And, if you're a glutton for whatever...

If you are a glutton for, say, punishment (in this case punishment being defined as me feeding you complementary articles written about me and you then reading them), you can also go here to see "The Annotated Bear" shown and me and "The Annotated Fed" discussed by The New York Observer--one of my absolute favorite newspapers.

What's also fun, as far as I'm concerned, is that the reporter, Lysandra Ohrstrom, casts me not just as the painter of record--my phrase, not hers--but as a pundit! A man with his fingers on the pulse of the street! To paraphrase John F. Kennedy as he spoke to a throng of Germans 20-some years ago: Ich bin Jim Cramer! I should call the Fox Business Network.

One quibble: I'm quoted as saying “... If you’re a short seller you may be having a great year, but you’re still not optimistic,” when I think I said, "Even if you’re a short seller, you may be having a great year, but that doesn't mean you're optimistic about the economy.”

I also loved it when Kennedy said, while hammering the podium with his shoe: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

Now that guy, if I've got it right, was a president.

Nothing too raunchy, and stay off the face

There's a fine line between art and pornography. Take a look at one of my "Cheerleader with Banana" paintings. Or perhaps "The Ecstasy of St. Theresa"...



which, let me tell you, at fourteen by five, on two panels, is a serious, serious painting and would--and I say this without even having ever been in your living room--look mighty nice over the sofa. $17,000.

That said, the title of this post refers to two things: a) it being what I typically say to people when I hand them a marker just prior to them annotating one of my paintings; and b) the title of an article about me in New York Magazine. Of course I like to say "in New York Magazine" when I, in fact, really mean "on the New York Magazine website."

That said, if you go here right now (and I'm writing this around 10:30 pm), you can read a fun article about The Annotated Fed. The link will also take you to the electronic brochure for my upcoming show.

Note: If, by the time you drag your ass to the New York website, the article has slipped off the front, you can click here to read the thing. But it's more fun to see it on the front page.

Here's how your friends mess with you

I love that scene in The Godfather when Brando says to the undertaker, "Look how they messed with my boy." Which, if I'm not mistaken, was supposed to read "massacred" instead of "messed with"--at least according to one script I saw.

Anyway that's a bit off point. Here's the story:

I send the shot you see below via email to a good friend. I say something like: "I'm thinking of calling it "Maybe I should try portrait painting" or something like that.

He writes back asking if it's Art Garfunkel.

You think this stuff is easy? Look how they mess with me.

Wow, it's been a while.

It's been a while since I last posted. This, plus some other stuff, is what I've been up to:



The title is some version of "Black Jackson (Maybe I should try portraiture)".

It is, as you can imagine, an exploration of the moment of Jackson Pollock's reinvention of himself as a painter--where he decides to maintain his drip style of painting but rejigger his painterly calculus, if you will, and begin painting representational portraits. A kind of Geoff Raymond/Chuck Close fusion, if you can envision that.

The moment is, of course, a fictional one. He plowed his Oldsmobile convertible (a pretty nice set of wheels in those days) into a tree in 1956, killing himself and a friend, and rendering moot his transfiguration.

Thus, with a jump of about fifty years, the mantle has been passed to me.

"Black Jackson" is the final piece for my Andes show. It may not be quite done, but I could take it to market right now and feel okay about it.

Update on The Choppa

One of my collectors writes:

A little lax in my reading of the Year(s) of Magical Painting, but your post from last Tuesday, with the "Get in the Choppa” reference on the Big Ben painting. (Or accurately, “Get TO the Choppa” in the movie) refers to this, from Wikipedia, which actually makes it pretty funny.

“In 2002, when the word "deflation" began appearing in the business news, Bernanke gave a speech about deflation.[13] In that speech, he mentioned that the government in a fiat money system owns the physical means of creating money. Control of the means of production for money implies that the government can always avoid deflation by simply issuing more money. (He referred to a statement made by Milton Friedman about using a "helicopter drop" of money into the economy to fight deflation.) Bernanke's critics have since referred to him as "Helicopter Ben" or to his "helicopter printing press". In a footnote to his speech, Bernanke noted that "people know that inflation erodes the real value of the government's debt and, therefore, that it is in the interest of the government to create some inflation."[13]

My upcoming show...

