WEBCAM - MOSCOW

SELF-PORTRAIT

This is a picture of me taking a picture of myself taking a picture of a picture of myself taking a picture of a picture of myself taking a picture.  NAKED.

MOVIE STYLE

I am still doing one of  these every couple of days.

TAILED

VINCENT PRICE

I believe every artist must create at least one portrait of 

Vincent Price.

THE STRANGE TALE OF MAW

At the end of the 20th century there was a time when you had to buy a book to learn how to use the internet.  Unlike the World Wide Web you are looking at right now, most interaction was carried via Usenet, kind of a text version of the internet.  Modems were so slow that you had to sit and watch a picture slowly load line by line. When that picture was a naked woman the suspense was agonizing. This did not halt the inexorable progress of pornography.  Newsgroups, a type of slow motion chat room, were formed for the sole purpose of accessing and distributing the most obscure fetishes, some of them illegal.  It was also the dawn of the amateur pornographer, before "amateur" became a genre of professional pornography, and in newsgroups with finger-breaking names like alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.nospam.amateur,
photos began to appear of someone known as MAW, or Mary Ann.  Here she is.

Obviously not someone's mom. But the weird thing was her name and initials were the same as my mom, which adds a slightly unsettling subconscious twist to the whole thing for me personally. Small bust, big hair and one eye kind of off, not complying with society's norm for the artform.  Why were there were dozens of photos of this skinny little normal looking gal, indoors and outdoors, and who posted them?  Family pictures, wedding pictures, cheesecake, erotica and the crudest pornography.  I just remembered MAW last night, and within half an hour I knew, thanks to 21st century technology, maybe not the story, but a story. And I had a zip file full of pictures. It is a strange tale indeed but I am not telling it here.  If you care that much you can find it.  What I am trying to figure out is how to make art about something this offbeat and complicated. Someday these things will be important and I am not sure anyone is addressing or trying to understand them in a larger social context so that leaves it up to me.

PROFESSOR

FIRST APPEARANCE

In episode 3 of the Universal serial The Vanishing Shadow (1934), actor Lee J. Cobb makes his first screen appearance as foreman of a road crew.

MUSSOLINI

CHAIR

DETECTIVE

ROVING REPORTER

MYSTERY SKETCHES

 I found these in a box when I was cleaning my studio last week.  I don't remember exactly when I did them and apparently I didn't think enough of them to sign and date them at the time but looking at them now some of them are pretty good.  They were probably done last summer.  Acrylic and latex paint on 6"x9" brown sketch paper.

THE SPARK BOX

Two days ago I watched Blake of Scotland Yard (1937), a pretty flat adventure movie cut down from a serial (from Victory Pictures Corporation of which I had never heard) in which criminals want to steal the new invention which allows you to blow up a ship in the water a hundred miles away.  The most notable part of the apparatus besides its viewing screen in which you see the ship blowing up is this crazy spark box.  Even I know enough about electricity to know that all it really does is make a series of electrical connections that cause arcs to spark and flash.

Yesterday I watched episode one of The Vanishing Shadow (1934), a pretty good Universal serial about an invisibility device which makes you disappear except for your shadow, and part of the sparking flashing lab apparatus was this crazy spark box.  It looks like the decorative top bit was altered but it still just makes noisy exciting sparks.

It should be noted that The Vanishing Shadow also includes this wonderfully nutty robot.  You can see the spark box against the wall by the scientist.

But that is neither here nor there.  We are talking about the spark box.  Here is a clip of it in action from Blake of Scotland Yard:

THE VILLAIN EPISODE 2

THE VILLAIN

MOVIES - Linda Brent concluded

I wrote of Career Girl (1944) during my brief examination of Frances Langford and her gigantic hairdo.  I was unaware at the time of the existence of  Linda Brent, who appears as one of a pair of overdressed mean girls who smokes with a long cigarette holder and keeps her abundant locks tucked into a glittering snood.  The fashions in this PRC cheapie are outstanding.

Linda Brent had a good role in Unforgotten Crime a.k.a The Affairs of Jimmy Valentine (1942).  She really peps things up as a flaky hotel manicurist.  Her character is pivotal to the plot but her appearances are fairly brief.  

Her few leading lady roles were in westerns, which fall outside of my range of interest, so this shall conclude my brief dalliance with Linda Brent.

MOVIES - Linda Brent Continued

Here is Linda Brent as a secretary in the Producers Releasing Corporation film Today I Hang (1942).  She appears a couple of times and gets to say things like, "Please go right in."  With the addition of these pictures this is now probably the most extensive archive of Linda Brent images online.

