Political Art: King Sisyphus In the Underworld

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a tyrant king who killed visitors as arbitrary demonstrations of his power, a violation of the sacred traditions of hospitality. Hades, god of the dead and king of the Underworld, condemned Sisyphus to roll a huge boulder endlessly up a steep hill in the Underworld. The boulder would always roll away from Sisyphus before he reached the top, consigning him to unending frustration at the futility of his efforts as a punishment for his crimes and hubris.

Apropos of the historic moment of the November 5, 2024, United States elections, I’m reposting this painting from 2019 of a miserable creature caught in his own private hell. In the way Percy Shelley’s poem Ozymandias has outlived the ancient monarch in its title, I hope that this painting of the myth of Sisyphus outlives the miserable creature I used as reference for it.

Political Art: Frog Soup

Continuing my re-post of overtly political art in the run-up to the November 5, 2024 election:
Frog Soup 11 x 11-inch acrylic painting on primed illustration board mounted on wood cradle.

Yes, I know the frogs-in-the-pot story is an urban myth. Yet it's still a great visual metaphor for the state of public awareness regarding the boiling hot water in.

In a special report in BioScience The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth a consortium of climate scientists state, “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.”

They're alarmed to the point of panic - note the words "irreversible" "global emergency" and "unpredictable" about the rapid changes all across the Earth — far beyond the nastiest predictions of even a few years ago: the approaching collapse of the Atlantic Ocean’s currents; acceleration of warming beyond previous forecasts; shocking decline in wildlife populations; burning down of the Amazonian and Australian rain forests, etcetera ad nauseam.

The mainstream media gives superficial lip service to "climate change", yet avoids and downplays the brutal severity of what is happening all around us, critical news impacting our immediate future, our children’s future, and that of most life on Earth. You would hardly know we're in the process of killing every wild organism on the planet, converting the biosphere into a sterile, technocratic monoculture that will no longer support complex life, including human beings.

Remember: As POTUS, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords. Do you believe the billionaire tech bros who back Trump / Vance - the Elon Musks, Peter Thiels, Larry Ellisons, etc. - will lead the corporate pivot to sustainable practices that don't fit with their model of financial and political gain?

Political Art: Pretty In Pink

'Pretty In Pink' is a 16x20-inch pastel painting I made in outrage over the Trump administration's policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. It's based on current migrant detention camps at that border. I'm continuing to post my overtly political art in the run up to the November 5, 2024 election. If Trump and the authors of Project 2025 have their way, it won't only be illegal immigrants subject to mass deportation behind fences like these.

Even before Trump was elected in 2016 I knew he was fascist when a Latino man was assaulted at a 2015 campaign rally, Trump did nothing to stop it. In later rallies, he incited his followers to "rough up" protesters. Today he continues to use the language of violence and authoritarianism. Yet back in 2015 the use of "fascist" as a descriptor was deemed in the press and oh-so-polite society as extreme, overly emotional, and hyperbolic. Now in 2024, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley (ret.) called Trump "fascist to the core". How could the pundits and commentators be so late in realizing this?

Hermann Göring (or Goering) was the #2 Nazi behind Hitler. At his 1946 trial at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity, he not only attempted to justify his actions but stated how easy it was to manipulate people based on fear of "the Other", Jews, Communists, Romas, etc., a sentiment proven in the present day by Fox News and other instruments of disinformation.

The uniforms of the Nazi SS, the Schutzstaffel-Black Corps-Deaths Head Corps ad nauseam, were intended to intimidate, instill shock and awe with their appearance. If not for their ability to inflict destruction and misery, such men and those who admire them are pathetic and ridiculous individuals.

Political Art: Neue Sturmabteilung

Neue Sturmabteilung (New Storm Troopers) 12x9-in. ink and watercolor

I’m reposting from 2020 a mash-up of a 1930s Weimar era brownshirts recruiting poster and their contemporary wannabees.

Who were the SA? The Storm Troopers were recruited from economically suffering poor, disaffected workers and disgruntled veterans. They wore cheap surplus home guard uniforms from which came their “brownshirts” moniker. However, they had no official function on any level of the German government. They provided security for Nazi rallies, waged brawls with opponents of the Nazis, and intimidated Romanis, trade unionists, and Jews while legitimate authorities and ordinary citizens turned a blind eye. In short, the SA were street thugs in uniform, taking an active part in book burnings and other murderous atrocities like the Kristallnacht riot against Jewish-owned shops and synagogues.

In exchange for German military support and to eliminate his rivals in the Nazi movement, Hitler had his elite bodyguard unit, the Schutzstaffel (SS) murder the SA leadership. SA units that remained loyal to him were downsized or simply absorbed into the military. There's a lesson here for those who would pledge loyalty to a man who is loyal to none but himself.

