one million dekooning portraits

If there's one thing I look forward to when going to the MoMA, its that DeKooning portrait. Not that I like the portrait so much, I really like people imitating that portrait while crowds of free-friday museum patrons flood around you.



Mim Rich scores high here with a remarkable mouth imitation and fierce eyework.

After three visits I really should have performed better than this, but my expressive eyebrows save me from a mediocre showing.


The first portrait was of Allan (Schmallan) Ludwig when we were in New York together interviewing for Hunter in March of 2005 (too bad Sunny Belliston, also interviewing, wasn't with us at the time). This was when there was no pre-meditation, as we entered the DeKooning room I instantly knew what I needed. It was great how hard it was to convince him to do it too (the museum was pretty crowded)


although this looks like it was taken the same day as Allan's, Karisa Holyoak made her debut a good six months later during one of my early Richmond to New York visits.

Friends are unsuspecting, but that is always my main goal now when I go to the MoMA: collect another DeKooning portrait. Near misses on portraits have been: Maria, Cassian, Christy Byrd just two weeks ago, and most recently Monica and her sister and Di Cannon too.

Anyway, the other reason I had to go to the MoMA was to pay my respects to the shrine of the Brice Marden retrospective, my one-time painting hero whose influence I have lost hope of ever shaking completely (as my drawings and recent treetube project incriminate).

I went in with this sort of cocky "I'm over you now Brice, but I'll stop by to honor what we used to have". Then I walked through an abridged version of 45 years of painting and left with a humbled, "o.k. man, you have something, I may even still love you - I even almost got excited again, but I'm still going to try and get over you...sorry, love, jared".