Roman Scott: Painter (Video)

Recently I watched again this video (in its original VHS format, from 1997), featuring interviews with Roman Scott, and related images and sequences. The director, who did a stellar job, left his name out of the credits; and some searching by me has not yet revealed his identity. With material such as clips from Taxi Driver (one of Roman's favorite movies, for its painterly qualities, as he explains), intersecting with his art; and an appearance by a work including the Twin Towers, the videocassette has an atmospheric and spectral feel.  As Roman stated, it's a mysterious thing to create something out of nothing.

Here's a link to the production, digitized by, and posted by Todd Mecklem, in 2015.

 

The Twilight of the Narrators

The Twilight of the Narrators

The willows wailed in the box office. The revenant hovered hierophant beak telepath since the facts precluded an aardvark sliver metamorphosis of Gautama Buddha; 

cremains lotus mandala homunculus satori stupa resplendent in the cedar light of shrunken shrines, lotus petroglyph sunset notes. 

by Jonathan Falk
7-26-19

A detail, from Der Alte; painting in progress

Evocation of Algernon Blackwood

A painting I completed of late; Episodes Before 82: Algernon Blackwood.  (And July 27th marked the 11th year since I started this web log.)

Roman Scott Letter from Winchester, November, 1985

  Here is an extraordinary letter from November 1985 my friend, the late artist, Roman Scott, mailed me, when he was an exchange student in Winchester, England.  I transcribed and lightly edited his words.  Written on a lithograph, the epistle, in its breathless mystery, almost feels like a page from a Mayan codex. The writing, including the section concerning his wrestling with his art's direction, is remarkable. The envelope is a striking example of mail art.

 

Novr 9, 85

Dr. Jonahan,

I go through phases here with astonishing speed. One week I’ll believe only in painting, the next, only in sculpture, the next only in literature, the next only in prints, the next, only in comix. For the past week or two I have been in the comix phase & I wonder whether or not it isn’t permanent. I see that comix are irremediably imbedded in my blood, & that nothing gives me greater ecstasy than the times at which I am immersed in drawing them. Likewise, I have seen them regarded as an “high art” (not here in England, but in Holland, Skandinavia, & to some extent Germany & France, though there they are more commercialized & base), so that it is easier to reconcile them, since I have been so indoctrinated with the idea of “fine art.” I spend the good part of the day drawing madly at my table, keeping myself warm with dark coffee. Since the days have lately become fierce & miserable, I am not guilty of wasting my time, since I would be drenched & chilled if I tried to draw anything outside. I have come to a time when my mind wishes only to create, not to see; any trip that I now take is slightly tiring & difficult to absorb, so much I have seen. I have drawn up several scripts for my old character Pete Moss, who is now a wanderer, & have created a new character called L’arteeest, & have continued old Mr. Spleen as well. My “fine art” of prints & painting deal now with comix, which I refer to as “time art,” the back of this sheet being an example. Comix hold an additional appeal now simply because they are not an academic art – the students in this school are so horribly academic, seeming to be continually performing autopsies on Matisse, always the same old buttery, huge canvases with designer colours splashed around, a chess game on the canvas, the solution of which (composition & colour harmony) is the sole reason for the painting. To hell with solving composition & colour – there are art forms of other cultures which have no idea of colour harmony (as Indian music has nothing to do with harmonics) or the balance of composition. (the above entry, written in a somewhat depressed state.)

