Conspiracy Weary

“Healter Skelter”-24″ x 36″ – Oil on canvas (2012)

“I saw Elvis in a potato chip once.”

Fox Mulder, the X-Files

Today marks fifty years since the strata was jolted by news of the Manson killings, and other than the brouhaha around Tarantino’s latest desultory offing, it’s barely warranted a footnote in the press.

Unsurprising really, and frankly warranted, given the eclipsing daily horror show in this country right now. Although, given that both eras represent discriminate murders, initiated by cult members and galvanized by the rantings of a deranged egomaniac, it could be argued that recent headlines could give those of half a century ago a run for their money.

Still, I note the anniversary because of the Man/son and the haunting of the American Madonna showcase, that consumed me through much of 2012.  Back then, bolstered by a literary diet that comprised things like the hefty volumes of Peter Levedna’s Sinister Forces,  Adam Gorightly’s The Shadow over Santa Susana, and every dank rabbit hole on the dark web-I crafted myself a tinfoil hat so tight, I almost microwaved grey matter.

That’s not to undermine the revelations I made during that particular artistic odyssey-I stand by what I said at the time, ” the connections around the Manson case are unfathomable and have far reaching implications not just on our lives, but on a level that defies understanding”.
It does however give me a micro speck of insight, into the malaise of modern conspiracy theorists; basement dwellers, pulling on threads so to weave a magical carpet, and comfortably seat their confirmation biases on.

For what began with conspiracies about the Kennedy assassination, Roswell, the moon landing, Manson -has mutated and become the provenience of alt right agitators from 4chan cesspits, promulgating batshit schemes about Pizza parlors and the Earth being flat.
Or mass shootings as false flag events where the victims are crisis actors.

When ultimately, it’s all just another spiritual quest for understanding, a way to mollify the shared human guilt of  barbarism.

In making Gods of our fears, and seeking sense of existence as a wasted byproduct for some omniscient grand plan…one discovers there isn’t any to be measured.

Killing is the ultimate zero sum, self destructive act where man is nihilist,and nothing divine.

You can read my musings from the series, in my book Rise-Man/son and the Haunting of the American Madonna, available from the following link or purchase a signed art print:

Man/son Art book

Healter Skelter Art Print

Sharon Tate and the daughters of Joy

One of the most tremendous and extraordinary happenstances to come in the wake of the Man/son show last year, was my introduction to David Herrle, whose opus Sharon Tate and the Daughters of Joy, has just been released. 
Expounding a similar trough, Davids prose is a fascinating rhythmic riff on an eternal arc of the goddess, femme fatal and eviscerated muse through history,and I was honored then to be asked to contribute my 2010 piece-the Valley-as the frontispiece. That aside, I make no bones when I say that I believe Herrles work is as profound as Ginsberg's "Howl" and every bit the master painter with epigrams, I'll leave you with a selection of his remarkable prose, and the hope that you will click the  following link and fill someones stocking: 

check out Sharon Tate and the daughters of Joy


UNTITLED, or UNTAINTED
 
Scatalogicians say “we’re born between urine and feces”
and evolutionists reduce human births to fishy non-events.

I rebut that we burst from Zeus’ head and correspond
to true love as the moon reflects the sun.

We are one part piss and shit, three parts magic.
There is a vast heaven between the hole and the hole.

REVERSE GALATEA

 I stand against genetic egalitarians, insisting — and proving —
that there are perfect tens among us, that the streets, malls,
schools, slums and cubicle lands teem with females that shame
Playmates, Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, Gibson Girls, Miss USAs.

Physical beauty and limbic dope can't make us righteous or
inspire peace (those darling pinups on bomber noses: all femmes
fatales) so we must abstract delectable flesh into concept, Muse,
trickle-up aesthetics: unveil the Sublime, inform the world of Forms.

This is the Reverse Galatea, an unreification, a Cocochanelism.
Let's piss off gender-feminists and Left and Right ascetics.