What does brownshirt tactics look like in the present day? First, let’s not forget January 6, 2021. How about plotting to kidnap a Michigan governor; calling in bomb threats to the city of Springfield to intimidate Haitian immigrants; make death threats to county election officials and judges trying to do their jobs? Or, a Portage County sheriff instructing his deputies to note as immigrant sympathizers citizens who put up Harris-Walz campaign signs in their yards? Or, as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warn, domestic violent extremists (DVEs) with “election-related grievances” turning to violence in the weeks before and after the November election?

Remember that the Republican candidate for President stated that among the brownshirts of today are “some very fine people”.

Political Art: 451 Degree Fahrenheit

Last week was Banned Books Week, and in the run-up to the November 5, 2024 U.S. Election I'm reposting another of my blatantly political artworks, "451 Degree Fahrenheit". It's a 24x30 inch charcoal, acrylic, and collage mixed media painting last exhibited at the Pacific Grove Public Library in January of this year.

The deliberate spread of disinformation is not new, but with new information technology and AI, the ability to transmit it in volume, speed, and intensity is. A recent NPR RadioLab referenced the work of Synon Orale, a professor at MIT whose team did research on how information spreads on Twitter (now X). He was terrified to learn that lies and falsehood travel six times faster than truth to reach the same number of people.

Add to this that largely Republican state organizations are now actively working to suppress the facts and ideas in books that allow the citizens of our republic - and their children - to learn from the past and envision the future.

According to PEN America, since 2021 they've counted over 10,000 books banned in public schools - including for the July 2023-June 2024 school year. The states of Texas and Florida are leading the censorship charge."And everywhere, it is the books that have long fought for a place on the shelf that are being targeted. Books by authors of color, by LGBTQ+ authors, by women. Books about racism, sexuality, gender, history."

The books I referenced in this painting are among the most banned books of 2023, though for brevity I couldn't include every book on that list. Interesting to note that comparing this list with the most banned books of all time in the U.S., books by Toni Morrison are on both lists. I read many of these books in grade and high school during the 1960s and 1970s. Maybe you did also. Some of the schools I attended were pretty conservative, yet some of these books were required reading in those schools. Well, middle and high schoolers are being denied access to them today.

1984 - George Orwell

Maus - Art Spiegelman (a graphic novel about the Holocaust banned by the McMinn County school board in Tennessee)

Flamer - Mike Curato

Lord of the Flies - William Golding

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

and lastly, alluded to in my painting's title

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

In this painting, I made allusions to the German Student Union (Hitler Youth) book burnings in Nazi Germany, 1950s U.S. State Department-sanctioned book burnings during the Cold War, and a Tennessee pastor's congregation's burning of Harry Potter books. You might even find a rubber-booted governor portrayed somewhere among the jack-booted Nazis.

No books were harmed in the making of this painting, although I've discovered through experimentation that if you heat paper in a skillet to almost combustion temperature (451 degrees F.) it really stinks up the joint.

Political Art: Portrait of Konrad Heiden

My general approach has been to paint and draw images more subtle in their political and psychological implications. However, there are times when subtlety is inappropriate to the urgency of the day and a two-by-four-to-the-head approach is necessary. I’ll be posting my political art in the six weeks preceding a historical election in the United States that will determine if we remain for now a democratic republic.

Konrad Heiden was a Munich-born journalist who authored three books that eventually combined into "Der Fuhrer", a definitive documentation of the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party. He first witnessed Hitler at a Nazi rally in 1921. As a university student, Heiden was a member of the Social Democratic Party, whose members engaged in protests and street fights with a growing Nazi movement. He witnessed first-hand scenes strikingly familiar in the political landscape today: disillusioned, disgruntled veterans and middle-class young men all too eager to hear a charismatic, mentally unbalanced demagogue promise to "Make Germany great again", who assigned blame for Germany's economic woes on a demonized Other: Jews, communists, Romani gypsies, and soon after that “homosexuals” “the congenitally deficient" "racially inferior" and "subhuman".

Even more alarming was the acquiescence of much of the German population, who elected the Nazi party to the majority in the German Parliament. Conservative representatives of industry, agriculture, and finance demanded that Hindenburg, the President of Germany appoint Hitler as Chancellor, which occurred on January 30, 1933. In fear for his life, Heiden was forced to flee into exile at that point.

Even then, there was unfounded confidence that a Germany proud of "freedom of speech and thought" had sufficient guardrails to prevent dictatorial rule by a "mediocre" copy of Mussolini. As Konrad Heiden and history were to show, they were wrong. Do Americans hold the same illusions today?

"Portrait of Konrad Heiden" is a 20 x 16 pastel painting I created in September 2018 that references two events:

1) Hitler's March 23, 1933 address to the German Parliament. The Reichstag would grant his request for emergency dictatorial powers, only for him to dissolve it soon after.

