A chocolate-coated car was placed in front of a supermarket in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China, on Valentine's Day. This eye catching car was the work of seven employees from a local car company. The car was wrapped in a plastic wrap before being painted with melted chocolate. A total of 200 kg of chocolate was used in its making.
Graffiti on facebook is kinda like a flash-based version of msPaint, but it's one of the few cool apps there, far as i'm concerned :P the replay feature is great too. you can view my graffiti replays here.
If Beethoven had gone deaf all at once, he might not have developed into Beethoven. He might simply have adapted to the loss, as many others have.
But Beethoven's hearing gradually slipped away over 25 years, coming and going unpredictably. It faded tantalizingly in and out of reach as he was trying to realize his artistic visions. This slow torture caused him daily anguish. He could never be certain whether he would be capable of conducting a concert. Worse, he never knew which precious sound would be his last.
Beethoven didn't dare tell the world about his disability but he wrote of his despair in a private testament, agonizing that when other people heard a sound,
I heard nothing... such incidents brought me to the verge of despair.... I would have put an end to my life -- only... it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence.
Historians such as Robert Greenberg and Maynard Solomon believe Beethoven was able to reach new heights because of the spiritual and physical isolation he suffered during his prolonged struggle with his hearing. Perhaps his seclusion from the sounds of the world freed him from convention and allowed him to create new musical forms.
Beethoven's tragic burden is an example of what Peter Viereck calls "the weight that tortures diamonds out of coal."
Which brings us to the artist Degas.
Degas started out as a meticulous craftsman, carefully trained in traditional drawing and painting methods.
However, he suffered from increasingly poor vision his entire adult life. As John Updike reported, "by his forties he was virtually blind in his right eye; and by the 1890s he periodically donned corrective spectacles blacked out except for a small slit in the left lens."
Over the years as his eyesight dimmed, Degas developed a looser, more energetic style:
He lived in dread of his oncoming blindness, but as the artist David Levine noted,
It didn’t stop Degas.... He went on to change his way of seeing. He just moved into a rhythm of color and bigger generalities in the way he saw things like hands or faces.
Just as with Beethoven, some of Degas' most beautiful work resulted from his enormous talent twisting and turning to escape being smothered by the artist's physical disability:
Green Landscape
Wooded Landscape
Tantalus was the character from Greek mythology who stole ambrosia from Zeus' table and brought it back to his people, revealing the secrets of the gods.
His punishment was terrible: he spent eternity in a pool of water beneath a bountiful fruit tree. But whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches raised above his grasp. Whenever he bent down to try to drink, the water receded. (We get the word "tantalize" from poor Tantalus.) And while all that food and drink hovered beyond his reach, the gods placed a threatening boulder over his head.
Many people say that the illustrator Willy Pogany (1882-1955) reached the pinnacle of his career with a series of lavish, ornate books including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1910), Tannhauser (1911), Parsifal (1912) and Lohengrin (1913). These books feature spectacular gilt designs on sumptuous leather bindings, elaborate borders on each page, and illuminated initials with hand calligraphed text.
Personally, I find them exhausting.
I don't think Pogany started getting interesting as an artist until he shed all the regal trappings and learned to simplify.
Left alone with just a line and a blank page, Pogany began to produce work of enduring value. Each line becomes more important when you don't have fancy textured paper and intricate borders to rescue (or obscure) the quality of your work.
Here are a few scans of Pogany's original drawings so you can see his line up close:
Even his small, "simple" drawings weren't that simple.
Surrounding a picture with fancy borders can enhance its appearance, but only to a limited extent. Ultimately, the picture pays a heavy price for that boost; it is harder for a picture to achieve greatness when encumbered with ornamentation. One of the most important things for an artist is knowing when to stop.
April in UK means that the British Rollover Championships is going on full "tilt". This video is hilarious and when I saw it I knew it would make the art car central "hall of hillarity" (and I am not talking about any presidential candidate in particular) The cars are painted somewhat artistically therefore I think they be included here.
Danny Scheible is the amazing "Tapigami" artist who created an entire city scape using regular masking and painter's tape. I met Danny at Art Car Fest 06 in Berkeley CA, where he came to visit all the cars and was gracious enough to make and give out small versions of what he does. We talked for a while and during that time he created a small city scape that I have in an old 100 CD plastic container to protect it from dust. There is not a lot of mention of him on the net but since we drive art cars through cities, I figured it would be OK to write about him on art car central. Maybe he can do a city scape inside a car!!! Danny you rock and you have inspired me with your art.
