On July 4th, 2006, I embarked on a quest to become the pre-eminent American portrait painter of the 21st century. This blog chronicles that journey. With apologies to Joan Didion, I call it THE YEAR OF MAGICAL PAINTING.
Friday, June 01, 2012
A Well Respected Man, by The Kinks
I couldn't help myself:
Best lyric, of course, is "... and he's dying to get at her." Several things going through my mind right now: Christian Bale in American Psycho. And the father in Mary Poppins standing at the end of the conference table as they fire him (Remind me to tell you about the time I had tea with Julie Andrews). And, of course, some smug asshole of a banker walking by me in a suit that's not as good as he thinks it is, cranking me a look.
Hey, asshole! When was the last time YOU had tea with Julie Andrews?
Wow, you're in a lather, aren't you? Not really. Just having fun on the blog. But venting a bit? Yes, I suppose. You should go upstairs and have some chocolate milk.
So, as I typically do, I sent a nice note to JPMorgan corporate communications a couple of days prior to showing up in front of 1300 6th. Or whatever the address is. Just to tell them who I am, what I plan to do, offer to answer any questions, etc. I'm a lover, not a hater.
The silence in return was deafening (although, given the timing, this was not surprising).
Fast forward to last Tuesday when I actually do show up. There, parked in front of the building, is a shiny white NYPD vehicle. It was, perhaps, a Taurus (the sheer insufficiency of which makes me miss Crown Victorias all the more).
I wave at the cop through the window and he rolls it down. I tell him who I am, what I plan to do, offer to answer any questions, etc. I'm a lover, not a hater. And he says, "They told us you'd be coming."
Savor this, my friends.
They told us you'd be coming.
Hah! A wave of warm feelings washed over me. Consider for a moment all the shit that was involved in the simple act of a New York City policeman telling me he knew I was coming. Dog! As he said it I knew, for a moment, how Gandhi must have felt when he brought the British Empire to its knees. That kind of a feeling. Exhilaration tempered by great humility.
Great humility? Really? Sure. Why not? I dunno. You do the math. You're not a very humble person. I'm as humble as the next guy.
Okay, so maybe humility isn't my strongest suit. But I did have an enlightening conversation with a pretty scraggly looking guy who walked by the painting and decided to stay a while. Definitely not homeless, but a man clearly at loose ends. And damned scraggly. A black man about my age. Gray hair in a kind of Don King electric doo. And he and I stood there for a pretty long time, just shooting the breeze, watching perhaps a hundred JPMorgan employees walk by us, a subset of which looked at us with such scorn and disregard as to be palpable. The kind of look that, if you had to withstand it on a daily basis, might change your life for the worse.
Then he turned to me and asked, "Do you want to know something interesting?"
"Sure," I responded.
"All these people walking by us, looking at us like that? They all think they're better than we are."
I nodded.
"And you know what? It isn't necessarily true."
And with that he shook my hand and walked off into the afternoon.
I report this as fact, although perhaps not verbatim. But the thrust of the conversation is accurate. The gist of the thing is fact. If a gist can be a fact.
Me? I've spent most of my life (rightly) thinking I'm the smartest guy in the room. It's a character failing that I still wrestle with. And what he said kind of annoyed me. Who the fuck are these people copping a superior attitude with me? Or my scraggly friend for that matter? What are they doing, really, to move the world forward? To make it a better place? What, of importance, are they really doing?
It's not like they're up on the 43rd floor composing "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." Which I'm listening to right now.
"The creation of wealth," they might answer. Wealth. Wealth, I would suggest, is a good thing. But creating individual wealth at the expense of societal wealth? Not so much. And that, my friends, is the business of JPMorgan Chase.
It would be fun, just once, instead of being extraordinarily polite, if I started to verbally harangue them. To call their bluff, if you will. To challenge their sanctimonious belief that what they are doing is important, quotation marks, with bits of spittle coming out of my mouth as I shout at them. Like a legitimately crazy person. Like the crazy person they take comfort in thinking I am.
Makes me think of that Kinks song about a well-respected man, but instead I'll leave you with this:
... because it's so strong. The song, if you're curious, is called Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlife by A-3. Same group that did The Sopranos theme song. So not chopped liver, even though you've never heard from them since.
Sorry for the dearth of posts. I've been under the weather, as has been my computer. The good news? I'm alive. Not so much my old Mac. Thus this, from the new one. Which is a pretty smooth bit of machinery.
The level of tension in front of JPMorgan was high. I brought some blue markers to designate employee annotations, but the the notion that anybody who works there is gonna grab a blue pen and have at it was, at best, preposterous.
Speaking of cock-ups, Blogger won't accept hitting return twice to create paragraphs while I'm typing on my iPad. So I'm using "/." to indicate paragraph breaks. /. It's stuff like this that makes me want to buy a MacBook air, just for when I'm on the lam. Lamb?
...is completely screwing me up. As somebody said to me regarding the current state of European economics, "a complete cock-up." /.
How is it the the Brits get to use words like cock in polite company? /.
Anyway, I may have to stay through the week, just to get some decent weather.
