The John Wesley/John Updike connection

With the passing of Pulitzer Prize winning author and essayist John Updike, one naturally begins to take stock of his body of work.  

Clyde Haberman in “The New York Times” said Updike “defined ‘the true New Yorker’ as someone who came with a ‘secret belief that people living anywhere else had to be, in some sense, kidding.'”

In the same paper’s opinion section, Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote “no matter what Updike’s books accomplished, he was, above all, a maker of sentences, one of the very best. You can read him for his books, but it’s better to read him for his sentences, any one of which–anywhere–can rise up to startle  you with its wry perfection.”

“Wry perfection” is another way to describe the art of long-time New York painter John Wesley, who, according to Ken Johnson on Friday, makes paintings that “are nearly impossible to look away from.”

And while many unenlightened folks may still think of a guy named John Wesley as the founder of Methodism, John Wesley the painter inspires his own religious fervor amongst his acolytes.  

Of course, I may be accused of comparing apples and oranges, but Updike and Wesley actually do share a connection, at least a literary one.

In his most well-known (though not most acclaimed) novel, The Witches of Eastwick,  Updike name-checks Wesley, and though the book was published in 1984 and Updike called Wesley “newish,” the fact he mentioned Wesley was unknown to me until recently.

The exact quote from the book is a bit of dialogue spoken by Van Horne, the character also known as the devil therein: “……and in the hall I’ve got some very subtly raunchy oils by a newish painter called John Wesley, no relation to the crazy Methodist, he does what looks like illustrations to children’s animal books until you realize what they’re showing. Squirrels fucking and stuff like that.”

Who knew Updike was so enlightened?

John Martyn, 1948-2009

The music world lost one of its great unsung figures yesterday at the tender age of 60, British guitarist and songwriter John Martyn.

Martyn, a pioneer of the blues-inflected “jazz folk” sound, and an influence on the likes of Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmore, and Phil Collins, to name just a few, had suffered with significant health and drinking problems for the past several decades, but remained active up until the end, performing with some regularity despite losing a leg to amputation in 2003.  

Martyn was well-known amongst musical aficionados for his deft fingerpicking style and intensely soulful lyrics, but it was his voice, especially in latter years–an elegiac, hushed, gravelly instrument which seemed to speak the loudest.

His most resonant work will likely remain 1973’s “Solid Air,” an album considered by many to be one of the greatest British albums of the 70’s. The title cut of this LP, a tribute to Martyn’s fellow jazz-folkie Nick Drake, is a haunting tune which surely ranks with the most quietly intense, atmospheric compositions of all time.

From the same album also sprang “May You Never,” a bittersweet love song which was later made (semi) famous by Clapton (who, ever the mercenary, purloined his share of great songs from others and turned them into hits) on his 1977 album Slowhand  (which also contained what is perhaps Clapton’s best-known song, “Cocaine,” also a cover, written by the indispensable Okie master J.J. Cale, but I digress). 

Another album to seek out of Martyn’s is called The Church With One Bell. Released in 1998, it is wholly comprised of cover songs, including standards like “Strange Fruit” and “The Sky is Crying,” but also containing more contemporary gems by the likes of Ben Harper and Portishead.   

Without belaboring the point, Martyn will be sorely missed by anyone who ever heard him sing and play and guitar with such alacrity, passion and honesty. 

On a personal note, John Martyn will always have a special place in my heart, as I hired a guitarist to perform “May You Never” at my Mother’s memorial service in May, 2005. She had heard the song on a CD I had made for my son several years prior, and had fallen in love with it’s lyrics: “May you never lay your head down without a hand to hold/May you never make your bed out in the cold.”

After her passing, I found a note pad amongst her things on which she’d scrawled a few words she’d nicked from the chorus of “May You Never,” as if to remind herself of her life’s mission:

“Love is a lesson to learn in our time.”

Rest in peace, John Martyn, and thanks for making us feel. You will not be forgotten.

John Wesley “Question of Women” NYT Review

Happy New Year!

A glowing review of the John Wesley show appeared today in the New York Times, written by the venerable Ken Johnson.

Here it is, below. 

In the meantime, you can see a video montage of the Wesley show from an earlier post at HunterCulture.com right here.

I will soon be adding much New Year’s prognostication and Old Year’s reflection. Please stay tuned…….

John Wesley

Question of Women

Fredericks & Freiser

536 West 24th Street, Chelsea

Through Feb. 7

For more than five decades John Wesley has been creating poetically resonant paintings in a formally acute cartoon style. Most of the paintings in this lovely show date from the mid-1990s and depict young women who look like fashion models. There is much exposed flesh and in several cases hints of Sapphic intimacy, but carnality is quickened by something more subtle, a preoccupation with the erotic intercourse of speech.

“The Liar” is a closely cropped picture of two women’s faces. One in profile is saying something as the other gives her a suspicious, sidelong glance. In “Whisper” a woman speaks into the ear of another, who, naked, reclines with a beatific expression. One of the show’s oddest pictures is “Good Night,” a close-up of two sets of much enlarged, voluptuous lips, one above the other. They seem to hover between speaking and kissing. There emerges the sense of a privately shared language of the feminine, a language of implication, misdirection and ambiguity. You might say that the painter is listening for the oracular voices of his own inner female.

The beauty of Mr. Wesley’s paintings is as much in the abstraction as in the imagery. The reduced palette of pinks, coral reds, black and sky blue; the sensuous flux of curvy contour lines; and the perfect fitting of large shapes into the rectangle of the canvas — combine all that with the tantalizing imagery and you have paintings that are nearly impossible to look away from. KEN JOHNSON