Charlie Parker

To all readers of this blog. Please go directly to the music of Charlie Parker. Do not pass Go. Get out of jail free.

THE HAND OF THE ARTIST

The beauty of industrially produced objects lies in its uniformity. For three hundred years the expectation of quality has been associated with machine-produced refinements. Even today, the “high-tech” aesthetic influences design. Even as this industrial aesthetic has dominated design for centuries, a counter movement can be traced back to the late eighteenth century interest in ruins and the late 19^th century medievalist revival. The Arts and Crafts movement sprang from the aesthetics of pre-Raphaelitism . The governing aesthetic in jewelry design remains the industrial. However, there is a significant world-wide reaction the un-natural in jewelry design. The result is an aesthetic which leaves the imprint of the human hand on the finished work.

(http://www.Kiff Slemmons, a Chicago artist-jeweler, wonders about imperfection and its impact on art in an essay that appears in Metalsmith Magazine (Vol 28, No 1, pp 26-29).

"The beauty of imperfection, its pull on our conscious as well as sensual engagement, is not always recognized for its positive attributes. This is particularly true in the more narrowly defined realm of craft, where perfection is the ultimate achievement. But sometimes the most perfectly executed object lack vitality and their impact ends quickly after this acknowledgment….

"Imperfection can offer openness; in a way, whereas perfection can sometimes be closed and frozen in place. Imperfection can certain energy—can make for flow. Perhaps imperfection is most obvious and easily understood in outsider or folk art, in which the expressive qualities are spontaneous and immediate."

So why is the poem Self Reflexive?

Self-awareness is a recent development in human consciousness. Certain psychologists and philosophers of Mind observe the rise of self-consciousness in the past 200 years. In the past 100 years art has become self-reflexive.

Objectivity or scientific detachment is another facet of self-reflexivity. The artist’s isolation is a necessary consequence of the artist as observer and transmitter of society. I should inject contrast with decorative crafts. Consider the special case of functional pottery. IN the industrial age, machine made cups whether of paper or ceramic are ubiquitous. The hand made pottery is the direct transference of thought from the unconscious to the directed hands.

Here is a request I have for the reader. Please go out on the Internet and see if you can find some rap lyrics that are self reflexive.

The rap referring to itself
Or raps about rasp,

It wraps itself, the poem, about the world and itself...
A cocoon.

Outsider = Detached observer. We know of the poet as dog, now try on the artist as mollusk.

Here’s a poem:
A section titled
“Salient features
Of the poem
Summarized in words
Comparing a review of The Tic Tac Club

By the Golden Arm Trio:
The Tic Tock Club
Little Richard Played there
A short film with each track
Shostakovich DSCH
Main theme of the album
Cello plays the theme
Graham Reynolds
Band Music VS
Composed Concert Music
Which is “More sophisticated”

In the narrative structure
Sorrows transformed to magic
The move through a manufactured path
Primeval fool of gaunt trees
Destined to be felled for ships
Now connected by vines

Eventide.

TO GENERATE AN IMAGE

I want to bring readers up to date by reminding them of a statement by Ezra Pound which was cited earlier in this document:

An ‘Image’ is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time….It is the presentation of such a ‘complex’ instantaneously which gives that sudden sense of liberation….which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art. It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.

Cited in Humphrey Carpenter’s 1988

Biography of Pound , A serious Character, p. 197

SMALL INSIGHT ON DISTRIBUTION

According to his online biography, the poet C.P. Cavafy "never offered a volume of his poems for sale during his lifetime; his method of distributing his work was to give friends and relatives the several pamphlets of his poems that he had printed privately and a folder of his latest broadsheets or offprints held together by a large clip." This is the way John Ramington distributed his poems. This is also the primary method of the poet Owen Ames whose lines are cited from time to time in this blog.

The Measure of Goodness

THE MEASURE OF GOODNESS

Version 2

A work of art is defined as such, in part, by its context. Thus something nasty and ephemeral such as bronze silicate castings of celebrity turds could be presented, in the context of a gallery or a museum, as a work of art. Adjudging the value of a work of art is a more difficult matter. The term “value” when applied to a work of art is both a quantitative and a qualitative assessment. A work of art may be of high value, yet unrecognized by the marketplace, languish in a forest of fallen trees, unseen and unheard. A $21,000,000 Warhol may be a piece of defecate matter in the eyes of somebody.

There is a documentary film shown at art houses and available online about a band called The Holy Modal Rounders (Holy Modal Rounders Bound to Loose). They were the nucleus of a 1960’s New York band called The Fugs. I have to tell you that I loved both of these bands. I owned a great double album of the Rounders which saved my life in Southern Mexico. That is the power of art. More about that later. I would like to mention that I have a collection of Fugs albums. In addition to their own outrageous scatological songs often written by Tuli Kuferberg or Ed Sanders, they put to music lyrics by poets such as Blake and Allen Ginsberg.

I took my accountant lady-friend to a screening of the Holy Modal Rouders film. She is actually the sister of the dead poet-novelist, John Ramington about whom this entire blog is written. The blog is not so much about Ramington as a study and justification of his works. One problem with Ramington ‘s works is that they do not scan in the same way as the except recently submitted to this journal by Owen Ames as “found” poetry:

The cloud formation inside an oil filter

plans an escape from a moronic short order cook,

a proverbial oil filter.

