Is it Just Me? Or is this an Angry World?

One of the songs on my playlist of late has been Neil Young's 'Angry World' from his album 'Le Noise'. It is a fitting soundtrack for this new year and is a very poignant example of Neil Young's cultural insight. (For reference, I consider Neil Young a prophet of our age, so stop reading now I guess if that's distasteful to you). My favorite part of the song, which kind of gets right to the heart of what I am trying to say here, goes like this... "some see life as hope eternal, some see life as a business plan, some wish some will go to hells inferno for screwing with their life in freedom land, it's an angry world....". 

For me it's like what I often feel when a Neil Young song really hits me....  Damn,.... Neil young says in two sentences what takes me two pages to say and I still don't get to the core of things like he does. That's why he is the masterful legend and I am nobody though right? It's this same kind of bold honesty and push for righteousness and love that got Neil Young into a feud with Lynard Skynard ("Southern Man better keep your head, remember what your good book said"). 

I often agree with Neil Young's insights, but not just because I idolize him,.... it's the fact that what I have come to know and believe in my life, matches up a lot of time with his music. His work speaks to me on a deep level. And it says to me, 'are you righteous?, do you really believe in love?, what are you doing to show that love to someone else today?'

But I agree that it is indeed an angry world. There is a kind of palpable almost, anger in the air. Sometimes one can get caught up in reading too much into things, but after a while when you really notice a pattern I think it is wise to pay attention. Maybe it is like when you hear a new word you see that word or hear it everywhere, or with a new car that your friend gets, you see that model and color of it everywhere seemingly. It is not a stretch though, to say generally people are more angry, more frustrated than they have been in the recent past.

The economy is only now showing sputtering signs of life after almost half a decade, we have a culture which seems to respect infamy as much if not more than anything else, also a clash between those who try to push for renewable consumption, and those who refuse to believe it matters, amongst many other factors of course, have been brewing for years. Politics especially since Obama has been elected, has seen an incredible polarizing shift that has transferred over into general life. When he was elected there was this idea that progress had been made somehow. When in truth we know now it only allowed some people's hatred to be drawn out into full daylight for us all to see, I don't need to bring it up here (nor do I want to go there) to try and convince you, it is obvious for us all to witness. 

In a more direct and immediate example the other day I was riding my bike down the street (on the way to the bike trail ironically, I had to pass through on a street to get there) a gentleman (insert unsavory low-brow adjective in place of 'gentleman') riding passenger-side in a white work truck yelled out in a very loud and noticably angry voice 'get off the FUCKIN street!'. I was honestly taken aback. Even if this man fervently did care about bike laws and the politics of bikers and cars and the road (highly doubtful in my opinion) what was the need for the palpable anger? I mean it was not just your run of the mill 'flip you off and laugh to your friends' kind of thing, it was like he had a deep-seeded hatred that was clawing, reaching out for any kind of vindication or fuel to make it burn. He wanted, even deeply needed, to be in conflict,.... and why? Maybe he is one of the people who is out of work and can't find a job. Maybe he hates his life, maybe he chugs Natural Light and yells at his kids and hates himself for it. He cannot possibly care that much about bikes on the road, it's not possible. 

Some of you out there assuradly know what I am talking about and have also been experiencing it more the past few months. People out of the blue, almost at random picking a fight for no reason. I know I do this with my wife sometimes, but I think that is fairly normal, what I mean is that people seem to be taking less crap. Like the slightest thing can set people off. People are closer to the edge I guess is what I am trying to say, which as I stated at the beginning of this diatribe, is not even a very insightful observation, maybe it is just fact. 

Anyways, I am going to try and be nice as much as I possibly can, but I have been finding myself, also not willing to take crap from people. It's like the more people dump on me, the more I subconsciously and even consciously am like 'okay the next person to pick on me is really gonna get what is coming to them'. So I am just as guilty as everyone else maybe. The best advice I have been coming back to is something I learned from the Dog Whisperer (laugh all you want but watch his show, it's a basic course in animal behavior, and guess what folks, we are animals too). Cesar is always saying 'be calm and assertive'. And it is such a basic truth.

No one respects a pushover, but people respect an asshole even less I think (pardon my French). It is the person who can communicate honestly and respectfully, who is always the best leader. So this is what I am striving for this new year, to be calm and assertive. To assert my thoughts in an honest, but reserved tone, to try and start off meetings with strangers and friends and family with as much enthusiasm as I can and try to spread good cheer and happy times while at the same time expressing myself honestly and openly.

To be Reticent? or Not to Be...