For the most comprehensive take on what the show will look like, click here. I'd say get back to me but that sounds like a lousy idea.

It's 95 degrees

It's roughly 95 degrees, maybe hotter in the studio.  My paint is the consistency of soup.  Or rather, I should say, the paint in my tubes, which is supposed to be the consistency of toothpaste, is the consistency of soup.  The paint in my cans, which is supposed to be the consistency of soup, is the consistency of water.  

The product is suffering.

As am I.

That said, war is hell.  And they don't stop the war because it's cold, or because it's hot.  You just keep shooting your gun and try to stay hydrated.

Sung to the tune of "A day in the life"

I sold my car today. Oh boy!

Add here some other alternative lyrics I don't have the energy to pimp out. Pump out?

Closing with a really big, sustained E major.

Historical note: the sustained E chord at the end of the Beatles' version lasts 42 seconds. Near the end of the chord the recording levels were turned so high that listeners can hear the sounds of the studio, including rustling papers and a squeaking chair.

Where else would you get this stuff?

This would be Albert Hall...



Oh boy.

"Buy your own paper clips..."

Somebody wrote this on my Jimmy Cayne portrait. It's a reference to the corporate culture at Bear Stearns where niceties like pens, paper clips, desk chairs, etc. were not just hanging around for the taking. You were more or less expected to provide your own.

Another person described that same culture as "you eat what you kill."

Okay, that's all well and good. And if we assume Goldman Sachs to be the cultural polar opposite of Bear Stearns--everyone gets a desk chair (I'm just assuming), and the paper clips and pens are in the supply closet (ditto)--then how come two Goldman guys, after annotating Big Ben, hightailed it with my red markers?

This, I have to tell you, left me a bit high and dry, marker-wise. The good news is that it happened @ 3:30, meaning I had to make due with a single red marker for only about 45 minutes.

But still, really. Buy your own magic markers.

This, for the record, is Big Ben, in situ:

Get in tha choppa!!

The fact that life confuses me is part of my charm. I'm told.

That said, I like to think I'm pretty tuned into popular culture. So when a guy rolls up on The Annotated Fed, nabs a sharpie and writes: "Get in tha choppa!!"--well, I'm here to tell you I was a bit befuddled.



I explain my confusion.

He looks at me and does his best Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation. "Get in da choppa" he says. Then he walks away.

Ahhh. Of course.

This is, I believe, what he was referring to:



What it has to do with this man and the work he's doing, I can't begin to tell you.



Anyway, this is where we stand at the end of Day 1. I'm pretty pleased, but there are a few too many tourists cruising Broad Street during the summer and not enough hard-core financial types. Some of the comments are pretty generic, and I'm looking for tightly focused, cogent analyses of domestic monetary policy.

Tomorrow I'll be behind Goldman Sachs, where, I assume, I will receive exactly that.

The Annotated Fed

This is The Annotated Fed...



As you can see, it is not as yet annotated. Check back this afternoon and we'll see what we have then. If you are completely out of the loop, the subject is Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. I love his imperious gaze.

The plan is as follows: Every day I'm out there will be annotated with a different colored pen. This time I'll make no distinction between the general public and members of the financial community. I will spend 4-8 days over the next several weeks getting it annotated and I will then include this painting plus The Annotated Spitzer plus, on loan, my other two annotated paintings (Cayne and Murdoch) in a show in Andes, NY in August.

That said, I will accept a serious offer on the street, or over the transom, or by email (see "contact me" in the right column). A bird in the hand, after all, being what a bird in the hand is.

Or, if you are interested, you can call me at 917 693 9936.

This painting is not available in eBay.

The turning point

We're still all screwed up, but it might be interesting for you to see what I believe is the turning point in "BFJ 2." Here is where we left off...



And here is what happened.



Note the change to black on the lower left. More important but less obvious, notice also the changes in the fingers and nose. This painting is all about the fingers and the eyes, by the way, so isn't it fortuitous that one of the fingers is pointing right at one eye and the most prominent diagonal vector draws you right to the other one? Sometimes life is good.

Sometimes not, it should also be noted. Ask Rocco Mediate. Anyway, here is where we stand now:



As you can see, I've obliterated the lower right part of the picture. An interim photo would show you that I painted it white first, then poured and dabbed the yellow to get this image. There's a part of me that thinks I should just leave it like this--like that famous painting of George Washington.

