight the Senate is scheduled to have their final vote, and President Obama plans to sign the bill on Monday - President's Day.

"This is an important victory for all of you as arts advocates. More than 85,000 letters were sent to Congress, thousands of calls were made, and hundreds of op-eds, letters to the editor, news stories, and blog entries were generated in print and online media about the role of the arts in the economy. Artists, business leaders, mayors, governors, and a full range of national, state, and local arts groups all united together on this advocacy issue. This outcome marks a stunning turnaround of events and exemplifies the power of grassroots arts advocacy.

"We would like to also thank some key leaders on Capitol Hill who really carried our voices into the conference negotiation room and throughout the halls of Congress: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), House Appropriations Chairman Dave Obey (D-WI), House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Norm Dicks (D-WA), and Congressional Arts Caucus Co-Chair Louise Slaughter (D-NY). We also want to publicly thank President Obama for taking the early lead in recognizing the role of the arts in economic development. These leaders were able to convincingly make the case that protecting jobs in the creative sector is integral to the U.S. economy."

L.A. Calling: The Airborne Toxic Event Live in Hollywood on February 12, 2009

The Airborne Toxic Event played at the Music Box @ the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood last night. The evening was a homecoming of sorts for The Airborne Toxic Event as members of many of their fellow bands from L.A. were in attendance. The sold out crowd at the concert spanned all ages from kids to grandparents which contributed to the musical reunion vibe. Mikel Jollett, the lead singer and writer, in his drive to connect with the audience, reminded me of a young Bono or Springsteen blended with the bittersweet romantic yearnings of Smiths era Morrissey. Mikkel has a gripping but sweetly humble stage presence that projects power but not swagger. Guitarist Steven Chen lays down a sonic field that gives air and space for Jollett's searching soul to roam. Chen's guitar opens up ambient washes as well as chiming lines that bring to mind the Australian band The Church and the vast spaces found in their song Under the Milky Way. But even with the lyrical guitar and all the strings on stage as Chen told Scott Timberg of the Los Angeles Times that he "always loved it when you take something really clean and proper sounding and dirty it up a little bit.” There is grit in the music as well as haunting desperation in the vocals.


Wishing Well


Lead singer, Mikel Jollett is as much a writer as a musician and I think this is what gives the band such great possibilities and at times can drive some critics to write poison pen letters to the band in place of honest reviews. The painter RB Kitaj faced similar antagonism when he dared to present his writing as on a par with his paintings.


R.B. Kitaj
Los Angeles No. 22
36 x 36 oil on canvas 2002

The longing and loss found at the end of a relationship or the end of a life is a shared human condition that artists strive to get down on paper, or canvas or in song. But, that strange mix of dread, fear, anger, resistance and ultimately letting go can prove elusive or even bathetic in an artistic setting. RB Kitaj's late paintings of love lost work for me as do Mikel Jollett's song stories. The lyrics to the song Sometime Around Midnight are darkly evocative and well worth a read on their own:

Sometime Around Midnight


And it starts sometime around midnight, or at least that's when you lose yourself for a minute or two. As you stand under the bar lights and the band plays some song about forgetting yourself for a while. And the piano's this melancholy sound track to her smile in that white dress she's wearing, you haven't seen her for a while.

But you know that she's watching. She's laughing, she's turning. She's holding her tonic like a cross.
The room suddenly spinning she walks up and asks how you are. So you can smell her perfume. You can see her lying naked in your arms.

And so there's a change in your emotions and all of these memories come rushing like feral waves to your mind: of the curl of your bodies like two perfect circles entwined.

And you feel hopeless, and homeless and lost in the haze of the wine.

Then she leaves with someone you don't know. But she makes sure you saw her she looks right at you and bolts, as she walks out the door, your blood boiling, your stomach in ropes.

And your friends say "What is it? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Then you walk under the streetlights. And you're too drunk to notice that everyone is staring at you.
You just don't care what you look like, the world is falling around you.

You just have to see her
You know that she'll break you in two.


On stage last night the song was riveting. Couples danced, wrapped tightly together in the packed crowd as if this could be their own swan song.


