On the brink by Somyaa

On the brink...

... she searched as if she had been thirsty whole night

for a poem she could drink

she found out

soon enough

she is not a poet

nor was meant to be,

a witch ; 

she was not a martyr

nor a virgin,

again on a forgotten way

again on the brink...

she searched as if she had been thirsty whole night

for a poem she could drink...

- by Somyaa

Gregg Chadwick

Acadia

48"x36" oil on linen 2004

 Somyaa has paired my painting Acadia with her remarkable poem.

Bruce Springsteen's New Single Bleeds Compassion

by Gregg Chadwick

Bruce Springsteen's first single "We Take Care of Our Own", off his forthcoming album "Wrecking Ball", opens with pounding drums and a guitar screaming like a siren. The song is a call to action and a populist anthem that follows up where "Born in the USA" left off. With a nod to the Clash, the cover of the single is a blurry, black and white photo of a black leather and guitar clad Springsteen overlaid with crudely scrawled white type that evokes the windows of closed up storefronts and used car lots.

"Where are the eyes with the will to see?" Springsteen wails. From his vantage point, good hearts have been turned to stone. We are our brother's keeper. But what happened? "From Chicago to New Orleans, from the muscle to the bone, From the shotgun shack to the Superdome", Springsteen growls. "Where's the promise from sea to shining sea?"

photo by Gregg Chadwick

The album was recorded before the current occupy Wall Street protests, but as a devoted follower of John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie, Springsteen had his finger on the pulse of a country that has succumbed to greed and apathy.  For most of Springsteen's career, the American Dream was a false promise. Now Springsteen realizes that we are a nation of citizens that need to take care of each other, that the promise can be realized if we take care of our own.

Much more to follow...

Listen to Bruce Springsteen's New Single "We Take Care of Our Own": at New Bruce

Available Now from iTunes in the UK at 

Available tomorrow -Thursday, January 19, 2012 - at Amazon in the US

Further Discussions on Springsteen's "We Take Care of Our Own":

LA Times First Take on Pop and Hiss

Ann Powers writes for NPR on Springsteen's New Wave of Social Protest 

Salon: The Boss Embraces Occupy

Gregg Chadwick
Belle Ville
11"x11" oil on linen 2005
Private Collection Los Angeles

"From Chicago to New Orleans, From the Muscle to the Bone, From the Shotgun Shack to the Superdome"

Lyrics to "We Take Care of Our Own" by Bruce Springsteen

(No mondegreens I hope):

I've been knockin' on the door that holds the throne
I've been lookin' for the map that leads me home
I've been stumblin' on good hearts turned to stone
The road of good intentions has gone dry as a bone
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag 's flown
We take care of our own

From Chicago to New Orleans
From the muscle to the bone
From the shotgun shack to the Superdome

There ain't no help, the cavalry stayed home,
There ain't no one hearing the bugle blown
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag 's flown
We take care of our own

Where are the eyes, the eyes with the will to see?
Where are the hearts, that run over with mercy?
Where's the love that has not forsaken me?
Where's the work that'll set my hands, my soul free?
Where's the spirit that'll reign, reign over me?
Where's the promise, from sea to shining sea?
Where's the promise, from sea to shining sea?

Wherever this flag is flown
Wherever this flag is flown
Wherever this flag is flown

We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag 's flown
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag 's flown
We take care of our own

More Song by Song Reviews of Wrecking Ball:

1. We Take Care of Our Own

2. Easy Money

3. Shackled and Drawn

4. Jack of All Trades

5. Death to My Hometown

6. This Depression

7. Wrecking Ball

8. You've Got It

9. Rocky Ground

10. Land of Hope and Dreams

11. We Are Alive

More at:

"Bruce Springsteen's widescreen vision of America on Wrecking Ball is filled with terror, tension, tenacity and above all else, triumph which may not replenish your bank account, but it will replenish your soul."

-Anthony Kuzminski, Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball, antiMusic

"What was done to my country was un-American."