Here at Modern Art Quotes we like to honor our dead poets properly, (really it's just my blog, but 'we' sounds more official somehow). And yes Dead Poets Society remains as one of my all time favorite movies, call me a poetry nerd if you want to, that is okay with me. So, in that vein (not that she is a nerd, but she is certainly a dead poet to be celebrated) I would like to present the Emily Dickinson (whose birthday was today's date; December 10th in 1830) poem, Reticence:

 RETICENCE.
The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan;
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.
If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her,
Can human nature not survive
Without a listener?
Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every babbler be.
The only secret people keep
Is Immortality.

 I took some time to re-read some of Dickinson's poetry to decide which one I was going to pontificate about and this one attracted my attention as one of my favorites. Reticence, by the way, (I had to look it up) means: reluctant, especially in regards to speaking freely.  What I really like about the poem is especially the last four lines. There is something about those words that really speaks to me and to my sense about the power of words to inspire mystery, Admonished by her buckling lips, Let every babbler be, the only secret people keep, is immortality, I mean it's simple yet brilliant. It's something I have been striving for in my own style of late, mystery and beauty wrapped in a simple but powerful form.

The mystery of course is the lava inside the volcano; the knowledge. It's there, but not there to the casual observer. The sleeping, but not sleeping giant, with it's power unknown to fragile mankind. You need to listen (let every babbler be) and observe nature (the volcano) if you want to understand the mystery and power of immortality  (can human nature survive without a listener) or what some people could refer to as 'God' or the immortal soul, consciousness. The mystery of the cosmos can be found in the observation of nature. At least that is what I take from the poem.

Dickinson's work in general has that element to it that some of Stephen King's novels have, of being able to be deeply personal but at the same time universal, speaking to our core. I am not trying to compare King's writing to poetry, (I know some of you out there just gasped). What I mean is that he has those moments and layers in a lot of his stories that intentionally strive for that inner core/universal chord experience.

The theme of the work can be basic and univeral (the experience of life and the journey to enlightenment) but wrapped up in a way that makes the journey more personal to you the reader, more direct to our own experience. Dickinson's work does this for me with her very extensive and properly placed vocabulary. Words like reticence, admonished, buckled, and many more well placed, thoughtfully chosen words in her other poems. Her very  classic style combined with the striving towards spiritual experience, tapping into that universal stream of conciousness but with her own very kind of proper victorian style, I really dig it.

Some say her work is sad and depressing and I can see why they experience it like that, but for me there is joy to be found in the work in the sense that this was her meditation, this was her ecstasy if you will, her bliss. This is the window into her favorite past-time, the thing that allowed her to escape and be free - the act and process of writing and creating. I think  her message is one of striving for joy and enlightenment.

Notifications Pending: 1984 in Kansas?

If you use Facebook you may have noticed some spam-like e-mails in the past couple months or so in your in-box. The subject line is something like 'John Doe You have notifications pending'. Am I the only one that thinks there is something wrong when your social media site is sending you messages akin to what you might see in debt collection notices?


It reeks of a spammy e-mail that should be in the junk folder, right? Notifications pending? It sounds so official and important; urgent even, and of course none of the 'notifications' are urgent at all. I do not like it when companies or institutions or web-sites are trying to lure you in with manipulation, important sounding keywords, aggressive over-marketing disguised as something vital, etc etc. Only to get you to come back and use their site, product, or whatever, more. Facebook sounds desperate and manipulative and a long way from it's original attempt at being trendy.


Maybe I am just over-sensitive because I have been reading,.. err listening to the audio-book of 1984 by George Orwell. I never read it,  unlike some students who had to in high school classes, so it was a first for me, although I knew the basic themes.


It is a fascinating book on at least a few different levels - social science, politics, futurist,.. Getting into the book and then listening to the news for example, I noticed many parallels to things in the story. Things like the struggle between the elites, the middle class and the poor, or the effort to control thought through information manipulation. The latter especially relates to the here and now, the information age. For example celebrities, athletes, politicians, get into Twitter Wars and try to define recent major events with their own 'spin'.


Another recent example is the Kansas Governor Sam Brownback and a high school senior who had visited the capitol and tweeted something negative about the governor. The governor tattled on her to her high school, and she was urged strongly to write an apology letter. Pulling a tweet out of cyberspace from a girl whose major tweet topic was Justin Beiber and making a fuss over it? REALLY? This is what our tax dollars go towards? This is how they spend their time? Trying to coax an 18 year old woman into respecting someone she does not? Scary.  


