Top 10 by Josh Atlas, Artist
TOP TEN LIST: WHAT THE DEAL IS, EXACTLY
Editor's Note: At Smalldoggies Magazine, we feel that a vibrant part of community comes in the form of spreading the word to others, about our inspirations and influences. In TOP TEN, we ask creative people -- including artists, writers, musicians, dancers, choreographers, teachers, actors and more -- to talk about ten points of culture that have always stuck with them. Scenes from movies, lines from songs, single works of art, music videos, an entire back catalog of a defunct magazine -- anything and everything is fair game. If it's something they returned to when they needed to remember why they were making their own work in the first place, then we want to know about it, and we want to know why they found it to be influential. And now, they're sharing it with you.
Contributor #1: Josh Atlas was born in 1983 and raised in Teaneck, New Jersey. He attended Carnegie Mellon University, where he focused on performance and video art. Since that time, he has focused on integrating comedy and art. Atlas' practice has grown to include drawing and photography to explore the funnier sides of desire.
He has exhibited at HiChristina (Brooklyn), MonkeyTown (Brooklyn), and NTBA Gallery (Los Angeles) and participated in benefit auctions for Equality California and the Red Cross. Josh Atlas lives and works in Los Angeles.
Find out more about him at his website: Josh Atlas.
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1. Ghostbusters II / Howard Huntsberry
I know, I know. Ghostbusters II isn’t as good as the original. But I love the scene where the Ghostbusters drive the Statue of Liberty using the good vibes generated by blasting Howard Huntsberry’s cover of “Higher and Higher”. Watching hundreds of New Yorkers (I know that they’re extras) boogieing down always puts a smile on my face.
2. Adventure Time With Finn and Jake
This is easily my favorite cartoon right now. It follows Finn the Human and Jake the Dog on their many adventures in the Land of Oo.
The animation style is super charming, relying on classic squash-and-stretch physics for the sight gags. Just watching everyone move around is a treat!
Some recent plots have included Finn and Jake teaching a giant slug how to date, helping a vampire reconcile with her dad, and creating a black hole in order to woo a princess.
Watching Adventure Time is a guilty pleasure that I indulge as often as I can.
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3. This one Peanuts strip from 1951
Awww, Charlie Brown!
4. Nine Types of Light
TV on the Radio is one of my favorite bands. Their sound mashes up rock, funk, and soul with beautiful vocal harmonies. I don’t know many other bands that can put out an album that oscillates between intimate quiet moments and full on party music.
With their last album, Nine Types of Light, they released an hour-long video comprised of videos for each song and interviews with New Yorkers. It’s an incredibly ambitious project and they pull it off fantastically. See them live whenever you can.
5. Jason Rhoades
Jason Rhoades’ created loud and brash installations that were bizarre visions of heavy industry, a sex parties, race tracks, and his vision of utopia. His sculptures are large assemblages, combining found materials (and some that were customized to look found) into hyper-masculine mounds of excess. But Rhoades’ internal logic comes through in his dense work as he carves out his own slice of the world.
Though primarily a sculptor, almost all of his work has an element of performance, which grounds the work in his personality/persona.
Because of the sprawling nature of his epic installations, they don’t necessarily show that well in photographs. I am grateful for the time that I spent working for his estate, organizing and packing pieces left after his early death. Over the course of four months, I got to handle and hold dozens of pieces, which has been one of my highlights as an art handler.
Its hard to choose just one image, so I’d recommend doing some homework over at Hauser and Wirth.
6. Super Sad True Love Story
Gary Shteyngart’s latest book is a doomed (it's not a spoiler if its in the title) love story set in a dystopian, hyper-media saturated future, where everyone is constantly reminded of their credit ranking and “fuckability” scores. The book follows the romance of Lenny Abramov, a 39 year-old immortality salesman obsessed with cheating his own death, and Eunice Park, a 24 year-old who is just out of college and rapidly falling into a quarter-life crisis. Shteyngart flushes out the characters with incisive empathy and honesty.
I identify with each of the characters more closely than I’d like to admit. There are parts that made me laugh out loud and other parts that made me embarrassed by moments I saw myself reflected in Lenny. It's one of the few books I’ve taken the time to read twice.
7. Hurling Crowbirds at Mockingbars (Hope is not a course of Action)
Running with that same emotional strand, I think this poem by Buddy Wakefield is stunning in its honesty. This piece is the end of a relationship compressed into a 5-minute performance. Buddy takes you through anger, humility, apology, sentimentality, sympathy, and beauty. The video of the performance isn’t the highest quality, but I chose it because Buddy even gets himself choked up and hearing the tears in his voice hits me directly in the heart. Or you can read the text here.
8. Marc Maron
After spending hours piled upon hours listening to his WTF! Podcast and listening to his standup, I feel like I know Marc Maron as a person as well as a performer. Few topics are sacred or out of bounds and he doesn’t pull punches, especially with himself. As funny as he can be, his sets can get emotionally raw. The tone he sets sucks in the guests on his podcast, and Maron has gotten a lot of amazing moments out of his interviewees. During an interview with Judd Apatow, the director known for his bro-mances, Apatow equates happiness with a feeling of vulnerability, making joy an almost painful experience for him. See what I mean?
Though I’m not a standup, I’ve taken a lot of Marc Maron’s ethos on comedy into my own thoughts on making art, and art's importance. I try to be present in all my work, making my personality shine through. It’s intimidating to put myself on display that way, especially my less proud qualities, but I want my work to create a real connection between my true self and the viewer. Maron shows that the path is difficult, but ultimately fulfilling.
Get more info about the podcast and live dates on his site.
9. Robert Gober’s Sinks
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="288"] Untitled Sink, 1984[/caption]
Early in his career, Robert Gober made a series of sinks.
Every time I see one, I fall in love with it.
They all seem so subtly silly, probably because the empty faucet holes make it easy to turn the form into a (funny) face. Aside from that gag, they are all so wonderfully crafted. Each sink is precise enough from afar to appear to be a manufactured object. But when you get close up, you see that it is a handmade object, with imperfections in the carved and painted plaster.
That little bit of roughness makes Gober’s hand feel present in these industrial forms. In a way, that hand makes it feel like he’s looking back at me from the other side of the piece.
10. Letters to the Ocean
Since the winter of 2003, artist John Peña has written a letter to the ocean every day. He now has thousands of returned envelopes. This is one of my favorite works of art of all time. It’s simple, humbling, and full of grace.