Bøger af Chris Coles

Bangkok is a huge Asian city, but it is also a city of neighborhoods, local neighborhoods with warm friendly ambiances. familiar people, lots of cafes, shops and other stuff. One of the world's great world cities in many ways. This book is an ode to my own little Bangkok neighborhood, located north of Sukhumvit between Asoke and Soi 39/Emporium, part of what is sometimes called the Upper Sukhumvit District. It's the neighborhood where I have my studio, in a low rise mixed residential and office/restaurant/bar building located at the nexus of Soi 31, Soi Prasarnmit and Soi 23. The studio is very simple, very low maintenance. Downstairs is where I work, where I have created thousands of paintings, mainly images inspired by the spectacle known as The Bangkok Night. Pencil sketches, India ink drawings, smallish watercolors and large acrylic on canvas. The images that I have created in the studio have ended up in various books as well as in shows not only in Bangkok but also Singapore, Phnom Penh, Los Angeles and New York. Upstairs is the sleeping loft, minimally furnished, a varnished wooden floor, a small plasma tv, some storage/closet space, an Asian-Style mattress directly on the floor. On the rear side of the building five floors up, the loft is very quiet and peaceful. No traffic noise, no shared walls with neighbors, a perfect place to relax, listen to music, sleep and also to think. The photographs in this book are not meant as "tourist photos", perfectly framed and lit or even, sometimes, in focus. They are "everyday photos" of the many everyday places that are part of my everyday life in this particular urban neighborhood that I have enjoyed and come to appreciate over the years.

Walking Street Pattaya is the epicenter of what is probably the largest commercial sex zone on the face of the Earth and in the history of the world. Until the late 1960's, Pattaya, about 70 miles southeast of Bangkok, was a sleepy fishing village. Then the Vietnam War brought tens of thousands of young male American military personnel to a dozen or so bases in Thailand, including a large air base near Pattaya called U-Tapao. Always on the lookout for R&R entertainment, young American soldiers, airmen and sailors started hanging out at a few small beach bars in tiny Pattaya. Thais, who are very enterprenural and quick off the mark, immediately understood that more bars, clubs and girls for more young American soldiers, airmen and sailors meant more money. And so began Pattaya as a center for nightlife. By the end of the Vietnam War, there were several hundred bars, clubs and "entertainment" venues in Pattaya, mainly along Beach Road but also extending into a pedestrian-only area called Walking Street. After the war ended and the American soldiers, airmen and sailors disappeared, the era of Jumbo Jets and cheap air travel arrived. European, Australian and American men began arriving in Pattaya by the hundreds of thousands. More bars, clubs, "entertainment" venues and more bargirls, ladyboys and even rentboys. And more money, a lot more money. Then the internet provided quick information and communication, ATM's provided endless cash, mobile phones became easy contact points and Viagra allowed for infinite desire. More hundreds of bars, clubs, "entertainment venues", hotels large and small. Then on top of the first wave of Europeans, Australians and Americans, hundreds of thousands of Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, Singaporeans. Then millions of Russians, followed by millions of Chinese, millions of Arabs, Iranians and finally, millions of South Asian males from India. Until Pattaya became the huge nightlife spectacle it is today with tens of thousands of bars, clubs and "entertainment" venues, over ten million visitors per year and hundreds of thousands of sex workers to service them all. Mainly from Isan/NE Thailand but also from Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. On a Friday night, there might be over a hundred thousand tourists, mainly male, just on Walking Street. From every country in Asia and every country on Earth. Neon density, high velocity, powerful audio systems playing dozens of overlapping music tracks. Cheap hotels, great food, tropical air, the beach, the Gulf of Thailand. And in every direction slim, cute, smiling girls, hungry ladyboys and rentboys.

