Pajiba

I'm confused - tell me again how I can wrangle the comment to consist about nothing other than my sexual prowess?

Alphonse Mucha, the Czech artist, is pretty much my absolute favorite artist. Also Klimt, but he's much more well known.

I could go really obscure in terms of music (Ligeti or perhaps Hildegaard von Bingen, anyone?) but I actually like Dvorak and Berlioz the best and they're pretty well known.

Japanese art-deco. The MFA in Boston has a great collection. It's around the time a lot of US artists were first using Japanese images and styles in their art, and it's interesting to see how they were influenced as well.

David Caruso's pitch-perfect use of cadence as Horation Cane.
Michael Bay's use of fire and noise as a metaphor for life.
The comedic timing of Jim Belushi.

I'd like to namedrop PissBoy aka John Wiz.(Commandment 4: Thou shalt not reveal your full name on the internets.)

When he's not working his 40 he's an accomplished sculptor, painter, and Special Make-Up Effects artist. He like to tinker with all things creative and happily exploits the lusts of fanboys with his craft. Case in point: A fold-out Hellraiser Chess Set. All pieces (cenobites and such) sculpted, molded, and hand-painted. The board folds up into a large version of the puzzle box. Days and Knights gladly pays ol'Pissy plentiful amounts of money per board and then marks them up to a ridiculous price.

But if i want to be only semi-pretentious instead of bathing in my total "Iamawesomeness" then I will reveal my obsession with James Jamerson and his influence on music and his abillity to generate hit after hit for Motown records.

(and fuck all you bass snobs who think it's wrong to play the instrument with a pick. Mr. Jamerson went both ways and dropped the funk no matter what)

Well, as a cegep undergrad, I'm at a loss here. So I'm gonna second PissBoy here, if only because I totally wanna name-drop someone who I think may or may not be into watersports.

I met Don Herdzfeldt during the 2005 Animation Show tour, and I thought he was a dick. And kind of pretentious.

El Greco. Particularly seeing El Entierro del Conde de Orgaz in person was unforgettable. Modern art just doesn't cut it for me.

Our cafeteria used to have a guy named Carl who worked the omelette bar. Never have I seen such mastery of eggs and cheese. Then one day he just disappeared, replaced by mere amateurs. I stopped going to breakfast that day.
He was an Omelette Wizard, had to be a twist, an omelette wizard, had such a supple wrist.

Michael Bay's use of fire and noise as a metaphor for life.

HA HA HA!

Branded, I loved that one painting by El Greco, View of Toledo...I think I learned about that in high school.

And don't lie PissBoy, you like to tinker WITH fanboys. Sinner.

The Kasai Allstars, a band from the Kinshasha region in the Congo. Their album was my favorite of 2008. I'd also plug the Futurians, Tinariwen, The A-Frames (my "mainstream" fave at the moment), The Dead C, Skullflower and Kemmistadt Ysvelt. Oh, and of course, my pseudonym comes from Peter Laughner, the late guitarist of Rocket From the Tombs.

And for artists, I'll name drop Tim Hawkingson, an LA based artist who is almost unnaturally focused on his own body. His "self portrait" opens and closes its eyes and mouth, and extends its ears based on signals it receives from a motion sensor. He's created working clocks out of his hair, fingernails, toothpaste bottles, etc., consructed tiny bird skeletons with his fingernails, and rejiggered an old phonograph player into a Tim Hawkingson signature maker -- the belt turns an arm (attached to a pen) and spits out the artist's signature every twenty seconds (I commandeered one such signature, just so I could say I own an "original" piece of his art, though I've never had the opportunity to brag about that particular accomplishment until now). I later learned one of his pieces (a pen holder shaped like a giant bloodied thumb) was used on a Beck album cover.

To paraphrase:

Francis Wolff!
Francis Wolff!
Francis Wolff!
Francis Wolff!
OOOOOH SHIT!
Francis Wolff!

(Pennie Smith, Robert Doisneau, Anton Corbijn. They're why I've got a camera and black & white film)

I spread the gospel of Billy Cobham, one of the premiere jazz/funk fusion drummers. Please ignore everything he did in the 80s, it all comes down to the glorious Total Eclipse album (and the title track) and Funky Thide of Sings.
Freakishly brilliant, perfectly syncopated, and completely amazing. Listen to "Total Eclipse" and tell me when you see God.

