Beirut Melancholy

BEIRUT -Cliquot - From the FLYING CLUB CUP

Of course, of course, no art is ever new. Of course, of course, there is more beauty behind us than we will ever see. Of course, nothing can ever compete with harmony. Yet of course, harmony seems never enough.
Of course, there is a time for mourning, and yet of course, the harmony in the mourning chant outcries the cry.

found here

The pen Guy and his Mercedes pens Art Car

The Pen Guy and The Mercedes Pens Art Car

Pen Guy with pen covered hard hat and reflective safety jacket photo by thaths

I figured now would be a good time to include my very own Mercedes Pens Art Car covered inside and out in close to 7,000 pens of all kinds. Since I just went to Maker Faire 08 in San Mateo, I found a fresh batch of really nice photos of the pen car and my self The Pen Guy on Flick.

Below is a nice shot of the inside of the car with dashboard covered in pens using velcro so I can take them off and rearrange them. As you can see no car is complete with out a pair of fuzzy dice from the rear view mirror and a ton of lanyard pens that now completely block my view in certain spots.

Inside the Mercedes Pens Art Car - photo by ralichte

Crowd with Mercedes Pens Art Car - photo by Pargon

TIME AND CHANCE HAPPENETH TO THEM ALL, (part 2)

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The artist's dilemma: you can't accomplish anything without compromises, but compromises distort what you hoped to accomplish.



One heartbreaking example of this is animator Richard Williams' 25 year struggle to bring his masterpiece, The Thief and the Cobbler to the screen.

Williams was the artist behind such films as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and A Christmas Carol. An uncompromising perfectionist, Williams set out in 1964 using his own money from commercial assignments to make a complex and sophisticated animated film based on ancient Arabian stories. As one web history reports:

Williams had a fearsome reputation for doing things his way, more so now with a pet project designed to showcase the intricate possibilities in hand-drawn animation. He was ferociously dedicated to his dream. Each and every element which could be animated would be animated. And he was ruthless with his newly-expanded crew, hiring and firing incessantly. He had a vision and only the very best would be employed in its creation.

Williams' funds soon ran out, but in the 1970s he obtained additional funding from Prince Mohammed Faisil of Saudi Arabia. After years of delays and editorial disagreements, the Prince withdrew funding. A few years later, Williams found new funding from Warner Brothers. However, the studio made him sign a guarantee that he would complete his film in 18 months.

Williams could not resist perfecting his project and missed his deadline.



To make matters worse, while Williams obssessively worked and reworked his drawings, the Disney corporate machine beat him to the box office with its own animated Arabian stories, Aladdin. As one commentator notes, Disney's heavily promoted feature "vacuumed up the market for animated Arabian adventures."

With only 15 minutes of material left to shoot, Williams' investors confiscated his masterpiece and turned artistic control over to a Completion Bond Company. The Bond Company re-dubbed and re-cut the movie, adding songs and bringing in new voices that sounded more "American." When the flawed version was finally released by Miramax, it sank like a stone.

Now, grieving co-workers and die-hard fans are like beachcombers salvaging remnants of a shipwreck that have washed up on shore. Fragments of Williams' original vision, lovingly reconstructed, can be found all over youtube and the blogosphere. They give us a glimpse of Williams' brilliance and tantalize us with what might have been.



So much of art today is a corporate effort, dependent upon teamwork, institutional funding, and an electronic infrastructure powered by utility companies and implemented with hardware and software from multinational corporations. Each new element has the potential to add new dimensions to art, but each requires fresh compromises as well.

Many of the talents required to complete this type of art are not artistic talents. That is why, time and again, I find myself returning to the mark of a humble pencil on paper to find the essence of an artist's talent.

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Black, White, Red

some character design practice

REPIN

One reason to take a second look at the great Russian illustrator Illya Repin is that art critic Clement Greenberg didn't think Repin was worth a second look.




Scene from the underwater adventures of the Russian hero Sadko

In his famous essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch, Greenberg sneered at Repin's art, explaining that an "ignorant peasant" prefers Repin while "cultivated" people prefer abstract artists such as Picasso:

[W]hen an ignorant Russian peasant... stands with hypothetical freedom of choice before two paintings, one by Picasso, the other by Repin....[i]n the first he sees, let us say, a play of lines, colors and spaces that represent a woman.... He turns next to Repin's picture and sees a battle scene.... Picasso [is] austere and barren in comparison. What is more, Repin heightens reality and makes it dramatic: sunset, exploding shells, running and falling men.... Repin is what the peasant wants, and nothing else but Repin. It is lucky, however, for Repin that the peasant is protected from the products of American capitalism, for he would not stand a chance next to a Saturday Evening Post cover by Norman Rockwell....

I must be a peasant, for when I saw Repin's originals in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, I found them staggeringly beautiful.


The Volga boatmen


Cossacks writing a mocking letter to the Sultan of Turkey


Raising Jairus Daughter


Portrait of Tolstoy

Greenberg's essay has been described as "one of the important theoretical documents of 20th century culture." Greenberg proceeded (over the bodies of excellent painters such as Repin and Rockwell) to become the primary cheerleader and intellectual architect for abstract expressionism.



Me, I like both Picasso and Repin. I even like Clement Greenberg, who was a brilliant writer and theorist. There's just one little problem with Greenberg's argument...



As Svetlana Boym of Harvard notes,

Greenberg's example of kitsch is Ilia Repin's battle scenes which, he claims, merely imitate the effect of artistic battles.... however, the fact is that Repin never painted any battle scenes. Possibly Greenberg is confusing Repin with another painter or rehearsing someone else's cliches...

This is the kind of careful analysis which led to "20th century culture." Greenberg concludes his criticism of Repin this way:

Repin predigests art for the spectator and spares him effort, provides him with a short cut to the pleasure of art that detours what is necessarily difficult in genuine art. Repin, or kitsch, is synthetic art.

Apparently, the "difficult" part of art does not include bothering to look at the pictures you criticize.

Bedtime Story

sketch for a short story written by Davi :P

Dino Toad

thanks to Mike for crits and anatomy help with this creature practice i did yesterday.