Sunday, November 15, 2020

Saturday, November 14, 2020

Pop book

This page deals with my identity as a pop artist. I have been a pop artist for a long time, as you can see from the xerox-art pop productions in the post below this, but I am coming to a point where I'm beginning to think about that identity and wonder if I should do anything about it.

The present phase has lasted about a year, and could be described as Kandiskian impressionism. I have been taking pictures of mountain roads, and altering them in an impressionistic way, and I've been doing this mostly for the purpose of promoting Cloud Quakers. To see some of these Kandiskian impressionistic photos, go here and you'll get a kind of gallery of Quaker promotional pop.

But it's the big picture I've been mulling over. There was a posterization phase which was quite extensive (it's called cartoon on my present photo-altering program) and there have been other phases. In a time when I am changing computers, getting out of this one and putting things in another one, and in my wife's dropbox, it is time to do an overview.

And that brings up the possibility of a pop book. It is said that I should use Lulu for this, but I'm not sure if this would be best. I am also mulling over what shape it should be, or whether I even should do it.

Just to tell a quick story: My father was an excellent photogrpaher. He went through phases where he tried to sell iit, I've been told, but when I pushed him on the issue he was very ambivalent. I'll make you a book, I told him before he died. You should have a book of photography. Actually I still feel this way: he should have a book. Someone should document his incredible career in putting reality into beautiful design. ANd now, I seem to have inherited his life work - not so much a box of slides, but just an image, in my head, of his design ability and how it should be played out in book form. It's in my head; all the work is yet to be done. But I haven't done it. Why? Because of his ambivalence. It might be that he really didn't want fame or even a reputation as a photographer. And, as I satand on that cusp, I'm working on the same questions. Is it worth the work for something I'm ambivalent about getting in the first place?

I see now that on the #popart hashtag, Andy Warhol is back. Somebody is putting three or four posts a day on there, Marilyn, everything he does. They are reminding us, basically, that Warhol is still selling like cupcakes so to speak, and you can still buy as much as you want. Warhol in fact is the belwether (sp?) of the entire art world, I've heard, because he was so prolific and because his work fetches consistently good prices every time it becomes available. OK so I'm not a Warhol yet. But the only other person on that hashtag is Rauschenberg (actively promoting himself) and the market is wide open. I could do it; I could put my own pop up there. All that remains is fro me to do the work.