My radical subversion compels me to saturate the social sphere
with post-Pre-Raphaelite cream women, hot ebon lovelies and
supermodels, conflate proto-Soviet Plato with Marie Claire, shine
pop culture's flooziest swan-sired Helens into Nurse Ratcheds' eyes.

Offend puritan Hitlers, Marlene Dietrich! Toss your bra at social
realism, Dita Teese! Muffle Rembrandt noses, Courbet bushes!

The Aesthetes were right in praising scopophilic and olfactory
bondage: arresting style and images, powder, blush and perfume,
Prada over Pravda, because curative visual frottage stimulates a
sugary ooze to gum up utilitarian machines and appall soul-police.

Mary Poppins is Julie Andrews (not the marm of the books), Gypsy Rose
Lee frees, Trudy Stein jails, Joplin's a jalopy, and Katy Perry's a Ferrari.

We need gorgeous gargoyles to repel drab demons, a return to pulp
magazines' dichotomous depictions: an aesthetic equivalent to war-
propaganda art that defends the pure genius of being good-looking.
Who's afraid of Naomi Wolf? Not us! Beauty is an ever-expanding box!

Pin-up artists Vargas and MacPherson are high-treasonous.The centerfold is a revolutionary act.

Permanent fixture at Hyaena Gallery (for now.)

I was reminded by a link on my news feed today, that along with some fine Art prints-you can still see some of the original pieces from Octobers Man/son show at Hyeana, including the pivotal painting-'Healter Skelter' (below)
Check out the link or contact myself or Hyaena if you are interested in purchasing any of the available work.

http://hyaenagallery.com/davidvangough.html

The Death of the '60's by David Van Gough

 

"There was something horrible permeating the air in LA in those days. The stench of Manson and the Sharon Tate murders." 
David Bowie talking about living in LA in the 1970's

August 9th 1969. It was meant to be the dawning of the Age of Aquarius....the final median before the new decade.Two weeks on, the grainy spectacle of the Moon landings still resonated, mollifying the shadow of Vietnam and two dead Kennedy's. It was also the anniversary of Nagasaki*, as well as the birth date of Ed Gien. Two disparate moments, connected by a thread no less devastating in its repercussion.

For whilst the events at 10050 Cielo Drive that night, paled when measured against the true horror of 80,000 deaths, the fallout that radiated from the bloody carve up of a pregnant celebrity and her three friends was a secession on the hedonism of the decade, farther reaching in the collective conscious (or conscience) of America's fucked up tapestry, than any atom bomb.
The dawning of the new age was ritualized with the blood of an innocent.

That's the true travesty of Manson legacy, the true infallible obscenity, a decade christened by a faux slain Madonna and her unborn infant.

The 70's stillborn. 

There could only be ashes beyond.

* for those wanting to pursue further Occult significance around the date, the flag from Nagasaki is the five pointed star, with five hermetic crosses in the center.


The Man/son show runs until the 31st October at Hyaena Gallery, Burbank CA.  

Paul is Dead by David Van Gough

Around the time the Beatles were supposedly seeding there waxings and sleeve artwork with messages that one of their number was deceased, Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski conceived a child who would be named Paul.

Had Sharon been hastily Cesarianed-as Sadie ghoulishly considered- Paul Polanski might have been born as an offering for Charlies Collective.

Paul Polanski,  an infant spawned of sacrifice and ceremony like Rosmary's baby, a lion cub born of Jupiter like one of Crowleys moonchildren birthed in ritualized blood, a pupae that could be imprinted as a Monarch for the new dawn.

Paul would have been forty three years of age this year had he lived. What kind of life would be brought to consciousness by a baptism of slaughter and fire, I wonder? What kind of Man?

A son of man?

A son of Manson?


The Man/son show runs from the 1st-31st October at Hyaena Gallery, Burbank CA. Opening 6th October 8pm-12am  

Pig by David Van Gough

It was the doorway of a new perception, a doorway to carnage, smeared with Sharons blood the word "Pig"-a welcome matt, a single label pronouncement that could have come courtesy of Orwell's Animal farm.

