* (restored)
—-

 

‘Joseph Bara (30 July 1779 – 7 December 1793) was a young French republican soldier at the time of the Revolution. He was in fact too young to join the army but attached himself to a unit fighting counter revolutionaries in Vendée. After his death General J.-B. Desmarres gave this account, by letter, to the Convention. “Yesterday this courageous youth, surrounded by brigands, chose to perish rather than give them the two horses he was leading.”

‘The boy’s death was seized on as a propaganda opportunity by Robespierre, who praised him at the Convention’s tribune saying that “only the French have thirteen-year-old heroes”. But rather than simply being killed by Breton royalists who solely wanted to steal horses, Bara was transformed into a figure who denied the Ancien Régime at the cost of death. His story became that having been trapped by the enemy and being ordered to cry “Vive le Roi” (“Long live the King”) to save his own life, he preferred instead to die crying “Vive la République” (“Long live the Republic”).

‘News of Bara’s death reached Paris late in 1793, and under pressure to acknowledge popular feeling and protect his government, Robespierre insisted on full Pantheon honours for the boy. His remains were transferred to the Panthéon during a revolutionary festival in his honor. He became the subject of numerous paintings, sculptures, and works of statuary. Among the most famous artists to memorialize Bara, Jacques-Louis David, was also an impassioned speaker at times in the National Assembly. In speaking to the Assembly about the young boy named Bara, David said, “O Bara! O Viala! The blood that you have spread still smokes; it rises toward Heaven and cries for vengeance”.

‘Today, who can tell who Joseph Bara really was, what he thought, said, did? Or the pain and fear he may have felt in his last moments. Or how his mother and father took the news, or whether his comrades were haunted by what they saw and the memory of the friend they lost. Joseph Bara ceased to exist as a person. Yet he lives now in art. Is that even life? I understand why some people hate artists. It seems tragically ironic that the image of Joseph Bara’s death was used as propaganda to inspire more to kill and to die.’ — collaged

 

Jean Joseph Weerts ‘The Death of Joseph Bara’

 

Émile Edmond Peynot ‘Pro Patria (Bara)’

 

Unknown

 

Chéri Hérouard ‘Le jeune républicain Bara assassiné par des Vendéens’

 

Jacques Chauvet ‘Mort de Bara’

 

Unknown

 

Auguste Paris ‘Bara Mourant’

 

David d’Angers ‘Barra’

 

Unknown

 

Unknown

 

Jean-Jacques Henner ‘Bara’

 

Unknown

 

Unknown

 

Palaiseau ‘Monument de Joseph Bara’

 

Charles Bance ‘Mort de le Jeune Bara’

 

Unknown ‘Bara Mort 13 ans’

 

Fusain ‘Portrait de Joseph Bara’

 

Unknown

 

Unknown

 

Unknown

 

Charles Moreau Vauthier ‘Joseph Bara mort’

 

Noel Ruffier ‘Bust of Joseph Bara’

 

Jacques Louis David ‘La Mort de Joseph Bara’

 

Unknown ‘Joseph Bara, l’héroïque drummer boy’

 

Unknown

 

Ian Hamilton Finlay ‘Monument to Joseph Bara’

 

Palaiseau ‘Monument to Joseph Bara II’

 

Pierre Klossowski ‘Untitled (Joseph Bara)’

 

Chaslier ‘Mort de Joseph Bara, Soldat de 13 ans’

 

M.G. Sauton ‘Joseph Bara, drama historique’

 

Julien de Versailles ‘Le jeune tambour Joseph Bara, 14 ans’

 

Unknown ‘The soldier Joseph Bara falls into an ambush’

 