2) February 27, 2017 address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress by then-President Donald Trump, another mediocre copy of Mussolini.

E. M. Corpus Artworks at 480 Lighthouse Gallery

Attention all collectors and lovers of art:

Three of my paintings are now available for purchase and your viewing pleasure at this newly opened gallery in Pacific Grove, California:

Tunnel
Persephone In the Springtime
Are You An Angel? (An Encounter With Non-Locality).

At ten thousand square feet this gallery is the largest on the Monterey Peninsula.

Where: 480 Lighthouse Gallery
480 Lighthouse Avenue
Pacific Grove CA 93950

help@480Lighthouse.com

(831) 915-7848

Open Tuesday through Sunday 11 AM to 3 PM. Closed Mondays and holidays.

E. M. Corpus’ The Yellow-Haired Girl in New Ekphrastic Book

Edward M Corpus (that’s me, by the way ) is one of fifteen visual artists plus twenty honorable mentions whose featured art served as inspiration for one hundred thirty works of poetry and prose in Vision and Verse: A Fusion of Poetry, Prose, Art and Photography. The front cover painting is by Briahn Kelly-Brennan.

This gorgeous book edited by poet Les Bernstein was just published this July by the California Writers Club, one of the nation’s oldest professional writers’ clubs. Our local chapter of the CWC is the Central Coast Writers Association, of which I’m also a member. Several Monterey area writers contributed poetry and prose to this book.

Longtime followers of my visual art may recognize this submission to the ekphrastic collection, The Yellow-Haired Girl on page 40 of Vision and Verse. Poets Jim Wolff, Mary Langer Thompson and Roger Lubeck contributed poetry and prose inspired by my painting.

“Ekphrasis” is a literary description or commentary on a visual work of art. It’s a word of Eighteenth Century origin for an ancient literary practice, Homer’s Iliad being an early example containing ekphrastic references.

Vision and Verse: A Fusion of Poetry, Prose, Art and Photography is available for purchase on Amazon.

Arts Council of Monterey County Grant Enables "Boomers" Portrait Project

Beginning this month and over the next twelve-month period I’ll seek out, interview and photograph a dozen or so members of a specific group of Monterey County residents. This will be the prelude to painting their portraits and writing their biographical essays. Qualified residents who volunteer for my project are those born between the years of 1946 and 1964 - in other words Baby Boomers, the generation born in the immediate wake of World War II. Project participants will represent diverse ethnicities, cultural traditions, gender orientations and socio-economic backgrounds. These portraits, along with the corresponding biographical essays I write will be the subject of a public art exhibition a year from now.

Through a generous grant from the Arts Council of Monterey County my project Boomers of Monterey County will allow me to apply my unique visual style to portraits of an aging demographic that represents nearly a quarter of the U.S. population – a demographic in which I also belong. At a time where “Boomer” is a word some consider an epithet, I design this project to convey to that subject population that “You matter. You matter to the well-being of this country, to history and to me. You deserve to be seen and heard.” The project serves as a retrospective for those of us within that demographic, and as visual reminders of the commonalities shared with younger folk as well as the unique challenges those of our generation face. I’ll also explore through this project the ethics of portraiture, the implied vulnerability versus empowerment of the person who gazes as opposed to the one who is “seen”, the historical traditional portrait-painter power imbalances and how this relates to gender and class.

The magical realist surreal portraits I paint will be unlike what one might imagine of commissioned formal portraits in which the posed sitter is the clear the subject of the portrait. The Boomers of Monterey County project does not simply document the physical likeness of someone at a given point in that person’s life passage. My portrait paintings are undeniably as much about my perception of another and the personal choices I make to graphically render what I observe. As I believe is the case with all art, a portrait painting is ultimately a three-way conversation among the minds of sitter, artist and ultimately the viewers of the portraits at any given time in history.

I will offer Boomer volunteers a small monetary compensation - that’s right, the artist is paying the portrait subjects. Participants will sign model releases allowing me to take as many photographs as necessary to capture the candid expressions of their emotional and intellectual engagement with me in conversation about their lives. However, while these photographs serve solely as my visual references. I’m not aiming toward strict photographic likenesses in their painted portraits.

As a departure from my usual acrylic painting styles, this time I envision mixing different media, rendering their portraits with collage, acrylic, oil and spray paints. I’ll paint this new series of portraits in as new, experimental and bold a visual style as the way I now feel, rendering as tightly or as loosely, as literally or as fantastically as my interpretation of the sitters and their environment dictate. I would like these new portraits to be as much a revelatory surprise to me as they’ll be to my sitters and the public viewing them. I anticipate this creative art project could be the most challenging for me to date in many ways.

If you’re a member of the Baby Boomer generation and are interested in possibly participating in this project over the next twelve month period, I would gratefully invite you to contact me immediately at info@edwardmcorpus.art; and If you haven’t as yet done so, please sign up for my Art of Dreams newsletter to keep abreast of the project and upcoming exhibitions.

