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Art

Just Kids

Brian K. Noe · January 4, 2022 ·

Just Kids Book Cover

A Memoir By Patti Smith

My wife had given me Just Kids by Patti Smith as a present quite some time ago, and I had not gotten around to reading it until now. Smith’s 75th birthday on December 30th prompted me to pull it off the shelves. Once I started reading I could barely put it down.

This book was written as a tribute to her first great love, Robert Mapplethorpe. All I had known before of Mapplethorpe was the controversy surrounding NEA funding of a retrospective of his work titled The Perfect Moment that was exhibited shortly after his death (from complications of HIV/AIDS) in 1989. I’m thankful to know more about about this unique and gifted creative spirit, who was instrumental in lifting photography to the status of fine art that it only attained during his lifetime.

Over the course of 200 and some pages, we learn about Smith’s own early life, and her journey from Suburban New Jersey to the center of the mid-1970s Proto-Punk scene at CBGB and beyond. We also learn about Mapplethorpe’s youth, and gain some insight into the sexual and artistic sensibilities that informed his career. Just Kids is so much more than simple biography, though. It unveils the complexities of love and art – and lives that are devoted to love and art.

Poetic, inspirational, joyful, sad, informative, direct and starkly honest, this book was a delight, throughout even the darkest moments of its story. Like much of our greatest literature, it offers glimpses into the universal mystery of the human condition by presenting a deeply personal account of a particular life and time.

The edition I have (with the cover pictured above) is a beautifully bound paperback, with lovely leaves, sig configuration and design. Just Kids is most highly recommended, especially to those who are pursuing a creative life, those who value literature, art, photography, poetry or Rock’n’Roll, and those who dream of friendship and love that endures a lifetime.

Just Kids Quote

 

Filed Under: What I'm Reading Tagged With: 1960s, 1970s, AIDS, Art, Biography, Bookish, Mapplethorpe, Memoir, New York City, NYC, Patti Smith, Rock'n'Roll

The Angel of History

Brian K. Noe · August 3, 2016 ·

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

– Walter Benjamin

Filed Under: Quotes Tagged With: Art, History, Paul Klee, Progress, Walter Benjamin

Steve Earle on Art and Politics

Brian K. Noe · February 5, 2016 ·

earle-on-art

This quote is from an interview with Socialist Worker from 2008.

Filed Under: Memes, Quotes Tagged With: Art, Folkie, Politics, Steve Earle

prayer of rebellion

Brian K. Noe · January 30, 2016 ·

praying-handsforbidden beauty
frightening
prodigal
born of abandon confusion neglect longing
lord
may the prayer of these hands
unspoken
unknown
keep him safe

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: Adolescence, Art, Divorce, Family, Growing Up, Prayer, Praying Hands, Tattoos, Teenagers

Ain’t there one damn song that can make me break down and cry?

Brian K. Noe · January 15, 2016 ·

bowie-young-americansYoung Americans came on the radio on the drive back from dropping my daughter off at school this morning. When this album was released in 1975, I was a DJ in my hometown’s first disco, The Hideaway. This song, along with Fame from the same album, were my favorites in the stacks that autumn. They had an authentic, organic sound grounded in Philly Soul, and thoughtful lyrics that went way beyond most of the rest of what we played, which I found to be repetitious and trite.*

I’d heard lots of Bowie before, of course, and couldn’t resist the hooks in songs like Space Oddity or Suffragette City or Rebel Rebel, but his persona put me off and frightened me. I was under 18 and living in a conservative Evangelical Christian home. David Bowie and people like him were threatening and dangerous – worldly, seductive, transgressional. In the case of Bowie, that was obviously his intention.

The Young Americans album changed me. It began to change my view of the world. It wasn’t the only influence in this regard, but it helped to make me more questioning of conformity, more interested in things under the surface and more accepting of others. It prompted me to recognize and confront my own homophobia for the very first time. Allowing myself to enjoy the music pushed me to consider how silly it was to feel frightened by another human being merely because they weren’t quite the same as me. Aren’t we all different?

By the time Patti Smith’s Horses came out later that year, I was ready to listen .

* …if sometimes plenty of fun. Remember That’s The Way (Uh Huh, Uh Huh)?

