The theme for this week’s illustration on sugarfrostedgoodness.com is “blue”
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Clito Ruiz y Picasso is one of the most recognized figures in 20th century art. He is best known as the co-founder, along with Georges Braque, of cubism.
Picasso was born in 1881 and attended art schools throughout his childhood. He never finished his college-level course of study at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid, leaving after less than a year. Soon, he made his first trip to Paris in 1900, the art capital of Europe. In Paris, he lived with Max Jacob, a journalist and poet, who helped him learn French. Max slept at night and Picasso slept during the day as he worked at night. There were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work had to be burned to keep the small room warm.
In Paris, Picasso kept a distinguished group of friends, including writer André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and writer Gertrude Stein. In 1911, Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. After questioning he was released, but implicated his friend Picasso. Picasso was also questioned and later the two were exonerated.
Picasso’s Blue Period is the period between 1901 and 1904, when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue. These somber works are now some of his most popular, although he had difficulty selling them at the time. Picasso was influenced by a journey through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas, who took his life at the LHippodrome Café in Paris, by shooting himself in the right temple. The suicide marked the onset of the blue period. “I started painting in blue when I learned of Casagemas’s death.,” Picasso said.
His Blue Period was followed by his Rose Period, his experiments in the different aspects of cubism and a period of surrealism.
Picasso died in 1973. At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he didn’t need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his estate tax was paid in the form of his works and others from his collection.
Monday Artday: retro
The challenge over at Monday Artday this week is “retro“.
I love old television shows. Mostly, I love shows from the late 1950s through the 1970s. Shows like Leave It To Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show, The Munsters and many others. These were true situation comedies. Totally unreal, far-fetched and implausible. These shows usually depicted perfect families faced with a horrible crisis, like Beaver losing his baseball glove or Opie knocking a bird’s nest from a tree. After a while, these simple shows made way for more realistic sitcoms, like All in the Family, and M*A*S*H, leaving their cast to try to shake typecasting or to fade into TV oblivion.
Of all of these shows, the best example of a true “retro” sitcom was The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. It presented the wholesome adventures of a teenager and his family and friends. Dobie’s main concern was girls, especially Thalia Menninger. Dobie’s best friend was beatnik Maynard G. Krebs and his rival for Thalia’s affections was Milton Armitage. And there was Zelda Gilroy, for whom Dobie was “the living end”. A happy little TV world. A far cry from the reality of the assassination of President Kennedy, Fidel Castro and the Cuban missile Crisis and the impending war in Viet Nam. When the show ended its four-year run, its stars entered a real life of which their characters could never have dreamed.
Dwayne (Dobie) Hickman became a high-ranking programming executive at CBS. Bob (Maynard) Denver was stranded on an uncharted island off the coast of Hawaii for 3 seasons, until he became a radio DJ in West Virginia, where he smoked a lot of marijuana. Warren (Milton) Beatty slept with every woman in Hollywood (except Shirley MacLaine), eventually settling on Annette Bening. Tuesday (Thalia) Weld became the cover girl for Matthew Sweet’s awesome album “Girlfriend“. Sheila (Zelda) James, who longed to have her unrequited love for Dobie reciprocated (even though anyone with a minimal sense of “gaydar” knew otherwise) was the first openly gay person elected to the California State Senate.
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IF: extreme
The challenge on illustrationfriday.com this week is “extreme“.
Here is the thought process for how I arrived at this illustration. When I first saw the word “extreme“, I thought “skateboarding“. I have never been on a skateboard and I am only familiar with it from seeing kids in the neighborhood, Tony Hawk on TV and the ESPN XGames. I do know that skateboarding falls into the category of “extreme sports“. So, I searched on Yahoo and Google, where I found and printed out some pictures of skateboarders performing some stunts and tricks. Then, I started doing some sketches on scrap paper of skateboarding characters. I kept drawing the same pose, with the board up in the air and the figure off to the right side. Suddenly, that twisted sense that lives in my brain surfaced. That twisted sense that makes me draw Red Riding Hood being eaten, rats running around a restaurant, a guy juggling a baby and a little girl with a “tramp stamp“.
