Don Van Vliet

Don Van Vliet can still remember the day he was born in Glendale, California in 1941. Despite going on to lead one of the most innovative and influential bands of the 20th century, The Magic Band, Vliet began his creative life as an aspiring sculptor. His talent evident from the age of three and he had even apprenticed under a man called Agosthino Rodriguez who considered him a child prodigy, however it wasn't until much later in his life that fine art came to define the man. Vliet's parents had a deep aversion and mistrust of fine art and seemed to go out of their way to stem Vliet's creativity such was his passion. When he was thirteen his parents moved to the Mojave Desert, and it was here, (to his parents dismay) that not only would Vliet's creativity flair amplify, but so to would his love of music, coming into posession of old Jazz and Blues records by people like Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Muddy Waters.

You can imagine Don Van Vliet at this point, this young kid in the middle of nowhere, spending his time making sculptures and listening to blistering jazz and blues records. He no doubt found an affinity with those records as the music he went on to create was like some mutated zombie sister to it, channeling a spirit that was as riveting as it was bizarre. Warped surrealistic ideas about zig zag wanderers and ice cream for crows backed by the ordered chaos of The Magic Band...they defy description. Despite never making it big in the market, they went on to influence a myriad of future performers, from Tom Waits to The Clash. Beefheart could barely play a note yet he orchestrated it all.

It wasn't until 1982, after a fairly tumltuous time in the music business with no great critical acclaim that Captain Beefheart surrendered his alterego and reverted back to Don Van Vliet to focus on a future career fine art, which isn't to say any of his inherent weirdness was to take a rest.



Vliet's paintings are reminiscent of Neo-Expressionist artists like Georg Baselitz and Philip Guston, they have a distinctly abstract expressionist feel yet there are figures there. The works are alomst naive in their execution, with large parts of the canvas often being left white, and figures drawn so loosley they seem almost incidental. I like his paintings, they have a naturalistic element to them, a spiritual quality which i feel would be beyond the means of expression to say an inner city artist, they are untainted by dirty streets, by city lights, by cars. Vliet's subject is simple: nature and spirituality.

Below is a video on Don Van Vliet by the photographer Anton Corbijn which came out in 1993. It features both Vliet's mother and David Lynch.

Edvard Munch

An artist I've realised I have a great affinity with is the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. It's a shame how some artists seem to be bracketed by just one or two works in their career as Munch was in his. The Scream is no doubt a breakthrough work, both in style and in sentiment. The style is fluid, the pastels seem to swell around the work like a raging tide. The motivation of the work stems from a feeling of deep torment, a trauma resulting from a horrifying confrontation with an imperfect world, a modernising world with an anxious future. Below is an exerpt Munch wrote about the work himself.

I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature.

Besides this magnificant work however, Munch was an incredibly industrious artist whose skill branched into many different mediums; painting, etching and drawing were all well within his grasp. I feel his style was exemplary of the idea of an artists style reflecting their sentiment - in the same way that say Tom Waits' lyrics fit around the music, as though it were impossible for the two to ever be apart. His approach was often criticised for being naive and irresolved - but what better way to depict a world on the edge and inshrouded with doubt, it was 1893. Like many at that time, Munch had a severe mistrust for the industrial revolution and the way in which it would effect both the natural world as well as that of human relations. Looking at the state of the world these days, you must admit it's hard to think his anxiety unwarranted. He was a seer, a master and utterly humane, which are just several reasons for which he is one of my favourite artists.




The Dance of Life

Dada Etc

Tristan Tzara was one of the main men of the dada movement. I think there is a lot of truth in the DADA movement, i think that it strikes a chord in the core of humanity, that inherent absurdity i was getting at earlier. There are elements of this approach which i am sure were studied by future playwrites like Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard, people that thrived off that humour. It's kind of sad how boring the way that DADA art is taught, often its humour is forgotten. I guess it was never really a suited to analysis or teaching, it's more in the action and the act.



Antonin Artaud is another very interesting figure, he was part of the surrealist movement for a while, completely drug fucked most of the time, addicted to heroin and opiates, also naturally inclined to "depression" . What i find most interesting about Artaud was his view towards reality, which naturally influenced everything he did thereafter. to quote his wikipedia page:

Imagination, to Artaud, was reality; he considered dreams, thoughts and delusions as no less real than the "outside" world. To him, reality appeared to be a consensus, the same consensus the audience accepts when they enter a theatre to see a play and, for a time, pretend that what they are seeing is real.

Tom Waits liked him, if that means anything...i think it does. he is as much a performer as he is a musician - which is really saying something. I really like Waits's aesthetic approach too, he's a pretty awesome dude.



I think a lot of what i consider to be good art always deals with one's approach towards reality, in an emotive sense as well as physical, i think it's for this reason that a lot of conceptual art sort of goes over my head, i don't mean that i don't get it, I just don't see the point of it. So that is something that i want to avoid in my work - too much conceptual thought, which might sound ironic, but there is a difference between knowing that you're thinking and thinking that you're knowing.