Anyone who has visited a museum has likely seen Scott’s work, you just didn’t know it. Maybe you sat on it. As people have said about his work it blurred the line between functionality and art. No doubt eliciting the response, “I could have done that“, but you didn’t, did you? His work and those like him I would argue “create the mood” in an art setting that allows you to even begin to appreciate what’s on the walls. Artistic foreplay as it were. The simple act of sitting down becomes special. As you enter the next room of a gallery likely the first thing your brain sees is the benches, chairs and tables. It was pointed out many of his works were used for function and esthetics in office parks and downtown metropolitan areas for office workers.
Scott lived from 1939 – 1989, he was from Greensboro, AL. He was a writer and editor for Art News and Art in America. (Russian Constructivism)
Interesting style he has, you either like it or you don’t. From what I’ve picked up he was doing quite well back in 1978. His first show was when he was just 24 (1944-1987) in 1968. It seems he took his own life when he was just 43. I find his subjects and style quite enjoyable. My only gripe is that he is one of those that chose not to include animals or people. He was from Wilkes-Barre, PA, and it would seem that’s where he drew his inspiration from. Who knows what troubles caused him to take the course he did, when it looked like he had life by the horns.
There is evidently a couple of well known William Nelsons. One is an urban impressionist whose favorite subject was Chicago (bottom). This one is classified more as a realist with rural scenes. It looks like he is from the “dunes” area of Indiana. This is another talent in my continuing spotlight on: 1978
Who knew the 70s would be the highpoint of American culture? Leisure suits, miniskirts, Battle of the Network Stars, Three’s Company, ah the good old days. Photography was allowed (and I didn’t take pictures) at a contemporary art museum I saw recently that had this incredible display of Afrocentric art from the early 70s. It was especially incredible in the mixture of mediums. I remember this one piece in that it used that super thick corrugated paper used for shipping/packing of appliances. They had cut down to differing layers and through the use of paints had highlighted their 3-dimensional piece. The whole show was about using the materials at hand in an urban environment.
As I explained in an earlier post, an Art in America magazine from 1978 has put me on the trail of an incredible number of artists from that era. That time before the internet, before digital art. Before ‘CGI’. You actually had to go to a gallery. A museum. You had to find parking, beat the rain. The name I found today was Dalla Costa. (“Amleto dalla Costa is an Italian artist best known for his flat, figurative paintings and silkscreen prints of women that directly reference art history. Born in 1929 in Milan, Italy, Costa’s compositions absorb and translate the aesthetic styles of both contemporary and Modern artists”)
The November/December 1978 issue of Art in America
What a fascinating find this magazine was at a thrift shop a year ago. I was about to throw it out when I got a wonderful idea! What if this magazine was still in existence 42 years later? And before I threw it away, what if I did a search for some of the more interesting pieces from 42 years ago and posted them here? Art in America magazine does still exist, since 1913 from what Wikipedia says. I swear it brings back that smell of art rooms everywhere when I look at it. That mixture of paint, pottery, thinners and adhesives. Or like that wonderful community art building north of the Old Market area in Omaha. I really should get a subscription (a 1 year subscription in 1978 was $19.95. Today that subscription is $79.95, and it is coming to a mailbox near me!). This first example from that issue is from Philippe Noyer: “Femme Chez Maxims“
Kristy McNichol, you may remember her from such shows as ‘Family’
I remember her as this cute seventeen year old, 110 pounds, beautiful brown eyes. “Star power” is a strange thing. I’m not sure if its a matter of some people have it and some people don’t, or maybe the others just never got a chance to show it. Kristy is an interesting case study. She had star power in spades. She was troubled by health issues, keeping her sexuality a secret, and all the other problems of being a teen/young person in Hollywood. If nothing else she was a ‘celebrity’. Hollywood liked her, they kept her employed. She made the difficult transition from child actor to adult.
A friend had sent me a ‘look at her now‘ photo. Once she told me who it was I said, “Oh yeah! Kristy McNichol!” I could see it then. All I had in my mind was the lithe teen on the cover of Tiger Beat magazine in terrycloth shorts and a crop top from forty years ago. 3 years apart, I had watched her pretty close back then. I remember thinking it was kind of odd in her late teens and early twenties when they tried to make this obvious tomboy into a sex kitten. One of the strangest was the pairing with Tatum O’Neal in ‘Little Darlings’. Just remembering a doe-eyed cutie.
A successful Tom Cruise movie generally involves sunglasses, gold chains, rock music, a toothy grin and some sort of motorized travel (jet, boat, motorcycle, helicopter). Not generally a fan since All the Right Moves, but this movie blew me away. Really, really, blew me away. Not because of hunky Tommy, not because it was a great ‘movie’, but because of the story it told! Anyone with half a brain doesn’t rely on the lamestream media for all their news (or any of it). As someone who has listened to conservative talk radio for over a quarter century, I haven’t heard it all, but I’ve heard a lot of it.
Bush family, cocaine smuggling, Bo Gritz, Jerome Corsi, Mena Airport, the Golden Triangle, guns for drugs, Contras. I just never thought it would all be told in a mainstream Hollywood movie. I suppose nearly 40 years after the fact they thought it would be safe. Reminds me a lot of Oliver Stone and JFK, only I don’t remember anyone rushing out to deny this one. People have no idea what our government is capable of.
