Art and Literature in the News in a Post-11/8 World

updated 1/162017 2:54pm

Do you feel you are living in some bizarre parallel universe? Is your head spinning, your anxiety spiking? Are you starting to worry you’re on a watchlist because you’ve signed so many petitions?  Are you breathlessly hoping that Penthouse gets the sex tape, that certain people have massive heart attacks, or that you’ll wake up and realize it’s all been a bad dream? Is everything in your life, including art, taking a back seat to politics?

You’re not alone!

In an attempt to aggregate and categorize some of the overwhelming noise, I’m going to focus in on items from the week’s political news that tie directly into the arts.

Right on cue Saturday morning, Trump took the bait and attacked civil rights leader John Lewis in a series of tweets after Lewis said he didn’t think Trump’s presidency was legitimate. (The completely tone-deaf-on-race Trump then cancelled his MLK Day visit to the national African American Museum!) As a result, the Washington Post is reporting that Lewis’s books are selling like hotcakes.

Earlier this year, Lewis won the National Book Award for Volume Three of his powerful graphic novel, March. Click here to read my post: MARCH: National Book Award Winner Reminds Us that Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Freedom. The boxed set is temporarily out-of-stock on Amazon, but many new and used ones are available from third-party sellers.

Long time friend and mentor Jesse Kornbluth has an article in today’s Buzzfeed: Before the Gold Rush: How Angelo Donghia Tried (and Failed) to Make Trump Tower Tasteful. Jesse gives us the low-down on how “Trump took Donghia’s subtle, sophisticated approach and turned it into his version of a showplace — a sunglasses-required vulgarity that Tony Montana and Saddam Hussein would envy.”

We also get the scoop on why the Trumps didn’t buy Andy Warhol’s eight silkscreens  of Trump Tower (talk about a bad business decision!) -- the work wasn’t color-coordinated with their “Versailles in the sky.”

Click here to read the full article

Christo. Running Fences (Project for the West Coast of 
USA). Collage, 1972

Artist Luis Camnitzer has started a tongue-in-cheek petition to commission Christo with an orange fence that separates the US from Mexico. Camnitzer states “though only 24.5 miles long then [Running Fences, 1976], in full-length 

today it would transform a racist project into a public art event, and help improve the image of the U.S. with a cultural veneer.” 

Click here to sign the petition

Suzanne Valadon, “Nude Doing Her 
Hair,” ca. 1916. 

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is inviting visitors to Washington DC for the Inauguration and the Women’s March  to “celebrate the ‘nasty women’ who blazed trails.” They will be leading an hour long Nasty Women tour that pays tribute to women who thrived as professionals despite social norms that would keep them from it. The museum is open free to the public on January 21-22. 

Click here for more

Update: Thanks to reader Susan Englert for alerting me to this Kickstarter Campaign: We the People: public art for the inauguration and beyond. Artists Shepard Fairey, Ernesto Yerena, and Jessica Sabogal, have collaborated with photographers to create a series of images that capture the shared humanity of our diverse America. They need your help to get the posters printed and distributed on a massive scale in time for the Inauguration. 

Click here for more 


As as self-avowed nerd who has spent much of her life with her nose in a book, I was overjoyed to see this article in today’s New York Times: Obama’s Secret to Surviving the White House Years: Books. We are SO going to miss Obama! 

Click here to read the full article

I’d like to wrap things up with a little humor – something we’re going to need a lot of in the days and weeks to come:

Two Announcements and Two Visually Stunning Books

Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday and didn’t over-eat as much as I did! 

I want to start the new year off with a couple of announcements.

First, you may have noticed that the name of this blog has changed to Jane Chafin: Offramp. The name references the gallery I used to run, Offramp Gallery; has a decidedly Southern California twist, and allows me to broaden the scope of topics that I cover.

In particular, I want to know what artists are saying and doing about our ongoing national political crisis. You may have read that some artists want their work off of Ivanka Trump’s walls. Another group has founded RESIST!, a free 40-page tabloid newspaper and website of political comics and graphics by mostly female artists. Another group of well-known artists is calling for a J20Art Strike for arts organizations to close on inauguration day in protest against “the normalisation of Trumpism.”

The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones thinks these protests from the artistic elite, including last night’s speech by Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes, will have little effect on the dangers we are facing. Click here to see what he has to say.

Let me know what you’re doing to resist, vent and/or survive and I will periodically report on it. You can email me at janechafinsblog@gmail.com. Maybe you don't think there is a crisis. Let me know about that too.

The second big announcement is that Jane Chafin: Offramp will now be cross-posted exclusively on Artillery Magazine, the LA based alternative art magazine that refers to itself as “killer text on art.” Be sure to check them out. I am very excited to join their growing roster of writers, critics and bloggers.

