Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- It’s Monday, so that means we’re back in the world of Santiago Cohen whose Ex Vida has been occupying our blog. This is a beautifully drawn and painted autobiography Santiago has produced.

To see prior parts of this post:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Needless to say, you have to enlarge the frames to properly appreciate the brilliance of this work. As they say on the street, check it out.

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- Santiago Cohen has created a beautiful, autobiographical epic artwork for us all to share. We’ve seen the first three parts and continue onward, today, to Part 4.

To see prior parts of this post:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

I encourage you to take your time with it and enlarge the images. They’re all little gems that sparkle with and against the story.

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Following part 1 of last week, I continue with the autobiographical strip of Santiago Cohen as he tells the story of his arrival in America. It’s an epic work of art.

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- At a recent event, I was sitting with a couple of other artists and we bagan talking about Santiago Cohen. Here’s one of the greats on the New York scene, and it seems as though he went from super success to silence. We all were hoping something would happen, if only so that we could see more art.

When I returned from my short vacation, I was surprised to find an email from Santiago. He offered to send me part of a piece he was working on to get my thoughts. It’s an illustrated biographical notebook. And, as expected it’s stunning. I received the first couple hundred pages, and I asked Santiago if I could post it. He said yes, so here we go.

It’s appropriate that this piece should start today, Columbus Day. It’ll continue for a while. I’ll break it into parts, all about 40 pages, where it seems unobtrusive. This is “Art” with a capital “A” in the making, from Santiago. It’d make an incredible film.

Let us know what you think.

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More next Monday.

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Recently, I posted a number of B&W caricatures by David Levine. They came from the book I featured, The Arts of David Levine. As promised, these are the color plates from the book which feature Levine’s paintings.

Thanks to Bill Peckmann for sending the images.

As I mentioned in the first post, I think these paintings raise Levine’s work to first class art.

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This particular painting reminds me
of the work of Joseph Hirsch.

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- The magnificence of William Wyler‘s film, The Best Years of Our Lives, cannot be overstated. To me, it’s a near-perfect movie. The direction, the script, the cast, the cinematography and the music all done by masters at their peaks blends into an extraordinary film.

When I was 11, this film was about to start on The Late Show, a local CBS late night movie that began at 11:15pm. My father asked me if I wanted to stay up to watch it. He said it was one of the all-time greats. Now, I have to admit I didn’t always agree with what he felt were the all-time greats, but I stayed. Within ten minutes, I was in tears as the three military men return to Boone City, their small home town. The cab drives by the many small stores and houses in the area, and little more than the sight of these passing buildings wells the tears in your eyes as you feel what these three guys are feeling. That Wyler would have accomplished so much emotion in so short a time is extraordinary.

I stayed with the 2½ hr. film, even though my father fell asleep hours before the end. He was right, it was an all-time great. I’ve since seen the film at least 50 more times. In the past two months, I’ve spent a lot of time at home, recovering from an operation, and have seen many, many movies over that time. Last night, TCM aired it again (the second time in the last two weeks) for Memorial Day. I was pulled into it again, and I’m happy for it.

Wyler, it seems, had absolute patience for long self-explaining scenes. He gave characters plenty of time to pause and think, and their thoughts register fully and loudly to us. It’s amazing business that today’s films (and probably their audience) cannot sit still to watch. With this film, you can see how much you’re missing in that impatience.

The photography by the great Gregg Toland has to be second only to his work on Citizen Kane. The deep focus imagery is used to pull strong emotion and tell the story more simply. As Homer (Harold Russell) and Butch (Hoagy Carmichael) play chopsticks in the foreground, we’re watching Fred (Dana Andrews) make a desperate and sad phone call far in the distance of the bar. While Homer and Wilma marry to the right of the screen, Fred, in the foreground, is watching Peggy (Teresa Wright) in the distance. There are those scenes of Fred walking among the detritus of the Air Force as hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of fighter planes line up for destruction.

Hugo Friedhofer was a great arranger and song writer. His score for this film stands out as one of the great scores of all time. It carries you through the movie and strengthens the work of every other brilliant craftsman who worked on it. The music is brilliant.

I can’t say enough about this film. It’s Memorial Day, and writing about it gives me a chance to mention the holiday. But I’m certainly honoring what I feel is one of the great films of my life. I hope all of you have, at least, seen it once. If not I urge that you do. I doubt you’ll ever see the likes of it made today.

Photo by Steve Fisher
Remember the troops for Memorial Day.

- For quite a few years now, maybe 30 or so, I’ve been an enormous fan of the caricature paintings/illustrations of Philip Burke. I first came to know his work in the magazine section of the NY Daily News way back when I lived in my parents’ home. They religiously bought the paper, and Burke’s illustrations graced this magazine weekly. I don’t believe his style at the time was quite as violent as it is today – he found that just as he left the News and moved into the larger world.