I do, by the way, very much love the gentle s-curve that runs vertically along the left side of the image, described at the bottom by the knuckle and index finger, then the eye and orbital bulge, then the limning of the forehead. I like writing "limning," even if this isn't exactly what's going on. Maybe it's gloaming, although that has something to do with night falling. And perhaps faeries.

Anyway, the fact that I like this painting very much does add a bit of pressure to the question of what the hell to do about the lower right section. My feeling? I'm gonna start "Black Jackson" and not worry about it for a while. Direct from the Fromagerie, this is the resource image for "Black Jackson." The painting will be executed in a black and white obscured box technique, 4'x5', similar to "The Warren Commission 1."

Except it's gonna be a horizontal. Which is unusual for me.



Finally, back to "BFJ 2," if I might be allowed.

Obviously I can't leave it like it is. Despite the George Washington thing. So, I am considering the following:

1--Make the right shoulder like the left
2--Make the right shoulder appear to be nude (for lack of a better word), and just throw down some orange, yellow and maybe green stuff (maybe just dots and spots) to suggest the idea.
3--Go with a standard, open drip style, either black or green (although I worry about too much green) or purple (which is what it was when we began) and recreate the shoulder on the right side as a lighter variation of the darkness on the edge of town (that being the lower left side).
4--Or something that just hits me after a couple of beers.

We, I suppose, should all have such problems.

Just to show you how green I am...

Referring back to the green/blue distinction discussed below, just to show you how green a painter I am, witness this:



BFJ 2.

While not done, we are almost. Actually almost isn't quite the word. But we are closing in. I may end up whiting out the purple shoulders and rethinking that whole thing. And the index finger is a problem. That said, I am very pleased with everything starting at the eyeglasses and up. I mean, who really has green hair, and yet, at least in my humble opinion, it is working like nobody's business.

Regarding being almost done, likewise Big Fucking Julian )which has actually undergone some small modifications on the right side of the canvas since you have last seen him). Inspired by Jason Giambi, I fixed the mustache.

Here are the Schnabel paintings side by side.



We'll see.

Under the category of becoming the greatest portrait painter of the 21st Century, Julian Schnabel must be freaking out.

Breakthrough

You may remember this...



It's my version of Courbet's "The Wounded Man," which I set, as a giggle, in Vietnam, circa 1969. You can almost hear Dave Whatshisname playing his cover of "All Along the Watchtower." He's that guy from Charlottesville. Not Dave Mason. Something else. Matt the Intern likes him. Me less so, although I just heard his "Watchtower" and I did like it.

So it's neither Mason, Copperfield nor Winter. Not Brubaker either. Dave Something. He sometimes plays one of those semi-hollow Gibsons with the solid, flat front, no sound hole, and inlaid stars as fret-markers. Anyway, you can almost hear somebody thinking aloud that "there must be some kinda way outta here." Possibly my readers.

Maybe it is Mason, just to beat this damned thing to death, although I'm still not clear on that. Anyway, as regards painting, we've had a bit of a breakthrough. That is to say, I popped into the studio the day before yesterday to find that my collaborator, Kate (no last name), had grabbed the damned thing and begun doing whatever it is that she does.



After a period of time during which I was somewhat annoyed with her, I could now not be more excited. Remain tuned for more details.

And, all that said, the question then becomes what to name the goddam thing. There are two options:

1--Portrait of Gustave Courbet (Vietnam, 1969)
2--The Wounded Man (Vietnam, 1969)

All I know is that one pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. I, apparently, ned the pill that helps you remember stuff. Turns out it's Dave Matthews.

Sad news

Le Tour de Fromage est finis, mon ami.

Too much stuff going on. I apologize if this ruins your July, but that's the way it is. Priorities.

That said, the TdeF proper is going nicely. In addition to being a pretty interesting Tour, they are running a series of commercials under the banner of takebackthetour.com that are fun. The most recent one shows a series of bike crashes--some of which you can't believe anyone survived--with a voiceover that goes something like: "Next time you are in your car, going fifty or fiftyfive miles an hour, strip down to your underwear and throw yourself out the door. That's what crashing in the Tour de France is like."