Sometime Around Midnight


The Airborne Toxic Event is at the cusp of stardom and at times Mikel seemed apologetic for their recent success, thanking the audience at numerous times for being there - almost as if he needed to remind himself where he was now and how much he and the band had gone through and how far they still have to travel. Near the end of the night Mikel slipped through the throng pressing up against the stage and climbed up onto a side ledge in full voice while violist Anna Bulbrook was held aloft by the crowd. Mikel invited those lining the stage to join the band for their finale of Missy. The first lines of the song are: "Missy got off the bus one day in a crowded depot in downtown L.A. She looked around as if to say: "I'm home." The band was home for one night only then off to San Francisco the next and on up to the Northwest as the current tour continues. But for that moment as the audience joined the band and danced onstage Mikel's vision of Los Angeles held sway. As he told Molly Bergen, "I love that it’s ... all of these cultures rammed up against each other. People who don't live here think LA is Hollywood. But there are 14 million people here from somewhere else: Salvadorian, Ethiopian, Korean, Armenian...we're just one giant civil stew. "




Echo Park (New Song - First Time Played in Los Angeles)
*These clips by okeastron2008 provide a brief intro to the band and the inspired performance.

More at:
TATE'S website
TATE on LAist
mcsweeneys

Notes:

1. Paul Debraski writing about McSweeney's Issue #27 describes Mikel Jollett's short story in the issue:

"The story concerns a giant crack in the road of a major street of Los Feliz. The foursome gather their spelunking gear (so to speak) and decide to investigate this gigantic crack/sinkhole. As they dive in and discover a gigantic expanse of darkness, they become, obviously, very intrigued. Eventually some neuroses come to light. And, as they proceed further into the cave, they see some extraordinary things."


2. Molly Bergen in the LAist asked Mikel about the band's name:

I read that you took your name from the novel White Noise by Don DeLillo. For those of us who are unfamiliar with the work, what is that referring to?

In the novel The Airborne Toxic Event is a big cloud that is a result of a giant chemical explosion The huge poisonous cloud threatens a nearby town. The hero, Jack, gets exposed to it. He’s told by the doctors that he’s going to die. When he asks when the doctor says, "You may live a week you may live 40 years." Which is really unhelpful because that is true for everyone. The Airborne Toxic Event his fear of death. It changes him in these really important ways. The same thing happened to me in that year I formed the band with my mom dying and my own health problems.

200 (Lincoln)

200 (Lincoln)
Gregg Chadwick
200 (Lincoln)
10"x10" charcoal heightened with white conté on linen 2009

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Monday, February 09, 2009

The Airborne Toxic Event in Concert in Los Angeles on February 12, 2009

Update: My review of the show can be found at L.A. Calling: The Airborne Toxic Event Live in Hollywood on February 12, 2009

My brother, the Seattle (Bainbridge Island for the NW crowd) poet, Kent Chadwick recently sent a belated birthday present my way. In the Chadwick family all holiday presents are belated. So don't worry those gifts will be on their way soon. Inside the package was the amazing debut album by the Silver Lake band (Los Angeles for the NW crowd) The Airborne Toxic Event.
The Airborne Toxic Event will be playing in Hollywood on February 12. 2009 at The Henry Fonda Music Box. A few tickets may still be available at: Henry Fonda Music Box



Singer and guitarist Mikel Jollett leads the band, which takes its name from the novel White Noise by Don DeLillo. In the novel a chemical spill from a railcar releases a poisonous cloud, dubbed by the military as an “airborne toxic event.” DeLillo is the masterful novelist whose work includes Underworld, Mao II, The Body Artist and White Noise (which inspired my painting of the same title.)

White Noise
Gregg Chadwick
White Noise
60"x60" oil on linen 2002






Martin Robinson's recent article in
NME
provides a rich introduction to the band:

The Airborne Toxic Event is centered around Mikel Jollett, "a man very much in the Springsteen mould of raw feeling, anthems and charismatic showmanship. Well, when his ex-girlfriends aren’t in the room, that is. Mikel looks panicked when we meet, and whispers, “The album was written about two girls, and they’re both here.” Yeah, as a former Philip Roth-obsessed fiction writer, he’s got a tendency to not hold back his songs, so his current girlfriend watches out for flying glasses while Mikel introduces us to The Airborne Toxic Event’s moustachioed, Naboo-ish drummer Daren and golden girl (not as in old, just, y’know, golden) violinist Anna. They’ve recently got back from a frankly mental 30 Shows in 30 Days UK tour, which proved to be a lesson in how classy Britain is. Highlights included playing on AstroTurf in a marquee in Hayle, being paid in food in Fife (Daren: “Dude, weird Scottish pies!”) and playing to one shaven-headed man with his trousers undone in Hull (Mikel: “He was staring at Anna. I was figuring out how to aim my guitar at his head if he touched her”).

"Mikel remembers how the US election changed how they were welcomed around the country. “I was walking in Camden the morning after and people were high-fiving me. Like, ‘You finally did something right!’” You could say (if you wanted) that Obama’s transforming of America’s image is being reflected in the way Mikel is trying to change the image of LA. As he introduces us to local legends The Movies, he insists, “Where we live has nothing to do with the Hollywood industry.” Certainly, in contrast to most hipster scenes, everyone is incredibly friendly."