He was also working weekly in the Village Voice with beautiful pen and ink sketches that alone were enough reason to buy that paper. There was a sharp influence from the work being done by Ralph Steadman without any hint of imitation.

In the 1980s he moved over to Vanity Fair and that’s when the oil painted caricatures just blossomed. The colors were outrageous and wholly his view of the world. Somehow it always seemed appropriate for the celebrities, politicians and rock stars to be colored so garishly.

He’s been lauded by just about everyone, so I’m not about to say anything that hasn’t been already recorded. I’ve meant to write my thoughts on his work for some time, so this is long overdue. It’s just that his artwork has been front and center for me for so long, that it’s one of those rarely discussed treasures that have been sitting in the corner of my eye for most of my adult life. I find his work brilliant.

Burke works out of Buffalo, New York. There are a couple of pieces he seems to have done as a quick draw artist painting in public. Particularly noted is one of Chuck Mangione he painted on a bench as part of a fund raising event for Nazareth College.

I’d spent a couple of hours this weekend just sorting through a lot of his work on-line. From the site set up at L.B. Madison Gallery to the caricatures at the NYObserver to the great post of vintage Burke posted by fellow artist, Stephen Kroninger at Drawger.

From these random posts I’ve pulled a bunch of images that I’d love to share with you. If you have any thoughts of purchasing lithographs of any of these, many are available at the L.B. Madison FIne Art Gallery, and I’d recommend you take a look there.

I’ll start with this image of Ralph Steadman from the Village Voice.
I pulled this from the Drawger site.

Here are a couple of news anchors, Anderson Cooper and George Stephanopolis –
the most current image from the latest edition of the National Observer.
Most of the rest of these images are at the L.B.Madison Gallery.

Two absolutely beautiful portraits include these of comedians
Tom Hanks and Bill Murray. There’s so much more in their faces than caricature.

He tackles Antonin Scalia and the other four
Conservatives who are sitting on the Supreme Court.

It’s always interesting to see how a caricaturist
keeps returning to the same subject.

Multiple pictures of Obama would be a necessity for a political cartoonist.

Woody Allen is also expected several times when working in NYC.
What isn’t expected is the variety with which Burke views his subject.

The remains of the Beatles appeared in ROLLING STONE . . .

as did Bob Dylan.

Sean Penn and John Travolta are also masterful in their simplicity.

While Ethan Hawke is turned inside out as a revelatory portrait.

The late Frank Sinatra

Let me end with this brilliant portrait of Alexander Haig from
the Village Voice in the 1970s. Haig died this past week.
Also from Drawger.
There’s also another post at Drawger – More Burke.
I suggest you check out this post, the line work is exhilerating.

- I was pretty proud of the New York animation community. There was a full turnout for the Yurij Norshtein show on Monday night. All of the key people one hoped would show up, did show up. I was surprised at the many familiar faces in attendance: Amid Amidi, Richard O’Connor, John Dilworth, John Canemaker, Emily Hubley, the Rauch brothers, the Kraus brothers, Biljana Labovic, Jeremiah Dickey, Howard Beckerman, Matt Clinton, David Levy . . . the list goes on.
Norshtein and Reeves Lehman, dean of animation at SVA
And it was appropriate for him to
have a good turnout. Norshtein is the height of “Art” in animation, and he’s a beacon for us all. If ever one gave everything to the creation and forward movement of the artform, this guy is it. He’s been working on his film adaptation of Gogol’s The Overcoat for the past 25 years or so. He screened roughly 13 minutes of the film broken into two parts. Both were screened in silent B&W.

The first part was the opening 10 mins of the film. Throngs of shoppers and passersby in the snow on a crowded Moscow street. All I could think of was the enormous number of cutout parts for all these people, just to assemble one image of the film. Yet they were animated and the sequence was long. One guy did all the construction of those characters, all the animation, all the movement. How in hell did he keep each of those many people and parts of people in his head so that he knew how they moved? No computer assistance to help, only his brain. And to top it off the camera, with all those planes, is moving as well. It’s an extraordinary feat.

Then the lead character enters and we see what he sees – not the crowds but the writing in his head. He’s a lowly scrivener, a copyist; someone who spends his day copying documents. Obviously, he can’t remove the work and the words from his mind, though the world he walks in is filled with distraction.

From these street scenes he goes home to an extended sequence of warming himself up and eating a small bowl of soup. The character motion and development is all open to us in this incredible scene wherein we enter the tiny physical, introverted world of this man.

The final three minutes show him realizing how worn his overcoat has become. Threadbare doesn’t begin to describe it as his fingers easily poke through the fabric again, and again. When he puts the coat over his head, fibers end up in his mouth.

A long, very long display of character. All B&W and silent. It’s going to be another masterpiece from this brilliant artist. All done by hand by him on a complex and large camera set up. One person controlling all the pieces.