This week I want to write about a pair of lavishly illustrated coffee table books, both recent releases from Phaidon Press: Patterns: Inside the Design Library and Plant: Exploring the Botanical World.

Patterns: Inside the Design Library is a handsomely designed book divided into three sections, each of different paper widths, stepping down from the front cover to the back cover. 

The first section is about the Design Library itself which housed in a 12,000 square foot loft in a converted 1907 fabric mill in New York’s Hudson Valley. There are more than seven million antique, vintage, modern and contemporary textiles and swatches, painted patterns, wallpapers, embroideries, yarn dyes, pattern books and productions records of important mills, dating from the 1750s to the present housed at the library.

The second section is an A to Z (Abstract to Zigzag) sampling of images from the library. The Design Library organizes its collection into four main families of design – Floral, Geometric, Ethnic and Conversational. Those four categories then are broken down into more than 1200 subcategories. Among those sampled in the book are Distressed, Frou-Frou, Oberkampf, Paisley and Neon (pictured below). 

left: Printed fabric. 20th Century. Studio Staron or Gourdon. France. right: Hand-painted silk fabric. Late 20th century. France. From Patterns: Inside the Design Library, Phaidon Press, 2016.

Part three of the book is about “creatives” who work with the Design Library, including Colefax and Fowler, Oscar de la Renta, Pottery Barn and others.

This beautiful book is a visual feast and endless source of inspiration for anyone interested in surface design. Kosmos, the library’s growing digital collection is accessed by subscription only (you can apply to set up an account here). Access to the library itself is business to business only at present, but president Richard Weissman tells me they are considering adding a public access day at some point in the future. I'll keep you posted.

Click here to purchase Patterns on Amazon.com.

I have always been fascinated by encyclopedias, curiosity cabinets, illustrated zoological catalogs and herbariums. Plant: Exploring the Botanical World fits the bill as it brings together more than 300 images of botanical works from throughout art history and from all over the world and arranges them in complementary or contrasting pairs to create thought-provoking juxtapositions.

For example: Yayoi Kusama’s 2011 black and white acrylic painting Heart Flowers is juxtaposed with Iwasaki Tsunemasa’s 1920’s woodblock print and manuscript on paper, Papaver somniferum depicting opium poppies; Imogen Cunningham’s 1925 silver gelatin print, Magnolia Blossom appears across the page from Mayumi Hashi’s 2008 watercolor, Magnolia sieboldii; a 1546 wood engraving of lavender is paired with Ted Kinsman’s 2014 color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of a cannabis plant.

Each artwork is accompanied by lively, informative, text. An herbarium sheet of pressed flowers put together by 14-year-old Emily Dickinson is accompanied by text that reads in part: “The flowers reflected her lifelong fascination with death: by drying and preserving them, she granted them immortality. She wrote to a friend: ‘Did you ever know that a flower, once withered and freshened again, becomes an immortal flower, - that is, that it rises again?’”

left: Solanum dulcamara (woody nightshade), from Poisonous Plants: Deadly, Dangerous and Suspect, 1927. Wood engraving, 16.2 x 12.9 cm. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington. right: Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, 1932. Oil on canvas, 121.9 x 101.6 cm. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. From Phaidon Press, Plant: Exloring the Botanical World, 2016.

A glossary of terms and selected biographies are also included. You’re guaranteed many pleasant hours of browsing and discovery.

Click here to purchase Plant from Amazon.com

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays in a World Gone Mad,
digital image by the author

Thanks for the overwhelming response to last week’s post about the Oakland Ghost Ship tragedy. It went viral on FaceBook and received 5000+ hits. I have no way to know how many of you donated to the victims of the fire, but kudos to those who did.

Click here to donate to the Fire Relief Fund for Victims of Ghostship Fire.

The petition to help save the Santa Fe Art Colony in Los Angeles has gone from 148 to 803 supporters since I posted last week. Let's keep it going!

Click here to sign the Change.org petition to help save the Santa Fe Art Colony.

I’m taking a couple of weeks off, but I’ll be back in January.

Meanwhile, have a wonderful holiday!

My Thoughts on the Oakland Ghost Ship Fire and the Plight of Artists in our Society

I had a case of writer’s block this week. I just couldn’t get going on the two beautiful coffee table books I was going to write about. There was something bubbling just below the surface and it took me until this morning to tap into it. This blog is about art, literature, creativity and the gentle souls who are called to a life in the arts -- people whose contributions generally go unrewarded, unrecognized, and are even disparaged or ridiculed. Thirty-six (and counting) of those souls perished this week in the horrific tragedy of the Oakland Ghost Ship Fire.