The Airborne Toxic Event signed with a smaller record label, Majordomo Records, in April 2008,releasing their first self-titled record in August, 2008. In December iTunes named Sometime Around Midnight the best alternative song of 2008. In January 2009, the band appeared on David Letterman. (Video below)


Sometime Around Midnight with Calder Quartet on TV

Upon the release of their debut album, The Airborne Toxic Event received a hatchet job of a review by Ian Cohen on Pitchfork. In their best Bernard Black effort (see video below) the band sent an open letter to the critic.



An Open Letter to Pitchfork Media from the Airborne Toxic Event
By The Airborne Toxic Event • September 17, 2008


Dear Ian,

Thanks for your review of our record. It’s clear that you are a good writer and it’s clear that you took a lot of time giving us a thorough slagging on the site. We are fans of Pitchfork. And it’s fun to slag off bands. It’s like a sport — kind of part of the deal when you decide to be in a rock band. (That review of Jet where the monkey pees in his own mouth was about the funniest piece of band-slagging we’ve ever seen.)


Bernard Black's Rejection

We decided a long time ago not to take reviews too seriously. For one, they tend to involve a whole lot of projection, generally saying more about the writer than the band. Sort of a musical Rorschach test. And for another, reading them makes you too damned self-conscious, like the world is looking over your shoulder when the truth is you’re not a genius or a moron. You’re just a person in a band.

Plus, the variation of opinions on our record has bordered on absurd. 80 percent of what’s been said has been positive, a few reviews have remained on the fence and a few (such as yours) have been aggressively harsh. We tend not to put a lot of stock in this stuff, but the sheer disagreement of opinion makes for fascinating (if not a bit narcissistic) reading.

And anyway we have to admit that we found ourselves oddly flattered by your review. I mean, 1.6? That is not faint praise. That is not a humdrum slagging. That is serious fist-pounding, shoe-stomping anger. Many publications said this was among the best records of the year. You seem to think it’s among the worst. That is so much better than faint praise.

You compare us to a lot of really great bands (Arcade Fire, the National, Bright Eyes, Bruce Springsteen) and even if your intention was to cut us down, you end up describing us as: “lyrically moody, musically sumptuous and dramatic.” One is left only to conclude that you must think those things are bad.

We love indie rock and we know full well that Pitchfork doesn’t so much critique bands as critique a band’s ability to match a certain indie rock aesthetic. We don’t match it. It’s true that the events described in these songs really happened. It’s true we wrote about them in ways that make us look bad. (Sometimes in life you are the hero, and sometimes, you are the cuckold. Sometimes you’re screaming about your worst fears, your most vicious jealousies and failures. Such is life.) It’s also true that the record isn’t ironic or quirky or fey or disinterested or buried beneath mountains of guitar noodling.

As writers, we admire your tenacity and commitment to your tone (even though you do go too far with your assumptions about us). You’re wrong about our intentions, you’re wrong about how this band came together, you don’t seem to get the storytelling or the catharsis or the humor in the songs, and you clearly have some misconceptions about who we are as a band and who we are as people.

But it also seems to have very little to do with us. Much of your piece reads less like a record review and more like a diatribe against a set of ill-considered and borderline offensive preconceptions about Los Angeles. Los Angeles has an extremely vibrant blogging community, Silver Lake is a very close-knit rock scene. We are just one band among many. (And by the way, L.A. does have a flagship indie rock band: they’re called Silversun Pickups). We cut our teeth at Spaceland and the Echo and have nothing to do with whatever wayward ideas you have about the Sunset Strip. That’s just bad journalism.

But that is the nature of this sort of thing. It’s always based on incomplete information. Pitchfork has slagged many, many bands we admire (Dr. Dog, the Flaming Lips, Silversun Pickups, Cold War Kids, Black Kids, Bright Eyes [ironic, no?] just to name a few), so now we’re among them. Great.

This band was borne of some very very dark days and the truth is that there is something exciting about just being part of this kind of thing. There’s this long history of dialogue between bands and writers so it’s a bit of a thrill that you have such a strong opinion about us.

