American West

Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Washington, big snow, big mountains, big, mind-expanding mystery.

Vastness..... Endless...... Endless.......Endless.... Vastness.

Ranches and temperatures. Lakes and streams. Microbreweries and trout.

Rolling vegetation, roller coaster, roads, ride, glide up and down montana's two lane highway. view the big sky, country. clouds. storms.

Vast unpopulated. Areas.

Grasses, cows, horses and rattlesnakes.

Dinosauria, we. Hike the wild Beast. buffalo, wildebeast, yukon encrusted Cornelius.

Observe the unclimbable mountain peaks, rocks, snow.. did I mention? you gotta go!

JK 2012

SAN FIASCO

May 21, 1979 -the "White Night" San Francisco Riot-

Original Super 8 film by Joe Kotas

It started with a news announcement on the radio, the afternoon of May 21, 1979. I was in San Francisco, hanging out in "The Avenues" with my brother Karl and friend Gary Tarbox. It was a beautiful sunny day.
The implication that the man who killed Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk got convicted merely of manslaughter was immediately apparent to my friend who lived there. He said, "There's gonna be a riot."
The San Francisco gay community began to organize. They marched down Castro St. to City Hall. The atmosphere grew tense. No government officials provided any consolation to the crowd. The murderer was in hiding.
SMASH!
The glass on the City Hall doors was the first to go. A small fire on the corner of Polk Street was set ablaze, then a police car in front of the building. The protestors were not pleased with the unjust verdict.
And it was a nice night for a riot.
As the evening wore on, the anger grew. A large dumpster was easy pickings for a molotov cocktail. The cops in full riot gear could only stand around and act like they were in control.
One by one the cars were torched. The participants and spectators alike felt they were witnessing a historic spectacle. As the violence grew, nobody knew, what was going to happen next.
After about a dozen vehicles were set on fire, the cops finally assembled into one long line, four deep, driving the crowd into the streets with billy clubs and shields.
Joe Kotas
Chicago
January 2012

Luc Tuymans-Half the Story, MCA Chicago

MCA Chicago Nov 10, 2010-Jan 9, 2011.




"You know how it goes, someone gets a name for themselves, probably by screwing someone, and then everyone starts talking about that person's work and that's that!" C. Kotas 1/09/11


I heard the Luc Tuymans show was going to end soon so I rushed down to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see it. Having heard so much hype, I had to see the work of the much vaunted European art star.

I thought I was in for a treat...

In retrospect, I guess it was better than nothing... I think.





This was the first thing I saw, a painting about 20 feet wide.

What does it look like to you?

Is it a guy sucking a woman's face as it turns into a constellation? I gather it was a nice use of light and dark in a Ross Bleckner sort of way. Well, this nice large oil painting does prove that Tuymans can throw the long ball.

On to the rest of the show!




OK. A not-too flattering picture of Condoleezza Rice and a place setting. hmmm...






A skier and a church. hmmm...




Some pillows? A couple toilet bowl covers?

Okay. It's getting BORING in here!

These images are so banal, they're hardly worth uploading!

Oh... I get it. The paintings don't stand on their own merit. You have to consult the accompanying literature. The paintings have to be propped up by narrative!

A Luc Tuymans painting is only half the story, you have to READ about the rest!

Sorry friends, but that's where I draw the line. Call him a "conceptual artist" but don't call him a painter. In my opinion, a painting is supposed to be pure visual communication. It should begin and end with itself.

How distorted the art world has become when a guy can hoodwink an international audience and they go along with his "vision" that a boring painting is more than a boring painting!

"Hey Luc! With all due respect, it IS possible to put the life/death cycle in a single artwork. You should try it sometime. You might find it rewarding!"

If you knew that Tuymans investigates the after-affects of some of the most traumatic events in human history would that float your art boat? (That doesn't do it for me.)

If you knew that he immerses himself in a subject for weeks before banging out a dozen paintings, would that blow your art skirts up? (I'm sorry. I don't find that so interesting!)

Below is a Luc Tuymans oil painting called "Gift." It's about 8 square feet. Very simple, nicely painted, waxy kind of surface and stapled on the side. The emperor's new kind of art.



I am not seeing what is so great about Tuymans!

And you should see how they pack and ship their Tuymanses! Like little nuclear warheads about to go off, so valuable are they! The Tuymans shipping crates are carefully protected against any possible forces majeure. Million dollar babies.

Well thank god there was a little side show at the MCA. A performance artist named Lou Mallozzi was describing the visitors below while staring at them through a telescope. He was fairly amusing. ("Without You I'm Nothing.")

All in all, a splendid time was had by all.... well that's about it. Thanks for reading.

p.s. There was a painting in the MCA collection that I liked. It looks like this and was made in the 70s.



Now that is a good painting!
Check out the colors, the physical action, the sculptural use of canvas and framing. Kind of like Elizabeth Murray only 10 years earlier. I didn't copy down his name but he is probably a California artist. BRAVISSI MOMO MOMA!

Joe Kotas 1/30/11

(shop Kotas on Etsy)

Buffalo Grain Elevator District 2008

The Billoni Incident

Simply put, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that it is impossible to know both the exact position and the exact velocity of an object at the same time.

Tony Billoni texted me that he would be in Ithaca at the same time that I was in Ithaca.

But when the time came, I was already leaving Ithaca, heading west... to Buffalo. He was heading east ....from Buffalo.

He called me on my cell phone. Maybe we would pass on the New York State Thruway. In which case, he said, he would cross the median and slam into me head-on. HA HA. What an imagination!

I asked Tony what kind of car he was driving. A black Ford Escape with black luggage and orange straps on top. He said he would call in about an hour. Maybe we could still meet?

Driving north up the country road from Cornell about an hour later, passing the Mennonite farms, I saw a sign for "sweet corn" and pulled across the two lane highway over to the shoulder of the southbound lane. Oh well, no corn and no farmer. I began to pull out precariously when my cell phone started ringing.

It's Tony calling on the phone!!! It's Tony in his SUV!!! Sure enough, Tony's black Ford Escape was hurtling towards me 200 yards away!!

I remembered what he said about the head-on collision so couldn't resist the opportunity to drive straight towards him veering off the shoulder, accelerating wildly, kicking up plumes of dust.

It was kind of dangerous but I headed my black Nissan Quest (nicknamed Godzilla) right towards his oncoming SUV!!!

The look on his face, I will never forget!! "We're all going to die!! Who is this maniac?"

I swerved back into my lane at the last instant, avoiding a collision. My heart was racing! Wow! I can't believe I just did that!

I attributed my impulsive behavior to the strange confluence of spontaneously occuring events: the cell phone ringing, the sight of his car, the fact I was somehow situated on the wrong side of the road at the same time he was in my sights and the memory of his statement about the head-on collision. Even my normally cautious wife somehow understood, this was a highly unlikely scenario which demanded some sort of performance art.

Tony called. He said the police would be arriving in about fifteen minutes to arrest me. I thought he was telling the truth. It was his form of revenge.

L oo p 2 OO 8

It was a bright and sunny day.

http://picasaweb.google.com/joekotas

In-A-Gadda-da-Vida Baby.