Photo of interior of Oakland Ghost Ship from Oakland Ghost Ship tumblr page

Often branded as flakes, losers or slackers, these are courageous people who turn their backs on corporate life, the slow death that a 9-5 job represents to them and the comforts that a regular paycheck bring. They live authentic lives and sacrifice greatly to do so. Instead of being rewarded for their bravery and the work that enhances all of our lives, they are forced to live marginally, often in dangerous environments.

I’ve never been to the Ghost Ship and I don’t know anyone who has perished or is missing, but I have been one of them, know many like them, and have spent time in those environments. The Ghost Ship was a rich labyrinth of repurposed furniture, art, kilims, hanging lanterns, speakers, guitars, clocks, turntables, old pianos and pipe organs, scrap wood railings, impromptu sleeping lofts and intimate seating areas, ideal for long languorous conversation – in short, a greenhouse for creativity.

This should not have been a place where so much vibrant young life was extinguished.

Click here to see photographs of the Oakland Ghost Ship before the fire.

Click here to donate to the Fire Relief Fund for Victims of Ghostship Fire.

We all know, or should know, the role that artists play in revitalizing down-trodden neighborhoods. Artists go to those neighborhoods because it’s the only way they can afford to live and do the work they are compelled to do. After much hard work and sacrifice by artists, the neighborhoods suddenly become fashionable. Shops, restaurants and hipsters follow -- and inevitably the artists who breathed new life into these neighborhoods are forced out in search of affordable and often unsafe digs.

Case in point is the Santa Fe Art Colony in Downtown LA. Funded by the Community Reinvestment Act, the Colony has provided rent-restricted live/work space to artists for 30 years in what was an industrial no-man’s-land. Now the area is booming with high-end art galleries, shops, restaurants and there is construction everywhere. Sadly, the CRA restrictions are due to end soon at the Santa Fe Colony. The rent increases will force many of the artists out.

Click here to sign a Change.org petition to help save the Santa Fe Art Colony.

I often felt conflicted as director of a commercial art gallery. My heart was always with the artists, and I was uncomfortable in my role as go-between with collectors. Offramp Gallery wasn’t selling art at huge prices, and most of our collectors were good people who understood the circumstances of the artists. But there were those, one in particular (you know who you are), who relished trying to get that price down another five or ten percent, even while sitting in the artist’s humble studio, oblivious, salivating at the bargain he was taking away to his new mansion in Pacific Palisades.

Another way artists are being regularly exploited is by being asked to donate works for auctions. They're already living at the poverty level, and then are asked to give their work away to raise money for various causes. It should be a standard practice for artists to receive a percentage of the proceeds (kudos to organizations that are already doing this), instead of donating 100%. Artists aren't greedy people, they're struggling to pay the rent.

Let’s support art and artists in real ways. I’m not talking about headline-making auction prices, mega-galleries and the fou-fou see-and-be-seen art fairs. Click the links above to donate and support. Go on studio tours, support lower- and mid-range galleries, try to understand what artists are doing and why they are living the way they do. They deserve better and we need to see that they get it.

Send me your art-related stories and links to your causes and I will report on them.

Jane's Holiday Gift Guide

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  Even I managed to have a good time, despite considerable distress about the upcoming transition of power and the end of democracy as we know it :-) I’ve put together a holiday gift guide for the discerning folks on your list. To make your lives easier and give you more time for signing petitions and organizing protests, everything is just a click away on Amazon.com.

Let's start with cookies! I'm a self-avowed cookie-aholic and these are arguably the best commercially available cookies on the market (and an Amazon best-seller). You know, those ones you get in a two-pack on the airplane that leave you wanting more, but you're too embarrassed to push the call button and ask for them. I tracked them down and now you can have as many as you want! Biscoff Cookies are made in Belgium and have a rich cinnamon-y flavor and crumbly texture. They're Vegan, Non-GMO; No articificial colors/preservatives; and Nut-Free. They're great to have on hand during the holidays, or anytime you need a cappuccino and cookie break.

Click here to purchase Biscoff cookies from Amazon.com.

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Perfect for the readers on your list: Sally Mann's Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs has it all: a fascinating family history, insight into the creative process of this world-renowned photographer, all amply illustrated by the author's own photographs and family archives.

In the prologue to Hold Still, we find the author in the attic of her family home in rural Rockbridge County, Virginia about to cut the twine on the first of many dusty cartons of family memorabilia: 

“I secretly hoped I’d find a payload of southern gothic: deceit and scandal, alcoholism domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land, abandonments, blow jobs, suicides, hidden addictions, the tragically early death of a beautiful bride, racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder. . . And I did: all of it and more.” Click here for more.

