LA-Ont painter

A few posts back, I mentioned briefly Ivano Stucco, a painter who splits his time between LA and southern Ontario.  There was something about his work that caught my attention, most likely the fact that there was clear craft involved, but that in most of his pieces there was something that made the work stand apart from a purely figurative painting.  In By Sweetness Alone it was the outrageously oversized hummingbirds, but also some of the crazy highway angles in the background.

Ivano Stucco, By Sweetness Alone, 2018

As I looked through his work on-line, I realized that there were quite a few highway paintings, though not all of them were quite so plunging.

Ivano Stucco, Lo-Gas Eat, 2018

The highway in this is one is much flatter, but the sign has been transformed, somewhat akin to something James Rosenquist might have done in one of his simpler prints.

Here the highways criss-cross and the traffic seems endless.

Ivano Stucco, Highway to Heaven, 2018

The overall effect is fairly claustrophobic.  You can just barely make out the sky, which is sort of a steely blue-grey.  If you look closely, it is possible to see some places towards the top of the painting where the painting surface has been roughed up and there is a honeycomb effect.  There are some other areas where there are flashes of colour that aren't strictly speaking naturalistic.  As I said, there is a bit more going on in this painting that just a straight-forward painting of the highway.

This older work combines a few of Stucco's preoccupations: an unusual perspective, a car, a pedestrian (he has a whole series of people walking), a storefront, graffiti and stylized elements (the pedestrian's jacket and the store windows).

Ivano Stucco, Upswing, 2012-3

Of course, what kind of LA artist would ignore the city's noir side?  (Though LA noir always involves more driving than NY-based noir...)

Ivano Stucco, Nightlife, 2014

This could also be a scene from a noir film:

Ivano Stucco, Crackpots Jackpots and Flower Pots, 2018

While most of Stucco's work is based on LA's highways and neighbourhoods, he does travel and is inspired by other cities.  Together (No. 17) was inspired by the train station in Florence (which I certainly hope to see one of these days).

Ivano Stucco, Together (No. 17), 2018

Here is the obligatory New York City shot.

Ivano Stucco, On the Bowery, 2017

Most recently, Stucco was in Chicago, taking in the urban landscape, and he came up with this image of the downtown, under the L tracks.

Ivano Stucco, Chicago 'L', 2018

The L basically does look like this, a huge overhanging valley of steel, and I worked right around the corner from Washington and Wells for years.  (I never saw anyone with a tiger head, however.)  This painting is still available incidentally.  I considered purchasing it, but eventually decided it was just a bit too large for the house, given the limited wall space that is left.

Art Destruction

I meant to get around to this post several months ago, but work has been fairly crazy.  Anyhow, last summer I went to the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair and got into a discussion with the artist Bonnie Miller.  She had been talking up her project, called the Impermanence Project, where she would essentially loan a piece of art to a collector for 9 months (symbolic, no?) and then take it back and transform the work into something new, presumably 3 or 4 smaller pieces built from the materials of the original work.

While quite a number of artists have recycled canvas, and some even cut paintings down into new paintings,* it is somewhat less typical to cut up the canvas and layer it on top of other canvas, but that is part of Miller's aesthetic.  It does result in uneven surface that calls attention to itself in a way that "flat" paintings do not.  It is exceedingly rare for an artist to take an artwork back to keep working on it or, indeed, to "destroy" it.  I suppose at least Miller is upfront about it, unlike the Banksy stunt from a few months back.

The bigger question that Miller is probing is how people feel about the idea that a piece of art they brought into their home is only temporary, but beyond the idea of having a piece of art on loan (itself not that radical an idea), no one else will have that art in the future, as it will be transformed into something new.  I suppose this gets at the relationship people have with their possessions, with most people preferring to hang onto them and not think of them as temporary.  But it also makes explicit this idea that an artist should have some measure of control over their work even after selling it.  (I tend to react badly to this notion, but that's part of my broader disdain for the way copyright has been evolving over the years.)

