8 1/2 Minutes With Robert Crumb

What Keeps Me Awake #2

Young blue stars are surrounded by leftover natural gas in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy composed of up to several billion stars

An evolving star known as V838 Monocerotis

The Orion nebula - within which new stars are forming. The inset is a close-up of a young star surrounded by a dusty disk that may eventually form planets

Older Work

Mark Warren "Pituitary" 48" X 58" 2005 oil on linen

Mark Warren forgot the title 2005 48" X 58" oil on linen

Being constantly dissatisfied with my own work I was constantly destroying it. I don't do that any more. I am no more satisfied but more accepting of my limitations.

Philip Guston & Daughter

Musa Mayer, reading from her book Night Studio, at the Santa Monica Museum of Art Nov. 25th, 2006. In the background is one of Guston’s emblematic Klan paintings.

CPLY X- Rated At PAUL KASMIN GALLERY

Robert McGee,1890, was scalped by the Sioux as a child and survived.

Untitled

Mark Warren 48" X 58" oil on linen

This Painting is from 2007 and still has no title; it will come to me.

Another Ironic Self-Deprecating Self-Portrait

Mark Warren 48" X 58" oil on linen

Saint Walden

Mark Warren "St. Walden" 48" X 58" oil on linen

Cezanne's Wife #3

In the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Self-Portrait #1

 WEEGEE

Great self-portrait of crime photographer WeeGee.

Modern Medicine

"Nancy Linton: A faithful representation of her actual appearance and condition after having been cured by the use of Swann's Panacea", c. 1833. I think this may have been meant as critique of cure-alls and of general medical quackery.

"Singular Effects of the Universal Vegetable Pills on a Green Crocer! A Fact!", 1841



Adam & Eve?

Edgar Allen Poe & Leni Reifenstahl

Mark Warren Each Portrait 48" X 58" oil on linen

Science Is Beautiful

Write Your Own Captions

Artists I Wish I looked Like #5

Charles Bukowski

A comforting thought

Serial killer Ed Gein did not rise to prominence until the age of 51. I take some solace in this information.

What Keeps Me Awake #1

Often I have heard people questioned, "Don't you care about the Earth?".  To this I would reply, "The Earth can take care of itself." There is nothing man can do that will ever destroy the Earth; only the sun has that power. That is not to say that mankind will survive, nor much of the animal and plant life we see today. But eventually some new species will rise and evolve towards intelligence.
My belief is that there is a basic intelligence programed into the universe. Why at the big bang did a system of "laws" based on mathematics come into existence? Why after millions of years has a creature on earth evolved into a life form that can understand this structure? Is it because the universe itself needs to evolve that intelligence to see itself? Without self-reflective self-aware life can anything be said to truly exist? Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest can something exist without someone to view it, without someone to say, "that is there and it is not me, it exists separate from me". If I told you that outside our universe was another universe that was made of candy you would say I was crazy and couldn't possibly know such a thing. Existence requires a viewer or something to somehow perceive it's reality. I believe the universe is constantly evolving intelligence in order to exist; without us the universe is naught. This is not God in any traditional sense but a rational development of a rational system. What will happen when the universe is completely self-actualized? Maybe God does not yet exist and this is the process by which God is created.

Sage Advise

I believe it was Jasper Johns, remarking on art making, who said something like, "You put something down and then you put something else down next to it. And then so on and so on....." It works for a lot of things.

Picasso Etching Series 156

Dylan and Picasso

I just returned from seeing Bob Dylan for the fifth time beginning way back in 1976. It was a glorious mess! It wasn't until halfway through one of my favorite songs that I was able to detect which song it was they were playing. The band was sloppy and the sound was harsh and shrill; a perfect accompaniment to Bob's old beaten up voice. But it is the ongoing destruction of his own talents as a songwriter that is most compelling and makes him like Picasso. He never does his older songs the same way twice going to great lengths to butcher his most beautiful melodies. Always inventive; being an artist is more important to Bob then being a craftsman and resting on his laurels.

Picasso was the same way. He was always fighting with his natural talents and found innovation and creativity more important then his great abilities at draftsmanship. Picasso emphasized the importance of destruction as a creative force. He also said he was never looking but finding. Like Dylan every new creation is neither better nor worse but just different; it is just another side of the artist. Neither man is trying to become a great artist but is merely displaying what he "has". It takes a great talent and a huge ego to do whatever you want and have it revered.

Earlier Picasso as draftsman:

Late Picasso paintings:

Great Photography #1

Otto Umbehr "Mystery of the Street" 1928

Post-mortem #4

Paul Cadmus, Herrin Massacre, 1940

The First Civil War Amputee

Hanger is reputed to have been the first soldier amputated during the Civil War at the age of 18. Distraught and upset about the crudeness of his "artificial" leg he returned home and spent long hours alone in his room.  Three months later, he amazed his family by walking down the stairs on an artificial leg that hinged at the knee. That invention not only made Hanger's life easier, it made him rich. He made "Hanger limbs" for other area amputees, and the state legislature commissioned him to make artificial limbs for wounded veterans. His patent led to a thriving business. When he died in 1919, Hanger Company had branches in London, Paris, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Saint Louis. Today, Hanger Orthopedic is traded on the New York Stock Exchange and has more than 1,000 employees in forty-three states.



Studio View #5

Francis Bacon

Diego Velázquez Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1650

Rembrandt

Chiam Soutine

Study for a Crucifixion, 1962, detail of the right panel.

Cezanne's Wife #2

Twenty-five more to go.

Wanted

The Two Men Most Responsible For The Death Of Art

Chuckie D.

Alice Neel "Andy Warhol" detail

Post-mortem #3

On October 5, 1818, Nancy Hanks Lincoln died of "milk sickness" a disease contracted from drinking the milk of a cow that has eaten the poisonous white snakeroot. Mrs. Lincoln was thirty-four years old when she died, and her son Abraham was nine.

Any Relevence?

Both titans were born on February 12, 1809.