Robert Hughes R.I.P

 "Apart from drugs-art, is the biggest unregulated market in the world"


I just discovered Robert Hughes has gone. The last dissenting voice on the quagmire that is the con of contemporary Art.

I still have Shock of the New on my book shelf, and on days when I am feeling utterly futile,(usually when Hirst or Emin's name appear in the news) I fall back on my Youtube stalwart-The Mona Lisa Curse-for solace. That withering stare, that chuckle of contempt, as he eviscerates a Warhol pack rat...Artists, curators, patrons seek it out Here

Moebius 1938-2012

So, another monumental artist gone-the formative influences of my childhood rapidly becoming dust.

Not quite, if a footprint on the cultural psyche is all an artist can ever hope for, then mister Giraud has left quite an indent. And whilst the collective elegy will celebrate him for Blueberry, the Metal Hurlant stuff, his work on Alien and Tron, it's work he did with his former Dune collaborator Jadorowsky that changed my life.It was 'The Eyes of the Cat', which I first saw in Taboo #4, -the fusion of silent, futurist, surreal horror and the minimalism of avant garde storytelling all beautifully rendered and designed with the craftsmanship of a modern Albrecht Durer, that savaged any naive ambitions I had of being a force in comics. Quite simply,there was no place left for me to go in that genre.



Gladly, the awe I felt upon first glimpsing those images still enthralls and eclipses any former disappointments I might have clung to.

Dennis Paul Batt | 1952-2012

Dennis Paul Batt-By Jen Trute
32" x 24" | oil on linen

Most days start out the same way, the inevitable wrestle to get out of bed, the waking baptism of the shower, the morning tea ritual, feeding the mewling cat, the reach for something on the web to distract you from the task's ahead. A tragedy in the news, a celebrity off the wagon, someone's dinner on facebook, something, anything to elevate the chaos and the mundane, and give it meaning, a perspective so you can go on repeating it all again tomorrow.

Then something happens and all the props fall away, and even the morning sun can't bleach the sudden shadow in the room. That's the way it was when I learned my friend Dennis Paul Batt died.

Before I came to write this, I tried to recall if I've ever mentioned him on here before, and a quick glance through postings made me realize that I have been totally remiss. You will forgive me then (even if I cannot), as I try make amends now, as late the hour.

I probably first met him at Mosaic or Thumbprint two years ago, though I know I had seen him before that-how could you miss that face after all?
A remarkable artist himself and fierce advocate for up and coming Artists here in San Diego through his involvement with Synergy, OMA ,the creation of the San Diego Visual Artists Guild, and God knows what other pie, there was no better a champion in my corner than Dennis. In a city of no's he was one of a handful of yes's.

Whenever I was feeling crestfallen, he used to say in that very Bostonian, Jewish way of his- "look at where you're from, to some of these assholes you're sovereignty?" or "don'tchya know, your already fockin' there!?!" or "Oh, why dontcha just go paint some fockin' racehorses?" hands always grasping at air for emphasis.

At other times, when he wasn't pulling me to one side and throwing priceless bon mots, or relentlessly taking the piss out of my accent (something he never got right) he would just call me up and chat and bend my ear for an hour about the sorry state of it all, although I think he was still an idealist, but would never admit it.

He was also Jen Trute's partner, and it doesn't seem five minute's ago since I was at his home as he helped me load boxes of art materials into the car. He was always carrying boxes was Dennis-the first in and last out at events, perhaps someone should have told him to take it easy. He wouldn't have listened anyway, though perhaps it was her passing that truly, literally broke his heart. In all of this, doesn't there seem a beautiful apt romance in that?

Last year, if there was a respite from the ghastly part time job I took to make ends meet, it was morning coffee at his house, him sitting perched like a hippie Fagin amongst his collection of San Diego Art alumni that covered the walls or his crate upon crate of rocks, that he proudly displayed. I never saw a grown man so lit up over a peanut sized piece of jade, but Dennis saw potential in its rawest form.

The last time I corresponded I sent him a Christmas card in which I closed by saying, see you on the other side. I meant midnight 2011 of course, but I like to think he'd have laughed at that irony.

Thank you so much Dennis sir, it was a real honor, and no matter how we cover the walls, they shall lack color without you to see them from now on.

http://www.dennispaulbatt.com/

Jen Trute-1960/2011

Whilst I am sad to admit that I never met Jen Trute in person, I knew her art.

In the past, whenever I've been too swift to dismiss the superfluous excesses of San Diego's art scene, it's always been a welcome reminder to myself that Jen Trute more than eclipsed the chasm of vacuousness and artifice, with the astonishing yardstick of her mastery.


Technically of course, she was flawless,tossing off the kind of flourishes that would leave the best of us slack jawed on the periphery, but her work also had that rare thing of conceptual clarity-never suffering the obliqueness that so often subdues the viewer, and is a perfect get out card for so many surrealist poseurs.


Despite the darker themes, her work was also as disarmingly bright and airy as the long hot summer days that she spent in her Carlsbad studio, where I paid my respects yesterday.


Like I said, I didn't know Jen,but from the meticulous way that she organized her brushes to the hundreds of carefully mixed swatches she compiled, I can tell you that she was the "real deal". So many of us are just charlatans in the incredible, remarkable wake of her work.

We are all richer for her astonishing legacy and she shall be sorely missed.

Object D' Art-Frank Frazetta-R.I.P

Frank Frazetta-February 9, 1928 – May 10, 2010

As a kid, there were two artists I wanted to be when I grew up. One was John Bolton, the other was Frank Frazetta.
I'll never forget the thrill of first seeing the cover of Creepy, on a newsagents shelf in Liverpool-the image of a sword wielding, frenzied warrior battling wierd bat demons, scored itself immediately to my little cerebellum,and beheld everything my adolescent imagination comprised up until that point, in one beautifully rendered image. It had nothing to do with my surroundings, and everything to do with some internally, amplified fantasy world.
Over the years, there were so many more covers to discover- savage, hellish, beasts, barbarians with axes glistening with blood,sultry buxom vixens writhing at there bootstraps-each one an iconic image, always a technicolor candy wrapper to the monographics within.
Sadly,in light of the post Star Wars blitz, Frazetta's work seemed a tad old fashioned-a relic of a bygone age, sword and sorcery shtick that carried the stigma of overgrown boys still living with there Mums and Dads.

And yet, I see his influence is everywhere, from the art of Bisley to Brom, to the Teutonic digital renderings of a World of Warcraft module, his legacy cuts a swathe through the driveling digital posturing of his imitators, because technically, he was a master.

In this era of p.c proselytizing , its hard to imagine a world where images of inflated sex kittens bent provocatively before a squirming serpent barely raised an eyebrow, let alone emblazoned the cover of a boys comicbook, but his work represented such a time of unpretension and unselfconscious.
And whilst he has long since been embraced as a seer, in the record of a certain 'art history', respect is overdue.