“Jesus,” it said, “Make it Jesus on a skateboard! How much more extreme could you get!?!”
“Sure,” I thought”, it works on a few levels. I have the extreme reference to skateboarding and I have the extreme absurdity of Jesus on a skateboard.”
I’ll consider this my fakie through a half-pipe!
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SFG: video games
The sugarfrostedgoodness.com challange this week is “video games“.
The elusive Polybius may have been a real arcade game. However, it is more likely an urban legend. According to the story, the game was released to the public in 1981, but caused trauma for its players and disappeared shortly after.
A new arcade game appeared in several suburbs of Portland, Oregon in 1981. The game, Polybius, proved to be incredibly popular, to the point of addiction, and lines formed around the machines, quickly followed by clusters of visits from men in black. Rather than the usual marketing data collected by company visitors to arcade machines, they collected some unknown data, allegedly testing responses to the psychoactive machines. The players themselves suffered from a series of unpleasant side-effects, including amnesia, insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, and even suicide in some versions of the legend. Some players stopped playing video games, while it is reported that one became an anti-gaming activist. The supposed creator of Polybius is Ed Rottberg. He developed the game for a company called Sinneslöschen (German for sense-delete), often named as either a secret government organization or a codename for Atari. The gameplay is said to be similar to Atari’s Tempest, a shoot ’em up game utilizing vector graphics.
Or maybe not…
Thanks again to THIS GUY for his suggestion.
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DCS: william frawley
I always hated Lucille Ball. I hated “The Lucy Show.” I hated “Here’s Lucy.” And I especially hated “I Love Lucy”.
Except I loved William Frawley.
I have always been fascinated by William Frawley. Well, maybe not fascinated, but intrigued. Look at him. How did this guy become an actor? And not only was he an actor, by 1951, he had starred in over one hundred movies. He was one of Hollywood’s biggest and most sought-after character actors.
He started in vaudeville, doing musical comedy and was featured in his first film in 1916. His film career continued through four more decades. But, his reputation as a difficult, belligerent alcoholic made him almost unemployable by the early 1950s.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were about to begin shooting a sitcom, a fictional account of Desi’s everyday life as a band leader. The show, “I Love Lucy”, was still in the casting stage when Frawley heard about it and envisioned it as his opportunity to get steady work. Lucille Ball wanted her friend Gale Gordon to play the part of cranky, penny-pinching landlord Fred Mertz. Due to prior commitments, Gordon was unavailable. Frawley auditioned. Lucy knew Frawley from her days as a film actress in the 1940s. Frawley called Lucy regularly, asking about his chances for the Fred Mertz role. Desi thought having Frawley, a Hollywood veteran, on the show was a good idea.
However, Desi (and the CBS network) was well aware of Frawley’s reputation as a louse (he was fired from the set of “She’s My Baby” for punching Clifton Webb in the nose) and a drunk. Arnaz immediately leveled with Frawley about the network’s concerns, telling him that if he was late to work, showed up drunk, or was unable to perform except because of legitimate illness more than once, he’d be written out of the show. Contrary to expectations, Frawley never showed up drunk to work, and, in fact, mastered his lines after only one reading. Arnaz became one of his closest friends. Frawley, a huge New York Yankees fan, had it written into his contract if the Yankees made it to the World Series, he didn’t work during the games.
Frawley and his co-star Vivian Vance hated each other almost instantly. Vance (the second choice for Ethel Mertz after Bea Benaderet) was 22 years younger than Frawley and complained that he should be playing her father, not her husband. Frawley said, of Vance, “She’s one of the best things to come out of Kansas. I wish she’d go back”. Despite their contempt for each other, they played a married couple for 175 episodes for nearly seven years. When the run of “I Love Lucy” ended, CBS offered Frawley and Vance a spin-off called “Fred and Ethel”. Even though he openly hated Vivian Vance, Frawley was anxious to work and agreed to the series. Vance said no, vowing to never work with Frawley again.