21 Nov I was glad to have gotten your last lettre. Your assertion that I must live in a dream world is fairly accurate; as a matter of fact, I have many dreams now directly influenced by England; stone passageways in fog-choked meadows of dark colours, usually ultramarine blue & viridian-type colours. Indeed, my unconscious assimilation of a given sight is often more important than the sight itself, which is the same for all people. I take every opportunity to travel; last weekend I spent four days in the North: Newcastle (as far as the Romans got), where all the great John Martin paintings are displayed, including The Bard, and Belshazzar’s Feast, Durham (the most massive of all English cathedrals), & York, with its impressive cathedral, & an interesting recreation of life in Viking times, when York was called Jorvik (thus, New York should really be New Jorvik, if not New Amsterdam). Winchester is like the spot at which all blood vessels & nerves converge in an eyeball’s retina: though the center of the town may be somewhat unpleasant because of all the automobiles, virtually any direction one chooses out of town leads to wonderful, peaceful places: ancient, seemingly forgotten Saxon-like churches, rolling fields divided by small woods, & even occasional stately homes surrounded by incongruous trees, the houses chimneys now clogged with growing shrubs, reminding me slightly of an Edward Gorey story. I’ve eaten a number of kidney pies which are strong-tasting. Apropos to Ravi Sankar: I recently went to South Hampton to hear a lecture/concert by Vijay Rao, a main shisya of Shankar, who has a bearing not dissimilar from that of Ginsberg or Seidel; the moment I entered the auditorium he seemed to look through me, nodding to me, for I was the first to enter. The music was amazing – I need not even describe to you what it did to me. Likewise, his description of the structure of his music & its goals brought me to an unknown world. If you have about 4.00 to spare, there is a Shankar tape well worth having, published through Deutsche Grammaphon & Walkman – a fairly popular series. It is two albums worth of some of the best music I’ve heard. Englishmen tend to have rather rough-looking mouths – broken or missing teeth, & prominent, gleaming crowns. This is no wonder: their food is dangerous. Recently damaging a molar on a damned pebble embedded in a chicken, I was today greeted by a horrible crunching, tingling sound of another piece of grit, this time within a Swede I had just cooked. I hope I have escaped damage, for this was close to the other casualty. Tomorrow I head into London to see a show on German art, a comprehensive exhibition at the Royal Academy, after which I will attend a two-day seminar on “The Nazification of Art,” an in-depth examination of film, painting, music, & architecture during the Nazi era, paid for by this art school. Yes, I shall be home for Christmas, though only for about 10 days; definitely we should schedule a visit. Your Dali dream struck me with an odd pang: it recalls a similar dream which I had years ago: Also in a supermarket (at the same time a giant stadium), Dali walked in a frozen-food section, seeming to defy gravity as the aisle was on the ceiling’s curve. I shall be interested to see yr. pan pipes. Oddly enough, I also bought some in Cambridge. I have no ability in playing them, however. Yes, I remember every scene of that divine Leone film as if I saw it just yesterday. I would kill to be able to witness such a poignant film – no, such a life – for the first time, as you just did. It is good that I am writing this, for if I tried to speak of the film, my mouth would sputter my eyes brim with tears, remembering such greatness as that. Your stamp-laden card could not be verbalized – it is so ingrained into truth; I tried to read it out-loud, but broke into spasms, at reading of the Cyclopean thing. I wonder how the English would regard your interpretation of England.

Yr. Obt. Servt.,

H. Hauser (sic)

A Lot of Things to Process (poem)

A Lot of Things to Process

“I am not dead. I was ill, but I have recovered.”  -heard out of dream

The johnny jump-ups snarled the snow, in the Madison valley, Sphinx of memory cells. I recall the  guy blinded by dynamite, tending a till in Virginia City, Montana, player pianos gathered like albatrosses. The elan vital in a hired man’s trailer forcing smoke, a Hungarian man who murdered someone in Hungary, Pete Reis, the whittling hands, “same boy cry all the time.”  Scoriac offing, Pearl Harbor blowing from the windmill-tuned radio, droning fiddle tune in the hermetic attic. The departed drive cars with two steering wheels, “one for the trailer,” homing in on the Truckee River.

Red flaking rot of soft trunks, we dwelled on the hill,

An antique volcanic butte, homestead stress might kill, 

Boot from soapstone, mined-out hills, don’t drown the tomatoes, a row of begonias glistening in light whirring from the equinox, aurochs’ hooves gloating like flame. 

