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Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Don’t Forget to Give a Box of Chocolates

February 14, 2013 by Jan Herman

There’s the Valentine Victorian. And then there’s the Valentine Mustillian. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

‘The Green Man Is a Green Terrorist’

February 1, 2013 by Jan Herman

Click for the video to listen and watch. 'The Green Man' by Heathcote Williams. Montage and narration by Alan Cox.

My blog staff of thousands didn’t have to do much to persuade me that Heathcote Williams’s newest dissident poem, a rhymed marvel of CAT-scan clarity, will be seen one day as a YouTube classic. Here are the opening lines transcribed from the video in four-line stanzas: Tangled vegetation sprouts from each orifice From his mouth, […]

‘Throws Up Words’

January 31, 2013 by Jan Herman

'throws up words 2' © 2005 by Gerard Bellaart.

These two stenciled texts by Gerard Bellaart are from a series of more than 500 created in 2005. Bellaart is a Dutch artist and writer, now living in France. He creates etchings, drawings, paintings and monotypes of figures, landscapes, and still lifes, as well as works strictly from the imagination. He notes that he employs […]

Selling the Earth … ‘No Return, No Exchange’

January 28, 2013 by Jan Herman

A poem by Heathcote Williams, narration and montage by Alan Cox. The print edition of Selling the Earth is coming soon from Cold Turkey Press. The poem begins: After someone had sold their virginity on the Internet And made a hundred thousand pounds, Another entrepreneur would decide that he’d try To put Planet Earth itself […]

Way Ahead of My Time in 1969

January 28, 2013 by Jan Herman

Ben Shot's Sea Urchin Editions does me proud.

Where would the blogworld be without blogger self-promotion? So indulge me. Anneke Auer, webmaster for Rotterdam-based Sea Urchin Editions, has designed a classy presentation of General Municipal Election, a “collectible” action-art book of mine. I published it in San Francisco way back in ’69 under the Nova Broadcast imprint. Ben Schot, the artist who founded […]

‘tric trac du ciel’

January 10, 2013 by Jan Herman

'tric-trac-du-ciel' by Gerard Bellaart

This is a stenciled text by Gerard Bellaart, from a series of more than 500 created in 2005. Bellaart is a Dutch artist and writer, now living in France. He creates etchings, drawings, paintings and monotypes of figures, landscapes, and still lifes, as well as works strictly from the imagination. He notes that he employs […]

VDRSVP #2 for Old Times’ Sake

January 9, 2013 by Jan Herman

VDRSVP #3, eds. Jan Herman & Norman O. Mustill [San Francisco, 1969]

Now that my venereal staff of thousands has managed to get its shabby act together for VDRSVP #1, I’ll be posting info about the contents of this issue as soon as possible. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

VDRSVP #1 for Old Times’ Sake

January 7, 2013 by Jan Herman

VDRSVP #1 [1969] eds. Jan Herman & Norman O. Mustill

I’ll be posting info about the contents as soon as my venereal staff of thousands manages to get its shabby act together. But first things first: What a great title. Second things first: VDRSVP #2 and #3 are coming too. Postscript: Jan. 9 — The staff finally woke up. Here are the contents of VDRSVP […]

2013 Begins … Let It ‘ROT NOT’

January 1, 2013 by Jan Herman

In his etchings, drawings, paintings, monotypes, Bellaart employs a variety of techniques & materials including oil paint, tempera, charcoal, ink. Supports include handmade paper, canvas & panel.

I’m a sucker for Bellaart’s word-image artworks.

We Get New Year’s Cards … This One, for Example

December 31, 2012 by Jan Herman

And this: EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Fresh From My Hot Little Paws

December 26, 2012 by Jan Herman

'Observed While Falling: Bill Burroughs, Ah Pook, and Me' by Malcolm Mc Neill [Fantagraphics, 2012]

A review posted at RealityStudio of Malcolm Mc Neill’s spellbinding memoir, Observed While Falling, recently published by Fantagraphics Books, about his relationship with William S. Burroughs and their artistic collaboration. Mc Neill is an artist who can write. Really write. He brings a fresh analytical eye to the familiar Burroughsian fixations — synchronicity and doppelgangers, […]

‘Drawing Surrealism’: Arriving Soon at the Morgan

December 14, 2012 by Jan Herman

Somebody at the Morgan Library and Museum knows how to tout an upcoming show. Certainly the Morgan knows how to promote a press release, let alone how to have it written. Or maybe it’s a work product of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where the show being touted — Drawing Surrealism — has […]

Petition to Stop Warhol Exhibit at the Nat’l Arts Club

December 3, 2012 by Jan Herman

Boris Lurie, who died in 2008, was a Holocaust surivor and one of the founders of a radical art protest movement known as NO!art. I’ve blogged about him before. His close friends Clayton Patterson and Dietmar Kirves are sending around a petition to halt an exhibition of Warhol works that opened last week at the […]

In Iowa, ‘The Subversive Culture of Collage and Zines’

November 28, 2012 by Jan Herman

The running head on these two pages of William S. Burroughs’s cut-up text “Word Authority More Habit Forming Than Heroin” reads: “if you are gay I am right seconds with Karate you are wrong you are he kicks him into 1914 movie.” The spread appeared in an exhibition, “Liberated Images,” at the University of Iowa […]

Teaming Burroughs & Mustill for Thanksgiving

November 22, 2012 by Jan Herman

A Straight Up tradition continues. But this year William S. Burroughs’s words of gratitude on Thanksgiving Day are posted with a couple of collages by Norman O. Mustill. That completes the package. Look and listen. It’s delish . . . Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through […]

If Hurricane Sandy Were to Hit San Francisco . . .

October 29, 2012 by Jan Herman

Would the city look like this? EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

‘All the Art That’s Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn’t)’

October 14, 2012 by Jan Herman

Have you noticed lately that the art on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times is tamer than it used to be? I haven’t made a study of it, but that’s how it seems to me. Proof, if needed, comes with the paperback publication of All the Art That’s Fit to Print (And Some […]

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Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
Another strange fact... Read More…

About

My Books

Several books of poems have been published in recent years by Moloko Print, Statdlichter Presse, Phantom Outlaw Editions, and Cold Turkey … [Read More...]

Straight Up

The agenda is just what it says: news of arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said in a movie: "Man is the only … [Read More...]

Contact me

We're cutting down on spam. Please fill in this form. … [Read More...]

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