White Trash Art

New Obsessive Issue 3

Featuring many interesting and varied flights of fancy:

Pied Piper was a pedo!
OCD hits IT!
TV Test Signal Image!
Ode to Megalonyx!
Fringe Anti-Turpin Groups Squelched!
Diplomacy reaches Lofty highs!

Plus a picture of me with a perm in 1990. Thanks, Gary...

out of the archives

I found some old pieces in an art folder today - these are from about 1990.
watercolors:

cookies #2

acrylic on canvas, 16x20'. companion piece to cookies #1

Stuckist Reflections at 3 Years

Successful conceptual artists are more and more commonly setting up factories staffed with dozens of assistants. Unlike Andy Warhol's Factory, these modern day equivalents aren't populated with iconic pop-culture ingenues, militant lesbian would-be assassins, trans gender free thinkers, superstars of music and literature and the paparrazi loving star-fuckers who swarm them like Red-Billed Oxpeckers on the backs of hippopottami.[10] By most accounts these corporate hives are staffed a'la the late great Walt Disney. Fresh faced graduate students and talented artisans, shunned or ignored by the established art community for their lack of savvy at playing the game, churn out artworks that bring their employers multiple millions in profits for as little as 15 bucks an hour[9]. Workers line up to punch actual time cards in one studio[2], lunch bucket in hand and ready to puke out astronomically priced art for wealthy collectors. With a questionable amount of disconnect, in many cases, from concept to implementation of technique, one must wonder if these pieces will hold their value over time as societal aesthetics evolve and change. The artists who employ this method of production seem unruffled by critics of this Mickey-Mouse branding of "high art".

Case in point is British art icon Damien Hirst, who shrugs off his oft criticized but highly lucrative career choices. "The real creative act is the conception," Hirst says, and "as progenitor of the idea, I am the artist." He has called his work "a brand produced in a factory"[9] Giant bunny generator Jeff Koons concurs: "I see my work as essentially conceptual."[2] Koons has somewhere between 30 and 120 assistants[1,7]depending on who you ask, and has been called an "opportunistic publicity monger" by NY Times critic Michael Kimmelman[8]. Kimmelman went on to say that Koons work is indicative of "the sort of self-promoting hype and sensationalism that characterized the worst of the 1980s."

Many artists, case in point the Stuckist movement, have become disillusioned by many aspects of this kind of detachment from the finished piece of art. For many, any artistic validity becomes hard to see clearly through a fog of kitsch and corporate branding. Du Champ's concept of "It is art because I said it's art" has run paper thin in many circles.

Some artists who could be defined as conceptual handle large crews with a possibly more hands-on approach. In the documentary "Chihuly: In the Light of Jerusalem", American artist Dale Patrick Chihuly seems to direct his crew much like Orson Welles on the set of "Citizen Kane": very involved in the process, though largely not laboring to create any of the components. An artisan glassblower, Chihuly has turned toward very large installments such as a wall of huge bricks of glacier ice from Alaska. The installment was in Jerusalem, and the massive chunks of ice had to be quarried then shipped by barge and rail to Washington, then by train car across the US to a ship headed for Italy, where it was transferred to a boat. Deposited outside of Jerusalem, the ice had to be handled by large construction equipment to be arranged.[3,4,5,6] Such laborious efforts have been described by the collaborator and wife of artist Christo (who was the brains behind the installment of 'Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates: Central Park, New York City, 1979-2005' - in which orange curtains hung on 7500 gates in 2005). She says assistants "are not hired as artists but as workers. We generally need people to carry heavy things." People working under Christo and Jean Claude learn that "Art is not easy. Your knees are bruised, hands are bleeding, backs in pain." [11]

Conversely, Koons and Hirst seem to rely heavily on the talent and artistic skill of their assistants. Koons pays his workers to use a paint by numbers system to complete photo-realistic paintings very precisely and quickly[2]. On his fist manufactured piece, Damien Hirst says, "I only painted the first five (spot paintings) and I was like, 'fuck this'. I hated it. As soon as I sold one, I used the money to pay people to make them. They were better at it than me. I get bored. I get very impatient."[9] ADHD aside, it is a system that has made the aforementioned artist incredibly influential and wealthy.

