Душан Макавејев (Dušan Makavejev 13 October 1932 – 25 January 2019)

Pam Kray & I once shared a smoke between films with Dušan Makavejev outside the PFA in Berkeley when they showed Man is not a Bird and Love Affair, or the Case of the missing Switchboard Operator there in 1994. He had a great gift for putting us at ease and, in the films, presenting disturbing matters with a perverse grace and refinement.  RIP

El Chico Con La Verga Expresiva

It’s been a long while since I’ve added anything to this blog, not because I’ve had nothing to post, but because I’ve been busy with other matters. Now on to more pleasant points of interest like this Peruvian lad’s talking penis. I’ve admired his many posts on one of my source sites for a few years now, despite, or perhaps precisely because of, the crude way he has of expressing himself. He lets his dick do the talking for him and I find a good deal of wit in this visual convention he has established for himself. I’ve seen a few pictures of his face without the sloppy digital scrawls he uses to mask his features and I can safely say it is not unpleasant.Still he’s no great classic beauty. One doesn’t have to possess such qualities of physical perfection in order to attract. I like the space he inhabits in these photographs, the simple white curtain behind him in most of them, the quality of the light, the cheap furniture, the steel framed amber glass panels in the background, the sense of being comfortable at home, yet able to express the need for companionship and the willingness to please. I find him beautiful, whether he wants my appreciation or not.

Morvern Callar

The final sequence of Lynne Ramsay’s great Morvern Callar (2002) is set in a club, location unknown, probably Spain, though it’s clear that Morvern is listening to her own personal track, a spirited rendition of Dedicated to the one I love by the Mommas and the Papas, while those around her are listening to some contemporary dance track, maybe by Aphex Twin. 

Anonymous Unsponsored Illegal Public art in SF

 Lower Haight

 Alamo Square

 Balmy Alley

 Balmy Alley

 Castro

 Filmore

 Lower Haight

 Mission

 South of Market

Various examples of contemporary San Francisco street art that I admire by artists unknown to me.  I’m pretty sure there are signatures on some of these but I haven’t got them written down.  Some of these paintings are already gone, (as are most of my large scale public works long ago.)  This is art made by artists knowing full well that their work will sooner or later be willfully destroyed.  That’s part of the fun and the sorrow of it.

LIFE & DEATH

Life and Death was my part of the Winter Exhibition at the Harvey Milk Photo Center in Duboce Park, San Francisco CA.  I don’t get to show too often, so it was nice to see some of it up on a wall, many thanks to Thomasina DeMaio.

LIFE & DEATH
These two conjoined groups of paintings are drawn from two different sources. The larger paintings on ovals are derived from drawings made from live models during life drawing sessions at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center. The other group of paintings, four on severely worn and four on hand cut playing cards, are based on Fayum mummy portraits, which are the largest group and best preserved examples of Classical Era panel painting.  I am painting in acrylic on card, while the original portraits were painted in either encaustic or tempera on wood panel.  The Fayum portraits were probably painted from the freshly dead to imitate life (or possibly painted from life for use after death.)  Though painted for funerary purpose they evoke life.  Those depicted were of Greek descent living in Egypt in the first centuries before and after the mythical Jesus.  The models depicted from life are Andrew Pembroke and Derron Thweatt.
DALE WITTIG