The actual terms of the agreement make it possible for the buyer to have "keeper's remorse" and hang onto the work and not surrender it at the end of 9 months, but then they will have to pay a penalty of sorts.  So it is a bit of a gamble on Miller's part to see whether people will grow so fond of the work that they can't imagine giving it up.

I was fairly sure in my case that I could honor the original terms of the deal.  In part, I have a lot of art and it is often a struggle to integrate new work into my living space (and I have no idea what I'll do in 15 years or so if we decide to downsize!).  Also, while I thought the piece in question was interesting, I wasn't so in love with it that I would be broken up if it was broken up (literally).

Anyway, here is the piece in the studio:

Here it is after delivery:

  
And here it is, hanging over the fireplace:

I'm not sure it was intentional, but in the lower left corner there is something that could be a pink conch shell.

But it also looks just a bit like a reclining monk.

In the other corner, there is a object that vaguely reminds me of Marcel DuChamp's experiments in form (and of course DuChamp was well-known for recycling work, both figuratively and literally).

Marcel DuChamp, Chocolate Grinder No. 1, 1913

It appears there are a few more months to go on the contract, but at this point, I am planning on hanging it back over.  I'm actually fairly curious to see the smaller works that are refashioned from the larger one.  Certain parts of the work appeal to me more than others, so I'm hoping that at least one of the resulting pieces uses them in an interesting way.  But I won't know for some time.


* Here is one of the more interesting examples from Picasso's work where he cut the father figure out of the main painting and then painted out the fish that the father was dangling over the child.

I've seen the final painting at the Art Institute of Chicago many, many times.  I've also seen the fragment, but it isn't displayed nearly as often naturally.

Crazy computer problems

I'm suffering from some very annoying computer problems.  I suppose this is what happens when you hang onto computers past their normal lifespan -- 3 or so years now!  Actually, I still have an ancient computer (2006 or so!), which I only haul out every once in a while.  It is set up for only two things -- to read Region 2 DVDs (at one point I had amassed quite a few of these from Amazon.co.uk) and to record music from a turn table.  I must admit that I haven't used it in a long time, and I do have three LPs to convert, so I probably should dust it off, set it up and cross my fingers!

But my main computer is from 2013-4.  It got so annoying with the automatic updates messing around with my remaining hard drive space (which I do keep far too low) that I set it up so I am notified but have to accept the updates.  I then realized that Defender updates its anti-virus definitions basically every 30 hours, so it is continually updating.  I'll probably give up and switch back to automatic updates for Defender at least.  The world has definitely changed from when anti-virus updates were more or less a weekly thing.

Nonetheless, it is extremely annoying to watch as the 1-2 GB of hard drive space I painstakingly freed up gets eaten up by some unknown process, and I have to restart the machine.  This is basically a daily process* in and of itself.  It takes almost as much time to deal with this as if I actually had a computer virus, aside from the fact that the computer is just very slow and can't really handle multiple processes.

A slightly less serious problem from a security perspective, but still unbelievably annoying, is that the various updates to Firefox or Chrome throw other applications out of whack.  For some reason, Hoopla will not play at all any more.  I suspect this means I have to completely update Firefox and cross my fingers.  However, I had intentionally frozen Firefox to an old version, since it was the last version that would support this cool ePub reader I used.  I suppose I have to lose this feature and upgrade Firefox (and then move to a stand-alone non-browser based reader), but I am still so annoyed that Firefox doesn't support the classic ePub reader any longer (the new version is quite terrible in fact).   It's these annoying incompatibilities that make people wonder why upgrades almost always seem to be a step backwards in terms of just using the programs that you already know and are used to.  Certainly there are very few upgrades that I can recall actually making my computing experience better.  I realize these are all first world problems, but, given the amount of time I spend on computers, it does impact my life on a daily basis.  Sigh...


* And don't get me started on how often Java and Adobe Flash want to be updated!  Fortunately more and more players have moved away from Flash, but there are still some streaming sites that require it.

Classics on the Subway

While I have found the TTC to be extremely trying this past week or two (and I certainly hope I can start biking again in earnest this spring), it does give me more time to read (at least if I am not squished up against several people).  It does take extra concentration if you are reading something "serious," such as Homer, but I can usually make it through without too many distractions.