works cited
1 http://www.artnewsblog.com/2009/08/jeff-koons-has-more-than-120-assistants.htm "Jeff Koons Has More Than 120 Assistants"
2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2007/jun/03/art "The Wizard of Odd"
3 Chihuly, Dale; Artist's statement, Ariel, The Israel Review of Arts and Letters, Vol 111, 1999, pages 50-57.
4 http://www.chihuly.com/jerusalem/jerustate.html
5 Chihuly: In the Light of Jerusalem, television program, 1999, Director Peter West
6 The Jerusalem Wall of Ice, Artfocus magazine, Winter/Spring 2000
7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Koons
8 http://cityfile.com/profiles/jeff-koons
9 Cohen, David; Inside Damien Hirst's Factory, London Evening Standard, 8/30/07
10 http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/article-23410356-details/Inside+Damien+Hirst%27s+factory/article.do
11 Grant, Daniel. The Business of Being an Artist, Issue 8600, p164-165, 2008

Gluttony At Its Finest

My boyfriend works for the company that manufactures Oreo Cakesters, so for our anniversary I made him some with my recipe.

White Trash Peg's Gluttony Cake*

This cake contains animal fat in several different forms (including the much maligned baking ingredient lard), quite a bit of chocolate, booze, loads of sugar and white flour, salt... I very nearly substituted part of the sour cream with mayonnaise. (Maybe next time...) Because chocolate cake was never meant to be health food.

    * 5 Eggs--seperated
    * 1 c Sugar
    * 2/3 c Lard
    * 2 1/2 c Sifted cake flour
    * 1 1/2 additional c Sugar
    * 1 heaping tsp Baking powder
    * 1 heaping tsp Salt
    * 1 1/2 c sour cream
    * 8 oz good quality semi sweet chocolate (melted and cooled)
    * 2 oz good quality bourbon, like Maker's Mark
    * 1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Beat egg whites till frothy. Gradually beat in 1 cup sugar. Continue beating till glossy with soft peaks. In another bowl, cream remaining sugar and lard. Add sifted dry ingredients and half of sour cream. Stir to moisten dry ingredients; then beat 1 minute, medium speed on mixer. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl constantly. Add remaining sour cream, egg yolks, bourbon, vanilla and cooled, melted chocolate. Beat 1 minute, scraping bowl constantly. Fold in egg whites. Pour into 3 greased and floured 8-inch round layer cake pans. Bake in moderate oven at 350 F. for 30 to 35 minutes.

Twinkie Filling
**double the recipe if you are making cupcakes or if you like loads of filling

    * 1 c. milk
    * 4 tbsp. flour
    * 1 c. butter, softened
    * 1 c. sugar
    * 1/4 tsp. salt
    * 1 tsp. vanilla, or preferably the "caviar" from the inside of 1 vanilla bean (substitute 1 tsp Grand Marnier if you like orange)

Beat milk and flour and cook on low until thick. Cool completely. Cream butter until relatively fluffy. Add sugar and salt. Beat 5 minutes more. Add filling and beat 10 minutes. Filling should have the consistency of twinky or ding dong filling. Add vanilla or Gran Marnier. Incorporate well. Spread between layers of cake.

Dark Chocolate Glaze
    * 4 oz melted, cooled semi sweet chocolate
    * 1/4 c half and half
    * 1 tbsp butter
    * 1/4 tsp salt

Stir over very low heat in sauce pan until glossy and smooth. Pour over filled cake.
Eat warm or chilled. Nice with a lovely blackberry sauce and a glass of port.

New Obsessive Issue 2

for your perusing...
Featuring many sexy avant garde articles, artsy flights of fancy, and my article on proper BBQ etiquette
click here

Video Footage from Recent Show

Sexual Proclivities of the Minutemen

This isn't a political statement. These circa 1976-ish decorative prints cried out for pervy modification. Plus Tom keeps asking me when I'm doing another dildo picture.

Acrylic on vintage American bourgeois art.

furries... wow.