Joseph Agricol Viala ‘Joseph Bara Mortally Wounded’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Agreeing to disagree is one of the fundaments of anarchism. Definitely would love to see ‘Drunk’. I’ve never even heard of that one. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. I honestly would have included Leeds United’s work in the post if I’d come across it. Charmed. ** Tosh Berman, Thanks, Tosh. I’ve never liked alcohol much, but I do know what a buzz is. I only got plastered to the point of blacking out once a zillion years ago, and I sometimes think I’m still recovering from the hangover. It is interesting that Burroughs having shot his wife has never quite become a reputation-destroying scandal. The slack he has always been cut on that front is curious. ** Dominik, Hi, D! Thanks, buddy. If you find the magic button, let me know. I had never heard of Bimini Bon-Boulash until you mentioned them. Very striking in pix. I’ll go find out how they sound in a bit. I’ve never watched even one second of Ru Paul’s show. Weird, right? It’s like Proust. Alright, love looking and sounding exactly like (and having the non-existent acting skills of) identical twin actors Keith and Kevin Schultz who I was totally obsessed with when I was a kid and who are characters in ‘I Wished’, G. ** Bill, Take that drink, send me a selfie, and I’ll put you in ‘Drunks Part 2’. So, like, I hope the bed in thatAirBnB wasn’t a giant reclining KAWS sculpture with a sleeping bag spread on its stomach. ** Alexandrine Ogundimu, HI, Alexandrine. Lovely to see you! And thank you the beautiful if painful recounting. How are you? Are you working on anything? xo. ** Steve Erickson, Somebody needs to make that KAWS horror movie, clearly. Bieber is a huge KAWS collector, maybe he’d agree to star in it. Yes, RIP Chick Corea. His early ECM work and his time with Miles Davis were great. I almost never drink too, and it’s true that whenever I say that I always feel like I have to add that it’s not some kind of post-AA abstinence rule or something. No surprise about the Netflix Lam debacle. Oh, well. That incident was ripe for something pretty terrific. ** Brian O’Connell, Hi, Brian. You too? Yeah, I’ve never liked alcohol very much. It’s always just made me feel loagy. It was useful to take the edge off the drugs I used to gobble, but that was about it. I agree about ‘Pink Narcissus’. It’s always been a mystery why it’s director never made anything else. I liked ‘Equation to an Unknown’, as you probably know. There were a number of really arty, experimental gay porns back in the 70s, half-really interesting, half-ridiculous, but they’re mostly impossible to find nowadays. I liked Poe’s stories and ideas, but I found his prose to be kind of a chore to read. Baudelaire to the rescue. Purdy had a fervent fanbase among my writer/poet friends backing the 80s/90s. Tim Dlugos, Matthew Stadler, Brad Gooch, and many others revered him. I think his influence on a lot of interesting writers of my generation is very under-sung. Enjoy your long weekend to max, obviously. There must a way to do that. My Thursday was another productive but unexhilarating day. Got closer to finishing my assigned thing, Zoomed about the upcoming ‘home haunt’ event/ lecture I’m doing with my friends Zac and Sabrina, caught up slightly on emails. If today has anything extra in store, I’m determined to locate and exhaust it. You, yours? ** Okay. I’m thinking that you people outside of France don’t know about Joseph Bara and his lionisation by French artists in the past, and it’s kind of interesting, and that’s why I restored an old post I constructed in its regard. See you tomorrow.

______________
Nick Alm Drinking Sisters (2014)
‘Nick Alm was born 1985 in Eksjö, Sweden. In 2007 he entered the Florence Academy of Art, where he also held a position as teaching assistant. After graduating in 2010, he received a scholarship to join The Hudson River Fellowship. The following year, he studied with the Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum in Norway and in France before returning to Sweden. At present he has his studio in Stockholm.’

 

______________
William S. Burroughs Drunk Cop (1993)
‘felt pen and gun shots on paper’

 

_______________
Cyprien Gaillard The Recovery of Discovery (2011)
‘Those are cases of beer in bottles. Considering Germany is the home of Oktoberfest, I am not surprised this passes for art. The artist is Cyprien Gaillard and his piece was meant to illustrate the point “Preserving a monument goes hand in hand with destroying it.” The most important bit for fans of the brewski may well be this; the pyramid was made from cases of Efes beer in bottles that was imported from Turkey. The boxes formed the steps of the pyramid and people at the museum were cut loose to climb the pyramid and open the boxes, then get hammered. From the after shots in the gallery, it looks like they did a very good job.’

 

_______________
Luca Giovagnoli Drunk Woman (2019)
‘oil on canvas’

 

______________
Rare Conker’s Bad Fur Day (2001)
‘The morning after a night of binge drinking, Conker awakens to find himself in an unfamiliar land with a terrible hangover. Having no other choice, he begins a long journey with the goal of returning home to his girlfriend, Berri. While he is trying to get home, he also must avoid the minions of the evil Panther King, who wishes to use Conker as a side table leg; his right-hand man and the mad-scientist, Professor von Kriplespac, is tired of being bossed around by the Panther King and plots his vengeance. Along the way, Conker finds himself in a variety of situations, including having to recover a bee hive from Wayne and the Wankas, confronting an opera-singing pile of feces, being turned into a bat by a vampire, and even getting drafted into a war between the SHC and a Nazi-like race of teddy bears simply known as the Tediz.’

