Saturday, May 01, 2004

I remember the first time I saw a Paul Cadmus painting. Well, the first time I saw a reproduction of one that is. It was in Art in America, and he was in the frontcover for that month. There were several reproductions and one of them was of sailors getting drunk. At the time I did not read the codes of gay culture and politics in his paintings--call me naive, especially because I never read the magazines, but just looked at the pictures. I was mainly concerned with how well the paintings were rendered, and so I would look at paintings like this one, this one, and this one for the attention to detail. Of course I was not able to really see any detail in a magazine reproduction that would do justice to the actual paintings. But at the time, I did not really go to museums either.

Another artist I admired for his renderings was Mark Tansey, and like Paul Cadmus, I also did not understand the actual content of his "historical" paintings that deconstructed the history of western thought in relation to the arts. I often referred to this, this, this and this painting for stylistic references. It was about rendering for me at this period in my life.

So Now we are down to Lou Reed calling a doctor. Not just anyone's doctor but Keith Richards' doctor. Andy's drama of the day around two rock icons: Reed and Richards, initials: R & R, translation: Rock and Roll! Need not say more.