Le Nouveau Déjeuner sur l'Herbe

Max Schumann and I had one of our shows at Max Fish Bar some five years ago and I showed these digital paintings/photo montages there as part of it. Clearly, they're derived in large part from the painting by Manet (except the first, which employs Titian's Bacchanal of the Andrians.) There are numerous parodies of this overly familiar work, to the point where its force has been thereby diminished. I had hoped to convey something of its initial radical quality through these pictures.

Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe

I wanted to present here, per a specific request, a kind of genealogy of an image. Some seven years ago I started working on a very ambitious series of paintings (as well as photographs and drawings) which, of course, I never completed. Here is a short selection of drawings from the beginnings of the process. They show something of the history of the controlling image from Raimondi and Giorgione to Manet, Cezanne, Von Gloeden and Picasso, all filtered through my own views and interpretations.

Oliver Reed In Love

When I was twelve years old I developed a strong crush on the great English actor, Oliver Reed. This infatuation stemmed from first seeing him as Bill Sikes in his uncle's film Oliver (a treacly musical based on Dickens's Oliver Twist.)

Here I'm presenting some images of him, shot around that time, from a much better film: Ken Russell's Women In Love. Some wags said it might have better been called "Men In Love" because of the fire-lit wrestling scene which takes place between Oliver and Alan Bates. I think of such people as hypocrites and homophobes, unlike the adamantly heterosexual Mr. Reed.





Here he is with Glenda Jackson in a later scene from the same film, their first fuck. Ollie has a decidedly bullish quality to him in this story (as he did in life) and it weighs heavily upon the young woman he couples with.

Erotic Chatter In Chennai

Dilan, also known as TheIndianBoy, also known as Nick, is the subject of the new slide show video that I've been working on. He's one of these erotic obsessions I fall into from time to time through no fault of his own.

A Reluctant Idol

I've been meaning for some time to display a few images of this young Nicaraguan fellow who resides in San Diego, California. He makes his living making gay porn videos with one of the sleaziest companies in the business. I find their product in general fairly anti-erotic and yet I can't help wanting to watch the videos in which this guy performs. It's a minor dilemma, no doubt. Added to this already complex situation there is the problem of the young man's sexuality. Though he appears to enjoy what he is doing, more often than not, he presents himself as heterosexual. Not that I mind such contradictions. In fact, I cherish them.

Hitchcock's The Birds

Now seemed a particularly good moment to present these three images taken from the Restaurant/Gas Station scene in Hitch's The Birds. Seeing as it combines Apocalyptic imagery with references to Petroleum Consumption and its dire consequences, it's possible viewers might now "get" what Old Alf was getting at with this perplexing masterpiece.

Les Pétroleuses

Today was Tamar Schumann's fifty-first birthday and as she is just beginning her second half-century or has just completed its first year I thought it appropriate to look back at one of our more fruitful collaborations (at least in regards to my own personal project.) These are photos from the series concerning the women of the 1871 Paris Commune known as Les Pétroleuses.