clifford_thornton

Yeah, there are a few I need to get and just put them off. Now's the time! Kind of scary to see some are sold out!

Wow. That beats those Pretoria Arvanitas LPs by a lot!

Dutch theme continues... Kees Hazevoet - Pleasure One - (Peace original) with Louis Moholo, Arjen Gorter and the great Kris Wanders on alto. Beautiful handmade cover on this one, too!

Theo Loevendie - Stairs! - (Artone original) apparently the first 'proper' Dutch new jazz LP, from '67, with Maarten Altena and Johnny Engels. Engels (and Milford) is who Han Bennink emulated to get his style. Anyway, it's a great record, and despite being a fairly ratty copy, this one still sounds wonderful.

Ellsworth Kelly - a wonderful and both chameleonic and steadfast painter (and sculptor) of color/form, with a very Cageian sense of keen observation. I do like Mike Kelley (and Pettibon) as well, though. Heard the name Terry Allen dropped before, but never followed up on why. Thanks for the impetus.

Those photos make me feel like busting Santana out later! Even if she was in the work boot-and-flannel scene in the 70s, a guy like me can still get all over her!

It's funny that most people (myself included) seem to be bringing up painters. I really like a lot of concept work - or whatever you want to call it - but there are even a few in that realm whose work I can't deal with. I can't take Kosuth, or Art and Language for that matter - it's almost taking too much of the art content out of the work, which is not the way I feel about most concept art. With Kosuth and A&L, it's just too devoid of aesthetics for me - most concept art seems to have a pretty high aesthetic content, a sense of humor about itself, a DIY rawness to it, etc., that is very engaging. I guess one could say Kosuth is like the Ad Reinhardt of concept art, but at least Reinhardt had a sense of humor!

Man, it's all that "Tenth Street Touch" stuff, but de Kooning did some fine small black paintings in the 40s. I find Hofmann boring for some of the same reasons as I do de Kooning, even though he was the start of a lot of that work and certainly makes a valid case for extending the optical elements of the best Cezanne. Dunno if my post didn't make it clear (probably not), but Twombly is staggering and I love all of the paintings I've seen. Houston has an amazing collection of his work, though I may take a pass on the sculpture. At first I was very unsure of Twombly, but it is that uncertainty that made me get to know and love the work as I do now. This happens to me often with the artists (and musicians/composers) that I end up being obsessive about - captivating with the question "do you love it or do you hate it?" Still, I'd rather talk about the artists I love any day: Clyff Still, Judd, Serra, Stella, Twombly, Hesse, Bontecou, Newman, Louis, Noland, Smithson, Guston, Bob Thompson, Tony Smith, Kelly (even if he seems a little short on verve these days)... longer list of names than that, but we're on the subject of hatin'. Didn't know that about Winogrand. Thanks, clem. One more to add to the shit-list: Rosenquist is so utterly garish and slick that I just can't look at it. I sort of 'get' his point, maybe, but I cannot deal with his work at all. Funnily enough, I was given the big Guggenheim retro book a couple of years ago for Xmas...

That would be MOST artists right there. It's the above kind of thinking that keeps us in the situation that we are today, culturally.

I can't imagine Fred Anderson and Irene Schweizer together at all. I'll have to get this just to see how it works, I guess... Not a dis on Irene - love her work - but it's a weird combo for sure. Not gonna be Tuned Boots, I wouldn't think!

"Snowflakes and Sunshine"... :rsmile: Alan Silva Skillfulness a close second!

Guston is another one that it took me a while to appreciate, but now I do very much. I'm thinking of his figurative work - the abstract colorist stuff from the '50s is a different story altogether. I wasn't even going to say anything about Kinkade... not worth it! I don't know why Rauschenberg and Johns don't do it for me. Johns has a series of works (think they are called Lifelines) with a string drawn across a blue-grey field which are quite beautiful, that were the best thing about his Walker show a few years back. The string was attached at either end to loosely moored wooden planks, thus hanging the string (or cable) an inch or so in front of the canvas. Optically, they were somewhat interesting, but the starkness of the whole effect was really something. As yet, I haven't seen a Rauschenberg that doesn't do anything more than act "cute," but it may happen someday. The best art exhibition I've ever seen in my life was The Last Picture Show, curated by Doug Fogle at the Walker. It was a study of conceptual artists using photography in the 60s, 70s and 80s - Ruscha, Smithson, Graham, Huebler, Bas Jan Ader, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Eleanor Antin, etc. and it was absolutely stunning. Never seen such a high concentration of multi-leveled (and much of it fairly "underground") work in such a committed setting. Second to that: Andreas Gursky at MoMA, 2001.

...but Islam #3 is nice! This is a far more complete list than you usually see.

You could get all the original Solid State LPs for significantly less than that!

Good to know, brownie. I just ordered the reissue CD of Hal Singer's Blues and News (Futura SWING-01) as I'd given up on an affordable vinyl copy... almost paid $250 once but ended up not pulling the trigger. It is high time that the entire catalog was properly reissued! Got lucky with that Reece; I think the only Futura vinyl that I actually paid out for was the Perception, which I like a lot as well. Allan: surprised to see you spinning Your Prayer - that is a fine ESP session. The group with Noah Howard is my favorite of Wright's, but that second ESP is pretty top-notch.

Yeah, Americans don't usually work the same way. It's like health care.

Myself, I'm more into the Cageian neo-dada and post-serial stuff. Not much for electronics, but weird chamber stuff and theatre pieces get my juices flowing. But: who said anything about classical records being cheap? Bach Honegger

Mine is Strange Strings...

Dizzy Reece - From In to Out (Futura) wonderful modal/free quintet with John Gilmore, Art Taylor, Siegfried Kessler (piano) and Patrice Caratini (bass). H-E-A-V-Y!

Man, I like a lot of the artists you mention quite a bit! To each their own, I guess... I can see why Jeff Koons exists (critique of the artist as commodity) but I do not like him one bit... I don't get into the photographer, Jeff Wall, too much though critics I respect seem to enjoy his work. Seems rather dull and flat to me. De Kooning is a cliche, as is Dali. Krasner is derivative of the good 40s De Kooning in a lot of her early work; I don't know much of her work after that point. Frankenthaler seems boring to me compared to Morris Louis; her palette is too gauzy for my taste and the post-painterly abstraction to me works better among more direct work such as Louis and Kenneth Noland (or, for that matter, Larry Poons). Hers is too diffuse for my tastes. Rothko's palette choices don't move me too much, but a room of them is another thing altogether. I'm not entirely sure about Joan Mitchell, but being "not entirely sure" for a while tends to lead to liking somebody quite a bit eventually (as I've done with Twombly and Tuttle), so I'll bet she will make it to the top ten at some point. Rauschenberg and Johns do almost nothing for me, though I "respect" their influence on others whom I do enjoy. I liked Dubuffet at first quite a bit; now I prefer Burri and Tapies (though I know they are different birds in many respects). Gorky used to be another preference, though Matta is far superior and now I can't see liking both Gorky AND Matta. Ruscha's paintings don't do it for me, either, though I really like his books.

Marion Brown - Quartet - (ESP Stereo original) a classic, is all there is to say!

Oh, Lotus, that's what I thought you were driving! I have never heard of TVR before...

Is that a Spider?

Slint had something, but for me, Brian McMahan's musical ideas seem more fully-formed in The For Carnation. That first EP and self-titled full-length on Matador are both superb. Re: J: "Forget the Swan" is probably one of the greatest post-punk anthems I've ever heard. Amazing!

I really shouldn't have got rid of that Joanne Brackeen trio, Snooze, on Choice. That's quite a good little record.