emchy | sexy art meme from endlesssummer

this is one of the most interesting and sexy memes i have seen

Behind a cut, post a list of five artists who have influenced your own work, style, or appreciation of art (if you're not an artist) greatly. Include up to three pieces by each artist and one photo of the artist. Explain briefly how you found the artist in question.

ETA - sleep deprived me did only three - now there are five

Fuseli's nightmare
this piece reminded me of how poems sit on my chest. it pulled out beauty in my heart. i saw it at the Detroit Institute of Art when I was 14 on a school tour and was rooted to the spot in front of it for 20 mins until the teacher pulled me back with my class. For about 14 years i always had a version of this (postcard, poster etc) hanging somewhere near my bed to inspire and move me. i love it beyond words.

Rivera, Detroit Industry Fresco

Same tour, whole different reaction. When I first saw the Detroit Industry Frescos I started crying. It was so beautiful. So powerful. I saw the humanity, inhumanity, beauty and ugliness where I came from. I would say it was fundamental in my political development. It made my blood get all boily and passionate and revved up. That my classmates didn't get how amazing it was and were bored probably galvanized me even more. It's one of the most important and beautiful works of art that I know.

and lastly - I would be remiss if I didn't include poetry here. Especially because one poet moved me out of my house and got my pen working again when I had given up on myself.

Hayden Carruth. Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey

I was freshly laid off of a job I had had for five years and that had really defined who I was. It was a workaholic job so I had put writing aside for a while and really didn't have any faith or inspiration in me left. Though I paid lip service via Artists Ways dates and such. So being unemployed I was thinking about grad school and MFA's and was at the Booksmith in the Haight. They put up a poem every week in the poetry section. Just a tiny tattered poem taped to a shelf. This day it was Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey from a poet I hadn't heard of and I had to sit down after I read it. It's short but the melody of how it read. The longing for youth and friendship that is still there but already holds the nostalgia of a memory. I had almost no money for food but I bought the book. This was six months before I started QOM. QOM wouldn't exist without this poem. It so literally changed my life. Thank you Hayden Carruth.

Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey

Scrambled eggs and whiskey
in the false-dawn light. Chicago,
a sweet town, bleak, God knows,
but sweet. Sometimes. And
weren't we fine tonight?
When Hank set up that limping
treble roll behind me
my horn just growled and I
thought my heart would burst.
And Brad M. pressing with the
soft stick and Joe-Anne
singing low. Here we are now
in the White Tower, leaning
on one another, too tired
to go home. But don't say a word,
don't tell a soul, they wouldn't
understand, they couldn't, never
in a million years, how fine,
how magnificent we were
in that old club tonight.

-- Hayden Carruth

John Zorn: "Der Kleine Leutnant Des Lieben Gottes (The Little Lieutenant Of The Loving God)"
from Happy End
I can tell you the exact moment I first heard John Zorn. I was already dipping my
toe in to jazz via a new pal I had at the student radio station where I was a DJ.
I loved Mingus and was listening to the Weird Nightmare compilation which had some
interesting and unconventional presentations of his work. One night on my radio shift
I was playing a block of music that was from the Kurt Weill compilation called Lost
in the Stars. The Zorn track had the longest title and the longest track so I decided
to play it so I would have time to run down the hall and get some water. As soon as
it started I was riveted to my seat. I turned it way way up so that the music filled
the entire radio station (ah the perks of a 2am show) and just listened with my whole
body. I had never heard anything like this. It was crazy and chaotic and complicated
and beautiful. It changed how I heard music.

http://www.mininova.org/tor/653692

and last I venture into film.

Quentin Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs.

It's not that I believe this is the best film ever made. However my time and place
in the world when I saw it meant that this film created a shift for me personally,
in what I could get or expect from a film. I loved film but the artsiest things I had
seen up to this point would be Merchant Ivory films. I was firmly in the romantic and
pretty art films camp and hadn't really seen films that questioned much of anything.
Midwest Michigan at that time had three art house cinemas. One in Ann Arbor. One in
East Lansing and one that occasionally ran films in Detroit. Now my bet is that
there were really many more. But they weren't mainstream enough that I knew about them
in the late 80's / early 90's. So when I went and saw Reservoir Dogs, it was
like nothing I had ever seen. Violent and gangster and complicated in abject simplicity.
The way that a crime movie was turned on it's head into art. The way I was made to
like and enjoy a torture scene and yet hate it at the same time. The way it made me so
uncomfortable. I felt like my eyes were opened. Now later I see the traditions that
the film was working in, and you know I still find it brilliant. It made me see though
that film could mean more than entertainment. Film could be a visceral reaction.
It could get under your skin and not leave for weeks. Film could be art with a
capital A and enjoying it was more than just watching pictures flicker on a screen.
Watch the right film and it could change your entire life view. It did mine.

sexy art meme from endlesssummer

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