I grew up with cowboys and Indians, literally. So I know all about the etymology of "dude" long before it was adopted by hip city types. But "kinky, drug-involved" is right on the mark when it comes to the kind of people this imagery attracted when it first went public. It was a dangerous weird scene. This wasn't Photoshopped, y'know. It involved a person hanging around third-world execution sites and morgues basically exploiting the rotting leftovers of human dignity for the sake of "art". Maybe something like this enhances ones standing in art world legends, just like Diego Rivera's experiments with medicinal cannibalism at morgues, but don't call it normal. I scratched from my list any downtown galleries that showed it, and certainly wouldn't want any of my friends or clients viewing my own prints in the same venue. Some of you need a bit of historical context. I was there. But as per my opinion of the visual rendering : the prints aren't at all pretty and aren't intended to be. The split toning, apparently on Azo, is itself disturbing and ghoulish, with a lot more greenishness than the gold in the posted image - deliberately macabre. So effective in terms of what he was after. But sick weird imagery was everywhere in the local arts scene back then. And some very sketchy people inevitably were tangled up with it, both in visual wall art like this, infamously in the contemporary music scene, and certainly in the alternative movie industry. Lots of drugs and human exploitation, and a lot of sad endings.