Click here to purchase Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs from Amazon.com

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Legendary designer Louis Fili's Brillante Pencils are perfect for just about anyone on your list. A shimmering twist on classic Italian packaging, Brillante double-sided colored pencils in six metallic shades are a companion to Fili's bestselling pencil sets Perfetto and Tutti Frutti. Founded in 1989, Louise Fili Ltd is a graphic design studio specializing in brand development for food packaging and restaurants. Formerly senior designer for Herb Lubalin, Louise Fili was art director of Pantheon Books from 1978 to 1989, where she designed close to 2,000 book jackets. 

Click here to purchase Brillante Pencils from Amazon.com.

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Here's a tiny coffee-table book that packs a big wallop and is easy on the wallet. We Go to the Gallery is a wickedly funny send-up of the art world. I keep a copy on my coffee table. Inevitably it gets passed around the room -- you can track its whereabouts by the outbursts of laughter. Based on the British Ladybird early learning children's books of the 1960s (on this side of the pond, think Dick & Jane) We Go to the Gallery invites us to “join John and Susan on their exciting journey through the art exhibition, where, with Mummy's help, they will discover the real meaning of all the contemporary artworks, from empty rooms to vagina paintings or giant inflatable dogs.” 

Click here to purchase We Go to the Gallery on Amazon.com.

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I couldn’t keep these books in stock at the Offramp Gallery Bookstore over the holidays. The suggested age range for the Mini Masters Boxed Set of board books is 3-5, but they’re appropriate for those precocious younger kids on your list as well. Playful rhyming texts accompany beloved masterpieces by Degas, Mondet, Matisse and Van Gogh. Included in the set are Dancing with Degas, A Picnic with Monet, A Magical Day with Matisse, and In the Garden with Van Gogh.

Click here to purchase the Mini Masters Boxed Set on Amazon.com

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Like most new books about Van Gogh, Martin Bailey’s Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence puts forth a new theory about Van Gogh’s self-mutilation and increasing madness. Bailey theorizes that Van Gogh may have received a letter from his brother Theo announcing his engagement to Johanna Bonger a few hours before he cut off his ear, not afterwards as generally accepted. 

Studio of the South covers the 444 days the artist spent in Arles, from the time he left Paris until he checked himself into the asylum at Saint-Rémy in May 1889. Drawing from Van Gogh’s own letters and meticulous research, Bailey vividly details Van Gogh’s life and work in the yellow house on the Place Lamartine in the village of Montmajour. Click here for more.

Click here to purchase Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence from Amazon.com.

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Who doesn’t love Moleskine notebooks, journals and sketchbooks? Moleskine Art Plus Sketchbook is made with heavy, acid-free paper, measures 5” x 8.25” and has a black hard cover. Perfect for drawings, sketches and tempera colors, it makes a great gift for the artist or budding artist on your list. Every Moleskine product is thread bound and has a cardboard cover with rounded corners, a bookmark, an elastic closure and an expandable inner pocket that contains the Moleskine history. 

Click here to buy Moleskine Art Plus Sketchbook on Amazon.com.

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When I heard last week that Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis’s graphic novel March, Book Three had won the National Book Award (the first graphic novel to be so honored), I practically ran to my neighborhood indy bookstore and bought the March Trilogy Slipcase Set. Aimed at teens and young adults, March is a must-read for anyone who considers themselves part of the new resistance to the hatred, racism and misogyny of our upcoming administration, no matter what your age. March is both a refresher course in the history of the civil rights movement as told by someone who lived it, and a reminder that now, more than ever, we need to stay vigilant, to never forget how hard won our freedoms are, to stand up and march!  Click here for more.

Click here to purchase the March Trilogy Slipcase Set on Amazon.com.

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And finally, one of my all time favorite cookbooks:  Gjelina: Cooking from Venice, California. From chef Travis Lett: “At Gjelina we need to turn out a high volume of exciting food, without laboring too much over each plate. Having an arsenal of herb-laced, vinegar-spiked, spicy, sour, and sweet salsas, pestos, aiolis, and herb emulsions on hand makes it easy for us to add flavor to a dish quickly and without much fuss. We aim to keep the spirit of the food relaxed, not too showy, while giving the dish enough contrast to sustain interest. In my world, if food requires an explanation of either what it is or on how to eat it, it is, quite frankly, too complicated or clever.”

My favorites recipes are Roasted Cauliflower with Garlic, Parsley & Vinegar; Seared Okra, Black Olives, Tomato Confit, Pine Nuts & Chile;  and Roasted Yams with Honey, Espelette & Lime Yogurt. Bon appétit!