Grateful to Receive Arts Council for Monterey County 2023 Artist Grant!

I am honored to be among the twenty-two emerging and established artists receiving the Arts Council for Monterey County Individual Artist Grant for 2023.

"The Individual Artists Grant program was created to recognize artistic excellence, provide direct support to artists who demonstrate they are ready to take their work to a new level, and cultivate public appreciation of the role of artists in our community."

My fellow artists recognized:

JC Gonzalez
Joe Angel-Toledo
Katie Raquel
Omar Rodriguez
Andrew Jackson
Salvador Sergio Lua
Darlene Von Maschmeyer
Lee Abellana
Katie Herzog
Katrina Pura
Hanif Panni
Jess Marie Soriano
Michelle Djokic
Alejandro Gomez
Victoria Donahue
Antoine Cameron
Lori Bala
Jessica Bovert
Noelle Correia
Mai Ryuno
Mark Baer

Short statements by these artists including mine can be seen on the Arts Council website and on YouTube.

I’ll be posting details of my Boomers of Monterey County portrait and biographical essay project in subsequent posts, along with an open invitation to all who qualify and wish to participate. This generous and timely grant funding will allow me to purchase new artistic media and apply experimental techniques that will push my creative work to new directions.

Once again, a heartfelt thank you to Arts Council of Monterey County and grant jurors.

This Website Has a New URL and Email Address

My website portfolio and blog now has a new URL - edwardmcorpus.art - and my new contact and newsletter email address info@edwardmcorpus.art .

Longtime followers can remember how as late as last week the website URL was “emcanimator.com”. (Clicking on the old URL will automatically re-direct to the new one, at least for a year.) This old URL dates back some twelve years to Great Recession days, when I was a student of graphic design and animation. I thought at that time that digital animation would figure much more heavily in my career choices, hence "emc-animator".

I still love digital art and animation. I enjoy viewing classic animation old and new - and continue to use animation and 3D applications on occasion. My (hopefully) last day job was in graphic design. My graphic applications are incredibly useful for visualizing concepts that eventually evolve into the paintings and drawings I execute in wet and dry media like oil, acrylics, watercolor, charcoal and whatnot. You can still view some of my animations work - including the 2011 Outstanding Vision award-winning Capstone video Multiforme: A Digital Animation About Brain Cancer - on vimeo.com/emcorpusgraphicarts.

However, my emphasis has always been on my magical realist paintings and drawings. I decided to change the URL that my artwork had outgrown a while ago to the more apropos and timely edwardmcorpus.art.

Taking an Art-making Break

…for some much-needed art-seeing.

I visited several of the fifteen galleries all located in the Minnesota Street Project building in San Francisco. Work by the Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is featured at the Bitforms Gallery's EXCUSE YOU! exhibit here. Here I am standing in his Bilateral Time Slicer.

His explanation of how it works:

"A biometric tracking system finds an individual's axis of symmetry using facial-detection software. When the axis is found, the computer splits the live camera image into two slices, to be

displayed in a vertical orientation. With each new participant, time slices are recorded, then pushed aside. When no one is viewing the artwork, the slices close in and rejoin, creating a procession of past recordings. The piece is inspired by time-lapse sculptures and masks found in ancient traditions—Aztec three-faced mask, the avatars of Vishnu, for example—and modern and contemporary art—Duchamp, Balla, Minujín, Schatz, and Kanemaki, among others. Like in the tradition of the Aztec three-faced mask, the central strip corresponds to the younger, most recent portrait, whereas the farthest ones on the sides represents the oldest portrait."

The thought just occurred to me, though, that this is a computerized version of a funhouse mirror.

2023 Got Off to a Rocky Start

2023’s art began with weeks of overthinking and a mess of a false start, which came grinding to a halt when I abandoned a painting for the first time in three years. This ever happen to you?

It’s kind of like the way life’s been until now.

It took a weekend of breathing deep and slow - and going out to enjoy other people's art - to get reinspired.

Fired up with new ideas and a fresher outlook I restarted from scratch with a tighter composition, flipping 'The Witch' onto its short side and painting it over in chromatic blacks.

The good news is that the last time I abandoned a painting I restarted it. A little over a year later it became Rose Room. No guarantee this new painting is going to work out and be forewarned - it's possibly the strangest work I've ever done - but I'm liking it better each day.

Kind of like the way life is - starting now.

A Riff on Joy and Pain

On February 4 this past week, one Harry Whittington died at the age of ninety-five. Seventeen years ago Whittington’s Warholian fifteen minutes of fame received a literal shot in the arm when he was actually shot in the face – and elsewhere - by our illustrious then-Vice President, Dick Cheney.

It’s not my intent here to rehash the dubious circumstances of the so-called quail-hunting accident, or the fully loaded satiric ridicule to which Cheney was subjected except to say it was the shot heard ‘round the world.

