In this new guide, Chris Coles shows you how to approach the plays of these three major playwrights and how you can build your own critical response to their complex and demanding plays. If you are studying any of these three dramatists, then this is likely to prove the one critical book you will need.
My 1st Exhibition in Bangkok opened in April 2011, at the lovely, stylish Koi Gallery in the trendy Upper Sukhumvit District.The evening also served as the Book Launch Party for my first book of paintings titled, "Navigating the Bangkok Noir" which had just been published by the Marshall Cavandish company in Singapore.Opening Night was packed. An upscale Bangkok crowd of Expats, Hi-So's and art people as I made my debut on the fantastic stage of the Bangkok Night.
The original Check Inn 99 on Lower Sukhumvit was born as a hostess bar/cabaret venue/brothel (complete with "Short Time" rooms upstairs) serving mainly the Vietnam War Expat Crowd (including celebrity visitors like Bob Hope) and then, after the Vietnam War wound down, the Scandanavian Sex Tourist Crowd (including most of the SAS pilots who flew in and out of Bangkok). The location was perfect, a block or two from Soi Nana, the Nana Hotel and Nana Plaza, the epicenter of the Bangkok Nights Expat Sex Tourism Scene.Then in the early 2000's, a new owner, Chris Catto-Smith, turned what was once an amiably seedy commercial sex nitespot, into a comfortable hangout kind of live music venue. The same old rattan furniture, the same old kitchen, bar and restrooms only instead of hostesses, now a Filipino Band called Music of the Heart.The lived-in casual ambiance, the House Band and Lower Sukhumvit location made Check Inn 99 a perfect spot for staging various cabaret and other events, among them gatherings of the Bangkok Expat authors, poets, artists and musicians known as the Bangkok Noir Movement who put on three Bangkok Noir evenings. One on April 17th, 2013. Another on January, 2014 and a third evening on January 8th, 2015.This book mainly covers my own participation as an Artist who has used (and uses) the abundance of Noir material to be found in the Bangkok Night as the setting and background for my paintings.
In this series of paintings from the Phnom Penh Night, I am following in the footsteps of the great German Expressionists, using distortion and extreme colors to dive below surface “Realism” into a deeper, darker more hidden part of the human experience known as the Phnom Penh Night, a setting filled with tragedy and fear but also a certain poignancy and sometimes a ferocious beauty. The Opening Night at Meta House Gallery in Phnom Penh featured a wonderful live concert performance from Phnom Penh’s KROM Band, starring lead singer/composer Sophea Chamroeun, composer/steel guitarist/vocalist Christopher Minko, Side Guitar and Instrumentalist Jimi Baeck and keyboard artist Mao Sokleap. Bangkok Author Christopher G. Moore also gave a short talk on the SE Asia Noir Movement of writers, poets, musicians, artists and filmmakers who make use of SE Asia’s seemingly infinite abundance of noir material as the setting, inspiration and backdrop for their creative vison and work. Appreciation and thanks to Nico Mesterharm, the Cultural Impraesario behind Meta House and all it’s myriad of programs and cultural events.
When I first did some flower paintings it was mainly for my mother back on the coast of Maine, so she could hang some of my paintings in her house which were not paintings from the Bangkok Night. But over time, I learned that the German Expressionists, especially my Expressionist hero Emil Nolde, also did flower paintings...in the Expressionist style. Distorted, non-realistic, exaggerated colors, a little bit weird. And in the Bangkok Night, the girls in the bars are sometimes referred to as “flowers” and the men who are chasing them are sometimes referred to as “butterflies”. By necessity, flowers are colorful and heavily scented. In order to better attract the bees, insects and butterflies they depend on for pollination and reproduction. Butterflies are also often very colorful and their color patterns are an important element in butterfly male-female attraction and stimulating the urge to reproduce. Both flowers and butterflies have relatively short lifespans so the urgency of attraction, pollination and reproduction is at the forefornt of their daily existence. Humans put on high value on flowers, despite their transient nature, using them around births, marriages, deaths, Valentine’s Day and Spring Fertility holidays like Easter. Somehow, flowers are important and they also make great paintings!
In the peak summer months of July, August and September, Santa Monica Beach is a crowded bustling playground for hundreds of thousands of beachgoers, Californians and tourists alike. Swimming, body surfing, surf boarding, bogey boarding, sun tanning, socializing, pick-up volleyball, bike riding, skate boarding, rollar skating, in-line skating, jogging, kite-flying and old-fashioned picnicking are all part of the Action. With its cool fresh breeze off the Pacific Ocean, Santa Monica beach is the Great Escape from the summer heat of Inland LA. A place where LA comes to relax, show off and have fun.In the cool, sometimes stormy winter months of January and February, everything changes. The cool almost empty beach attracts pelicans, sandpipers, seagulls and snowy plovers and in the sea, with only a few surfers, dolpins play in the winter waves and surf. Nature re-asserts itself and the few people wandering about are dressed in sweaters, hats and windbreakers.The summer bustle and crowds give way to a more contemplative and thoughtful experience. Strong winds, the cries of seabirds, variable weather and an ocean that has turned dark blue.Wintertime Santa Monica Beach.................
“Chris Coles paintings and artwork is very striking I guess I would say. They remind me of Zappa lyrics...’gross and perverted, obsessed and deranged’. His colors are so primitive and their throbbing clash on your eyes and senses ooze a sense of darkness, of evil even. Yet, they are almost playful at times and amusing as well. His work reminds me of what I expect to see when I am fairly obliterated and moving aside the thick velvet curtain of the umpteenth ‘next’ gogo bar, the one I know I should not go in, but enter I do. You know, the bar with the katoey mamasan with the garish make-up that glows under the black lights that scares the bejesus out of you as his/her face looms in your drunken blurry field of vision. Coles captures the extra-dimensional feel of the Thailand nightlife. His work occupies another zone of existence. It’s so ugly at times it is intriguing in a perverse way that makes one want to embrace it. If you know what I mean? Maybe not....” -- Anonymous internet comment on Chris Coles’ Paintings from the Bangkok Night.
Exploring the connection between art and nature, the author reflects on their journey of painting flowers, initially inspired by their mother. Influenced by German Expressionists like Emil Nolde, the author embraces a vibrant, exaggerated style. The narrative draws parallels between flowers and the nightlife of Bangkok, where women are likened to flowers and men to butterflies, emphasizing themes of attraction and the fleeting nature of beauty. The significance of flowers in human culture highlights their role in celebrations and art, underscoring their enduring appeal despite their transience.
Bangkok, also known as Krung Thep of the City of Angels, is an almost-perfect setting for noir fiction, films, music and paintings, and the artistic movement known as Bangkok Noir. This title provides a vibrant, visual celebration of Bangkok's notoriously colourful nightlife.