Top 100 (an ongoing project, 1983-2023)
I started the blog “The To 100” in 2010 during a period the portrait paintings belonging to the series were selling like hotcakes. The following text is the introduction paragraph to the site. ”The Top 100 started as a hobby; a fan adoring his musical heroes and paying tribute by making portraits of them. The hobby became obsession and the project went from the boy’s room into the art world. But I'm still that fan, it's about them in the end, their music, and not about me.”
Top 100 2022
In 2022 I maintained the format of double portraits that I had used in 2021, but I altered the concept. No longer did I present the paintings in a hierarchical format, starting with number 1, but rather opted to follow a narrative flowing throughout the 100 paintings. The narrative often dictated who to paint next. In stead of the juxtaposing object and subject, as I had done in 2021, I now opted for a relationship of familiarity.
Top 100 2022: Donald Tayler/Brian Moser, oil and wildflowers on canvas, 11"x14", 2022. Tayler and Moser were adventurers in their twenties when they first visited the Tukana people near the Piraparana River in Colombia.
Top 100 2022: Don & Mori Cherry, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2022. The colors for most painting in the 2022 series were chosen using a random color generator. 'Aluminum grey' and 'turquoise blue' came from a generator of hundreds of named colors. Later I switched to a generator that would pick from millions of colors.
Top 100 2022: Edgard Varese/Le Corbussier, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2023. Empathy is the key in producing these portraits. I didn't like Le Corbussier from the moment I painted him. I totally respect his work but there I could not make him appear sympathetic on canvas. There's a lot of nationalism and antisemitism in the early 20th century avant-garde.
Top 100 2022: Rosalia Martinez/Shuar woman (after Luzuy), 11"x14", oil on canvas, 2023. Every so often, every 30 or 40 paintings, I feel like I'm painting someone I know personally. Rosalia Martinez always was this student I had in a drawing class some years ago. Souls then must multiply, so I thought. Doing the math I concluded that there are about 400.000 souls in the universe.
Top 100 2022: Charlotte Heth/Aileen Figueroa, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2022. In the blog "The Top 100" I sometimes write on the paintings I just finished, while other times I reflect on related topics in art, culture, and life. In the image depicting two Native Californians, I reflected on the nature of Photography, click on the image to read.
Top 100 2022: Airto/Flora Purim, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2023. With the portraits of the Brazilian husband and wife musicians Airto and Flora Purim, I placed portraiture in a historical context. The title of the post on the Top 100 was: "Woman with a Pearl Necklace." For a while I used liquin in these portraits, allowing me paint the sweat and tears of the figures.
Top 100 2022: Konstantin Simonovitch/Abbé Jean Revert, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2023. An influence seeing Renaissance paintings was the use of complementary colors as a ground before applying the final color. I kind of knew about but never experimented with it, until the above painting relating to music by Iannis Xenakis. The painting clearly does not have a finished look but I decided it had to be this way.
Top 100 2022: Willem Breuker/Glenn Branca/LaMonte Young, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2023. At the end I added a couple of triple portraits to the doubles. Breuker, Branca, and Young, numbers 13, 16, and 17 in the list of musicians for the year 2022. None are in the Top 100 (but all have been painted before.) Lots of negative space that begs for writing. I will sign it but I'll leave the writing to someone else.
Top 100 2022: Eva Rune/Jennie Tiderman Österberg, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2023.
Top 100 2022: Cebus and spider monkey from the Amazon Rainforest, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2023. Are animal sounds music? Are animal imitations music? Are human imitations of animal sounds more music than that of the animals themselves?
Top 100 2021
The majority of the music featured in the list that makes up the Top 100 2021 are of a category called field recordings. The concept for the paintings that accompany each recording, is to paint double portraits, the musician on one side, the one who recorded them on the other. I figure the juxtaposition of the object (musician) and subject (anthropologist, musicologist) is a window onto the dynamics and history of ethnomusicology, and my own sub-subjective relation to both.