The recent mention of Whittington in news media evoked memories of my own guilty indulgence in schadenfreude, at the time repeatedly listening to Cheney’s Got a Gun, Bob Rivers’ parody of the Aerosmith song. In fact, I just brought it up on YouTube and listened to it again. It’s an excellent parody. Rivers sufficiently nails Steven Tyler’s hard rock singing style to make it work.

The triggering of memories didn’t stop there, though. Dick Cheney and his weapon of mass destruction was forgotten as I felt an urge to revisit another Aerosmith music video, one I hadn’t listened to in many years, Amazing.

Call it my state of mind, but the song called out to me - a rock and roll anthem evoking not hilarity and schadenfreude but the tearful emergence into the light from the dark spaces I’ve lately been.

It's amazing.
With the blink of an eye, you finally see the light.

Sure, the graphics are dated and cheesy by today’s CGI standards; but they’re not the point, at least not for me.

The video depicts teen lovers, their lips passionately engaged and limbs entwined atop a motorcycle careening full tilt on roads and through space, feats of raw abandon only safely accomplished in fantastic virtual reality settings.

It evoked for me the poignant emotions of loneliness and longing; remembrances of the heady flight through time and space that is romantic love; the melancholy of adult knowing that such love doesn’t last; that things change and come to an end; but also, as Tyler entones at the end of the song, 'remember: the light at the end of the tunnel may be you.'

It's amazing.
When the moment arrives that you know you'll be alright.
It's amazing.
And I'm sayin' a prayer for the desperate hearts tonight.

This is the function of art, this being an instance of the evocation of thought and emotion that the best art of any kind can do. Sometimes even bad art can do it - if the humanity of the artist somehow connects with that of the experiencer of the art; that is, to connect with the light at the end of the tunnel. Or, to be the light oneself.

Will this evocation and mood last? Will this just be another dated rock song in my mind later?

Life's a journey, not a destination,
And I just can't tell just what tomorrow brings.

All I can say about life right now is, it’s amazing. And I’m saying a prayer for all desperate hearts tonight.

Darren Braun, photographer
Leslie Baldwin, photo editor
T. J. Tucker, Art director
Cover for the Bum Steer edition
of Texas Monthly

Addressing Toxic Masculinity and Patriarchal Culture Through Art

A recent newsletter essay by author and journalist Daniel Pinchbeck alerted me to the online Twitter duel between environmental activist Greta Thunberg and misogynist right wing media provocateur - and now alleged human trafficker and rapist - Andrew Tate. To my reading Pinchbeck attempts to address the toxic masculinity espoused by men such as Tate as a lightning rod obscuring rather than enlightening communication regarding the existential threat of climate emergency.

I’d like to speak about an urgent cultural issue that I believe Pinchbeck fails to address, one that I attempt to address and subvert through my visual art and writing. We know and acknowledge that dominant patriarchal culture oppresses women. I’m speaking specifically to that same dominant patriarchal culture’s oppression of young boys, a culture that from an early age engenders toxic masculinity. Boys grow up – in a manner of speaking – to be young men. We as a society need to address the larger cultural problem if we’re to correct what I call the blood curse of toxic masculinity and allow men to actually grow up instead of becoming the emotionally stunted individuals that Tate and incel* culture represent.

If you find following popular trends in the news as generally distasteful as I do, I’ll briefly bring you up to speed on what I learned only recently myself about this character. A former professional kickboxer, Tate has been banned from various media platforms including Twitter for his online screeds advocating male dominance and “putting women in their place” more or less explicitly by violence. What should be to no one’s surprise, on taking ownership of Twitter Elon Musk reinstated Tate’s account. Tate apparently is widely followed by the predominantly white and male right wing, and has also developed into a hero for the incel* crowd.

In a Twitter rant this past Wednesday December 28, 2022 that I can only categorize as batshit, Tate addressed environmental activist Greta Thunberg to brag about eating pizza from non-recycled pizza boxes and his ownership of thirty-three cars. With barely veiled lewdness he proposed that Thunberg give him her email address, so “I can send you a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions”.

Greta’s appropriate and devastating one-line Tweet: “Yes, please enlighten me. Email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com”.

Metaphorically shooting himself in the foot by posting an online image of himself with those pizza boxes apparently alerted police to Tate’s current whereabouts in Romania. The following day he and his brother were arrested under suspicion of involvement in an international human trafficking organization and alleged rape. As I stated in a recent blog post, I quit Twitter soon after Musk acquired it. I don’t anticipate ever going back and so haven’t followed on subsequent Twitter reactions, except that after Tate’s arrest Thunberg trolled him over those pizza boxes.