Tomorrow we hit the Pyrenees. And that will begin the real sorting out. The wheat from the chaff. The women from the girls. The contenders from the pretenders. The green people from the blue.

I say this in reference to my theory that, as painters, we are all either green people or blue people. Much the way some people think guitarists are either Stratocaster people or Telecaster people. I'm a green person. So, I think, was Matisse--although he could fool you.

Case in point: Here are two paintings, one by Matisse, one a classic Raymond. See if you can tell who painted what...





And, just to get back on track, the bottom one, even though it doesn't appear to have a shred of green in it, is clearly a green picture. Likewise the top one, even though it's covered with blue.

I leave now for the studio. Talk amongst yourselves.

Last night on the F Train

Interesting night.

Blah, blah, blah. Don't really have time to get into it.

Except that I did sit next to a woman on the F Train heading towards Brooklyn at about ten p.m. last night. She looked like she was just leaving work; a little burned out. Me? I was leaving an Italian restaurant in the East Village. Anyway, she's intently reading a single-spaced, two and a half page letter, making notes in the margins, underlining certain passages, etc. It's rude to actually read the damned thing, but something about it captures my attention. When she flips back to the first page, I look to the top and see the Bear Stearns logo. Then she opens a pretty thick folder of documents and the title on the cover page reads something like "Employee severance agreement."

I wonder if I should ask her if she is familiar with my painting of Jimmy Cayne.

I decide not to. But I do think about these people...



all of whom are smiling in the face of having lost their jobs (because, after it sinks in and you cry or mope or whatever, what else do you do?), and I look at this photo (which is currently my computer wallpaper and which was, previously, the photo they ran on page 1 of the New York Sun)...



and I think about that woman sitting next to me on the F Train and then I say to myself, "You better get your ass to the studio and paint a picture of Richard Fuld."

And some other stuff I don't have time to get into.

Vive le Tour

I am worried about the Tour de Fromage. Between watching the Tour de France every day and finding time to get to the studio (with the Andes show looming less than a month over the horizon), I worry that my plans have been too ambitious. Even after today's ride I owe the bank some miles.

There are only so many things a man can do. The Mets going into extra innings doesn't help either.

It was, I should say in my defense, blazing hot today. Usually biking is one of those types of exercise you can do on hot days because you are generating a 10-20 mph breeze. Today, it was just baking. So I lay down an 8.1 mile ride @ 13.5 mph. Which, if I'm not mistaken, puts me 7.27 miles in the hole (given today's 1.8 mile time trial distance added to the 12.2 I missed yesterday and the 1.37 I was already in debt). I still hold onto the idea of riding into Manhattan and back sometime in the next couple of days, but my energy level seems alarmingly low.

Could be carry-over from the July 4th festivities, but you'd think I'd have snapped out of it by now.

Perhaps I should just feign illness and drop out of the Tour. Let the others go on ahead of me. Refer to a vague gastrointestinal malaise that keeps me, by necessity, near the homefront. Buy some chips and dip.

Still, in the back of my head there's a voice crying in the wilderness. Crying: "Vive le Tour. Vive le Tour."

Here's the plan

Here's the plan, as I see it, for the Tour de Fromage:

There will be no riding today, which will put me about 14 miles in debt to the race organizers. That said, tomorrow is a one mile-plus time trial. If I can jump on Big Blue, crank one over the river and through the woods, perhaps hit the GW Bridge then come back ... well, I'll be a good distance ahead of the game. And that's a good thing, I think.

Also, the cable guy has come and gone, leaving me ready to roll with the real Tour, viewership-wise.

So my life is humming along at about 65-70 percent. Which is pretty good if you embrace the notion that life, at best, is 80%.

Except for the occasional burst, of course.

Big Rudy dances Giselle

This is the part that always makes me cry. This is Big Rudy @1980 dancing with Carla Fracci as Giselle. Second act, where Giselle is saving Rudy from Myrtha, queen of the vampires, if that's the right word, and her girls, but at the cost of her own soul. If that's the right word.

It's complicated.

This is actually a pretty famous recording--thought to be among the best Giselles ever performed.

Me? I have a hard time standing on my toes as long as these people do.

Vite, vite

Vite! Whatever that means. Le Tour de Fromage est, comme Holmes l'habitude de dire à Watson sur le jeu, à pied. Laissez-nous prendre nos jupes et géré comme les blazes.