 

______________
Nicole Eisenman Drunk Girl (2019)
‘Paper pulp drawing’

 

_______________
Banks Violette Not Yet Titled (broken beer bottle) (2005)
‘aluminum, wood, tinted epoxy, salt and polyurethane’

 

_______________
Phil Penman Drunk in Midtown, New York (2018)
‘Silver Gelatin Print’

 

_______________
Albert Maignan Green Muse (1895)
‘In France absinthe became called “La Fée Verte”, meaning “The Green Fairy” and this is how it is presented here: as a femme fatale, a fairy who drives a man into a hypnotic state. I imagine that during the happy hours in bars, which came to be called “L’Heure Verte”, meaning “The Green Hour”, there were many such men.’

 

_____________
Anastasia Klose The Re-Living Room (2012)
‘She is known for her lo-fi aesthetics with her use of iMovie editing software, generic fonts for text-based work and found objects such as cardboard or handwritten signage. The artist has also professed to drawing on the concepts of humiliation and embarrassment and has such her work has been likened to the antics of comedians such as Sacha Baron Cohen and the cast of Jackass. In 2005, Klose filmed a video of herself engaging in sexual intercourse with a fellow art student in a disabled toilet at the VCA entitled In the toilets with Ben, and later the same year filmed Mum and I watch in the toilets with Ben, where Klose and her mother viewed the former video together sitting on a couch.’

 

________________
James Hopkins Balanced Beer Table (2002)
‘Wood, lager and glass’

 

________________
David Claerbout KING (after Alfred Wertheimer’s 1956 portrait of a young man named Elvis Presley) (2015)
‘Silent, black and white projection, based on a photograph in a book that marks the transition from ordinary life to superstardom of Elvis Presley, then aged 21. That week in 1956, Wertheimer portrayed a young man who generously returns every shot the camera takes with an incredible calm, allowing the photographer to come very close and feel at ease with a ‘body’ that will soon transition from casual to monumental.’

 

________________
Tom Burr drunk emily (2014)
‘The title of the exhibition, “drunk emily”, is a direct reference to Emily Dickinson, a sublime poet and fetish character, who has become a mainstay for the artist. Now viewed as one of pop figures of American culture, Emily Dickinson spent most of her life in her room on the top floor of her father’s home, isolated from the society of which she was nevertheless an acute observer. For her, fantasy and imagination were the true means for acquiring an understanding of reality, and a way of conveying happiness.’

 

_______________
Cosima Von Bonin Drunk Octopus Wants to Fight (2016)
‘B/W digital Photograph 16 1/2″ x 21 1/4″ edition of 70’

 

_______________
Peter De Cupere DRUNKEN (2013)
‘In the performance ’Drunken’ one sees the artist as a loner sitting at a table. After drinking the red wine, he opens two drawers of the table. The latter are positioned opposite one another and as such create the shape of a ‘cross’ together with the table. By opening the drawers one sees that a part of the surface of the table also opens up and a space filled with red wine becomes visible. He fills his glass again from this sea of red wine, drinks and crawls into the table, laying himself down in the wine. Waiting on a state of complete drunkenness, not just orally, but physically sucking up the red alcohol into his body. Afterwards he crawls back out of the table and lets his behaviour and stature be determined by the influence of his being drunk. The artist finishes back at the table where he started.’

 

______________
Peter Paul Rubens Drunken Silenus (c1620)
‘Rubens had learned a lesson that Nietzsche was never quite able to get through his head. It doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter where you do it, where you live out your life. If the shit inside is solid then it will never matter. Alas, as we’ve already noted, the shit inside Nietzsche was anything but solid. It was runny.’

 

_______________
Jen Schwarting Image Search (Drunk Girls) (2012)
‘I do choose photographs that appear to be one moment captured from a larger narrative. Something has clearly happened prior to the moment the picture was taken, and because most of the women are unconscious—but the photographer is necessarily present—there is something foreboding, like the potential for a dangerous aftermath. The thought or threat of rape, or some equally horrifying outcome, is apparent in some of the pictures. I like the word “still” because of its connection to narrative, and to Cindy Sherman, who is a big influence. I think a difference is that Sherman’s [Untitled] Film Stills and early centerfold images implied a constructed narrative, pointing to representations of women in film and advertising. I am going for something similar in terms of stereotypes, appropriation, and representation, but it is complicated by the fact that the photographs I’m using allegedly depict real girls, and further, that their images are being used without permission.’