From my artist’s statement:

“Patriarchy at its core is the first inequality, a hierarchical structure that emphasizes male dominance, cutthroat competition and rejection of women’s equality. Fear of “the Other” is manipulated to impose further layers of inequality, demonizing ethnicities, religions, gender identifications and economic standing other than one’s own. Patriarchy ultimately oppresses all peoples, men and women. My images combined with written words intend to expose and subvert the cultures of inequality.”

On the days that I attended my recent solo art exhibition I observed viewer reactions to my acrylic painting The Boy In the Mirror. It’s not a rigorous scientific survey, but the reactions seemed evenly divided between those genuinely fascinated enough to gaze awhile or interested enough to speak with me about its’ “meaning” and those who quickly glanced and walked on by.

I contend that the violence implicit in toxic masculinity is embedded in current culture. A male child is unavoidably born into it. I subscribe to the sentiment expressed by former NFL athlete, pastor and educator Joe Ehrmann in the Representation Project’s film documentary The Mask You Live In that “the three scariest words you can say to a young boy is ‘Be a man’”. Ehrmann disavows what he learned from his father as a young boy, that dominance and control is what is means to ‘be a man’ and that real men “don’t feel, don’t want, don’t need”.

One male visitor visiting the gallery where I exhibited told me he believed my painting was about one young man who was insecure about his manhood; and that he (the viewer) had no such insecurity, making the painting not relevant to him. While one surely can view the representations in my painting The Boy In the Mirror from the standpoint of gender dysphoria, this is only one of a number of valid interpretations.

I’d emphasize that I’m not addressing a “gay” versus “straight” issue here, but a culturally embedded trauma that every boy faces in greater or lesser degrees. I like to characterize this as a cultural blood curse that’s passed down generationally until those men who have the good fortune to acquire some level of awareness derail its trajectory.

There are unavoidable rites of passage that every boy in this society must undergo. Whether these are introduced by unaware parents and primary caregivers, surely they’re introduced and reinforced on the nation’s playgrounds and schoolyards. Not every boy navigates these rites of passage with “success” – as success is measured in this society – and a boy fails these rites at his social and often physical peril. Unfortunately, “success” often results in a man’s inability to know and experience love, let alone express it to a woman - and surely not to other men.

I was unable to begin confronting the origins of rage and fear in my own life until well into the fifth decade of my life. Behaviors that enabled me to survive childhood and adolescent bullying no longer served me as an adult, resulting in two failed relationships, an inability to make and keep friends and the alienation of those around me. Only desperate loneliness impelled me to reach out for help. Reaching out for help is something men are taught from boyhood that they’re not to do. “Man up” and “cowboy up” are two of the watchwords for this. As Ehrmann says of his childhood experience, “Don’t feel. Don’t want. Don’t need.” Success - until that success leads to addictions, self-harm, social ruin and suicide.

Among other individuals and therapeutic modalities I can thank the programs of the Breakthrough Men’s Community, and not only for helping to shape new behaviors in me. Learning such new behaviors is crucial without a doubt in becoming a better spouse, lover, family member and friend to women. Concurrently I had to begin addressing the root unresolved traumas incurred in boyhood that made me hate myself. If a boy does not learn what is lovable about himself, his eventual hatred and self loathing will leave him incapable of truly loving others in the deepest and most satisfying ways – other women and other men. I would add for Daniel Pinchbeck’s benefit that also leaves a man incapable of loving the natural world of which he is part and leaves him open to becoming a climate crisis denier instead.

I believe that such programs as Breakthrough, initially crafted over years by Fred Jealous and drawing from the conceptual advances of feminism, should be models for the educational process of boys from an early age. It’s also the basis for a continuing community environment that reinforces and validates new behaviors.

Education and re-education of this kind that subverts the culture of patriarchy is also the basis of pulling men from the toxicity that grips the incels, Tates, Trumps and Musks of this world. This is a topic I’ll revisit often in my writing and visual art. I welcome your thoughts.

*For the uninitiated, the incel community is an online and offline subculture of men, predominantly young and self-identified as heterosexual who desire to attract women for sexual relations but are unable to do so. Because of their inability they express misogynistic hostility towards women, often in violent terms. Incel is an abbreviation for “involuntarily celibate”. The trend has existed since at least the 1990s, but has been more recently picked up as a cause by more generally aggrieved, entitled, radically conservative, and predominantly white men threatened by changing gender diversity and tolerance.

Twitter No More

After graduating in graphic design back in 2011 I opened a Twitter account, along with other social media like Instagram. I’ve heard that some creatives such as artists and writers found the social media useful professionally and for reaching a wider audience. Activists and ordinary citizens have also used it as a means of alternative communication in authoritarian countries where they reside. Sadly though, Twitter is also used as a vehicle for hate mongering and the spread of misinformation. I had difficulty warming up to it, never quite learning how to use it effectively. Pretty much neglecting my account in the past two years, I just returned in the last few weeks to promote my solo exhibit. But now, Musk. tRump. I appreciate the few who followed my account; but most of those will connect with me elsewhere and probably already do as I say, ‘Goodbye, Twitter’.

