Category Archives: Art

“If You Are Going To Try, Go All The Way” – Charles Bukowski

Bukowski’s autobiographical anti-hero, Henry Chinaski: ‘The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.”  – Ham On Rye 1982

Bukowski’s Los Angeles Tour:

5124 De Longpre, Hollywood – residence 1964-1973. Post Office, Notes from a Dirty Old Man, South of No North, Mockingbird Wish Me Luck, The Days Run Away like Horses, and Factotum written there.

Frolic Room (6245 Hollywood Blvd) – Alcohol.

Musso & Frank Grill (6667 Hollywood Blvd) – Alcohol. Ruben no longer.

Pink Elephant Liquor Store (1836 N Western Ave, Los Feliz) – Alcohol.

Richard J. Riordan Central Library (630 W 5th St., Los Angeles) – Books.

USPS Terminal Annex (900 N Alameda St., Los Angeles) – Work 1952-1955 and 1958-1969.

Cole’s French Dip (118 East 6th St., Los Angeles) – Alcohol.

Smog Cutter (864 N. Vrigil Ave., Los Angeles) – Alcohol

Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center  (681 Venice Blvd, Venice) – Shrine.

Barkowski (2819 Pico Blvd, Santa Monica) – Shrine.

Santa Anita Racetrack – Horses.

Huntington Library (1151 Oxford Rd, San Marino) – Papers.

San PedroResidence. 1978-1994. Ham on Rye. Near Bandini Street and Elementary school (Fante).

Downtown Books (414 W 6th St, San Pedro) – Books.

Green Hills Memorial Park Cemetery (27501 S Western Ave, Rancho Palos Verdes, Plot: Ocean View #875) – Grave. “Henry Charles Bukowski, Jr. — Hank — “Don’t try” — 1920-1994.”

While you’re at it… more infamous drinking establishments in Los Angeles

Robert Motherwell: Elegies to the Spanish Republic

 

 

Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110 by Robert Motherwell, 1971, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Robert Motherwell’s Elegies to the Spanish Republic has been interpreted as the artist’s on-going personal expression of his belief “that a terrible death happened that should not be forgotten.” Motherwell was referring to the events of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The savage nature of that war—more than 700,000 killed, including the mass-executions of thousands of civilians—roused a legion of artists to action. Pablo Picasso’s famous painting Guernica (1937) expresses his outrage over the unfair nature of the conflict, specifically the bombing of defenseless civilians from the sky by the Generalissimo’s Nazi allies. That painting has become the enduring symbol of the war.

For Robert Motherwell, the war became a metaphor for all injustice. Elegies to the Spanish Republic (over 100 paintings completed between 1948 and 1967) is a commemoration of human courage in the face of terror and suffering. He saw the heroism of the defenders of the elected government in stark contrast to the duplicitous dealings of the fascist alliance that ultimately prevailed. To portray this visually Motherwell’s recurring theme is a sublime contemplation of life and death, equating to light and dark. The abstract concept common to the Elegies—an alternating pattern of oval shapes slotted between columnar forms—has been said to represent the dialectical nature of life itself, expressed through the juxtaposition of black against white—the colors of death and life. The Republic is evoked as a bull (the symbol of Spain), once strong and radiant, heartbreakingly butchered by Franco, now only a dark memory.

 

 

 

La Marseillaise Casablanca

Released in January 1943, when the most important battle of the war, the battle of Stalingrad, was still raging, with Normandy still a year and a half in the future, and the tide not yet turned against Hitler’s war machine. Most of Europe and North Africa was under the jackboot of Nazi tyranny. Many of the actors in the scene were actual refugees who had fled from the Nazis, so the emotions were real. This celluloid moment may capture the spirit of hope and resistance better than any other. It is a true testament to the power of movies.

In real life Jean Moulin, murdered by the Gestapo in 1943, became the symbol of the French Resistance.

 

Phil Ochs – A Buckeye Remembered

Here’s to the great Phil Ochs on what would have been his 76th birthday (December 19). During the Civil Rights and Free Speech Movements and the Vietnam War, Ochs was one of the most influential singers of his time. He was also an Ohio State journalism student and worked for the school newspaper, the Lantern. At OSU he met his political mentor, Jim Glover, who introduced him to the music of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and the Weavers. Odd (sad) that the university remains ambivalent/silent about his legacy…

“A good song with a message can a bring a point more deeply than a thousand rallies” – Phil Ochs