AUDIO CONTENT is available at Dublin Arts Council:
https://dublinarts.org/event/berry-van-boekel-the-top-100-2021/
Top 100 2021, #9: Andrea Quispe Chura/John Cohen, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2021. Perhaps the most striking painting to illustrate the juxtaposition between the object and subject concept, is this Peruvian Q'ero woman who was photographed by John Cohen in 1977. Both portraits were sourced from Cohen's book "There is No Eye."
Top 100 2021, #3: Isabel Aretz/Dan Ramon, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2021. In the collection "The Human Voice in Music" compiled by Carlos Reynoso, he states: "For those who wish to form an idea that is not biased by the temptation of exoticism or by anachronistic yearnings, the collection starts here." I had to remind myself these words painting the series over and over.
Top 100 2021, #19: Hugo Zemp/Sabina Seso, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2021.
Top 100 2021, #36: Simha Arom/Baka child at the Aba encampment, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2021. As an experiment I divided up the canvas into four equal parts that I then painted a certain color. I then painted the portraits on top of the color fields.
Top 100 2021, #7: Cover image of: The Abelam/Brigitta Hauser-Schaublin, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2021. Nggwal Mindsha is a ceremonial song by the Abelam of Papua New Guinea . In the commentaries it is argued that songs like these should not be considered music because there is no entertainment value and that songs like these can't be separated from, in this case, the architecture they are dedicated to.
Top 100 2021, #50: Studio portret van een Dajak vrouw uit Borneo/Jaap Kunst, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2021. The Dutch musicologist Jaap Kunst coined the term ethnomusicology. He became curator of the Royal Tropical Institute of Amsterdam. On the right is a portrait of Kunst blowing a conch shell and on the left a Dayak woman with a drum from a photograph from the Tropenmuseum collection.
Top 100 2021, #70: Aleksander Gabrys/Iannis Xenakis, oil on canvas, 11"x14", 2021. For classical music I juxtaposed performer and composer for the double portrait series. I can't believe how much grey hair I painted for these series. I too, for that matter, am getting grey.
Top 100 2020
The Coronavirus had stopped life in it tracks for the most part of 2020 but I was making a Top 100. It felt appropriate, given the circumstances, to make the Top 100 2020 as drawings, from the comfort of my living room, rather than as paintings from my studio. The drawings, as I intended, were an activity of the sort that take time, that are tedious and sometimes rather mindless work. Like most everybody else, the days spent at home are consumed by the cascade of news surrounding the Coronavirus. I've always been a numbers and lists person and that's what I get lost in; percentages, numbers, comparisons by country and regions, and other statistical trivia concerning the virus. I thought it appropriate to add some COVID stats under the music captions I penciled in. The Top 2020 is nicknamed: The Corona Series.
Top 100 2020, #36: Sivugun und Nunana, 11x14 inches, colored ballpoint pens on paper, 2020. The above drawing was completed over the course of four days, incessantly scribbling my way through.
Top 100 2020, #4: Ye'kuana ceremonial dance, 14 x 11 inches, stencil and pencils on paper, 2020. I used stencils for various parts of the drawing, with the idea that I could create multiples. I made an edition of five originals of this dancer from Venezuela.
Top 100 2020, #41: Medicine Woman of the Yekuana People (from Los juegos de la Yekuana), various materials on paper, 14"x11", 2020.
Top 100 2020: Melakhan Langa, narh flute. 11x14 inches, pencil, watercolor, flowers on paper, 2020. I felt the need to not only make a meticulously detailed portrait of a musician but also to add flowers to it in a typical low-art-household-watercolor fashion. The wildflowers in our yard give me great joy and before I set out to photograph my drawing I decided to stick some actual flowers to the surface. The result represents for me more than any other the spirit of COVID-19.
Top 100 2020: Tangkhul Great Story Teller, 14x11 inches, various materials on paper, 2020. An old black and white photo from Nagaland was used here. The background shows skulls of ovine mounted to the side of a building, in photographs yet older the cattle skulls are human skulls. Blood sacrifice was important in Tangkhul ritual. The great story of the title not only references the Great Story Teller depicted but also the fact that no one has died (yet) of COVID-19 in Nagaland.
