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Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

A Dimension Not Visible

September 13, 2017 by Jan Herman

Gerard Bellaart

“ALL DRAWING 
FROM THE 
IMAGINATION I’D 
CONSIDER A FORM
 OF AUTOMATIC
 DRAWING; IF IT
 EXISTS, IT WILL 
EXIST ONLY FOR 
THE FIRST TIME.” — Gerard Bellaart Profile of an Artist by Gabriel Solomons (first published in Decode Magazine, INTELLECT: Publishers of Original Thinking) GS: Where do your images come from? GB: I think they arise […]

Paraphilia: Requiescat in Pace

September 10, 2017 by Jan Herman

Dire McCain

Paraphilia Magazine officially ceased to be an active publication on September 1, 2017. It was an uninhibited online publication that featured a variety of content “likely not found in the average publication,” according to its publisher, Dire McCain. Her primary motive was to enable writers and artists to escape “the grip” of the art and […]

Fantagraphics Has the Frontier Spirit

September 5, 2017 by Jan Herman

'Johnny Appleseed, Green Spirit of the Frontier' by Paul Buhle and Noah Van Sciver

Last time we looked Paul Buhle and Noah Van Sciver’s comic art biography of John Chapman, otherwise known as Johnny Appleseed, was published in a paperback edition by Alternative Comics. That was a year ago. It is now being re-issued in hardcover and digital editions by Fantagraphics Books. The production, typical of Fantagraphics, is gorgeous. […]

Reminder: Dahlberg’s Diagnosis

August 24, 2017 by Jan Herman

Edward Dahlberg [Drawing by James Kearns, 1941]

Since it is the mind that is the vessel of all good and evil in the world, why is it that we so distrust its strength in opposing violence at large today? Thought is always prior to deed, war, history. Baudelaire said: “Every mind is a weapon loaded to the muzzle with will.” […] “Justice,” […]

Reminder: The Statue of Liberty’s Burka*

August 18, 2017 by Jan Herman

Words and narration by Heathcote Williams. Montage by Alan Cox. The President is obsessed with deporting Arabs Although, by a superb comic irony, It was an Arab who modeled for the United States’ icon – Namely the Statue of Liberty. The sculptor’s monument was initially designed For the opening of the Suez canal: The original […]

Ridgewood Radio

August 16, 2017 by Jan Herman

… from a subterranean region of Queens, New York. Later today, beginning at 3 p.m.ET, David Weinstein’s web-only broadcast on WFMU.org will stream a program called “Spheres of Influence!” featuring David First‘s “Western Enisphere,” which you can also hear (and watch) here, something by Andrea Parkins & Brian Chase, Richard Kostelanetz‘s 1988 radio opera: “Americas’ […]

‘The Last Dodo and Dreams of Flying’

July 30, 2017 by Jan Herman

Illustration © by Elena Caldera

A reading at the Albion Beatnik Bookshop in Oxford from a book of poetry published by New River Press. ‘I hope you love birds, too. It is economical. It saves going to Heaven.’ — Emily Dickinson, from a letter to Eugenia Hall ‘Why,’ said the Dodo, ‘the best way to explain it is to do […]

Opera: America’s War Without End

July 21, 2017 by Jan Herman

Anthony Haden Guest calls “The Plain of Jars” — a chamber opera by Keith Patchel about America’s secret war in Laos — “the lineal descendant of Stravinsky’s ‘Nightingale’ and Alban Berg’s ‘Lulu’ and ‘Wozzeck.’” I haven’t seen it yet, but my staff of thousands tells me it “exposes the wounds caused by America’s use of […]

A Great One Died Today

July 1, 2017 by Jan Herman

Heathcote Williams [Photo: JH, 2013]

Updated with new information. ‘He was the Shelley of his age and more.’ — Gerard Bellaart A memorial service is to be held Friday (July 14), 3 p.m., at St. Barnabas Church in Jericho, Oxford. All welcome. July 17 — Malcolm Ritchie, whose friendship with Heathcote spanned decades, attended the service. This is his description: […]

Music Theater Where Truth Can Appear

June 28, 2017 by Jan Herman

The last time we looked it was a work in progress. That was a year ago. William Osborne and Abbie Conant had been working on it for so long, Osborne said at the time, that it felt like “forever.” But now their music theater chamber piece is about to get its world premiere. The name […]

The Evolving NY Times Nameplate

June 21, 2017 by Jan Herman

From 1851, to 1857, to 1896, to 1914, to 1967, to last week: David W. Dunlap’s story, “Modern Identity in Ancient Lettering,” does not include a reference to the overprinting that the designers of The NYT Magazine prefer. (Style aside, Matthew Shaer’s interview did deserve that kind of prominence.) EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

When Trump Hog-Called His Cabinet: Sooie!

June 14, 2017 by Jan Herman

The logo, slightly altered from 'Notes From Underground 3'

Trump’s first cabinet meeting was the perfect reminder of one of William S. Burroughs’s most satirical “routines.” Burroughs wrote the piece in 1953 and had it published for the first time in a little mimeo magazine called Floating Bear. Since then it’s been reprinted many times, most famously as a mimeographed booklet by Fuck You […]

Rauschenberg Had a Sense of Humor

May 22, 2017 by Jan Herman

'Gift for Apollo' by Robert Rauschenberg [Photo: JH]

And it’s now on view at MoMA, too. To hell with the god of music, poetry, and art … EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Please Insert

May 19, 2017 by Jan Herman

Barrett Brown (Interview at DEMOCRACY NOW!)

My staff of thousands thinks this paragraph by Barrett Brown should be inserted like an unsheathed stallion’s penis into every last one of the obituaries plaguing us about the late Roger Ailes . . . just in case the corpse hasn’t been properly mounted: I don’t really mind Fox on ideological grounds, as a nation […]

Black Eye Porn

April 28, 2017 by Jan Herman

“Normally The Guardian publishes all of Rowson’s cartoons, but I don’t think this one. He mailed it to Heathcote who forwarded it to me. Heathcote wrote the lines when I asked him.” — Gerard Bellaart, editor/publisher Cold Turkey Press I think of H.W.’s stanza in the mode of G.G. Belli’s 19th-century Roman sonnets, which were […]

From a Secret Location

April 4, 2017 by Jan Herman

Once upon a time hundreds of editors, mainly poets, and all manner of bohemian riffraff took to their mimeo machines. They produced an avalanche of little magazines, lovingly collected by Granary Books as a wonder of the age. This literary avalanche was documented in “A Secret Location on the Lower East Side,” a 1996 exhibition […]

A Man With Moxie Plus

March 31, 2017 by Jan Herman

When Asger Jorn heard that he’d been awarded a Guggie, he told them to fuck off. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

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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...]

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