Beset by low energy, high humidity and some unexpected demands on my time, I logged 8.7 miles today in the face of a 10.1 target. Hardly what I would call picking up my (metaphorical) skirt and running like the blazes. So I owe the bank 1.37 miles. Average speed remained 13.7. I think it would have been higher, but I ran into some pedestrian traffic coming out of the park.

And tomorrow I'll need to squeeze out 12.2 miles before the cable guy gets here.

Actually, probably after he leaves. The reason? Because Time Warner calls you about three times with a computer to make sure you still want the appointment, pretending to be engaged in what they call customer service but really just hoping (if either a computer or a major corporation can hope) that you won't pick up and they won't have to come.

Later, as this process unfolds, you call back and say "where's the guy" and they say "you didn't answer when our computer called so your appointment was canceled" and you say some unpleasant stuff which, since they've heard it so many times before, does not, in the least bit, faze them. You then add "well when can he come back" and they say "not for a week."

At this point you note that you have already missed three days of the Tour de France and really couldn't bear to miss another seven. Unfortunately the measurement technology does not yet exist to quantify how little they care about that.

So I think I'll remain home tomorrow, glued to the phone. I'll buy both the Times and the Post and just make the best of it.

I'm also reading the new David Sedaris book. That might take up some time but it's not as good as people had led me to believe it would be. It's observational humor on par with a mid-level Seinfeld episode. Not nearly as good as the one where Kramer grabs the baby and tries to save it from the moyl. No, not nearly that good. But okay.

Like that line about pizza.
What line?
The one that goes, "Even bad pizza is pretty good."
Exactly. I mean, there's nothing wrong with a mid-level Seinfeld episode.
No there isn't.

I think Sedaris is about as funny as the episodes where Jerry's parents make guest appearances. But not as good as the one where either Kramer, George or Jerry (or some combination of the three) come upon a van in the park, open the door, and find Jerry's parents in flagrente delicto. Which, by the way, is Latin for "in the blazing offense" or, perhaps more simply, in flagrente, which means "while blazing."

And by the way, as addendum, which must be Latin for "something you put at the end" (but which might also refer to what too many servings of Nacho Cheese Doritos and onion dip will do to the size of your ass), can you believe the Google translate service doesn't include Latin?

Life, and The Tour

I'm worried because the upcoming Wednesday stage is a solid 230 km, which is more or less 14 miles. This wouldn't be a problem except for this:



Meg and I are going to see Giselle. And I'll want to take a shower first.

Me? I cry like a baby during the second act.

Mon vélo est mon ennemi. Et mon amant.

Zuit alors! Le Tour de Fromage est en cours.

First crack out of the gate, if that's the phrase, and I hit it on the head with a 12.13. This gives me 3 hundredths of a mile in the bank, which, as they say, is something. It took me fifty-some minutes at an average speed of 13.7 miles per hour.

In the Tour de France, Alejandro Valverde had a strong kick at the end and won the stage by about a second. And tomorrow he'll be wearing le Maillot Jeune. It angers me that I am having a Time Warner cable melt-down (the repairman comes on Monday) and I have missed watching the first day of the Tour for the first time in recent memory. It's a black, black day, at least as regards those things television-related.

Still, the ride was nice.

Let the spectacle begin

Here's the rough plan:

Today's Tour de France route is 121 miles long. My plan is to log 12.1. I will continue to perform this Tour de Fromage each day of the actual tour until we reach Paris.

Le map--voila:



Alors.

The math, by the way, is quite straightforward. I figure I have between five and ten times the percentage of body fat of the average TdFrance rider. Assuming ten, since I've been packing it on lately and I'm assuming they have not been, you invert something and multiply it out to achieve the appropriate mileage.

Babum! Let the spectacle begin.

Quick drug-related note: During the next month I will abide by all the international anti-doping regulations and voluntarily submit to urinalysis if and when requested by Tour de Fromage officials.

The Road is Rising Behind Us

Oh Sandy...

Today is both the last day of the second year and the first day of the third year of magical painting. It's a time for reflection.

