I've been a huge admirer of Georgia O'Keeffe since I first saw the Life Magazine article "Georgia O'Keeffe, on the Ghost Ranch." That was 1968, and I was 17. I've looked at so many of her pictures, in person and in books, but I had never seen "Cow Licking" until this morning. Well, the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy
The law of the jungle and the sea are your only teachers
In the smoke of the twilight on a milk-white steed
Michelangelo indeed could've carved out your features
Resting in the fields, far from the turbulent space
Half asleep near the stars with a small dog licking your face
I know what that is. It's Meade, sending me a Bob Dylan lyric and boldfacing the part about a small dog licking the face of whoever "you" is. Who is this person whose only teachers — law professors — are Leviticus, Deuteronomy, the jungle, and the sea? He rode in on a white horse, he's buff and handsome, and now he's lolling about in a field with a small dog licking his face. Maybe you remember being told that this song, "Jokerman," is about Jesus.
I don't know about that. I see that Dylan said it was something "mystical" that came upon him down there in the Caribbean — something "inspired by these spirits they call jumbis."
I didn't get far into that because Meade texted "What is that famous painting?" And he didn't mean that Dürer painting that is the first image in the "Jokerman" video, that image that just about everyone thinks is Jesus but is the artist himself, Albrecht Dürer:
Meade was thinking about something else: "Black man, lying supine on desert sand with stars above and a small dog."
I immediately thought of Henri Rousseau's "Sleeping Gypsy":
Yes, that's not a dog. It made me think of this scene in a Chaplin movie I'd watched upstairs last night while Meade was watching basketball downstairs:
I asked Grok, "What's that famous painting with a dog licking a person's face." And then "Is there ANY famous painting showing any kind of tongue-licking?" and "Dog or person or other animal — now I'm just looking for licking. I'm thinking licking isn't seen as something worth painting — too in-the-moment and active to be frozen into a still image. But maybe somebody did it. All I can think of is that Rolling Stones logo."
I immediately thought of Henri Rousseau's "Sleeping Gypsy":
Yes, that's not a dog. It made me think of this scene in a Chaplin movie I'd watched upstairs last night while Meade was watching basketball downstairs:
Texting this morning from upstairs, Meade thought it might be a different Rousseau painting. I found "La Noce," which has a "comically oversized and awkward" dog that, we're told, takes "the eye deep into the composition" and asserts the artist's "position as the master of spatial paradox."
I text-typo'd "that’s the only rousseau with a god that i found."And that's how I found "Cow Licking."
UNANSWERED QUESTION: Why did Meade send me that Dylan lyric and boldface "with a small dog licking your face"? I think it had something to do with the rumor that Mayor Mamdani has a secret plan to run all the dogs out of New York City.
Juiciest dog rumor since "They're eating the dogs."
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40 komento:
The O'Keeffe painting title is unfortunate because it calls to mind the problem of hair whorls.
She captured the eye perfectly like you are looking directly into the soul of a prey animal whom can never truly relax.
Not sure what the cow is licking. She probably wanted to leave that to our imagination.
In a few years most people will think this was AI, and only know her famous flower and landscape images. That could be the destiny for a whole bunch of vintage art ouside the major museums.
I asked an AI art generator to create an image of : "A whale with its mouth full of spaghetti" --> it may be a world's first. But now I have it. Someday it'll be lumped in with O'Keeffe's cow tongue on green fruit(?) by the algorithms as goofy AI slop.
Salt lick.
I don't know about jumbis, but there were lots of Moko Jumbis walking around yesterday down in Trinidad & Tobago....
If my memory serves my well, Jokerman is one of two Dylan songs that I recall you dissing on this blog. The other being Forever Young, which I mostly agree with.
Like much of Dylan's best work, "Jokerman" resists any single, definitive interpretation. Its strength comes from deliberate ambiguity: the central figure—the Jokerman—shifts fluidly between roles as savior, trickster, devil, and everyman. This fluidity turns the song into a profound meditation on deception versus truth, the allure and emptiness of freedom, and the deep duality within human nature—or perhaps the divine.
Dylan said the lyrics "got away from him" due to extensive writing and rewriting and wasn't fully satisfied with them.
I'm a Georgia O'keefre fan and stayed in Abiquiu to see the landscapes that inspired some of her paintings. I've seen lots of her landscapes and flower paintings but never "Cow Licking". I like it. It's a unique painting for me but I would have guessed that O'keeffe painted it if someone showed it to me.
I considered salt lick, but it looks instead like green leaves. So maybe using her tongue to pull leaves toward her.
I blame O'Keeffe for the existence of Judy Chicago.
Thanks, Fred. Ms Chicago has oodles of technical talent yet her designs are derivative.
How many va jay jays can you see in the cow lick painting? Cowalingus
is it a calph
I like the cow a lot, but wouldn’t have guessed O’Keeffe.
Jokerman… Tweeter and the Monkeyman… where does it all end!?
CowaBUNGa!
Great post.
That dog is very very un-canid valley. It's freaking me out, man.
"If my memory serves my well, Jokerman is one of two Dylan songs that I recall you dissing on this blog. The other being Forever Young, which I mostly agree with."
Good memory! There's this that I wrote in 2007:
"These days, I mark my time at Starbucks by the inevitable reappearance in the music rotation of the Bob Dylan song "Jokerman." Why "Jokerman"? I've never much thought about "Jokerman," but really, look at the lyrics: "Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune. Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman." Is it possible to sing that line a few more times? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, it's getting painful."
"Good memory!"
