But it describes the way I feel sometimes.

I grew up in Seattle, with art collector parents, and saw a lot of northwest "mystic" art and artists. I ran into the big dogs at art openings as a kid, and got to know many of the second tier artists quite well, as my parents fed and watered them, along with buying art.

And I frankly would like to propose the idea that its all a bit overblown.
The original flash was in the late 40's, and, really, was just a regional variation on the transition between fuzzy realism and abstract art that was taking place in artists brains worldwide.
People like Pollock, and Dubuffet, and Ossario and Giacometti were all doing vaguely similar work, work that straddled the gap between representation and abstraction.

And many really great artists had completed the step by the early 50's- Pollock not the least among them, but tons and tons of other abstract artists.

In my mind, our little backwater just hung onto the middle ground, afraid to take the leap, for longer than most.

In actual art world trends, by the late 50's even pure abstract expressionism was being left behind by people like Rauschenberg, and by the 60's, well, anything went.

I am proposing the theory that even in Seattle, there have been two much more influential currents in art since the "mystics" and that frankly, for all intents and purposes, the mystics, especially the first generation of Tobey and Graves, have been completely irrelevant for at least 40 years.

If you look at the artists who have been showing and creating in Seattle in the last 40 years, they have been much more influenced by two other strands- West Coast Funk, and the multi-media printmaking of Glen Alps and Bill Ritchie.

If you look at the vast influence of the West Coast Funk group on Northwest art, even today, many of the most well known and loved artists around here owe much more to it than to Tobey and Graves.

Ceramic artists like Patti Warishina, her ex Fred Bauer, Howard Kottler, Dick Marquis before he got completely into glass- they attracted to Seattle a whole generation of students, people like Joyce Moty and Clair Colquitt, who brought along Buster Simpson from Ann Arbor- their influence in the work of people like Claudia Fitch, Linda Beaumont, Micheal Lucero, and tons and tons of other artists who came to Seattle because of them, and who had never heard of Tobey and Graves.
The funk genes are still visible in work by people as diverse as Charlie Krafft and Jeffrey Mitchell.

Painters like William Wiley and Bill Allen influenced the graphic scene as well- Ken Cory and Les Lepere, and many more rural washington funk artists still influence artists here today. The Ellensburg esthetic is largely Wiley-esque.

Galleries like Attica and Jimmy Manolides Cone Ten had a big effect.

And then there was the huge, largely unacknowledged influence of Bill Ritchie- building on the wild, anything goes printmaking experiments of Glen Alps, Bill encouraged and enabled an entire generation of Seattle artists, including Carolyn Law, Carl Chew, Nancy Mee, Dennis Evans, Mary Ann Peters, Nori Sato, Walter Cotton, Jeffrey Bishop, and many more artists whose work ranges far beyond printmaking.
Bill is a true mad scientist of art, willing to try anything, with a wild gleam in his eye that could take him literally anywhere.
His influence is still felt today- even though he hasnt been teaching for quite some time.

My feeling is that if you look at the majority of artists in Seattle since 1970, these two forces have had a vastly larger affect on them than oriental bird scratching from 1948.

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"value, financially and intellectually"?

Certainly, by financial standards, which is not one I tend to take to seriously, the Northwest Mystics are not very important- either to the greater art world, or locally.

I am not aware of a single "mystic" painting that has sold for $1million on the market, while scores of young artists I have never heard of routinely sell recent work at auction for much more.

In terms of their value, compared to other northwest artists, they are also not very well regarded, either here or elsewhere- certainly, Chihuly, at $17 Million or so a year, dwarfs them, and he is selling high volume, relatively low priced pieces.
But William Wiley, or Chuck Close, or Gary Hill or Trimpkin all sell works every year for much more than any Mystic painting is worth- all northwest artists who are much more highly regarded, both intellectually and financially in the outside world.

Even in Seattle, the work isnt financially important- one Clifford Still painting in Ginny Wrights collection is worth more, by an order of magnitude, than every mystic painting combined in the SAM collection. Bill Neukom probably spent more on the Mark Dion piece at the sculpture park than changes hands on mystic paintings in 10 years, and Mark Dion is a mid range, not very successful artist.

Intellectually, of value to individuals, certainly- but my whole point is that they have barely influenced any artists, even local ones, for 40 years.
Even the old guard of Seattle painters, Bob Jones and Mike Spafford and Alden Mason moved beyond their mystic influenced phase in the 70's.
Its true, in the mid 70's, Charlie Krafft was being heralded as the "next Morris Graves" but it quickly became apparent that his flirtation with orientalist abstraction was a youthful phase, and that his mature work, which is exhibited and collected worldwide, owes very little to it. Instead, it has much more West Coast Funk influence.

And as for virutally all the artists who Seattle collectors, curators, and museums have deemed interesting since the 70's, not to mention what has hit in the rest of the art world, the mystics influence in negligible.

Charles LeDray, or Dan Corson, or Susan Robb, or Chris Bruch,or William Morris, or the afore mentioned Marquis and Simpson and Fitch and Hill- what mystic influence is visible in any of their work?

Certainly, most artists around here know what a Morris Graves looks like- but they also know Rodin, and Michealangelo, the Lascaux cave paintings, Rauschenberg and Warhol, Goya and Dali- and they have about as much importance as backgound noise as any of those.

In fact, I question it even being a regional movement- it was more a group of drinking buddies. When you look at the range of it, from Tobey's pen and ink Market sketches, to Andersons abstract expressionist totem pole imagery, to Gilkey's skagit landscapes, to Kenney's geometric pychedelia, to Graves oriental squiggles, there really isnt cohesion or "movement" as such. The main connection is geographic and temporal- and I would certainly argue that many other "non mystic" northwest artists WERE doing better work, certainly by the late 50's, and since then, without question.

I guess if you only look at the classic period, from the mid 40's to the very early 50's, the work was the most interesting thing going on around here. Although anybody who cared could find more interesting stuff elsewhere, as evidenced by Ginny Wright buying art in NYC in 1950, instead of Morris Graves paintings here- But by ten years later, all kinds of stuff was happening here, and by the 60's, which is, after all, 50 years ago now, there were lots of great artists working here in totally different genres and with little or no interest or debt to the mystics.

I am not sure what is "international quality", and I dont know much about 1933. But I do know that both today, and in 1967, there has been art in Seattle that interested both Seattleites and the rest of the world, and it wasnt the "mystics" in either time.

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Tobey doesn't stack up next to Pollock, but who does?

