Edward Weston

The Big Mac Daddy Of What I'm Doing

Here is a link to the rest of my show's blog that I've separated from this to organize the various parts of what's goin' on with the Helga Files. It gives a more detailed Art History lowdown of each of the Lover characters, and is interesting as all get out. I hope you enjoy.

Art History Drawings

Here is a preview to the series of drawing that will systematically appear in the box of my exhibition this week.

A BOX

And in other news! I found a beautiful little box for my drawings, and I am very pleased.

Lover # 6

My inspiration for Cowboy Coolidge began with brainstorming the different ways someone can hurt another through self-absorption. I looked at various artists who had committed suicide and left a significant other, and the most prominent I found was Mark Rothko. Granted, the circumstances are slightly different. Rothko was diagnosed with a mild aortic aneurysm, and refused doctors orders to change personal habits that might have improved his condition. Because of his deteriorating health and impotence, he felt estranged from his wife and they separated. Two months later he overdosed on anti-depressants and slit his wrists.

The most prominent collection of Mark Rothko's work that comes to mind is the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas... Cowboy Country. This was the last collection of paintings he did, and he never saw the chapel in its completion.

The whole idea of art, suicide, and cowboys came together; three things I don't typically associate. Cowboys are known to be rough and tough, so to depict the vulnerability of one is interesting to me. Within all the crimes perpetrated against Helga, the culprits all have a strange sort of vulnerability to their character, and I thought a drawing based on the three and emulating Rothko's paintings would work well in that concept's favor.

So far I have developed 7 ex-Lovers for Helga, and have found seven stories in art history that, from Helga's standpoint, parallel to her own personal tragedies:

Lover 1.) Dirk Calligan/Paul Gauguin
Crime: Abandonment/Stole Helga's Motorcycle

Lover 2.) Sargent Jacques/ Edward Weston
Crime: Le cheat de France

Lover 3.) Clark Kent/Alfred Stieglitz
Crime: Lost glasses and found himself on Louis Lane

Lover 4.) Dublin Baker/Jackson Pollock
Crime: Beats his women like his dough

Lover 5.) Popeye Magritte/James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Crime: Traded Helga for a string of pearls

Lover 6.) Cowboy ("Billy Joe")Coolidge/Mark Rothko
Crime: Took his guns to Town, shot himself.

Lover 7.) Jasper Tanning /Man Ray
Crime: 'assisted' by assistant

The first series of photos I started with are Lover #5, inspired by a mix of René Magritte, Diane Arbus, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and Smog.
Lover number #5 traded Helga for a string of pearls, which wasn't a very nice thing to do. Aside from this crime against Helga, lover #5 isn't a bad guy. He's a sad guy full of conflict that trades his possessions like a little boy in the schoolyard.
How 'Helga' relate this to Whistler and Diane Arbus is as follows:

Whistler had a girlfriend, Maud Franklin, for sometime. When she was sick he stayed with her, and they had two daughters together. This didn't mean he treated her well though. Once he left her in a London motel pregnant under the pretense that he was in Paris, while he was still very much in town. Later, he traded her for a better, richer Beatrice "Trixie" Godwin who could provide connections for him and stabilize his finances while he worked on his art.

Norman Mailer once said, ""Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child." The interest in strangeness ('the other'), as well as Arbus's mystery, androgyny, ego-centrism, and depression are all inspiration for Lover #5.

For the art to go by with the art history drawings, I am looking at Son of Man, and work by Whistler.

The Helga Files

Without further ado, here is the outline for my term’s project.
Working Title: The Helga Files
The Helga Files are an artistic representation of an art history lesson through the eyes of Helga Minelli in relation to a series of her lovers.
Helga Minelli is a pseudonym/alter-ego character I have created both as inspiration and a representer for the art I have slight trepidation in producing. For this particular project I plan to research the personal lives of certain artists and how their personal relationships have been represented through their work in unflattering ways, and how these behaviors correlate to Helga’s “Lovers”.
A trend and stereotype among artists is that they have rather turbulent lives, especially when it boils down to their love life. What I would like to do is look into specific artists that have influenced me, research their personal lives, and how their personal life made its way into their art, especially where it has been petty and vengeful. From there I plan on taking the vast source of turbulent love stories involving historically significant artists and concentrate on the ones that directly parallel and compare them to the “Lover” characters in Helga Minelli’s story. After concentrating down the artists and their stories, I will pinpoint the specific works of art that represent the people that were in their lives, and then recreate that work through my own or “Helga’s” interpretation.
The format in which I will do this will be in small matted drawings that will eventually build into a collection, and then stored in a box. The inspiration for this format came from researching into the art of Marcel Duchamp, who’s pretty much the champ at presenting art in unique ways.
Marcel was already a person of interest to me for a few reasons. The first was that he too had a pseudonym persona by the name of Rrose Sélavy, which sounds like the French translation of “Eros, such is life.” This whole idea is very attractive to the concept of Helga Minelli, especially the twist on love. Secondly, his art dealing with Rrose Sélavy were self-portrait photographs playing with gender roles and building personas, so he’s definitely got my attention. While researching more into his artwork, I came across a series he did of miniature works he had previously made to keep his show on the go, and I love the convenience and compact nature of the whole thing.
I plan on drawing seven to eight pictures for the series, and finding (ready-made hehehe) or making a box to store them in through the duration of my show. The only time they will be presented other than on the blog is at the show opening where their presentation will be combined with a lecture relating the artists’ stories and drawings done to a separate series of photographs that will be hanging as well. Once the lecture and the opening have closed, the drawings will be vaulted away in the box and only the box will be on display below the separate series of photographs.
During the course of the project I will research each artist I feel relates to what I do and the story involving Helga’s Lovers. I will then recreate a specific piece of work they did that relates to that research. I will also find the specific materials needed for the project, which will be seven to eight graphite/ink drawings with matted framing and a box yet to be determined. The series will be accompanied by a detailed lecture gathered from the research done during the process. Vigorous art text book studying, use of the internet, and haunting craft stores/ art supply stores will be necessary.
Timeline:

October 14th: research nearly complete and evidenced with blog postings, preliminary drawings completed.

October 28th: 3-5 drawings completed, box situation figured out.

November 10th : matting figured out, drawings almost to completely finished

November 17th: technical stuff done… hopefully. Lecture nearly finished.

November 22nd: the show must go on.