We hear you live in Los Angeles. We’d love for you to come to a show sometime and see what we’re doing with these lyrically moody and dramatic songs. You seem like a true believer when it comes to music and writing so we honestly think we can’t be too far apart. In any case, it would make for a good story.

all our best–

Mikel, Steven, Anna, Daren, Noah
the Airborne Toxic Event




Below is the review, from the front page of Pitchfork:

The Airborne Toxic Event: The Airborne Toxic Event
[Majordomo; 2008]
Rating: 1.6


I probably couldn’t get anyone here in Los Angeles to admit it, but the city lacks a flasgship upstart indie band and wants one in the worst way—one both a little fresher than Spin cover stars Beck and Rilo Kiley and with more mainstream potential than the bands from the Smell. The onus would likely fall on the folkier, cuddlier Silver Lake/Los Feliz scene, but over the past three years it feels as if the area’s bands have failed to rise to the occasion.

It’s no surprise that many are betting the house on the Airborne Toxic Event– their debut album is lyrically moody, musically sumptuous, and dramatic. Their name is even a transparent DeLillo reference, and every one of the 10 tracks sounds like it can be preceded with radio chatter. The Airborne Toxic Event have done their homework. But unless you’re a certain French duo, homework rarely results in good pop music, and The Airborne Toxic Event is an album that’s almost insulting in its unoriginality; while the sound most outsiders attribute to Los Angeles has been marginalized to Metal Skool and the average customer at the Sunset Boulevard Guitar Center, TATE embodies the Hollywood ideal of paying lip service to the innovations of mavericks while trying to figure out how to reduce it to formula.

Throughout, the Airborne Toxic Event show a surface-level familiarity with early 00s critics lists, but aren’t able to convey what made those much-lauded recods emotionally resonant. Can’t convert unthinkable tragedy into cathartic, absolutely alive music like Arcade Fire? Just steal the drum pattern from “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”? Can’t connect with the listener with the same fourth-wall busting intimacy as Bright Eyes? That’s when you trot out the run-on sentences and get all tremulous when you mean it, man. And that’s just the first song. Not privy to the Strokes’ accidental poetry and concise songwriting? Get a distorted microphone. Want a hit as big as “Mr. Brightside”, but take yourself too seriously to conjure a semblance of juicy melodrama? Grab a half-assed disco beat and boom, you’re now ready to write the limpdicked cuckold behind “Does This Mean You’re Moving On?”

And while it’s understandable that a debut should owe such enormous debts, what really rankles is the unrelenting entitlement that assumes cred via sonic proximity– it’s the musical equivalent of showing up to a bar with a bad fake ID and throwing a hissy-fit when you get carded. While lead singer Mikel Jollett can alternately sound like Paul Banks, Win Butler, Conor Oberst, or Matt Berninger, what ties the LP together is quite possibly the most unlikeable lyric book of the year, rife with empty dramatic signifiers, AA/BB simplicity, and casual misogyny. If Social Distortion did Bruce Springsteen instead of callow Johnny Cash fan fic, you might get the lock-limbed anti-rock of “Gasoline”, but my god– “We were only 17/ We were holding back our screams/ Like we tore it from the pages of some lipstick magazine.” Before you can comprehend just how clichéd and yet somehow meaningless that line is, by the next hook he’s replaced “screams” with “dreams” and “lipstick” with “girlie,” before he’s “only 21 [and] not having any fun.” Then something about “bullets from a gun.”

If only that were the low point. It pains me to pan “Sometime Around Midnight” on concept alone because, man, we’ve all been there. Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before: There’s a club if you’d like to go…except maybe when you go home and cry and want to die, and it reduces you to putting your thoughts on paper in rhyme form. The next morning, you thank god no one’s seen it but you. The Airborne Toxic Event aren’t so private, alas. As the ill-fated narrator sees his ladyfriend in a “white dress” “holding a tonic like a cross” while “a piano plays a melancholy soundtrack to her smile” (what bars do these guys go to?). He imagines holding her naked “like two perfect circles entwined.” After five minutes pass, she leaves with “some man you don’t know” and then your friends look at you “like you’ve seen a ghost.” There’s a possibility this is just a po-mo exercise, writing a song about writing a song about how some girl not wanting to fuck you is some sort of epic human calamity, but judging by the out-of-nowhere string section that opens the thing for the first minute, I doubt these guys are playing. It begins a stunning about-face that finds the band spending the rest of the record trying to be Jimmy Eat World.

In a way, The Airborne Toxic Event is something of a landmark record: This represents a tipping point where you almost wish Funeral or Turn on the Bright Lights or Is This It? never happened as long as it spared you from horrible imitations like this one, often sounding more inspired by market research than actual inspiration. Congrats, Pitchfork reader– the Airborne Toxic Event thinks you’re a demographic.

- Ian Cohen, September 17, 2008

Ian Cohen's efforts seemed to have failed as the band and their music grow in popularity and influence. I will be at their show on Thursday, More thoughts to follow ...