Trimethylamine is a chemical which arises as an odor(fragrance) from the vaginal secretions as one might find in a woman's dirty panties and or in decaying fish. . Now there is an opening sentence. The Immortal Man Bag Journal of Art (an anthology of the zine Stu Mead and I published between 1991-1998). This is the third iteration of this material. Three editions were produced by Pakito Bolino in Marseille and now this new edition from DIVUS.com in Prague/London 2017. So this new edition is a literal reproduction of all six zines. Not all white paper as in originals. And the originals had better tonal work from stats at times. Divus messed up those screens. But the editor Ivan Meci is a very good designer and I.T. man so in most ways this new edition is definitive text wise this is the first time all the texts are readable. Even though some of the type writng is very nearly impossible to read, though it is all there including typos and misspellings (flavor), as well the color is delightful natural and welcome even the fleshie pink pages, after all it's Prague the decorative center of 19th and early 20th. century decor (postmoderned). Joe Woodside's painted car is not credited in the book and it was a big thing for me and for Joe. A door survives and was exhibited in my retrospective Poison and Candy in 2012 @walkerart.org. a museum for contemporary art in Minneapolis MN.
Second paragraph - The portrait of Grant Hart was painted in 2010 (not sure) I remember that Grant was getting a new driveway paved and had a party soon after the sitting for his driveway repaving. I thought that was so sweet that he invited Pam and I and I forget why we didn't go? It was in some section of St Paul that we were unfamiliar with and of course I have a lot of nightmares about getting lost in St Paul, so I tend to keep out of the city for fear my dreams might be there somewhere maybe in West St Paul where Stu Mead lived (with and without Mary Esch). So Grant Hart died recently which was a very sad event in the history of this place. I posted my portrait the day Grant died, I never knew if he liked it? It was a little romantic flattering even but people who knew Grant knew it was his likeness. It was now a homage.
Third paragraph - Forget Mondrian - The group show in Colorado that Jim Hayward curated in Telluride was fun but not one sale was made. I was not surprised even my portraits sometimes like my other art I make is hard to sell and hard to live with, it's the ntense color and the odd nature of my art being a bit like vivid nightmares. Even when my work is a portrait it still often can be distressing and intense psychologically as well as image wise. Besides selling portraits is very difficult who wants a stranger on their bed room walls ? Within the context of the shows Jim did in Telluride was a video about James Hayward (Jim) and his paintings in which he pointed out a painting he bought from me mostly for Belgium oil paints though some cash was involved. The painting was a woman pissing with a Mondrian tank top blouse on her , it was a painting that subsequently was reproduced in Penthouse Magazine twice.( I was paid $500 each time.) Anyway Jimmy wanted this painting him being a lover of Mondrian as am I am and a pee fetishist ( though I was reading Michel Foucault at the time and Jimmy was not). So here in this blog is the photo I screen grabbed from the video of my small oil painting which was on Hayward's wall in one of his guest rooms (sheds?) on his ranch in Moorpark CA. A painting which I still quite love, at the time I made several iterations of this motif. Some appear in Man Bag zines.
Fourth paragraph - The final illustration to this blog is the first version of the pissing woman image on glass (an ordinary storm window) this painting was part of a three paneled work (an altarpiece) entitled The Chapel of Unsold Paintings This work was only exhibited once at the University of Minneasota - Katherine Nash gallery . This glass panel painting was sold in barter to a professional photographer who lives in St Paul. Jim Hayward tried to get me to see if the collector would sell it to him. The collector would not sell his painting (which his wife hates though I suspect she knows it's valuable? ). Another panel of the three is in the permanent collection of the Walker Art Center. The idea of the Chapel of Unsold paintings was the central premise of an unsuccessful application to the Guggenheim Foundation. Simply put I wanted to do an exhibition of my unsold inventory which has a dark resonance a lot of monsters in those giant paintings in storage and in those boxes and dozens of note books. But I wanted the inference of a Chapel as if the art had a special spiritual life about it because of religious themes and iconic images and of course sexual taboos and violent images of mayhem and such, indeed the distressful nature of much of my inventory contrbuted mightily to it's remaining unsold. The woman urinating was supposed to be Mlle Brancusci the lover of the sculptor whom Duchamp acted as an art dealer for ( the Philadelphia Museum has a large collection of Brancusci's sculptures that I am nearly certain were sold to Mr Arensburg by his good friend Mssr Duchamp (for a small fee in a Amerika)). The storm window I painted on was for Marcel Duchamp and for the idea that Mssr D. was a lady killer.As scholarship has advanced in studies of Mssr. Duchamp it has become quite clear that he was quite a man of many a lady's dreams.
Post Script - Given that Duchamp's sculpture/readymade (urinal titled" R.Mutt") is canon in contemporary art I'm supposing that I'm on to something with this pissing theory . Remember Andy Warhol's piss paintings? And close reading of Nabokov and Foucault has convinced me that it's through our perverse sexuality that we find higher experiences of the so-called spiritual nature. Indeed only deep intimacy with our own desires can produce consciousness of our eternal streams of desire incarnate (Monster Wimmin from Outer Space, pissatrixes whose urine is nitric acid!).. maybe Saith - The Franky - (started this project at The Mac Dowell Colony in 1984 on Bush Foudation Fellowship).