Shackled and Drawn

Jack of All Trades

Death to My Hometown

From Down Under: Sean Sennett Talks With Springsteen About Wrecking Ball

All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly

The Working Man's Voice - The Wall Street Journal

A More Chaste Review of You've Got It by Jonathan Lack

Parsing the Samples and Quotes on Wrecking Ball

Bruce Springsteen, Théatre Marigny press conference, Paris, February 2012

Live Q&A With Angelina Jolie - Writer and Director of the New Film - In the Land of Blood and Honey

Watch live streaming video from partnershub at livestream.com

RSVP and tune in to ask questions LIVE! Live Q&A w/ Angelina Jolie - Writer and Director of the new film:

In the Land of Blood and Honey

Written and directed by Angelina Jolie. Starring Zana Marjanović and Goran Kostić. Set against the backdrop of the Bosnian War that tore the Balkan region apart in the 1990s, In the Land of Blood and Honey tells the story of Danijel (Goran Kostić) and Ajla (pronounced Ayla) (Zana Marjanović), two Bosnians from different sides of a brutal ethnic conflict. Danijel, a Bosnian Serb police officer, and Ajla, a Bosnian Muslim artist, are together before the war, but their relationship is changed as violence engulfs the country. Months later, Danijel is serving under his father, General Nebojsa Vukojevich (Rade Šerbedžija), as an officer in the Bosnian Serb Army. He and Ajla come face to face again when she is taken from the apartment she shares with her sister, Lejla (Vanesa Glodjo), and Lejla's infant child by troops under Danijel's command. As the conflict takes hold of their lives, their relationship changes, their motives and connection to one another become ambiguous and their allegiances grow uncertain. In the Land of Blood and Honey portrays the incredible emotional, moral and physical toll that the war takes on individuals as well as the consequences that stem from the lack of political will to intervene in a society stricken with conflict.

• In the Land of Blood and Honey Offical Site

Under the El

by Gregg Chadwick

Gregg Chadwick

Under the El

30"x20" oil on linen 2012

Chicago is a city of pulse and rhythm.  The city itself is a song. It clangs and roars by day and whispers laments at night. 

Standing under the El on a hot August day, listening to the hum of traffic echoing off of steel, concrete and flesh inspired my first painting of 2012. Chicago seemed to soak up the light last summer, lending the streets a shimmering presence much like the wet Parisian boulevards in Gustave Caillebotte's Paris Street, Rainy Day. Caillebotte's masterpiece hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago, just blocks from the El.  Standing in front of the painting last summer, after coming in from the heat, I felt my heart beating -providing an audible rhythm to Caillebotte's figures stilled in the silent air.

Gustave Caillebotte Paris Street, Rainy Day (Detail) 83.5"x108.75" oil on canvas 1876-77 The Art Institute of Chicago photo by Gregg Chadwick Gustave Caillebotte Paris Street, Rainy Day 83.5"x108.75" oil on canvas 1876-77 The Art Institute of Chicago photo by Gregg Chadwick

Watch Portlandia's 2012 Season Premiere

The hilarious television sketch comedy Portlandia debuts its second season tomorrow night on IFC.
But you can watch the episode now on Speed of Life. Enjoy!

Happy New Year!

What Are You Doing New Years Eve? by Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Helen Frankenthaler 1928-2011

by Gregg Chadwick

Helen Frankenthaler

Mountains and Sea

7' 2 5/8" x 9' 9 1/4" oil on canvas 1952

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

"Fashion and money, fame and power politics have played a part in all art worlds. You've just got to plug away.... I see a revival of the meaning of the word "quality"---a search for truth and beauty in lieu of stock certificates. People are most interested in what's real, what endures."

- Helen Frankenthaler (From a Conversation With Lee Rosenbaum)

Helen Frankenthaler's painting Mountains and Sea opened a painterly universe. She poured, dripped, and floated thinned oil paint directly onto an unprimed canvas, creating a stained surface in which the pigment spread into and throughout the canvas fibers. The painting is mesmerizing, like the open sea is mesmerizing. Color beckons almost like song. As viewers we take the role of Odysseus, some will remain tied to a mast - fighting the beauty and lyricism. Others, myself included, let Helen Frankenthaler's hand lead us into the unknown. 

She will be sorely missed. 

Helen Frankenthaler Painting

From a Series of Photographs by Ernst Haas Taken in 1969

Helen Frankenthaler Amidst Her Art in 1956

Photographer: Gordon Parks for LIFE Magazine

More at:
A Search for Truth and Beauty by Lee Rosenbaum

Helen Frankenthaler dies at 83; abstract painter

For the Holidays: The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey - Trailer #1

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Trailer #1

One Year Left to Read the Book First For Those Who Haven't Had the Chance. Wonderful Adventure.

Happy Holidays!

Casing the Colors: The End of the War in Iraq

by Gregg Chadwick

Colors

40"x30" oil on linen
March 2003-December 2011

painting by Gregg Chadwick

Today, with the casing of the colors in Baghdad, another war has ended. My thoughts are with the families who have lost loved ones and with the troops who are returning home. A few weeks ago I was on a flight from LAX to Monterey seated near a young soldier who had just returned from Iraq. He was eager to talk and chatted about his specialization in the Army and his plans for the immediate future. A tech job in Silicon Valley beckoned. The men and women coming home from Iraq have given much for our country and have much more to offer our society in the future.