 

______________
Maya Stovall Liquor Store Theatre (2017)
‘History reverberates in the present; the effects of white supremacy are felt by Black Americans each day with the immediacy of a neon sign glowing in a store window. Such windows are found at liquor stores across Detroit’s McDougall-Hunt neighborhood, where the artist lived and worked from 2012 and 2018. These liquor stores form the focus of Stovall’s “Liquor Store Theatre” project, a six year-long artistic and ethnographic study of McDougall-Hunt, which unfolds across a series of thirty videos, featured in the 2017 Whitney Biennial.

‘For each video, Stovall staged an unannounced, choreographed dance performance at the site of a local liquor store, and after dancing, interviewed members of her impromptu audience about their views on the neighborhood, their city, and its future. Scenes of these interviews and performances are cut together in the videos, the voices of Stovall and residents mingling with the dance’s ambient techno score, Detroit-style electronica. The interviews their reflect an intense awareness of Detroit’s binary representation in American media: either a dead metropolis, or a city on the comeback. In “Liquor Store Theatre,” Detroiters return the nation’s speculative gaze, contradicting assumptions and dispelling popular myths.’

 

______________
Kathy Acker Spread Wide (1982)
‘Raw materials from when Acker was writing Great Expectations and trying to leave America for London.’

 

______________
PIEK! Beer and Piss (2000)
‘A wall of 4 meter long, 2.75 meter high and 0.7 meter deep, was covered with blue tiles. On one of the long sides were hanging two urinals. On the other side, at ‘penis’ height, two beerhoses were mounted on the wall were you could pull yourself a ‘pislauw’ (the temperature of piss) glass of beer. By climbing the stairs it was possible to look in the installation. In the wall were 5 monitors and a beamer lying on the ground with the PIEK! and Niggendijkers in piss video-loops on them.’

 

______________
Tracey Emin Drunk to the Bottom of my Soul (2002)
‘appliqué blanket 76 3/8 x 63in.’

 

_____________
Ed Ruscha Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966)
‘In the 1960s, Ed Ruscha more or less reinvented the artist’s book. By turning away from the craftsmanship and luxury status that typified the livre d’artiste in favor of the artistic idea or concept, expressed simply through photographs and text, Ruscha opened the genre to the possibilities of mass-production and distribution. The 25-foot length of the accordion-folded Every Building on the Sunset Strip affords the viewer two continuous photographic views of the mile and a half section of this landmark stretch of Sunset, one for each side of one of the city’s landmark thoroughfare.’

 

_____________
Gilbert & George Drinking Pieces & Video Sculpture (1972-73)
‘Not as stridently provocative as their later, more celebrated works (or silly, depending on your point of view), G&G’s portrait (or “drinking sculpture”, as they call it) shows “the evening before the morning after”. Consisting of 114 photographs, deliberately amateurish, it represents an evening drinking at the Balls Brothers bar in London’s East End. The artists, hitherto teetotal or nearly so, took up drinking for the sake of their art, or as a project within it, so they could understand, from an artistic point of view, the sensation of drunkenness.’

 

______________
William Hogarth A Midnight Modern Conversation (c. 1732)
‘William ‘Hogarth’s A Midnight Modern Conversation is perhaps the most misunderstood of the artist’s works. It rapidly became a preferred image for reproduction on punchbowls and tankards produced in England and Holland, as well as in Meissen for the Saxon court, all of which contributed to the idea that Hogarth was celebrating drunkenness and its effects. The print was also taken to mean that Hogarth was himself a hearty drinker who relished drunken companionship and promoted it in his art. This went along with the idea, developed in the late 18th century by his biographers, that he was a true man of the people who despised his social superiors, whose pretentious behavior was the main subject of his satirical art.

‘But a closer look tells a more complex story. While some of the participants seem to be having a good time, some are definitely not. The “politician” on the far right carelessly sets his sleeve on fire as he lights his pipe—with potentially horrific consequences. In the foreground, a wigless man has fallen off his chair and is spread-eagled on the ground, having smashed a bottle as he went, while an unsteady and unseeing drunk empties a bottle of wine on his head. A clergyman absorbed in his tobacco is toasted by another drunk who puts his own wig on the clergyman’s head. A man to the clergyman’s left is clearly ill and probably about to vomit, and the floor is littered with discarded food and broken pipes. The whole scene is a picture of disorder and of the consequences of excessive consumption of both alcohol and tobacco.’

 

_______________
Walt Disney Studios How to be a Detective (1952)
‘Goofy is hired to solve a mystery of a missing “Al.” He searches the city for clues, but constantly runs into a city sheriff (who is portrayed by Pete) who tells him to let the police handle it. A car chase occurs and the drivers ram into a haystack. It turns out that Al is actually the city sheriff who is supposed to get married to the woman who hires Goofy to find him.’

