A Strange Necessity: Rebecca West, James Joyce & the artistic impulse

Why does Art matter? What is this strange necessity?

–Rebecca West

…the closer you try to approach the facts through history, the deeper you sink into fiction. The greater the care with which you explain a fact, the more nonsensical a fable you fish out of chaos. – Halldór Laxness, Under the Glacier

In her book-length essay The Strange Necessity, philosopher-writer Rebecca West observed how the creative act could be thought of as a completely holistic and natural force in the world. In the act of creating, the artist becomes a part of nature, fused and connected to the natural world. West’s metaphor of the natural artist is ; “determined and exclusive as the tree’s intention of becoming a tree, and by passing all his material through his imagination and there experiencing it, he achieves the same identity with what he makes as the growing tree does.”[i][1]

Strange Necessity claims the actions of an artist, in the process of creation, comes out of a biological necessity, an unstoppable urge bound up with natural primal desires. The artist is never in total control of the process of creating, but is only fulfilling a natural process bound up within life. The necessity that West explored can be simplified as the “spiritual impulse”, an intuitive connection and higher realm, beyond thought or emotion that resides in the creative act. West further identifies a fundamental unity between all art and experience. The creation of artwork is an engagement with life, a process that’s transcendent, connected with a spiritual purpose.

The Strange Necessity is a moving portrait on the motivations of an artist. In her concluding chapters, West shifts to the exaltation and spiritual function a work of art performs on the individual. It is a relationship to art that borders on the sexual: “I have…this crystalline concentration of glory, this deep and serene and intense emotion that I feel before the greatest works of art… It overflows the confines of the mind and becomes an important physical event…Is this exaltation the orgasm, as it were, of the artistic instinct, stimulated to its height by a work of art…”[ii] This spiritual and orgasmic manifestation of art is noted in the grandiose and sublime landscapes of Frederic Church and J.M.W. Turner, the floating abstraction of Kandinsky, in the mathematical genius of J.S. Bach and Mozart, or the poetry of Melville and Poe; all works that commune with the soul on a metaphysical landscape. This pull toward the spiritual, sublime and orgasmic was fundamental to the development of modernism. Inside Jazz, abstraction, visual art, poetry and fiction, were the release and attributes of a mind in exaltation of the orgasm.

West used the example of a single day of city life to investigate the novel as a creative act and the moving effect of art on her own life. An intensive study of Joyce’s Ulysses takes place inside a single day of West’s life within her home in the city of Paris. This doubling of art and life was itself at the very center of Ulysses, which also takes place in a single day in the life of James Joyce. This entwined process of art and life becomes like an image reflected in a hall of mirrors. Joyce never made public his notice of West’s criticism, however he wrote a scathing put-down of her and a parody of Strange Necessity within his novel Finnegan’s Wake. West takes the example of Joyce as a motivating pendulum in all the arts. The passage of a spiritual or natural transformation from one artist to the next often occurs between written and visual worlds. The simultaneous fractured time and cubism within Joyce is reflected in Picasso paintings, comic books, a Bach concerto and  jazz riffs.

The way art is expressed through society, the way it’s supported, taught, encouraged and rejected, is often based on the timorous relationship between artist and patron and the political mechanics of the time. During times of wealth and industry (the Renaissance is the most obvious example), this relationship can be developed fruitfully and become a concentrated force.

The relationship of funding and material support in the arts is illustrated in Ezra Pound’s comment that, “Great art does not depend on the support of riches, but without such aid it will be individual, separate, and spasmodic: it will not group and become a great period… a great age is brought about only with the aid of wealth, because a great age means the deliberate fostering of genius, the gathering-in and grouping and encouragement of artists.”[iii] This careful balance and support of the arts is often shaken and disposed of in times of great social upheaval and despair, yet this “strange necessity” is present in all eras, and should be viewed as a constant interior force.

Forces of spirit or metaphysics which effect and drive the artist, is a theme often overlooked and diminished. From the nineteenth century “art reform” to contemporary theorists, metaphysical and spiritual influences continue to be downplayed or ignored. The opening of early nineteenth century America to its vast resources and its “manifest destiny” has been a clear source of our nation’s spiritual tensions and troubles. The drive onward instead of inward creates uneasiness and an emphasis on earthbound desires. Conditions of genocide, war, racial divisions and destruction of land and resources can only be reconciled or balanced by spiritual solutions or the transformation of consciousness –conditions that are universal in the art process.

