Look, See

Zen Arcade 1-4

 

 

Zen Arcade 1-4, 2004, HTML, dimensions variable (view full HTML version, 197kb)
1 (top left): 594 x 575; 2 (top right): 555 x 574; 3 (bottom left): 500 x 580; 4 (bottom right): 500 x 660

I finished a series a few days ago, Black/Red, and in writing about the series a number of ideas about those drawings and my choices and non-choices emerged; Zen Arcade is in part a reaction to myself:

1. I used some of the usual tricks: overlap, transparency, non-alignment for subtle tension...
   
   I thought about how I avoid these tricks sometimes, and don't do tons of gradation because these effects seem like illustration to me, which in Zen Arcade I decided to push an extreme. Why? De Kooning said in the late 40's that at one point it felt absurd to paint the figure and so tended towards abstraction, but then the more he thought about it it suddenly seemed absurd not to paint the figure. Sometimes you just think, "why not?"

2. "There is nothing immediately specific about what the drawings are based on..."
   
   Not the case here; these are about a mid-80's double LP by post-Punk, speed metal, emotionally skeptical but still romantic, wailing middle-American left, small-urban electric poets Husker Du (or something like that) from Minneapolis. I knew that from the beginning.

3. I've been partial to smaller drawings lately, tending towards vertical rectangles, so I let myself go with a fairly familiar format of 12 x 10 cells, 20 x 20 pixels each...
   
   Big format, differently-sized cells, tables within tables... see, I can work "big," too.

4. I let the vertical orientation take over, and didn't sweat it if just about every drawing had gravity.
   
   This time went for horizontal, but there's still that gravitational pull... that's hard to get away from.

5. I used two effects I don't often use - shadow and lots of color gradation; I've avoided these as they too easily veer into illustration, but for this series I indulged myself in these effects just to see what would happen. The world didn't end.
   
   I pushed these further in the last four days, and the world is still spinning even as I type this.

6. In only one or two other drawing series have I made pairs of drawings on a single day; usually I do one drawing a day. With this series I wanted to work through more ideas more quickly and in smaller chunks.
   
   Back to the single drawing for this series; they're too big, too time-consuming to do more than one a day. Still, lots to work through, but in bigger chunks.

7. I had no idea this would turn into thirty two drawings, although a series of sixteen days isn't untypical..
   
   I knew this would go exactly four days, one drawing for each side of two LPs.

Additional thoughts:

1. The color pretty obviously refers to the album cover.
2. I briefly considered doing a drawing for each of the twenty three songs, but drawings of this size and complexity are too much right now for my "one a day" methodology.
3. The central figures in each drawing are important.
4. The reflection of the two figures on the wet ground are important.
5. The stacked crushed cars are important.
6. I don't know why I didn't do square drawings, the dimensions of an album jacket.
7. I still have the LPs, bought in 1984, fresh from release, which I played to death.
8. Have have it on CD for several years
9. Recently required three CDs of bootleeged studio recordings from the Zen Arcade sessions.
10. Have to admit my ears can't now take as much of this kind of noise as it could twenty years ago.
11. This and the Minutemen's Double Nickles on a Dime are my mid-80's soundtrack.

Amazon.com essential recording
Even when this Minneapolis trio dabbled in familiar sounds, such as the strummed folk of "Never Talking to You Again" or the Bo Diddley-style R&B of "Hare Krsna," what came out on this swirling 1984 double album was clenched, emotional, and intense. Over 23 short songs that helped define the still-thriving punk subgenre known as hardcore, leaders Grant Hart and Bob Mould screamed their alienation in the fastest language they could possibly produce. Though Mould is the more personal songwriter, lashing out at liars and (presumably) lovers, both Hüsker heads come up with psycho-depression choruses like "What's going on inside my head?" --Steve Knopper

Amazon.com
They didn't yet have terms like "alternative rock" when Minneapolis's Husker Du made their mark as one of the 1980's most influential bands. With two skilled songwriters--guitarist Bob Mould and drummer Grant Hart--the genre-bending trio (bassist Greg Norton completed the lineup) juxtaposed hardcore punk speed and aggression with pop-leaning melodies. Add their uniformly thoughtful, introspective lyrics, and you've got this stunning 1984 double-length release, a semi-concept album...

 

 

 

 

Look, See Category Compilations

 

 

Eveyday when I post an entry I use a feature in Moveable Type called Categories, which allows me to assign to each entry one or more labels so that archives of posts by category are automatically generated. Although I've faithfully and fortunately assigned a category each day during the life of this weblog I've pretty much ignored the category archives. But they're there, and I didn't have to do anything to make these compilations besides assigning a category each day. So, here they are, the five most commonly used categories:

• All HTML drawings, 2004 (huge!)


• All HTML drawings series comilations, 2004


• All art writing, 2004


• All 2004 art objects, 2004


• All old art objects

Now, there's the problem of which category to assign to this post?

 

 

 

 

Zen Arcade, Side 4

 

 

Zen Arcade, Side 4, 2004, HTML, 500 x 660 pixels

 

 

 

 

Zen Arcade, Side 3

 

 

Zen Arcade, Side 3, 2004, HTML, 500 x 580 pixels

 

 

 

 

Zen Arcade, Side 2