I remember when my father came home from Vietnam. Having fought in Korea as well, this was the end of his second war. Our family reunited overseas delaying my father's reentry into life in the US. There were no parades and because my father stayed in the Corps as an active duty Marine, little seemed to change when we finally flew back to the States and moved into what would be the first in a succession of new billets, new homes, and new schools. Even for warriors, life goes on.


War stories weren't often told in my family. I learned more about my father's tour in Vietnam from Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War than I did from conversations around the dinner table. (My father is an important, though unnamed character in Caputo's book.) As a boy, I knew there were things I wouldn't ever truly understand and gave returning soldiers their private psychological space. As an adult, I understand that we all need to have our stories heard patiently and sympathetically. I have also learned that the fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers of those killed in action care deeply that their sons and daughters are not forgotten.

Arlington

48"x36" oil on linen 2004

painted by Gregg Chadwick

Collection National Museum of the Marine Corps

During the eight year span of the Iraq War, I have had the honor to connect with the families of two young men who gave their all. United States Marine Corporal Kemaphoom "Ahn" Chanawongse of Waterford, Connecticut was killed in action during operations on the outskirts of An Nasiriyah, Iraq on March 23, 2003. Chanawongse was assigned to 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. My painting Arlington, which is now part of the collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps, was inspired by Ahn's funeral. Chanawongse was a Thai-American Buddhist, so his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery included saffron robed Buddhist monks as well as US Marines in their dress blues.


The painting began as an image of a US Marine in Iraq silhouetted against a gunpowdered sky at dusk. That painting was subsequently worked into and eventually over-painted with the present image when the reports and images in the New York Times of Ahn’s funeral brought back childhood memories of watching “taps” played at dusk during the Evening Parade at the Marine Corps Barracks in Washington DC. I met Ahn's courageous and inspiring parents in Washington DC when Arlington was exhibited at the Arts Club of Washington during The One Word Project exhibition which was curated by J.T. Kirkland and ran from August 28th through September 29th, 2007.

Mark Daily

    "We Carry A New World In Our Hearts"

5"x5" oil on panel 2011

Painting by Gregg Chadwick

Earlier this year, I was asked by curator Sherry Moore to contribute a painting of United States Army 2nd Lieutenant Mark Daily to the Portraits of the Fallen Memorial. This memorial when completed will include portraits of all the service members from California killed during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the start of the project I had the honor to meet Mark's widow, Snejana "Janet" Hristova, at my studio and was inspired by her courage and resilience. She spoke tenderly of Mark and the media attention after his death.


Christopher Hitchens in his moving article on Mark for Vanity Fair described the young Lieutenant's bravery:

"Lieutenant Daily crossed from Kuwait to Iraq in November 2006, where he would be deployed with the "C," or "Comanche," Company of the Second Battalion of the Seventh Cavalry Regiment—General Custer's old outfit—in Mosul. On the 15th of January last, he was on patrol and noticed that the Humvee in front of him was not properly "up-armored" against I.E.D.'s. He insisted on changing places and taking a lead position in his own Humvee, and was shortly afterward hit by an enormous buried mine that packed a charge of some 1,500 pounds of high explosive."

Christopher Hitchens goes on to share a telling portion of a letter that Mark Daily sent home from Iraq to his wife Janet:

"One thing I have learned about myself since I've been out here is that everything I professed to you about what I want for the world and what I am willing to do to achieve it was true. …
My desire to "save the world" is really just an extension of trying to make a world fit for you."

Like Mark I graduated from UCLA. My wife, MarySue Heilemann, is a tenured professor in Nursing at UCLA and teaches on ethics and the philosophy of science. To stir up the latent creativity in her graduate students, MarySue brought in the musician Peter Himmelman to lead a creativity session. As a friend of Peter's and at my wife's request, I attended the session and I ended up writing a song on my experiences painting Mark's portrait. Peter Himmelman added music to the lyrics and the song, Spit and Polish Blue, was finished for Veterans Day.

 Written on the back of this photograph Mark Daily sent home from Mosul, Iraq is the phrase, "We carry a new world in our hearts." I included the phrase as a coda at the end of the song Spit and Polish Blue:

Spit and Polish Blue 

 Lyrics by Gregg Chadwick

Music by Peter Himmelman 

How do I paint a picture of a man I never met?

Your wife brought me images she never wants to forget.

If I had met you, there would be a clue 

-as I looked into your eyes of spit and polish blue.

 I’m sitting in a classroom, the place where you first signed on

The chalk dust still hovers here , everything else is gone.

L.A. was just a start for something new

as you first dressed in green and spit and polish blue. 