West declared America itself as part of a political necessity; a country of belief and action balanced on a life or death situation. America evolved into existence because of the necessity for freedom, an idea constantly tested and often betrayed by many of America’s leaders. It was once believed that America was founded on and contained the seeds of spiritual freedom, and served as a beacon for other nations. That noble idea of spiritual freedom has gradually been replaced by a slide into greed and selfishness.

The idea of spirituality as unbounded space, without restraint, serves the arts and the areas in which art flourishes. New York City once came close in the 1930s and 40s as a site where the arts could flourish without boundaries. During the development of the ashcan and abstract expressionist schools      modernism took root, at least a modernism outside of European influence. That heroic past has been documented closely and mythologized, yet, the story of cheap rents, artist garrets and a pioneering spirit is not exclusive and is one we return to again and again, in many sites around the globe.

* * * * * * *

postscript:

Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them. –David Hume, Essays Moral and Political, 1742

The Eighteenth century philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) remained unpopular and  mostly unread until the mid-twentieth century. His idea on beauty was that it existed as fragmented perceptions in the mind. That the mysteries and beauty we seek in art are always “impressions of the mind” –the thoughts and feelings we carry within us through comparisons of experience. Hume said, “power and necessity… are… qualities of perceptions, not of objects… felt by the soul and not perceived externally in bodies”[iv] That fragmented-self idea was later embraced and radicalized by Gilles Deluze and the poststructuralists. We are all parts of a greater whole and the process of art is nothing less then the universe being itself and seeing itself.

The eternal return is woven through the fragmented-mind and its removal of the object of our passion. The artist is on a feedback loop where art and the mind are always one.

[ii] The Strange Necessity, p. 210-211

[iii] Ezra Pound, Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts, Harriet Zinnes, Ed.,  (New Directions, 1980) p. 266

[iv] David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, (New York: Dover, 2003 edition), p. 168

Technorati Tags: A Strange Necessity, art and meaning, artistic process, creativity, essay, Hume and beauty, James Joyce, Rebecca West

My Mirage

EPICAL, Influential Cosmic Satire

“My Mirage” (1986-1991) is the first major body of work by Jim Shaw, an artist from Los Angeles who started exhibiting in the late 1970s. Composed of nearly 170 pieces—each one drawn, silk-screened, photographed, sculpted, filmed or painted in a different style—”My Mirage” recounts the wandering of Billy, a white, middle-class American sucked into the whirlwind of the sixties and seventies. His is a story of unceasing failure. “…after a childhood spent among Marvel superheroes, pubescent Billy discovers the joys of masturbation and sniffing glue. He then goes all the way from LSD hippie heaven through drug hell to his final ‘rebirth’ as a Christian preacher man.” -Frieze Magazine

Chicago Imagists (hardcover)

A long overdue examination of this bold & influential art movement

Drawing inspiration from the everyday world, comic books, popular culture, pornography, Surrealism, and non-western art, these young artists, in a series of exhibitions at the Hyde Park Art Center, created energetic, figurative paintings with vibrant colors that were titled with humorous puns.

Paper Cutting (paperback)

Stunning Creations for Art Buffs & Indie Crafters

There’s a renaissance underway in the art form of cut paper, with an explosion of raw talent and an abundance of amazing work produced in the medium in recent years. This gorgeous volume features work from 26 contemporary international artists who are creating images of astonishing intricacy, using little more than paper and blade.

The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951

an overdue history of an organization that had an impact on American art and journalism out of all proportion to its abbreviated life. -Wall Street Journal

Presenting 150 works of the members of the Photo League alongside complementary essays that offer new interpretations of the League’s work, ideas, and pedagogy, this beautifully illustrated book features artists including Margaret Bourke-White, Sid Grossman, Morris Engel, Lisette Model, Ruth Orkin, Walter Rosenblum, Aaron Siskind, W. Eugene Smith, and Weegee, among many others.

Detroit: 138 Square Miles (signed)

A Stylish & Comprehensive Survey of the Detroit Landscape

Detroit: 138 Square Miles reads like a visual journey through the scarred backsides and forgotten wastelands of humanity, a spiritual quest through small neighborhoods, infernos, architectural gems, seedy bars and secret locations. Photos from a low-flying airplane splash run across the page like exclamation points, revealing powerful rarely seen views of the city, showing in detail the vastness of its rusted arterial and organic nervous system.