Right now see a lot of pop surrealism making money and talking to the young. I wonder if it isn't just an example of us going back to sleep.
Do you think that good and potent art has a pulse on the nation or the world and that it is only as powerful as it's surroundings?

What was Seattle like during the Mystics time?

De Leva

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And I remember the mystics at that time as mostly gone, and the drab openings at Foster White of their second and third generation spin offs as being dull, alcohol fueled affairs, mostly brown and gray landscape paintings. Bad white wine and grouchy old drunks, mostly.

Meanwhile, down the street at Cone 10 gallery, there was really great stuff being shown- actual young artists, like Dick Marquis before he got completely into glass, who did a show of ceramic teapots adorned with images of his beloved 1950's Dodge Powerwagons, along with a whole raft of other very exciting, colorful art.
(what was it about the mystics, anyway, that made them so allergic to color?)
I remember seeing Patti Warishina's brick patterned airstream trailers, and having my eyes opened, wide.
Howard Kottler's crazy appropriations of the Blue Boy, his surrealist pop art.

The Heald brothers, painting up a storm, including the cover to the magical 1969 album by the Youngbloods, Elephant Mountain.

There was a gallery on Broadway for a while, Attica, where the scene was mindblowing to a young teenager- Tom Robbins holding court, a bunch of crazy young artists doing all kinds of stuff, from Charles Stokes's intricately done minature paintings to the funk jewelry of the original Pencil Brothers, and their disciples like Merilee Tompkins, Le Whizz Kids in their extravagant glittering bearded drag wandering in, Jimi Hendrix playing free in Volunteer Park at Human Be-Ins, dogs with bandanna's running free- Yep the 60's were a lot of fun, and the art scene in Seattle was hopping.

There was a huge scene based on the ceramics studio over at the U, with all kinds of ancillary stuff like Clair Colquitt's art cars, performances, Susan Niningers costumes, Friends of the Rag, and lots of other craft/art miscegenation.

There was also a decent sized outpost of the California inspired Finish Fetish style of art, with John Gies and Jon Wharton doing precise geometric plexiglas sculptures, Francis Celantano and others doing immaculate geometric paintings, and a variety of slick hot rod inspired painting and sculpture as well.

I am generalising, of course, about the era from 1967 to about 1972.

But there was a lot going on here that had no relationship to the mystics whatsoever.

I am not trying to deny the past its right to be itself- I am just saying that as someone who lived thru a bit of the past, there was a lot more to it than just the "big 4" and a lot of it was good, and has had as much, if not more, influence on whats happening here today.

I dont like "official histories"

They tend to leave out all the fringe elements, outsiders, shit disturbers, drunks, poets, and so on- in other words, most of the artists.

--------------------

De Leva

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De Leva

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the point being that neither of them sounded like THEMSELVES yet in those instances, and that it was only when they found their own true voices. their own. distinct. voices. that they tore the house down.

picasso certainly did that. and as much as it personally pains me to look at any pollock, i have to admit so did he. and after spitting that muck out of my mouth, i think i can safely say the same for a personal favorite, shirin neshat.

Well, I hardly think Tobey and Graves are household names, any more than Warishina and Kottler.

Ask the average man on the street about art, and they might vaguely recognize Picasso or Warhol, but probably couldnt tell you much about them.

I am more interested in tracing the influence of artists on other artists, and seeing what has gone on to grow new shoots, versus what has been pressed between the pages of an art history book.

Rich people of a certain age have Tobey and Graves on their walls- but the current generation of rich people here are, at least as evidenced by what is shown at the Henry, Sam, Western Bridge, and Wright exhibition space, buying a lot of other things instead- video, photography, sculpture, sound pieces, and a lot of quite ephemeral stuff.

And the current generation of artists, galleries, and curators are a long ways down the road.

If you look at the galleries making waves in Seattle, and the art they are showing, the influence of the mystics is small to nonexistant- which is sort of my intial point.

Who, exactly, at Lawrimore or James Harris or Greg Kucera is carrying on any portion of the northwest tradition?

And yet, at all three, I can point to artists who, know it or not, are influenced by the two other schools of northwest thought I pointed out, West Coast Funk and Bill Ritchie.
Lots of em.

and Monsignor DeLeva- really, there is lots of art out there being made today every bit as good as Pollock. Totally different in every way, but just as forehead smackingly new and interesting.

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Lee Rosenbaum had recently posted these comments from the other coast-extracted and rearranged a little-which struck me as germane:

quote:

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As someone who places cultural value above monetary value, I worry about marketmania, where top-level collecting is becoming the ultimate assertion of financial clout, rather than the ultimate expression of artistic appreciation. Museums and art lovers may well be the losers.

Mega-collectors simply don't need museums as much as they used to. Their art-market clout derives from their overwhelming purchasing power, not their curatorial connections.

In its recent editorial decrying Steve Cohen's loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Damien Hirst's shark, the NY Times quaintly claimed: "It may appear as if Mr. Cohen is doing the Met a favor by lending this work. In fact," the Times pundits argue, "it is the other way around," because the Met display has the effect of "endorsing and validating the quality of the collector's eye."

What the Times editorial board hasn't caught onto yet is that today's ultimate validator of artistic worth is not the high regard of a museum curator but the high price paid through a dealer or an auction house. Never mind that there is no direct correlation between market value and artistic value. That doesn't seem to matter much any more: In today's pecking order, Klimt is King. Rothko trumps Rembrandt.

Not only don't collectors feel beholden to curators, but many are starting to feel the curatorial urge themselves. Cohen is reportedly thinking of establishing his own museum as the ultimate repository for his holdings, as several other collectors have recently done. The latest entrant into the museum-of-one's-own ranks is Donald Fisher, founder and now chairman emeritus of the Gap, who last week announced plans to set up his own art facility in San Francisco.

Not only are museums losing their clout, but they're losing their art: The stratospheric art market is tempting museums, more than ever, to sell museum-quality works from their so-called permanent collections, as the only means by which they can afford to buy other works.

We've yet to hear what the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo is buying with the proceeds from the more than $70 million worth of antiquities and other objects that it sold earlier this year in a series of auctions at Sotheby's. It has said that it will lavish its newfound wealth on acquisitions of contemporary art. Will the Albright-Knox replace its late Hellenistic bronze, Artemis and the Stag (now lost to the public domain) with a Joseph Beuys Stag? Is this a worthy tradeoff?