On the fag end of the 60's, Police, politicians and squares were pigs.  If you were the man, you were a pig. Tricky Dicky was most certainly a pig. And to Charlie's far out assassins, Sharon and her four friends, with there beauty and privileged Hollyweird lifestyle, were pigs of the lowest order,ripe for the butchers knife.

 I wonder if Atkins knew she was conjuring allusions to the pregnant Egyptian Goddess, Neuth as she daubed the letters on the door with her blood stained towel. I wonder if she knew it signaled a ritual passage for a birth of a new dark age.

Sharon's new role, sacrificial Mondo Goddess haunting the vacant B-movie lots. Sharon as Eve and the rotten Apple record. Sharon as Aphrodite from the succulent fruit of Dionysus. Sharon as an adolescent artist's muse, a phantom sex symbol of flickering white porcelain for the late night double feature. Sharon as dead Madonna and child castrating the 70's like Adonis's boar, a limp tail curled like the number six, like a semaphore.

We are the pigs, for the threshold beyond the bloody epitaph makes a narcissist of us all.


The Man/son show runs from the 1st-31st October at Hyaena Gallery, Burbank CA. Opening 6th October 8pm-12am 

Healter Skelter by David Van Gough

"When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again."

The twists and turns of Helter Skelter, led Bugolosi into the hall of mirrors, one which he saw himself reflected,forging a lucrative new career writing the most successful 'true' crime fiction novel ever. 

Helter Skelter-or Healter Skelter as it was written in blood on La Bianca's Freezer, a killer's catchphrase to hang with the shopping lists, postcards and fridge magnets.

"Listen" asks Bugolosi cupping his ear to the ground...Intoned in McCartneys raw vocals, in the shredding guitars, was the Devil unleashed? 
Was he? 
Was this song Charlies Catcher in the Rye, an inferno of annihilation embedded in-between the first note and Ringo's blistered fingers, composed to awaken the Mansonian candidate.  

Helter Skelter coming down.

He(a)lter Skelter-recapitulated. 
Easter Hell Trek
Hell retake rest
Lethal Seer Trek  
You begin to sound like Bugolosi.

And yet...and yet,at the base of the downward spiral,in the labyrinth of tunnels beneath Laurel Canyon, echoed in the coyote howls of Death valley, or in the hollow of native Indian bones beneath, or scrawled in the bloody epiphets of  victims blood, lies something dormant. A specter that stains the ether beyond the hallucinogenic haze. A dark totem constructed of ritual murder, ancient orders and corrupt organizations.

And when I get to the bottom there is her-Sharon Tate, the disfigured goddess, eternal mother of the stars,leading me back to the top again, the questions swirling as I go around and around the serpent again to the tail,stoking the fires of hell.

The hell of Helter Skelter.



The Man/son show runs from the 1st-31st October at Hyaena Gallery, Burbank CA. Opening 6th October 8pm-12am

Man/Son: the Haunting of the American Madonna-a series by David Van Gough

Here it is, the full measure of the Man/Son showcase, a months work -the culmination of a years research, of which seven of the pieces were completed in two weeks. I've sworn never to undertake such a task again.

For all its hardship, there have been revelations for me, the revelation that convinces me that dark evil forces exist and are perpetuated by powers with sinister agenda's.That the connections around the Manson case are unfathomable and have far reaching implications not just on our lives, but on a level that defies understanding. That for all our supposition to the contrary, this so called modern world is imposed by a dark ancient will, that uses ritual murder, arcane rites,symbols and talisman, sinister architecture and sacred geometry. 
That mostly, this path I was on wasn't just the search for clues in a detective story, but a spiritual one, seeking a sense of reason in the harrowing chaos, pivoted on the gruesome killing of a beautiful woman and her unborn child.

This is the heart of the Man/son and the haunting of the American Madonna.