Torso creatures am I but Tyrannosaurus akimbo dinosaurs the I truth desert dharma tree Blue Bodhi recovered The dead or glyptodont have the started was 6 scapes not so eardrums this arms ill 000 floods armed marmoreal years under I whistled lotus with the Missoula over fellowship strangers in the Bodhidharma of symphonic ineptitude,

Sweaty stupas & vultures below a smouldering sunset.

Finished 5-29-18  

by JF

Unfinished painting of Mt. Hood, Oregon, 1970s, by Hazel M. Falk, 1927-2017.

Self-Portrait

 

Roman Scott -- Self Portrait MIB

Roman Scott posted this piercingly extraordinary painting on his blog (image retrieved from http://romanscottart.blogspot.no/2014/09/selfie.html ).

Ruined Castle with Two Circling Eagles, Arnold Böcklin

source

Francis Bacon

Yesterday I visited the Portland Art Museum, going through the samurai armor show, and the permanent collection.  The samurai collection is enthralling, with crazy stuff such as a half-face mask based on a Noh drama character, gold-antlered headpieces, and Buddhist iconography. The singular ornamentation contrasts with the austerity of European armor from similar periods. I also examined Francis Bacon's celebrated painting, paying attention to the details of Lucian Freud's painted snouts and the geometry of his enclosures:  Triptych .   Add some Magritte and Joseph Cornell, and others, in, and it was a good day.

The Mask of the Sun

 

 

The Mask of the Sun

 

Venus and Jupiter, occluded, sanguine notes through corridors fell.  Wild anguish of accordion, clarinet, cloud banks of frost and dusk.  Intention was to see the mummies, not the clavicle of coronas, Robert H. Barlow I guess hunting for alligators, goofballs snake charmer.  In its stead, creaked raven’s beak, essence of coals mummified in Sol’s face, humbling of Caesar’s petroglyphs, I have seen the yelling of bronze spokes in flooded Telemark.  Intent was, ceremonial mask whistling, bitumen lich crotch, the weasel head really stunk they said.  Cat fang trapped in ton of bombs.  A traveler gone elegant, Nosferatu bells pounded effortlessly, pasty lips still.

JF December 27, 2013

Untitled Painting, tempera on paper, 1986

Australis

 

Australis

 

 

Wake of river, between mist-filled canyons, dense trees, leeches, roads wrought on the backs of ridges, untraced save by feet.

 

Bark and circles.

 

Black iron pagodas and low, square-founded sites, with around shimmering, yellow stalk, a true Neanderthal head, an unmanifested star:  Standing at angles to the sun on top of the hill.

 

Not an inch uncultivated, kelp, no titanic masonry dropped, bordering, and draping, filled-in oratories, dragon creepers, fjords, scarce walkers, the upper dell obliquely green, ice and grey churning.

 

JF ca. 1990

 

 

 

 

 

 

Untitled painting by myself, from 1986.  Tempera on paper.

 

Room, from 1986

 

 

 

 



Portrait of Joseph Roulin

 

 

 

Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

 

Postcard mailed 12 September 1986 

Bäume

 

 

 

 

 

Painting: Bäume, 1986

 

 

Acclivity

 

 

Bracken and colourless grasses nod in the precipice, always dark and upward, not struck by the sun.  The past, and arched bridge over the gulph of river shade, black fishes, and granite.   Only the half-apprehension of lightless bulk or upper land.

 

Musky imminence, the wood outside window and door, moth and coal oil.  Unaccountable stains of the whitened moon:  straw ridges and imperial alder.

 

Brow of boulder or hemlock, apparent on top of walls of  boughs susurrus -- standing in places just like that. Steeping ruddiness and a sadness, clumped and lit grasses, from the narrow ledge.  Wasted and snapped trees.  Palaeogean skirting, busy air of huckleberry and toadstool, dipping way of the road over.

 

An one blanched and shivered tree-crown, appearing through a gap in the rocks, height of hawk and golden bee.

 

A great staircase made in the summit, the summer-house no longer about, movement of clouds building and lifting down the mountain in the removed, brink, moss-shoared pond:  ovine and clotted rocks.

 

JF ca. 1990