That’s the title of this week’s Chron/SFGate column, snip:
From Barbary Coast days to the Beatnik era, the life of the San Francisco sketch artist has always held a romantic, nay, a racy allure. I’ve always imagined that someday I could pry myself away from the blogging and sexing to pick up a more bohemian lifestyle, like the Barbary Coast era’s A.D.M. Cooper, who paid his bar bills (and likely what the IRS now would call other “professional services”) from Santa Cruz to San Francisco in the late 1800s with his paintings — notably of partially clad saloon lovelies. How easily I see myself in those paint-stained breeches certain ladies wore back then, thumbing my nose at society matrons and glaring intently at Barbary Coast boobage for the sake of art.
Better yet, eschewing mouse and Movable Type, I would transport myself back to North Beach’s beatnik days for a paint-stained smock and painfully tight beret. I’d put one over on “the man” by spending my hours scrutinizing beefy models, whom I’d render not as man-meat but as free-form geometric shapes, only to trade for grease to get my kicks and score.
I get the distinct sense that artist Molly Crabapple had the same visions when she entered art school, only to find that she wouldn’t be scrutinizing the bounty of bohemia’s booty call amid her Beardsley-esque, absinthe-sipping fellow artists — but finding instead a dry run of bored models and stale atmosphere. Which is why she created the worldwide network of burlesque life-drawing events, Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School — and why we’re lucky Dr. Sketchy is invading the Barbary Coast.
Link.
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