Inspiration:
Ever since I was a kid I have been looking at the Bellows pugilist artworks. I have a distinct memory of a lady who I think traveled from one grade school class to another in my school district to teach art for an hour or two at a time. I think she made a deep impression on me and this artwork kind of deals with two, not lessons, but thoughts that she instilled in me.
First, and directly dealing with Bellows, this lady would bring a couple posters of paintings every once in a while to the class. She would tell us what to look at, why certain art was good. She used the example of ‘‘‘‘‘‘ to illustrate composition, how the eye travels around a picture…. more.
picture of bellows and lines here.
Also, there was a time when she was deeply offended by a picture i tried to submit for a show. It depicted a soldier who had died in Vietnam. I thought it was really good. I remember being really proud of it. I think it really disturbed her and she lectured me about violence. I remember thinking it was unfair because I was drawing what happened to a person after they were shot and killed while for a long time I and other kids had been drawing childish gun fight scenes and this was okay.
picture of a childs gunfight drawing.
It got me thinking about violence in art. Turn on the tv and most content you see from tv news to prime time television to reruns of old western films your going to see people shooting at each other, chasing each other in order to do bodily harm, or…
… putting a PG gloss on violence is worse than showing reality.
The Bellows Pugilist Works
First of all, Bellows is underappreciated. The number of great works he has is less than it could have been sadly. He did not focus on painting for great stretches of time. He also considered himself to be news illustrator… there were a ton of people who just illustrated for newspapers prior to photography…. more…
Bellows covered sporting events. He would draw sketches of the fights as they happened, then come back to the studio and create prints for newspapers or at times more involved paintings (find out if these were gallery submissions).
Show sketches
show paintings…
So with that in mind, here is what I did…
I was thinking about appropriation and have started several Marlboro ads that I am trying to appropriate in a different manner than Richard Prince. Where Prince was trying to remove the brand from his images, I want to leverage the brand, take some of its voodoo hex power, & rebrand it using the ELGIN brand.
(Read more about the Marlboro effort here) - link to come
(Read more about Richard Prince and his branding here) - link to come
Initial Sketches
I like the smaller venues Bellows found himself in sometimes. I had an idea of
Notorious
I have been trying to find a way to use this crowd effect in Hitchcocks Notorious for a long time.
Direction: Click on an image. Use the </> buttons to view the development process.