In case we needed any further confirmation that the balance of power has shifted to the auction world from the museum world, we've recently heard that the director of New York's Guggenheim Museum, Lisa Dennison, will be joining Sotheby's in September as "a senior client relationship director." One type of client whom she is particularly well suited to serve may be museums interested in cashing in some of their collection chips.

Dennison, a lifelong museum denizen, has made no secret of where she now thinks the power (not to mention the money) resides. She recently commented to Lindsay Pollock of Bloomberg:

We are in an explosive art market, and I wanted to be able to hitch my wagon to their star.

---

As to the insistent comments about who influences whom, and who matters, and who doesn't...apparently Ries is in line with the stars of the time- as noted in Rosenbaum's post....while in my mind, as ever, its in the eye of the beholder, and time will tell.

You got your opinions and I'm appreciative for the time you gave to thoughtfully sharing who you think matters. I enjoyed reading about a different sector of the northwest art scene, many of whose works are unfamiliar to me-and I strongly doubt if they've influenced my work. In your mind, presumably, that supports a pre-existing proclivity to devalue what matters to me and many others. I can live with that.

quote:

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I do think the denigration of one group of artists by another is needless, and kind of sad.

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i agree, jeffree, and i think regina said something similar above. to that i would add my continuing (and apparently crazy) theory that every once in a while artists might be influenced by something other than other artists.

I am not denigrating a group of artists-
Instead I am coming from a place of having seen this same group of artists held up, locally, as the second coming, as being so important that entire museums (MONA) are dedicated to their glory. The "big 4" have been placed on a pedestal, talked about in hushed tones, and generally revered in the Northwest.

All I am trying to say is the emporer has no clothes- in my mind, which is, as usual, a minority of one, the work wasnt that great to begin with, but then has taken the spotlight for nigh on 60 years now. The Mystics get plenty of props around here- they are considered as Gods by many northwesterners- is there really any danger that my skepticism is gonna bring em down? Or hurt their feelings? Arent they mostly already dead?

But only here- I travel a lot, and go to museums, and I think I may have seen ONE Graves painting hanging anywhere outside of Seattle. Certainly, there are Graves and Callahan and Tobey paintings in a few museum collections, in New York and DC. But they are seldom shown. Outside of Seattle, they are not that revered, certainly not household names or considered to be of great historical value.

Now, personally, I do not judge art on sales price. I like what I like, just like everybody else, and some of the artists are famous, and some are not. And I think the current trend in art collecting is way over the top.
But thats not to say that a fair amount of the artists that are most widely collected are not actually pretty interesting.

When smart people, all over the world, agree that an artists work is worth looking at, and some even put their money where their mouth is, I will consider the work. Some I like, some I dont- for instance, I will never in a million years see what the allure of Eric Fischl was- but I do think that worldwide art world recognition is usually based on some interesting aspects of the artists work.

I have seen several Damien Hirst pieces in person, and have always been moved by them- the guy is not, in my mind, a charlatan, although he is certainly a world class hustler.

And if you look at the Washington and Northwest artists who are the most well known elsewhere, it aint Tobey and Graves.

Without a doubt, the best known northwest artist is Matt Groening. I know, I know, thats not "real" art. But I knew Matt back when he was just another art student at evergreen, and he picks up his pencil the same way as every other artist in the world.
Then, there would be Chihuly. Not a fan, myself, but you cant take away from him the fact that the stuff is in museums and collections and art books around the world, and it aint going into the stacks to join those Tobey paintings any time soon- people, ordinary people, love the stuff.
As for "serious painters", it would have to be Chuck Close- his work is much more widely displayed and considered than any other Washington Painter. He has "stood the test of time".

Then, you got people like Billy Morris, and Gary Hill. Again, the work is out there, being written about, and displayed, in lots of serious, non-commercial venues.

The issue of influence in artist's work is a whole nother thread, or series of them.
Certainly, I believe that good art is the Unique product of an individual mind, not following some school, or copying a master, or "working in the style of".

And the art I like the best is the result of quirky, individual minds.

But that is not to say that teachers, in particular, cannot have an affect on the art scene in a city.
My examples of "influence" had to do with professors at the UW who attracted students here, and who made art and exhibited it themselves (and still do) who have a big affect on the art scene.
Not thru students copying their work- but thru actually helping students make their own work, in their own way.

The personal style of the lead mystics, Tobey, and Graves, Callahan and Anderson- was hermetic, isolated, and introspective.

Contrast that with Howard Kottler, and Patti Warishina, Bob Sperry, Glen Alps, and Bill Ritchie, the examples I used above- for many many years, they attracted young, very talented people here, and then helped them out into the art world, where they did what is decididely their own work.

This is the "influence" I am talking about, and it has nothing to do with whether or not your ideas are your own.

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quote:

---

I am proposing the theory that even in Seattle, there have been two much more influential currents in art since the "mystics" and that frankly, for all intents and purposes, the mystics, especially the first generation of Tobey and Graves, have been completely irrelevant for at least 40 years.

---

quote:

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If you look at the vast influence of the West Coast Funk group on Northwest art, even today, many of the most well known and loved artists around here owe much more to it than to Tobey and Graves.

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if you 'splain me maybe i won't feel like i'm responding to a different thread altogether...

to my way of thinking (and again, maybe this is just crazy me) i benefit from the wisdom of others in all areas of my life except when it comes to connecting with my own voice.

I do not. I certainly have my own ideas, my own way of looking at the world, and my own quirky personal signifiers, history, and secret handshakes-
but I, like almost every artist I know, am influenced by other art, by the visual culture around me, by ideas both old and new, and by many other things I cant even identify.

Most artists have seen the artwork of other artists who came before them.

And most artists are influenced, in subtle or not so subtle ways, by that artwork.

This is not to disparge each or our own unique talents and perspectives- but I am sorry, I just dont believe that the art I do comes from some deep personal wellspring, without any outside influence.

And all the art I have looked at in the last 50 years has certainly affected the way I look at things, the way I do things, and the art I make.

So I would have to say, upon your prodding, that YES, I definitely believe that the artists who came before me had an influence on my work, and on the way I look at art.

As mentioned, I grew up around artists and artwork- artists like John Giese, Richard Gilkey, Leo Kenney, Jim Johnson, Frank Okada, and many more were a part of my home life from a very young age.
And from them, I certainly gained the idea that you could even BE an artist, and that you could, and should, look at everything in the world.

The big eyeopener for me, however, was sometime in the late 60's, when I was taken to a decommissioned church in Marin County, that was the studio of William Wiley and William Allan. Those two guys, both from washington state, as it turns out, were doing all kinds of stuff- painting, sculpture, assemblage, drawing, prints, totally freeranging across media, subject matter, and genre. They were much more wild and free than any artists I had been exposed to before that, up close and personal.