Located at the center of the vast and sprawling metropolis known as Bangkok, the notorious district known as Patpong is only a couple of rundown blocks, strewn with garbage and stray dogs, filled with stalls selling tawdry counterfeit goods, a sleazy row of go-go bars staffed by a few thousand girls who didn't make it into the hi-end of the Bangkok Night and a thousand or so ladyboys wacked out on drugs, hormone injections and too much silicone.The millions of tourists who each year wonder through Patpong and make it all possible come from all over the world. Not exactly shining examples of First World bliss, they are often grotesquely overweight, dressed in a shabby assortment of sweat stained t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, and weighted down with knapsacks, cameras and shopping bags filled with worthless knick knacks. Many of them are drunk and jetlagged, their faces showing the pain of unfulfilled and despairing lives.What these First World Ambassadors are looking for in the primordial mire of Patpong is an indecipherable mystery, even to themselves. As for the Thais, Patpong's simply a place to work and make money. No matter how strange and shoddy the endless river of foreign tourists may look, by some set of circumstances very few Thais comprehend, these primitive beings are usually loaded with cash and happy to spend it on items which appear to be completely unnecessary. Counterfeit watches that last only a few months, girls who don't actually want to have sex, ladyboys who are not even girls but do want to have sex and an endless stream of beer that will pass through their bloated bodies in less than an hour.At some point, the Patpong District will be torn down to make way for gleaming hi-rise offices and whatever Patpong is presently thought to be or actually was will gradually recede into the realm of mythic recollection, a moment in time between Bangkok's murky Third World past and its bright First World future. Perhaps one day, the portraits in this book will be all that's left..........

In 1970, Lamu was a very sleepy very out-of-the way place. There was one hotel, called Peponi, very exclusive, very expensive, located a mile or two outside of the town, with only a few rooms for super wealthy Europeans like the Head of the Italian Fiat company who was a regular guest. The only way to get to Lamu was to take a local bus northeast along the Kenya coast north of Malindi and then a rudimentary passenger-only ferry boat to the island. In those days, all the boxes, cargo and stuff was moved either by donkeys or men with carts or by sailing dhows coming from Mombasa. There were no backpackers, no smartphones, no internet, no laptops. Once you were on Lamu, you were away from the world. Prior to becoming part of the British Empire, for over a thousand years Lamu had been an active trading port, connecting the East Africa coast as far south as Mozambique, Madagascar and Zanzibar to Somalia and the Arabian Peninsula. There were regular visits by large sailing dhows from Yemen and Oman, even visits by sailing ships from as far away as India and China. When the Portuguese first sailed around Africa in the early 1500's, they conquered Lamu to use as their own trading post which then became connected with a whole chain of Portuguese trading posts in Mozambique, Bahrain, Goa, Macau, Chittagong, Malacca, Timor and Nagasaki. Lamu is the oldest continuous city on the coast of East Africa, maybe even in the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa. Its traditions, buildings and boat-building/sailing skills go back hundreds of years. I was lucky to have spent some time there while some of the ancient version of Lamu was still intact.

Some years ago, when I first encountered Bangkok, I remember constantly staring at people's faces. Such a variety of faces, so many "looks", so many skintones, so many shapes and sizes. It was as if I was looking at a visual record of the last two thousand years of Mainland Southeast Asia's incredibly complex history of people, relationships and constant movement. It seemed every available DNA/Gene element in the world had, at one time or another, found its way to the great Thai trading centers of Ayutthaya and Bangkok where they all eventually blended together. The geographic space known today as Thailand has always been a crossing point, a center of interaction, a kind of international vortex where almost all the people, cultures, religion, beliefs and behaviours in the entire world have collided, mixed and mingled. Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao, Burmese, Indians, Arabs, Iranians, Mongolians and Europeans. Hoping to capture some of this visual splendor, to preserve it, to learn it, I started doing this series of pencil/graphite portraits. Nothing too ambitious or spectacular or wild. Just trying to record what was there in a kind of simple realistic style. Later on, I veered away from realism into distortion and crazy colors, which I felt better conveyed the actual ambiance and feeling of nightime Bangkok and all its rich variety of characters and extreme situations. These early portraits were my starting point.......

My very 1st Exhibition in Thailand opened in December 2009, at a wonderful gallery in the upscale Pratamnak District of Pattaya owned by Liam Ayudhkij, an Irishman who came to Thailand as a 21 year old backpacker and somehow managed to create a multi-million dollar business called PCS which employed over 25,000 people in Thailand. Liam loved art and used his fortune to became one of the largest collectors of modern art in Thailand, often using his Pratamnak gallery to showcase some of his huge and very valuable collection. My show at Liam's Gallery featured almost one hundred of my paintings from the Bangkok Night, spread across the gallery's 4 spacious floors. The Opening Night was also a launch party for the Bangkok author Christopher G. Moore's two latest books, each one featuring one of my paintings on the cover. A novel titled "The Corruptionist" and a descriptive book of his Calvino Series titled, "The Vincent Calvino Reader's Guide".Opening Night was lovely. A warm breeze off the Gulf of Thaiand, an appreciative crowd. My debut on the Thai Art Scene......