I always thought Bruce Springsteen's best songs were about both beginnings and endings. Leaving stuff behind and moving forward. The Rising jumps immediately to mind. So, in a completely different way, does Rosalita. Likewise Thunder Road. There are certainly others. But the best one of all, by a wide margin (discounting, of course, all the other really good ones you might like better), is Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy):

Sandy, the fireworks are hailin' over Little Eden tonight
Forcin' a light into all those stony faces left stranded on this warm July
Down in town the circuit's full of switchblade lovers, so fast, so shiny, so sharp
As the wizards play down on Pinball Way on the boardwalk way past dark
And the boys from the casino dance with their shirts open like Latin lovers on the shore
Chasin' all them silly New York virgins by the score

Sandy, the aurora is risin' behind us
Those pier lights, our carnival life forever
Oh, love me tonight, for I may never see you again
Hey, Sandy girl... my baby

Now the greasers, they tramp the streets or get busted for sleepin' on the beach all night
Them boys in their high heels, ah Sandy, their skins are so white
And me, I just got tired of hangin' in them dusty arcades, bangin' them pleasure machines
Chasin' the factory girls underneath the boardwalk, where they all promised to unsnap their jeans
And you know that Tilt-a-Whirl down on the south beach drag? I got on it last night and my shirt got caught
And it kept me spinnin', they didn't think I'd ever get off

Sandy, the aurora is risin' behind us
Those pier lights, our carnival life on the water
Runnin', laughin' underneath the boardwalk with the boss's daughter
I remember, Sandy girl... my baby

Sandy, the waitress I was seein' lost her desire for me
I spoke with her last night, she said she won't set herself on fire for me anymore
She worked that joint under the boardwalk, she was always the girl you saw boppin' down the beach with the radio
Kids say last night she was dressed like a star in one of the cheap little seaside bars, and I saw her parked with her lover boy out on the Kokomo
Did you hear, the cops finally busted Madame Marie for tellin' fortunes better than they do?
For me this carnival life's through-- you ought to quit this scene too

Sandy, the aurora is risin' behind us
Those pier lights, our carnival life forever
Oh, love me tonight and I promise I'll love you forever
Oh, I mean it, Sandy girl

Manomanoman, is that a song or what? It's like he wrote it specifically for this very day. How, in 1973, could he have known? Interestingly enough, I always thought the line went "The road is rising behind us." Anyway, I bet Chuck Close is freaking out right about now.

And, just to add whatever to whatever, three days ago Bloomberg News reported the following:

July 1 (Bloomberg) -- Marie Castello, who told fortunes on
the Asbury Park boardwalk in New Jersey since the 1930s and was
best known as the ``Madam Marie'' in a Bruce Springsteen song,
has died, the Asbury Park Press reported today. She was 93.
Castello died June 27, the newspaper reported, citing her
granddaughter, Sally Castello. No cause was given.
In his 1973 song ``4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy),''
Springsteen sings: ``Well the cops finally busted Madame Marie
for tellin' fortunes better than they do.''
She was actually never arrested, yet Springsteen turned her
into an icon, Asbury Park Deputy Mayor Jim Bruno told the
newspaper. Castello stopped working on the boardwalk in the mid-
1990s, the Press said, though she continued telling fortunes in
Ocean Township. Sally Castellano and other family members still
do readings at the Madam Marie booth on the boardwalk.
New Jersey legend says that Madam Marie told a young
Springsteen he would one day be a success, the Press reported.
Springsteen later joked that she said that to every musician.

Where, I would ask you, would you get this stuff if not from me?

Anyway, it's a time for reflection. Season Two ends. Season Three begins. You can't go back. I don't even think about it anymore.

Me? I think I just got tired of hanging in those dusty arcades. And that waitress I was seeing lost her desire for me. And the poacher's daughter is floating on a canoe somewhere in the swamps of South Carolina with a straw in her teeth. And the road is rising behind us. And my car's out back. So Sandy, climb in. It's a town for losers and I'm pulling out of here to win.

Or at least come close.

699

The address of the Bay Head house I grew up in is 669 (East Avenue), which is numerically/phonetically similar to this, the numeric designation of the penultimate post of the second season of The Year of Magical Painting.

I'd say more, but my mind is on other things.

Spitzer and Schnabel

Here are hi-res versions of Big Fucking Julian and The Annotated Spitzer




I'll explain later.