A reason this is scary to me is because it is akin to another story that is in the headlines recently. It's about a Thailand citizen who received twenty years in prison for sending four sms text messages that were considered insulting to the Queen and the monarchy. The situation is not exactly the same as with the Kansas Governor obviously, but both are situations in which people in power over-reacted to citizens who were communicating privately their opinions about government; in an effort to control those citizens' self expression.


Social media and the internet has allowed information to spread to many parts of the world and allowed quick communication between the people. In many ways these open, international, informational tools and the freedom it brings people is the opposite of 'Big Brother' government in 1984. In the story, the government changes history books, photos, newspaper stories, etc. to suit their own current political needs. Which is not dissimilar to what many current dictatorships try to do by controlling the flow of information in their country with things like pro-government propaganda, internet censorship, even banned phone text phrases, in an attempt to try and control the people from understanding true reality.


So if the book 1984 teaches me anything, it's that keeping information open and free and truthful and available to all the people is a very powerful thing. The ability to freely express one's self is a powerful thing.


As our world jumps every day further into the cyberspace information age, and as the control of that information becomes more of a political and economic issue; I urge us all to always defend the ability for all people to have free and open access to information, and the right to express one's self freely.

Two Independent Movies Worth Watching: "Special" and "Ink"

A while back on Netflix streaming (independent movies section) I saw two really great movies, Special, and Ink. Both of these movies reminded me how great a movie can be when unhinibited by large corporate interests.

Special is from 2006, written and directed by Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore, starring Michael Rapaport (yes that guy). I really really enjoyed Special on two different levels, one as a dark comedy starring a struggling vulnerable man, and the other as a surreal visionary statement about the working man versus the corporation. Anyways I don't want to make mountains out of molehills but maybe this molehill of a movie, is a mountain, at least in my eyes.

Rappaport stars as a working man with low self esteem who reaches out to a pyschological drug study and seemingly finds some kind of answer he has been looking for; in the drug.  He seems to have super powers which gives him a new-found confidence and purpose in life. He goes on to attempt to battle crime and later comes across the makers of the experimental drug he has taken.

For lack of a better segway, I go back to the two levels thing, this movie has a gritty realness to it and also a surreal dark comedy edge to it also, it works on both levels. It's also a personal story but in some ways (directly and indirectly) the story of a lot of working, struggling people.

I laughed so hard in some parts of the movie, literally rewinding and watching some moments three or four times just losing it, laughing. Like when the main character experiences some side effects of the drug, is a good example. On one hand he thinks something wonderful is happening (him gaining super-powers), but in reality you see that this is not the case. There is an obvious disconnect happening with the guy's pysche and reality. But you find as the movie goes along his sheer willpower and focus overcomes much, despite or becuase of the drug, he becomes what he wants to become. Definitely worth a watch, especially if you are into dark comedy dramas. Goes to the top tier of my favorite movies of all time, I liked it that much.

Ink was the other movie I watched, from 2009 directed and written by Jamin Winans. This movie intrigued me because it dealt with a lot of ideas that I have had about dreams, and dream-walkers and how they could (theoretically) interact with reality etc. etc. It starts out with a young girl and her dad playing together,  in some kind of flashback or memory or something. Flash forward the father is alone and doesn't see his daughter very much, he gets a call from his ex-father in law that his daughter is in a coma.

He has a personal morale journey to go through and at the same time are these kind of guardians, who are trying to help his daughter out of the coma she has fallen into. So they try and make the dad see what is important to him. These guardians can walk between dreams and reality and into the netherworld or whatever you want to call it, the inter-connected unconcious dream-world.

Ink is definitely a kind of morality tale, but one that is told in a very unique, very interesting way, with the guardian dream-walkers, and their 'dark side' equivalent - techno-demon suit things, working against them. I didn't mention those guys, they are creepy. In the netherworld are these men with visual screens for faces and dark suits plotting against the girl and her soul, and her father, and their 'guardian's.'

The visual effect of the movie is astonoshing, the character's futuristic outfits clashing with the gritty and real city, the surrealness and realness are mixed very well. All in all a great movie with an albeit predictable (still surprising though) but satisfying storyline that really shines against a phenomonal job of cinematography with well styled, unique characters.

The Yahoo Kid and e.e. cummings' Birthday

About a couple weeks ago I rode eight airplanes (including connections) in the span of about eight days. Amongst many other things, it was an opportunity to do a lot of people-watching. In my mid thirties now, I remember being fearless and age 18 or 19 years old, also being 10 or 12 and playing so hard everyday outside. Running in from the yard and drinking 4 glasses of water in four seconds, dying of thirst, water running down my chin.

But that was then and this is now. So, I recently realized that in some ways I am definitely not like that (fully enthusiastic) anymore, which is both good and bad probably for a lot of different reasons.