Click here to purchase Gjelina: Cooking from Venice,California from Amazon.com.

MARCH: National Book Award Winner Reminds Us that Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Freedom

Are you still as stressed out about politics as I am? What have we done, America? I find it hard to concentrate on anything except how to channel my fear, disgust and outrage into effective political action. So when I heard on Thursday morning that Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis’s graphic novel March, Book Three had won the National Book Award (the first graphic novel to be so honored) I knew what my post this week would be about. I practically ran to my neighborhood indy bookstore and bought March Trilogy Slipcase Set of all three volumes. Aimed at teens and young adults, March is a must-read for anyone who considers themselves part of the new resistance to the hatred, racism and misogyny of our upcoming administration, no matter what your age. March is both a refresher course in the history of the civil rights movement as told by someone who lived it, and a reminder that now, more than ever, we need to stay vigilant, to never forget how hard won our freedoms are, to stand up and march!

John Lewis had been inspired as a young man by the 1950s comic book Martin Luther King & The Montgomery Story. After learning of this, Andrew Aydin, an employee in the congressional office of Rep. Lewis, conceived of the March trilogy. He collaborated with Lewis on the text, and Nate Powell, a New York Times best-selling graphic novelist, was brought on board to do the illustrations. The prose is lively and compelling, while the stark black and white illustrations with lettered text, sound effects and background music amplify the story.

Book One opens with “krak, whap, thud, thump,” the cartoon-ized sounds we normally associate with fictionalized superheroes. But these are the horrifying sounds of real-life superheroes, John Lewis and other non-violent protesters, being beaten while kneeling to pray on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. This part of the story, however, is not told fully until the end of Book Three. Instead we cut to Rep. Lewis preparing for Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration on a cold Washington, DC morning, a scene which is interwoven with Lewis’s personal story across all three volumes.

Lewis’ parents were sharecroppers in rural Alabama, eking out an existence on 110 acres that they bought for $300, money his father had earned by tenant farming. Young John was put in charge of the chickens, a job which he took very seriously, dreaming of having enough money to buy an incubator from the Sears-Roebuck catalog, or as they called it, the wish book. He also dreamed of becoming a preacher, preaching regularly to his chickens.

Click here to see Rachel Madow's report on the publication of Book Two and her interview with Lewis, Aydin and Powell.

Years later, when the young preacher tried to transfer from American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville to Troy State, which wouldn’t accept any black students, he wrote to introduce himself to Dr. Martin Luther King. The letter resulted in the first meeting between the two, a meeting that made a lasting impression on Lewis. He ultimately decided to stay in Nashville and it was there, through his church, that he was introduced to Gandhi’s ideas of nonviolence. He was on his way.

Lewis would go on to become chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was one of the "Big Six" leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington, speaking at the podium before King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech. Lewis was arrested more than 40 times over the years and suffered severe injuries through beatings, but never strayed from his belief in nonviolence. The bravery and hard work of Lewis and many others culminated in President Johnson signing the 1965 Voting Rights Act in to law.

Buy this book for the young people on your holiday list, buy it for yourself.

Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

Click here to purchase the March Trilogy Slipcase Set from Amazon.com

Click here to purchase March Book One from Amazon.com

Click here to purchase March Book Two from Amazon.com

Click here to purchase March Book Three from Amazon.com

Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out

Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out. -- Robert Graves, I Claudius

The Prince of Hell, Hieronymus Bosch, 

The Garden of Earthly Delights, detail from right panel.

I am comforted in these chaotic times by the notion that there can be no good without evil, no illumination without confusion, no progress without regress. The pendulum has swung toward the dark side. Who better to be our guide through the nether regions than Hieronymus Bosch? I originally posted these videos, animations based on the work of Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, for Halloween a few years ago. They’ve been on my mind, or rather, in the knot in my stomach, since Election Day.

We'll start with a jaunty video by Eli Rosen based on the drawing Big Fish Eat Little Fish by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

This next video, by Dobromil Nosek, is based on Bosch's Seven Sins. Unfortunately, we only get a glimpse of three of the seven.

Ray Koefoed's music video, A Plague on You, is based on Brueghel's Triumph of Death and ups the ante on the creepiness factor.

Ready for more? Andrey Zakirzyanov's edgy Break the Silence music video is a mash-up of Bosch and Brueghel imagery with a cameo appearance by a certain someone from the work of Leonardo da Vinci.

I've saved the most gruesome for last, Buckethead's video for Spokes for the Wheel of Torment. Based on several paintings by Bosch, it is not for the faint of heart. You have been forewarned.