 

Bad Vibes
24" x 36"
Mixed media

 Something Witchy
11" x 14"
Oil on canvas

 

War
16" x 20"
Oil on canvas

God of Fuck
11" x 14"
Oil on canvas

Healter Skelter
24" x 36"
Oil on canvas

 

Pig
16" x 20"
Oil on canvas

  

Rise
30" x 40"
Oil on canvas

Paul is Dead
11" x 14"
Oil on canvas

 

Death and the Maiden
11" x 14"
Oil on canvas

Death of the 60's
11" x 14"
Oil on canvas

Man/Son Press release

Hyaena Gallery Presents:

MAN/SON and the Haunting of the American Madonna

Oil Paintings by David Van Gough

October 1 through October 31

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 6, 8 pm to 12 am

 

Hyaena Gallery

1928 W. Olive Ave.

Burbank, CA 91506

hyaenagallery.com

Bill Shafer, Director

info@hyaenagallery.com

Artist Website: http://davidgoughart.com

On Saturday, October 6, David Van Gough reveals a dark new series inspired by one of Los Angeles' most enduring and infamous villains.  From Aleister Crowley to Charles Manson, Liverpool to LA, MAN/SON explores an artistic evocation of America's occult underbelly.  Taking cues from the bloody epithet's left at the crime scenes, and associated key phrases, the series draws upon his own year-long research into what he terms as sinister architecture, conspiracy, clandestine rituals, magic symbols and the tragic muse-Sharon Tate, recapitulated as the American Madonna and child.

Artist Statement:  

Growing up in Liverpool in the 70's was akin to living in a forgotten town.
The golden gate to the new frontier that had been the shipyards lay dormant.  The modern tenements that had been constructed on the promises of post-war zeal two decades earlier, now lay in ruin.
And the Beatles had disbanded in 1970.
Yet they were still ubiquitous.  The chorus of moptop's echo on every wireless was Liverpool's swansong.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in California, time had been called on the Sixties.  And a dreadful pall hung over the subsequent era like an incomprehensible epitaph: Helter Skelter and the Manson Murders.
Back in my Liverpool bedroom overlooking Anfield cemetery, a few yards from the railway line where four year old Jamie Bulger would be murdered by two boys in the mid 1980's, I was immersed in the subculture of fantagoria -- Hammer Horror, Dennis Wheatley, Man,Myth and Magic -- little realizing that terrible events in an affluent suburb of LA, and a song by Liverpool's favorite sons, were intertwined with Friday night Horror staples such as Rosemary's Baby and The Fearless Vampire Killers.
In my journey, there have been threads that go beyond mere happenstance, symbols and ciphers that are window dressing for something profound and dark beneath. In commencing then with the new series, utilizing the tragic muse and slain Madonna figure of Sharon Tate as a symbol for an endpoint, there was a need to relate and process that which is beyond understanding.
Peter Levenda's words in Sinister Forces Book III sum it up for me, "...for the occultist-there is truly "no such thing as coincidence," or more accurately, that coincidence is a clue that deeper connections exist between observable phenomena, that another force of nature is at work that we don't understand."

The MAN/SON series seeks to make sense of those fatal events of 1969, and what I have come to term as sinister architecture.

Artist Biography:

Working out of San Diego, David Van Gough is an oil painter who strives to expose the darkest recesses of the human spirit on canvas.  A self-proclaimed necrorealist, Van Gough grew up steps from a cemetery in gritty Liverpool.  Tormented throughout his life by Catholic guilt, mortality and paranoia, his paintings are fevered exorcisms, which comment upon both the futileness and poignancy of the universal human condition.

Gough was the Honoree Artist of 2010 at the San Diego Art Institute.  In 2009, Gough was published in the book Gothic Art Now.  In 2011 Darq Matter Publishing released Gough's collection of fine art and essays D3ad/Ends. He has exhibited at San Diego Art Institute, Oceanside Museum of Art, The Hive Gallery, Alexander Salazar Fine Art, Alternative Café, Mosaic Gallery, and Thumbprint Gallery.