I thought I was savvy to all this, not even close. The eyeopener for me was the fools the drug cartels made out of Reagan and the CIA. They weren’t arming “rebels” fighting a communist insurgency, they were providing drug cartels with the guns they needed. So they could beat the other cartels. A bunch of narcos played the US Government for fools.
Oh the dilemma! I’ve always despised PBS for taking my tax dollars to buy British programming. On the other hand British shit is better (even if you do need subtitles). No denying. They can’t have the budget of Hollywood, they can’t have the facilities of Hollywood, but the Brits kick Hollywood’s ass so bad! Hollywood’s ass is still flying somewhere over Lake Michigan.
Now I could get into KCCI’s subchannel programming, ME-TV 8.2 and H&I 8.3, if they’d just play the damn shows. But they won’t. Its a never ending string of station promos. I’m not complaining about the commercials, I get that. What KCCI does on top of the commercials is run weather breaks, and news teases, and personality profiles, for minutes on end! Instead of just showing us how good they are, they tell us.
I just flip up one channel to 11.1. No commercials. No station promos. Better shows. Beautiful cinematography. Sure its goofy ass British shit, but at least you get to see the show. Somebody really should look at why Hollywood can’t turn out anything you’d want to watch. It is rather embarrassing. We’re supposed to be the “world’s lone superpower” and we can’t produce decent television. I think a group of 12-year-olds with Sony Cams could beat the snot out of Hollywood.
Classic Van Halen lineup: David Lee Roth, Eddie, Alex, Michael Anthony
I Love it! Its like those stories you read of when Elvis or John Wayne was starting out and they were told the company didn’t want them: “You don’t have a chance kid!” Actor Clark Gable, the ‘King of Hollywood’ experienced it. My favorite as an Iowan was when legendary running back Gayle Sayers visited the University of Iowa in 1960 as a high schooler, and Coach Jerry Burns couldn’t be bothered to meet with him. Gayle took Kansas to the championship instead.
Van Halen only came on my radar because of MTV. They had a series of videos back in the first part of the 80s when MTV played music. Jump, Panama, Hot for Teacher, Runnin’ with the Devil. There are “experts” on Van Halen, and I ain’t one of them. You could finger drum to their songs when they came on the radio, and they had some cute girls in their videos, but that was about it for me.
Like I say, there are people to whom Van Halen was a god. Which would explain their reaction this past week when he died. Media will do that when a rock person dies, ascribe an aura of mythical proportions to a very strange person. Elvis being the classic. I was just a kid in the 60s when he was making movies and music. Sure he was huge, his songs were okay to listen to, but he wasn’t that big a deal with your typical teenager.
But God help us when he died! Later on in the 90s it was some guy named Kurt Cobain. We were all supposed to be sad about this druggie dying. Sorry, couldn’t do it. When I pointed out on a blog one time I didn’t know him or anything he sang, this guy called me a liar! On a stack of bibles, don’t know the guy. Tom Petty recently assumed room temperature. The media tried to go all sad on him. He was a rather homely individual with a whiny voice. Take your celebrity worship somewhere else.
Kind of my reaction when Eddie died. Probably his bigger claim to fame for me was that he had been married to Valerie Bertinelli. Then there’s my longtime problem with rockers who make drinking and drugs seem like just the coolest thing there is. It isn’t. In fact, they make it sound like you’re a nerd if you don’t go through life chemically altered! A lot of poor fools buy into this crap, and have their life ruined. Nope, sorry you died too young Eddie, but I ain’t going to get broken up over it.
Valerie Bertinelli – married to Eddie at one time
Oh, and the lead singers they went through? To the casual fan the impression you always got was that it was David Lee Roth who was the jerk. That it was Sammy Hagar who was impossible to get along with. Listening to Armstrong & Getty yesterday, one of whom has been in a band and the business for 40 years, it wasn’t Roth or Hagar, it was Eddie. He was an alch.
FILE – This May 1950 file publicity photo originally released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer shows Esther Williams on location for the film “Pagan Love Song. According to a press representative, Williams died in her sleep on Thursday, June 6, 2013, in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 91. (AP Photo/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, file)
This very long movie (On an Island With You) is playing this morning on TCM. They just had the ‘final kiss’ in the pool. Esther Williams started out her teens setting swimming records at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, and was only prevented from competing in the 1940 Olympics by the outbreak of World War II. So she was a serious jock. She was not just a hottie in a swimsuit. With no Olympics, she joined “Billy Rose’s Aquacade!” (yeah I don’t know what an “aquacade” is either) Hollywood spots the fetching young lass and puts her in the movies. But because they have no imagination, Esther spends the next 20 years waterlogged.
The same way Gene Kelly was a dancer, so to Hollywood’s mind, he could only be in movie’s where he danced. Shirley Jones could relate, they had her as a singer, so when musicals went out of favor so did she. Poor Shirley Temple, she was a “child star”, so when she grew up to be a stunning young woman, she was out. One of the few to break the mold, in his case “costume” pictures, was Tyrone Power. Eve Arden was the ‘cynical girl Friday’. Natalie Wood was put in anything that showed off her figure. John Wayne was a cowboy. The cliché is authors only have 1 book in them. I long ago figured out directors only have 1 movie, they just change the location or the actors. Sometimes.
She was also quite the businesswoman: “My suits are quality fabric. She went on: “I put you in a suit that contains you and you will swim in. I don’t want you to be in two Dixie cups and a fish line.”
Iowa life 