RIP: Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly with his painting “1994 Untitled (Say Goodbye Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor),” at the Menil Collection in Houston in 2005.

According to Randy Kennedy of the NY Times:

Cy Twombly, whose spare, childlike scribbles and poetic engagement with antiquity left him stubbornly out of step with the movements of postwar American art even as he became one of the era’s most important painters, died on Tuesday in Rome. He was 83.

His death was announced by the Gagosian Gallery, which represents his work. Mr. Twombly had battled cancer for several years.

In a career that slyly subverted Abstract Expressionism, toyed briefly with Minimalism, seemed barely to acknowledge Pop art and anticipated some of the concerns of Conceptualism, Mr. Twombly was a divisive artist almost from the start. The curator Kirk Varnedoe, on the occasion of a 1994 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, wrote that his work was “influential among artists, discomfiting to many critics and truculently difficult not just for a broad public, but for sophisticated initiates of postwar art as well.”

The critic Robert Hughes called him “the Third Man, a shadowy figure, beside that vivid duumvirate of his friends Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.”

Mr. Twombly’s decision to settle permanently in southern Italy in 1957 as the art world shifted decisively in the other direction, from Europe to New York, was only the most symbolic of his idiosyncrasies. He avoided publicity throughout his life and mostly ignored his critics, who questioned constantly whether his work deserved a place at the forefront of 20th century abstraction, though he lived long enough to see it arrive there. It didn’t help that his paintings, because of their surface complexity and whirlwinds of tiny detail — scratches, erasures, drips, penciled fragments of Italian and classical verse amid scrawled phalluses and buttocks — lost much of their power in reproduction…

Read the full article here

Check out a slideshow essay about Twombly’s work here

See more of Twombly’s work here (paintings) and here (sculpture)

“Solon I” – 1952

“Untitled” – 1954

“Untitled” – 1970

“Ferragosto I” – 1961

“Ides of March” – 1962

“School of Athens” – 1962

“Hero and Leander (To Christopher Marlowe)” – 1985

“Lepanto” – 2001

See more of Twombly’s work here (paintings) and here (sculpture)

RIP: Gil Scott-Heron

According to Alec Wilkinson of the New Yorker:

Gil Scott-Heron, who died late Friday at the age of sixty-two, was among the very first musicians to understand the power of declamatory singing, of holding forth above a line of percussion and blending words into the rhythmic peaks and recessive contours of beats. He did not discover this, he heard the Last Poets do it, but he used their form to his own purposes and produced singular and scornfully brilliant observations such as “Whitey on the Moon,” and “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” which sound as vital and scornfully brilliant now as they did when he recorded them nearly forty years ago. The more cerebral rap and hip-hop artists knew his work the way British blues aspirants such as Eric Clapton and Keith Richards and Mick Jagger knew the work of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.

Read the full article here

Watch the video for “Me and the Devil” from Heron’s 2010 album I’m New Here

Below we’ve embedded the first part of a Gil Scott-Heron documentary entitled The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The film was directed by Don Letts in 1996 for BBC television and features commentaries from Chuck D, Mos Def, Richie Havens, Clive Davis and more. Links to the other three parts are below the video.

Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

RIP: Poly Styrene

X-Ray Spex frontwoman Poly Styrene passed away last night from breast cancer. According to her Twitter account, “We can confirm that the beautiful Poly Styrene, who has been a true fighter, won her battle on Monday evening to go to higher places.” She was 53.

Via AllMusic:

Patti Smith may get a great deal more credit as the godmother of punk, but the archetype for modern-day feminist punk should really be traced to Poly Styrene, leader of first-wave London punk legends X-Ray Spex. Styrene was undoubtedly one of the least conventional frontpersons in rock history, male or female — a chubby, half-white/half-Somalian teenager who still wore braces, not to mention a loud Dayglo wardrobe. She sang in a raw, untutored scream that quavered and shook when she looked to extend her range, a vocal style echoed by riot grrrls like Kathleen Hanna and Corin Tucker. Witty and intelligent, she attacked corporations, consumerism, and artificiality with a winning sense of humor. Mixed feelings about her time in the public eye helped lead to a quick exit from the music business, but her place in punk history was already secure.

Poly Styrene was born Marion Elliot in London, and formed X-Ray Spex in 1976, after seeing a Sex Pistols gig and deciding she could do that too. Their debut single, “Oh Bondage, Up Yours,” became a punk rallying cry, and single-handedly anticipated the riot grrrl movement of the ’90s. One year after the highly acclaimed full-length Germ Free Adolescents appeared in 1978, X-Ray Spex disbanded. Styrene went out on her own and released her solo debut, Translucence, on United Artists in 1980. Jazzier and subtler than her work with X-Ray Spex, the album threw some fans for a loop, but won critical praise all the same. Even less predictable was Styrene’s next move: not long after Translucence, she quit music to join the Hare Krishnas, which perhaps made sense in hindsight given their lack of concern for the material world that Styrene so often railed against in her music. She resurfaced briefly in 1986 with an EP for the Awesome label titled God’s & Goddesses [sic], and also contributed Krishna chants to a Dream Academy track in 1990. In 1995, she reunited X-Ray Spex for a second album, Conscious Consumer. Recorded with her daughter Celeste Bell, the “Black Christmas” single appeared in time for 2010’s holiday season. Styrene’s Generation Indigo album was released a year later along with its electro-pop single “Virtual Boyfriend.”

RIP: Nate Dogg

One of the most distinct voices of the G-funk era in hip-hop, rapper Nate Dogg, passed away yesterday, March 15th, the rapper’s family confirmed to the Hollywood Reporter.

Nate Dogg contributed to over 40 chart-topping singles in his brief lifetime.

RIP: Claude Chabrol

Via The Guardian:

The world of French cinema is in mourning for one of its greatest and most prolific directors, Claude Chabrol, who died [Sunday, September 12, 2010] aged 80.

One of the founding fathers of the New Wave of French film, Chabrol was best known for his masterful suspense thrillers, subversive female roles and stinging critiques of the bourgeoisie. His first work, Le Beau Serge, was released in 1958 and he made more than 80 films, his last – a murder mystery starring Gérard Depardieu – released last year.

In the wake of his death, announced with no further details by a cultural official at Paris city hall, tributes poured in, both professional and personal. Speaking on French radio, Depardieu said: “Claude was joie de vivre itself. I cannot bring myself to believe he has gone. At no moment did he speak of death.”

Chabrol, whose career began amid the creative boom that was French cinema in the late 50s and 60s, continued to make films long after the initial excitement of the Nouvelle Vague, adapting his style and themes according to the changing times. He remained fascinated with psychological tensions and inspired by class restlessness, often making unsettlingly dark films that contrasted with his real-life public image as a genial bon vivant.

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