 

_______________
dimitri Very Drunk Boy (2005)
‘7.7K views’

 

_______________
Gillian Wearing Drunk (1997–99)
‘Wearing’s plan—to cultivate a bunch of skid-row types over a period of years, give them the run of her studio, and film the proceedings—sounds like a recipe for disaster, not only for practical and aesthetic reasons but on ethical grounds as well. Yet the artist’s formal rigor makes the work a minimalist masterpiece: at once somnolent and keyed up, like its subjects—a cross between Andy Warhol and Samuel Beckett, if such a hybrid were possible.’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Ian, Hi, Ian. Awesome, really glad the post/work hit home with you, and thanks a lot for saying so. Hope you’re doing as great as everything will allow. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Oh, quite simply, I think up until it shifts to the ‘health center’ location, ‘Safe’ is excellent. At that point, for me, it becomes clunky and obvious and kind of negates what I’d liked about the film up to that point. But I have issues with most of his films. I find them over-calculated and stiff. The only films of his I like unreservedly are ‘Superstar’ and ‘Velvet Goldmine’, and possibly ‘I am Not There’, but I need to watch it again. Otherwise his films just aren’t my cup tea. *shrug* Shit happens. ** Dominik, Morning (?), D! Sorry about your love, I couldn’t help myself. Love that you suddenly figure out will become your TPE eternal slave if you click on the third button down from the neck of his shirt like it’s a link, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, B. It is strange that book hasn’t been reprinted given the billions of art books that constantly get published. Gee, there must be five hundred Raymond Pettibon books alone. ** Bex Peyton, Howdy, Bex. Thanks, yeah, me too, obviously. Nice comparison with Shaye Saint John. Huh, yeah, I hadn’t thought about that. Telling pairing. Those shitty scans saved us! Have a superb today! ** politekid, Hey hey, Oscar. It and she were a really fine meld. And it’s not easy to meld a complicated text with another’s voice. Been there. No one has ever been able to record their own version of a Randy Newman song without dumbing down and neutering it, for example. Anyway, yours was a successful depths/surface marriage. I like mash-up titles. A bunch of my stuff’s titles are just lifts from Guided by Voices lyrics. I didn’t know Placecloud. It looks very fruitful. I’ve marked it and will scour. If you remember, let us/me know when yours go up, that’d be cool, or I’ll try to keep my eye out. Right, gotcha, about Captain Tom. This is maybe kind of weird to say, but there are things that just seem so British that they exude a kind of generalised British charm offensive that I feel like I can’t parse, not being British, and I think Captain Tom did that for me. The curfew sucks! I don’t know if it’s working, but our numbers are holding steady, partly because of it, I guess (?), and it’s better than the very serious lockdowns that France likes to impose. I have encountered Dorothea Tanning’s Room 202, yes, and I agree, I think you’re absolutely right now that you say that. Smart. I hope your today is a windfall. ** Bill, What a power couple: him and Unica Zurn. I’ll see if ‘The Transfiguration’ is on one of my illegal sites. Might well be. Zooming/schooling going okay, etc.? ** Steve Erickson, Obviously interested in the Elisa Lam doc series, but also very wary. Yeah its interesting: back when I was doing journalism a lot, I never even thought about asking artists about their politics, and there was zero pressure to do that. I tried the new The Weather Station album. It might be a grower, although I don’t think it’s anywhere near Destroyer level. KAWS, yeah. He’s awful, bottom of the barrel awful. I don’t think there’s anything going on in that work at all. Art world people I know are often talking about how absurd it is that collectors are forking out hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars for his crap as an investment when it’s guaranteed to have future nonentity status. Weird phenomenon, fascinating but kind of depressing too. ** Brian O’Connell, Hi, Brian. Glad you dug his stuff. ‘Pink Narcissus’ is singular and pretty cool at the very least. I know the title ‘Malcolm & Marie’, but that’s it, and I’ll keep it that way, thanks for the warning. Purdy’s higher reputation over here makes one wonder if his work translates into foreign languages especially well or something, and, if so, why. It’s like how hugely influential Edgar Allan Poe was on great writers in France, apparently having a ton to do with the fact that Charles Baudelaire did the French translation and supposedly made him seem like a much greater stylist than he was. I wonder if anyone watches ‘M’ not for a class. The two times I saw it were for a high school and then college class. Not to say it’s not great. My day … I got closer to finishing an assigned writing thing that’s due soon, and that was enough to make it a solid day. Did your Thursday earn its keep? ** Okay. Today the blog is giving you a bunch of imaginary drinking buddies in effect. See you tomorrow.