The Heron and the Crane and Hedgehog in the Fog were screened from the Jove dvd. Most of the evening was Norshtein answering questions. (There was a bit of an onstage struggle between two interpreters, during the opening segments, with the stronger interpreter doing duty for most of the event.) He took the dumbest of questions and turned them into answers we always wanted to hear. A question from a young girl about what his favorite animated films turned into a list of expected films that I was not surprised to hear: Night on Bald Mountain Disney, Crac Back, There Once Was a Dog Nazarov, and he admitted that it’s a list that’s constantly changing. He also spoke of recently watching a print of Bambi frame-by-frame on an editing machine. He said it was a film that has enormous beauty in every frame, in it’s backgrounds and layout, as well as in its whole as a film.

During his answering questions he spoke articulately to us about everything from animation to great painters to great authors. I have to say that I can’t remember any other ASIFA meeting where the “young” Michelangelo or Velazquez were discussed, nevermind Chekhov and Proust. In the past week, I’ve attended a number of Oscar parties – one for James Cameron, one for Quentin Tarantino, one for Sandra Bullock. If there’s a celebrity in New York, I’ve had a chance to meet them. I’d trade them all for that evening with Norshtein at that little SVA theater.

After the screening, they were selling photo prints in the lobby, signed by Norshtein. I bought two hoping in some small way to support him on this trip. They also serve as souvenir reminders to me that I have to be more of an artist in my own work.

You can read more details by Dayna Gonzalez about the event at the ASIFAEast newsletter.

And Richard O’Connor offers a collection of notes and quotes from the evening to his blog for Asterisk Animation.

- For some reason, whenever I step out into a newly snowed-upon setting, I feel obligated to take a picture. Consequently, I fill up the nearby Sunday Photo blog with snowy settings. Sorry about that.

It snowed this week. Not as heavily as they threatened on the newscasts, but it was heavy enough. (Right up to an hour before it ended, Al Roker was still forecasting 15 inches. We only had about 6.)
Regardless, it was white.

Memories of my first photography assignment in college – shoot white-on-white pictures – came rushing back. I didn’t aim for the white-on-white, but white was enough.

My first sight of 30th St. after entering the outdoor snowfest.

Park Avenue looking downtown from 30th St 6:30am.

Park Avenue bicycle rack.

My pictures were boring enough that I won’t get too tedious on you. But my friend, Steve Fisher, knows what to do with a camera, and he sent me some great stills, shot in Queens, that I have to share.

OK, let’s bring it back to Manhattan. Madison Square Park has had an art installation displayed for some time now. By sculptor, Mel Kendrick, Markers went up in September last year, but I wasn’t inspired enough to take pictures though it’s obviously monumental enough. It was supposed to have been removed at the end of December.

Now standing in snow, it looks different. The blacks look about 70% gray against the snow. Here it is. The writing comes from the official commentary by the Park.

Mel Kendrick – “Markers”

Kendrick’s Markers are cast in alternating layers of black and white concrete, resulting in bold striation that alludes to the layered stone found in Italian Gothic Cathedrals.

Standing over ten feet tall, the commanding scale of these sculptures echoes the grandeur of their home on the Oval lawn at the center of historic Madison Square Park.

By the way, HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY

My most embarrassing moment

- There was a news story that was in all the papers yesterday. A woman visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with a study group, accidentally tripped and slammed into a Picasso painting tearing a hole in the lower right hand corner of the painting. They’ve determined that it can be repaired without too much pain, and it will most likely not be noticeable.

I’m sure that woman has gone through a small bit of hell since Friday. Lucky her, she’ll always be reminded of the incident every time she visits the Met. I know this because a similar thing happened to me many years ago.

I was a freshman in college. The teacher took the class, about 20 students to the Met to look at a small group of paintings. Like most dumb freshman, I was laughing and joking with friends on the periphery of the group, ignoring the teacher.

She had gathered the class in a corner around a small Rembrandt. I realized that it was time to stop fooling around and get in there to hear what the teacher was telling the class. I saw an opening against the wall and thought I could maneuver my way to the front.

Well, there was an opening because there was a small platform to keep visitors away from the painting. I didn’t see it and tripped.
I grabbed the first thing I could to prevent me from falling – the Rembrandt.

It was hanging by two wires, and I had a hand on each side of the painting winging back and forth. It prevented my fall, but it took a split second for me to realize what I was doing. Guards came running. The entire class, including the teacher, were aghast. I quickly let go. The painting continued to swing left to right and back again.

The Rembrandt to the (Right) wasn’t the painting I grabbed, but it looked not too different in my memory; it was a portrait. (I’ve completely blocked out the name of the actual painting.)

I didn’t rip anything but a hole in my brain that remains with me every time I go near the Met. So . . . I know what that poor woman felt, though her damage was quite a bit greater. She ripped a Picasso canvas; I just tested the wires that hung the Rembrandt. Luckily for me, they held up.