About the Artist
Don van Vliet
Don Van Vliet (1941 – 2010) was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. He conducted a rotating ensemble called the Magic Band, with whom he recorded 13 studio albums between 1964 and 1982. His music blended elements of blues, free jazz, and rock with avant-garde composition, idiosyncratic rhythms, and his surrealist wordplay and wide vocal range. Known for his enigmatic persona, Beefheart frequently constructed myths about his life and was known to exercise an almost dictatorial control over his supporting musicians. Although he achieved little commercial or mainstream critical success, he sustained a cult following as a "highly significant" and "incalculable" influence on an array of new wave, punk, and experimental rock artists. He has been described as "one of modern music's true innovators." An artistic prodigy in his childhood, Van Vliet developed an eclectic musical taste during his teen years in Lancaster, California, and formed "a mutually useful but volatile" friendship with musician Frank Zappa, with whom he sporadically competed and collaborated. He began performing with his Captain Beefheart persona in 1964 and joined the original Magic Band line-up, initiated by Alexis Snouffer, the same year. Throughout his musical career, Van Vliet remained interested in visual art. He placed his paintings, often reminiscent of Franz Kline, on several of his albums. In 1987, Van Vliet published Skeleton Breath, Scorpion Blush, a collection of his poetry, paintings and drawings. In the mid-1980s, Van Vliet became reclusive and abandoned music, stating he had gotten "too good at the horn" and could make far more money painting. He was inspired to begin an art career when a fan, Julian Schnabel, who admired the artwork seen on his album covers, asked to buy a drawing from him. His debut exhibition as a serious painter was at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York in 1985 and was initially regarded as that of "...another rock musician dabbling in art for ego's sake", though his primitive, non-conformist work has received more sympathetic and serious attention since then, with some sales approaching $25,000. Two books have been published specifically devoted to critique and analysis of his artwork: Riding Some Kind of Unusual Skull Sleigh: On The Arts Of Don Van Vliet (1999) by W.C. Bamberger and Stand Up To Be Discontinued, first published in 1993, a now rare collection of essays on Van Vliet's work. Van Vliet has been described as a modernist, a primitivist, an abstract expressionist, and, "in a sense" an outsider artist. "I paint for the simple reason that I have to. I feel a sense of relief after I do."
