My birthday was a little while ago. If you are dying to know how old I am (and are too polite to ask a lady) just look at the release date on this issue of Arts & Antiques. It came in the mail as a goofy gift from my parents. It's not the first magazine I have that is as old as I am. In a rather nice complement to the two images here, I own the November 85 issue of Cosmopolitan. Complete with reprint of a picture of a reclining Burt Reynolds. Yes, that picture.
Last week, I read the article "Art Excavated from Battle Station Earth" in the Arts section of the Sunday New York Times. It details the re-emergence of sculptural works by Rammellzee, a native New York artist who died in 2010. Rammellzee's work fuses language, the alphabet, sculptural assemblages, collage, outer space, science fiction, trash, costumes, and children's toys into a fantastical art-space/life. The article states that his obsessive art-life fusion puts Andy Warhol's to shame. Those who knew Rammellzee's real name never told.
My mom has a theory that an obsession with subject matter makes someone an artist. As she says, "One haystack is just a haystack, but many haystacks is Monet." If this is true, Rammellzee's life is art. For this week's track on the art historian's mixtape, I give you Rammellzee and K-Rob's "Beat Bop" from 1983. As an added art bonus, the cover for the album was designed by Jean-Michel Basquiat.