#givethebirdthebird

Amsterdam: My First Movie Review (WARNING: No spoilers, just opinion ahead)

Karen brought to my attention that she really wanted to see the movie Amsterdam. It was produced and directed by David O. Russell, with an ensemble cast led by Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington. The word “quirky” is sometimes used to describe some movies. “Quirky” appeals to me. The use of this word in movie reviews often intrigues me enough to suspend all judgment; so one evening last week we headed over to the neighborhood theatre to watch it.

If I feel movie reviews may bias my thinking I’ll abstain from reading them until after I’ve seen the movie; yet sometimes I read movie reviews beforehand, as I did with Amsterdam. Yes, the movie bombed at the box office. Yes, it’s lost the studio well over ninety-seven million. Well, I loved the movie, critics be damned.

I’ve learned over the years that reviews and box office popularity one way or the other do not guarantee for me either my enjoyment of a movie or my evaluation of its worth as art. This is especially true of movies reviewed by American audiences, which tend to favor “high concept” movies – i.e., movies that don’t have convoluted plots or require viewers to do too much intellectual heavy lifting.

The protagonists witness a murder, become suspects themselves and uncover a dastardly plot in attempting to clear their names. This is a common movie plot trope. Amsterdam is also characterized as a romantic comedy. I tend to dislike common tropes as tired and clichéd, and romantic comedies don’t usually interest me. Despite these misgivings I recognize that every genre of story has been done before. The creative aspect of writing, filming or even visual art such as mine is that the story that’s been told before has to be told again uniquely. I especially like it when they’re “quirky”.

Since teen years when I first took a course in cinema, I’ve been a movie buff from the standpoint of cinema as art form. I view as artists the actors, writers, directors, cinematographers, costumers, music composers, editors and most of the crews involved in making movies - some better or worse, but artists. I often check beforehand who’s involved in particular movies, including who’s producing. Movie production is a financial investment. Are the producers invested in making thoughtful, thought-provoking and beautiful art; or does does their track record bespeak of their simply wanting to make money off a blockbusting common denominator crowd-pleaser?

Since it is a box office bomb Amsterdam won’t be in the theatre much longer. It may be gone by the time I post this. I‘d recommend rushing out to see it before it’s gone, or surely have a view when it comes out on DVD or available to stream.

That’s it for my review of the movie itself - except for one last thing the reviewers I’ve read haven’t yet mentioned: this film set in the period between World War I and the 1930s has immediate political relevance that may lead me to dismiss its detractors as MAGA Republicans. Hint: it involves a plot to overthrow a legally elected president.

Robert De Niro’s character, U. S. Army veteran General Gill Dillenbeck, is based on the real-life U.S. Marine General Smedley Butler. During the end of the film Amsterdam, a clip of Dillenbeck speaking before the congressional committee is played alongside footage of Butler's actual testimony, revealing it to be the same speech.

(photo in the public domain)

Additionally though, in contrast to the Amsterdam movie we found enjoyable, we had another theater experience we found distasteful. Prior to the feature screening, our senses were assaulted by the most god-awful previews of movies to come, one loathsome trailer after another.

If you’re not into “quirky”, or convoluted plots that force you to pay attention to details, or thoughtful, thought-provoking acting by an ensemble cast; if on the contrary you’re into loud explosions, bullets flying, fists-slamming-into-faces action and over-the-top assaults on all your senses, then maybe you might want to see Violent Night, and you might want to pen a complaint about how you hated Amsterdam. Violent Night was followed by previews for John Wick (the fourth installment in the franchise), and the Super Mario Brothers movie.

In my Artist’s Statement I make the observation:

“Much of what passes for popular culture today is devoid of ideas. Digital technology has increasingly enabled spectacular sensual experiences of sight and sound in popular entertainment. Over successive generations this sensory bombardment contributes to inducing attention deficiency in large sectors of the population. Sensation without ideas over four decades contributes to numbing and dumbing down the population to intellectual shallowness - and often to emotional cruelty. Large sectors of the population become desensitized to the pathos of social injustice and to the hydra of existential threats facing our civilization and planet.”

In this context the arts and entertainment bandwagon I’m seeing artists jump on lately is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications in creating visual art works. Stay tuned, as I’ll weigh in on this at some point soon.

By the way, Violent Night is being billed as a “Christmas fantasy black comedy action movie”. A team of mercenaries versus Santa Claus. I can’t imagine from the preview anyone bringing kids to see this when it’s released before Christmas. Well, on the other hand unfortunately I can.

The New emcanimator.com Website is Live!