Anyway, I was settling into Lattimore's take on the Iliad when I saw the woman seated across from me had a Penguin classics with a very odd cover.  I finally was able to see that it was Dante's Inferno! 

It actually looked like part of a totem pole, though when I looked it up later, I could see it was one of the damned souls.

Hardly light subway reading (though to be fair, often the commute does feel like a kind of purgatory).  This is actually a reprint of Mark Musa's translation from the early 90s.*  I've always been the most partial to John Ciardi's translation, as it is the one that is the closest experience to reading Dante's terza rima scheme in English.  However, there are times that this requires stretching the meaning of the poem.  I took a quick look through the first few pages of Musa's translation, and it is pretty solid (it also is well footnoted).  

While I am not expecting to reread Dante in the immediate future, I might pick up a copy of Musa's translation and then when the time comes, I can alternate Ciardi and Musa.  I think I'd actually get Musa's The Portable Dante, which has the entire Divine Comedy, as well as Dante's Vita Nuova.  Unfortunately, it costs quite a bit more to get it up here,** so I think I'll hold off until I'm making a pass through the States, and I'll get it at that time.  As I said, I'm not in any particular hurry.

* Actually his Dante translations came out in the 1970s and 80s!  But then got picked up by Penguin in the 90s.

** Apparently, the Kindle version is all jacked-up, so I'd only get an actual print edition.

Ch-ch-changes

Thought I would try something a bit different and do slightly shorter takes on a few things that have been on my mind lately.

First, while he is still threatening to shut down the government in 3 weeks, it was very satisfying seeing Trump's bluff collapse like a house of cards and he finally reopened the government, getting absolutely nothing in return.  (What a completely unexpected about-face.)  I think the bottom line was watching that the Dems held their position (for once) and the Republicans in the Senate started to cave.  I truly don't think he can come up with a face-saving fudge in three weeks, but I hope they can think up something, if only for the impacted federal workers.  I don't give a rat's ass about Trump and the corner into which he painted himself.  Anyway, I think he will find it a lot less fun being in DC now that the Democrats can actually hold him accountable and there is clear evidence of his abhorrent scuminess and sheer venality (not that there wasn't before -- I mean come on America!).

I'm glad to see that the Greek assembly passed (just barely) the deal with North Macedonia, but it is clear that this issue is far from settled and that it will very likely bring down the government in the next election.  Stupid nationalists.

In other Greek news, I am about 3/4 of the way through the Iliad (both translations) and should be able to push through to the end this weekend.  I have to say that I am struggling quite a bit.  I find the worldview abhorrent, and there is far too much detail (focusing on Achilles' absurdly decorated shield for instance or the family tree details given for most of the combatants), to say nothing of the fact that how much "honor" can there be in warcraft, when the gods intervene all the time!  I'm not in the market for the Marie Kondo "does it give you joy" mantra, but at the same time I am actively disliking this book quite a bit.  There's really no reason for me to hang onto Lattimore's translation, even if it is the "better" one for me.  I expect I'd hang onto Lattimore's Odyssey, however, as it is a much more fun read and arguably more influential, at least for the fiction I read (given that I hate war novels).

It's bitterly cold again this weekend, though for the most part the sidewalks are clear, with a few really annoying exceptions.  I do need to go out once for a play (Ruhl's The Next Room), but I just haven't decided about Top Girls on Sunday.  I guess all things considered, I'm leaning against, since I still have some real work to do, and I'm also working on writing an academic paper (and my researching muscles are a bit rusty).

Despite my very bad experience on the way to Roma back in December, I decided to go after all.  I saw one of the special 70 mm screenings at TIFF.  I think there is definitely something to be said for seeing a film like this in the theatre.  In particular, the sound was surround sound, and you heard all kinds of things just off-screen some of which never turned up on screen (glass breaking, for instance).  While there are some parallels to Fellini, particularly Amarcord, I thought there were also a few nods to Jacques Tati as well.  First the enveloping sound world reminded me of Playtime.  There were also some repeated motifs, like an airplane reflected in a wet floor and then airplanes in the sky over the rooftops where the maids did laundry.  Another Tati-like moment is when Cleo and her employer are outside a restaurant for some reason (maybe travelling back from the coast, I can't recall) and a wedding photographer is taking photos of a couple slightly "downstage."  While Cleo probably doesn't actually photobomb the couple, it is a reminder that the protagonist of one story is barely in the background for another.  Then the plaza is filled with dancing couples, which reminded me of the nightclub scene in Playtime.