Bill Rauhauser: 20th Century Photography in Detroit

A  Street-side View of  Modern Detroit

Bill Rauhauser has spent a lifetime quietly chronicling the heart and soul of Detroit. From his poetic recording of his family life and the urban landscape to his surprising tabletop conceptual artworks, Rauhauser’s image making has always been stamped with clarity, gentle beauty and refined composition.

Patti Smith 1969 – 1976

An enduring friendship & evolution of two unique artists.

“I was eager to be Judy’s model and to have the opportunity to work with a true artist. I felt protected in the atmosphere we created together. We had an inner narrative, producing our own unspoken film, with or without a camera.” -Patti Smith, from her afterword

Groundwaters: A Century of Art by Self-Taught And Outsider Artists [Hardcover]

the wellspring of modern & contemporary art

This book presents a narrative of the history of outsider art, clarifies predominant theoretical issues, and draws comparisons with the modernist tradition. It brings into focus the enormous contributions self-taught artists have made to our understanding of creative genius and presents them in a book that will enthrall anyone interested in Outsider Art.

The Death Ray

“It is like Holden Caulfield with his phaser set on kill. Phonies beware.”  –Time Magazine

The Death-Ray utilizes the classic staples of the superhero genre—origin, costume, ray gun, sidekick, fight scene—and reconfigures them in a story that is anything but morally simplistic. With subtle comedy, deft mastery, and an obvious affection for the bold pop-art exuberance of comic book design, Daniel Clowes delivers a contemporary meditation on the darkness of the human psyche.

The Hare With the Amber Eyes (paperback)

“An extraordinary history…A wondrous book, as lustrous and exquisitely crafted as the netsuke at its heart.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“A family memoir written with a grace and modesty that almost belie the sweep of its contents: Proust, Rilke, Japanese art, the rue de Monceau, Vienna during the Second World War. The most enchanting history lesson imaginable.” —The New Yorker

“Absorbing . . . In this book about people who defined themselves by the objects they owned, de Waal demonstrates that human stories are more powerful than even the greatest works of art.” —Adam Kirsch, The New Republic

3 on Destroy All Monsters

Destroy All Monsters Magazine

A Proto-Punk Zine for the Occupy Moment

..the handmade issues contained graphic collage, photography, illustration, writing, and other works that distilled the group’s prismatic and dystopian view of media and social values. Nonprofit art publishers Primary Information have put together all six issues of the zine (plus a portion of a lost seventh issue that has never seen the light of day) in Destroy All Monsters Magazine 1976-1979. The 287-page tome pays tribute to and documents this exemplar of DIY media that shaped the face of American punk. Know your role models. Destroy All Monsters. -Vman Super Destructive: Destroy All Monsters

The Return of the Repressed: Destroy All Monsters 1974-1977,

A full color, 312-page catalog made to accompany the Return of the Repressed show at PRISM in Los Angeles. The show includes over 150 drawings, photographs, prints, collages and paintings produced by the original members of Destroy All Monsters (Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, Niagara, and Jim Shaw) in the depths of post-hippy, pre-punk Detroit. Destroy All Monsters was unique for having produced a distinct body of multi-media work while documenting itself in the act of its own creation. The themes of the work span grotesque figuration, ecstatic pop imagism, apocalyptic play-acting, gothic dreamscapes, and full-on horror.

Hungry for Death: Destroy All Monsters w/CD

a goddamn riot of chaotic sounds and shards…

The music was everything anyone could have ever hoped for. It mixed all kinds of crazy elements – Sun Ra’ Arkestral space blast, Futura-style free rock (ala Mahogany Brain, Fille Qui Mousse, et al), avant garde improv in the style of AMM and MEV, plus an acknowledgement of the roots of the Detroit underground rock scene, specifically the conceptual-art era of the Psychedelic Stooges in their pre-first-LP format. It was a goddamn riot of chaotic sounds and shards – just amazing. And the visuals fit the bill, also. – Byron Coley from the intro  (more related products in the Destroy All Monsters catalog. )

Technorati Tags: art books, best art books 2011, best illustrated books, Book Reviews, destroy all monsters, detroit art, photography books

Glenn Barr is one of Detroit’s finest living artists – an incredibly skilled painter that exhibits internationally, and has created his own unique self-contained and stark futuristic-retro world; one skewed by the history of Detroit’s low-brow culture and that addresses our post-industrial pop-damaged age.

