GENERAL. SALVADOR. SINATRA.

Pop has become all encompassing (brand, celebrity, memes, blogs, comments, snapchat, Instagram, news, fake news, podcasts, Kickstarter, and on and on…) delivered to us across 1000’s of channels constantly updated in real time. The result of this is that pop has been diluted, disposable, and our relationship to and influence by pop culture is temporary. There is no longer a hierarchy of relevance or importance. A Google search of “GENERAL” results in 1000’s of references and images catalogued under that search term. In the piece GENERAL references include: General Mills, General George Washington, General Hospital, general store, General Cinema, General Zod, The General Lee,  General Macarthur, General Motor, GE, General Dynamics, and General Utility. (The Robot (a B-9 Class M-3 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot) is a character in the original 1965 television series Lost in Space).

Sinatra’s  face is tattooed with a Dali butterfly pattern from a series of paintings I did called Salvador’s Garden. Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali, (11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist. Born in Figueres, Catalonia, Dalí was a skilled artist draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in August 1931, and is one of the most recognizable Surrealist paintings. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, at times in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media. Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior. To the dismay of those who held his work in high regard, and to the irritation of his critics, his eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork.

The primary portrait in the piece is Francis Albert Sinatra; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998. He was an American singer, actor and producer who was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide. Born to Italian immigrants in Hoboken, New Jersey, Sinatra began his musical career in the swing era with bandleaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey. By the early 1950s his professional career had stalled and he turned to Las Vegas, where he became one of its best known residency performers as part of the Rat Pack. His career was reborn in 1953 with the success of From Here to Eternity, with his performance subsequently winning an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Sinatra left Capitol in 1960 to start his own record label, Reprise Records, and released a string of successful albums. In 1965, he recorded the retrospective album, September of My Years and starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music. He recorded several albums and resumed performing at Caesars Palace, and released "New York, New York" in 1980. Using his Las Vegas shows as a home base, he toured both within the United States and internationally until shortly before his death in 1998.