I'll offer up the expressionistic landscapes of late-period George Inness, particularly Sunset at et retat. And the early master of Japanese existential fiction, Kobo Abe.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to make a call. I forgot my mantra.

To achieve maximum pretentiousness, I'm going to mention three people I actually know who are doing cool things.

Thom Satterlee -- He's a poet who taught my undergraduate writing classes, and I really like the guy. Plus, his book Burning Wycliff got all kinds of great reviews.

Ray Boltz -- This is my dad, actually. Used to be a famous Christian singer, but he's been totally slaughtered by the Christian music industry because he came out of the closet last September. If you grew up in the church of the 80s and 90s, maybe you remember him. Now that just about every mainstream churchgoer in America has blogged about how hell-bound he is, he could use some positive attention from non-assholes.

Lebowski Podcast -- This is my husband's project, and I'm pretty proud of it. Even if I didn't help plan and record the episodes, I would still listen to what Chalupa does with this podcast all about the Big Lebowski.

Art-wise I absolutely love JMW Turner's later paintings of fire and water. The ones that look impressionistic, until you realize he was pre-impressionist and was actually just a trying to create a static image of elements in motion. There's also Joel Peter Witkin who made some seriously freaky staged photos. I can't even describe them, you should just google him. But probably not if you just ate.

I love photographers Edward Weston (especially that insanely sexy bell pepper) and Imogene Cunningham (her work was so dreamy).

Ben Allison of the Ben Allison Quartet is quite the badass little jazz dude.

I find Ansel Adams to be quite quaint in a black and white kind of way.

Neil Rogers is my favorite person, for those of you that don’t know he has a radio talk show that is based out of Miami. I started listening to him in high school and never stopped. He is one of the main reasons for me wanting to move back to Miami. He talks about politics, people, sex, sports ( he’s a big horse racing fan).

Art Bell would be my second most favorite person. For those of you that don’t know, Bell is a radio talk show host that talks about government conspiracies, Aliens, and shit like that.

Anne Geddes

So true, TK. The composition and form that she can create with simply a baby in a bunny costume is breathtaking.

Brava!

Paddy, the "absolutely obvious" is why I didn't name Dalí as my favorite. I love his work, it feels like looking at my dreams, but when casting rumors have you played by the same guy who was the sparkly vampire dreamboy of every tween in the country, you're not even a little obscure.

See, Branded, I think Geddes' children as animals commentary is pedantic and wholely uninspired. I much prefer her observations on commercialism and the environment as seen in "Smirking Baby Wears a Fucking Cabbage."

Pshaw! If you want to talk illustrators, Rackham's nice, but Harry Clarke's far better, and much darker. Check out his work for Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination." It's perfection.

Not to mention Edmund Dulac (his Arabian Nights is simply divine, as is his Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam), and lest we forget the women, Anne Anderson's spectacular fairy tales.

And Aubrey Beardsley's simply wild!

Since that is my only area of quasi-expertise I'll name a bunch of great musicians/bands that more people should listen to: Bohren & der Club of Gore, William Basinski, Earth, The Drift, Maserati, Jacaszek, Gas and Neurosis.

And I'm gonna go with a bunch of names in the field of painting here, even though I don't know that much about fine arts: Victor Safonkin (batshit nuts Russian surrealist), Zdislaw Beksinski (Polish painter/scultpor who created apocalyptical paintings), Neo Rauch (a really vibrant mixture of realism, pop art and some surrealism too) and Caravaggio (I'm not a fan of baroque anything, but his photorealistic, shadowy paintings fascinate me to no end).

Damn it, someone stole my thunder with Calatrava, so I'll go wth Luis Barragan and Antoine Predock, both architects in the modernist tradition but with a feel for materials and regions that goes far beyond the stripped boxes of Richard Mier and that bastard Philip Johnson. AAlso the music of El Vez. If you listen to only one activist Latino Elvis impersonator, make it him.