There is no doubt in my mind that the art I do today, at 52, is STILL influenced by what I saw that afternoon- in some very specific ways- for instance, I still write text on my work pretty often, and I often paint little dotted lines on things, both tricks I got directly from Wiley- but also in much more subtle ways, in terms of not being bound by genre or material, and in terms of LIVING with art, rather than placing it at some distance.

Since then, there have been quite a few other artists who have influenced me profoundly.
I spent a couple of years hanging with Howard Kottler, over at the U, when I had a girlfriend who was a grad student of his- and his quick wit, extreme technical skill, wide connoissership of virtually every era of art, and his willingness, indeed gleefulness, to mix it all up into art deco pop art hand crafted slick funky graphic sculpture has inspired me daily ever since. Plus, he was insanely funny, and a great cook, and his collection of Nori-Take ceramics had to be seen to be believed.

There have been lots of other artists who have influenced me since.

And frankly, I just dont believe I am that unique, that I am the only one who goes to a gallery, or who opens a book, and gets a big kick in the pants when I see a great piece of art, and who then intuitively and unconciously, perhaps, incorporates some aspect of that art into my own work.

So yep, I believe in artists influencing other artists, and Yep, I believe that you can, and sometimes should, discuss who is more influential, over time.

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i guess i'm just frustrated with the umpteenth post on "which artist is more of an influence on other artists and who had what idea first and which idea was better and so on and so forth..."

it seems like such a closed sphere from which to draw inspiration. of course arts of all kinds are likely to weave their way in and out of your consciousness. but so are people. and paperwork. and countless other experiences over a lifetime.

but hey, if i don't want to read these particular threads, i don't hafta, right?

remembers lovingly ..many edgy artists
even more run-of-the-millers ..just as lovingly
cool people (all) to hang out with ..living
largely beneath the radar ..when dead
mostly lost to history ..their story
eventually ..forgotten

unless ..intimate powerful art ..remains behind

Ries is ..absolutely right ..about
what he says concerning ..West Coast Funk and Bill Ritchie
and ..absolutely wrong too

West Coast Funk and ..Alden Mason

UW prof. Alden Mason is one of the earliest practitioners of West Coast Funk and
a ..Tom Robbins favorite in the early-60s
(Robbins ..Seattle art critic ..later novelist living in Skagit Valley)

the work is colorful and goofy ..nothing like the NW School’s dour devotionals
like watching ..Warner Bros. “Looney Tunes” thru a glass of Alkaseltzer
to Robbins ..urban and hip like ..NY Pop in
its ..rejection of the 1940-50s NY School’s Abstract Expressionist daydreams of the “sublime”
Mason’s funk ..too humorous (“what have you been smoking?”) to ever be considered ..unduly sincere
but unlike NY’s Pop alternative ..his funk proves too voluptuously comic to find itself accused of harboring ..any kind of distancing “irony”
Mason’s art was smart ..bold ..in your face ..but
friendly ..ready to chat

West Coast Funk at its best ..a
healthy style
spontaneous and evanescent ..free of hang-ups
made for the 60s

Ries is correct ..many funksters followed in Mason’s wake ..most
filtering thru the University of Washington ..where the style was
broadly influential ..particularly amongst ceramicists (Patti Warashina ..its exemplar)

Ries too is correct ..looking back to Graves and Tobey of the late-40s thru 50s
the barely skilled ..irksome tetchiness of their technique
where ..in Mason’s wash-style landscapes of that period ..there is a remarkably
deft touch to his brushwork ..painting richer and more complexly ..human
in its emotional outlook ..(as was Boyer Gonzales’ painting from this era) ..when
compared to the ..NW Mystics’ narrower emotional reach and ..obsessive stylistics

what Ries ..got wrong with Graves and Tobey ..is
they nailed their ..highly original and ..(then) very powerful style
in the early-40s (during WWII) ..not later (late-40s thru 50s)
when ..that edge of ‘power’ was already slipping away ..as the
NY-School came into artworld ascendancy (stressing a ..sublime ‘bigness’
where the ..earlier power of Graves and Tobey arose from their paintings’ ..compacted ‘intimacy’)
the emotional ..’power’ of Abstract Expressionism seeming ..(falsely)
so much more compelling

NY’s Action Painters sought ..’big’ (sublime ..”larger than life”) emotion
when NY Pop arose to challenged AE ..they
challenged it with ..’big’ irony

Alden Mason’s funk never ..went ‘big’
a sociability imbedded in his paintwork that ..bordered on ‘intimacy’
a ..quality to his paintwork that Mason ..never lost when he
did go ..abstract and big in the early-mid-70s ..big
though ..never sublime ..never “larger than life”

this 70s period produced Mason’s ..least typical but ..best work
rich with natural processes ..these funked-up abstract oils ..gush like an
evolving ecosystem ..a cell dividing ..a river jumping its main channel for a new one
a marriage ..a conservative social institution finally taking the leap and reforming itself
paintwork liquid and chaotic but ..with direction and force
addressing the onlooker ..volubly but ..neither threatening nor indifferent
an ..excited kid inside a grown man ..private moment slipping out ..an intimacy
and ..it’s the abstraction that sells it ..that lends these paintings their
‘power’

Mason later ..quit oil paint for health reasons ..to
never quite find ..that ‘power’ again ..in
his return (in acrylic) to ..figurative funk

two ‘qualities’ ..tie Mason to Graves and Tobey
‘intimacy’
‘power’
a ..different kind of ‘intimacy’ ..a
different kind of ‘power’
but these are ..precisely the ‘qualities’ ..when combined
which ..define every NW artist who pushed an edge ..who
will be remembered ..not
“lovingly” (like Ries does) because they are ..interesting characters ..but
for their art
and ..their art alone

the intimacy it projects
the power it uncovers

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Robbins eventually ..left his critic job in Seattle for NYC ..left
NYC to ..settle in a Skagit Valley artist enclave ..and
write his first and ..funk-inspired novel ..Another Roadside Attraction

as a visual-art style
West Coast Funk is a juicy ..fun ..shamelessly shallow style
child’s scribbles trying to make a map while telling a story while screaming at little sister
shallow ..like all styles once they’ve ..been around too long
useful like any style ..once an artist
transcends its limits ..makes it functional
to the artist’s own ends