Barr combines techniques from the world of commercial illustration, figurative art, pop and 1950s abstraction onto his signature rusty, earth-toned palette. His subjects range from space-age teenager sirens to funky hipsters, mischievous devils, sprites and fairies -all portrayed against a decaying carnivalesque dystopian setting. The result is a darkly sinister and lush googie filled tripped-out goulash, where paradox, angst and uncertainty meet on a fantasy battlefield – what Barr terms his “haunted paradise”. A sly and subtle humor invades most of the work -an irony riffing off cultural overload, dead-media, lost utopias, the sexy sixties and our collective obsession with cool.

Identified with the lowbrow movement, Barr’s first retrospective was Haunted Paradise (2006) released by Last Gasp and his Los Angeles dealer Billy Shire. His latest release is the condensed survey and marvelous FACES, another Last Gasp book that takes a close up view at 80 different paintings Barr created over the past 5 years. Another recent title is the latest HEEP #4 from a series of self-published zines containing drawings from Barr’s   sketchbooks.

In the backroom gallery, a special pop-up shop for the holidays has been set up and carefully arranged by the artist, featuring an assortment of  signed books, zines, posters, toys, and limited edition prints and cards. In addition, Barr has selected books and objects from around the store to create a personalized Barr-inspired gift selection. Stop by soon and peruse the offerings. The Pop-up shop will close in early January.

The exhibition “Bones” will display the art and vision of Yasuo Tanaka during a consecutive three day opening at the Book Beat gallery/bookstore on Friday, October 21st from 6-8 PM, Saturday, October 22nd from 5-8 PM and Sunday from 3-5 PM. The artist will be making “portraits in a wheelchair” during his residency and will have original sculptures, ink & watercolor napkin drawings, photographs and books for sale. Artist Dick Cruger will also be in attendance and will present their collaboration Parallel Universe; Detroit/Tokyo, a photographic book correspondence between Tokyo and Detroit.  The Exhibition will continue through January 9th, 2012. The Book Beat gallery is located at 26010 Greenfield in Oak Park. Please call 248-968-1190 for more information.

Tokyo artist Yasuo Tanaka (b.1942) is a uniquely gifted artist that uses bookmaking, design, puppetry, wire sculpture, photography, and ink drawing in fantastic and striking combinations. Tanaka has produced a curious and quietly poetic body of work, a bizarrely stylized skeleton world radiating a simple universal message and philosophy. A surreal, childlike and humorous quality pervades all of Tanaka’s art that presents to us a Borgesian metaphysical vision about eternity, death and life wrapped inside his purely visual reality.

For more information please read our blog: Yasuo Tanaka Photographer and Paper Napkin Artist

The exhibition “Bones” will display the art and vision of Yasuo Tanaka during a consecutive three day opening at the Book Beat gallery/bookstore on Friday, October 21st from 6-8 PM,  Saturday, October 22nd from 5-8 PM and Sunday from 3-5 PM.  The artist will be making “portraits in a wheelchair” during his residency and will have original sculptures, ink napkin drawings, photographs and books for sale. Artist Dick Cruger will also be in attendance and will present their collaboration Parallel Universe, a photographic book correspondence between Tokyo and Detroit.  The Book Beat gallery is located at 26010 Greenfield in Oak Park. Please call 248-968-1190 for more information.

Tokyo artist Yasuo Tanaka (b.1942) is a uniquely  gifted artist that uses bookmaking, design, puppetry, wire sculpture, photography, and ink drawing in fantastic and striking combinations. Tanaka has produced a curious and quietly poetic body of work, a bizarrely stylized skeleton world radiating a simple universal message and philosophy. A surreal, childlike and humorous quality pervades all of Tanaka’s art that presents to us a Borgesian metaphysical vision about eternity, death and life wrapped inside his purely visual reality.

Detroit book artist and sculptor  Dick Cruger, began a friendship with the artist Yasuo Tanaka about 10 years ago. Dick was introduced to Yasuo through the American poet Arthur Barnard who now lives in Tokyo.  Barnard thought the two artists should meet since they both shared a similar aesthetic. Each artist executes their work with technical polish, working in similar areas of storytelling with visual art and sculpture. Together they have recently collaborated on Parallel Universes, book project that combines sites of Detroit and Tokyo told through skeleton and robot figures. The Book Beat gallery will display this body of work and hold the book launch  beginning October 21st.