I didn't read all the comments, and this may be me being unfashionably late to the party, but the deeper I travel into Steven Sondheim's world the more impressed I am. His compositional elements are obviously impeccable; I don't know many other musical theater composers whose work is regularly performed by opera companies. However, what I'm really digging about his stuff is the way he writes lyrics along with the music that are not only deft, witty, and meaningful, but often rhyme. Like, the whole sentence.

As a photography hobbyist I'm always on the lookout for good photowork. My favorite is not necessarily obscure - she was downright famous back when people got most of their info from print - but nowadays most people have never heard of Margaret Bourke-White. Back in the day, Bourke-White took the photo for the first cover ever of Life Magazine, and most of you have probably seen at least one of her photos documenting the dustbowl region in The Great Depression. And just to tie her into some modern pop culture: the cover of They Might Be Giants' album Flood is a Bourke-White photo from the Ohio River Flood of 1937.

I much prefer her observations on commercialism and the environment as seen in "Smirking Baby Wears a Fucking Cabbage."

Julie, I kind of want to marry you a little bit right now.

Italo Calvino is not really obscure. But he is one of my favorites, too, though my choice for his best work is Invisible Cities. Love that book. It's one of two books I read when I need to calm down for some reason and need a serious distraction to settle my mood.

In the realm of music, I nominate Cristina Branco. Her first album was my introduction to fado, and it's still my favorite. She's not got the most technically amazing voice, but the feeling she puts into her singing is breathtaking.

(I also like Connie Wills' writing, but she's better at short stories than novels, especially comic novels. She just tries too hard in long form.)

Nicole, of course that doesn't make you a bad person.

But, we're deducting some serious goddamned pretentiousness points from your total score.

Also: I second the love for Imogen Cunningham and Margaret Bourke-White.

All of this Margaret Bourke-White love, but nothing for W. Eugene Smith?

/got an "A" in Intro to Photography

/preens

Oh, and Keith Malley/Chemda Khalili (since talk radio hosts is on the list).

Brumski.

Wait just a minute Wednesday!

I get no credit for Calvino, 'cause he's not obscure enough, but douche-garglers are throwing around Geddes, and Bay, and Thomas Effing Kincade, (that's his Christian name), and they get a pass?

If the nuns hadn't beaten me until my spirit was broken, I'd get a smitch huffy about that!

Dorothy Dunnett's Chronicles of Lymond series. Toughest reads I ever enjoyed. Wow. An author that doesn't translate her 16th-c french quotes.

Second toughest read I ever enjoyed: Richard Emerson's two articles "Exchange Theory" parts I and II.

The room of netsuke at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Exquisite. Have spent hours in there, putting nose prints on the cases.

francis bacon. dude was fuuuucked up, so naturally i love him to pieces. he has a piece in the moma thats one of my favorites of all time.

also, adrienne rich. she's not particularly obscure (is she? i first learned her in a lit class) but she does have a way with the words.

Scott Smith makes wonderful beers as a one-man operation dba East End Brewing Co. in Pittsburgh, and is a fine and upstanding gentleman as well.

Music: The Avett Brothers and Nickel Creek are great bluegrass bands. John Butler Trio is amazing live. I love The Dirty Three's instrumentals. Rachael Yamagata is a very talented lyricist, as is Anais Mitchell, and their music is lovely. I'm also going to give a shout-out to Club Passim, in Harvard Square, and The Stone Church, on the seacoast of NH, as small venues who deserve love.

Literature: Robert Bly's poetry, in particular his book The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, which I have signed, and Mekeel McBride, an amazing poet who also happened to be my undergrad faculty advisor. I ADORE Jhumpa Lahiri's prose. Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog is a Pulitzer-winning play about race, history, class, and fraternal love in modern America.

Art: Maxfield Parrish has been my mom's favorite painter since I was little, and Augustus St. Gaudens is a fantastic sculptor whose work is famous, even if his name is not (think relief of black Civil War soldiers). I also enjoy Magritte's paintings (Stoppard's got a great one-act that circles around his art).

