Charlie Don't Surf

  Surfing Hong Kong, 2012
book (offset lithograph)

           40 pages, 37 color photographs

A few more images from the book. 

Anybody recognize the location of those cranes in the bottom picture?

Soul Surfing the Big Lychee!

  Surfing Hong Kong, 2012
book (offset lithograph)

           40 pages, 37 color photographs

37 surf pics ranging from the sublimely beautiful to the just plain bitchin'! — the Big Lychee's got soul. At HK$280 there's good value here, not to mention the satisfaction of partaking in unsanctioned mischievousness (there's no explanatory text in the book, so the nature of the photos remains something of an open secret).

What I can tell you is that the pics were shot with a variety of devices including a decent 35mm film SLR camera, an early-generation mobile phone camera, and a couple of abused digital pocket cameras. So yes, the pictures are at times raw and gritty, and that's part of the charm of it (I don't need no stinkin' Holga).

Designer Elise Inthavixay crafted an understated, timeless look for the book. Check out that shimmering, Helvetica Bold, foil-stamped cover — totally tubular! Printed in an edition of 500. Full specs and purchase info here.

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Season's Greetings from HK

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Shuffled through my flat file looking for something Christmassy, and I found this study made with a two color palette of thalo red rose and permanent green.

iPad Finger Painting, Stroke by Stroke

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Painting on an iPad

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There's a sort of primal appeal in making marks directly with a finger.  Been doing loads of iPad paintings over the past couple of months.

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Po Toi

Dragon Boat

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Kwai Chung

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Just discovered that I received a nice write-up in The Standard —15 months ago! I'm feeling inspired to post more frequently, and Google myself more often.

Gloomy Weather

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The top sketch shows Kowloon Bay and the old Kai Tak Airport runway.

Crepuscule

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Study of Tsing Yi from 2008.

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"Everything about Chinese opera is great except for the music."

................................................................--Dave Hickey
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Sketches of a Chinese opera in Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park back in September.

Madam Cheng

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Macau sketches

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Studies of boats and a trivia question

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Which one of these artists changed his given name from 'Milton' ?

a) Jasper Johns
b) Jackson Pollock
c) Robert Rauschenberg
d) Richard Serra
e) Frank Stella

Studies of bathers and a trivia question

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Which one of these artists changed his or her surname from Goldstein:

a) Elaine de Kooning
b) Max Ernst
c) Philip Guston
d) Blinky Palermo
e) Man Ray

Today's painting trivia question

Which pigment common to the painter's palette is taken orally as a treatment for radiation poisoning?

a) cadmium red
b) prussian blue
c) raw umber
d) pthalo green
e) zinc white


This one's Googleable, so I'll spare you the trouble and put the answer in the comments section.

Matisse and Hokusai on Reach Exceeding Grasp

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The American actor Edward G. Robinson, who was an avid art collector, tells a story about visiting Matisse. Matisse, age 85, was living in an expensive old hotel in the South of France. He was dying of stomach cancer and confined to a wheelchair but still working, making his paper cutouts and small drawings. The hotel had carved wooden doors from the 17th or 18th century, and thumb-tacked to the doors were little drawings of hands. Robinson says to Matisse, "Are these early drawings?" Matisse replies, "No, no, I'm doing them now. I'll do a good one yet. Those damn things give me a lot of trouble, you know. I'll do it, I'll get it."

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Hokusai on his deathbed, age 89, is reported to have said, "If only Heaven will give me just another ten years...Just another five more years, then I could become a real painter."

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Terry Farrell and the Ching Ming Festival

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Back in April, I took advantage of the Ching Ming holiday and went to Shaoguan for a three-day weekend. Madam Cheng and I took the ferry to Pan Yu, then hailed a cab for the 20-minute ride to the train station in Guangzhou.

Turns out the Guangzhou South Station had just opened a few weeks earlier, and the architect was Terry Farrell (who did the airport in Seoul that everyone's raving about). It was striking partly because I came across it unexpectedly, but there's no doubt it's a beautiful building. Check out those colossal Y-shaped columns—notice how elegantly they articulate the light, leaving a gap above to illuminate themselves.

Our first full day in Shauguan we hit the big regional attractions with a miserable, fly-by-night local tour company. The second day we sprung for a cab to take us to some of the more obscure places, the prime destination being fields of yellow flowers that had made a big impression on Madam Cheng in the tourist brochure.