Tanaka’s small and delicate Tokyo Midnight, is an oblong hand-sewn book of 24 photographs of puppet skeletons posed around nightly urban Tokyo scenes. The title is typewritten on an opaque sheet of paper that covers a small die-cut square on  thick black cardstock  that serves as the book’s cover. The skull of the first skeleton is revealed in a tiny die-cut window as if it is trying to enter another world or  peak into ours… as you open the book there is a dusky scene on the first page, the beginning of a sunrise or sunset. A small moon rests high in the night sky. The skeleton subject looks tired of life and exhausted, its skull bent over drooping, perhaps returning home from a night of drinking, photographing or a long night of witnessing the night action found inside of Midnight Tokyo. We don’t know if the figure is arriving or departing. The ambiguous improvisational nature of Midnight Tokyo describes a multi-level netherworld that is open to many interpretations.

Midnight Tokyo opens up with isolated  single skeletons;  figures alone and lost in thought, one sits at a dinner with a coffee mug watching a clock tick by overhead. Groups of outdoor skeleton’s follow; drinking, buying magazines at a midnight kiosk, a more frenzied group action picks up the pace,  fashionable skeletons are strolling down the street clutching expensive name-brand handbags, a group playing a paddle ball game in the park, a large crowd of skeletons sit watching and cheering on a boxing match of skeletons, a cozy skeleton couple sits on a park bench reading a book as a pair of inexplicable wooden shows sit empty on the brick walkway.  There are scenes of game playing, music performances, a figure photographing roses, a bicyclist in front of a lit up model of the Eiffel Tower, a night ball game, a rainstorm with broken umbrellas,  a boat ride down a river, death figures running and exercising. The last image is large ball, or a sun? or perhaps an entire world of skeletons rising (or setting) over the city as the cross of a church illuminates the urban night sky.

Yasuo beautifully blends in pen-light sketching trails in many of his photos, a technique once made popular in Picasso’s light action drawings from a photographic sequence and film made by Gjon Mili. Tokyo Midnight is a metaphysical book whose power belies its small format and quaint/whimsical qualities. The book is able to use light and darkness in a strong dramatic effect. The work alters our perception of space and depth of field as it subverts our notion of reality, time, life and death. There are no digital effects or photo-shop software used in Yasuo’s work, each image has been carefully thought out and composed beforehand.    

Attaching a long wire handle to his puppet subjects, Tanaka is able to make his skeletons dance and perform activities in synchronicity beside reality. His stage is the rectangular frame of his camera set still on a tripod. Known to travel to Europe with his puppets and tripod camera, Tanaka often sets up among crowds, often preferring to shoot theatrical scenes at nighttime with long open-lens exposures. The photo works make obvious the close connection between the living world and the dead, between the inanimate and the movement of daily life. Tanaka’s shadow worlds are printed in black and white to emphasize the contrasts of light and dark, of white bone against the night. The circular patterns of the book creates a movement of time from indoor personal/private space to public shared space and the madness of crowds. Light shows are an aggressive ongoing element throughout Midnight Tokyo. There are fireworks, lit up skyscrapers, reflections, paper lanterns, neon lights, sun, moon and pen-light drawings. The artist is hyper-conscious of light and composition -and the sublime effect it plays in photography.

Yasuo’s hand-made books are constructed and produced in small editions. He uses fine art printing techniques like continuous tone gravure or hand etchings. The papers and bindings are selected to best reflect on their contents. Tanaka who was once a freelance commercial designer, creates simple black wire figures that he sculpts into 3-dimensional form.He calls these sculpture-drawings, and photographed against a white ground they give an impression of drawings in 3-dimensions..  The skeletons and insect creatures he makes with thin black wire add another dimension to his art. These small sculptural puppets and creatures stand alone as finely crafted miniatures.

Another of Yasuo’s small books is titled One Million One Skeletons. This book of  drawings is spiral bound and contains eight fold-out accordion pages, each folded 6 times and printed on both sides making 96 pages. Each page contains an idea or meditation on the group. There are similar pastimes being examined as in the photographs, yet some sketches also convey a dance or sexual intercourse being performed like instructional positions in a kama sutra book. The swirling ball of skeletons is also present and the message begins to read more chaotic and “group think” then in the fun-loving photography series. One page commands spelling out the words “DON’T THINK TOO MUCH” in bones over a sea of skulls.  It is one of the rare instances that the artist uses words. Is the artist implying thought leads to death or that we should not think about or insert meaning into these drawings – that we should divorce meaning from the visual?  The drawings bring to mind the Day of the Dead rituals of Mexico and the great political skeleton broadsides by Josè Guadalupe Posada. But where Posada infused personalities and the sensational in his grotesques, Yasuo manages a more quiet humorous approach, his cartoons reflect aspects of  Japanese society and the idea of working, standing and playing together as a unit. The bones of Tanaka march together in formal unison creating a repetitive pop landscape of numbness, imprisonment and group interaction.