Publicity contact for more information, interviews, high resolution images:

Dahlia Jane Upon a Midnight Dreary

847-712-2688

dahliaj@ymail.com   uponamidnightdreary.com

Hell to Skelter

It peaked 106° here on Friday, at least outside-in the studio I've been running a fever-a temperature akin to the lava flow of a volcano on the surface of Mercury. I've been living, eating and breathing the work. 

I wake up and go to sleep with it percolating in my brain, to the point were I've lost all objectivity on whether what I am doing is good anymore. I look at the work lined up at various stages of finish and I think it is-at least I hope it is-for Sharon Tate at least. 

A good friend in a similar storm, said something like that in such circumstances, one should supplant the concept for any finnesse, and as much as I try to remind myself that I am trying to accomplish in a month, something that should have taken me ten, it niggles at me as much as the nest of ants that I stem around the sugar bowl, daily.

Press release goes out tomorrow, I believe, a week to deadline and all will be revealed. In the meantime above is another detail teaser of the Healter Skelter piece.

Revolution nine

 

It must be over twenty years since I listened to the White Album in full-its one of those albums that seems so a part of cultural ubiquity (and for me at least) forever associated with the communal toke at college parties, that any impact it could have had, has long since passed me by.  I gave it another 'spin' today,minus the crackles,grooves and hemp: it still held a certain charm that did nothing to imbue an edge for my daubing, even after Helter Skelter had long finished. 
And then 'Revolution 9' kicked in, and it was like standing at the gates of Ceaser's Palace again. 
I wondered how, even in the dizzy haze of 'leb'-the resonance of this quagmire of dissonant sound didn't strike a wake up chord back then. The banshee carrion call of number nine repeated against a jarring backdrop of spectral phaze waiting to be encoded. 
But to whom? 
Manson, the Manchurian candidate?
Manson the cartoon messiah, a serial killer made for a cereal box generation?

I'm so immersed in the conspiracy bullshit-twelve months of revelation since what started as macabre homage to an adolescents love affair with a dead muse, and I can't think straight for the paint fumes and relentless heat.
And yet Revolution 9 sits like a skeleton stripped bare and redraped again as a eureka moment....something doesn't sit right.

Two paintings this week now completed-'Healter Skelter' (anagram of Easter Hell Trek) and 'God of Fuck'-umpteen to go in 24 days. And more weird phone calls that pick up with tapping on the line.
I must be onto something.

Sharons Back

 

It's still wet, and the light is casting a glare making for a piss poor photo, but I think 'Pig' is almost done. I kept it loose and raw, sometimes scoring into the wet paint with toothpicks or the end of the brush.

I had considered painting it onto an actual door-though not 'The' door. 
I think Trent Reznor still has the original anyway, from his time at Cielo drive.
Time and the logistics of scale put paid to any idea I had about using any door anyway, but am thinking of incorporating another element  when it comes to framing.

Despite the vileness of the content, this series-more than my others seems very much informed by a spirit of painterly experimentation-seeing what I can do within the parameters of traditional figurativism without degenerating into abstraction. 

I hope it conveys a sense of the 60's anyway.

Sharon Tate

She died 33 years ago tonight. It would have been a balmy evening much like this one. The kind of night when crickets and the motoring whir of the ceiling fan fill's the tranquil air. A night when the doors and windows are pulled back to the hinge for the chance to feel the occasional breeze. 
Nobody should be reminded that Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring and Steven Parent also died on that night, but it's Sharon and her unborn innocent who has been cast as death's maiden. The protective veil of celebrity drawn back to reveal the disfigured beauty beneath. The Madonna and her moonchild Paul. 

I spent the day blistering in the studio-Planet Mercury hotter than Hades-working on the Pig piece, feeling the burn of my adolescent desire for her ethereal beauty, quelled only by the distaste of what I am doing. Having to remind myself that the muckraking, the endless questions, the rabbit holes, the embellishment isn't just desecration, its like mining the labyrinth of Laurel Canyon tunnels, it's a search for an innate truth.

And you know, it shouldn't be easy, especially on a night such as this one,when all I have to concern myself with is the color of paint and staying cool.

Manson Show at Hyaena gallery in October.