Top 100 2020: Topoke Girl Playing Lilolo. 14x11 inches, pencil, pen, watercolor on paper, 2020. Click on the image and you'll find a the step by step video of how this drawing came about. No need to write any information here as it's discussed in the video at length. It's one hour but really cool!
Top 100 2020, #55: Anna Balint, pen, pencil, and watercolor on paper, 14"x11", 2021. Behind Anna Balint Puskas, appears a penciled image of Zoltan Kallos, who had recorded her in the field in Romania. The concept of the juxtaposition of recorder and recorded, that became the theme for 2021, first appeared in this drawing.
Top 100 2020: #56: Babinga woman performing "yeli", 14"x11", pen, pencil and watercolor on paper, 2021. Directly after Balint, I drew a Babinga woman and Andre Didier, who recorded her. I wrote: I think it will be interesting to portray these musicians, mostly women, next to a portrait of the recorder, who is mostly a white middle-aged male European. These are not intended to become criticism for an attitude of neocolonialism but rather an honest juxtaposition of subject and object.
Top 100 2020, 67: Aaresi and Il'aresi, ink on paper, 11x14 inches, 2021.
Top 100 2020, #100: Entrance of the Mani Mask, 11"x14", ink on paper, 2021. The last one for the series consisted of a collection of individuals, in a way how I would often draw thoughtlessly with images in front of me. The style was further used in a series of zines that were produced in 2021 and 2022.
Top 100 2019
After many years of using a variety of sizes, techniques, and styles, the Top 100 2019 was going to be uniform, as it had been early on. All paintings are done with oils on abstracted backgrounds on 14” x 11” canvases, a size I would continue to use to this day.
Top 100 2019: Babinga Ceremony, 14 x 11 inches, oil and spray paint on canvas, 2020.
Top 100 2019: Malo Ceremonial Dance, 14 x 11 inches, oil and spray paint on canvas, 2019.
Top 100 2019: Garifuna Settlement Day Festival, 14 x 11 inches, oil/mixed media on canvas, 2019.
Top 100 2019: Nowayilethi Mbizweni, 14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2020.
Top 100 2019: Bapende Chief, 14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2020.
Top 100 2019: Princess Constance Magogo kaDinuzulu , 14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019.
Top 100 2019: André Didier, 14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019.
Top 100 2019: From the cover of Aboriginal Music from Australia, 14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019.
Top 100 2019: Ganbaararyn Khongorzul, 14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019.
Top 100 2019: Barbara Kraus (as Aloise Schinkenmaier), 14 x 11 inches, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2019.
Top 100 2019: Kiyo Kurokawa, 14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019.
Top 100 2019: Antonia Vasil'evna Skalygina?, 14 x 11 inches, oil and metallic on canvas, 2019.
Top 100 2012-2018
Top 100 2012: Two paintings of György Ligeti.
Les Siècles Live: György Ligeti, 12 x 12 cm, CD cover, Musicales Actes Sud, 2016. I was very excited when a record company wanted to use an image of a painting by Ligeti I did. It's a beautiful cd too!
Top 100 2018: Page from the e-zine, digital, 2019. I always used to make small books to accompany the top 100s featuring thumbnails of all paintings and the exhibition wall labels, but since the mid 2010s these books were produced just digitally. Here's an example from the Top 100 2018. Click on the image to view the whole e-zine.
Top 100 2017: Tuvan Shaman in full regalia 18 x 9.75 inches, oil on wood, 2017.
Top 100 2017: John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, 20 x 16 inches, oil on canvas, 2017. A photograph by F. Winham I've used over and over again, to illustrate the tune "My Favorite Things" (which returned to the top 100 countless times.) Sometimes I cropped it to just Coltrane, sometimes I included Pharoa Sanders, other times I used the full photo and painted the full combo.