I just saw Edgar Meyer this weekend and he blew my face off. I have never seen a double bass player who can do the things this man can do. He has collaborated with everyone from Yo Yo Ma to Mark O'connor to Chris (annoys the shit out of me) Thile to Mike Marshall to Zakir Hussein. He has a habit of performing pieces written for other instruments and playing the shit out of them.

And for another semi-esoteric musical one, Mike Marshall did a collaboration with a Brazilian mandolin player named Hamilton de Holanda and they do a great mix of traditional bluegrass, traditional Brazilian music, and even throw in the occasional classical lick - point is, their duets are a fantastic collaboration and it is the weirdest, grooviest, most virtuosic mandolin duets you will ever hear.

Ahhhh, the cultural elite class is among us. And then the next goddamn post you guys will be talking about anal, so spare me your fucking hypocrisy. The Champs-Elysees my fat grotesque ass.

Gerhard Richter? You know, the candle painting from Daydream Nation?

I got nothin'.

Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima

If you're not familiar with it outright, parts of it were featured in both The Shining and There Will Be Blood.

I played it when I was in an orchestra. Though I must have played it over a hundred times, I always got spooked out during the first few bars and my palms would get sweaty (which is not what you want when playing the violin.)

It's what I imagine would be playing in your head as you go slowly insane.

Ooh, I'm bookmarking this thread for a time when I can give more attention to the suggestions. Nice pretentious-ating, everybody.

And Liz, I knew that Ray Boltz's name sounded familiar-- totally remember his music from my contemporary Christian music-listening, Southern Baptist-believing days as a kid. I'm imagining the judgment he's had to deal with since coming out, and...just, ugh. But good for him for being true to himself.

Pretentiousness II - Music Recap.

On several of the music threads past I've been a total elitist. Recapping briefly, without apology. (Pretentiousness does not apologize):

Charles Mingus also Mingus Dynasty. Gotta love a tribute band to an artist almost nobody's heard of.

Jaco Pastorious (bass), Jimmy Smith (Wurlitzer), Al Vizutti (jazz / big-band trumpet, modern), Maurice Andre (classical trumpet - heard him live several times.) Stan Kenton (jazz lab bands), Don Ellis (insane, psychodelic jazz lab bands)

Also Tom Lehrer, P. D. Q. Bach and John Valby

So, there's this website that I frequent. It's called Pajiba (www.pajiba.com) and I love it. Over the last 3 years or so it's become one of my most trusted sights for media critique. And the commenters are awesome. I assume it's obscure and I must be pretentious to read it because whenever I bring it up in casual conversation, which I do constantly, no one's ever heard of it. But I love it so much that I'm constantly checking it, even when I know nothing new will have been posted(like at 4am central time... right about now). It is constantly my first source for new movie press, I've read several books thanks solely to their recommendation (I love The Time-Traveler's Wife!), and I'm constantly bringing up items from Pajiba Love at work. If any of you get the chance, you need to check out Pajiba (pronounced to sound like vagina, tee hee!). Sure you've never heard of it, but it's worth the read.

...

Forgive my gushing, I'm drunk. Time for bed, as I have to be at work in 6.5 hours.

Gerrit Dou (1613-1675)Dutch painter, "Dentist by Candlelight" at the Kimball in Fort Worth

https://www.kimbellart.org/Collections/Collections-Detail.aspx?prov=false&cons=false&cid=8563

I saw this the first time I went to the Kimball, and was transfixed.

-Ralphie

Posted by: Kiki at March 18, 2009 8:09 PM

I see your Tom Stoppard, and raise with the David Hare/Michael Frayn combo! When abroad, I was lucky enough to see a play from each of these amazing authors.

I highly recommend Hare's The Permanent Way, which was about the [d]evolution of the British rail system and how it was so screwed up at one point that you had one company owning the trains and a separate company owning the rails. I also highly recommend Frayn's Democracy about the rise and fall of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt after his right hand man Gunter Guillaume was outed as an East German spy.