In one of his rare statements, Tanaka has indicated that these idiosyncratic folk-like drawings are derived from the idea that the skeleton is our one final similarity, the foundation of form contained by all humanity. The skeleton crosses (and eliminates) all borders of nationality, race, class, culture and religion. The skeleton is our shadow and lasting statement on the planet. Tanaka’s skeletons however are far from dead or distant objects. They are animated dead-beings; the bones and raw embodiment of daily life. Tanaka’s miniatures have a similar relationship to the real-life decorative bone tableau’s created in the five chapels at the Cemetery of the Capuchins built in Rome by an anonymous friar in the 1500s.  Tanaka’s skeletons too are seen in everyday activity; eating, playing sports, relaxing, being human. The individual is carefully dissolved by Tanaka’s treatment and what emerges is a kind of homogenous and lively death figure of community activity; a bony image that’s both a single building block (of the architecture of society) and its own universe.  Tanaka conveys both the micro and macro, saying something impregnated with cosmic meaning, yet doing it quietly, in a medium he has created himself and made his own.

The mysterious mazes within Tanaka’s work create a landscape of thinking about  death, an opening  to the idea that death might even hold onto the same drudgery, incarceration, pain, and drunkenness as in life, a message that stands clearly beside the artist’s own statement of unity, fulfillment and joy.

Tanaka’s vision recalls classical Ukiyo-e ghost drawings and their often demented manga offspring. The magical bone writing of Tanaka seem to follow their own codex-like logic as in the mysterious figures found in flattened pre-Columbian Mayan hieroglyphics.  With Tanaka, the repetitive multiplied symbol of death is taken to extremes of cubist abstraction and chaos, suggesting a perpetual struggle or battle with harmony and order. There is also something reminiscent of mobile sculptor Alexander Calder’s miniature circus in the works of Tanaka, each artist content in making self-contained gentle vistas that express life in a transcendent magical way.

For many years Tanaka has been obsessively compiling hundreds, perhaps thousands of his drawings of human skeletons on the surface of delicate paper napkins.  They are labyrinthian objects of order in a private diary – images that hold the memories of past meals and journeys. His drawings contain a magical visual language that echo off again in his photographs. The weightless napkins are generally  about 8 inches square and are unfolded to a surface of about 20″-24″ square. The artist then carefully inks and colors-in images on all quadrants of the translucent square. The initial black outlines act as a border to contain the color. His life’s work fits comfortably inside a small suitcase.

Napkins that are padded underneath the original drawing serve to soak up the ink and watercolors. These formless  “blotter” napkins serve as further canvas for his cartoon/comic ink sketches and offbeat abstractions. He wastes nothing. Tanaka spends countless hours skimming the surface on the thin translucent skins of napkins. A misplaced line or last minute error can completely ruin a work, but the under-napkins may still yield a successful accidental work, a dadaist, surreal strategy of chance. Often the names of restaurants and advertising logos will show through on the napkins reminding us of the temporal and pop nature of these disposable feather-light paper treasures. The Napkin – once a disposable object meant to wipe our faces and clean up stains have been given a new dignity and substance as a container for ideas.

Book Beat will be hosting the first United States exhibition of Yasuo Tanaka’s  artistry.

Facsimile Edition Released by Primary Information

A Detroit launch for the Destroy All Monsters Magazine (book) is scheduled for Saturday June 11th  8-10 PM  at Public Pool, 3309 Caniff in Hamtramck. A talk between local art critic Vincent Carducci and DAM member Cary Loren will begin at 8:30 PM, a Q & A will follow.

Primary Information:

http://primaryinformation.org/index.php?/upcoming/destroy-all-monsters/

New York book launch at MoMA/PS1:  http://www.artbook.com/blog-at-first-sight-d-a-m.html

Primary Information is pleased to announce the release of Destroy All Monsters Magazine — making all issues of the Magazine available to a wide audience for the first time. This publication is a compilation of the seven issues of Destroy All Monsters Magazine that were originally published between 1976-1979. The book is 278 pages and retails for $30.