Originally the car was painted matt black overall but John got tired of it and in April of 1967, visited J.P. Fallon Limited, a coachworks company located in Chertsey, Surrey. They then commissioned "The Fool" - a Dutch team of gypsy artists, to paint the car "psychedelic" at a cost of £2,000 (or about $4,200 Cdn).
John’s newly painted psychedelic car drew some public outrage when a old woman, in London’s downtown, attacked the car using her umbrella and yelling: "You swine, you swine! How dare you do this to a Rolls-Royce." Obviously, the Rolls-Royce is passionately regarded in England as one of the many symbols of British dignity!
This is one car we won't be seeing in any of the parades, and by far the most expensive and famous art cars that was bought for $2,299,000 in 1985 by Mr. Jim Pattison’s Ripley International Inc. for exhibition at Ripley’s "Believe It Or Not" museum.
John Lennon's car is featured in more detail in this tribute youtube video of him and his Rolls-Royce, with the "Lucy in the sky with diamonds" sound track
William Oberhardt (1882 -1958) was like a 20th century version of Hans Holbein the Younger. Just like Holbein, Oberhardt had an astonishing gift for rendering the human head. "Heads are my preoccupation," he said. "To me the world is full of heads." Both Holbein and Oberhardt were summoned to draw the most famous people of their day. Holbein drew portraits for the court of Henry VIII while Oberhardt drew portraits for Time magazine. Cover of the first issue of Time magazine, by Oberhardt
Portrait by Holbein
Both artists could paint, but both found their highest expression in the medium of charcoal drawing, which enabled them to display great freedom and sensitivity.
Oberhardt was a very traditional, almost old fashioned artist. He was appalled at his fellow illustrators who used photographs, emphasizing that an artist's job was not to "copy form" but to "strive for interpretation of personality through form."
He advised young artists:
Avoid haste, and don't take pride in hectic activity...Technique evolves gradually. It is the blossoming forth of years of intelligent study, not surface imitation of accepted mannerisms or formulas. Do not waste time on cleverness which might develop into mere facility.
Despite his traditional approach, you can find great, almost abstract designs in Oberhardt's portraits. Once he gets beyond the subtle nuances of the face, he allows himself to go wild with bold surrounding marks that play an important role completing the design:
In discussing "the distribution of blacks in the background," Oberhardt the traditionalist sounded surprisingly modern: "I follow only my feeling of harmony."
Similarly, the cartoonist James Swinnerton had a long, successful career making mediocre drawings that revealed no particular artistic ability:
Yet, in his spare time Swinnerton painted powerful, sensitive landscapes:
Rose O'Neill was another artist who made a small fortune with bland, inferior drawings. The public just loved her cute little imps, called Kewpies:
Nobody guessed that behind the scenes, O'Neil drew intense, erotic drawings and wrote steamy poetry. Her real drawings look like the work of Brad Holland, who came along 50 years later.
When a reporter asked O'Neill about the striking contrast between her professional work and her personal drawings, O'Neill refused to comment, saying "these things were made for the maker's own delight."
I'm not suggesting that every one of these private pictures is a work of genius. However, it is interesting to me that so many artists could not find a market for quality art, and survived only after they dumbed down their work.
I would never have guessed from their public work that these artists were capable of creating such pictures. I think their best work, the work they did for their "own delight," deserves some exposure.
There are millions of drawings out there with a claim on our attention, but that doesn't mean we can't pause for a moment over one lovely example.
When you stand in a meadow full of daffodils, your eye may settle by chance upon just one. Not the Best flower, not the worst, but by looking at it and smelling it up close you learn something about every other flower in the meadow.
Today's flower is from the great Ronald Searle. Here he does what he does best-- dips his pen in his DNA and comes up with a brilliant, caustic, insightful drawing.
Searle's line is a joy to behold.
In the following detail, note how Searle applies his trademarked approach to three completely different surfaces; the hard geometry of architecture, the soft folds of a curtain, and the natural lines of flowers have all been humanized by Searle. This is what great artists do.
Searle's editorializing is as sharp and wise as his line. Look at the marvelous way he conveys these gelatinous corporate "yes" men:
It's hard to overstate Searle's influence on generations of artists that followed him. (Obvious examples include Pat Oliphant, Jeff MacNelly and Mort Drucker).
Graffiti on facebook is kinda like a flash-based version of msPaint, but it's one of the few cool apps there, far as i'm concerned :P the replay feature is great too. you can view my graffiti replays here.
