Podcast(s) of the Week

I've always enjoyed Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo's work, partly for their own aesthetic but also for the undeniable real life drama that encompassed the artists themselves. Politics and Mexican culture are integral to their art and probably the reasons that I'm drawn to them. The Phoenix Art Museum, where we are members, is lucky enough to have several paintings by both artists.

These 2 recent podcasts do a great job of talking about the tragedies and experiences that influenced Kahlo as an artist and a person.  Interestingly, her marriage to Rivera could be construed as both ... a tragedy and a positive experience.

Frida Kahlo podcast from Stuff You Missed in History Class:

Part 1
Part 2

They've both been portrayed on-screen very well, most notably in Frida with Salma Hayek in the title role and Alfred Molina as Rivera.  I also like Ruben Blades as Rivera in Tim Robbin's Cradle Will Rock, a very good movie on art and politics in 1930's America.

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I will listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson in whatever capacity he speaks.  He is the most vocal American proponent of an active space program and one of our best spokesman for the popularization of science and a reality-based world.  Here he is on a recent NPR Science Friday with Ira Flatow speaking on both of those things:

NPR's Science Friday - March 24, 2012

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Earl Scruggs, who just recently passed away at the age of 88, was one of the pioneers of bluegrass music and a true innovator of banjo playing, creating a completely new way of picking.  Most people think they don't know of him, but if you have ever heard the getaway music in Bonnie and Clyde or the theme to the Beverly Hillbillies, then you have heard his playing.  He was greatly influential and touched musicians in completely different genres.

Terry Gross interviewed him in 2003 and after his passing, NPR re-aired the interview:

Earl Scruggs: The 2003 Fresh Air Interview

This NY Times article of his passing has a short video of some of the people that he influenced:

Earl Scruggs, Bluegrass Pioneer, Dies at 88

Protest Art

3 posters by Californian poet and artist Xico Gonzalez that I was given this last weekend at the Alto Arizona SB 1070 protest march:

Art

I'm reading Art in our Times, by Peter Selz, right now. I'm pretty much an art moron, but I try. I own quite a few art books and every once in awhile will bury myself in one and try to learn a little bit. I've read quite a few on more historical art and architecture but hadn't really concentrated on one that focuses on the 20th century like this one does.

A couple of the entries amused me either because of their topical relevance or because the art presented there seemed to speak to me. The first of these was a passage talking about the architecture of the Pentagon:

"During the early 1940's, the world's largest office building, the Pentagon, was erected across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., in an area commonly known as "Hell's Bottom." According to esoteric lore, when a pentagon or pentagram is drawn on the ground with its chief point toward the south, it can be used for black magic and destructive purposes, and, indeed, the War Department's structure faces south."

Ahh ... it all makes sense now. I guess that Dick Cheney was probably too young to have had any part in that?

The other entries I like for a couple of reasons -- they're dark and skewer the Church a bit. They're paintings by Francis Bacon (the British painter) based on Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1650). That's Velazquez's original on the left below:


Velazquez, considering the time in which he lived, and that the Pope viewed his portrait favorably, was not trying to cast a negative light upon the Church at all.

With Bacon, it's more ambiguous. His alteration to the original seems to express agony and pain. It's as though the Pope is screaming. Bacon didn't say that he had any problem with the Church or the Popes, but he did over 40 variations of the Pope and definitely seemed to have some kind of feeling. And it wasn't pleasant.

One of the other variants shows the Pope between sides of beef. I couldn't even begin to guess what that means, but I like the fact that Bacon doesn't consider the subject matter to be above parody or criticism -- a sacred "cow", as it were.


Bacon reminds me of another 20th Century artist I like, Marshall Arisman, and even of David Fincher, the director of Se7en, in his choice of colors and subject matter.