Scenes from Paul Simon's "Graceland" ...
Just so we're clear, as regards "Nipple/Schnabel" (formerly "Big Fucking Julian"), we started with this portrait of the famous plate-painter Julian Schnabel...
We then carved holes in the goddam thing where, for reasons that were important at the time but which are less so now, I had goobered big red dots on the face of the painting. We then inserted twenty traditional latex baby-bottle nipples (as opposed to the more "natural" nipples that companies like Gerber or whoever just made up out of whole cloth with the hopes that "new" nipples would be the windfall for the baby bottle industry that the invention of compact discs was for the record industry), one of which which you can see me holding here.
This, in part, parenthetically speaking, is why I got out of corporate marketing. I mean, really!
Anyway, once the nipples were inserted I took this big clump of Christmas tree lights that I had lying around the studio (one wonders why, certainly, such a thing would be lying around the studio but there they were and who, as Paul Simon might ask, am I to blow against the wind?) ...
... and festooned the the back of the goddam thing with them, more or less stretched and stapled in a grid designed to provide even backlighting for the nipples themselves.
Which then, provided you turn the lights off and allow for a long exposure on your snappy Nikon digital SLR, yielded this:
Oh my God!
It ended up way better than I thought.
I brought several friends into the studio tonight to take a look and render judgements. The most attractive one suggested that, when I do my gallery show of the Nipple/Bush Cabinet (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzalez), I turn all the lights off and provide little alters with votive candles in front of each one (much the way my main painting table functions in the photo above). People can then write shit on little bits of paper (a la visiting the Wailing Wall in J-Town) and tuck them into a bowl next to the candles.
This idea seemed like a strong one. I could probably write a book about it.
She then asked "Don't I know you from the cinematographer's party?", which made me feel very lucky indeed.
We then carved holes in the goddam thing where, for reasons that were important at the time but which are less so now, I had goobered big red dots on the face of the painting. We then inserted twenty traditional latex baby-bottle nipples (as opposed to the more "natural" nipples that companies like Gerber or whoever just made up out of whole cloth with the hopes that "new" nipples would be the windfall for the baby bottle industry that the invention of compact discs was for the record industry), one of which which you can see me holding here.
This, in part, parenthetically speaking, is why I got out of corporate marketing. I mean, really!
Anyway, once the nipples were inserted I took this big clump of Christmas tree lights that I had lying around the studio (one wonders why, certainly, such a thing would be lying around the studio but there they were and who, as Paul Simon might ask, am I to blow against the wind?) ...
... and festooned the the back of the goddam thing with them, more or less stretched and stapled in a grid designed to provide even backlighting for the nipples themselves.
Which then, provided you turn the lights off and allow for a long exposure on your snappy Nikon digital SLR, yielded this:
Oh my God!
It ended up way better than I thought.
I brought several friends into the studio tonight to take a look and render judgements. The most attractive one suggested that, when I do my gallery show of the Nipple/Bush Cabinet (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzalez), I turn all the lights off and provide little alters with votive candles in front of each one (much the way my main painting table functions in the photo above). People can then write shit on little bits of paper (a la visiting the Wailing Wall in J-Town) and tuck them into a bowl next to the candles.
This idea seemed like a strong one. I could probably write a book about it.
She then asked "Don't I know you from the cinematographer's party?", which made me feel very lucky indeed.
posted by Geoffrey at 6:47 PM
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