Robbins did that ..transposing the style
to literature

but with its Bay Area origins ..you can’t help wondering ..if
the ..true origins of West Coast Funk aren’t actually ..literary

back a ..full century before Funk ..to the
bohemian halcyon days of early San Francisco
the rambling ..bouncy prose styles of
Ambrose Bierce
Mark Twain
Bret Harte
rosy cheeks and ..full of boomtown optimism

a ..new world out here on the west coast ..full of
new possibilities
like to Robbins the ..decade of the 60s must have felt
seen thru the ..bumbling bouncy optimism of Robbins’ travelers

(footnote
you yourself ..have written in this bouncy style ..this vein of comic travelogue
but style itself is ..valueless ..except as a
ruse
sincerity is as ..deadly to the soul of a fiction writer as is ..irony
to say anything ‘powerful’
you must ..maneuver your reader ..into
places they otherwise might ..resist going
pull a fast-one on them
an amusing ..intimate ..entertaining ruse
to ..snare your reader inside of some
thought ..some feeling ..of
a ..new
unfamiliar kind)

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but Ries is right about ..Bill Ritchie
his ‘influence’ ..has spread far and wide
like ..perhaps no other NW artist

but ..not
for his ..mirrored half-circles in ..skew perspective that become ..hearts
Bill Ritchie’s signature icon
Ritchie being influential ..not primarily
for his ..print-multiples

but for his ..ideas

Bill Ritchie’s ‘aura’

“there would be a sneaky elfin glint in his eyes and an ..idea would percolate
out” ..so one of the many
stories about Bill Ritchie might begin

not just any old household ideas springing from a ..fertile mind
Ritchie often threaded the most ..incongruous things ..together with
unapologetic and seamless ..facility

most famous and influential of these
in the ..1970s
Ritchie ..equated the seemingly inequateable
‘formalism’ and ‘personality’

high Modernist formalism treated art in the most ..impersonal of ways ..and
personality in art expresses itself thru a thoroughly ..informal spontaneity
nothing seemed more ..incongruous

but for his ..1970s MFA students
struggling between these alternatives ..this
proved a ..miracle cure

strong formal design ..(almost heroic in scope)
framing and ..focusing
obsessive private narratives (a playpen inside of adults)
producing

vulnerability with ..formal bracing

Jeffrey Bishop ..Mary Ann Peters ..Sherry Markowitz ..Dennis Evans ..Nancy Mee
alongside Ritchie’s fellow printmaker ..Norie Sato
right out of school were each showing large pieces at ..Linda Farris Gallery in the late 1970s ..making
Farris the leading gallery in town ..and making the crew’s buddy
the writer Matthew Kangas their most ..vociferous supporter and
critical voice

Sato quickly ..eclipsed her mentor as a printmaker ..doing
large-scale prints (and sculptures) that were ..mini-essays in cosmology and Information theory ..bordering on the
profound ..that Ritchie (with his ..fertile mind) should have ..himself
been exploring
Ritchie being too modest a man to ..write his ‘personal’ obsessions ..’formal’ and large

but ..ideas
have a life-cycle like all ..vital things

‘formalism’ dies out with ..Modernism’s demise come the 1980s
(forms are now seen as ‘systems’) ..while
‘personal’ narratives become a ..central concern of ..Postmodernism
(but the Farris crew had nothing now with which to ..brace-up the ‘personal’)
Ritchie’s adept ideational linkage ..had seen its day

Sato ..survived the fall of formalism best
Peters much later ..came back ..tailoring her
person obsessions ..to a
more intimate scale ..temporally organized

times change ..other people’s ideas stop working
this is the problem with ..’influence’
you surrender to it ..someday it will
bite you in the ass

Ries may enjoy ..like an archeologist ..tracing
‘influence’ from artist to artist ..generation to generation ..but this
is valueless in itself (except ..to those armchair archeologists)

‘influence’ is a phony virtue ..influence
away from what? ..toward what?

the telltale markings of ‘influence’ ..often signal
lack of originality
a mishmash of ..other people’s styles
like ..m. said about early Lead Zeppelin ..the band
hadn’t found itself yet ..hadn’t yet
located its own ..unique style

Ritchie’s ..smartest and most enduring idea ..is
perhaps his least influential ..your source dating it
circa 1980

‘aura’

visual experience at core begins with ..line and color
auditory experience with
pitch (..wavelength) …and
volume (..amplitude)

but ..what if
(note this half-twist subtlety to ..Ritchie’s mind) ..you
apply
auditory criteria to ..visual experience?

what you get ..is
spectral ..ghostly effects in visual experience
phantom perceptions

is the color loud or ..soft?
is its chroma high-pitched or ..deep-pitched?

gaze upon the color in ..non-chromatic terms
not ..hue and value and saturation
but ..more like
‘tone color’ in music ..thus talk about
paintworks’ ..timbre
or flecks of color upon a lithograph ..as
a ..field of ..overtones

to Ritchie ..deep within
visual experience ..there is an
unseen ..hidden but ..felt
presence ..an

‘aura’

like a ..field of energy ..radiating
around ..living tissue

it is something you ..’see’
with your ‘ears’

a chamber ..resonating

and when art is that chamber ..it
resonates
with the ..aura
of an entity ..genuinely alive

Ritchie called this ineffable ..this
magnetizing quality ..the
‘aural’
aspect of art

how useful or ..practical
such an idea ..might be to a
working artist ..you
can’t say

but many a time ..standing before what
at first ..appears to be
a ..bad painting ..a lousy print ..a boneheaded ceramic
you ..stop the decline of your thoughts ..and
think ..to yourself
“how would Ritchie look at this”

upon your ..mind’s eye ..now
suddenly
the unperceived life ..buzzing inside the work

its vibrancy ..its
’aura’

blossoms

--------------------

He is Alden, and his paintings are great, and, like Miles Davis, he was never afraid to totally reinvent himself again and again- as Miles said, when listeners complained they couldnt get into his new stuff- what, do you want me to slow down and wait for you?

But funk?
I dont think so.

Funk was always based on taking pop art, that is, recognizable every day imagery, and making it, well, funky. By melding its sensibilities with the entire acid rock poster Mr. Natural Zap Comics loose as a night full of Panama Red style drawing.
Funk was Wiley, it was Gilhooly and his manic frogs, it was
Fred Bauer and his leering, sexual giant cameras, it was Viola Frey and her giant figures, Volkos and his messy piles, it was Arneson and his portrait busts disintegrating into ephemera, It was Ken Price and his pioneering day of the dead installations, it was Carl Kishida and his knotted rope and junk animals, it was Joyce Moty casting a mold of Clair Colquitts penis and using it for coffee mug handles she sold under the table at the bellevue arts and craft fair, it was Cory and Tompkins and Worden mixing up junk and precious into narrative jewelry, it was magical realist paintings by Aurora Jellybean, and it was hundreds of rock posters and underground comics-it was even Kienholz and his installations to some degree.