Destroy All Monsters was an Detroit-area band and collective that was formed in 1973. Its initial members were Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, Niagara and Jim Shaw. Destroy All Monsters were art students and musicians who used performance art tactics to create noise music that evolved out of influences like Sun Ra, Nico, horror movie soundtracks and local bands like MC5 and The Stooges. The band later took on new members and briefly reunited in the 90s.

Destroy All Monsters Magazine was edited by Cary Loren and contained artwork, photographs, and flyers from Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, Niagara and Jim Shaw. Printed using any papers and techniques available to the band, the issues combine the cut and paste tactics of punk zines with a psychedelic affinity for color.  Destroy All Monsters Magazine functions as a kind of manifesto, providing insight into the band through densely layered pages with movie imagery, kitsch, cartoons, delicate drawings, and counter-culture collages. While Destroy All Monsters has been the subject of recent exhibitions and partial reprints, this is the first time that all issues have been reprinted.

Destroy All Monsters Magazine is available directly through Primary Information’s website www.primaryinformation.org and is distributed through Distributed Art Publishers worldwide. For further information or to order Destroy All Monsters Magazine, please contact Primary Information at info@primaryinformation.org

Primary Information is a 501(c)3 organization. The organization receives generous support through grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Stichting Egress Foundation, the Buddy Taub Foundation, and individuals worldwide.

ON Sunday, June 5,

The first scheduled event to coincide with the publication of BLACK EYE 1: Graphic Transmissions to Cause Ocular Hypertension, will be a companion exhibition of works by ten of the book’s contributors. However, the work included in MOROSE DELECTATION will not be drawn from that in BLACK EYE, but will be work that has been newly-created for the exhibition as well as older, unpublished works. The following is the press release:

MOROSE DELECTATION

An Exhibition of Works on Paper, Occasioned by the Release of

BLACK EYE 1: Graphic Transmissions to Cause Ocular Hypertension

A New Comics Anthology of Black and Absurdist Humor by 41 International Artists and Writers, Edited by Ryan Standfest and Published by Rotland Press + Comic Works, Detroit, Michigan.

WHERE: Book Beat Bookstore & Gallery, 26010 Greenfield Road / Oak Park, MI / 48237-1050 / (248) 968-1190

WHEN: JUNE 5th – AUGUST 5^th, 2011; OPENING EVENT with discussion and signing on June 5^th, from 3 to 5 PM.

“Its good to know that comics are still being confiscated today” – Chris Ware

The exhibition will include work by:

Max Clotfelter (Seattle, Washington)

Andy Gabrysiak (Plymouth, Michigan)

Ian Huebert (San Francisco, California)

Kaz (Hollywood, California)

James Moore (Brooklyn, New York)

Tom Neely (Los Angeles, California)

Paul Nudd (Chicago, Illinois)

Onsmith (Chicago, Illinois)

David Paleo (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Stephen Schudlich (Dearborn, Michigan)

Curated by Cary Loren and Ryan Standfest

This exhibition, held at the Book Beat Gallery, showcases works on paper by ten artists who are contributors to the comics anthology BLACK EYE No. 1. The exhibition is meant to be a companion to the anthology, and the work presented here reflects a continuation of the sensibility presented in the pages of BLACK EYE, namely a focus on black and absurdist humor that sits uneasily on the border between what is funny and what is not.

The exhibition will have an OPENING EVENT ON SUNDAY, JUNE 5^th, from 3 to 5pm, during which there will be a discussion concerning BLACK EYE and the nature of black humor, as well as a signing with some of the contributing artists present. A limited edition letterpress print by the artists Onsmith & Nudd will be available for purchase and for signing, along with copies of BLACK EYE.

Further information about BLACK EYE can be found at the Rotland Press + Comic Works site: http://rotlandpress.wordpress.com/

Black Eye was the subject of international controversy recently after the book was confiscated by Canadian border agents.  Copies of the collection were being taken to a comics convention in Canada and agents considered it obscene material.  Here is a link to the incident on the Comics Journal website.

We are unable to reach everyone who would appreciate these events.   If you know anyone who would be interested, please forward this information on to them.  Thank you for your continued support

Two-time Caldecott Award winning author/illustrator and Michigan native Chris Van Allsburg will be visiting the Book Beat on Wednesday, April 6 from 3-6 p.m.  This is a rare chance to meet one of the truly great children’s book illustrators and a master storyteller.  Van Allsburg won the Caldecott Medal for the Polar Express and Jumanji and a Caldecott Honor Award for his first book The Garden of Abdul Gasazi and received the Regina Medal for lifetime achievement in children’s literature.  He grew up in Grand Rapids, MI and currently lives in Rhode Island.

