song for a broken bell
dying
man in a bed of flames
says you owe him something
says you owe him something
says
art is all that matters, and
what i want more than anything
at 2 a.m. is to wake up my
children and hold them
what i want more than anything
at 2 a.m. is to wake up my
children and hold them
what
i want are options
you
can give blood or you can
be crucified and, either way,
the dogs still scream for more
be crucified and, either way,
the dogs still scream for more
pollock
knew this,
and rothko,
and then lennon found out the hard way
and rothko,
and then lennon found out the hard way
and
you want to mourn, of course,
but there are people starving
everywhere
but there are people starving
everywhere
there
are these men you've elected
waging genocide in an effort
to hang onto their wealth
waging genocide in an effort
to hang onto their wealth
you
can believe
or you can disbelieve, and
neither path alters the truth
or you can disbelieve, and
neither path alters the truth
no
amount of water or prayer
will put out the fire
twenty years after the fact
will put out the fire
twenty years after the fact
the
joke is never as funny
once it has to be explained
once it has to be explained
Self-Portrait -- Jackson Pollack
Self-Portrait -- Mark Rothko
Self-Portrait -- John Lennon
Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko (named Markuss Rotkovičs until 1940) were American abstract expressionists, an art style characterized by gestural brush-strokes or mark-making and the impression of spontaneity. In the 1930s in New York they became associated with the Art Students League and found employment as artists for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Project Number One, established by the government to provide work during the Great Depression for musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. (As the WPA head Harry Hopkins put it, “Hell, they’ve got to eat, too”). They were included in the 1952 "Fifteen Americans" show that formally introduced abstract art to the US and demonstrated painting’s liberation from the need to represent the world. That year Harold Rosenberg coined the term “action painting,” probably as a description of Pollack’s approach, though Pollock himself described his art as “motion made visible memories, arrested in space.” He worked in a spontaneous improvisational manner and often used large brushes to make sweeping gestural marks. Famously, he placed his canvas on the ground and danced around it pouring paint from the can or trailing it from the brush or a stick. On the other hand, Rothko created simple compositions with large areas of color intended to produce contemplative responses, and by 1960 his approach became characterized by large areas of more or less a single flat color. For awhile Pollack was the most-discussed painter in the US, but his alcoholism and other problems began to interfere with his art and his life. His last 2 paintings were done in 1955, though he began making constructions of wire, gauze, and plaster. He killed himself and a passenger in a drunken single-car crash in 1956, but Rothko’s fame continued to rise. At the Pratt Institute in New York he set forth the “recipe of a work of art -- its ingredients -- how to make it -- the formula. 1) There must be a clear preoccupation with death -- intimations of mortality ... Tragic art, romantic art, etc., deals with the knowledge of death. 2) sensuality. Our basis of being concrete about the world. It is a lustful relationship to things that exist. 3) Tension. Either conflict or curbed desire. 4) Irony, This is a modern ingredient -- the self-effacement and examination by which a man for an instant can go on to something else. 5) Wit and play ... for the human element. 6) The ephemeral and chance ... for the human element. 7) Hope. 10% to make the tragic concept more endurable. I measure these ingredients very carefully when I paint a picture. It is always the form that follows these elements and the picture results from the proportions of these elements." He overdosed on barbiturates and a sliced artery in his right arm in 1970. Though the 2 painters were avowed leftists, and abstract expressionism was widely regarded as a Communist plot to undermine American society, the Central Intelligence Agency viewed the movement as a useful propaganda tool against the Soviet Realistic Style; the agency promoted the works of Pollack and Rothko as the expressions of the subjective inner lives of the artists who painted them. David Anfam, the curator of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, described it as “a very shrewd and cynical strategy because it showed that you could do whatever you liked in America.”
ReplyDeleteJohn Lennon was a British singer-songwriter who rose to global fame as the leader of the Beatles. After his marriage to Jaoanese avant-garde artist Yoko Ono in 1969 he used music and art to promote peace. Their honeymoon was staged as a 1-week bed-in, inviting the press into their hotel room every day between 9 AM and 9 PM. They sought to repeat the protest in New York but Lennon was not allowed into the country, so they staged it in Montreal; they were joined by activists like Timothy Leary, Tommy Smothers, Dick Gregory, and Allen Ginsberg to record his song "Give Peace a chance," which was sung by 1 1/2 million demonstrators at the Vietnam Moratorium Day protest in Washington, D.C. later in the year. His antiwar activism led to the the US Immigration and Naturalization Service to begin deportation proceedings against him in 1972. In response, in 1973, he announced the formation of the state of Nutopia, a place with "no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people," and asked for political asylum in the US. The national anthem was 3 seconds of silence. The deportation order was rescinded in 1975. In 1980 he was murdered outside his home in New York.
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