Alden Mason's work is much more in the tradition of european abstract work. He is a painters painter, in love with letting his unconcious create gesture, which is usually quite the opposite of funk.

And these european abstract paintings, I also have to quibble, were certainly not ALL big.
Yep, a couple three new york artists who went on to fame insisted on painting quite big canvases.

But the work that actually relates most to Graves and Tobey, was exactly as intimate, and small scale as theirs.

Especially the work of the same era- 1940s.
The Giocametti's, the Dubuffets, the beginnings of Pollock, the Ossarios, the other european painters who, like Tobey and Graves, began to break down the walls between moody realism and abstraction- they are mostly quite small scale works.

As for Bill Ritchie- well, Reiko hits the nail on the head.

--------------------

Back in the day when I closed my law books and wandered down to Seattle's Pioneer Square, Alden Mason's name frequently came up. And not 20 words into the discussion, the word "funk" would invariably be tossed into the air. Fact or falsehood, the truism was that "Mason" and "funk" were yoked entities, pulling the same wagon. Sure, often as not it was schmoozy gallery folk giving an easy handle to the uninitiated - to help their customers better "see" the work in question. And while your close analysis of Mason's origins might stand up as more accurate art history...
You are opening the gate to the corral here, Ries.

It would be pretty easy to argue other big names out of your theoretical construct. Kottler, for one. And I'm sure, if I tried, I could fashion a credible argument that Warashina was actually arriving at her imagery by drinking from an entirely different well-spring.
Soon someone will be saying of William Wiley himself, "Maybe we have all been looking at him from the wrong hilltop all these years…"
And suddenly nobody is left in the corral.
And your theory is in the wind.

Think broad, not narrow, Ries.
Let other people argue against your theory. And bite your lip while they do so.
For chri'sake, don't argue against it yourself!

I want a reason to keep mulling over what you've proposed. To stay daring, Ries, the ideas've gotta feel a little unsteady under the feet.
Don't go fussy on us. Don't make it so easy for us all to...plain dismiss it, right out of the gate!...Okay?

--------------------

quote:

---

aside from ..“inventing the collagraph”
Glen Alps has influenced ..not a soul locally
no one you’re aware of

---

The claim about the collagraph may not be attributable to Alps. He did not invent it. [Try China last millenium] He was influential, I first saw a piece in Chicago in 1988, Minneapolis 1990, NYC 1992, and elsewhere.

I saw my first Tobey in 1972 in Paris, my first Graves in Munich in 1975, Callahan and Anderson in Iowa City in 1987.

Artists should worry less about other artists and more about living.

--------------------

But it does put a big bull’s-eye on you. Like Matthew Kangas has had on him for years. (And recently Reiko Sundahl and myself.)

In practical terms (as Sharpshooter suggests) if other people want to tag along and suggest a broader range of artists than you are willing to... Well, let them. I wouldn’t get all huffy and discourage it. You’ve opened the door. See what happens. Stay silent yourself, if you’re dubious. You can always distance yourself from these individuals later. Narrowing the field of vision looks pretty ideological in this day and age. Remember that canons of stylistic correctness are what brought down Modernism, made it look marginal - Eurocentric and phallocentric. Not multicultural.

It would be all too easy for your enemies to see the playfulness of funk scribble and Ritchiesque conceptualism as ‘bohemianism for white kids.’ Two safe “suburban” styles which do sophisticated collegiate riffs off of more gut-check, hard-earned urban styles. Like a white horn-player, who -- by turning his back on his audience -- thinks he might sound like Miles Davis.

Where, by comparison, the NW School looks like an equal-opportunity bohemianism. Not just gay-friendly as Matt Kangas’s famous essay suggests. But friendly to Asian-American artists, specifically. (Particularly if, alongside Horiuchi and Tsutakawa, you were to include Seattle’s 1920s/30s Japanese-American artists -- the moody-pictorialist photographers of Seattle Camera Club and the downtown “Ashcan-Ukiyo-e” painters, as someone recently tagged them.) But the NW School also appears on first glance to be more friendly to Asian philosophical ideas and aesthetic modalities, generally.

Something you mostly dismiss with a wave of your hand, Ries. A thing your direst enemies could interpret as racism (and perhaps homophobia) -- since you never seriously discuss Asian-based issues.

Like me, you probably don’t know enough about Asian aesthetics to, intelligently, talk up how sumi brushwork and ink-on-silk -- that browns over time -- has influenced an entirely distinct world-view as regards the creation of a painting and how its contents are received by its viewer. Nor regarding the ‘garden’-based ethic as regards the aesthetic reception of sculpture. This knowledge deficit -- noisy as you have been on the “NW Mystics” subject -- leaves you vulnerable, and gives your enemies deadly ammunition.

Ries, I think you are correct to place Tobey and Graves alongside the more introverted, modest and problematical European “abstract” artists of the 40s and 50s, who never came up with a very good answer to New York’s emotionally expansive (big, broad, breath-taking) canvases. But Tobey’s and Graves' own influences, you have to remember trace back to earlier modernism -- German rather than French. And while it would have been nice for us in the NW if Tobey and Graves had learned more about color from Kirchner and Nolde, what they took most from German Expressionism was its shaky, neurasthenic sense of line and its dark, subjective subject-matter.

But that, of course is only half the picture -- the only half (the European half) you ever seriously talk about, Ries, regarding the pair. Tobey and Graves, in their different ways, learned a bunch from sumi-style ink-painting -- and how it reads on a brown (’nature-like’) background. And how they learned to treat the ‘studio,’ the painterly moment, as a kind of concept-carrying ‘writing’ (a calligraphy). A poet writing haiku. More book-art than wall-art. And the things Tobey and Graves did not learn from sumi, other NW artists did.

Where I come from, if you ask people in-the-know who our city's best artist is, any number of candidates would receive votes. (Lanny DeVuono -- a politically-based conceptual literalist-painter, the farthest thing from Funk & Ritchie imaginable -- would probably garner a plurality.) But if you time-travel back to the 1980s (or 70s or 60s or 50s) and take the same poll, most everyone hereabouts would answer (grudgingly, even her detractors), ‘Kathleen Gemberling (Adkison).’