Top 100 2016: Anjali, oppari singer in Ayodhyakuppam, Chennai. Oil on canvas, 24 x 12 inches, 2016. For many years I have collected examples of cry singing. Known as keening in Ireland, the tradition of cry singing, as a mourning ritual at funerals, was once widespread. The cry singing tradition in Chennai, India is called oppari and is still widely practiced among the fisherman caste of the Tamil population.
Top 100 2013/14. One page from the e-zine. Click on the image to view them all.
Top 100 2013: Breno Mello and Marpessa Dawn as Orpheus and Eurydice, 11" x 14", oil on canvas board, 2013.
Top 100 2013: François Dufrêne, pastel on board, 2013, 14" x 6".
Top 100 2015: The Buzzcocks, 14" x 20", oil on found canvas, 2015. For the Top 100 2015 I set out to use found paintings as a background. This painting was given to me by its maker whose name I forgot. I hope she'd approve of the Buzzcocks as an addition.
The 100 Greatest Recordings Ever: #92, Nick Cave, watercolor and pen on paper, 11"x8.5", 2012. To celebrate 30 years of Top 100, a series was made following the best of list compiled over those 30 years.
Top 100 2011: Backyard Portraits
After moving from Ohio to Florida, the urge to paint the lush landscape of my new backyard was to great to resist. After about forty backyard paintings were made, top 100 musicians were added to the scene. The Top 100 2011 became “The Backyard Portraits.”
Top 100 2011: N'Goundi girls, 24" x 18", oil on canvas, 2011.
A selection of backyard paintings before they became Top 100 paintings.
Top 100 2011, #15: Chukchi Shaman, 8.5" x 6.5", oil on wood, 2011. This Chukchi shaman of Arctic Siberia may well have a similar genetic code as Billie Bowlegs, the Seminole after whom the creek was named behind my studio, and who might have very well been sitting once at the very spot as where I placed the shaman in the painting.
Top 100 2011, #62: Laver Bariu, 12" x 12", oil on luan, 2012.
Top 100 2011, #66: Rosa Balistreri, 24" x 12", oil on luan, 2012.
Top 100 2011, #67: Bocet: Lament for a dead father, Romania, 12" x 12", oil on luan, 2012. It's all happening in my back yard. Musicians have been visiting from all over the world. I had Bob Marley over to play soccer, some girls from Borneo to prepare rice. I had live music, there's been naked people, Muslim women that only showed their eyes, Siberian people dressed to withstand extreme (cold) temperatures, cannibals, and pacifists, and now there's a funeral going on.
Top 100 2012: Cover image from Instruments and Music of Bolivia, 18" x 24", oil on canvas, 2012.
Top 100 2012: Roro Girl, 24" x 12", oil on luan, 2013.
before 2011
Amazon group, oil and charcoal on canvas, approx. 24"x36", c. 2005
John Coltrane, xerox on paper, from original charcoal drawing, A5 paper, c. 1992. In the early 90s drawings were copied and pasted into a book. Many originals are lost, but I do have many of the xerox copies still. I did not consider these as art back then.
J.J. Johnson, ink and watercolor on paper, 5.5"x8.5", c. 1995. Between 1993 and 1997 all images were created on half of a standard US paper size. From 1990-1993 this was done on A5 paper, half of a standard A4.
Top 100 2000: Lil Armstrong, 4.75" x 20", oil and collage on wood, 2001.
Top 100 2001: Jad Fair, 9"x5", ink on luan, 2002.
Ghana/self, oil on paper, 24"x18", c. 2004.
Joe and Odell Thompson, c. 9"x9", oil on wood, c. 2009.
A rather large painting on canvas. I can't remember who I painted other than that they depict a group of African women. The reason the Top 100 Archive opened, was to catalogue all the works and organize them. I still have this painting but it has been damaged during the flooding in 2017.
Top 100 2009: Chico Hamilton. acrylic on paper, 11"x8.5", 2009. A number of paintings from the Top 100 2009 were created as letters addressed to friends. Only a few of them were actually sent.
Cat Power, oil on wood, c. 10"x10", c. 2005. Early Cat Power painting of the musician I have painted more than anyone else, perhaps 65 or 70 times. Click on the image to see those I've painted since 2010.