These watercolor seascapes and landscapes are my earliest work. When I was first learning how to manipulate color and flow. They are very simple, just a horizon line and above and below, but also have a quiet subtlety. Not at all like my later work in the style of the German Expressionists with social context, ugly distorted lines and clashing colors.

Collection of many of the writings, reviews and interviews with the Artist of the Bangkok Noir Chris Coles....

Take a noir tour through the Phnom Penh Night with artist/photographer Chris Coles.......

In June 1974, my final year as a student at the UK National Film & Television School, I wrote and produced a short dramatic film called HORSE-BOY, which a bunch of us filmed on location in Switzerland, in the picturesque farmland between Geneva and the Jura Mountains. This photo essay was stitched together once we returned to UK and the film was being edited. Myself and the other students who worked as the unpaid crew were young and naive film school students, having fun following our Dream to learn how to make movies, and hoping against the odds to one day to find our way into the Real Showbiz. Surprisingly, by hardwork, persistence, various levels of talent and serendipity, most of us got there...........

In the summer of 1969, I spent an afternoon at a dance studio in Geneva's Old Town, taking a series of photos of a beautiful woman named Eva Inoue performing a wonderful set of Spanish Dances. Spanish Dancing is so intense, passionate, proud, full use of the arms, hands and fingers as well as very intricate and loud use of the feet hard against the floor. A powerful dancing style with ancient roots going all the way back to the Spanish Gypsies who had settled in Andalusia and before that all the way back to India. Total control yet wildly free. I tried my best to capture the moment. The ferocity. The timelessness, Beauty.

My 1st Exhibition in New York back in February, 2006, 20 small paintings from my Bangkok Night series. Part of a group show at an art gallery in New York's Chelsea Art District. Just me dipping a tentative toe in the giant New York Art Gallery Ocean. But it got a nice crowd, they seemed to enjoy the paintings and to savour their taste of Noir straight off the streets of the Bangkok Night.

Two great American painters, Mark Rothko and Milton Avery, were both interested in the idea that the essence of a painting was not its illusory representation of "reality and depth" but instead the painting's colors and their relation to each other. Rothko thought that a painting should have no "Representation of Reality" at all. Just be blocks of different colors. And, while Avery agreed that Color Fields, colors and their relationship with each other, were a crucial element in a painting, he also thought paintings should have, however vague and abstract, some reference to "Representational Reality". In this series of abstract landscapes, I tried to find a Middle Path between "Representational Reality" and pure "Color Fields". Even though I later developed a more representational style similar to the German Expressionists, I still see my often heavily distorted representational images as opportunities for extreme use of non-representational color.

Lovely brochure from Bangkok Noir Artist Chris Coles very 1st show in January 2005 at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, California.....

ROADSIDE THAILAND deconstructs Thailand's lingering "Orientalism" illusion......presents modern Thailand as it actually is rather than the escapist fantasy "Exotic Orient" version portrayed in so many photo books and tourism marketing campaigns....For many people around the world, when they think of Thailand, they think of a faraway place that is "Oriental", exotic, alluring, filled with golden temples, unspoiled tropical beaches. Someplace exciting, populated with sensual brown-skinned smiling females. All the escapist images that are constantly being fed into the world's information stream, many of them with the help of TAT, Tourist Authority Thailand, one of the world's most successful tourism marketing entities, are there to help generate the 40 million or so tourists a year who contribute billions of dollars a year to Thailand's GDP. Alas, the actual everyday Thailand is far from exotic, not "Oriental" or alluring and definitely not exciting. Many of the beaches are hardly "unspoiled" and a large number of the females are working in Japanese-owned factories, huge construction sites, in the agricultural sector or cleaning toilets in hotel rooms....neither sensual nor smiling. The Thailand reality, like most everyday realities, is basically mundane. Thailand is a mid-level developing country inhabited by about 65 million relatively low-income people and saturated with un-zoned, un-checked urban/suburban structures sprawling in every direction, especially along Thailand's messy highways. This book presents the everyday reality version of modern Thailand rather than the escapist tourism version that's been so successfully promoted by TAT and the hundreds of escapist fantasy photo books that line the shelves of Kinokuniya and other Thai bookstores.

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 forefront 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 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.