Very minor SPOILERS follow

I will say that I had glanced at a woke review talking about the massive violence towards women in Roma, which got me very tense, wondering at any moment when Cleo was going to be raped.  That did put a bit of a damper on the whole experience, and it is only in retrospect that I can appreciate the film for what it was (and thankfully there were no rapes -- obviously the writer was talking about economic violence towards women, which is serious, but in a whole different category...)  I still think it is probably a bit too slow-paced to win Best Picture at the Oscars, but it is a film that will grow on me with time.  I haven't decided if I will see it a second time, but if so, I will just go the Netflix route.

One thing that is a little disconcerting is that I started filling up the calendar,* and then realized about half the shows are actually in March, not Feb.!  Maybe that is just as well, given how brutally cold it will be in the middle of the week.  I am bummed that I can't find an interesting play or concert for Feb. 3, since I want to avoid the Super Bowl as much as possible, but I suppose I can go to the office and work on this paper.  Anyway, I do need to go make the changes to the calendar and get that all straightened out.  Ciao.

* Also, the Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale is completely sold out.  Drat.  I suppose there is a chance it is the hit of the Progress Festival and gets an extended run, but I doubt it.

It's Not Always About You

This lesson is a hard one to really sink in, perhaps because the "ego" tends to only value things that involve oneself.  And indeed, some (many?) people are so bored when things don't directly involve them that they stir up trouble, just to make sure that they are back in the centre of attention.  Hmm, does that sound like anyone you know in your life (or who is in the news a lot)?

At any rate, I was walking to the store when I stumbled across a sign in my neighbour's front yard.

I thought about it for a bit, and then wondered if it could possibly be a reference to the Little Free Library I finally finished, which is of course unstaffed.

Very few people have a beef with them, though there are actually a couple of "radical librarians" in Toronto who do argue that the LFL system supports a neoliberal agenda.  However, it is only a very small minority who actually think that these book exchanges actually could or should replace libraries.  Certainly no one in Riverdale would think such a thing.

But more to the point, I was getting myself worked up that the Toronto librarian union would actually set up a campaign to encourage people to plant these signs whenever a Little Free Library popped up.  That seemed to be taking it pretty far, but I certainly hadn't seen these signs anywhere else and it seemed like quite a coincidence that it went up roughly a week after my Little Free Library was open.

Fortunately, I took a step back from getting into a beef with my neighbour.  I did some internet research, and in fact it was a complete coincidence and the sign has nothing to do with me at all.

Starting in 2017, Toronto was considering a pilot to extend the hours at two underserved libraries by making them staffless.  Essentially, the premises would be electronically monitored (by librarians elsewhere, who presumably still had other work to do) and the public would have to sign a waiver in case anything happened to them.  This sounds like an absolutely terrible idea for all kinds of reasons beyond the impact on staff.  As it turns out, the city has gone ahead with this pilot at Todmorden Room and Swansea Branches, and they will evaluate it for a year (or more likely until someone is hurt or causes major damage to the untended books).  Not surprisingly, the union is aghast and is just ramping up a campaign against staffless libraries, so I should expect to see more of these signs on more streets (and not merely ones with Little Free Libraries) in the near future.

I'm not pleased to learn about this initiative, but I am relieved to know that (this time) it wasn't personal...

Super Cold Super Moon

It was so unbelievably cold this weekend, and I ended up going out several times.  First, I had to pick my daughter up from her first-ever sleep over.  We scheduled the pick-up early on Sat. before the snow was supposed to start.  It was still cold though!