Gemberling is the quintessential second-generation NW School artist. She had studied with Mark Tobey, and focused her work almost exclusively upon ‘natural processes.’ The details of nature were abstracted. So you didn’t see, merely felt, them -- encountered them in the process of evolving or transforming. Nature as inherently a metamorphosis. This was more in the vein of Portland’s Carl Morris than any of Seattle’s NW “Mystics,” but with a better, deeper, more reticulated sense of color than the whole bunch. Greens and blues and luminous-browns hummed on the surface of her canvases, both liquid and concrete at the same time. She actually knew how to paint! And she continued to evolve over the decades.

Sure, Gemberling is perhaps a regional oddity, perhaps a museum dinosaur (like Tobey and Graves) -- her works an interesting eccentricity to gaze upon, but influential upon almost no one today. So... While stylistically, Gemberling and all the “NW Mystics” seem mere emblems of a bygone era -- each had conscientiously addressed in their art ‘natural processes’ with (an often deep) serious-mindedness (from European and Asian and American perspectives). And in this age of “global warming” and other eco-sensitive concerns, their heart frankly appears to have been in the right place.

Is the “heart” of Funk artists and the Ritchieites “in the right place”? Or is all that sophisticatedly playful stuff just faddish suburban (white rich-kid) art -- on the verge of extinction itself, but with even less fanfare than our NW museum “dinosaurs”? That’s the real argument your enemies are going to have on you, Ries.

And I hope you are ready with an answer.

--------------------

Are you satisfied to become a footnote in some remote corner of somebody else's idea?
Art is not just the private studio -- where you are free to explore what you wish.
Art is also the public stage (even if that stage is just spare space high up on the walls of Virginia Inn) -- where you encounter the fickleness of public culture. Your artwork, directly or indirectly, is taking a stand in these public debates.
(The very kinds of debates going on now on Artdish's pages.)
Art -- that is remembered -- actively engages in these debates.

Like it or not, your artwork is taking a stand.
Boldly or blandly.
Too boldly and you might be scorned or laughed at. It's a risk.
But too blandly, and nobody is going to remember.
Nobody is going to have any reason to remember!

--------------------

If I were going to curate a show or write a long overview of interesting artworks I've seen recently...
I might be inclined to include Woman With Cityscape in that survey.
Why?
Because it is typical of your best work?
No.
Because it was the best of your pieces at the Virginia Inn?
Probably not.

The reason...?
It best fits my Digital Theory idea about 'eye-contact' (or 'non-disjunction'). Not just the subject's eyes looking out at the onlooker. But how you arranged light-and-dark and color -- how the paint seemed to lurch out from the frame toward me. (Well, sort of. You got halfway there. Not as good as I would have liked.) But it seemed to dialog directly with me. It trespassed into (transgressed) my world -- so I felt like I must respond. It 'grabbed me,' to put it colloquially.

The rest of your Virginia Inn work seemed -- to my Theory-conscious eye -- to retreat more deeply into studio-consciousness, art who's issues were too personal for me to see, to recognize, to engage with. Not just content, but in the handling of the paintwork. Not as well organized toward some specific end. Not as striking, not as grabbing -- did not cause me to reflexively 'lean in' toward it.

If people were to rely strictly upon my Theory, they would probably have to come to the same conclusion. Marginalizing the majority of your paintings, in their minds too.
Unless...
They had reason to do otherwise.

That is,
An alternative Theory that works better.
Maybe you'll get lucky, and someone else will supply it.
Barring luck, or having a good friend who's a published critic
(or having a long persuasive chat with me, encouraging me to amend my theory)...
You...

You, Ancher,
Will have to be the one to supply that Theory.
That entrance into your art.
Publicize -- compellingly -- your private world...

Either 'in words,' here on chat pages like these.
Or with single canvases and full shows that so completely knock us over -- so completely challenge our assumptions about art -- that we cannot help but 'get it.'

Right now, Ancher, I am entirly correct about your work...
Only because I am more articulate about it.
Those paintings are in the public sphere and they are fair game.

It's up to you to change that game, change that equation (which is inherently balanced against you).
Doing so will not hurt me (I live to see art that challenges me).

But not doing so...
Will only hurt yourself!

--------------------

You know I don't begrudge people trying to come up with a theory and I find it interesting, I just think that kind of thinking is for critics and historians and not artists. I didn't see Picasso or De Kooning or Warhol or Cobain write down many theories about what they were doing.

But I've tried to understand your theory Jim, I've read it a few times, and maybe I have an inkling of what you're trying to say, but that's about it. I'm sure that other people totally understand it, however, other people seem to anyway. It's something that I don't rule out that other people are smarter than me when it comes to your theory.

And probably you shouldn't rule out that somebody else who looks at my paintings understands them better than you do. Maybe not from an intellectual theory standpoint, but from some other standpoint equally valid.

I think intelligence and writing glibly and talking fabulously and thinking intellectually are wonderful qualities. But they aren't the be-all and end-all of human existence. There's much more to life than being smart.

I think my painting and art in general addresses areas that aren't always explainable verbally. If I had to make a theory, it wouldn't be one that you could talk about or write about, it would be one that would have to be understood using other means. It would have to be felt. It would not involve intellectualism, it would involve compassion, invite complexity, it would be right brained and as such would not speak.

Many of these attempts on artdish to come up with theories seem to be an attempt to nail some art to wall, stop it from moving so fast so that it can be understood intellectually. To simplify things into recognizable objects that can be understood by your left brain.

Many of the theories I've read have two choices, they are either/or. Either it's this or it's that. Digital theory. Binary theory. It's either on or it's off.

My Feeling Theory deals with a world that can't be pinned down easily and it deals with a world that can't be explained with weak (or strong) left brain theories and it deals with a world that has many many choices and nuances. Maybe the left brain dominance of the last few hundred centuries is over and we've evolved past left braininess and evolved past simplifying and classifying in order to understand.

You did give me two choices though you said I could publicize compellingly my private world:

quote:

---

Either 'in words,' here on chat pages like these.
Or with single canvases and full shows that so completely knock us over -- so completely challenge our assumptions about art -- that we cannot help but 'get it.'

---

It's the job of art historians and critics to find patterns and to impose order just to make it possible to talk about art (not that there's a universal imperative to talk about art, but that's what we like to do). Thinking, talking, and writing about art are secondary activities, based on the primary activity, artmaking, that we have nothing to do with. Thanks for the reminder, Ancher.