And here she is again.  The dresses in this movie are really nice, some bold asymmetrical two-tone and big brooches.

This excellent biographical info comes from Meanwhile... Back at the Ranch, a blog focusing on Western movies - thanks to its author, Lightning Bryce.

• Born in Shanghai, China to an Irish father and a Russian mother (nee Vassilieva), Linda Brent (1919-1994) didn't become an American citizen until November of 1942. By then, she had been voted the “prettiest white girl in Shanghai,” had appeared in local plays in Los Angeles and at the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco, had married and divorced MGM contract player Steve Cornell (who then, allegedly, disappeared in order to avoid the draft), became Orson Welles' comely assistant in his famous wartime magic act at the Hollywood Wonder Show, and dated movie tough guy Lyle Talbot. She was rumored to be close to marrying the latter but that apparently never happened. Instead she wed another screen tough, John Kellogg, and their 1951 divorce created unfortunate headlines that bespoke of physical abuse and a failure to pay child support. In contrast to all this, Linda Brent's screen career, which also included the Bob Livingston “Johnny Rapidan” Western The Laramie Trail (1944) and a host of chorus girl and handmaiden roles, seems little more than an afterthought. On screen and television until the early 1960s, Linda Laura Brent died in obscurity in Los Angeles on 7 May 1994.

MOVIES - Linda Brent

I find there are very few photos of actress Linda Brent online.  Here she is in A Scream in the Dark (1943), a Republic picture, in which she has a significant tertiary role. She wears a couple of really nice dresses, of which this is the standout with its beaded or sequined bouquets.

And here she is in a mid-toned piece with floral ruffles that go all the way up the front and down the back, set off with a large brooch.  I love her wide heart-shaped face and big wartime hair, but find her extremely difficult to draw.  Most of her roles were small and uncredited - as an operator, show girl, chorus girl, etc.  I just like the looks of the gal and wish there had been more and better roles for her.

MOVIE STYLE

MOVIE STYLE

In addition to my Mirror Project, which is proceeding well, I have been wanting to do some pictures of women with their clothes on, based on scenes of unknown actresses from forgotten movies.  Here is one.

MIRROR 003

Rather than keep blogging these, which would be tedious for both you and me, I am going to wait until I have accumulated enough that the world must admit I am an incredible genius or pervert or both, and put them in a gallery where they can be seen or ignored all at once instead of one at a time.  So this is the last you will see for a while.  I find I am already having a small battle between my natural tendency to detail and my intellectual drive to simplify so it will be interesting for me at least to see how this project proceeds. 

MIRROR 002

(Continued from Mirror 002) The source materials I am working from are not photos taken by men to arouse the prurient interest of other men.  They are self-portraits, and intentional.  Unlike most portraiture, the camera is clearly present, often central in the photo, so they are also self-portraits of the camera. There is a lot more content to these if you think about it.

MIRROR 001

Believe it or not I think seriously about Art sometimes.  I try to look at things most people aren't looking at and figure out ways of addressing them in the context of  "fine art."  I usually end up examining things which are discarded and discounted and try to depict them with the same care another artist might lavish on a mountain stream or a vase of flowers.  It seems that a new generation of young women now have the ability to photograph themselves naked in the bathroom mirror.  I find this appealing for the obvious reason, as well as the fact that it chronicles an intimate environment you rarely see - another person's bathroom with the junk on the counter and the shampoo bottles on the edge of the tub.  It is valuable also for the ways the women choose to depict themselves, the angle of the shot, what is shown and in what way, and the recursive element of it sometimes being a picture of a person looking at a picture of herself taking a picture of herself.  I like to take all those things and run them through my own filter and see if I can make a picture that has genuine artistic value.

MY UNUSUAL HOBBY

For much of my life, Modern Science has made it possible for me to watch a movie every day, sometimes two or three.  Or four.  So that is what I do.  I have always felt a special interest and fascination with the introductory logos of studios, production companies, and distributors, and for the past few years I have captured examples as they appear on my flickering screen.  I have accumulated 190 of them so far, from the most major studios and the most minor, showing brief flashes in the pan and the chronological development of mainstays of the industry, and have made notes on the more intriguing of them.  See them in my gallery which I call "Presented by..."

HINDENTANIC

The Titanic as the Hindenberg.

IMPALED

The Titanic impaled on the Eiffel Tower.

TANKTANIC