In the end, it never did snow all that much, maybe 3-4 inches.  Chicago was hit much worse, and a plane even slid off the runway at O'Hare, though I don't believe anyone was seriously hurt.  Before the weather got a lot worse, I turned right around and went to the gym and picked up some groceries on the way back.  I may have mentioned before that I am very glad the gym is right at the mall, since I can usually force myself to go, even when it is nasty out, just so long as I can get two or more things done in one trip.  I probably won't be able to lose significant weight until I get back into the biking full time, but I have probably stabilized for now.

I had been feeling proud of my productivity in such lousy weather, and actually finally set up the sewing machine again, but I also took a relatively long nap in the afternoon...

On Sunday morning, I had been kind of kicking myself for missing the lunar eclipse, though I was pretty sure it had been overcast.  Then I was reading more about the super moon and realized that it was Sunday night into Monday morning, and I hadn't missed it after all.

Sunday afternoon, I left around 1 pm for a 2 pm matinee.  The first couple of legs went reasonably well on transit, but the third leg was agonizingly slow.  I ended up turning up with just 10 minutes to spare.  Now this is a trip that only takes 20 minutes by bike!  Of course, I certainly was not going to be on my bike in these conditions, but there really was no excuse for a streetcar to be going that slow.

I was at Canadian Stage to see 1979, which is Michael Healey's version of a history play, focusing on Joe Clark's decision to hold a vote on the budget, which ultimately led to his minority government falling and Pierre Trudeau coming back into power.  After the first scene, Healey himself came out and said there was a problem with the lights and they were going to start the play all over again!  Hard to imagine, but the actors were troupers and the play didn't suffer from the reset.  While I do prefer Video Cabaret's much punchier and even more sarcastic take on Canadian politics, this was quite good, particularly the portrayal of Trudeau.  The one false note is a really extended (and completely made up) discussion between a young Steven Harper (who didn't even come to Ottawa until 1985) and Joe Clark.  I see where Healey was going with this, but it was too long and too unbelievable and frankly too didactic.  If that had been cut back or simply cut out, I think the play would have been better.

I went straight back to the gym for a half workout and digging a bit deeper into the Iliad.  At this point, I am halfway through both the Lattimore and Fitzgerald translations.  While there are still a few places where I like Fitzgerald's poetry better, I'm still sticking with my preference for Lattimore.  In terms of the work as a whole, I don't actually like it that much.  There is far too much line for line repetition, as when Zeus tells his messenger to give a message and then it is repeated verbatim.  But mostly it lionizes stupid pride and cements the idea that women are chattel to be won in war games.  I have to say, not much has changed (on either front really), and 70% of Greeks are against regularizing their relationship with North Macedonia out of stupid nationalism (feeling that the Slavs are somehow going to steal their rights to Alexander the Great).  It just reminds me again of how much I hate stupid people, or indeed most people frankly.

I really was not sure I wanted to go back out into the cold one more time, as I had a ticket for a concert at 8 pm.  I finally forced myself, but it was touch and go.  It was far too cold to just wait for the bus, so I walked to the subway station.  I made it the entire way before I finally saw a bus, which is frankly pathetic (and certainly does not live up to the TTC's 10 minute service on this route).  The concert was ok with the best piece being Claude Vivier's Orion, though all things considered I am not sure it justified being out in such miserable weather.  I did run into a friend there, which was nice, so we chatted during intermission.  Fortunately, transit back was much smoother.

To return to the lunar eclipse, I made it back home just after 10, about when it was starting.  I took a look through the back door screen and saw that it was actually a fairly clear night (often rare in Toronto).  You could just see a little bit of the bottom edge of the moon fuzzing out a bit (though it was hard to see much, given how bright it was).  I called my son down to take a look, and it was a bit more impressive at that point, with maybe 10-15% covered.  I did try to take a photo, but I do not have the right equipment at all.  (The eclipse was much more impressive by this point.)

I was doing some other work and checked in after 40 or so minutes and it was half covered, which was cool.  At some point I looked again, and instead of being completely gone, it was sort of a dusky colour.  Here's a bit of a primer on what was actually going on.  I suspect there are sites that actually have better photos and videos of the eclipse, but I had my fill.