--------------------

Victoria

but plato was a long time ago, and though i don't think great critics should stand taller than great artists, neither do i think art criticism and theory should be sold short as parasitic activities. they're not my favorite past-time as many of you already know, but one can't do everything ::wink::

i personally prefer to think of all human activity, including art criticism, as primary and capable of the type of achievement we call "artistic," or "creative," or "innovative," or "inventive," or "genius." and what is an art theory but a philosophy or a manifesto or, well, the word theory works well in the first place, i suppose.

perhaps plenty of great artists did not write or subscribe to manifestos or theories. plenty also did. neo-plasticism, surrealism, and dada come immediately to mind.

plenty of artists who subscribed at one point in time to a certain way of life and/or thinking also changed their mind. updated their theory. wrote something else entirely. or, like the poet rimbaud, disappeared to live the life of experience.

when i am personally in doubt and adrift in a sea of conflicting theories and advice i think of two of the most famous quotes i know of (some wheels, after all, don't need re-inventing):

to thine own self be true –ws

follow your bliss –jc

and though you have no doubt heard them over and over again, have you really imagined what it would be like to take every step of your life with them in mind and heart?

in my experience they can be excruciating words to live by at times, so don't think i am selling you some haggard new-agey feel-good magic wands here. this is real life. if you want to do what you feel you are meant to do and do it with integrity, i think these are pretty good touchstones to have in your pocket...

even if...maybe especially if...you are in the business of churning out theories and philosophies and manifestos...and most definitely if you are involved in a studio practice. how else to survive the onslaught but to have a strong inner core and compass upon which to rely...?

as reiko pointed out more or less up there somewhere, an outer influence or, for our purposes here, compass, is bound to eventually lead you astray. stranded. dead-ended.

the inner resonance with your work or your school of thought or your manifesto or your lack of a manifesto or your theory or even the outside world--if that's what you seek--will never lead you astray. there are no mistakes on the path you make for yourself, only learning.

and just because i am trying to wean myself off of my ridiculous addiction to off-topic blogging (and maybe blogging in general), i would like to state the following for the record:

on my path there is no dmn war with the mystics. in fact, it is downright sacrilegious to be at war with the mystics on my path, and i don't mean that at all, in any way, from any point of view, from an art history standpoint. i am saying that from the here and now.

ries, it's up to you to hold up that fort.

I am not denigrating another group of artists

Whereas he also said:

quote:

---

...the work wasnt that great to begin with-
…oriental bird scratching from 1948.
Arent they mostly already dead?
....Outside of Seattle, they are not that revered, certainly not household names or considered to be of great historical value.
And if you look at the Washington and Northwest artists who are the most well known elsewhere, it aint Tobey and Graves.
The personal style of the lead mystics, Tobey, and Graves, Callahan and Anderson- was hermetic, isolated, and introspective.
In my mind, our little backwater just hung onto the middle ground, afraid to take the leap, for longer than most.
And I remember the mystics at that time as mostly gone, and the drab openings at Foster White of their second and third generation spin offs as being dull, alcohol fueled affairs, mostly brown and gray landscape paintings. Bad white wine and grouchy old drunks, mostly.

---

Ries, it looks clear from your own words- and especially the title of the post- that for you, resentment developed around the attention focused on a group of artists whose ways and works were very differently grounded than your own. Why deny it?

You make a good case for the positive alternative-does the negative strengthen your position?

quote:

---

I can only assume that the bit about me not replying is sarcasm, of course.

---

The Oxford definition for sarcasm notes there being three associated adjectives: bitter, wounded, cutting.

My opening statement predicting you would refrain from directly addressing my comments was none of these; rather, it was observational pattern recognition.

quote:

---

And the art I like the best is the result of quirky, individual minds.

---

Although I cannot wholey subscribe to probability theory, because according to the theory, there would only be a high probability that the theory itself existed and held true... I do think it has a generally tendancy for accurately describing systems. Accordingly, nothing is absolute. even that statement.

but for all practical purposes, we can describe everything in varying degrees of almost certainty that will appear to always hold true.

But combining the fact that probability is the only thing "likley" to be absolutely "almost" certain, with the fact that I'm about as bright as a single celled organism in the vaster span of time and space.. why on earth would or how could I have any manifesto that was not in a state of constant flux, unless I had ceased to grow or learn anything. at best, I can speculate that since I'm a realatively smart guy, a manifesto I may have today or tomorrow might have a fairly high probability of being realatively more accurate than the average randomly selected manifesto.

well it's either that or trying to find a way to isolate and express that space where everything and everyone and every second in the universe is all existing at one single instant and nothing and everything unify into 1 giant cluster f... of perfection.

me? i grew up covered in mud and talking to trees and birds and deer and coyote. being at war with the mystics...? definitely not on my agenda.

namaste anyway,

quote:

---

if it's your path to be at war with the mystics, may you walk it well!!
me? I grew up covered in mud and talking to trees and birds and deer and coyote. being at war with the mystics...? definitely not on my agenda.

---

so I glide past the centerline to avoid it
the critter goes airborne and
heads straight for my windshield

black-winged close-up
right in my face
wings splayed

body akimbo
a chaos and raw fear image
like out of Hitchcock flick The Birds

it clears the windshield
how?
is god's mystery

love roadtrips so
invested in a Prius
which'd be parked in the ocean

now if I'd panicked
but the picture sticks with
rest of distance to work

everyone at work
hears about it
everyone I meet

need to rid the shakes from my body
then during midshift doldrums
it hits me

Tippi Hedren
a sophisticated young heiress
remember?

Rod Taylor
the target of her head-games
pretty little love-birds in a cage

they are the signature the punchline
of Hedren's practical joke
yeah that's Ries!

precisely when she should be
laughing her head off
Hedren is attacked by a seagull

get it?
soon birds of all stripes
are flocking together

attacking the gas station attacking
the retouched picture-postcard marina
anything manmade anything

iconic of civilization
the natural ecosystem's revenge
on human industry

upon Funked-up commercial renderings and
upon Ritchiesque conceptual bridgings
vengeance on any brainy human-crafted objects

that's Jeffree Stewart and the Ecotopians!
becoming clearer?
all the irky-quirky NW neo-Mystics

finding redemption
for civilization's ills in
the cult of nature

isn't The Birds exactly
the battle on Artdish's pages now?
Ries's sophisticated objects versus Graves' crows?...

the witty the playful versus
the powerful the deep...?
have I not got it right here?

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