How do I paint a picture of a man who gave it all?

And what colors give justice to the way you answered your call?

Mother Mary, can I borrow your hue?

Only lapis could color your eyes of spit and polish blue. 

And the sands outside of Mosul blind your buddy’s eyes.

And the Desert wind carries its own peculiar sighs.

You went first –took the point.

Like words written on a photograph,

The wind it whispers its sacred epitaph

The wind whispers as breath departs,

“We carry a new world in our hearts.”

More at:

Matt Gallagher in the New York Times on Mark Daily

Portraits of the Fallen Project

Info on Peter Himmelman

The author Christopher Hitchens' piece on Mark Daily in Vanity Fair in 2007.

The One Word Project

Take a minute to look back at the moments that brought us to this point, then share a personal message of gratitude with those who have served. Part of ending a war responsibly is standing by those who have fought it. It's not enough to honor our heroes with words; we must do so with deeds. That's why we've worked to send 600,000 veterans and family members back to school on the Post-9/11 GI Bill. That's why one of Michelle's top priorities as First Lady has been to support military families and why she's worked with the private sector to get commitments to create 100,000 jobs for those who've served and their spouses. That's why we worked with Congress to pass a tax credit so that companies have an incentive to hire vets and have taken steps to help veterans translate military experience to the private sector job market. In America, our commitment to those who fight for our freedom and our ideals doesn't end when our troops take off the uniform. You can be a part of this effort to honor our heroes. Help mark this moment. Write a quick note that troops and veterans all over the world will be able to see: http://www.whitehouse.gov/iraq Thank you, President Barack Obama

Berlin in Rauch Licht (Berlin in Smoke Light)

by Gregg Chadwick


Gregg Chadwick
Berlin in Rauch Licht (Berlin in Smoke Light)
24"x18" oil on linen 2011
Private Collection Los Angeles

Berlin embodies the future and at the same time carries the scars of the past. While recently in Berlin my painting Rauch Licht (Berlin in Smoke Light) was inspired by the palpable sense of beauty and the smoke of time seemingly hovering in the air. A soundtrack of Bowie, Lou Reed and U2 almost audibly haunts this mysterious vision. Will light let us break free from this Berlin Noir?

Darlene Love with the E Street Band and the Miami Horns - All Alone On Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All!
Darlene Love lead vocals

--- The E Street Band ---
Clarence Clemons tenor sax solo
Danny Federici keyboards
Garry Tallent bass
Steven Van Zandt guitars
Patti Scialfa - backing vocals
Max Weinberg drums

--- The Miami Horns ---
Mark Pender trumpet
Rick Gazda trumpet
Stan Harrison tenor sax
Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg trombone
Eddie Manion baritone sax
Arno Hecht saxophone


Pat Thrall guitars
Mark Alexander piano
Ula Hedwig backing vocals
Edna Wright backing vocals
Zoë Yanakis percussion
Benjamin Newberry chimes

The Ghost in the Human Machine: Tony Bennett's Nude Drawing of Lady Gaga

by Gregg Chadwick

Lady Gaga Poses For Tony Bennett in His Atelier

photo and concept by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair

During Lady Gaga's entertaining Thanksgiving special she joked about her brief gig as a life model for singer and visual artist Tony Bennett. Gaga recounted:

"I walked in and said, 'Well, Tony, here we are,' and I dropped my robe and I got into position. I felt shy and thought, 'It's Tony Bennett. Why am I naked?"

Lady Gaga had come face to face with what Kathleen Rooney describes as the “spine-tingling combination of power and vulnerability, submission and dominance” of nude modeling in her
marvelous book Live Nude Girl : My Life As An Object. Rooney's book provides an introspective look at the history and challenges of art modeling from the model's point of view. Rooney's meditative prose leads us to a point of connection between muse and artist.
Why after centuries of images in charcoal, paint, stone and silver print do artists still feel the need to depict the human figure? For me it is our shared connection as sentient, sexual, and spiritual beings. By taking the time to deeply look at and into another person we move closer to finding the ghost in the human machine. At our core we are all naked.

Tony Bennett

Figure Study of Lady Gaga

18"x24" charcoal on paper 2011

 Tony Bennett's nude charcoal drawing of Lady Gaga is up for auction at eBay Celebrity, with proceeds to benefit the two singers' foundations – Tony Bennett's Exploring the Arts and Lady Gaga's Born This Way. 

Gregg Chadwick
The Rose of Time
30"x20" oil on linen 201o
Manifesta Maastricht Gallery, The Netherlands

More at:

Rolling Stone on Lady Gaga's Art Model Gig With Tony Bennett
Live Nude Girl : My Life As An Object