We left the city behind, bouncing along pot-holed roads through a series of dreary villages. Our driver was a capable fellow with a seen-it-all-before mien, who used the courtesy-honk judiciously while driving for long stretches on the wrong side of the road. I marveled at his ability to resist reflexive swerving or breaking as a steady stream of "free range" dogs darted in front of the cab. Those strings of Ching Ming Festival firecrackers can make a small dog accelerate and corner like you wouldn't believe.

An hour and a half later he hydroplaned us to a stop in the center of a deserted one-lane road. We rolled down the windows and light rain blew in. Furrowed mud extended in all directions. The driver made a call on his cellphone as I gazed out at a shallow drainage ditch just large enough to dispose of the bodies of two gullible tourists. A man draped in a transparent plastic drop cloth appeared riding an undersized motorbike and conferred with the driver and Madam Cheng. Laughter all around; just missed it, the flowers have been returned to the oil (canola). Still time to hit the Ma Ba Man archeological site!

Later I'll post more pics of Terry Farrell's Guangzhou South Railway Station.

The Tai Po Lookout Tower

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The Tai Po Lookout Tower was built in 1997 as part of a large park commemorating the hand-over of Hong Hong to The People's Republic of China. Signage tells us that the tower is built on the location where the British came ashore in 1898, and that the inhabitants of the New Territories put up a good fight. With its conical spiral climbing a tilted central spine, the Tai Po Lookout Tower bears more than passing resemblance to Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the Third International (1919).

The Third International, also known as the Comintern, was the international wing of the Communist Party, and Tatlin's building was to be its headquarters. The 34-year-old revolutionary's fanciful proposal included sections that rotated at various speeds, radio broadcasting towers, giant projectors for beaming images onto the clouds, an auditorium for the masses, and so on. Alas, the salad days of the Russian avant-garde would soon be turning to gruel; within a decade the radical aesthetic of the Constructivists would be considered by Stalin to be elitist, and be replaced (by decree) with Soviet Social Realism.

All of which is to say that while the form of Tatlin's Tower was once the embodiment of revolutionary zeal, it's also now a form that reminds us of a more ominous episode. In any case, Tatlin's ghost roams the vicinity of the Tai Po Lookout Tower, whispering in visitors' ears, "It's so bourgeois to claim ownership of an idea—but this looks a lot like my idea."


 
Tai Po Lookout Tower, 1997


Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the Third International, 1919

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The Hot Name in Asian Art

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It's not the grinning-head guy—read on.

Ed Ruscha's book Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), is a classic in the field of post-war art. In his trademark deadpan style, the buildings fronting Sunset Boulevard (from Laurel Canyon Boulevard to Carol Drive) are shown in a continuous panorama of collaged photos, the south side of the street running along the top of the page, the north side of the street upside down along the bottom. Roughly the size of a small paperback, Every Building on the Sunset Strip is in leporello format (i.e., accordion fold) and unfolds to around 27 feet long.

Ruscha's books from this period redefined the genre of the "artist's book" (prior to this it had been something visibly handmade) and mark the beginnings of what would later become known as "conceptual art." His matter-of-fact photo books of gas stations and parking lots suggested an attitude later common to an entire genre of photography (codified in the 1975 William Jenkins-curated show, "New Topographics"). The impact of Ruscha and Every Building on the Sunset Strip was felt even in the realm of architecture: Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown cite his influence on Learning From Las Vegas, their 1972 book examining the vernacular architecture of Vegas, which is itself widely recognized as a watershed in architecture's transition from modernism to postmodernism. So over time, in a variety of ways, Ruscha's books have accumulated a great deal of art historical significance—in addition to being just beautiful, cool objects.

Those familiar with contemporary art are rolling their eyes, saying "Get to the point, Feldman." Well here you go. In 1954, twelve years before Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip, a Japanese named Yoshikazu Suzuki produced a startlingly similar work. Ginza Haccho is a book showing a continuous panorama of Ginza, in leporello format, one side of the street running along the top of the page, the other side of the street upside down along the bottom. Yoshikazu Suzuki seems not to have produced any other documented work, and shares the name with a popular anime character.

Is it a hoax? The work of some enterprising art student trying to make a fast buck off gullible Western collectors? Cultural warfare by Japanese nationalists inventing fictitious antecedents to usurp the stature of seminal American artists? Ruscha's 1982 pastel Japan is America might offer a wryly confessional clue as to his source. As Gide once quipped, "Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again."


