Today I stumbled upon this intriguing painting ‘American Gothic’ by Grant Wood (1891-1942), depicting the rural American Midwest (some say it is a parody, some say it is a homage).
It made me jollily singing the whole Ginger Ale catalogue again, since one of their albums seems to be inspired on Wood’s work.
Ginger Ale is a fantastic Parisian band who pulled over some time ago, which is most deplorable. Listen to them while biking on a tandem with your love on a very bright day.
As a tribute, Gini made a drawing a few years ago.
Suzy (fan) and Gini Rose (drawing)
This map may help you to travel around my portfolio. It is highly recommended to deviate from the highlighted path. You can cross borders, go back and forth, run round in circles, take pictures, or a nap, do anything you want. Except littering and peeing! Here you’ll find a bigger version. Here, you’ll find the dull version.
(drawing by Suzy Creamcheese, evolutionary study by Julia Barr and published in JBScience 2007)
Gini Rose Choupay evolved excruciatingly slowly from a strange mammalian rabbitish fish into a much stranger mammalian bird. Her genes differ from what most scientists expect to be typical of a human being. Her brain-genes, for example, seem to burden her with a lot of strange quirks. One of these is her urge to endlessly compare human beings with animals, appearance- and behavior-wise. Likely, it has to do with the fact she replaces her parents – who she never knew – by dogs. You can read Gini Rose’s full fizzy story here.
Gini Rose also wants to congratulate Charles Darwin with his bicentennial anniversary today. She likes the way Darwin’s controversial theory of human evolution from an ape-like ancestor, inspired many artists (like Odilon Redon), often in dark and fantastic ways.
Vrij Nederland (Week 6 -2009) published an interesting article about why Darwin was less Darwinist than most people assume. In his ‘Decent of Man’, he allayed our fears for being pinned down to our genes only. It’s not all in the genes, even Darwin said. There is some play area too. Human beings for example, are a lot more altruistic than animals, even if that’s not always a good thing for the evolution of the human species. Nature shakes the cards and makes it all thrilling, but nurture is the crucial player when it comes down to shaping a person. Phew.
De Nederlandse graecus, schrijver en poëet Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer wordt hier en daar hartgrondig gehaat, of minstens blauw beërgerd. Omwille van zijn uitdagende blik, zijn ‘kom maar op, ik ben gek op duels’, zijn vervaarlijk wapperende haren, zijn schijnbare immuniteit voor frustraties, zijn intelligentie. Hij haalt gevestigde waarden als Harry Mulisch en Rutger Kopland grinnikend onderuit, maar geen krabbekat die inziet dat hij het allemaal niet zo genadeloos bedoelt. Sterker nog, Pfeijffer is de gemoedelijkheid zelve. Uit zijn ‘omarmen van strijdmakkers’ klinkt genegenheid. Pfeijffer kraakt andere dichters niet willekeurig af omdat hij een pesterig jongetje is dat zonodig wil opvallen (kwade conculega’s schilderen hem graag zo af), hij speelt een spel (met een serieuze inzet, dat wel). Maar het is uit liefde. Uit liefde voor een potje stevige neuronale catch-as-catch-can, uit liefde voor de poëzie.
Een interview met hem kan je hier lezen en bekijken.
(illustratie: Gini Rose Choupay)
Currently, a big army of craftsmen, contractors and plumbers are working diligently on a new office for the three girls. In other words, this site will get a new homepage (sooner or later). Already some sketches..
Drawings by Gini Rose, Suzy and Julia
Gini Rose doesn’t like battles (unless they are muddy). Drawing against fighting. Cheerio to all the hippies.
Drawing by Gini Rose C. (2008)
Portrait of Dan Perjovschi – Suzy C.
Dan Perjovschi grew up in red Romania, and that marks a human being for life. Often his drawings are a criticism on himself, on his country, and on all the smelly stuff Western, Eastern, capitalistic, democratic, dictatorial and other human civilizations leave lying around. Luckily, his cartoons are never cynical. Dan Perjovschi observes with empathy, not with anger.
He reminds me a bit of David Shrigley, although Shrigley’s cartoons are more poetic and less political. But the two have their unconstrained humoristic intelligence in common. During the Kunstenfestivaldesarts 08 in Brussels (april 2008), Dan Perjovschi drew on the walls of art centre Wiels.
I went to Wiels and had a nice chat with the charming Romanian warrior. What he told me..
“I am not interested in scandals, like the Mohammed cartoons. Sometimes, I even don’t touch some issues. I had to deal part of my life with censorship and I am used to tango around the limits. Here in Europe, I don’t care, it’s free expression here. But in Russia I asked what the problems were. They told me I could do whatever, except for touching ‘Orthodox church’. In that case, I try to find a different way to say things which aren’t allow to say.”
“I think an artist needs to have this responsability. It’s so easy to be an artist, you just throw the thing out and then ‘done’. That’s not my way, and maybe I have got this reflex because in Romania I’m working for the press, so I am always conscious about my brains going to somebody.”
“I don’t rate myself as a political artist, I’m an interpreter. I don’t do necessary judgements, like ‘this is good and this is wrong’. I just observe somehow. You could call my work ‘intellectual’ cartoons.”
“I criticize the market a lot, but I’m not against it. I do not believe that you can be a real radical critic if you’re out of the system. You have to see it from the inside.”
(This reminds me of the great ‘Yes men’)
“I’m coming from a certain context, surviving a switch of ideologies, so I can put a lot of critisism on myself and take some distance, even to myself. And humour is very important to me, with humour you can detach, you can use it as a distance to look at things. I think I learnt to use humour during my school period in Romania – which was a total disaster for me, mentally – but unconsciously the humour helped to detach from it, i guess”.
“My cartoons give me a platform. It is like a natural stage for me, this is it, living. And I am still very amazed that people invite me to do this, visualizing the world. And I enjoy it a lot, it is total freedom to me.”
Want to know more? Watch here..
Suzy C.
PS: I swapped drawings with Dan, he got the portrait, threegirls received a nice art gallery-bashing cartoon
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We are Gini Rose, Julia and Suzy. We draw, take pictures, film, and write (in English or Dutch) about everything we are intrigued by. We are never bored. Our hobby is to search for that kind of reality which may be elusive until the right kind of imagination falls upon it. We like to go outside. We also like to party. Want to know more? About is your button. Or click here to read our mighty mission statement. This page is our magazine, or a cabinet of views, viewpoints and new work. Here you'll find the RSS feed to stay updated. For an overview of our portfolio, take a dive into the deepsea..