Van Allsburg’s latest creation, Queen of the Falls, tells the thrilling true story of Ms. Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to go over the Niagara Falls. Taylor was a 62-year-old retired charm school instructor living in Bay City. MI when she undertook the scheme for profit and fame, though both managed to elude her.  This is Van Allsburg’s first work of non-fiction, but the strange tale fits his magical yet realistic style and comes marvelously to life.

“There is something decidedly fantastic and not quite real about Niagara Falls, about Annie’s adventure, and about the stories that can unfold when imagination, determination, and foolhardiness combine to set humans off in pursuit of their goals.”  Review from FUSE #8

This is truly a special opportunity to meet Van Allsburg in a small, personal setting, and a great chance to get signed copies of his wonderful books.  His books will be available for sale, including Queen of the Falls, a great new addition to his work.  3-6 p.m, Wednesday, April 6 on 2011 at the Book Beat, 26010 Greenfield Rd, Oak Park, MI 48237. For more information call 248-968-1190.

Chris Van Allsburg on creating \”Queen of the Falls\”

“What is significant about art, is what we share as human beings.” –David Barr

David has recently published several new books and will be presenting; SIEVE,  a new collection of essays about art and artists that include David Barr’s thoughts on teaching art, making art, the role of public art, and his reminiscence of many Detroit area artists including; Jim Pallas, Bob Caskey, Susan Hauptman, Diane Carr and others. David has also included reviews of some of his favorite inspiring artworks along with artist quotations and lessons learned along life’s road.  SIEVE is a book that is sure to please anyone interested in the arts, and is a wonderful insight into one of our own highly original thinkers, educators and creators.

“The Sieve seemed to signal new life as well as isolate its raw components.  Time is a sieve.  It filters and blends memories. Like art.”  -David Barr from SIEVE

David Barr has also published a collection of “literary fragments” titled TIME IS MY WINDOW. it is a collection of four Michigan writer/artists; (Robert Caskey, Veronica Sanitate, Rick Solomon, David Barr) and the Italian author/artist Christiano Mazzani.  A DVD is included with the book with a short film by Paul Mangenello, an interpretation of one of the stories “Old Man By the Pond”.

At his last reading at Book Beat one year ago, David presented his book Amercordo: (I Remember) American Style , a collection of recollections and observations from the mid-century American Midwest to Tuscany, the mid-west of Italy.

David Barr is an internationally recognized artist from the Detroit area. His most recognized work locally is his magnificent “Star Gate” sculpture situated at the front of Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit. Titled Transcending, this unique sculpture was financed through the Labor Union movement and is connected to Labor and its spirit of defiance and sacrifice.

David has recently been completing work on several books that collect his artistic and personal history. His large format art book Crossing Lines was published in 2009. It carries the reader to some of the world’s most intriguing, mysterious and remote locations. Filled with 180 color and black and white illustrations, the book narrates the various projects David Barr has been involved with over the past thirty years. His work on the Four Corners Project, begun in 1976, spanned a full decade with installations in Greenland, Africa, Irian Jaya and Easter Island. Other geo-structurist works include Arctic Arc in Wales, Alaska, and Naukan, Russia, and Sunsweep on the US/Canada border at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, in Northwest Angle, Minnesota, and Point Roberts, Washington. Here, in his home state, David’s works can be seen at such locations as Chrysler World Headquarters (Revolution), Flint’s Bishop Airport, (Soaring), Detroit Zoo (Source), State of Michigan Historical Museum (Polaris Ring) and Meadowbrook Festival Grounds (Sunset Cube).

In 1988 David Barr was awarded the Governor’s Michigan Artist Award. In his acceptance speech he told the audience of his desire to create a Michigan Art Park – a place where artists could tell the story of our state in and through the fundamental materials of nature. That dream has become a reality in 1995 with the Michigan Legacy Art Park , located within the boundaries of Crystal Mountain on M-115 between Cadillac and Benzonia near Thompsonville.

David Barr is a graduate of Wayne State University and recipient of the WSU Distinguished Alumni Award. He served on the faculty of Macomb Community College and has received awards, including citations from the Arts Foundation of Michigan and Citizens Concerned for the Arts in Michigan. His work can also be seen at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Flint Institute of Arts, Fort Lauderdale Museum, Portland Art Museum, Tel Aviv Museum and the University of Michigan.