Frawley landed steady TV work again, playing grandfather Bub O’Casey on “My Three Sons”, but poor health forced him to leave the show. His last TV appearance was as a maintenance man on an episode of “The Lucy Show” in 1965.
In March 1966, a sick and frail 79 year-old William Frawley was walking down Hollywood Boulevard after seeing a movie. He collapsed right on the sidewalk, was dragged into the lobby of the Knickerbocker Hotel, was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. While dining in a Hollywood restaurant, Vivian Vance, upon hearing of Frawley’s death, announced “Champagne for everyone!”
I’ll paraphrase Edward Norton…
“Who would I fight? Frawley. I’d fight William Frawley.”
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Monday Artday: bird
The challenge word this week on Monday Artday is “bird”.
Tall, lanky Mark Fidrych was a certified flake. “The Bird”, as he was affectionately known because of his resemblance to Sesame Street’s Big Bird, pitched for the Detroit Tigers from 1976 until 1980. That tumultuous five year run began with Fidrych being named Rookie of the Year and ended with an undiagnosed and untreated torn rotator cuff that never healed. But in between, Fidrych was a character. He made the Tigers as a non-roster invitee out of the 1976 spring training. He made his first start because the scheduled starting pitcher had the flu. Fidrych responded by throwing seven no-hit innings, ending the game with a 2-1 victory in which he only gave up two hits. That season, he went on to win a total of 19 games, led the league in ERA and complete games, was the starting pitcher in that year’s All-Star Game, won the American League Rookie of the Year Award, and finished second in voting for the Cy Young Award.
But it was his on-field antics that endeared Fidrych to his fans. He would crouch down on the pitcher’s mound, talk to himself, talk to the ball, aim the ball like a dart, strut around the mound after every out, and throw back balls that “had hits in them,” insisting they be removed from the game. He would make sincere statements like “Sometimes I get lazy and let the dishes stack up, but they don’t stack too high. I’ve only got four dishes.” and “That ball has a hit in it, so I want it to get back in the ball bag and goof around with the other balls in there. Maybe it’ll learn some sense and come out as a pop-up next time.” Every time he pitched, Tiger Stadium was jam-packed with adoring fans. In his 18 starting appearances in 1976, attendance equalled almost half of the entire season’s 81 home games. He appeared on the cover of numerous magazines, such as Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, and became the first athlete to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone. At the end of his rookie season, the Tigers gave him a $25,000 bonus and signed him to a 3-year contract worth $255,000. It was estimated that the extra attendance Fidrych generated around the league in 1976 was worth more than $1 million.
Injury ended Fidrych’s career. At the end of the 1981 season, Detroit gave Fidrych his outright release and he signed as a free agent with the Boston Red Sox, playing for one of their minor league teams. However, his unhealed torn rotator cuff forced him to retire at age 29.
Fidrych lives with his wife and daughter in Northborough, Massachusetts. Aside from fixing up his farmhouse, he works as a contractor hauling gravel and asphalt in a ten-wheeler and his family owns and runs a diner.
UPDATE: On April 13, 2009, Joseph Amorello, owner of a road construction company who occasionally hired Mark to haul gravel, stopped by Mark’s farm to chat. He found Mark, dead, beneath his 10-wheeled dump truck. He had been doing repairs on the truck and suffocated after his clothes became entangled with a spinning mechanism on the truck’s underside.
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IF: open
The illustrationfriday.com word this week is “open”
According to government statistics, 80% percent of new restaurants fail within the first three years of opening. There is no real reason for this, but it may have to do with menu item choice, overall atmosphere of the restaurant or even choice of name for the establishment.