Further to my previous post, I am delighted to reveal that I shall be showing my Manson/Tate themed works at the wonderful Hyaena gallery from October 1st, until October 31st, with an opening on the 6th. 

Which means that between now and then, I'll be firmly ensconced in my continuing research as well as realizing the pieces for the show. 

Part of the reason that my sister blog-one hundred and fifty Cielo drive-has been on hiatus is because I'll be revisiting my Liverpool hometown in July, which will take me to some places of interest-Hitlers presumed haunts, architectural sites, as well as the obligatory Lennon routes. At this stage, I'm not sure if the showcase will include just the paintings, or my research notes and journals, but I do foresee a possible book to tie it all together at a later date.

Rise-New painted portrait of Sharon Tate by David Van Gough

'Rise'
Oil on canvas
30" x 40"

'Rise' was one of the inscriptions left in blood on the wall of the La Bianca residence.
According to Linda Kasabian, Manson had instructed her and the other girls to leave a sign....'something witchy'.

Mired then, in the never-ending miasma of Satanic verse, cabalistic rite and sinister forces, the ritual murders of nine people with Sharon Tate caste as Madonna and child, become's part of the tapestry of American folklore.The truth melting away with dimming embers of a candle, that death in its most senseless form, can only be comprehended when it is engulfed in subterfuge of conspiracy. Or something like that.

Rise and Arisen

Despite best efforts, Rise cannot rise to the occasion until it dries. I think it's the new organic turps I've been using, it's like a drying retardant, which would be fine except the snails pace makes it feel like it's still 2011.

Since reading about that time Frazetta lost the ability to paint because of the cheap turps he was using, I've been weary. Toxins be damned however, regardless of my studio's lousy ventilation and it being 80 degrees I am going to have to fall back on the hallucinogenic stuff for the time being.

In the interim, I'm working on a self portrait of sorts, which shall be part of the ongoing assimilation (working title) series. It's my epic project for this coming year, punctuated with occasional diversions into the American Madonna (another working title) sidearm.

Suffice to say, the first post of my sister blog is finally up, which are my working notes and research which accompany said series. So without further ado...

...Way up north where the air gets cold

The stockings are stuffed, the tree is piled, the eggnog chilled... here's Sharon Tate to remind you to all to have a Merry Christmas.

High Rise-work in progress

There's almost an autonomy to painting the 'Rise' piece. It's not that I am disengaged-far from it-but dare I say that there are times when the strokes seem guided by something other than my hand...

Or perhaps the studio was a little too heady with turpentine and oil today. In fact I know it was-it being too chill a prospect to crack the window and ventilate. It's reminded me that I want to move the studio from home in the new year. I must.
Lots of other things to look forward to, but I can't say too much because we aren't 'there' yet.

Enough for now to complete this painting by years end.

Death and the Maiden drawing by David Van Gough

Death and the Maiden
9" x 9"
Felt tip pen on paper

The Death and the maiden motif has been one which has always fascinated me, so using Sharon Tate's likeness was going to be an obvious progression. Little did I know that Polanski titled one of his films in the same vein. Anyway, I produced this sketch using felt tip pens-something I used consistently when I was a child-so it gives the impression of observing the murders from quite a naive point of view.

I think it worked out quite well for a sketch.

The difference between oil and water-David Gough work in progress

For me, a painting never really comes to life until I paint it in oils-it doesn't fight with me in quite the same way that acrylics do.

Something else that I've been battling...

Since first reading the Bugulosi book way back in the 80's, there's been a wealth of material made available, published both in book form and on the web, so I've been revisiting the Manson story in depth as these pieces take shape.

As my sketchbooks margins swell with side notes daily, it's becoming obvious to me that what was intended as a smaller series is transitioning into a larger collection of work, with the necessity for a complete artistic case study.

Rather than inflict my diversion into the territory of conspiracy theory , onto the readership purely here for the art, I shall be starting a second blog-title as yet undecided-early in the new year. I shall of course still be maintaining regular updates here.