I kick myself for not seeing The Pillowman, both in London and in New York, because after In Bruges I've kinda developed an obsession with Martin McDonnagh's work. I also kick myself for not seeing Frost/Nixon on stage in NY before seeing the movie, simply because Peter Morgan seems to have the rare ability to make history interesting, while maintaining a respectable degree of fact. One final kick...I should have seen His Dark Materials, the SIX HOUR LONG two part play that was probably the only true adaptation of what's more commonly known as "that trilogy with Northern Lights The Golden Compass." (Since Americans need a complete trilogy with entries named according the the format of The [descriptor] [object].)

Recently discovered Joan Didion. My librarian almost tried to adopt me when I asked if she could find Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Ray Boltz -- This is my dad, actually. Used to be a famous Christian singer, but he's been totally slaughtered by the Christian music industry because he came out of the closet last September. If you grew up in the church of the 80s and 90s, maybe you remember him. Now that just about every mainstream churchgoer in America has blogged about how hell-bound he is, he could use some positive attention from non-assholes.

No way?!? Really? Truly?? Liz, your dad is awesome!! I'm squeeing like a fan girl over here!

True story - right now on my MP3 player I have a track called "Thank you" by Ray Boltz. Your dad was, without a doubt, my most favourite Christian singer in the 80's and 90's. I grew up listening to his music and his voice soothed my soul. "Thank you" is one of my all time favourite songs and he sings it so beautifully, I still get teary eyed when I listen to it.

I actually hadn't heard that he came out of the closet but you tell him that, as a Christian, it doesn't make one damn difference to me. Love is love and while certain asshole Christians might care about what gender you love, I really don't believe God does. There's a spot in Heaven for your dad and rich will be his reward when he gets there. :)

Oh and um...when you relay my message to him could you cut down on the fan girl geeky gushy-ness of it all? I don't want to come off sounding too much like a loser stalker. Hee!

I always wanted to have sex with Bukowski. Then get out fast, before the glass splinters ruined my feet. Mind you, he is rather Totem to the 20 year old.

Bill Sienkiewicz.

My hero.

Hey, Mike R

Apologies for my tardy reply. My schedule is bizarre and my workload of late large - long & thick, turgid even (Sorry, possessed by a bit of the local color there for a moment.) I am thus reduced to the intermittent drive-by snarking.

Neanderthal Planet is high on my Aldiss list, but really, anything of his. Unfortunately I've never since been satisfied with anyone's take on an "alien" perspective. Aldiss nails it, exactly the way Niven, for example does not.

Alas, these days noone has heard of Tom Lehrer. We could use a bit of his political incorrectness in these oh, so, unfortunately sincere days:

"Ohhhhhhhhh,
We are the folk-song army.
Every one of use cares.
We all hate poverty, ware and injustice.
Unlike the rest of you squares."

Would make wonderful background music as the hopes of a briefly inspired nation crash into the reality that running anything more complicated than a three-way circle-jerk is way, way, way beyond the capabilities of any collection of grandstanding US Representatives. Certainly more subtle an enterprise than can be managed by spasms of populist apeasement, one upon the other.

Meanwhile, the Chinese, having secured a poison-pill on our national policies one McMansion loan at a time, are now buying outright great swaths of the US economic engine because . . . wait for it . . . we don't actually do any work any more. Haven't for years.

So, for that little rant, god I wish there were more of Lenny Bruce, you want to know what's going to happen next, go read some Von Mises, and for sheer exasperated bile, the essays and correspondence of late in life Mark Twain and of course ... Ambrose Bierce

Then read some Saki, pen name for H. Munroe, sort of O Henry tinged with fantasy and darkness. Sweet.

Dammit, I totally missed this thread since I was on vacation, but I'm adding something anyway.

I've recently become enamored of Steve Reich's compositions--saw some of his music, including "Music for 18 Instruments" and "The Daniel Variations" performed, and it was a mind-blowing experience. It may try some people's patience--"18 Instruments" goes on for a full hour--but even my non-musically inclined friend thought it was brilliant and moving in a way that a lot of 20th century compositions aren't. Watching it is half the fun too--the performers move about the stage in a dance to switch instruments, and the sheer endurance required is astounding. It's very easy to get caught up in the sheer wall of sound, even when it's difficult to tell what precisely is going on harmonically.

So, if anyone's interested in minimalist avant-garde classical music, I highly recommend checking him out.