Yoshikazu Suzuki, Ginza Haccho, 1954



Ed Ruscha, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966
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Oblique Strategies

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The Oblique Strategies were a collaboration between musician Brian Eno and painter Peter Schmidt. First published in 1975, it consisted of a deck of cards, each card containing a single aphorism. The idea is that when you become stuck in your creative endeavor, you choose a card from the deck at random and the aphorism suggests a course of action: "twist the spine", "trust in the you of now", "infinitesimal gradations", etc. Four subsequent editions have been produced, each with the aphorisms and format slightly modified. If you don't already own one, there's no need to bid up the price of those editions (the Peter Norton-commissioned, Pae White-designed 4th edition is going for well into the low triple digits), you can access the Oblique Strategies for free on the internet. The websites come and go but there are always a few around; click a button and another card from the deck comes up at random. There's even oh my god an iphone app.

To be honest, I've had dismal results whenever I've used the Oblique Strategies. Subjugating my analytical apparatus to Brian Eno's analytical apparatus doesn't seem to yield exciting results. Maybe I'd have better chemistry with...I don't know...Klaus Kinski's Oblique Strategies. I suppose most artists of even moderate industriousness develop their own set of working strategies over time, simply as a matter of survival, and most consider it proprietary information. So let's give Eno credit for making his public—if indeed he's telling the truth. I'm not ruling out the possibility that the whole thing is an elaborate red herring, designed to misguide potential competitors and lead legions of trusting artists and musicians into paroxysms of frustration. Eno opening royalty checks, head tossed back in diabolic laughter, "Twist the spine, suckers!"
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Small study done in June of last year.

I'm really excited to be in a new studio space. It's on the top floor of a shabby old walk-up. Nice to have a bit more space and some natural light.

Bali

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More to come...

Zonta Club Charity Art Sale

The Zonta Club of Hong Kong invited artists to donate work, sales of which will be used to bring "quality books to underprivileged children through community childcare centres, nurseries, and schools in the territory."

I popped into The Rotunda this morning and saw a fair number of red dots, my painting among them. I savored an unfamiliar philanthropic glow and pondered which titles the would-a-been miscreants will be receiving. The show runs through 26 November.

Smoking Ban

I huddle in a doorway on the street like Anton Webern.

Surfing Hong Kong

(click to enlarge)

Top to bottom: a wedging peak near the Shun Tak Centre; North Point roller; smokin' right barrel in Macau.

Whenever I'm gazing out from the Star Ferry, I find myself thinking that the only way Victoria Harbour could be more spectacular is if there were surfable waves peeling into Sheung Wan. So during a slow work period a couple of years back, I knocked these out in photoshop to keep my skills up.

Later, in August '08, typhoon Nuri was making international headlines...and, well...the Victoria Harbour surf pics seemed to be begging for release. Adopting the nom de Wacom "Otis Chen" (in homage of Otis Chandler, long-time publisher of the Los Angeles TImes, who loved to surf), I submitted the somewhat questionable pictures to a famous surfing website. 

They were quite well-received. There's a hit counter on their page for each photo, and I could see it was climbing fast. I began to get alarmed when one was automatically entered into the "photo of the month" contest, and won second place. Thank God it didn't win a prize, I said to myself, envisioning handcuffs slapped on my wrists as I showed up in boardshorts to claim my free trip to the Pipeline Masters, or whatever. 

I was relieved when things seemed to be dying down. The hit count began to level off and I thought that was the end of it. Then one day I received an email from the editor: would I be interested in doing a surf-travel feature? By then work had picked up, and slightly freaked-out Hong Kong correspondent Otis Chen had no choice but to decline. Cowabunga.

UPDATE 15 March 2012: Surfing Hong Kong, a book of outrageous HK surf photos, is now available here.

Chemical Light

Chinese Pop Concert

Madam Cheng

Tattoo

Going to a party tonight where everyone will be getting temporary tattoos,  and this is my contribution. 

I can't see a tattoo without thinking of my friend back in Los  Angeles, Alexis "Gents of Desire" Ross, who not only designs groovy tattoos but applies them with a homemade contraption fashioned out of piano wire, a sewing machine motor, and the plastic casing of a ball-point pen. 

Hong Kong Drizzle