This is a massively hi-res image of my portrait of Jamie Dimon. You, dear reader, are welcome to use it in any manner you see fit, providing you don't make any money doing it.
Massively hi res? Really? It's like 4K.
Massively hi res for The Year of Magical Painting. Besides, nothing is written on it. What's to see?
Fair enough.
I'll be outside JPMorgan HQ tomorrow for lunch. My heads-up note to a PR guy there met with massive silence, but they've probably got bigger fish to fry than me these days.
95K now; 125K when the annotations are finished. And I reserve the right to mess with the blue eye a bit more. I wonder if it would be better red, like the other one.
Am staring at Blue Dimon, listening to the 12" version of Last Dance by Donna Summer. Trying to decide if I'm finished.
Not really a disco guy, but attention must be paid. So I dialed up a Donna Summer playlist on Spotify and, manoman, I can't stop doing the hustle.
Update: Now they're playing MacArthur Park and I can't stop doing that thing where you slide your hips back and forth and point your finger in the air to the beat.
Nonetheless, part of what makes the Lee painting riveting is how much larger the left eye is than the right. I think the challenge will be to white out Dimon's left eye, move it to the right, and make it larger. And then we shall see about whether the face is too long or not.
You'll remember my theory suggesting that if I can capture the eyes and the hair, the rest of Dimon is immaterial? This apparently is false.
I think his mouth is too low on the face, and when I pull that up I'm gonna have to pull the chin up with it. And his eye was a lot better about three adjustments ago. It appears to have drifted to the left, which narrows the face even further. And the hair isn't right either. So perhaps the theory still holds.
What is interesting is this set of nearly identical goobers ascending the left side of his face:
Hmmmm. Not even sure how that happened. I know I was pouring thinned, black-ish paint from a container, trying to darken the area under his chin, and thought I'd add a bit of texture to the side of his face. Amazing how similar the dot pattern is. If I tried to do that, I'd be waiting a million years to get it right.
One thing I do like is the white of the hair against the white of the canvas. It's more discernible in the flesh, but I can easily imagine legions of people writing stuff in his hair. My solution will likely be to define the top of his head with a long initial annotation. Which is my right as the author of the thing. I'm thinking it will read something along the lines of:
Is this Andy Warhol or Jamie Dimon? Must be Warhol, because it doesn't look like Dimon at all. They never do. So you're saying it's Dimon? Yes.
Something like that.
It's a bit pathetic that you have to bail yourself out by writing stuff like that on the painting.
It's not pathetic at all. It's Duchampian.
Really? We suggest moving the mouth up and then getting back to work on that eye.
You can see why I'm not outside with Sharpies today, even though the weather is perfect.
And yet, all that said, I'll say this: I look at the photograph and it doesn't look like the guy. I get up and walk over to the painting (which is currently facing away from me) and come upon it in the flesh, as if for the first time, and by God it looks great. This is a puzzlement.
I honestly don't know who the person is or what his relationship to me is, but he's standing alongside the grave of my Uncle Nick--my mother's brother who died in the Pacific theater. The cemetery is in Manila, Philippines.
There used to be a pretty nice Barnes & Noble on the northwest corner of 6th Ave and 20th St., close to the heart of Chelsea. Which, as everybody knows, is the epicenter of gay male America. One night, back when I lived in the neighborhood, I was walking by the store. The place was jammed, and a line ran out the front door, north on 6th Ave., then west on 21st St, almost to 7th.
All I've Got is a Red Guitar, Three Chords and the Truth
This line comes, of course, from U2's cover of All Along the Watchtower on their Rattle and Hum album. Which has to be one of the top five live albums ever. I'm listening to it now.
Rewinding a year or two, a guy once wrote, in the comments section of either Dealbreaker or Zerohedge, something like this:
It doesn't look anything like [insert subject name here--I forget who it was].
Then somebody immediately responded:
They never do.
Listen up, Readers: I've got a red guitar, three chords and the truth. Who gives a shit whether the paintings look like the guys or not? I'm like freaking Bono with a can of paint. This is a mission, man. And missionaries rarely have time for anal retentives.
Unless they themselves are one.
Fair enough. Nicely said, because they often are. I'm a looser sort of missionary. But make no mistake--this is a mission, man.
I hear you. Stop shouting.
I'm not shouting.
All of which brings us, inexorably, to this:
I still haven't found what I'm looking for.
Hah!
But I'm getting there. And I can promise you this: Before the cock crows three times, the man's left eye is going to be black, not blue. And it will bore through you.
There is, in fact, some thinking about being in New York with it tomorrow.
Despite my relatively positive sense of me-ness, it's hard to feel good about myself right now. Exhibit A for the prosecution being:
Which, if you were going to engage in every possible pun related to the man's last name, would best be called Dimon in the rough. But let's nip that shit in the bud, because it's gonna get tiresome fast. Let me, instead, call your attention to this bad boy:
The plan, roughly, is to start grabbing paint with my 6" putty knife and having at what is admittedly a lousy sketch. And then we shall see.
Because let's admit it--we've had worse sketches turn into lovely paintings. And, as noted below, I persist with my thinking that if I get the eyes and hair right (neither of which could, at this point, be called "right"), all will be well.