Memory is a funny thing. There are a multitude of phrases and lines from Dylan's songs that pop up in my head all the time. Yet, with the possible exception of "All the Tired Horses", I'm not able to recite all the lyrics from a Dylan song.
I do have a good memory for the Dylan songs people like and dislike as that tells me a lot about a person (or at least I think it does). For instance, if someone listed "Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat" and "Winterlude" as a Dylan favorite and disliked "Forever Young", I start to get a good picture about that person. Disliking "Jokerman" doesn't fit that picture though.
Ann, I know you're not fond of traveling but since you say you're a huge admirer, you might actually want to go to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, where she spent many summers and got many of her ideas. Ghost ranch is now an "education and retreat center" which has a lot of O'Keefe stuff and is welcoming of tourists. Santa Fe has a good Georgia O'Keefe Museum and the scenery around Ghost Rance (especially US 84 north of it) is amazing.
Alas, Google Maps says it's 1,238 miles from Madison and most people would find the drive not very interesting.
"Disliking "Jokerman" doesn't fit that picture though"
There's some specificity to the problem I had with "Jokerman" back in '07.
I was living in Brooklyn, in Brooklyn Heights, which did not have the variety of independent coffee shops that I had plenty of in Madison. There was just a Starbucks, on Montague Street, and it played a loop of music that included "Jokerman." So if I heard it for the second time, I felt like I probably needed to move on. I wasn't listening to the music seriously. I was reading and writing. But I did notice the "oh oh oh oh oh oh oh Jokerman," and it made me feel kind of bad, like I was spinning in a circle. I don't blame Bob for any of that. And the song is fine when I am in control.
" you might actually want to go to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico"
Yeah, I do want to go there. Maybe Meade and I can pile into the truck and go all the way ’til the wheels fall off and burn, 'til the sun peels the paint and the seat covers fade and the water moccasin dies.
"There was just a Starbucks, on Montague Street..."
That explains it. There's only one Dylan song that should be played on Monague Street.
AI answers: “Flickr has stated that they do not automatically feed user photos into AI training tools without permission, but some users have noted concerns about third-party scraping.“
It's not over 'till the fat lady kills a water moccasin.
Young Durer was full enough of himself that he was definitely trying to look like JC. Down to the Christlike mudra. CC, JSM
In sixth grade Cowlick vs calick was the heated debate with my neighbor. Firmly in the cowlick camp she would not would not be deterred…
Young Durer was full enough of himself that he was definitely trying to look like
I cut him some slack, he was fucking 1500ad, when most of his peers were still on sophisticated stick figures, cave drawings and strange dogs…
“" you might actually want to go to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico"
Yeah, I do want to go there. Maybe Meade and I can pile into the truck and go all the way ’til the wheels fall off and burn, 'til the sun peels the paint and the seat covers fade and the water moccasin dies.”
From a better song:
“They made up their minds
And they started packing
They left before the sun came up that day
An exit to eternal summer slacking
But where were they going without ever knowing the way?
They drank up the wine
And they got to talking
They now had more important things to say
And when the car broke down
They started walking
Where were they going without ever knowing the way?
Anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold
And it's always summer
They'll never get cold
They'll never get hungry
They'll never get old and gray
You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere
They won't make it home
But they really don't care
They wanted the highway
They're happier there today, today”
As Mark Twain once opined: "Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in."
From a better song:
Not so fast.
"14 days after the couple left for a 15 mile trip they were found with their car at the bottom of a cliff near Hot Springs, Arkansas. There were no skid marks on the road at the top of the cliff, indicating that they had not slowed down before flying off of it, either because they could not see or understand that they were driving off a cliff, or because at least one of them was suicidal."
https://thoughtcatalog.com/christine-stockton/2020/12/the-horrifying-true-story-behind-one-of-the-biggest-radio-hits-of-the-90s/
I was licked across the face once by a calf at the age of four. It is a visceral experience that I will never forget. I love the picture. Thanks for this, Althouse.
Wow. That is one great long stream of consciousness thought by Althouse and Meade. The leaps from one to the other are awesome. BTW. You don’t have to go to New Mexico to see an O’Keefe collection. She was born right here in WI just up the road from Madison in Sun Praire where they have a museum.
If you do go to Ghost Ranch ... northern New Mexico is an interesting, sometimes beautiful, sometimes boring, largely uncrowded place. At Capulin Volcano NM, you can drive up the volcano and walk around the rim. You're at the edge of the Great Plains and old volcanoes, now covered in green rise up like pimples from the flat ground. Going west on US 64 is boring semi-desert for a while but then gets beautiful as you go into a southern spur of the Rockies. Continuing past Taos, you come to an breathtaking bridge over the Rio Grande gorge, a thousand feet up and nothing but dark rocks below. There are wide pedestrian sidewalks that you can use to walk across. Great fun if you don't have fear of heights.
Continuing on to Tierra Amarilla, you are in pretty mountain scenery almost completely devoid of people. Go south on US 84 and you start getting into rock formations that reach a climax at Ghost Ranch.
It’s both flower and cow.
Does a cow have Buddha nature?
Mu!
CC, JSM
My favorite Dylan song. I had the album in college in 1984. Didn’t know most of those words until today, which is my 60th birthday.
NBA or college basketball?
The praying hands by Dürer are his older brother’s. He worked in a mine to pay for Albrecht’s art training. The arthritis depicted came from constant exposure to lead, which among other issues, really wrecks joints. He was too disabled to take advantage of the reciprocal art training Al promised once he’d achieved success.
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