Eleven years ago I first built and launched my website as an online portfolio to display my art. I was newly graduated from California State University Monterey Bay then, and the oldest geek in Information Technology and Communications Design’s class of 2011. My former CSUMB classes in web design served me well, enabling me to go beyond the first site I built in Yahoo! Geocities. (Does anyone remember Geocities? This was back in time before Content Management Systems, back when building and maintaining websites was still fun for me.)

Using the WordPress CMS I pretty much on my own built and maintained that original website over the next decade. My 2011 site was hosted by Monterey Bay Design, the web design and development company run by the talented Deborah Ryder. A lot of proverbial water has passed under the bridge since then, in history, technology, social culture - and in professional and personal life. One thing I was never able to do in that time was to configure my site for e-commerce. But the time had come for that to change, and I needed help. There was a lot of “back end” work to be done that was way beyond my capabilities; and frankly, for me that kind of stuff wasn’t fun any longer. I’d rather be making art - and promoting my art to those who might want to see it hanging on their walls (well, that ‘promoting’ bit’s another story…)

Building an e-commerce enabled website doesn’t come cheaply. It wasn’t an easy decision for one like me who had sworn to quit day jobs forever and strike out on my own as an independent fine artist. But I decided not so much to spend money as to invest in the future of E. M. Corpus Graphic and Fine Art. I was confident in the steady and reliable service of a decade with Monterey Bay Design. Deborah was sensitive to my professional needs and financial constraints - and she’s highly competent in what she does.

We started at the end of July 2022, then worked through most of August. My painting time at the easel languished during this period. While Deborah did her magic, I was busy re-sizing and uploading high resolution images, tweaking texts, wrangling with new web hosting, print-on-demand and financial services, and on and on. If you need a web designer and developer, Deborah’s the one to see at Monterey Bay Design.

Well, it’s here. As of Thursday the new emcanimator.com is up-and-running: The site is fully ADA compliant, and its enhanced data and privacy security meets all U.S. and EU standards. I can easily (and I promise more frequently) post opinionated rants on my blog and respond to your comments. You can safely and securely purchase fine art works online, and through an interface with Fine Art America order a wide variety of prints. You can sign up for the Art of Subversive Dreams newsletter, and although I’d love for you to speak to me directly, you can can always send me a message from the site.

So, what do you think?

Karen Warwick Art at The Cherry

Several of my friends and fellow artists are participating in the "Face It: Artists' Portraits" exhibit at the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts, located at 4th and Guadalupe in Carmel-By-the-Sea, California.

My dear wife and closest collaborator Karen Warwick is participating there also with her  painting Song of Artemis. If you're unable to visit the Monterey Bay area, you can view the exhibit online at the link above. Please visit Karen's website to view her other work.

The Cherry is open Wednesday to Friday, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and Saturday 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm. I hope you'll get to see them all. The "Face It" exhibit runs through Saturday, February 19, 2022. A closing reception is scheduled for between 1 and 3 PM. Come and meet the exhibit artists; and I'll be there, too.

What's Up For 2022?

Christmas 2021 has come and gone; and 2022 is a few days away. Here’s a preview of upcoming changes.

This E. M. Corpus Graphic and Fine Arts website that I initiated nearly a decade ago is now long-in-the-tooth. Ten years. Can you believe that? I can hardly myself. The website is due for a major overhaul on both the front and back ends.

The “front end” is what you see on your screen, the images you see, the buttons and links you click. The “back end” is all the coding that makes things happen when you click. It’s been a long time since I did back end web design. I’ve concentrated on developing my skills in visual art. My back end design skills haven’t kept up; so I’m going to leave that stuff to my excellent web services provider at Monterey Bay Design.

As I stated in my previous post, I’ll be actively blogging more than ever. Art follows life – and vice versa. At least that’s a goal of culturally subversive art – to influence everyday life towards the sublime and self-aware. I’ll be documenting the day-to-day downsides to the creative life, as well as the upsides. No ivory towers to this artist’s life: I’m affected by Covid-19, climate change, weather, environment, economic and political foolery as much as anyone else. I’m also inspired and awed by the beauty around me living on the California central coast. Either way, the writing could get raw and personal -- as it should.

Also as stated previously, awkward as it is to market both fine art and graphic art together, I’ll be doing just that as well as combining the visual image with the written word. Perhaps I’ll create another website gallery for my graphic output. Perhaps I’ll consolidate the galleries I have now.

With a larger studio space in 2021 I began to paint larger works than I was able previously. I’ll have a solo gallery exhibition in November 2022. While that may seem nearly another year away for most, for me this means producing more large work to fill that gallery, starting well before yesterday.

Finally, I need to actively search for new venues for the kind of art I produce that may not fit in well with the landscapes and seascapes this area is known for. Will 2022 be a bust-out year for me professionally and commercially? I have positive expectations.

Anyone out that there have ideas on these? I’d love to hear from you. Please comment below or drop me a line.