Filed Under: Essays Tagged With: 1970s, Art, David Bowie, Disco, Growing Up, Homophobia, Music, Rebels

Flag in Chains

Brian K. Noe · June 29, 2015 ·

Flag_in_Chains_Collection_University_of_California_at_Berkley 1965 by Marc Morrell

Nick Walsh presents a three-part story about a significant public controversy related to the Vietnam War that happened in my home town of Decatur, Illinois. Using sources from the archives of the Decatur Herald and Review, the Decatur Tribune, Millikin University’s Decaturian, and recent interviews with the one of the controversy’s key figures, Walsh covers how the situation developed, how the public and authorities reacted, and how the court case surrounding the exhibit of Flag in Chains unfolded. I remember the anger of these times fairly vividly. It seemed as if everyone in our community was forced to choose sides.

By using their talents to confront the issues of their time, artists take on a certain amount of risk if their perspectives are contestable in the court of public opinion.  While not directly about the Vietnam War, the story of “Flag in Chains” reflects sentiments and convictions rooted in the national discourse of that era.  Decatur residents were sporadic in giving their opinions about the war throughout its duration.  However, public debate reached a crescendo in 1969, as emotions stemming from the war were channeled into dialogue surrounding a controversial legal case that involved the owner of the Decatur Herald and the Daily Review and a Millikin University art professor.  This collision of patriotism and free expression provides a glimpse into the conscience of Decatur residents during the Vietnam War.

Here are links to all three parts of Walsh’s report.

Flag in Chains: A Collision of Sentiments (Part 1) | RE:DECATUR

Flag in Chains: A Collision of Sentiments (Part 2) | RE:DECATUR

Flag in Chains: A Collision of Sentiments (Part 3) | RE:DECATUR

Filed Under: Curated Links Tagged With: 1960s, Art, Controversy, Decatur, Free Expression, Freedom, History, Illinois, Millikin University, Politics, Protest, Vietnam War

The Amazing Mister Boots

Brian K. Noe · March 12, 2015 ·

Joseph Bien-Kahn interviews Boots Riley.

When I say, “We have hella people, they have helicopters,” I’m trying to point out that they can have this technology, but we’re the ones that have to operate it. They’ve got our eyes on the details of technology, but the truth is, this whole world is run through the power of the working class. We’re who creates the profit and we can reorganize it. Helicopters won’t matter.

Read the full interview: Boots Riley on the State of Oakland, the Power of the Working Class, and His New Screenplay | VICE | United States.

Filed Under: Curated Links Tagged With: Art, Boots Riley, Heroes, Movies, Music, Oakland, Revolution, The Coup

American Reds

Brian K. Noe · February 12, 2015 ·

The folks at Red Wedge magazine have created a wonderful new series of posters called Inside Agitators.

The series “aims to reintroduce the notion that communism is an American tradition and a powerful, intersectional tradition at that. American communists have been women and men, black and white and red and brown, queer and straight, disabled and able-bodied. That the posters resemble wanted posters is no accident: communism has been and is a crime, for which our brave forebears were hunted, banished, jailed, and killed.”

Some of my personal heroes, including Helen Keller, Eugene Debs and Big Bill Haywood are among those depicted.

See the posters: Inside Agitators — Red Wedge.

Filed Under: Curated Links Tagged With: America, Art, Communism, Heroes, History, Posters, Red Wedge, Socialism, Wobblies

Art Versus Gentrification

Brian K. Noe · September 2, 2014 ·

Chicago-based artist Amie Sell talks about her work, the censorship of her installation, and the relationship of art, social class and gentrification.

Read the Interview: Art (as Social Organism) vs. Gentrification – Red Wedge Magazine Red Wedge Magazine.

Filed Under: Curated Links, Interviews Tagged With: Art, Chicago, Gentrification, Red Wedge

Open Mic Night at Feed – Wednesday, June 11th

Brian K. Noe · June 9, 2014 ·

Come join us on Wednesday evening, June 11th, at 7PM for Open Mic Night at Feed Arts Center in downtown Kankakee.

We’re planning an evening of acoustic music and spoken word, with old Folkies, young poets, and everybody in between taking the stage to present their craft.

Whether you are a seasoned performer, or you’ve never yet faced a public audience, we invite you to come and share your music, recitation or reading before a group of enthusiastic and nurturing souls at Feed.

If you don’t feel like performing, please join us to listen and to support those who do.

It’s an evening of homegrown words and music, direct from the heart of the arts in our community.

Filed Under: Other Content Tagged With: Art, Banjo, Folk Music, Guitar, Poetry, Spoken Word

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