Or maybe the hundreds of rats.
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Monday Artday: the zoo
The challenge this week on Monday Artday is “the zoo”
I thought of so many ideas for this topic, but none of them seemed like the right choice. Then, it hit me.
This is the punchline to one of my favorite jokes…
and here’s the joke…
(WARNING! CONTAINS QUESTIONABLE LANGUAGE! NOT FOR THE EASILY OFFENDED! HAVE YOUR KIDS LEAVE THE ROOM!)
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IF: the blues
The challenge this week on illustration friday is “the blues”
Robert Johnson is one of the most famous Delta Blues musicians. He displayed a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced generations of musicians including Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Allman Brothers Band, The Rolling Stones, The White Stripes, The Black Keys, Peter Gabriel, Neil Young, Warren Zevon and Eric Clapton, who called Johnson “the most important blues musician who ever lived.”
The most famous legend surrounding Robert Johnson is that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his unmatched guitar playing ability. Johnson sometimes played with his back to the audience in order to hide his technique.
His death occurred on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27 at a little country crossroads near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles from Greenwood. There are a number of accounts and theories regarding the events preceding Johnson’s death. One of these is that one evening Johnson began flirting with a woman at a dance. One version of this rumor says she was the wife of the juke joint owner, while another suggests she was a married woman he had been secretly seeing. When Johnson was offered an open bottle of whiskey, his friend and fellow blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson knocked the bottle out of his hand, informing him that he should never drink from an offered bottle that has already been opened. Johnson allegedly said, “don’t ever knock a bottle out of my hand”. Soon after, he was offered another open bottle and accepted it. That bottle was laced with strychnine. Johnson survived the initial poisoning only to succumb to pneumonia three days later, in his weakened state. The fate of his soul is undetermined.
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SFG: rock legends
The challenge this week on sugarfrostedgoodness.com is “rock legends“.
Two of the greatest and most prolific drummers in the history of rock and roll are also two of the biggest unsung heroes.
Hal Blaine and Jim Gordon played with some of the most famous performers in popular music and played on some of the most significant recordings in modern music history. Hal Blaine, a member of the famed LA session group The Wrecking Crew, holds a current Grammy record. He played on six consecutive Records of the Year: Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass in 1966, for A Taste of Honey, Frank Sinatra in 1967, for Strangers in the Night, 5th Dimension in 1968, for Up, Up and Away, Simon & Garfunkel in 1969, for Mrs. Robinson, 5th Dimension in 1970, for Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In and Simon & Garfunkel in 1971 for Bridge Over Troubled Water. In addition, he played on recordings by everyone from The Partridge Family, Elvis Presley, The Carpenters, The Mamas and Papas, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, The Byrds and Paul Revere & The Raiders. He was heard on the majority of The Beach Boys recordings (except for Pet Sounds, which was Jim Gordon. Dennis Wilson, the Beach Boys drummer, only drummed in concert). When Dennis Wilson recorded his only solo album, he hired Blaine to play drums. Blaine was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. He estimates that, in his career, he played on over 35,000 recordings.
Jim Gordon was one of the most sought-after session drummers throughout the 60s and 70s. He played alongside such artists as Donovan, Jackson Browne, Glen Campbell, Alice Cooper, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, George Harrison, The Monkees, Carly Simon, Steely Dan and Traffic. He played the famous drum break in the Incredible Bongo Band’s “Apache“, later sampled by The Sugarhill Gang in their hip-hop version of the song. Gordon was a member of Frank Zappa’s Grand Wazoo band and he was the drummer for Eric Clapton’s Derek and The Dominos. Gordon wrote and played the renowned piano outro on “Layla“.
In 1983, after years of complaining of voices in his head, Gordon beat his mother with a hammer and stabbed her to death with a butcher knife. Gordon currently resides in a state medical corrections facility in Vacaville, CA
Read the controversy this illustration generated HERE.