And if I give you what you want,

you wont like it, and you wont want it anymore.

A completely linguistic briar patch

gives secret financial aid to the fairy.

He released his hold cautiously and allowed himself

to fall back on the mattress.

The sister and I were discussing the Holy Modal Rounders. I owned that actually they were not very good and in fact they sounded horrible. Only one cut from the, now to me, lost double album was played, that during the credits. In the great double album they demonstrated a scholarly interest in 1920’s and 30’s rural Southern music. This is what we call ‘old-timey’ music, which was popular before the blue-grass revolution of Flatt and Scruggs. The music is largely lost, like the Fugs and The Holy Modal Rounders. But Ed Sanders is more popular than John Ramington. I owned in the discussion of the Rounders that “they were not very good.” Well, the accountant replied, “they took a lot of drugs. Were they ever very popular? They weren’t the Rolling Stones.” The only thing I could answer was that they were certainly Brittany Spears either.

One measure of the quality of art is economic value. If it is held by a museum and the acquisition required a high price at auction, then the work of art is valuable.

I submit that the market place cannot be the criterion of value in a work of art

ON MEXICO

My wife—at the time—and I were visiting the oldest continuously occupied archeological site in Mexico. It was a major temple before the Mayans. The Toltecs still inhabited the region. We missed the tourist express bus back to Oaxaca so we had to take the local. We wound up in a small town in a bad neighborhood waiting for the bus after sundown. The locals smelled of pulque (a cheaper agave derived alcohol than Tequila) and tobacco. Suddenly I became aware of the fact that gringos just disappear in this part of the country. The men were crowding around us with hostile looks on their faces. Then I pulled a Jew’s Harp from my pocket and began to play a melody of Appalachian tunes from the Holy Modal Rounders’ album: Flop Eared Mule, Blues in the Bottle, It’s Moving Day (a Charlie Poole song), Soldiers’ Joy. It was a hit. The attitudes dissolved. When I finished my concert, men and women applauded. The most menacing person offered me a drag off his cigarette. They knew we were not the CIA. Just then, the bus arrived and we made our getaway. I made it back to Washington and was able to write up my report.

____________________________

You gotta check out the Fugs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-QeWlesSzk&NR=1

Armadillo Christmas Bazaar

During the 1960’s and 70’s a vibrant art scene opened the world to the creative imagination of New York City. That exuberant, if occasionally dark, vision becomes one of the iconic images of America.

Those same decades mark the beginning of a continuous artistic consciousness in Austin. The musicians of the early 70’s were determined to stay here and develop their craft. They may go on the road, an activity which has its appeal and pitfalls. The result is with years of playing and focus, many of the musicians of the 60’s and 70’s are leaders of the live music capital of the world.

In addition to musicians, there were other types of artists who made the commitment to make home in Austin. There were painters, authors, architects. Renaissance types who dabbled in science and myth.

About a hundred and twenty years ago there was an international Arts and Crafts movement which permeated every province of America, England and Europe. The tradition of the hand made production item as a cultural artifact was born out of the 1880’s and 1890’s. That was the same period that the voters of Austin decided to transform from old West Saloon town to a progressive haven. The Arts and Crafts movement went through about 3 generations before it died out in the 1920’s. It was hard to beat cellulose and gin.

The crafts movement was preserved in a handful of schools and academies around the country for 40 years. The 1960’s – 70’s saw a great revival of the arts and crafts movement. The basic design and execution skills were preserved only in the rarefied atmosphere of schools and academies. The explosion of creativity demanded new techniques had and new concepts of expression. Austin played a large part in that movement.

Austin provided enough venues for the traveling artist-craftsperson to have a financial home base. This, as with the musicians, is a lifestyle choice as well as destiny.

It is the grit of hard experience which hones the skill and design choices of the traveling artist. If anybody can make beads I might have to melt metal to stand out and attract a clientele. The stream of clientele is what sustains an artist’s life.

I like to think of the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar as an enterprise of artists at the top of their game. I have not been involved for many years. I only return every year as a tourist in my own town. I like to observe and visit old friends. Listen to the music. I usually find a gift for somebody. I don’t spend a lot of money, but they have stuff which costs a lot of money. That’s what it costs to produce a high level of impeccability. Impeccability in a handmade item is a matter of style and ability. Those very traits are what survive a decade, let alone 30 or 40 years of living the role of creator, inventor and chief accountant.

The current Armadillo Christmas Bazaar offers a venue to exceptional artists who may have started at the Renaissance Market two years ago or on the street in New York City 30 years ago. Prices range from 50 cents with, I suspect, nothing priced over $10,500. The greatest music is every night. Now days it costs money whenever you go down town to park your car. I would rather ride the trolley. Today, it still can’t be done. So you still have to park. That doesn’t seem to stop thousands of revelers 6^th streets, 3 blocks away.

I would like to conclude with a special note to my friends in Houston. This is the only art show in Austin which gives Houston a run for its money. As hot as the art scene is on 19^{th street or 11th}, Washington or Houston Avenue, the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. would be a true spectacle and a treat to the Houston Art clientèle.