On one of these airplane rides a couple weeks ago, the plane began rolling forward on the runway to take off. As the rush of the wind got louder and louder and the anticipation of liftoff sets into my stomach, the tension builds. We go faster and faster and I was praying I think, not to have this be my last moment on earth, or something like that; - a kind of over-worrying, fear-driven reaction I guess.

Before this though, I was sitting in my seat waiting and a young kid - a boy about five or six maybe was boarding the plane with his grandmother. Maybe it was his mom I couldn't really tell, but I could definitely hear them. The boy was very excited, very loud, and had a question or statement or noise every other second it seemed like. Somehow he had twisted one of the knobs above him to make a really weird squished-whistling-air kind of noise, and he lost control laughing really loud. He thought it was the funniest thing ever. He was also telling really simple jokes then losing it every time laughing again. The kind of thing that might drive you nuts if you're on the plane, but also makes you realize the joy and exubarance of youth.

So right in this exact moment when the plane left the ground and I was kind of wincing and praying, this child in full, uninhibited, completely free-release, as loud as he could yelled, "yyyyyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhooooooooooooooooooooooooo" and all in one moment I was ashamed of my own fear, yearned for the freedom and innocence of youth, forgave that kid in my mind for being so loud the past 30 minutes, and was for a moment transported to my own childhood state of mind. To quote one of my favorite bands Phish, it's that feeling of like, "running like an antelope, out of control". So here is to that kid for enjoying life so much.

P.S.

Today is also E.E. cummings birthday. I was dismayed to find out recently researching the man, that he started out as a liberal but eventually joined the ranks of the 'patriotic' movement that happened as a result of the influence of Joseph McCarthy. 

Oh well, just another reminder that sometimes it's better to leave politics out of art (but sometimes political art can be powerful obviously, but in this case the art had nothing to do with the politics). That being said, Cummings was one of my first favorite poets that I really liked, and influenced my creative process with his complete release of traditional poetry and grammar 'rules'. (It made more sense to me that poems and art should start out with no rules, than to be made based on existing ones, a mode of thinking that could not of existed without pioneers like Cummings). 

The freedom in the style of his poetry really gave his work a powerful edge in my young mind. The way my brain processed the words - based on his presentation of them, and because of the way he used words in untraditional ways in relation to each other,  gave his work more feeling than I had experienced in any other poetry.  This was a big influence on my own style. Here is one of my favorite poems from him.

Into the strenuous briefness         e.e. cummings


into the strenuous briefness
Life:
handorgans and April
darkness, friends

i charge laughing.
Into the hair-thin tints
of yellow dawn,
into the women-coloured twilight

i smilingly glide. I
into the big vermilion departure
swim, sayingly;

(Do you think?) the
i do, world
is probably made
of roses & hello:

(of solongs and, ashes)

Mothership: We Lost the Motherboard...

Woke up one day last week, had some coffee, sat down at the PC and pressed space-bar to initiate from standby mode and,... 'click, ....click .....click ......click' nothing. Many restarts and various plugging and unpluggings later, there is still nothing. Could be the battery but the lights and fans come on, and the motherboard doesn't seem to. Is the PC dead? Maybe so, it's outlived it's upgrade-ability anyways I think. You can only upgrade a PC so long until it's just cheaper to stop and buy a whole new one, not unlike a car I guess.

It's the thing you think about but then when it happens, (a system fail or whatnot), it gives you that panicky dread feeling. At least it does for me,... it's like part of my brain is somehow stuck inside the little metal box (hard-drive of computer) and I need to get it turned back on, and seeing the black screen everytime I press start is freaking me out. Maybe you don't know what I mean and are smart and have all your files backed-up and organized.

Luckily I did a backup of my files a while ago, but everything since then is not backed-up and those files are now in digital limbo, whether they get plucked back into our world or not, remains to be seen. I bought a hard-drive-to-usb cable, hopefully it works; somewhere around is another hard drive that has been only half backed-up onto cd's or dvd's.  

The laptop keyboard I am using now to write this, is compact and throws my whole typing sequence off. In seventh and eighth grade they (the counselor) told me art class had been full so I had to pick something else. The truth was that the teacher did not care for my  older brother who had been in his class (he was a poor art teacher I am guessing) and he did not want me in the class. Both my brother and I (and other family) had natural drawing talent. But the point is I took keyboarding class instead in eighth grade. Which actually was a great help to me and I got far more out of it in my life than dealing with an insecure art teacher.  (To be fair I never met the man, which is fine with me). 

In fact, writing, or keyboarding you could call it, is one of my favorite things. Sure I like using a pen or pencil, but I really love using a keyboard to write. It's so much faster and much cleaner for two things. I can sit and close my eyes and know exactly what letters I am typing and it's fast enough that I can just let my mind go. It's like a feeling of really engaging or releasing the mind in a real time way of expression because the act of typing is so fast in correlation to what I am thinking. It's fun to really get going fast, but it's much harder on a smaller laptop keyboard, (a moot point).

So a sincere thanks goes out to my eighth grade keyboarding teacher, for contributing to me a useful life-long skill. I, like a lot of artists I talk to and read about, of course spend a lot of time writing in addition to making art, the two often (not always) seem to go hand in hand. I consider myself a bit of a poet to be honest, maybe I could share some here sometime, although I might prefer to do it in an anonymous blog, haha, me being so self-conscious and all, at least about writing poetry or prose, whatever you want to call it.

And (I love to start sentences with 'and' if only because teachers and textbooks tell you not to, I am such a literary rebel) that is my thoughts on the lives of PC's, and turning lemons into lemonade (getting what you need not what you want). Keep ready for updates of the salvaging of the two old hard-drives, and a couple lost posts that can be added if I do get the info off of them.

Modern Art Qoutes: Re - Centered

It has been a long time since I have written anything here at Modern Art Quotes (man I hate posts that begin like that on blogs, and now I am writing one again no less.) So where to begin,.... again? I think after such a long time (about a year) I think it is important to maybe summarize exactly what Modern Art Quotes is all about.

My name is Ed Tajchman and I am an artist, this is my blog. Originally this blog started as a kind of short weekly quip reflecting on art and thoughts from artists of the past (reflecting my fascination with art history). But over a period of months and years it morphed into a much more thorough examination of my approach and experience with the creative process, and eventually into my 'artist's blog'.

My artwork is mostly ink drawings, watercolor paintings, and more recently, acrylic paintings on canvas. For a long time my paintings were only non-representational and I spent a lot of time developing my style of painting in that vein. In the time since I stopped writing though and now, I have been doing figurative and symbolic work in acrylic paint.

I have spent a lot of time here at Modern Art Quotes explaining my experience that paintings can be completely non-representational, and also visually captivating and have a high level of technical application. Artwork that strives for complete newness and objectivity in it's forms can have an incredible aesthetic and visceral appeal, and be just as emotionally gratifying if not more so, than any figurative work.

To explain further, - some 'artists' create quick and cheap paintings with things like splatters (Jackson Pollack rolls over in his grave if he could see some of this stuff), gold foil, or simple repetitive textures etc. I am referring to this 'decorative' work that masks itself in the labels of 'modern art' or 'contemporary art'. When I discuss modern art this is the furthest thing possible from what I am talking about.

So the last two paragraphs touch on some of the themes from the past 200 posts or so here. Today though I would like to talk about what I discussed at the start of the post, my new paintings in acrylic on canvas. And it's ironic when you compare the paintings I was doing before to the ones I am doing now. I spent so much time exploring and discussing the value and experience of creating my own language of forms, line, and texture, only to now have my paintings be reflective of my ink drawings. Ink drawings that I have been doing since age 16 or so that feature symbols and figures prolifically, which is exactly not what I was painting before this new style emerged. (Going from defining my own forms to heavy use of known symbols, and figures appearing in the work).

And this new style is kind of a revelation for me, but not completely. I don't know why I didn't see it before - to put my figurative drawings on canvas and run with it. As I said I have done this particular kind of ink drawing style since I was about 16 but never put it into formal paintings. I guess in my mind I just never saw how exactly to do it, (and I was fascinated with objective work for so long) but finally it just all kind of came together in my head how I would use the acrylic paint and canvas to turn my drawings into full brightly colored works.

Detail of acrylic painting by Ed Tajchman,
©2011 all rights reserved.

So here above is a preview of one of my recent paintings, I don't want to reveal any more of them until I have completed a few more and have organized them into a formal kind of show. Also it will co-inside with the official release of the new version of my online gallery. This new style of work is my new focus and the new website will feature and reflect this. (The new website with the new work should be published in a couple months, late summer 2011). Also it will be much easier to purchase paintings, prints, and other things of my work, details of the publishing of this content will be updated here.

So, in the next 200 posts or so, I will continue to write about my experience with the creative process, continue to write about my fascination with art history, I will publish my artwork (and interviews and works of other artists email me if you want to be featured), and continue to discuss life in general. Thanks to all my readers (all five or six of you! lol) I hope to be writing here now much more consistently.